Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘What should I do now?’

‘That’s up to you. But if you come across anything you think might help our investigation, please let us know.’

‘You can count on that,’ he called after them as they left.

‘Would that be as the banker said to the actress?’ Singh muttered to Regan.

‘What do we say to this woman, Maggie?’ asked Stevie Steele, as they sat in the inspector’s car, outside the red sandstone semi-detached villa. Steele had an eye for the property market and he reckoned that in the Grange District, a house like that would fetch well over four hundred thousand pounds, and might even top the half-million mark.

They had been there for half an hour. They had been on edge when they had rung the doorbell: no police officer, however experienced, however senior, relishes the job of telling a married woman, or man, for that matter, that from that point on they will be using the word ‘widowed’ on official forms. But there had been no reply. Mrs Virginia Whetstone was not at home.

At first, they had assumed that given the wicked weather, she was away visiting friends, but Maggie Rose had noted that there were two cars in the drive.

‘Maybe someone’s heard about it, and beaten us to the punch in telling her,’ Steele had suggested. ‘Maybe she’s with neighbours. ’

‘Maybe. But the name hasn’t been released yet. Let’s just wait here for a while and see if she shows.’

So they had gone back to their car, and waited in the fog as the minutes ticked by. It was still thick, but not as bad as it had been, and a few vehicles were beginning to venture out. ‘How’s Andrea?’ Maggie asked casually.

‘She’s fine.’

‘That’s all? Fine?’

‘Yup.’

‘Are you still seeing as much of her?’

‘Who says I ever was seeing that much? We’re friends, and that’s it.’

The detective superintendent smiled. ‘No comment.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘No comment.’

‘Are you saying I’m not capable of being just friends with a woman?’

‘I’m saying nothing.’

‘I manage to be just friends with you, don’t I?’ he challenged.

‘I’m your boss: you have to be.’

‘Not so. We could have a purely professional relationship; five o’clock, goodnight, that’s it. But we don’t. We’ve been out socially. . as friends,’ he added.

‘And it’s nice,’ Maggie conceded. ‘I enjoy going to a movie or for a meal with you. You’re someone I can talk to; plus you don’t see me as easy prey, and I appreciate that.’

He reached across and touched the back of her hand lightly. ‘That doesn’t mean that I don’t find you attractive, ma’am. For the record, I do.’

‘I’ve been aware of that too, don’t you worry. And by the way, it’s mutual. It’s just that I’m only interested in being attracted up to a certain point. Understand?’

Stevie nodded. He looked at her as she leaned back in the passenger seat. ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘But. . a purely hypothetical question, I stress. . what might happen if you got attracted beyond that point?’

She smiled back at him, then squeezed his hand. ‘If I did. . of which, non-hypothetically, there’s precious little chance. . then before anything happened, you’d get transferred; or I would.’

He grunted. ‘Just don’t send me to your ex-husband’s division.’

‘You’re not scared of Mario, are you? Did you see his New York photo in the Evening News on Monday, by the way, with that American cop, the guy who’s coming over as the other half of the exchange trip?’

‘Yes, I saw it, and no, I’m not scared of him. I just don’t fancy the Borders, that’s all.’

‘That may not be an issue for much longer,’ she said idly, to steer the conversation in another direction.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, intrigued.

‘Never mind.’

‘Come on, what’s up? Is Dan Pringle retiring?’

Her eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Meaning that Mario’d get his job and I wouldn’t?’

‘No,’ Steele protested, suddenly on the defensive. ‘You’re above him in the queue; and Greg Jay’s ahead of you both.’

‘You can forget Jay,’ she said vehemently. ‘But you’re on the wrong track anyway: Dan’s not going yet, not that I know of anyway.’

‘Someone is, though. You’ve let that much slip.’

‘Rumour! It’s rumour, that’s all, and I should have known better than let anything slip to you. Change the subject. How much of what that man Easterson told George and Tarvil was news to you?’

‘You don’t get off that lightly, Superintendent. Let’s go for a Chinese after work and I’ll grill you further.’ Steele grinned at her. ‘Now, to answer your question, most of it was. I’ve been aware of the Scottish Farmers Bank since it was formed out of the demutualisation of the Agricultural and Rural Building Society a few years back. But I’ve always known it as a personal-service set-up, fiercely independent and very targeted in its approach to its clients. Its mortgage book as a building society was heavily weighted towards the top end of the market.’ He pointed at the Whetstone villa. ‘Houses like that one, for example, were very attractive to them; that sort in the towns, and in the country, properties with a bit of land attached. They’ve maintained offices in the four cities, London and key rural population centres in Scotland, servicing clients who are, in the main, minted. That’s what I knew of them.’

‘Comprehensive,’ Rose acknowledged. ‘So what didn’t you know?’

‘I didn’t know that they now only have private banking halls in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, for top-end clients. I didn’t know about the Internet banking set-up, and I hadn’t a clue that they’d sold their mortgage book to a Dutch bank. And the fact that they’ve done a complete about-turn and were using the cash generated from the mortgage sell-off to attack the corporate banking and lending market came as the biggest surprise of all.’

‘From what I’m told they’ve done it very successfully too,’ the superintendent added, ‘and according to Mr Easterson, a lot of the credit was due to the late Mr Whetstone. I find it hard to think of bank managers as debt salesmen, and yet it seems that’s what they’ve become.’

‘It’s the way of the modern banking world, like he told the boys, and Whetstone was their top salesman. Knocks Manny English’s suicide assumption even harder on the head, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m not so sure that’s out of the question.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the inspector. The detective superintendent pointed across the road at a taxi that had just drawn up in front of the Whetstone semi. A woman appeared on the pavement on the far side of the cab; as it drove off they saw that she was struggling with a number of cream-coloured Jenners carrier-bags. Steele watched as the unknowing widow turned into her driveway. ‘There’s still the big “how” question, isn’t there?’ he finished.

‘I’ll tell you how he could have done it,’ Rose replied. ‘The call to the emergency services showed up on screen as coming from a mobile number, a phone that was nicked a couple of days ago. There were cycle tracks on the grass around the body. It could be that our anonymous tipster had also stolen the bike he was riding, that he stole the overcoat that Easterson said Mr Whetstone wore to work yesterday, and that he stole whatever makeshift stand he used to step off with the belt around his neck.’

‘Who’d nick a milk crate?’

‘Or a small step-ladder?’

‘Where would Whetstone get that?’

‘He could have taken it from his office. No one saw him leave.’