Head Shot

67

He looked at her, darkly. 'Never mind Paula, love. Maybe we have.

That's how clever these people have been.'

He was in the act of rising to clear the dinner plates from the table, when the doorbell rang. Grumbling at the interruption, he walked through to the hal to answer it. Neil Mcl henney stood on the doorstep. 'Glad it 268 was you,' he said. 'I don't have to persuade Maggie to let you come for a pint.'

'But I don't want a pint,' McGuire protested. 'And you don't drink any more, remember.'

'Nonetheless, we're going for one. I'll wait; you get your jacket.'

'That quick?'

'That quick.'

Mcllhenney's car was parked just along the road. 'What did you tell Maggie?' he asked, as they drove off.

'The plain truth; that you had turned up out of the blue with a pink ticket from Lou and were hauling me off into the night.'

'She'l be used to that, by now. Tell me some more truth. Are you screwing your cousin Paula?'

Dusk was gathering; so was the silence inside the car. At last, Mario broke it. 'Why are you asking me that?'

'Because I hear things; even more in this new job than I did before. A little bird… to be exact a woman DC in Special Branch whom you know well… told me this afternoon that she heard that you were, from a pal in Greg Jay's team.'

'So the word's got out, has it,' McGuire growled. 'I wonder who else Alice Cowan's pal's talked to.'

'Does that mean that you are?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't think you're that stupid; daft yes, but not stupid. Mind you, she's some piece of woman, your Paula. I can see how anyone who saw you go into her place at night and stay for three hours might jump to that conclusion.'

'Aye, well you tell Alice from me to let her pal know that if one more whisper of this reaches my ears, then I'll pull every string I've got to make sure that a few detective officers down in Leith wind up on uniformed night shift in Craigmillar, or worse, find themselves transferred down to the Borders under my command.'

'She needed no telling; that's exactly what she said to her pal. She's a fan of yours, even though she didn't fancy the Borders herself.'

'I'm touched,' said McGuire, sourly, as his friend drew up outside the Liberton Inn. 'Why here?' he asked.

'It's as good as anywhere else; plus, they know us here from the old days, and they'll give us a wide berth. It'l be as good as talking in a phone box.'

'You've got something for me, then?'

'Oh yes,' Mcllhenney grunted as they stepped into the lounge bar.

'Have I ever.' A few heads turned as they entered, then looked away quickly. Neil went to the bar, while Mario found a table in the furthest corner.

'Well?' the big superintendent asked quietly, as his friend returned with a pint of lager and another, of orange squash.

'Tennent's.'

'Bugger the beer. What is it?'

'Okay; to business. I've done those checks you asked. You wanted to know al about your dear old dad-in-law, and here it is.

'For a start he has no criminal convictions, either here or in Portugal, where he lived from the time when he made his sharp exit from Maggie's mum, until about three years ago. When he went back there, he settled in Setubal, just south of Lisbon, where he lived with his parents, during the war. I spoke to the chief of the local police, who was very helpful.

'When he arrived in town, Jorge bought a bar and restaurant that had been pretty well derelict and turned it into a decent business, good enough to keep him in a degree of comfort, but not one that was ever going to make him rich.

'Like I said, he has no record of any sort, but that doesn't mean that the Portuguese police never took an interest in him. Some of his customers were pretty tricky; you know the sort, wide boys who find al of a sudden that London's too noisy for them. But not just English; Jorge Xavier's bar… that was the name he used over there… was a hangout for ex-pats in general. There were suggestions that he was involved in more than alcohol: the place was raided a few times over the years, but it was always clean.

'The closest he came to being in bother over there came around twelve years ago, when a kid disappeared. She was a Portuguese girl, aged twelve, the daughter of a woman who worked in Jorge's kitchen, and she just vanished. She was never seen again. A lot of people were questioned about her disappearance, including him. The kid used to hang about the place, apparently; he was friendly towards her and he used to let her wait on tables.

'The Portuguese police didn't go as far as to say that he was a suspect, but he was the nearest they had. They had him in three times, and they gave the mother a hard time too, but she told them nothing that would have incriminated him.'

'Shit,' Mario growled. 'If only they'd asked over here.'

'And if they had, what would they have got? The guy's clean here too, 270 remember. Anyway, it died down after a while, and Jorge's life got back to what passed as normal. Until, that is, three years ago, when he did another vanishing trick. He sold his bar to one of his German customers for a hundred and twenty grand's worth of D-marks, and he disappeared.

