Fatal Last Words

Sixty

‘How are you doing, Becky?’ asked Sammy Pye.

‘I’m at the end of the road,’ his colleague confessed. ‘There is nothing I can say for sure, nothing I’ll be able to declare under oath. It’s possible that somebody tried to access the victim’s files on this computer, but nobody will ever prove it, far less who it was.’

‘The daughter could have done it, but she’s eliminated as a suspect.’

‘She is, but there’s one other. There was a second guest screen-name on her internet account: sllinco, with two “l”s. What’s the boyfriend’s name? Ray mentioned it, but it’s slipped my mind.’

‘Collins.’

‘There you are, then; it’s an anagram.’

‘You haven’t been in touch with Carol about this, have you?’

‘Of course not. This is your investigation, Sam; I’m only on the periphery. I wouldn’t go interviewing your witnesses without asking you.’

‘Sorry, Becky, course you wouldn’t. Do you think you can get into sllinco’s files?’

‘I can have a go, but ideally I’d need the same sort of information you gave me on Glover.’

‘That would be difficult.’

‘Then I’ll try with the basics. You never know. .’

‘Thanks.’

Pye was about to hang up when Stallings spoke again. ‘Before you go, when am I getting my DC back? I gather he’s been kidnapped and taken down to Leith.’

‘Hey, he came of his own free will. We no longer needed to be based in Charlotte Square, so I decided we might as well go back home. Look, I’m grateful for the loan of Haddock. He’s in the middle of a specific task right now; I’ll look at releasing him once that’s done, unless. .’ he said, heavily, ‘we get sucked into the Henry Mount investigation. That’s going to break in the media eventually, although the Aussies have helped us by keeping a lid on the name. From what I hear, they’re going to release it at a press conference in Melbourne at ten a.m. local time.’

‘What’s that with us?’

‘One a.m. Alan Royston’s going to have a busy night, with journalists looking for the connection between the two murders.’

‘Have we established one?’

‘The head of CID reckons we have.’

‘Neil McIlhenney?’

‘No, the real head of CID, DCS McGuire. He’s on holiday in Australia; he’s gone to Melbourne and he’s seen the body. He’s convinced; so much so that he’s told me to get up to Fred Noble’s place sharpish, and offer him protection.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Ah, I forgot, you’re a newcomer. Three days ago, this part of Scotland could boast of three internationally famous crime writers. Now we’re down to one, and that’s Noble.’

‘He must be nervous.’

‘I hope he is. If he is next on some nutter’s list, being nervous will be no bad thing. Give me a call if you get any more out of the Glover daughter’s computer.’ He hung up and walked out of his office, into the CID suite, where Haddock had taken over the desk vacated by the holidaying Griff Montell. ‘Sauce,’ he said, ‘any feedback from those emails you sent?’

‘Three results, sir,’ the DC replied. ‘Two of them are negative; the Bosnian message and the one to Ratko7 were both returned as undeliverable, addresses closed down. But while you were on the phone, I had a call from a woman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr Mary Warmly.’

‘Odd name, even for America.’

‘Yes, but it explains her email, Marythreecool. She’s a historian, on the staff at Harvard University, and she says that she’s an expert on the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. She told me that she didn’t know Glover but that she had an email from him, in April, asking if she knew anything about the four names on the list in DCC Martin’s safe. She replied, saying she couldn’t help him. A couple of days later, he phoned her. He asked if she was sure about this, and gave her the names again. She repeated that she didn’t recognise any of them, and she asked him what it was about. He got quite excited, she said, and told her that he was afraid that two of them, Danica Anelić and Aca Nicolić, were dead, and that he was trying to find the other two, if they were still alive. He knew that she had contacts in Serbia and Bosnia and visited there, and wondered if she had heard anything at all that might help him. She said no, yet again, then she asked what was behind it all, but he said he couldn’t tell her that and hung up.’

‘Did she ever hear from him again?’

‘No.’›

Pye frowned, and scratched his head, pondering. He looked across the room, to find that Wilding was watching him. ‘April,’ the sergeant murmured. ‘Wasn’t it April when Glover had lunch with Andy Martin up in St Andrews, and gave him that list to put in his safe?’

‘Yes, it was. But why did he do that? Because he had twigged that his anti-Trident views had brought him to the attention of the intelligence services, and that he was being watched.’

‘And he was right. We know that from the new chief constable himself, don’t we? Didn’t he tell Neil McIlhenney that he had checked, and that it was true?’

‘Yes, he did,’ the DI agreed. ‘But when he had his sit-down with DCC Martin and told him his story, did Glover ever mention the word Trident? I was there on Sunday when Andy let us in on it, and I don’t remember him saying that he did.’

‘You’re suggesting what exactly?’

‘That Andy assumed, correctly as it turned out, that it was the Trident connection that had attracted the spooks to Glover but that the man himself might have believed he was being watched because of something else, something unrelated. This list he left with him clearly has fuck all to do with Trident, not unless Serbia has a fleet of nuclear submarines that we know sod all about.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘First we’re going to see Fred Noble, make sure he’s still intact, and work out a plan to keep him that way. That’s top priority. After that, I’m taking this up the line, all the way to the top if I have to.’