Lethal Intent

Seventy-six

Stevie Steele had been expecting a report from Arthur Dorward, not a personal visit, so he was surprised when his red-haired colleague walked into his office. 'Hello,' he exclaimed, 'I didn't think that you Howdenhall lab guys could find your way to divisional offices any more.'

'We get precious little thanks when we do,' Dorward answered, 'so these days we only deliver the good news in person.'

'Good news? You bear good news?'

'I do indeed, my son. A double helping, in fact.'

Steele leaned back in his chair and smiled. 'Let me have it.'

Casually, Dorward tossed an envelope on to his desk. 'It's all in there, but this is what it says. First, the sock: as you suggested, we had another look at wee George's clothing, and knowing what we were after made all the difference. We took several fibres from his jacket; they were an exact match for the cotton in the sock that socked Mario McGuire. We checked the garment too. That wasn't difficult: it's a Marks and Spencer product, fits size eight to ten shoe, and it's from a range that was withdrawn only six months ago. Before you ask, it could have been bought in any of their stores but, still, it's a big step forward.'

'True. It eliminates half of the male population and one or two large females as well.'

'Get away with you. It changes your report on the boy's death entirely, and you know it. Would you like to know about the rock?'

Steele chuckled. 'I can hardly wait. Did you put your top geologist on it?'

Dorward looked down his nose. 'Naturally. It's a lump of grey granite from the north-east, the stuff that Aberdeen and a few other places are built out of; very hard, much tougher than sandstone. The interesting thing about it is that it's been machine cut. Superintendent McGuire must have a seriously hard head to have got up after being whacked with that.'

'He has, take my word for it. He'll be out of hospital by now.'

'He's lucky he's conscious by now,' the inspector said. 'If that weapon is what was used on young George Regan, the kid didn't have a chance.

'Now, the other. We went back to Ross Pringle's room, and we dismantled that heater. I put my best girl on it, and on one side of the loosened socket that caused the leak, she found a clear right thumbprint. We had to fingerprint Ross's body, I'm afraid, which I didn't like doing, but it allowed us to eliminate her. We took the lock on the door apart too. There were scratches inside it that my specialist thinks would have been made by a skeleton key. He also… and this is where he got really clever… found traces of two different types of lubricant inside the lock, which led him to speculate that the skeleton might have been oiled to make it work better.'

'Whose speciality would that be?'

'Apart from a locksmith? A joiner? A mechanical engineer? A policeman? We're scientists, Stevie, we only go in for guessing when it's founded on something concrete.'

'Have you eliminated the engineer who did the last service on those gas appliances?'

'Gimme a break! Of course we have. Match that print and you've got your man.'

There was a knock at the door. Steele looked up and saw, through the glass, Detective Sergeant Ray Wilding. He beckoned him in, as the smiling Dorward stood. 'When we catch this guy, I'll buy you a beer, Arthur. So will George, Dan and Neil, I'm sure.'

The two officers passed in the doorway and Wilding took the seat that the inspector had vacated. Steele had taken up Skinner's suggestion that he bring him into the investigation and had found him only too willing. 'You're looking pleased with yourself too, Ray,' he said.

'So will you be in a minute, Stevie. I've found Chris Aikenhead for you, and he's right on our doorstep.'

'Yes!' Steele hissed.

'I read through the file on the investigation, and I found a reference to him, saying that he worked off-shore with a Scottish-owned company called Oriental Petroleum, so I checked with them. He still does. He worked on their platform in the North Sea at the time, and for three years after his wife's suicide, until he was moved to an installation off Venezuela. He remarried out there and stayed until September, when he came back to a job in the Edinburgh office as development manager. The personnel officer was very co-operative: she gave me his address.'

'Hold on, Ray. What if she tells him that the police have been asking about him?'

'I asked her not to do that, in case she alarmed him unnecessarily. I told her that something had arisen that related to his late wife's case, and that we wanted to advise him of it. She promised me she wouldn't say anything to him.'

'Let's hope she's as good as her word. Where does he live?'

'In the Buckstone area.'

'Christ, that's close to Neil, and Dan Pringle.'

'And the ski centre.'

'It gets better. What was his trade on the rigs?'

'He was an engineer.'

'It all fits. We pay a call on him, Ray, but first we get a warrant. We might need to search his house for a sock that's in want of a partner.'