Gallery Whispers

8

Andy Martin and Mario McGuire sat in the Head ofCID's office, on the second floor of the Fettes headquarters building, half an hour after the visitors had departed. After Skinner and Mcllhenney had withdrawn, the chief superintendent had continued the briefing for a few more minutes, until he was sure that each of the visiting officers had a complete grasp of the situation, and that everyone's priorities in the search for the assassin were the same.

All of Scotland's police forces have points of entry to the country within their territory, even Central, which although it has no ferry ports or air terminals, does have docking facilities at the BP oil installation at Grangemouth. Martin's concern was that every possible route into Scotland should be identified and covered as far as possible.

'If you were him, sir,' asked McGuire, 'what would you do?'

The DCS's vivid green eyes flashed as he smiled grimly at his colleague. 'What's the most obvious thing?' he said, throwing the question back.

'Fly into the busiest airport, I suppose, which has to be Heathrow, then catch the Shuttle, or hire a car and drive to Scotland.'

'And if you were Hawkins, where would you fly from?'

McGuire stroked his chin. His black beard grew fast; a dark shadow always showed by mid-aftemoon, for all that he had a wet shave every morning. 'Anywhere but South Africa,' he answered eventually.

'Right. But if you were South African and your real name was van Roost, maybe your natural inclination might be to route through Holland. The Low Countries' airlines are making a real effort to pinch travellers from Scotland away from London. You can access just about anywhere in the world out of Glasgow, Edinburgh or Aberdeen, through Schiphol and Brussels. That works in the other direction too, so you'd better check out Kim and Sabena landings. Their computers should tell you the origin of each passenger's journey, even if they were onward travellers from outside Holland or Belgium.

'Damn it,' Martin scolded himself. 'I should have come up with this clever thought that at the briefing. Mario, make sure that big Neil passes that on to McGuigan and Macintosh, so that Glasgow and Aberdeen landings are checked too.'

'Ach, I'll tell them myself 'No. The boss has set up the chain of communication through Mcllhenney so that he can keep in touch with everything that's happening. Let's do it his way.'

'Very good, sir. I'll nip along and tell Neil now.'

'You do that.' The detective inspector started for the door. 'Hang on a minute,' the DCS called out. 'Are you happy that you've got enough manpower for this job?'

'Well,' McGuire answered, slowly, 'since you ask. Another set of legs with a sharp brain to drive them wouldn't do any harm.'

'Okay. I'll lend you Karen Neville or Sammy Pye from my personal staff. Take your pick.'

The DI frowned, considering his choice. 'Are either of them firearms trained?'

'Both. First class shots, the pair of them.'

'Then it's hard to choose between them. But I'll take Neville;

Maggie's worked with her, and rates her pretty highly.'

'Okay, you've got her. Pick her up on your way out and brief her.

Remember, though, she only needs to know that we're looking for this guy. She doesn't need to know why.'

McGuire nodded and turned towards the door once more, only to hear a knock, then see it open, as Brian Mackie stepped into the room.

Martin looked up, surprised. 'Hello, Thin Man,' he said. 'What brings you here?' He waved a hand in farewell as the Special Branch Commander left. 'Cheers, Mario. Good luck.'

'With what?' asked Mackie, casually, as the door closed.

'His Lottery ticket. So what's up?'

The tall detective looked up, glumly. 'This Oldbarns investigation, that's what.' He handed a folder to the Head of CID. 'That's Sarah's postmortem report. The woman was full of cancer: undoubtedly she'd have died within months. Someone helped her on the way with a great big dose of pharmaceutical heroin.'

'Any thoughts on who?'

'I don't want to jump to any conclusions here. I've sent Maggie and young Stevie Steele, from Clan Pringle's Division, out to interview the boyfriend, to see how he reacts. However, someone performed an operation on Mrs Weston two weeks ago. There's no record of it in any of the main hospitals, or at the Murrayfield, but Sarah found a wee private clinic on the South Side that's acting a bit shifty. They clammed up when she asked them about it.

'I'm wondering whether her ex-husband, who's a surgeon, remember, did the exploratory op, and then' 'did her a favour when she asked.' Martin finished his colleague's supposition for him. 'He'd have had access to the drugs, I suppose.

Ach, I'd be heart sorry for the poor bastard if he did that… even although it's against my principles.'

'Unless…' Mackie began, hesitated for a few second, then gathered his breath and went on. 'Unless we succumb to a rare burst of professional incompetence and close the book on this one: write it up for the Fiscal as a suicide.'

The Head of CID looked at his friend in silence for around thirty seconds, then he opened Sarah's report and read it, still without a word. Finally, he looked up.

'Brian, I'd hate to see this man lose his career and his liberty for doing something that he wasn't cruel enough to refuse. But we're only investigators, mate; not judge, not jury, not even prosecutors. Whatever our different private feelings, we have a public duty to establish facts and report them to the Fiscal, and we can't neglect it. Not ever.

'Let's you and I follow this for a bit, one step at a time. First, let's pay a joint visit to this clinic that obstructed Sarah and give them a hard time until they tell us whether Mrs Weston was a patient there, and if so who treated her.

'We'll see where we go from there.' Martin paused. 'What have you done about the press?'

'Royston's told them that we're waiting for the result of the PM before reporting to the Fiscal. Sarah's still waiting for a small piece of lab work, so technically that's still true.'

'Fine. It can stay like that overnight. Let's go and see this clinic.

What's it called, by the way?'

'St Martha's.'

Andy Martin grunted, with a grim anger which surprised his colleague. 'She won't be much help to them if they get in my way.'