Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘Let me guess at this morning’s headline in the Hull Daily Mail . . “Police remain baffled”. Right?’

‘I don’t think it’s making headlines any more. They’ve hit the wall and they know it.’

‘They’re not the only ones.’ He sighed. ‘Jack, do you have any feelings just now, anything you can’t pin down?’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Ach, it’s okay. Call me when Stevie arrives.’ He hung up, switched the light outside his door to green, then called McIlhenney. ‘Neil,’ he exclaimed when the DI picked up, ‘it’s me and I’m as frustrated as hell.’

‘You are, are you? Let me guess. You think there’s something up. You see all sorts of threads waving in the breeze, and you’re dead certain that they all weave together into a great big tapestry, only you don’t know how and you can’t work it out for the life of you. Right?’

‘Spot fucking on! How did you know?’

‘Because I feel exactly the same way.’

‘Fat lot of help you are, then,’ Skinner grunted. ‘Let me know when you work it out.’ He hung up again. ‘Fuck it!’ he shouted to the empty office. ‘Why the hell did I talk Andy Martin into going for the DCC’s job in Dundee?’

For a moment he was on the point of calling his friend and one-time protégé; instead, he called his own number.

Trish, the nanny, picked up the phone. ‘Sarah, please,’ he asked her.

‘You sound knackered,’ she told him. Trish’s gift for plain speaking was one of her best points. ‘Sarah isn’t here. She’s gone up town.’

‘Carving someone up?’

‘She didn’t say, but I doubt it. She told me she hoped to be back in time for the boys’ lunch. Can I give her a message?’

‘Tell her not to wait up for me. I’ve got a late engagement in town.’

‘That’ll come as a surprise to her.’

‘You push your luck; you know that?’

‘Sorry, Bob. I just can’t help myself sometimes. . okay, any time. Say hello to your daughter.’

‘Hello, Seonaid.’

There was a squeal from the other end that contained most of the five letters of ‘Daddy’.

‘Hey,’ said Trish. ‘She remembers you.’

‘Bugger off, girl,’ he laughed. ‘If you weren’t too good to fire. .’

He stared at the ceiling for a while, thinking about home, thinking about Sarah and, although he tried not to, thinking about Aileen de Marco, and how hard it would be to keep his promise to her and to himself. He did not see Stevie Steele’s car as it rolled up the drive, or the woman who emerged from the passenger seat.

When the knock sounded at his door, he recognised it as Dan Pringle’s thump rather than Jack McGurk’s more circumspect rap. ‘Come in,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t make me open the fucking thing for you.’

He was half-way round from behind his desk when the head of CID came into the room. He expected Stevie Steele to be behind him. He did not expect the short, crinkle-haired black woman who was flanked by the two detectives.

Skinner grinned, in surprise as much as anything else. ‘Special Agent Merle Gower,’ he exclaimed. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Since I was last in Edinburgh?’ she replied. ‘Since the former president’s visit, as I recall, although the Secret Service was so thick around him that day you probably never saw me.’

Merle Gower was the official resident presence in London of the FBI, although Skinner suspected that she had links in addition with the secretive National Security Agency. She had succeeded his late friend Joe Doherty, on his recall to Washington by the previous administration; at first she had been cocky and abrasive, but she had learned quickly and had won the trust of her British contacts.

‘Do you have decent coffee here, Bob?’ she asked him.

‘No.’ He walked across to the filter machine on his side table and poured her a mug. ‘But you can try this crap if you like.’

‘As long as it has caffeine, I suppose it’ll be okay.’

He poured another for himself, and brought them over to the coffee-table, leaving his colleagues to fend for themselves. ‘This is a big surprise,’ he said, as they sat on the low leather couches.

‘For me too.’ She took a sip from her mug. ‘Hey, this isn’t bad. What is it?’

‘Fair-trade coffee. My wife buys it from a Nicaraguan importer. It means that the growers get a fair price, as opposed to being screwed by the bulk buyers. I’ll give you the address if you like.’

‘You wanna get me fired? I thought you liked me.’ She turned as Pringle lowered his bulk on to the seat beside her.

As Steele joined Skinner on his couch, the DCC leaned towards him, his eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Congratulations,’ he murmured, as Special Agent Gower shuffled sideways to give herself more room.

‘You know?’

‘I always know. You be good for her, hear me.’

‘Do I hear “or else”, sir?’

‘You better.’

‘No worries.’

The exchange was quick and whispered. Neither of their companions heard them, as they completed their seating arrangements. ‘Okay,’ Skinner barked, ‘take me through the reason for this intrusion into the most important day of this force’s year.’

Pringle gulped and began. ‘It’s DI Steele’s story, boss. It has to do with a bank fraud.’

‘The guy that Sarah autopsied last week?’

‘That’s the one. I’ll let Stevie talk you through it.’

The young inspector nodded and leaned back, half turning so that he faced both Skinner and Gower. Quickly, he talked them through the investigation and the twists and turns it had taken, although he skipped over Sarah’s misplaced enthusiasm when she had found the shoulder dislocation. ‘Whetstone was solidly in the frame, no doubt about it, until Monday,’ he said.

‘What happened on Monday?’ asked the DCC.

‘Aurelia Middlemass disappeared; so did her supposed husband. They left his car at the airport and caught an easyJet flight to London, then on to God knows where. As far as we’re concerned they vanished into thin air. So I set to work, looking into her background. That led me to a bank in Dubai, where her CV said she worked before coming to Edinburgh. What her CV didn’t say was that she was dead. The real Aurelia was killed in an accident, just before our version came to join the Scottish Farmers Bank.’

‘So all of a sudden your locked-up investigation’s stood on its head. She did it, and maybe killed Whetstone as well.’

Steele nodded. ‘Just so, sir. That led me to get in touch with the police in Dubai, but instead of getting someone from their Traffic department, I wound up speaking to a brigadier general, no less, who’s your opposite number.’

‘I must ask for a promotion,’ Skinner grunted.

‘That’s where I come in,’ said Merle Gower. ‘We, the US, that is, as opposed to the FBI, had a strong interest in that so-called accident. This was not because of Ms Middlemass, however; she was a South African national. You see, she was not alone in the vehicle, and she was not the only fatality. Her companion was a US citizen, Mr Wayne Morrison; an attaché on station at our embassy in the United Arab Emirates. They were a couple, and had been for a year or so.’

‘I take it he was CIA?’

She looked Skinner in the eye, answering him with her silence. ‘The vehicle was rigged; there was a bomb, concealed above the exhaust. It was detonated remotely by someone with a radio transmitter, who probably watched them and picked the moment. Morrison and Ms Middlemass were in the habit of going driving in the desert every weekend, the sort of routine that someone in his position should have known better than to establish.’

‘Suspects?’

‘We have one. He was attached to a technical college in Dubai as a research chemist. He had an Egyptian passport under the name of Anwar Baradi, but that was, of course, false. Eventually the CIA came up with another name for him, and a photograph, found in a house in Kabul, after the liberation. They believe that he’s an Algerian, called Hasid Bourgiba, but relations with that country are not exactly brilliant, so that hasn’t been verified. What we do know for sure was that he was a member of a terrorist group that wasn’t part of, but had links with, al Qaeda.’