Private Investigations

Sixty-Four

High noon on Wednesday and the gang were all there.

Where? Gathered on the roadway that led down to Eden Higgins’ boathouse, all of them there on my summons.

Eden had been stroppy when I’d visited him four hours earlier in Moray Place, to advise him that his presence would be required, along with that of his wife and son.

‘I hate unfinished business,’ I told him. ‘In fact I don’t allow it.’

‘I thought I made it clear,’ he snapped, ‘that your input was no longer needed.’

‘I’m not a tap you can switch on and off,’ I barked back at him. ‘Trust me, Eden,’ I added, ‘if Alison was still alive, she’d be standing beside me at this moment, telling you to be there.’

A slap across the chops wouldn’t have brought him into line any more quickly. ‘What’s it about?’ he asked, his usual quiet demeanour restored.

‘Patience, friend,’ I replied. ‘You’ll find out.’

‘I don’t like grandstanding, Bob.’

I smiled. ‘Me neither as a rule, but sometimes . . .’

Rachel Higgins was furious as she stood beside the Bentley; she looked good though, in a fur jacket and hat, her designer jeans tucked into calf-length boots.

Rory Higgins was curious as he locked the car; a light smile played with the corners of his mouth. All the same, his expression suggested that what was coming had better be good or his mood could change very quickly.

Eden was reserved; his outburst that morning had been unusual in a man who was not given to letting his emotions show on the outside.

Rory had driven his parents from Edinburgh. I suspect that it had been something of a treat for him. His father had offered me a seat when finally he’d agreed to come, but I told him I preferred to make my own way.

‘Come on then, Bob,’ he said, in a ‘humouring him’ tone of voice as we stood waiting. ‘Get on with your Poirot moment.’

I held up a hand. ‘Not yet.’ I looked back along the road, towards Rhu. ‘But soon,’ I added, as I saw three cars approach in convoy fashion. The lead vehicle had blue lights on top.

They came to a halt at the entrance gateway and five others stepped out, joining us in the unseasonably warm sunshine: Mario McGuire, in plain clothes, and his four lieutenants, Pye and Haddock, Mann and Provan. Only the DCC knew all of the story; the others were in for something of a surprise.

‘What the hell?’ Eden exclaimed as they walked towards us, looking vaguely like the cast of Reservoir Dogs.

‘You called it my Poirot moment, chum,’ I said, ‘and you were right. Since I seem to have become a consulting detective, I thought I’d wrap this up in the grand manner.’ I dug into my trouser pocket and produced a key that Mario had given me the day before. ‘This was found in Hurrell’s flat,’ I announced as I moved towards the boathouse door. ‘It fits an Abus padlock, which this is. Let’s hope it works on this one or I’m going to look a right twat.’

It did. I slid the newly freed doors apart, letting the others see what was inside. Back, secure in her mooring, was the Princess Alison, all seventy-five feet of her.

‘My God,’ Rory laughed. ‘How big a hat did it take for this bloody rabbit?’

Rachel stared into the boathouse, eyes wide.

Eden smiled. He took a step towards me, extending his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ he began. ‘I never thought for one moment . . .’

‘I know you didn’t, so you’ll allow me the grandstanding.’ My own hand stayed by my side.

He nodded. ‘Absolutely. Where did you find her?’

I walked into the great shed, and threw a switch beside the door, turning on the strip lighting, as the others followed. ‘Orkney,’ I replied. ‘The last thing anyone thought, me included, was that she’d have been taken north, but she was. She’s been moored in a marina since the day after she was taken, renamed, as you’ll see from the boards that were covering her original markings. They called her MV Revenge. Appropriate, because that’s what it was.’

‘How did you get her back?’ Rory asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I drove her back,’ I replied. ‘Well, to be honest, the other guy did most of the driving.’

‘What other guy?’

‘One of the two who borrowed her in the first place.’

‘Who stole her, you mean,’ Eden murmured.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘I mean it. They borrowed her; that’s what it’s going to say on the completed police file, and on the report to your insurers.’

He frowned. ‘I’m not getting this.’

‘You will,’ I assured him. ‘Here,’ I exclaimed, ‘do you fancy testing her out, just to satisfy yourself that she’s okay? My friends here have been working their buns off dealing with the aftermath of her disappearance. They deserve a wee bonus.’

