Private Investigations

Fifty-Nine

It’s all too easy for a cop engaged in a complex investigation to become obsessive; as soon as that happens his judgement is liable to be impaired.

I recognised the signs as I ended my call to Mackiltee Lodge. Walter Hurrell, not Rachel Higgins, took the stolen jewels to the safe and he watched the owner as she put them in there.

Yes, Bob, and that meant precisely what?

In all probably, it meant nothing. Hurrell was Eden’s driver; of course he’d have taken them to the hotel, and been put up there, since it was remote. He was his minder, responsible for his personal security. It was natural that he should have taken the family valuables to the safe, and if he’d watched the owner as she put them in, he was only doing his job properly.

‘Forget it,’ I told myself, just as my email inbox pinged to let me know that I had a new arrival. I opened it and saw a message from Sauce Haddock, headed simply, ‘For Info’.

There was no text, only an attachment. I clicked on it, and waited as the Word software booted up and a document appeared. The page was headed ‘Callum O Sullivan’, and the text below was a list of names, in alphabetical order; his party guests, for sure. I scrolled down from the top. Most of the names from A to G were unknown to me, apart from a European Tour golfer and a couple of football people, but one did stand out, even though it wasn’t news to me. ‘Francey, Dean’, there because of his connection to Sullivan’s nephew, Maxwell Harris.

It was when I got to ‘H’ that I sparked. I’d expected to see Anna Harmony, listed under her adopted name, but the entire Higgins family were there as well, Eden, Rachel and Rory. And so was Walter Hurrell.

Obsession edged towards paranoia: that name was coming up far too often. I was very keen to see him on video with Sammy Pye and Lottie Mann facing him across an interrogation room table. If I was a betting man, he would have been carrying my money in the ‘Who shot Dino?’ stakes, but the odds would have been miserably short.

I was still contemplating an imaginary call to Ladbrokes . . . other bookmakers are available . . . when the FaceTime icon started bouncing at the foot of my screen. I hit ‘Accept’ and waited for a few seconds, until my own onscreen face was replaced by that of Amanda Dennis. She had her back to her office window, and behind her I could see the grey pillars on the terrace outside.

‘Quick one, Bob,’ she said. ‘Your man gets back tomorrow, six a.m. What do you want done with him?’

‘I want him detained within the base,’ I replied. ‘They should say nothing about what’s happened to his family. That’ll be for the interrogating officers.’

‘No.’ Her face set in a frown. ‘It’ll be for you; only you can go in there.’

‘Christ, Amanda,’ I exclaimed, ‘that’ll cause a riot in ScotServe HQ. I’m breaking enough protocols as it is.’

‘I don’t give a stuff about ScotServe, or its increasingly unpopular chief constable. That base is the most secure place in the United Kingdom and they won’t have plods running all over it. You have standing within my service and it’s on that basis that they’ll let you in.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘if that’s the deal. In which case, I’ll be keeping my visit strictly to myself, in the short term. Thanks for this, Amanda. Please tell them to expect me at midday.’