Pray for the Dying

Thirty-Three

‘Anything on Bazza’s computer, Banjo?’ Lottie Mann called out to a detective constable who was seated at a table on the other side of the inquiry office, working on the confiscated PC. He rose and crossed towards her.

‘No email account that I can find, and that’s disappointing. He was very big on porn sites, though,’ he advised her. ‘Nothing illegal, nothing that Operation Amethyst would have hit on; all grown-ups, all doing fairly monotonous and repetitive stuff. Strange; from what I saw of Mrs Brown when we raided the house, he shouldn’t have needed any diversions like that. There are some pictures of her on the computer that bear that out, and a couple of videos.’

‘Chacun à son goût.’

The DC nicknamed Banjo. . his surname was Paterson, but none of his colleagues made the connection to the man who wrote the words of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. . stared at her. ‘Eh?’ he exclaimed.

‘It’s the only French I know,’ she said. ‘It means there’s no telling what you’ll find under a guy’s bed when you take a look. Or something like that.’

‘I’ll take your word for it, boss. I only speak Spanish and a wee bit of Mandarin Chinese.’

‘Smart bastard,’ she snarled. ‘What else?’

‘Video games; the thing was wired up to a big high-def screen. And casinos, he was quite a gambler, was our Bazza. He played roulette and blackjack mostly, but poker as well, from time to time. He also had an account with an online bookie, and bet heavily on the horses and on boxing.’

‘Was he any good at it?’

‘He seems to have been. He paid through a credit card; I’ve looked at the records and most months there was more going in than coming out. He had a system for roulette and he only ever backed favourites.’

‘That’s not a complete surprise; Bazza’s old man had a bookie’s licence and a couple of betting shops. As I recall, Bazza ran them for a while after he died, then sold them on to a chain. So yes, he’d a gambling background. He backed the wrong horse, though, when he took up with the South Africans. How about Cec?’ she asked. ‘Did he have a PC?’

‘Cec couldnae spell PC,’ Dan Provan muttered.

‘Possibly not,’ the detective constable agreed. ‘He’s got a PlayStation and that was it. He likes war games; anything where people get blown to bits. He also likes porn, but DVDs in his case. We could nick him for a few of those if you want.’

‘Can’t be arsed,’ Mann said. ‘What about their office?’

‘Definitely non-ecological. They don’t give a shit about how many trees they kill. All their records are on paper. However, they did fail to hide a list of addresses. They didn’t connect to anything so we’re having a look. Our search warrant was broad enough to let us go straight in.’ Paterson smiled. ‘Now for the good bit. Uniform have visited just one so far, a four-bedroom villa in a modern estate near Clydebank; it’s a cannabis farm, and you can bet the others are too.’

She laughed. ‘Poor old Cec; it’s not his week. He’s probably home by now; have him rearrested and brought in, then hand him and that address list over to Operation League. He’s their business now.’ She turned to Provan. ‘Bilbo,’ she began.

He glared at her. ‘The chief wis bad enough,’ he growled. ‘No’ you as well.’

‘What do we have on Bazza as a force? Is there an intelligence report on him?’

‘Now there’s a hell of a question to be askin’ a garden fuckin’ ornament like me.’

‘Okay, Dan,’ she laughed, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No more funnies?’

‘No more funnies.’

‘Good, because that really was a hell of a question. Ah’ve got a mate, a good mate, in what we’re no’ supposed to call Special Branch any more, in Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Section. He’s jist told me that the chief. . the old chief, no’ the new one. . asked for updated files on all organised crime figures as soon as she came in. When SCT went to work on Bazza, they asked the National Criminal Intelligence Service for input, and a big red sign came up, warnin’ them off.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means he wis a fuckin’ grass, Lottie; he was protected. And if it wasnae for us, and it wasn’t, it must have been for MI5. They’ve got a serious crime section.’

‘Jesus!’

‘You’ll get brownie points wi’ the new chief when ye tell him that, eh?’

‘Maybe. But have you thought through the implications?’

‘Sure,’ Provan admitted, ‘but Ah’m no’ paid enough to spell them out. Ye’d better go and see the gaffer.’

‘I will do. While I’m up there, you concentrate on the only other line of inquiry we have with Bazza. Have we got the CCTV tapes from the Easthaven Retail Park yet?’

‘Aye, and I’ve cleared up something; nothin’ major, just a point for the record. We know that Smit and Botha were at Easthaven and that Bazza went there too, to meet them. We know from the gaffer that the South Africans were in Livingston on Friday, collecting their weapons. Ah’ve checked with the team in Edinburgh, spoke to a DC called Haddock, bright-soundin’ kid. .’

‘Nothing fishy about him?’ Mann murmured.

‘Whit. . ach, be serious, Lottie. He said that there was no mention of a third man bein’ with them. So, Bazza must have been in the boot o’ the motor by then.’

‘Fair enough, fills in the timeline. Take a look at that video and see if it shows them meeting, then we’ll join all the dots. What does the recording cover?’

‘Two cameras, all day Friday, midnight to midnight. But there’s a clock on it so Ah’ll speed run it back to just before seven and go from there.’

‘Fine, you do that. I’ll go and see the boss.’