‘I suppose I owe you that much,’ he conceded.

That much, and my fee for finding the thing, I thought.

‘Excellent.’ I jumped on board. ‘Join me, everyone.’

‘Really!’ Rachel complained to her husband. ‘Do we have to?’

‘Just a short trip,’ he said, ‘a run out into the Gareloch and back.’

She scowled. ‘You all go, then. I’ll stay here.’

‘Aw come on, Rachel,’ I called from the control deck, ‘don’t be a wuss! The fridge is rebooted and the champagne’s cold.’

She threw me an icy look, but mounted the short gangplank and came on board. Everyone else followed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm; Dan Provan and Sammy Pye were positively reluctant.

I went through the start-up procedure as David Gates had shown me, then pressed the remote that raised the sea gate. Having appointed myself captain, I told Rory to cast off.

Gates had reversed her in when we had returned from our two-day journey down the west coast of Scotland, so leaving the dock was easy. I edged her away from the shore, very slowly, then opened the throttle a little, steering her between the buoys and out into the sea channel, wondering idly what I’d do if a Trident sub surfaced suddenly beneath us.

‘Are you a sailor, Sammy?’ I heard Sauce Haddock ask. ‘You must be, since you’re so fond of North Berwick. How about you, Dan?’

I glanced round at the wee DS, and thought I detected a faint green pallor in his complexion. I couldn’t hear Pye’s reply, but I can lip-read ‘Fuck off’ well enough.

I didn’t go much further, only a few hundred yards, until we were clear of any other Saturday-morning sailors. When I was satisfied it was safe, I cut the engines and pressed a button to drop the anchor, then waited until we were solidly moored.

‘We don’t want to sit here, Bob,’ Eden warned. ‘It’ll get cold pretty quickly.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but we need to talk. We parted on bad terms last week, and that needs to be sorted, if only to get Sir Andrew Martin off DCC McGuire’s back. Let’s go down one.’

Rachel had taken my unsubtle hint about the champagne. On the lower deck a tray waited for us with nine blue plastic flutes, each half filled. She distributed them without a word or a smile.

‘Cheer up, Mum,’ Rory pleaded. ‘This is a celebration, of sorts.’

I contradicted him. ‘Oh no, it isn’t. Your family has this boat back, but at some price. Isn’t that right, Eden?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. But I repeat, I knew nothing about any of it.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Finally I’m satisfied that Walter Hurrell wasn’t operating under your orders.’

‘Walter wasn’t what?’ Rory exclaimed.

I let his question lie; instead I put one to him. ‘Do you remember Callum Sullivan’s party?’

‘His divorce celebration? Of course; only too well, but how did you know about it?’

‘Through DCI Pye and DS Haddock,’ I told him. ‘They had it from Sullivan. You remember it because there was a bit of a stooshie, and you were in the middle of it.’

His face reddened. ‘Don’t remind me.’

But I did. ‘You’d had a few, and you came on to a girl. I’m guessing this part, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Her name was Anna . . .’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he interrupted. ‘I never found out.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you did,’ I conceded. ‘But you recognised her, for you’d seen her before, dancing on the bar in tassels and a G-string in Sullivan’s bar, Lacey’s. It was the night your girlfriend, Marcella, walked out on you, as she told Pye and Haddock. When you saw her again at the party, drink taken, you probably imagined she’d be amenable, given her line of work, so you came on to her . . . way too strong, as it happened. She protested, and you were, not to put too fine a point on it, filled in by another guest.’

Rory winced as he nodded. ‘I thought I could handle myself, but that lad was a fucking psycho.’

‘He was indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Did Walter Hurrell see this happen?’

‘Yes, he did. I had a beef with him afterwards; I wanted to know why he didn’t pitch in. He said that he didn’t want an all-out brawl to develop. He promised me that he’d deal with the guy privately later on.’

‘He dealt with him, all right,’ I said. ‘He recruited him; first of all he paid him five grand to kill Hector Mackail. After he’d done that, he gave him another job, to abduct the child of the other man who, quote, borrowed, unquote, the Princess Alison. The police believe the child was going to be used as leverage to force her father to say what had happened to the boat. It went wrong; Zena died.’

