Private Investigations

Thirty-One

‘Is this really a holiday resort?’ Haddock asked, as he drove carefully through the narrow, crowded streets of the seaside town.

‘Absolutely,’ Pye assured him. ‘In the old days they called this the “Biarritz of the North”. It’s still popular. You’re thinking like a young single man, Sauce.’

‘I’m not single! We’re a couple.’

‘No, you’re a Dinky: as in, Dual Income No Kids. It’s the same as being single, in most ways. When you think of a holiday, you think of getting on a plane and getting off somewhere twenty degrees warmer. When you think of a beach it has to be so bloody hot underfoot that you can’t walk on it.’

The DS grinned. ‘That just about sums it up, I’ll admit.’

‘Then wait till you’re like Ruth and me, with Junior to look after. We did it once, the package holiday thing. Nightmare. Getting him on and off the plane, to the hotel, never taking our eyes off him while he was crawling about near the pool, finding something he could eat without him spitting it out.

‘Ever since then we’ve rented a cottage. Next summer we’re going to CenterParcs in the Lake District. If it’s warm at the weekends and we fancy the beach, we take him to North Berwick, or over to Fife. Elie’s nice, or would be if it had more facilities.’

‘We’ll bear all that in mind,’ Haddock said, ‘in five years’ time, or maybe in ten. Meanwhile, in this place there isn’t even a yellow line we can park on.’

‘Go back to the police station,’ the DCI suggested. Haddock was about to take his advice when a space opened up for him, as a Volvo estate pulled out. ‘See? Patience.’

‘Not my strongest suit,’ Haddock grumbled. ‘Don’t we have DCs who could be doing this job?’

‘Yes, but it’s one for us. I want to see Dino’s flat, not hear about it second hand. The boy Jagger can stew in the cells at Fettes until we’re ready for him.’

‘Are we going to charge him?’

‘Too bloody right we are. I’ve already told the depute fiscal as much. He may have talked to us eventually, but what you told him was spot on. His help and his silence sent them to their deaths.’

‘He could say he confessed under duress.’

‘The only possible duress was applied by Drizzle’s forehead, and that was part of an altercation. Sauce,’ he said, ‘the Crown Office might decide eventually not to prosecute because he wasn’t under caution when he told his story, but he’s going to be charged and stuck up in court before anyone’s had a chance to think too deeply about it. Apart from anything else, he’s media fodder. It’ll be reported as a positive development.’

‘And get you brownie points with the chief?’ Haddock murmured, laughing.

‘Us,’ Pye countered grimly. ‘If this thing winds up in the unsolved column nobody’s going to come out with pass marks at the next review . . . apart from Jackie, ’cos I’ll make sure she does. Now, where is this place?’

‘There it is.’ The DS nodded towards a doorway on the other side of the road, where Sergeant Tweedie stood, waiting. ‘Did you get the keys?’ he asked her as they crossed.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘The landlord wanted to come with us, but I told him that wouldn’t be appropriate in a criminal investigation. He liked that.’ She grinned. ‘It’ll give him something to tell his pals in the Nether Abbey at the weekend.’

She led them through a door that opened directly from the street into a dimly lit corridor. The detectives counted three flights of stairs, until there were no more to climb.

‘You two won’t remember DCS Pringle, who used to be head of CID in the old force,’ Pye told the sergeants as they reached the top. ‘By the end of his career he used to insist on being given a detailed description of a call-out. If there were stairs involved he wouldn’t go. Stevie Steele, God rest him, told a story about the last time he did, a visit to a fourth-storey flat. When they got to it, they found the door painted purple. Stevie said Pringle’s face was about the same colour.’

He stood back, as Sergeant Tweedie produced the keys. Only the Yale was needed. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, moving to one side, then following them into the attic apartment. It was small, but freshly decorated, with a dormer window that allowed a view across the putting green and towards Fife.

‘What are we looking for?’ she asked, as the trio put on rubber gloves.

‘Anything that links to associates of Francey,’ the DCI replied. ‘Did you get anything out of Chic when you gave him the death message?’

‘Nothing useful,’ Tweedie told him. ‘Like you told me to, I asked him to make a list of his son’s associates. The only names he gave me were people he drank with in the County and the Ship. I know them all, just like I knew Francey. There are a couple of rowdies in there, but nobody who I’d consider for a minute for this sort of thing.’

‘Did he mention Callum Sullivan?’

‘No; nor his nephew either. I’ve been asking around and my impression is that he and the boy Maxwell Harris were no more than acquaintances. The kid was struggling for friends when he moved here, and that’s why he latched on to Francey.’

‘Friendly enough for him to have been in Mr Sullivan’s garage and seen the car, though,’ Haddock pointed out.

‘True,’ Tweedie conceded, ‘but you know what I think? I think Dino smelled money, so he cultivated the kid, just to see what might come out of it. And at the end of the day, something did.’

‘The red BMW.’

‘Exactly. I was suspicious as soon as I heard that he helped Maxwell polish the cars. That was far too much like work for Dean Francey. There had to be something in it for him.’

‘As there was,’ the DS murmured. ‘Far more than he could handle.’

‘Hey!’ Pye’s call came from the other side of the room, by the window. He had lifted the television set down from the cabinet on which it stood, then opened the rectangular unit and looked inside. ‘I might have something here.’

He reached into the box and took out a passport, and then a brown envelope with an elastic band securing it from the outside. He carried both to a gateleg table that stood against the wall.

He removed the fastening from the envelope then slid out its contents: a wad of cash, secured tightly by another elastic band. Holding the bundle carefully, he rippled through the notes with his thumb.

‘Used notes,’ he murmured. ‘Clydesdale Bank issue, on the outside at least.’

‘How much is there?’ Haddock asked, as the DCI returned them to the envelope.

‘I’m not a bank teller, and I don’t want to handle them any more than I have to, not until the scientists have had a chance to print and swab them. But, if they’re all tenners, as they seem to be, I’d take an uneducated guess at five grand.’

‘Do you think that’s payment in full, or a first instalment?’

‘The latter surely,’ the DCI suggested. ‘Didn’t Jagger say Dino was going to meet a guy who owed him money?’

‘Hold on,’ the DS exclaimed. ‘If it was half in advance and he was going to collect another five K, why did he need Jagger’s thirty quid and his bank card?’

‘We know that. He and Singer were going away for good; and maybe also because after the utter bollocks he’d made of the job he was sent out to do, he might have had doubts about whether he would actually get paid the rest.’

‘Are you sure the money relates to the abduction?’

Both men turned and stared at Lucy Tweedie as she asked her question.

‘This much I am sure of,’ Pye said, quietly. ‘He didn’t make it selling frozen fish as fresh to Chinese restaurants.’