Quintin Jardine - Lethal Intent

'Churchill was a Conservative, surely,' Martin exclaimed.

'Only when it suited him, my dear. But you didn't come here for a history lesson, did you?'

'Not that far back, no.' He looked at her. 'Mrs Meikle, can I count on your absolute discretion?'

'When you can't I'll stop you,' she promised.

'Fair enough. In that case, what can you tell me about Tommy Murtagh? I gather that you and he were on the council at the same time.'

'That odious little man!' she exclaimed. 'Yes, we were, more's the pity. If the people of his ward had seen through him thirteen years ago, the first time he stood, we might have been spared a lot. You'll be familiar with the phrase "something of the night". When I sat opposite him in the council chamber I found it difficult to see anything of the day in Mr Murtagh. It simply appals me that he's now our country's First Minister. I argued long and hard against devolution, and I was in the foreground of the "No" campaign in the referendum. I warned that something like this would happen and now I've been proved right.'

Martin waited for the storm of her indignation to subside. 'I gather that Murtagh had a meteoric rise though the local Labour Party,' he said. 'Do you know if he had any particular mentor at the time?'

'Brindsley Groves,' she said at once. 'Old Herbert was still around when Murtagh was a youngster, but he spent most of his time on the golf course by then, or at least in the bar. His son ran the firm with very little input from him. It was pretty well known that there was something between him and Murtagh's mother, and that Brindsley made him a foreman because of it, helped him through university, then gave him a management job afterwards.'

'Did Groves benefit from it?'

'Council contracts, do you mean? Of course he did, but we could never prove it.'

'How did he take it when Murtagh opted for a parliamentary career?'

Diana Meikle looked down her nose, as if she was inspecting one of her potted plants. 'He engineered it; at least that's what I heard. There was another runner for the seat, but he decided to pull out at the last minute. The word was that he had something nasty in his past involving little boys, and that the people behind Murtagh had unearthed it.'

'The mother's dead now, isn't she?'

'Yes. She lived long enough to see her son elected to Westminster, and died the same year. Tommy told me, in one of the few civil conversations we ever had, that she had chronic kidney disease, and it affected her heart.'

'Does he have any other family in Dundee? His father, for example?'

'No, Tommy's parents lived in Derbyshire when he was born. The family, or at least he and his mother, moved up here when he was four.'

'Why Dundee?'

'I have no earthly idea.'

'Why didn't the father come north with them?'

'He was dead by then. He was a motor mechanic; the story was that he was killed in a work accident when Tommy was a baby. The mother took a job as a clerk in Herbert Groves's office; that's where she met Brindsley. He'd have been in his mid-twenties at the time; he's late-fifties now.'

'She was a widow, and yet you're saying their relationship was a secret?'

'It was from Celia, Brindsley's wife.'

'Ahh.' Martin chuckled. 'They must have been married young.'

'They were.' She gave a wicked smile. 'Contraception was much less reliable in those days, you know. The pill wasn't as readily available then as it is now.'

'How many children do they have?'

'Two; a boy and a girl. The son runs a tea-importing business; he and his father fell out years ago, and have barely spoken since. The daughter married a doctor and moved to London. They're not the happiest of families, although Brindsley and Celia are still together.'

'Murtagh doesn't have any siblings as I understand it'

Diana Meikle frowned. 'Who told you that?'

'I've read his official party biography: it says he's the only child of George and Rachel Murtagh.'

'Maybe so, but he's not his mother's only one. She had a daughter when Tommy was about ten. She took her mother and brother's surname, of course, but all the gossip said she was Brindsley's. This is Dundee, though: the talk never got to where the rich people live.'

'Where's the daughter now?'

'I have no idea.'

'Do you remember her name?'

'Funnily enough I do: she was called Geo.'

'Your source is secure, is it?' Skinner asked Bandit Mackenzie. 'She's not going to talk to a pal about your visit?'

'Gwennie? No, she'll keep it tight. I trusted her with a few things when we worked together, and she did likewise.'

'I won't ask.'

'Nothing too serious, I promise. The main thing is that she won't let me down.'

Skinner looked at the photographs on McIlhenney's desk. 'These are originals. What if someone notices they're missing?'

'They won't: Jakes isn't top priority just now. But if someone did ask, Dell would just roll her eyes and look innocent.'

'She takes chances for you, this girl.'

Mackenzie grinned. 'She has an extra incentive.'

'What might that be?'

'She fancies a transfer to Edinburgh. I told her you could swing it for her.'

The DCC laughed at his sheer audacity. 'And she believed you?'

'Of course, because it's true. You can do that, boss … you did it for me.'

'Hah! You flatter yourself: I brought you through here to take a load of trouble off the hands of my chief officer colleagues in Strathclyde. I was doing them a favour, not you.'

'That's not what my ACC said when he approved my transfer; he called you a thieving bastard, sir, as I recall.'

Skinner grunted. 'Ungrateful sod. She's good is she, this DS Gwen Dell?'

'I rate her.'

'Tell her to apply for transfer, then. I'll keep my hands off it, though; I'll arrange for the new head of CID to process it.'

'Eh?' Neil McIlhenney exclaimed, sharply.

'Within this room for now, please, till there's an official announcement.' Skinner told the two chief inspectors of Dan Pringle's decision. 'I have to respect his wishes,' he said. 'I thought about trying to talk him out of it but, honest to God, he's a broken man.'

'So who…?'

'I haven't had time to think about that, Neil. It's an appointment I didn't think we'd have to make for another year or two. For the moment, I'll do the job myself, till the present crises are over.'

'What?' Mackenzie intervened. 'We've got more than one?'

'Always,' Skinner shot back, covering his slip of the tongue. 'Did you think you'd come to a cushy number?' He leaned on the desk. 'Let's concentrate on this one for now, though. Frankie Jakes.' He jabbed a finger at one of two images on the desk: it showed a man with dark, scowling eyes, a low forehead, and a scar on his stubbled chin. 'This ugly boy. What did Dell tell you about him?'

'Age twenty-nine, or at least that's what his asylum documents said. They also gave his real name as Branko Janevski, and his home city as Skopje. He was granted asylum five years ago, on the ground that he'd been ethnically cleansed, but the view in Strathclyde CID is that you couldn't cleanse Frankie with a high-pressure hose.'

'Do they know of any Albanian connection?'

'That's why he was allowed to stay. A lot of Macedonians have ethnic Albanian origins; when things went nasty in the break-up of Yugoslavia, they were persecuted. A lot were killed; the younger guys like Frankie got out any way they could and headed for Calais.'

'What about his criminal activity?'

'Small time; that's what I was told. He's suspected of dealing, as we knew already, and of being hired muscle for gangs across the river. His name was mentioned in connection with a shooting in Paisley a while back, but only in the passing, and he wasn't even interviewed. He has a couple of arrests on his record, but no convictions. The closest shave he had was two years ago, when he was caught with a supply of ecstasy tabs. He was going to be charged with possession with intent to supply, but the drugs got nicked from the evidence room before he got to court.'