Quintin Jardine - Hour Of Darkness

‘Yes, that one. You went on about it for months, accusing him of brown-nosing McMinn, the chief superintendent, the deputy fiscal, and everyone up to the master of his Masonic bloody lodge.’

‘He did too,’ he growled.

‘Like hell he did. You weren’t called as a witness because you were off with man flu on the day when you were supposed to be interviewing the guy you’d arrested and Willie had to sit in for you.’

‘That’s bollocks.’

‘No, it’s the truth,’ Cheryl insisted. ‘I know it is because you were so angry about it, you even convinced me you’d been stitched up. I went to see Mr McMinn, and asked him why. He was very nice about it, when he might not have been. He sat me down and he explained what had happened. He even showed me the log of that investigation.’

Mackenzie stared at her wide-eyed. ‘You. .’ he gasped, ‘. . you did that? You fucking idiot!’ he screamed, suddenly. ‘I wondered why I was transferred to fucking Coatbridge out of the blue. Now I know.’

‘Yes, now you know,’ she snapped. ‘And you weren’t there long before everybody there was against you too. I was so happy when you met Bob Skinner, and he offered you a job in Edinburgh on his drugs squad. I thought that in a smaller force running your own section, you’d get over all that aggro inside you.

‘But you didn’t, no, not you. You were hardly here before you were complaining about that man Martin muscling in on one of your investigations. And that was nonsense too, because at the end of the day you got the collar and the glory that went with it.

‘But as usual, that wasn’t enough, so you took to the drink, big time. Skinner could have got rid of you then, but instead he gave you a second chance. . and a promotion not much later. But in your eyes he was doing you down as well, by keeping you out of CID.’

‘And he fucking was!’ he hissed.

‘Is that right? In that case you should be happy now that he’s gone, and the new regime have put you back in there, as number two in the whole department.

‘But are you? No chance; you’re back to moaning and bitching about your senior officers, after only a few weeks. You know what you are, David? You’re bloody paranoid, man. You need help.’

‘Well, I won’t fucking get it here, will I!’ he roared, leaping from his chair, and leaning over her, so close that she pressed herself backwards, away from him.

‘Is it too much to ask,’ he bellowed, ‘that you should be on my side, just this fucking once, when that fucking thick Paddy Eye-tie gorilla McGuire is trying to tell me how to do my fucking job, and threatening me with fucking Hawick if I don’t do it his way? Well? Is it?’

She tried to push him away. At first he resisted, but finally, just as she began to feel real fear, not for the first time in their marriage, he straightened up.

‘There has never been a time,’ she told him, very quietly, ‘when I have not been on your side. But you have to change or I will go to Chief Constable Steele and tell her I think you need psychiatric evaluation. I’m not going to sit and watch you destroy yourself, and me, and the children, David; I’m just not going to do it!’

As she looked at him she saw all the rigidity go out of his body, saw him relax, saw a strange smile spread across his face.

‘You’re absolutely right, Cheryl,’ he murmured. ‘You’re not.’

‘It’s confirmed?’ Sammy Pye said, in anticipation, with his mobile pressed against his ear.

‘Yes,’ Karen Neville told him. ‘My missing person’s become your homicide, and you’re the senior investigating officer, by order of Detective Superintendent Mackenzie,’

‘So he told me yesterday. There’s an about-face for you. I’d never heard someone grit his teeth over the phone, but I’ll swear he did. I wonder what came over him.’

‘Are you kidding? I think we could both come up with the right answer for that one. Dark curly hair, become a dad recently?’

Pye smiled. ‘Probably. Here, you don’t have a problem with me being SIO do you, Karen?’

‘Hell no. You inspector, me sergeant. Besides, this might turn out to be an overtime job and I’m not in a position to do much of that, as you know. It’s much better that you lead and I give you what help I can, with Jack McGurk’s approval, of course. He is my boss, after all.’

‘That’s fair enough; I’ll square anything I need from you with him. What do you know, that I need to?’

‘I was in the middle of typing up a summary when Forensic Services called to confirm that the blood in the flat came from Cramond Island woman, now known to be Isabella Spreckley or Watson.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ the DI said, his tone cautious. ‘Do we really know for sure that it’s her?’

‘One hundred per cent? We don’t, not without a familial DNA match, and we’ve got no way of getting one. However,’ she paused, and he could hear satisfaction in her voice, ‘I have rousted out her medical records from the NHS. They tell me that she had her appendix out when she was forty-two, and that she had an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a condition that’s one-third less common in women than men. It was being monitored by the vascular department at the Royal Infirmary. The partial remains in the morgue tick both those boxes. Do you have any reasonable doubt left?’

‘No,’ he conceded, ‘I’m convinced. What’s your summary going to say?’

‘That we’ve interviewed all the neighbours on that stair. It seems that Miss Spreckley kept herself very much to herself. The only one who was on anything more than nodding terms was Mrs McConnochie, who lived below. If you met her you’d think it would be impossible to keep secrets from her, but Miss Spreckley managed, mostly. For example, she told the old dear she had a sister, and a niece, even though she hasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Tarvil checked this morning with the Registrar General’s office.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘He’s got a cousin works there. He went in and ran a trace for him. Miss Spreckley had two brothers, but no sisters. She was visited, though, Mrs McConnachie could tell us that much.’

‘But not by whom? Could she tell you that?’

‘It was a young woman with a kid, she said. She called the victim “Auntie Bella” when Mrs M opened the street door for her and asked her who she wanted. There was a man too; he arrived later and he was definitely not to her taste. “Rough looking,” she said.’

‘Is that as detailed as she could get?’

‘I didn’t press her. Now we know for sure what we’re dealing with I can go back and try to get better descriptions of them both.’

‘You could get Tarvil to do it,’ Pye suggested.

‘I don’t think she’d be too comfortable with DC Singh. It’s got nothing to do with race,’ Karen explained. ‘She’s of a certain age, and I think she feels more comfortable with a woman than a man.’

‘Understood. You’ve just described Ruth’s granny.’

His wife frowned at him; they had been in the kitchen when his mobile had rung. ‘What’s my granny been up to?’ she murmured.

‘She got caught fire-bombing the mosque.’

‘Sammy!’

‘Joking, joking,’ he laughed. ‘It was only shoplifting.’

‘Sammy!’

‘It’s okay; she did a runner and they never caught her. Sorry, Karen,’ he said, into the mobile. ‘My wife’s very protective of the old biddy. As for your lady,’ he continued, ‘there’s something else she didn’t get out of Miss Spreckey, nor have you from her records. She didn’t have those kids out of wedlock. She was married and her husband’s name was Watson.’

‘How do you know that?’ Neville asked, puzzled.