Quintin Jardine - Death's Door

‘I’ll bet you see a hell of a lot of people in the course of your working day.’

‘I mean that I’ve seen you in here, a few months ago, around the time of that business with Rudy Sewell.’ He sighed. ‘Poor old Rudy.’ Skinner looked at him impassively. ‘He was well liked in here, you know.’

‘I’m sure he was,’ the Scot replied. ‘I met him once up in Edinburgh; decent guy. What happened to him?’ His question was a warning and the other man read it correctly. It meant ‘subject closed’.

‘Adrian,’ said McGuire. ‘I’d like to log on to my internal e-mail from here. You can do that, can’t you?’

‘If you give me the IP address I can call up your system, then you can enter your own password.’

The head of CID knew the sequence of numbers off by heart; he recited them then watched as they were keyed in and the force Intranet homepage appeared on screen. The technician rolled his chair back from the desk. ‘It’s all yours,’ he said.

McGuire entered his user name and password, then went straight to his mailbox. It contained several new items, but he went straight to the most recent, from Sammy Pye, at the top of the list, and clicked on it. There was no text, only an attachment, named as ‘Barnes.MOT.zip’. He opened it and saw three small images in a strip. ‘Adrian,’ he asked, without looking round, ‘how do I blow these up to workable size and display them side by side?’ He followed the instructions as they were given, one by one, until three faces, all clearly recognisable, appeared on the big widescreen monitor.

The David Barnes on the right wore a beard, and looked to be at least forty. ‘That’s Dražen on the left,’ said the chief superintendent.

‘Yes,’ Skinner whispered. ‘He’s not a lot like his father, but the look in his eyes gives him away. And what about the one in the middle?’

McGuire looked at the third image, and his mouth fell open. ‘Jesus, we know him! That’s Davor Boras’s driver. And do you know what, boss? He was polishing that windscreen left-handed, and he was wearing a wedding ring. I can see it, clear as a bell.’

Skinner laughed, shattering the library quiet of the room and causing heads to turn. ‘How fucking cute can you get?’ he exclaimed. ‘When Dražen anglicised his name, everybody must have assumed that he chose one with the same initials. But that wasn’t what he was doing. He was taking a new identity that would prove useful to him, copied from someone he knew and who could act as his double when necessary. Adrian,’ he pointed at the centre of the screen, ‘I want to know everything about this David Barnes, family background, address, the lot. I want all his secrets, all his weaknesses.’

‘That’s not what I do, Bob.’

‘But can you do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then help us with this, please. Call Amanda for authorisation if you must, but do it.’

‘It’s all right. I have the clearance. Leave it with me.’

‘Good lad.’ He turned to McGuire, as Adrian resumed his place at the keyboard. ‘We’re getting there, mate.’

‘Could it have been him?’ asked the chief superintendent. ‘Could it have been this guy who went to Wooler?’

‘What about the ring?’

’You said yourself, that’s not conclusive. Maybe Dražen is into wearing gold knuckledusters.’

Skinner frowned, then leaned across the desk, picked up the phone, dialled and waited. ‘Arthur,’ he exclaimed, ‘DCC here. Remember that letterbox in Wooler? The final part of the set-up, looping the wire round the door handle: how difficult was that when you did it?. . Very? That’s what I hoped you’d say. So, in your opinion, could it have been done by someone who was naturally left-handed?. . Hah! Thanks.’

He hung up and turned back to McGuire. ‘I quote the mad Dorward: it would have been impossible to do it left-handed unless you were standing on your head: you’d have had to reach too far through the letterbox.’ He shifted impatiently in his seat, then stood. ‘Get back on to Sammy: see how he’s done, whether he has anything fresh. I’m going upstairs. Adrian, what’s the pass-code to get back in?’

‘That’s classified.’

‘Son, it’s changed every fucking week. I know that.’

The man sighed. ‘Okay. It’s one seven zero eight.’

The DCC left the unit and took the lift back to the top floor, where the director general’s imperious secretary, a holdover from her predecessor’s time, granted him admission to her office. ‘Do you have what you need?’ Dennis asked.

’Most of it. I’m on the way to knowing how Dražen killed Ballester and Stevie, and why. It wasn’t just about revenge: he also wiped out any information he might have had on Boras’s operation.’

‘Knowing is one thing, Bob. Proving. .’

‘Teach your granddad, love,’ he said, and winked. ‘I’ll bet you have this conversation wiped from the tape. To prove it, I need to lift someone; I could use the Met to do it, but that would get messy. I’d need to take him to one of their stations, but that would be on the record and all sorts of questions would be asked.’

She laughed. ‘You are a master of manipulation,’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s the man’s name?’

‘David Barnes.’

‘David. . Isn’t that. .?’

’Dražen’s alias; that’s right. The other David is Boras’s driver. It’s a nice arrangement, I’d guess, if Dražen ever needs to be in two places at once. Wherever Davor is, his driver will be, and since he never seems to stray far from his inner sanctum in the City, you should be able to pick him up from the garage below it. He’ll probably be polishing the boss’s Roller.’

‘Okay. There’s a house we use in Clapton; you can interrogate him there, but please leave him in one piece.’

‘We’ll have to; with a bit of luck his boss will never know he’s been gone.’

‘I’ll get it under way.’ She smiled as he rose to leave. ‘About the tape: one thing that people in intelligence learned from Richard Nixon was to be sure you have an off switch.’

Skinner was still smiling as he made his way back to Adrian’s desk. ‘There you are,’ said the operative, holding out a two-page document. ‘David Barnes, his life and loves. Memorise it, then shred it, please. It can’t leave the building.’

‘I know. Thanks.’ He turned to McGuire. ‘Any more from Sammy?

‘Well, he says that Ray Wilding’s a happy boy: he’s just arrived back from the airport with Becky Stallings. He tells me she’s looking pretty pleased with herself too.’

‘Which flight did she catch?’

‘The first one. It’s taken them two and a half hours to get back to the office.’

‘I don’t want to know. Apart from that?’

‘He’s found an airfield. It’s just west of the A1 north of Newcastle; it’s a wartime RAF place that reverted to the farm from which it was requisitioned. It was kept in operational condition and the present owner runs it commercially. It’s called Walkdean.’

‘How far from Wooler?’

‘Forty-five minutes by car, Sammy says.’

‘Would the Beechcraft be able to land there?’

‘Easy.’

‘But how the hell would he get a car? They didn’t have time to get one there, and a hire vehicle would be traceable.’ Skinner scratched his chin. ‘You know, Mario,’ he murmured, ‘I reckon it’s time to let our friends in the north in on a bit of what’s happening.’

Deputy Chief Constable Les Cairns smiled as the Land Rover edged along the narrow road. He was a countryman at heart, and so he snapped up any excuse to escape from the city, and from his office in Ponteland.

He liked a bit of mystery too. Much earlier in his police career, he had been a detective constable in Special Branch, and he had enjoyed the cachet that the posting gave him among his professional peers. Since attaining command rank, he had been confined to the office; he was envious of people like Bob Skinner, mavericks who had the balls to write their own job descriptions once they had made it to the heights.