As I was speaking, I was watching Rory like a hawk, never taking my eyes off him, studying his every reaction. At that stage I had only one uncertainty left: did he know anything, anything at all?

His expression as I broke that news gave me my answer; it was pure astonishment, adulterated only with horror, and it was sincere. Sincerity is the hardest thing in the world to fake, and Rory isn’t that gifted.

‘That was him?’ he gasped. ‘The lad I had the battle with? Francey, the fellow who was found shot?’

‘That was him,’ I confirmed. ‘And the woman found dead and burned with him, that was Anna, the dancer you and he fought over. The bullets that killed them, Rory, came from the same gun that was found beside Hurrell’s body, when DI Mann and DS Provan over there went to arrest him.’

He looked across at the two cops. ‘Established,’ Mann said, ‘beyond any doubt. Them, and the bullet that finished off Jock Hodgson, they all came from that gun.’

He gazed at his father. ‘Dad, did the police tell you all this?’

‘Yes,’ Eden whispered. ‘They confirmed it on Saturday.’

‘I’ve been back since Monday, and you haven’t said a word to me?’

‘That’s because he was afraid you were behind it,’ Mario McGuire’s strong voice seemed to startle father and son, ‘scared that Hurrell was acting on your orders. Isn’t it, Mr Higgins?’

‘I’m sorry, Rory,’ Eden admitted. ‘I knew I hadn’t done it; the alternative terrified me.’

‘You thought I was a killer?’

‘I was afraid you might be.’

Rory whistled. ‘What a fucking tragedy that would have been,’ he said, bitterly. ‘What an effect it would have had on the business. That’s what you were really afraid of, Dad.’

‘No!’

‘Come on, we both know it’s true. Higgins Holdings is the child you love most of all. I’m just an employee.’

‘Nonsense!’ Eden protested. ‘That’s not true.’

His son laughed. ‘Dad, I’m a message boy. Every one of the general managers of the subsidiaries is paid more than I am.’

‘Come on, that’s part of the learning process. You know that.’

‘What? Like Marcella over in Destry; a first-class honours graduate sweeping the floor and working the switchboard?’

‘Hah!’ his father retorted. ‘Listen to the poor downtrodden boy who’s just come back from a weekend in Monaco.’

‘This boy’s a qualified pilot,’ Rory shouted back at him, ‘which means you only need to employ one other person on the flight deck.’ I was about to intervene, but he was in full cry, so I let the family bitterness come out. ‘You know what really got to me, Dad? When Mackail, the poor fool you stitched up, knocked you down that flight of stairs in the office, it wasn’t me you shouted to for help. It was Walter.’

Eden turned to me. ‘Do you hear this, Bob?’ he sighed. ‘Help me here.’

‘I wish I could,’ I said. ‘But you know what? I’m standing here and I’m thinking about your sister, God bless and keep her.

‘I’m remembering the time she told me that you wanted her to leave the police and join Dene Furnishing. “As what?” I asked her. “Personnel director? Sales director?” No, she told me, you wanted her to be head of security, and you were going to pay her two whole grand more than she was getting in the police. She was a sergeant at the time, about to be promoted to inspector, which made your offer worthless, even in financial terms.’

It was my turn to sigh. ‘Eden, you have your business empire and you have your executive toys, like this one, although it has to work for its keep as well, and I’m sure it’ll be tax-deductible in some way. But you’re a cold little man, with no real insight into the feelings of those closest to you. Honest to God, I’m amazed that people love you, but they do.’

‘I want his name,’ he snapped.

‘Whose?’

‘The name of the other man who stole my boat.’

‘No,’ I laughed. ‘You’re not having it. I told you, he borrowed it.’

‘He stole it!’

‘Look, just shut up!’ I shouted, forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t there to lose my temper. ‘Do you know what that man is doing now? He’s with his wife, in Edinburgh Royal, where she’s recovering from the fractured skull that Francey gave her. When she’s fit enough, their first priority will be to bury their dead child. You will forget about him.’

‘He should be prosecuted,’ Eden muttered.

‘Not going to happen,’ I told him, back in control of myself. ‘The Lord Advocate will never allow it, and your friend the First Minister won’t either. Leaving aside the fact that there’s precious little evidence against him, other than his own confession, which isn’t recorded anywhere, he’s protected. Don’t go after him, Eden. I’d a tough enough job stopping him from going after you.’ I raised my plastic flute to my lips and sipped some flat champagne. ‘Cheers, by the way.’

