Lethal Intent

Seventy

In Edinburgh, Stevie Steele had one thing on his mind: the whereabouts of Chris Aikenhead. He had completed all but one of his list of informal interviews; the last, with Dan Pringle, he feared would be the most difficult. He had served under the outgoing head of CID at divisional level, and for all his acknowledged weaknesses, he had admired him as the type of detective that he hoped to be himself.

He knew that, like most detectives, Pringle hated offences against children more than anything else, and so he was not surprised that he had gone for Patsy Aikenhead in the interview room, given the evidence that he had had before him at the time.

He told him as much, as they sat in his drawing room.

Pringle exploded in his face. 'Are you digging that thing up again?' he shouted, his bushy moustache quivering. 'I'll tell you this once, Stevie, and once only. That bloody shambles had nothing to do with me. It was all that arrogant bastard McIlhenney's fault. He sent a uniformed officer to bring the Yasmin Khan woman to the office for her interview, rather than getting off his fat arse and going to talk to her on-site.'

Steele had experienced his former boss's temper before: he knew that the one thing he could not do was bend before it. 'That's not George Regan's recollection, sir. He told me, without even being directly asked, that the order to bring her in came from you.'

Pringle's eyes blazed. 'If George said that McIlhenney must have put him up to it.'

'If McIlhenney had done that, sir, then surely he'd have told me that story himself, but he didn't. The only thing he said to me that was critical of you in any way was that he thought you went too hard against the girl.'

'Maybe I did, son.' Steele was surprised by the concession. 'But there's one thing you and everybody else seems to have forgotten about her. That balls-up over the time didna' prove she was innocent, it just meant that the Spanish girl, Magda what's-her-name, could have done it too. Only she didn't, Stevie: Patsy Aikenhead was guilty. She did what she confessed to doing: she threw the kid into the cot in a temper, and the poor wee thing banged her head on the bars and died from it. I know that, I heard her say it, and for all her hysterics I bloody know she was telling me the truth!' He was breathing hard. 'Did you ask McIlhenney if he thought she was innocent?' he barked.

The inspector felt his own temper rise. 'It doesn't matter what McIlhenney thinks!' he barked back. 'It doesn't matter what you think. I haven't been asked to investigate the conduct of the Aikenhead case. I've been asked to find links between you, Neil and George because of what's happened to all your children. I've been asked to protect any other coppers' kids who might be at risk. So will you please drop the outrage and the protests and co-operate with me?'

It was as if Steele's sudden anger had blown out Pringle's fire. The older man seemed to sink into himself. 'She did it, Stevie, that's all,' he said, quietly, as he slumped into his armchair.

'Okay,' his colleague murmured as he sat opposite him. 'Okay. Now, can I get down to the things I need to ask you?'

'Aye, go on.'

'First, do you agree that there are no other possible links between the three of you? This is most important.'

'Yes, I agree. McIlhenney was on temporary secondment to my division. Maybe our paths crossed once or twice after that, I'm not sure, but certainly never with George involved.'

'Good. That's a weight off my mind. The other questions I want to ask you are about Chris Aikenhead. At any point in the investigation did you interview him?'

'No. He was away; it was only after we'd charged the girl that her solicitor got in touch with him and he came back. He came to see me then, but it was all wrapped up and the girl was on remand by that time. With hindsight, I shouldn't have let him anywhere near me, but he made such a fuss in the station, it was either that or have him arrested for breach of the peace.'

'Why didn't you?'

'I felt sorry for the boy. He hadn't killed the baby; he was just reacting like any husband might have in the circumstances.'

'How did your discussion go?'

'As you'd expect; he yelled at me that his wife would never do something like that, and I told him that she did and that she'd admitted to it. He said that it must have been the girl Magda; I told him that we knew for sure it wasn't, although I didn't tell him why.'

'Did he make any threats?'

'He got steamed up about the Spanish girl, until I told him that if I caught him within a mile of her I would have him arrested on the spot.'

'Can you remember enough about him to give me a description?'

Pringle nodded; he closed his eyes, as if it made it easier to form a picture in his mind. 'Big bugger,' he murmured, as if he was describing it, 'about six three, maybe, sun-tanned, brown hair, don't know about the eyes. Very fit; a strong-looking boy, but you'd expect that with him working on the rigs.' He blinked and looked across at Steele. 'That was ten years ago, mind. Can you not get a photo?'

'I'm trying, but no luck yet; he's never been arrested, and he doesn't have a photographic driving licence. Was that your only meeting with him?'

'Not quite. I saw him again at the trial, then afterwards, when the whole thing had blown up in our faces. He asked to see me again, and I agreed. He was very quiet this time, very controlled; he asked me if the inquiry would be reopened, and I had to tell him that while it would, there was no prospect of progress as long as the other girl involved refused to come back from Spain, and that even if she did, the prospect of a guilty verdict against her was remote.'

'How did he react? Do you remember?'

Pringle closed his eyes again. 'Oh, yes, I remember. He looked across the desk at me and he said, "However long it takes, Mr Pringle, we can only hope that justice will be done." And then he said, "Of course, sometimes it needs help." He was calm, though, not threatening in any way; he just sounded sad.'

He shifted in his chair. 'He was right, and all, Stevie. It needs help when buggers like us are involved. I'm sorry about my tantrum earlier. You see, it was no surprise your coming to see me. I've been expecting it, ever since I heard about the McIlhenney boy, and I've known what we would wind up talking about. I canna' bring Ross back, but I truly hope we're all wrong about this, and that her death was a one-in-a-million accident. For if it wasn't, I don't know if I'll be able to live with the knowledge that it was caused by something I did. You were spot on, son: whether I was right or I was wrong doesn't matter a toss. My daughter will still be just as dead, and so will George's son.'

Steele rose, and Pringle showed him to the door. 'There's an extradition agreement with Spain now,' he said. 'D'you think this might lead to us trying to get the Magda girl back over here?'

The inspector frowned. 'There wouldn't be much point. That's the one thing I've learned for sure, this morning. She died in Algeciras, five years ago, from a drug overdose.'