Head Shot

66

'This is getting crazy,' Maggie murmured, almost to herself. 'What else did Haggerty tell you?'

'That was about it,' her husband answered. 'After your man at GRO came up with Paula's name, and you told Pringle, he went haring into Leith to see Jay. The two of them pul ed the watchers' notes and saw that I've been to her place twice since the murder, and Gregjust went crazy.

'I must real y have upset him; he was for sending a couple of senior officers down to Gala to bring me up to Edinburgh for questioning. Old Dan was sensible enough to tell him to hold his bloody horses, while he went to see Willie Haggerty. The ACC ordered him to calm Jay down, and said that he would talk to me personally, which he duly did.'

Mario sensed her bristling, and saw her sit stiffly upright in her dining chair; that was as close as her icy control would allow her to come to ful -blooded, exploding anger. 'The nerve of that man Jay,' she exclaimed.

'Just as wel that Dan was there, or he might actually have done it. I tel you, love, if he had done that, it would have been him or me. I'd have gone to the DCC and told him that.'

'You wouldn't have had to. First of al, I'd have beaten you to it, and second the Big Man wouldn't have needed any threats from us. The ACC told me he had a cal from him this afternoon. They discussed the case; Haggerty said that he sends us his condolences about Beppe. He also said that they've come to a conclusion about Essary.'

'That he's stil around, even though the money's gone?'

'That's right, and that he's sitting there thinking he's a genius, having pul ed off the perfect crime, and that we don't know that he's even done it, far less that we know who he is.'

'The second part of that's true.'

'Maybe so, but if Big Bob and Haggerty are right, he's still around for you to catch.'

Mario paused to slice off a strip of his fillet steak. 'There was something else, though,' he continued, forking it up. 'I wasn't late home because I was with Haggerty.' She looked at him, curiously, as he chewed.

'I was just leaving Fettes when I had a cal from Paula, doing her nut. So I had to go back there again… another one for Greg Jay's book, no doubt.

'She was stil shaking with anger when I got there. Apparently while Dan was off having his arse chewed by Willie Haggerty, Jay went ahead and lifted her. He had her picked up from the deli and brought to his office, then questioned her about the restaurant incident, and about those birth certificates.'

'What did she tell him?'

'She accepted the story about the restaurant… although Stevie Steele's had his last Christmas card from her, I can tell you… and she told Jay that she's never been in Register House in her life, far less gone there to pick up other people's birth certificates.

'He hammered away at her for over an hour, then he let her go, with a warning that when they found the clerk who issued the certificates, he was going to stick her in a line-up.' He paused to eat the last of his steak.

'He's wasting his time, though,' he added, at last.

'Why?'

'Because… although she was too shaken up to remember it at the time… on the day in question, Paula was on holiday in Italy.'

'Can she prove that?'

'Oh yes. It was a girlies' trip; she went for a week with her mother and her favourite auntie. I'l tell you something; Greg might have been within his rights in questioning Paula, but if he has my mother hauled down to Leith in a patrol car, he and I are going to have hard words again.'

'Mmm,' said Maggie. 'So Paula's well off the hook, is she? Yet someone used her name to get those certificates. Why, I wonder; why hers?'

'Thinking ahead, probably. This whole thing was planned in minute detail; I reckon that if Stan had gone to sign those leases rather than Beppe, he'd be dead now.'

'Or your mother,' Maggie murmured, and regretted her words, as she saw the look which passed across his face. 'I'm sure you're right,' she went on, quickly. 'Yet I wonder… maybe Paula's met Magnus Essary or Ella Frances, and doesn't even know it.'