He scowled at me. ‘So that’s it? I get my boat back and nothing else. Walter’s death is suicide and the whole case is closed?

‘I wish it was,’ I said.

‘What more is there?’ he protested.

‘Walter Hurrell didn’t kill himself.’

‘What?’ He looked at Mario, then Mann. ‘But you said he did.’

‘Oh, he fired that gun all right,’ Lottie replied. ‘But he was well dead when he did. When we took another look at the flat, we found another bullet, on the right side of the bed, wedged between the floor and a skirting board. Whoever shot him wiped the pistol clean, put it in his hand, fired again, and then put another bullet in the magazine. Only Hurrell’s prints were on the weapon and it appeared that it had only been fired once.’

‘Whoever shot him,’ Eden repeated. ‘It could have been anyone.’

‘But it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘My other half is a pathologist. She did Hurrell’s autopsy, and she is meticulous. One of the things that she checks for as a matter of routine is sexual activity; when she did that with Hurrell she noticed something unusual. There were traces of soap in his pubic hair. She gave it a good comb through and she found something else; it wasn’t all his. There were a few hairs in there that had become detached from another person . . . female, in case anyone’s wondering.’

I looked around, steadying myself with a hand as the boat rocked on a sudden swell. ‘A further detailed search found matching hairs to those, attached to a large blue towel in the bathroom. The hypothesis is this. Hurrell’s partner washed his genitalia after he was dead, in an attempt to remove all traces of herself and then washed herself, possibly took a shower.’ I paused. ‘Now why would she do that?’ I asked.

‘Why?’ Rory repeated.

‘Possibly because she had to be somewhere in a hurry,’ I replied. ‘What time did you take off from Edinburgh last Thursday night? ‘

‘Nine o’clock. It was supposed to be eight, but we were held back because Mum was . . .’ He stopped, abruptly. ‘Hold on a minute. What are you suggesting?’

‘Yes,’ Eden exclaimed, ‘be very careful here , Bob.’

‘I’m being as careful as I can, but this is a fact. There’s a CCTV camera at the end of Moray Mews. It covers the front entrance of every property there. Walter Hurrell died around seven on Thursday evening. The street camera shows nobody entering or leaving his flat at all on that day, yet somebody left there.’

‘Then it must have been by the back entrance,’ he declared.

‘Agreed,’ Sammy Pye said. ‘Your house has a back door as well, doesn’t it, sir, through the garden flat where Rory lives? And you have a security system, professionally installed, professionally maintained, with central video monitoring of cameras throughout the house, and also at each entrance.’

Eden nodded. ‘That’s correct.’

‘Yesterday morning,’ Pye continued, ‘under the terms of a warrant granted to us in private by the Sheriff Court, we took possession of the full day’s recordings for last Thursday. They show Mrs Higgins leaving through her son’s flat at a quarter to six and returning by the same route at ten past seven. Ten minutes later they show her leaving by taxi. We have the cab number, and we’ve spoken to the driver. He confirmed that he took her to the airport. He said she seemed agitated, and told him to get a move on. Not a good idea,’ he added. ‘He made a point of catching every red light along the Queensferry Road.’

‘Do we need to prove it by DNA comparison?’ I asked. ‘It’ll be done easily and it’ll be conclusive.’

‘No,’ Rachel whispered, as everyone on board stared at her with the same intensity, even Dan Provan, whose last surprise had probably come fifty-something years earlier when a midwife picked him up by the feet and slapped him on the arse.

‘Silly man, he’d gone too far.’

‘Did he want more money?’ I asked. ‘Was the jewel money not enough?’

She looked at me, right eyebrow raised. ‘Did he ever want more!’ she snorted.

‘Rachel!’ Eden shouted, rushing across to stand between us as if he could protect her. ‘Shut the fuck up! Don’t say any more.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ she chuckled, ‘way too late. What he wanted, Bob, was for me to leave Eden and go off with him. He knew that half of all this is mine, and he was greedy.’ She patted her husband on the shoulder. ‘My husband may be a boring, neglectful little man, and I may have sought other options from time to time, but I’d never leave him.’

