Head Shot

29

He could see as soon as he walked through the door that she was having a bad day; frown lines showed on her forehead, and her hair, which was normal y perfectly arranged, was ruffled.

Mario braced himself for the outburst. 'You would think that in this day and age, cash payrol s would be a thing of the past; but no such Honest to God, some of our employers are still stuck in a time-warp.

'We advise them, we warn them, we plead with them, and do they take a blind bit of notice? Do they hell as like!'

Maggie frowned at him. 'And you can wipe the daft bloody smile off your face. You won't be grinning when you have an armed hold-up in the middle of your division… as you wil, sooner or later.'

'Anyone hurt?' he asked at once.

'No, thank goodness. They waved shotguns around, but no shots were fired.'

'Where was it?'

'At that massive private housing development up near Myreside; three guys sat round the corner in a battered old Ford, watched the cash drop off, then just moved in and picked it up. They drove off with twenty-two thousand pounds. We found the car a mile away.'

'Who were they this time?'

She caught his meaning at once. 'Tony Blair, George Dubya Bush and Lennox Lewis.'

'Check the toyshops; maybe whoever bought them used a credit card.'

'Teach Nana Viareggio, McGuire; that's already being done. As it happens, we found a school-patrol woman who saw them change cars; she told us that they headed east in a dark blue Peugeot saloon, plus she gave us a pretty good description of one of them. He's medium height, she said, with grey hair, a broken nose, and a birthmark on his cheek.'

'Bluey Scott to the life.'

'That's what I reckoned; I've sent Ray Wilding and a DC round to his house, with an armed response team because there were firearms involved.'

'I wonder which one he was?'

'Lennox Lewis, I'll bet. He used to be a heavyweight boxer, after all.'

'No, dear, he used to be an opponent. They took his licence away in the end. I saw him in the ring, twice; the two fights lasted a total of five rounds and Bluey was knocked down a total of seven times.'

'That could happen again, if he's stil got the shotgun.'

'Nah,' McGuire drawled, 'Bluey won't give them any trouble. He might be punchy, but he's not suicidal. I lifted him once myself, and he came along quietly enough.'

'You're more scary than Wilding.'

'I'm not more scary than a Heckler and Koch carbine, though.'

'Let's hope so. There's always hell to pay when a police officer shoots a suspect.'

'Especially if he's carrying a table leg at the time, and he's on his way home from hospital.'

'Let's not go into that,' she said, ending the discussion. 'Now, get to the point. What's brought you here? If you thought you'd pick me up so I could get ready for Andy's do, I'l be a while yet. It's barely gone five.'

Her husband shook his head. 'No, it isn't that. Sit down for a minute, will you.'

'Why?' She threw him a puzzled look, but did as he said.

'It's about your father.'

'I told you, Mario,' she blurted out, urgently. 'I don't want to know.'

'Yes, but you have to; as a police officer.'

'What do you mean? Has he been up to… Has he committed a crime?'

'Not lately, not one that I know of, at any rate. But he may just be a victim of one.' He told her about his discovery of her father's new identity and of his fruitless search for him.

'You're saying that my father's a missing person?' she asked. 'If you are, he can bloody well stay lost. That would be best all round, in fact.

Jesus Christ, what sort of background checks does the education authority run on the people it employs to work with children?'

'Very careful checks,' he answered quietly. 'And in this case, what could it possibly have thrown up? Your father might be the worst sort of beast, but the fact is, he's never even been charged with anything, far less prosecuted, far less convicted. To everyone but you and your sister, he's clean.'

'There's been no trouble at the school?'

'None to speak of; certainly none of the sort you mean.'

'And you say he's just vanished?'

'That's how it looks.' He told her again about the scraps of supper and the Sunday newspaper that he had found in his flat. 'He's a missing person, love. You have to treat him as such.'

'But who's missing him?'

'His employer, for a start. And I am too. I want to find this man, to make bloody sure that he stays out of your life; our lives.'

'Mario, he probably has no idea where I am, or what I am.'

'Don't you kid yourself. He reads the tabloids.' He told her about the press cutting in Rosewell's sideboard; reading surprise and pain in her face.

'All right,' she conceded at last. 'I'll circulate his details roiAall the divisions and enter him on the national register.'

'In that case, you'l need this.' He took the photograph from his pocket and handed it to her.

It took a great effort of will by Maggie before she could look at the likeness of her father. Yet when she did, to her great surprise she felt nothing; his was just another face, just another of the many that had lain on the same desk. Some of those had been missing, as he was now, others had been dead, victims… as she had been, and in her mind, stil was… while others had been criminals. George Rosewell fitted two of those categories; and for all she knew, perhaps he belonged in the third as well.

She looked at the photograph again. There was a familiarity about it… on occasion, the man still appeared in her nightmares… but that was al. She laid it on the desk, face down. 'Okay,' she said. 'I'l see about having it circulated. If he turns up… well, let's just hope it's after Manny English comes back.'