Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

He grinned and slid an arm round her. ‘As long as we need, love. As long as we need.’

‘Sarah, this is excellent,’ Dan Pringle mumbled, as he finished the last of his steak pie in the Skinners’ dining room. ‘It’s good of you.’

‘It’s good of Alex,’ she replied. ‘She made it while her father and I were out creating mayhem.’

An hour earlier, the DCC and the head of CID had left DI Arthur Dorward’s meticulous crime-scene officers poring over Major Tubbs’s guest bathroom, and headed for Skinner’s home.

They had briefed Sarah as soon as they had arrived. A toothbrush and a tube of combined tartar control and whitening-formula toothpaste had already been bagged and were on their way by car to the Howdenhall lab. No trace of a receipt had been found among Bartholemy Lebeau’s effects, but the manufacturer had established from an examination of the tube’s bar-code that it was part of a batch dispatched a week earlier to a pharmacist outlet in Newcastle.

‘But that’s terrible,’ she had exclaimed. ‘There could be little time-bombs ticking all over that area, just waiting to explode.’

‘Seven of them to be exact. That consignment was opened and put on the shelves on Friday; they’ve made eight sales since then. But that’s just the tip of it. Potentially, your bombs could be all over Britain. The rest of the batch has been pulled, and the shop’s checking its till records to see if any of the customers used cards and can be traced. The manufacturer’s implemented recall procedures for all shipments made up to seven days before the Tyneside lot and since. When they get them back they’ll start to test for contamination, but if it’s been done at random that’ll be a massive job. As that begins, we’re making public announcements on all television and radio news bulletins nationally. It’ll scare people, but it can’t be avoided. By the way, when did we last buy toothpaste?’

‘Six weeks ago. I bought two big pump dispensers, one for us and one for the kids.’ She shuddered. ‘Brings it close to home, doesn’t it?’

‘No, love. It brings it right inside the house.’

Sarah was still grim-faced as they finished their meal. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, guys. Right now all over the country there could be people doing what we’ve just done, then going to brush their teeth and. . Poof! It’s horrible.’

‘I know,’ Bob agreed. ‘But maybe if it was going to happen it would have happened already. If there had been a mass contamination, I’d have expected more than one incident by now.’

‘Maybe there have been,’ his wife pointed out. ‘Lebeau’s death was taken for a heart-attack at first, remember.’

‘True, but you spotted the real cause within twenty-four hours. The worst case is that this is part of a national emergency; the best. . although not for Lebeau, I’ll grant you. . is that it’s a one-off.’

‘So, while the manufacturer and the retailers are doing their things, where do you go?’

‘Tomorrow I go back to the office to bring the chief fully up to date, and to field calls from Tyneside and any other forces with information. Dan and his team go back to Haddington. We need to talk to more of those marching Belgians.’

It was solitary, in comparison to that of most of his fellow officers, and it was of necessity secretive; in addition to that Neil McIlhenney’s job was one of the most stressful in the modern force. Heads of Special Branch at regional level were not especially high-ranking; his soon-to-be-formalised step up to detective chief inspector was as high as he would go in the post. However, the responsibilities they carried were awesome.

The quirks of history had conspired to make it so. The first great SB target had been the insidious spread of Communism, even if it was more imaginary than real across Britain. As it faded, it was replaced as top priority by the Irish threat, much more significant and, in England at least, much more deadly. Even if the bombers had never targeted Scotland there were historic undercurrents that required continuous vigilance from the country’s secret policemen.

Ireland had not gone away. . privately, McIlhenney and Skinner doubted that it ever would. . but it had been overtaken by another danger. Outside the corridors of the CIA and MI6 headquarters, the threat posed by the fundamentalists of al Qaeda had been underrated, even after several incidents and a punitive strike against them by the Americans. But September Eleven had changed all that.

No single event, McIlhenney mused, as he drew his car to a halt outside the Malmaison Hotel, not even the assassinations of the Kennedys, or those of Sadat, King, three Gandhis, or Lennon had reached out and touched personally so many people. It was a particularly bitter truth for him that morning, as he was going to collect one of those on whom it had inflicted the greatest loss.

When he walked into the hotel’s small reception area, the duty manager recognised him at once: he was not a man easily forgotten. ‘Good morning, Mr McIlhenney,’ he greeted him. ‘Are you here for Mr Mawhinney?’

‘Got it in one, Saeed. Will you call him for me, please?’

‘I will, but I’m not sure that he’s in. He hasn’t been for breakfast yet, I know that; but the last couple of mornings he’s got up early and gone for a walk first. Could be he’s been and gone and I’ve just missed him. I’ll call him.’

He picked up a phone, dialled Mawhinney’s room and waited for a full minute before hanging up and shaking his head.

‘Is his key there?’ the detective asked.

‘No, but that doesn’t signify. It’s a card thing and guests never leave them behind.’

‘I’ll go up anyway and knock his door. Maybe he was in the shower when you called. What’s his number?’

‘One oh six.’

McIlhenney walked up a single flight of stairs and found the room quickly. He knocked on the door, loudly, and called out, ‘Morning call, Colin. You’ve got a nine-thirty appointment, remember.’ He waited, with growing impatience, until finally he gave up and went back downstairs.

He sat in Reception for ten more minutes, grumbling to himself and checking his watch. ‘This is a bit of a damn nuisance,’ he muttered to himself, then took a decision. ‘Saeed,’ he called out, ‘have you got a pass key?’

‘Of course. You want to look in the room?’

‘Just to be on the safe side, we’d better.’ The two men climbed the stairs once more, and the manager unlocked the door to room 106. It was beautifully furnished, and immaculately serviced; its double bed in the centre of the room was made and, apart from a suitcase in a stand behind the door, there was nothing to indicate that it was even occupied.

McIlhenney frowned and took out his cell phone; he found McGuire’s mobile number and called him. ‘Yes,’ his friend replied, unusually impatient, as if he had been disturbed.

‘Mario, if I’m interrupting anything I’m sorry, but did Colin Mawhinney stop at your place last night?’

‘No,’ McGuire grunted. ‘But neither did I. We were at Paula’s for a meal. I stayed there, Colin left about ten to walk back to the Malmaison. Why? Is he not there?’

‘No, the bugger’s out. You sure he knew I was supposed to pick him up to take him to meet the minister?’

‘Absolutely certain; I remember mentioning it to him.’

‘Any chance he misunderstood?’

‘None at all. I was speaking English at the time. I suppose he might have forgotten, though. Best thing you can do is phone the minister’s private secretary and ask her to call you if and when he turns up there. After that all you can do is wait there for a while and see if he comes back.’