Quintin Jardine - Fallen Gods

"A storm in a champagne flute," the DCC murmured.

Rose smiled. "That's what we thought. We attended, we interviewed everyone present and we conducted a thorough investigation. This led us to a suspect, a young woman who was present at the opening, even though she hadn't been invited, and who'd had access to the picture before the event. This person was an obvious suspect; last year she was involved in an incident of attempted religious fire-raising and underwent psychiatric treatment as a result."

"The girl Strachan?" Skinner interrupted. "Yes, I remember hearing about the case. The treatment didn't work, then?"

"That's just the point, sir. It did. We were fed the girl; she was meant to take the blame. Someone made a malicious call to her, told her that God was calling her again, and that she should go to the exhibition. Given her recent history, she just flipped."

"You pulled her in, though?"

"Yes, of course. We might have bought her as the culprit, too, but for Stevie." She glanced at Steele and he saw a trace of a smile cross her face. "He thought to check her phone records, and he traced the mobile from which the call had been made."

"Good, but standard procedure nonetheless. So you had another suspect?"

"Yes, a trainee lawyer employed by Candela and Finch. But he denied making the call. He claimed that someone could have borrowed his phone and used it, during an office party. We had no way of disproving that, so we had to release him."

"Did he know the girl?"

"They were at university at the same time, but there's no evidence of an acquaintanceship. However, when she appeared in court last year she was represented by Dav Chapin, of Candela and Finch, so anyone in the firm could have known of her."

"Okay, so your investigation was rubbered. Or did you have a way forward?"

"No sir," said Rose, 'sideways. Stevie took a broader look at the whole situation, and came up with a completely different scenario. As a result we believe that the fire at the Academy had nothing to do with protests or religion. We believe it was staged deliberately, to engage the fire services. They were barely there before there was a second outbreak, in the empty office of Tubau Gordon pica fund manager up in the Exchange district. By the time the firemen got up there, a whole floor had been completely destroyed."

"And was this fire deliberately started?"

"There's no evidence of that, sir. But an entire division of the company was wiped out; its records all the way back to January were totally destroyed. When the chief executive of the company did a financial reconciliation, he discovered a loss of thirty million pounds."

"So it was deliberately started?"

Rose smiled. "As I said, there's no evidence of that. The fire service, and independent people, conducted a complete investigation. Everyone's agreed that it was an electrical fire caused by overheating in a computer, which was routinely left switched on. The experts say that as far as they can see it was an accident."

Skinner grinned. "But we're not as bloody stupid as them, are we? We don't ignore the obvious."

Rose returned his smile. "No, boss, we do not." She turned to Steele.

"Stevie, would you like to take this up?"

The inspector nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The obvious, sir, is that these two fires were both spontaneous outbreaks, but there was evidence of detonation in one and not in the other. The experts' view is that if there's no forensic evidence of fire-raising, there's no case. But what if the computer where the fire started was the timer? What if it was rigged to set it off itself at a specific time? There would be no forensic evidence, would there? None you could see, that's for sure.

So we're down to circumstances. Let's consider the loss. Tubau Gordon is an investment trust manager, and a good one; there's no way even a bad investment manager could blow thirty mil within an IT without it starting to showing up to his colleagues from the start. So as I see it, the loss must have been generated in the company's secondary business."

"Which is?"

"Currency speculation," Steele replied. "And guess what? The computer where the blaze began was the one used for that activity."

"But why go to all the trouble of holding up the fire brigade? Even with an automatic call out system, the computer would be gone by the time the fire-fighters got there."

"Because the back-up computer and all the paper records had to be destroyed as well. And it had to be done that weekend. Three days later those records would have been archived off-site."

Skinner smiled, and punched the air in a mock gesture. "Clever boy, Stevie. So who's the link?"

"David Candela. His family has a private investment trust which uses the dealing services of Tubau Gordon. It's located on the Oriental floor, where the currency division was also housed. Mr. Candela manages his trust himself; all the instructions to the brokers come from him. He enjoys round-the-clock access to the building and he's a regular attender at weekends; the security log shows that.

"Further investigation over the weekend has revealed that Mr. Candela was a regular client of the Maybury Casino. He's a heavy gambler, and frequently complains about the house limit, even when he's losing.

"To sum up, sir, my belief is that Mr. Candela has extended his gambling by dealing privately on the currency markets, but he hasn't been using his own assets, he's been using those of Tubau Gordon. He's been getting into the currency department and running a private account, protected, no doubt by a code word known only to him, and one that no one could enter by accident. A bank audit over the weekend shows that the loss has been run up over the last couple of months. It would have been spotted this week; that's why the lot had to go up in flames last Saturday."

Skinner nodded; he glanced at the lugubrious Pringle, then back at Steele. "So why aren't you turning cartwheels, Stevie? Why do I sense that there's a big "but" coming?"

"Because we can't prove a bloody thing, boss," exclaimed the inspector, tersely. "All the solid evidence there might have been is melted. Any one of seventy people could have had access to that computer, and could have run up the loss. The only thing we have to link in Candela is that phoney fire in the Academy, which for sure he triggered himself at the exact moment he planned… and we have no way of proving either that he planted the device or triggered it."

Skinner pushed himself up from the sofa, walked over to his window and gazed out on to Fettes Avenue. After a minute he turned and looked back at his colleagues. "So what you're telling me, boys and girl," he said, 'is that we've got some clever fucking lawyer in Edinburgh who's committed the perfect crime."

"That's about it, sir," said Rose, "We know it's him, but there's no way we'll ever touch him for it. It looks as if he's done just that."

The deputy chief constable stretched his arms above his head. A wave of jet-lag caught up with him; he stifled a yawn. He grinned; a smile that they were all used to and that some of them had thought they would never see in that room again.

"No, Mags," he said. "He only thinks he has."

The place was understated, if anything. It was a very plain house, conservative in its design, without the ramparts and turrets found all too often in folly dwellings of its age, built from locally quarried stone, and smaller than might have been expected in such extensive grounds. And yet, there was something about it that reeked of money, and old money at that, maybe two hundred years old. Andy Martin's staff had established that it had been in the same family's ownership since they had built it in the late nineteenth century.

Bob Skinner stopped his BMW just where the driveway opened out into a wide garden area in front of the mansion. He was blocking the narrow road, but that did not worry him; in fact it suited his purpose. It was well into the evening, but the day had been fine, and the summer sun was still bright.