Quintin Jardine - Death's Door

‘How do you know that?’ She paused. ‘Of course: your cousin Joey.’

‘That’s right, he’s a Mountie sergeant in the Ontario division. I had an e-mail from him last month: he told me that our DCC had been on a tour of all their offices, spending time with each of the departments. It was all set up through their CO.’

‘You never told me!’ Maggie exclaimed.

‘Okay, but there are things you don’t tell me, operational stuff. I wouldn’t expect you to. By the same token, I reckoned that if this wasn’t on the bulletin board, maybe I wasn’t meant to know about it.’

‘Secretive bugger.’ She sniffed. ‘They should have given you the Special Branch job, rather than plucking Dottie Shannon out of her inspector’s uniform.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You’re forgiven. I still don’t go with your theory, though. He’s got to fill in his time somehow, and the whole point of sabbatical leave is that you use it for professional development.’

‘So what are you going to do on your maternity leave? Just feed the baby and nothing else?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Indeed? In that case, what was that stuff about an Open University business management course that I found in the printer the other day?’

She glowered at him. ‘Bloody detectives: you’re never off duty.’ She paused. ‘Stevie, the truth is I don’t bloody know what I want to do. But if I did an OU course, would it bother you?’

‘My darling, nothing you do could bother me. If that’s what you want, go for it. Just hold off till the baby’s born and you’ve recovered, that’s all.’ He slapped himself on the side of the head. ‘Ah, that reminds me: I checked the answer-phone when I was in the bedroom. There’s a message for you from the maternity unit at the Royal: they want you to call them.’

‘Did they say about what?’

‘No. All the guy said was that it was purely routine.’

Maggie laughed. ‘Purely routine: even medics are using police-speak now. Next thing you know I’ll be helping them with their enquiries.’

‘This is all right,’ said Detective Constable Tarvil Singh, as he looked around the room, ‘apart from the noise of the kids next door. What’s this place called?’

‘Gullane Village Hall,’ DS Ray Wilding replied, ‘simple as that. The playgroup doesn’t last all day, and it was a lot easier to borrow this office than to bring a mobile unit down. And, by the way, it’s a truly sad bastard who hardens his heart against the joyous sound of children at play.’

‘Spoken like a single man. I’m well familiar with that sound, believe me. I get plenty of it at home.’ A wooden seat gave an ominous creak as he settled his massive frame into it. ‘Where do we start?’ he asked.

‘We’ve started,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ve got uniformed officers down on the beach and in the car park behind it, interviewing people, looking to find those that go there every day, showing them the photo and asking if they know who she is. You and I are going to do the rounds of the pubs in Gullane, Aberlady, Dirleton and North Berwick to see if she’s recognised in any of them.’

‘What about the DI? Where’s he?’

‘He’s down at the bents, briefing the uniforms and getting them under way.’

‘What about the golf club? He doesn’t really think there could be a link there, does he?’

‘Of course not,’ a voice from the doorway exclaimed. Stevie Steele stepped into the room. ‘We had to check out the possibility that the victim might have been brought to the scene using the road that runs across the course, but that’s been eliminated. I spoke to the secretary last night, and to the steward and the head greenkeeper. There’s a gate at the top of the road, beside the clubhouse, and it’s padlocked overnight. The greenkeeper’s an early bird: he was there at seven, and he didn’t unlock the gate till eight.’

‘Could somebody have opened it before seven?’ Wilding asked. ‘Picked the padlock?’

‘Then locked it again on his way out? Hardly, but if he’d tried, the steward would have seen or heard him: he was up early too. I showed all three of them the girl’s picture, but none of them recognised her.’ He looked at Singh. ‘Tarvil, if we don’t have her identified by this afternoon, I want you to have some posters done. We’ll put them up in shops, hotels, banks, pubs, clubs and post offices in all the coastal towns.’

‘Will do, boss. Pubs first, though, yes?’

‘Absolutely. I want an identification this morning, if possible. This girl didn’t parachute in here. Somebody saw her before she was killed.’ Steele headed for the door once again. ‘Come on, let’s get to work.’

‘Are you going to help us, sir?’

The DI grinned at Singh. ‘You think I don’t get my hands dirty any more? You two split up: there’s three hotels and one pub in Gullane, two coffee places, and other shops all along the main street, so do half each. I’ll talk to the post office and the bank staff, after I’ve made my priority call on the local VIP.’

‘Who’s that? The wee actor chap?’

‘No, Tarvil,’ Steele chuckled, ‘more important than him, as far as we’re concerned. I’m going to see the DCC, as per the head of CID’s order. He might not have asked to be kept informed, but we’re going to do him that courtesy anyway … and show him the picture while we’re at it.’

Alex Skinner was smiling as she replaced her phone in its cradle. Leaning across her desk in her small screened office space, she thought no one had noticed, but she was wrong.

‘That’s the weekend fixed up, is it?’ asked Pippa Clifton, the secretary she shared with two other associates of Curle Anthony and Jarvis, Scotland’s leading business-law firm.

‘Mind your own, woman,’ she replied cheerfully.

‘Come on, spill it. That was him, wasn’t it? Your new Mr Perfect.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You damn well do. You had your girlie face on, and these days that’s a dead giveaway: it was him.’

‘Pippa, we’re too busy for this,’ Alex protested.

‘It’s now or I’ll hound you after work.’

She sighed. ‘Okay, that was my next-door neighbour and friend, Detective Constable Griffin Montell. As it happens, he was apologising for breaking a date tonight as he’s been roped into a big investigation.’

‘But you were smiling.’

‘Yes, because I didn’t really want to go out tonight.’

‘Ah!’ Pippa’s eyebrows arched. ‘So he’s coming to your place once he’s finished.’

‘No, he’s not. How many times do I have to tell you? Griff’s a friend, that’s all. I like him, he makes me laugh, and that’s fine, for there is no way on this earth that I’m ever getting seriously involved with another copper. I repeat, but for the last time, he’s just a friend.’

‘Mmm.’ The secretary sniffed. ‘There’s nothing in my rule book that says a friend can’t give me one on occasion without either of us assuming that we’re engaged.’

Alex felt her cheeks flush and hoped that her tan disguised the fact: she kept her face straight.

‘Your dad approves of your friend, doesn’t he?’ Pippa continued relentlessly, even as her boss picked a folder from one of her trays.

‘I don’t seek his approval, any more than he seeks mine.’ She almost bit her tongue as she finished the sentence.

‘Which reminds me. I meant to ask you: is it true about him and the new First Minister, Aileen de Marco? The word is out, you know.’

Alex glared across her desk, signalling a jibe too far, and with it, the end of the conversation. ‘Pippa,’ she snapped, ‘there is office gossip, and then there is pushing your luck. Guess where you’re at? Get to work, now.’