I nodded. ‘How long were you and Hurrell . . .’

‘A few months. It was my initiative. He was guilty and fearful for his job after the first time, but he was in my pocket by then.’

‘Was it also your initiative for him to kill Mackail?’ Mario asked.

‘Damn right it was,’ she retorted. ‘I was there when he assaulted Eden. I’d have called the police, but Eden wouldn’t hear of it. Pity about that; in hindsight I can see that if I had done, he’d have been arrested and none of the rest would have happened.’

She had a point; that hadn’t occurred to me.

‘When we found out from Hodgson that he’d stolen the boat, well, that was it.’ She looked at me again. ‘Walter went too far there,’ she said. ‘I was appalled when I heard what he’d done, but again, it was too late.’

‘So you told Hurrell to kill Mackail,’ I challenged.

‘I told him to scare him as badly as possible.’ I didn’t believe that, but I led her on. ‘Again, Walter went too far.’

‘And the child?’

‘You were right. She was to be held until her father told us where our boat was.’ She glanced at Eden, who had slumped on to a bench seat beside her. ‘His name is Gates, by the way,’ she told him, ‘but Bob’s right. He drives a missile submarine, and that, I imagine, makes him pretty much inviolable.’

‘And Francey?’

‘Walter did that, of course; he decided the man was a risk, and shut it off. There, I wasn’t too angry when I heard. The lout assaulted my son, after all.’

‘His girl didn’t, though.’

Rachel shrugged.

‘When did you decide that Walter was a risk himself?’ I asked.

‘Who says I did?’ she shot back. ‘You have no sight of me entering or leaving his place last Thursday, only my going and coming from Moray Place. As for my . . . my traces, as it were, I was a regular caller, so you can’t pin them to that night. The extra gunshot he could have fired himself any time, and if he washed his cock regularly, so what?’

Her self-confidence restored her husband. ‘You’re right, Rachel,’ he said as he stood. ‘Silence from now on and let’s fight this thing.’

I nodded. ‘You do that, Eden. But please don’t hire my Alex for the defence. I wouldn’t want her to go down in flames this early in her career at the bar.’

‘Don’t you have confidence in her?’ Rachel asked.

‘Oh yes,’ I laughed, ‘make no mistake about that. If you want to brief her to enter your guilty plea, that’ll be fine by me: because you are done, by two things.

‘One is that ring you’re wearing on your right hand, that nice emerald and diamond piece that I noticed last Monday. I’ve seen it since then, in a photograph attached to the list of property that Jock Hodgson reported stolen from his house, along with his laptop.

‘Two, and even more damning, on the day of that burglary, and three days later when the poor bugger was tortured and killed, Walter Hurrell was in the Spire private hospital having a hernia operation. I know this because it was on the medical records made available to my dear lady when she did his post-mortem.’

I watched her confidence evaporate, like a piece of ice in the California sun. It seemed to flow out of her.

‘You didn’t only leave hair samples on Hurrell,’ I continued. ‘You left some prime specimens on the floor around the chair where you tied Hodgson up. They’ve been matched already. Doing that wouldn’t have been a problem for you, by the way. You’re a strong woman, and he wasn’t the fittest bloke, plus you had a gun. Isn’t all of that right, Lottie?’

‘Yes indeed, sir,’ Mann called out. ‘We also found a butane blowlamp tossed away in the garage. There was a bar code on it that told us it was sold in B amp;Q Hermiston Gate, Edinburgh, just after nine on the day Hodgson died. And that in turn led us to the buyer. A classic mistake of the amateur criminal, sir.’

‘I know the one you mean,’ I said. ‘You should never pay by card, Rachel, always cash.’

I looked at Eden and then at Rory. ‘I’m sorry, guys, she did it, and more. At this moment DCC McGuire has people searching every CCTV tape from last Monday evening, trying to find Rachel’s car on the way to and from the Flotterstone Inn to the meeting I believe she had Hurrell set up for her. And they’ll find it. Your security tapes show her leaving Moray Place on that evening, and getting home just in time for her birthday party.

‘Sammy, Lottie,’ I said to the two senior detectives, ‘you should make the arrest together. That way you’ll both get brownie points with the chief constable.’