Quintin Jardine - Aftershock

‘But, assuming I accept what you’re saying, what about his father? He’ll make a God Almighty fuss.’

‘He won’t say a fucking word. If he does, he and his wife are admitting that they knew who the new director of their son’s company really was, and that, even for parents, puts them in big bother. Even if the courts didn’t do anything to them, the City would ostracise them. So on you go, Mr Major, do your job and get the wheels turning. Tomorrow, remember; he goes back tomorrow.’

As Her Majesty’s representative left, Rosalie Gramercy came into the room in police headquarters. ‘Chandler is co-operating,’ she told them. ‘She told me that she was Dražen’s girl all along, and that being seen with his friend was just a front. Do you want me to charge her?’

‘Hell, no!’ Skinner laughed. ‘She’s told you what we wanted to hear. You can give her free chips in the casino, as far as I’m concerned. We would like to see him, though. We’ve got something we’d like to put to him in private.’

‘No problem. I’ll take you to him.’

Dražen Boras was being held in a secure room on the top floor of the building. The Scots had seen many hotel suites that were less well appointed, but they knew that he would be on round-the-clock watch, and saw that the basic principle of removing anything that might be used for self-harm was being observed.

As they looked at him, they were surprised by his serenity. He still wore his gaudy shirt, but within it, his demeanour seemed to have changed. ‘How did you find me?’ he asked.

‘Dedicated research,’ Skinner told him. ‘You don’t speak Spanish, so where did your name come from?’

‘One of my DEA handlers in the States came up with it.’

The DCC was rarely surprised, but his eyebrows rose. ‘DEA? Where do they come into it? I was told that you and your father had CIA connections.’

‘We do, but recently I have been helping in other ways. There’s a drug route through the Balkans. My business has made me well placed to track it, and that’s what I’ve been doing.’

‘Don’t trust your friends,’ Skinner told him. ‘Especially when they’re spooks. The name, Dražen.’ He explained what it meant. ‘Somebody was having a laugh.’

‘If I ever see him again,’ Boras murmured, ‘that laugh will be cut short, along with his throat.’

‘You never will, chum. Even as we speak, every record of you is being wiped from their files. Your old man will find he’s no longer useful either. He should watch his back from now on: a man like him has more enemies than brain cells. He may find himself on the list for a polonium sandwich.’

‘My father will be all right, sir.’

’But not you, Dražen,’ said McGuire. ‘You’re going down for life for what you did.’

‘I’m admitting nothing, friend.’

‘I didn’t expect you to,’ Skinner told him. ‘But you know what we have on you and you know where it will lead. However, that’s all for discussion back in Britain. We’re on foreign soil here; none of this conversation is on the record. That I promise you.’

Boras looked him in the eye for several seconds. ‘I think I believe you,’ he said. ‘In that case, I am truly sorry for what happened to your officer. You know what was meant to happen and that was not it.’

‘I know. Your dad’s two operatives were meant to be caught in that trap. You couldn’t be sure you’d bought their silence for ever, could you? Listen up, Dražen,’ he continued, ‘I know that you’ll admit to nothing on the record. To do so would incriminate your father, and for all that you’ve been supposed business rivals, you won’t do that. So here, and nowhere else, I want to ask you one question. Why did you kill Daniel Ballester?’

Boras’s eyes widened; he stared at Skinner in astonishment. ‘Because he murdered my kid sister,’ he exclaimed. ‘You know that.’

‘He was a nasty muck-raking journalist out to make trouble for your dad and you,’ said McGuire. ‘That could have been your motive.’

‘He was a pipsqueak. We’d already taken care of him professionally. In revenge he killed my sister and her friends, including poor little Amy Noone. I liked little Amy. I tell you. . off the record. . I’ve never killed anyone, apart from him. I didn’t imagine I’d enjoy it, but I did. It was good to watch him strangle and shit himself as he died.’

‘So that was your only motive?’ Skinner repeated.

‘Absolutely.’

‘In that case, I’m even more sorry for you. Ballester didn’t shoot Zrinka, or anyone else. You killed the wrong man. And you know what? You’re the second guy today who’s discovered he’s made that mistake.’

The artist known as Caitlin Summers looked out of the window of her new home. Never in her wildest moments had she ever dreamed of waking up in a Stevenson lighthouse, but that was what she had done less than an hour before.

At first, when they had told her of the accommodation that had been rented for her, she had feared that she would have to maintain the light, and had been relieved to learn that it was no longer operational.

She sipped from her mug as she surveyed the seascape, looking north along the coastline towards Dunbar, the nearest town. The view to the south was less attractive: Torness nuclear power station was never likely to be short-listed for a Design Council award. Still, she had seen uglier structures, and uglier people, in her time.

Her sudden fame had taken her by surprise: she still marvelled at the skill of her managers in securing the First Minister to open her exhibition, with the attendant publicity it had brought. But that was their job, she supposed; just as she had hers.

She checked her watch: it was time for her morning appointment. She finished her coffee, rinsed out the mug and slipped on her waxed cotton jacket. ‘Well, Caitlin,’ she said aloud, ‘let’s see what wildlife we can spot this morning.’

A soft wind was blowing off the sea as she stepped outside; the tide was on its way in. She picked up her pace quickly as she headed north, hoping that she would reach the fossilised remains of the prehistoric forest that she had been told about before the water covered it. The team from the BBC news programme Reporting Scotland had suggested it as the ideal location for their interview.

A few seagulls greeted her as she walked along the grassy path, above the narrow beach. ‘Sorry to disturb you, birdies,’ she told them. ‘You’re probably not used to human company out here.’

The coast was wild and desolate. There was not another soul in sight and yet, somehow, she did not feel in the slightest alone.

In full uniform, Deputy Chief Constable Andy Martin sat in the well of the High Court in Dundee with a growing sense of horror as an usher in the corridor outside called out, for the third time, the name of the chief prosecution witness.

The jury, eleven men and four women, had been empanelled the day before, and had heard opening speeches by counsel for the Crown and for the defence. They sat in two rows, some displaying signs of impatience, one or two showing signs of bewilderment. The judge, Lady Broughton, sat sternly above them, dressed in the wig and red robe, trimmed with white fur, that was the traditional uniform of the Scottish Supreme Court bench. The prisoner, Cameron ‘Grandpa’ McCullough, sat in the dock, stone-eyed and impassive, flanked by two huge constables as he watched the majesty of justice implode.

Martin knew what was going to happen. He knew that when police officers had called at the Aberdeen home of Carmela Dickson, John McCreath’s widow, to collect her and her sister for their big day, they had found the house empty. The shouting in the corridor was a charade.