'But not alone, it seemed. For the daughter of one of the ex-pats, a widow named Baldwin, left home at the same time, without as much as a goodbye note to her old lady. The girl, whose name was Ivy, had worked in Jorge's place as well. She was a very striking kid, the locals said; very attractive. But the thing that made her stand out was the fact that she looked like a wee doll. When she left, she was eighteen, but she could make herself up to look mid-twenties, or dress down to look early teens. That was the way Jorge liked her to dress when she worked; he said it put the punters off groping her.'

'How did Ivy's mother take the news?'

'She raised the roof, apparently. She had a fancy man, one of the Londoners, and the word was that Jorge's card was marked if any of his old friends ever caught up with him. But like everything else out there, the excitement died down after a while.'

Neil looked across at Mario; he was grinning, from ear to ear. 'It's about to get stirred up again. George Rosewell lives down in a tenement in Bonnington, next door to a doll-like waif cal ed Ivy Brennan, and her two-year-old son. George is the kid's father.'

'But he's sixty-three!'

'Ivy said he told her he was mid-fifties.' He snorted.'… Not that that makes a hell of a difference. But now to the kil er bit. Did you drop that other name?'

It was Mcl henney's turn to grin. 'I did indeed. It's well seen why you're the superintendent, pal, and I'm only a scruffy DI. The police chief in Setubal recognised the name at once. He lives most of the time in Setubal; in fact he's official y resident there, although he still has his house in Edinburgh. And as far as anyone could see, Mr Lyal Butler was Jorge Xavier's best pal.'

'Yes!' Mario exclaimed, loudly enough for heads to turn once more.

'So what does that prove, then?'

The two detectives looked at each other. 'I reckon,' said McGuire slowly, 'that it means that my father-in-law killed my uncle; or at least, he's a prime suspect.'

'You mean that this Magnus Essary… the dead guy who wasn't. .. is really Maggie's father?'

'You know about Essary? That was supposed to be under wraps.'

Mcl henney looked at him. 'You're gone less than a week and you've forgotten what SB is like?'

'Not even I worked that fast. Yes, George Rosewell the janitor and Magnus Essary the non-existent wine importer are one and the same; he used Lyal Butler's house in Edinburgh as an accommodation address for his phoney business, and rented our warehouse space as premises just to have a lease to show anyone who asked questions about the setup.

'I see it all now. He probably planned the scam out in Portugal; thought about it for years, maybe. Then he had a complication in his life; he was banging wee Ivy Baldwin in her schoolgirl gear, and he put her in the club. Rather than hang around in Setubal and wait for Ivy's mum's boyfriend to have him dumped off a trawler into the Atlantic, he sold up and came back to Edinburgh to put his plan into operation.

'So as not to look conspicuous, he bought two flats side by side, one for him, and the other for Ivy and the baby, when it came along. Her cover story was that her father had bought it for her. George got himself an ordinary job, waited for a while, then put the plan into action.'

'Why did he wait?'

'This is a pure guess, but I'd say he was waiting for Dr Amritraj to get set up over here. He must have been in on it from the start. The medical report for the insurance companies, so good that it was just accepted, was written by him. Then he certified the late Father Green as Magnus

Essary, dead of a sudden massive heart attack.

'Raj Amritraj was from Goa, in India; not all that far back, Goa was a Portuguese colony, until the Indians booted them out. Check that out for me too, with the GMC, but I'm right, I know it; Jorge and Raj met in Portugal. The poor old doctor probably thought he was in it for half a mil ion, but all he got was a bul et in the back and maggots in his eyes.'

McGuire stood, abruptly, and walked up to the small bar, returning with another pint of lager and another squash for Mcl henney. 'Don't let that go to your head,' he said, acidly.

'So,' his friend asked, 'does that make Ivy this El a Frances, then?'

'That's what logic tells you, except for two things. Ivy's age is pretty flexible, but all the descriptions we have of Frances put her around the thirty mark, and that would be pushing it for the wee lass. Plus, when I showed Ivy George Rosewell's photo, she told me that he had a beard; that's what started this bal rol ing in my head. Now why would she do that, if she was in on it?' He paused. '… Which begs another fucking big question.

'But meantime, pal, you and I better go and see Ivy in the morning.