Pray for the Dying

Twenty-Four

‘Bingo,’ Skinner exclaimed, as he gazed at the photograph on his monitor. He turned to his exec. ‘It may say Byron Millbank on his driving licence, and that may not be a top-quality image, but I rarely forget a face. . and never, when I’ve seen it dead. That is Beram Cohen, one-time Israeli paratrooper, then a Mossad operative until he was caught using a dodgy German passport while killing a Hamas official, most recently for hire as a facilitator of covert operations.

‘As you know, Lowell, he’s the guy who recruited Smit and Botha, procured their weapons through Freddy Welsh in Edinburgh, then went and died, inconveniently for them, of a brain haemorrhage a few days before the hit.’

‘Could we have stopped it if he hadn’t?’ Payne asked.

‘There would have been even less chance. The evidence we had would still have led us to Welsh, but no sooner; we probably wouldn’t have got to the hall as quickly as we did.

‘Even if we had been lucky and got the two South Africans, my guess is that Cohen would have been in the car and would have taken off. He’d have been on the motorway inside two minutes. He would have got clear, dumped the guy Brown’s body, so it would never have been linked to our investigation, and we’d have had no clue at all, nowhere to go.’

He scratched his chin. ‘Cohen dying might have been convenient for us, but as it turned out it wasn’t a life-saver. Speaking of Bazza Brown’s body,’ he continued, ‘lying a-mouldering in the boot of a Peugeot, and all that, I’d like an update on that side of the investigation.’ He checked his watch. ‘Mann’s press briefing should be over by now; ask her to come up, please.’

The DCI nodded and was about to leave when Skinner called after him. ‘By the way, Lowell, are we any nearer being able to open that bloody safe, or do we seriously have to explore the Barlinnie option? Toni’s sister gave me a number, but as she warned me, it had been changed. She did it weekly, apparently; there’s security,’ he grumbled, ‘then there’s fucking paranoia.’

Payne laughed. ‘It’s in hand, gaffer, but the Bar-L route may be quicker than waiting for the supplier to send a technician.’ He paused. ‘By the way, how did your visit go? How are the mother and sister?’

‘As bereft as you would imagine,’ the chief replied, ‘but they’re both very calm. I was impressed by Marina,’ he added. ‘She’s not a bit like her half-sister. Toni, it seems, was the love child of a Mauritian politico; she must have inherited the gene. Marina, on the other hand, struck me as one of nature’s civil servants, as her mother was.’

‘And her father? Is he still around?’

‘No, not for some years; he never was, not full-time. Sofia seems to have valued a degree of independence.’ Skinner pointed to the anteroom at the far end of his office, the place that Marina Field had filled. ‘Have you lined up any secretary candidates yet?’

‘Yes. Human Resources say they’ll give me a short list by midday.’

‘Then hold back on that for a while. We can call up a vetted typist when we need one. Marina says she wants to carry on in her job, working for me. I’ve stalled her on it, until I decide whether I want that.’

‘How long will you take to make up your mind?’

Skinner grinned. ‘Ideally, three months, by which time I’ll be out of here.’