Quintin Jardine - Fatal Last Words

‘True. So what does it tell us about the man? What was he doing travelling around Scotland with a Bulgarian under his wing?’

‘You and I can only speculate about that,’ McIlhenney pointed out. ‘Our best hope is that Lord Elmore can tell us more. . or tell me more, at any rate.’

‘You reckon I’ll leave that to you, do you, that I’ll be too busy in my new office? I don’t think so. It’s great being Supreme Leader; you get to cherry-pick. I’m going to sit in on that meeting, for two reasons. One, I’ve a personal interest in catching the killer of a man who was my companion only three nights ago.’

‘Granted. What’s the other?’

‘I have a funny feeling that I can see the way this thing is headed.’

‘Achh!’ the superintendent snorted. ‘You and your intuition. It’s a bloody sight more than I have.’

His boss beamed. ‘I guess that’s why I’m chief constable,’ he said mildly.

They drove on, circling Newcastle to the west, Skinner bemoaning the fact that the city’s notorious Brown Ale had passed into foreign ownership. ‘Not that I drink the stuff,’ he admitted, just as the ringtone of his mobile sounded through the car’s Bluetooth system. ‘Yes,’ he replied, his voice activating the call.

‘Bob? Piers Frame here; your secretary told me you were travelling. Can you speak? Are you alone?’

‘Not alone, but we can talk. My companion’s a senior officer and in on the investigation.’

‘OK, I’m happy with that. I don’t need you to identify him. Let’s leave the snoopers at GCHQ, who listen to my every word, I’m sure, something to puzzle over. I have some information for you, about the name Coben.’

‘Have you by God? I wasn’t hopeful, I admit.’

‘What I have to say won’t change that. He’s dead.’

‘Then he’s not the man I want, unless he’s been culled very recently.’

‘No, this happened a few years back. There is very little known about him, but Frankie Coben was a Serbian national, from a wealthy family with a part-Hungarian, part-American background. He seems to have been very much a background figure, though. The current Serbian government can’t tell us anything about him; all the records of him have been expunged. By whom? Nobody’s sure. He was a nasty piece of work; the anecdotal evidence. . and that’s all there is. . says that he was a state security fixer, torturer, and killer. He was also very bright; he was said to have been educated at the University of Belgrade, a student of literature.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He was reported killed about seven years ago, during an assassination attempt that was blamed on the Americans. There was nothing intact in the building after the explosion, only body parts, but later, Coben’s papers and ID card were found among the wreckage.’

‘But nothing else, no physical confirmation. . like his head, for example?’

‘No, that was all.’

‘I see.’ Skinner glanced across at McIlhenney; his eyes were on the road ahead, but he had eased his speed and was listening intently. ‘Can you get me a mugshot of this guy?’ he asked.

‘There aren’t any. They went with his records.’

‘Was he the target of the hit?’

‘No, no. Coben was always a low-profile figure, never more than a background whisper; he didn’t attract that level of notoriety. They were after a bigger fish, and the best evidence that it was indeed an American effort is that they ballsed it up. The man they were after was Coben’s boss, who was then in hiding under protection, but he was elsewhere at the time. . in a brothel, they reckoned after the event.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Tadic, General Bogdan Tadic.’

‘ Has our cigar salesman finished with the artist?’ Pye called through the open door of his cubicle as Wilding walked back into the CID office.

‘Just.’ The sergeant waved a printout at him. He stepped into the room and laid it on the inspector’s desk. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘McBain reckons that’s spot on.’ The image could almost have been a photograph, it was so detailed. ‘What do we do with it now?’

‘We do two things. I’ve just had my instructions from the chief constable himself. He called me from his car to ask whether we’d heard from Mario in Australia, then hit the roof when I gave him my news. He and Neil McIlhenney have been away on a trip. He didn’t tell me where, but he did say it’s given them a clue to who the man might be. You’ve got the likeness on computer, yes?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. I want you to send it to Andy Martin’s email, up in Dundee. Call him, warn him it’s there, wait till he opens it and ask him to confirm that it’s the man who called on him. The other task, I’ll handle; he wants the photofit faxed to a guy in London, who might be able to fill in some blanks on the guy.’

‘MI5?’

‘One number up from that.’

Wilding’s eyes widened. ‘Jesus, this is serious. Big boy’s games.’

‘We can play them too.’

As the sergeant left, Pye turned to his computer and keyed in a note, as dictated earlier by Skinner. ‘ For the attention of Mr Frame. There follows verified likeness of the man calling himself Coben, seen in Edinburgh Monday last week. Chief Constable Skinner requests your assistance in determining any links between him and the person of the same name, believed killed seven years ago in Serbia. ’ He sent it to the unit’s printer; by the time he had crossed the office, it had emerged. He signed it, keyed a number that Skinner had given him in a second call from his car into the fax machine, then fed it in, followed by the photofit.

‘You’re right, Ray,’ he whispered to himself as he walked back to his tiny glass-walled room, ‘this is heavy-duty.’

He had barely resumed his seat before his phone rang. He snatched it up, thinking that it might be Skinner, checking that his orders had been followed. But the voice in his ear was female, and English. ‘Sammy? Becky. I bet you thought I’d given up on you and gone back to checking stolen cars.’

‘You want to know the truth?’ Pye asked, then confessed, unprompted. ‘I’ve been so busy chasing other leads and angles that I’d forgotten about you.’

‘Then let me remind you. I’m the colleague who’s been letting crime run rampant through west Edinburgh while she tries to crack the mysteries of a computer you and her boyfriend dumped on her.’

‘Yes, I know, I’m sorry. But this investigation has had me chasing fugitive former secretaries of state, banging up dukes’ daughters with huge heroin habits, and now, when I thought I had only one mystifying homicide to clear up, I find that I’ve got two. That might seem like just another week at the office to a veteran of the Sweeney, but to us provincial hicks. .’

‘Stop it!’ Stallings chuckled. ‘I get enough grief from ’im indoors without hearing it from you too. He called me this morning to tell me that Mount is now officially on your caseload as well.’

‘Are you going to help us with it?’

‘To be honest wiff yer, as that annoying bastard always says on the football commentaries, I don’t know. However, I am going to make your fucking hair stand on end, as my beloved would put it. I have finally got into the boy sllinco ’s box on his girlfriend’s computer. I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but sometimes you crack a password easily, sometimes the obvious takes forever; in this case, the latter. I won’t bore you with all the names and combinations I tried, but finally I recalled which paper Mr Collins works for and used that. No joy first up, so I reversed it, tried eritlas . . sounds like a place in Middle Earth, doesn’t it. . and bingo.’