Fallen Gods

Fourteen

They were halfway though the Mongolian meal when Maggie's cellphone played its distinctive tune. She looked at Mario, awkwardly, apologetically; he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Could just as easily have been mine," he said. "Go on."

She flipped the phone open, pressed the 'yes' button, and answered, "Rose'.

"Sorry, Maggie," said Stevie Steele. "I hope it isn't a bad time, but you did say to keep you informed."

"I know I did; it's not a problem. Are you still at it?"

"Afraid so."

"I thought you'd have had it wrapped up by now, at least as far as you could. What's up? Have you been watching more video tapes?"

"I have, but it was a waste of time," said the inspector. "I went back far enough to watch the picture being hung on the wall. It wasn't tampered with at that point, and from the tapes we saw earlier on, there's no sign of anyone interfering with it after that."

"So it must have been rigged to go before it was delivered to the gallery?"

"Not necessarily; the exhibits came from all over the place. The curator waited until he had them all on the premises before he hung them. They were kept in a storage area below the main hall; it isn't covered by video cameras so in theory the device could have been planted there."

Steele hesitated. "Tell me, Maggie," he went on eventually. "Did Quintin Jardine Fallen Gods anything strike you as wrong about the notion that it was set off by a timer?"

As her husband looked on, Rose frowned. "You could ask why it was, I suppose. And I guess the answer could be either to give the arsonist time to get well clear, or, to have the painting go up before an audience, as a sort of a statement."

"If that was the case, he got it right, didn't he, our fire-raiser.

Bang in the middle of old Candela's speech."

"True. So unless that was pure coincidence, whoever set it must have known the timings and running order of the opening ceremony."

"So you'd think," Steele agreed, 'except…" He stopped in mid-sentence.

"What?"

"Except for the fact that there was no timer."

Maggie's eyes widened. "Come again?"

"The technicians have finished with the picture. They found the remains of a device, sure enough. It had been laid against the frame and conductors had been attached to the back of the canvas, to make sure that it went up fast, from the centre. Then the back of the painting had been covered over with heavy brown paper, sealed with gaffer tape. There's nothing unusual about that, and none of the gallery staff thought twice about it.

"The bomb, if you want to call it that, was primed and hung on the wall, ready to be detonated. But when it was, there was no ticking clock involved. It was set off remotely, triggered by a radio signal."

"Bloody hell! From how far away? Can they tell?"

"Up to four hundred yards, according to Tony Davidson, the telecommunications guy. It could have been blown from anywhere in

Princes Street, or from the top of the Mound, even. But was it? After all, it did happen right in the middle of the speech. What does that suggest?"

"That whoever did it was actually there, in the hall."

"Exactly. "Light the blue touch paper and withdraw", I reckon. And just to put the tin lid on it, at five this evening, the Press

Association had an anonymous call from a guy claiming responsibility for, I quote, "an act of retribution against blasphemy". He didn't name any organisation; he just said that much and hung up. All the PA reporter was able to say was that he sounded like a teuchter."

"The Presbyterian militant wing, in other words."

"Aye, or just as likely a nutter, who had nothing to do with it. The story was on the radio and television bulletins by the time the call was made. Oh yes, and the call came from a phone box."

"Like as not a fruitcake, then, I agree. Do we have a list of everyone who was there?" asked Rose.

"We have the complete invitation list," Steele replied. "It includes clients, other lawyers and professionals, the Lord and Lady Provost, the Chief Constable and Lady Proud… who declined, by the way… a couple of Supreme Court judges, and the media. We have a list of all the people who were signed in and given lapel badges with their names on them. We have a list of all those guests whose badges were not picked up. We have a list of all of the staff on duty. But we do not have a list of those people, guests or otherwise, who simply wandered in and past the registration desk without picking up their badges … as some people do at these bashes."

"Weren't there invitation cards?"

"Yes, but they were taken at the reception desk, not at the door. There were a couple of security people on the steps who were supposed to look at the invitations, but they've admitted already that it was quite possible for someone to have got past them. There were full taxi-loads of people arriving, five, ten at a time. No way did they check everyone."

"No. Listen, Stevie, where are you?"

"In the office."

"I'd better get along there then."

"Why, Mags? To do what, exactly?"

Rose frowned. "The video tapes from the security cameras. We'll need to check every face against those lists, looking for someone who isn't on any of them. And we should take that phone call seriously. This is borderline terrorism, so we should get Neil Mcllhenney and Special

Branch involved. We should tell Dan Pringle as well."

"I've done some of that already, Mags; I've told Neil. I agree there's a chance we'll come up with a face that's on his files. I'll leave it to you to break into the head of CID's Saturday night. But there's something else we have to face up to as well, and this is why I think we should sleep on it… apart from the fact that I'm knackered and cross-eyed from looking at tapes. If we don't find that face in the crowd, and it's long odds against that we will, then what we have on our hands is a gathering of Edinburgh's great and good, their spouses, partners and the rest, every one of whom is a suspected arsonist."

Maggie Rose let out a whistle loud enough to turn heads at the next table. "You are right," she conceded. "I must have had too much to drink already. Get on home, Stevie… or off to wherever you're expected. I'll see you in the office tomorrow, nine a.m. sharp. We've got a minefield to find our way through here, and no mistake."