Lethal Intent

Twelve

The tent was still in place, although the body of George Regan junior, aged thirteen, had been removed to the mortuary in the High Street. The King's Stables Road entrance to Princes Street Gardens had been reopened, and a mobile investigation headquarters caravan, white and imposing, now stood where the cars and ambulances had been parked earlier.

George Regan senior and his wife had gone, with the same composure and grace of bearing they had brought with them, to the unspoken relief of their colleagues. The sergeant had understood how difficult their task would be. The violent death of a stranger child always had a profound effect on those who had to investigate it; when the victim was known to them, inevitably it was even worse. George had realised also that he could not be a member of the team, and had made no such embarrassing request.

'You never know what's in a person till you see them in a crisis,' Detective Superintendent Chambers said quietly, facing Stevie Steele across the small table in the mobile HQ. They had been joined there by Detective Chief Superintendent Dan Pringle, the ageing head of CID, and by Alan Royston, the force media-relations manager. There was a fifth person in the command van: Sir James Proud, the Chief Constable, had come to the scene; he sat next to Pringle, silent and solemn.

'Or in yourself, till you experience one,' the DI added. 'Beneath all his normal banter and stuff, George is a bloke and a half

'So let's find out how his son died,' the head of CID pronounced. 'But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We'll reach no conclusions until we have the post-mortem findings. That said, on the basis of what we've seen, provisionally it looks as if it was a straightforward mishap. Young boy out for adventure decides to climb the castle rock, slips and falls, breaks his neck.'

'There were no other injuries on the body,' Steele pointed out. 'Nothing to indicate that he'd fallen.'

'You could fall off a pavement and break your neck,' Pringle countered. 'You might not even have to fall. I heard of a case once where a man was waiting to cross a road and a bus drove past too close to the kerb. Its wing mirror hit the guy, killed him stone dead.'

'It was after dark,' said Mary Chambers, 'and wee George was on an eight o'clock curfew. The other kids were all home on time. Yet he sneaked off on his own and tried to climb a cliff.'

'That would be fairly typical George behaviour,' Steele told her. 'He was a lovely lad, but you'd have thought that mischief had been invented for him. And who says that he was on his own? Maybe they were all there. Maybe it was a dare that went wrong. Maybe the other kids panicked and legged it.'

'That's a possibility,' she conceded.

The Chief Constable leaned forward. 'I don't like to intervene in these situations,' he began, 'but we must interview these boys; quietly and discreetly, but we must do it. We need to eliminate… or confirm… the possibility that they were all part of this prank and have all been scared into silence. If they haven't, then to complete the picture we need to find out if anyone else saw George junior, after they all went their separate ways.'

'Very good sir,' said Chambers. 'DI Steele, DC Singh and I will get on to that straight away.'

DCS Pringle grunted. 'Mary, big Tarvil on his own will scare the shite out of those kids just by looking at them. With George gone you'll be short-handed, so I've persuaded Maggie Rose to lend us her young prot?g? PC Haddock, for a while. He's inexperienced, but he's a smart kid, and he's maybe more user-friendly than DC Singh.'

'Okay,' the superintendent conceded, 'but we'll need to get on with it. George Regan gave us the boys' names, and told us where to find them. Two of them are at Heriot's, and the other four are at Castlebrae, where George junior was. We'll try to interview them at school, but first we'll have to contact the parents, tell them what's happened and give them a chance to be present when we speak to their sons, or get their permission to do it with a teacher present. These are minors, so we'll have to ask the schools if they can lay on counselling for them afterwards.'

She looked at Steele. 'You take young Haddock and handle the pair at Heriot's. I'll do the Castlebrae lot with Tarvil.'

'What about the media?' asked Alan Royston. 'We'll have to make an announcement soon. I'd like you to take a press briefing. How about midday?'

Chambers nodded. 'I'll do it, but not until two o'clock; give us a chance to speak to the boys first. Once we've done that I'll have a better idea of what I'm going to say.'