Quintin Jardine - Lethal Intent

'How did you know they were druggies?' Allan asked. 'We didn't release that.'

'Do me a favour. Who do you think you're talking to?'

'Point taken. You're right, of course: three victims blown to bits. We've identified two of them as Frankie and Bobby Jakes, former asylum-seekers, and now former everything. We haven't a clue who the third guy was, although the barman in the Johnny Groat, where they'd been drinking, said he sounded foreign. Whoever he was, we found his arse in the car… a big flashy American thing, it was. The rest of him was all over the place and what was left was pretty well crisped, but the pockets of his jeans were crammed full with what had once been white powder.'

'Supply cut off at source, you might say. At least that's a bonus for you, if not for them.'

'Mmm,' DCS Allan muttered, 'but there's a downside. We're not telling anyone this either, but it wasn't a bomb that blew them up. My ballistics guys have been working all night on it, and they tell me they're pretty much certain that it was a missile, an American Javelin anti-tank weapon, they reckon.'

'Bloody hell!' exclaimed Haggerty. 'I've never heard of them in Partick before.'

'Me neither. But at least we've got somewhere to start looking. There were two guys in the pub. They'd been seen talking to the Jakes boys, and when they left, this pair went out just after them. They were seen making a very sharp exit from the scene just after the explosion. We reckon they might have fired the missile from their car.'

Haggerty felt his scalp tingle. 'How do you know they weren't just punters?' he asked.

'We know for sure they weren't. They were heard telling Jakes, and a woman, that they were porters at the Western. Only they're not. The hospital's never heard of them. We reckon that they were the hit team, and right now, finding them is our absolute top priority. We're putting E-fit pictures out on television tonight. Hopefully, they'll lead us to them.'

The two officers who had found the body in the Transit were still there, but a uniformed inspector had arrived from divisional headquarters in Leith and taken charge. McIlhenney eyed the two youngsters. A tight lid would have to be put on the situation; he wondered whether they could be trusted, and how strong their loyalty to the force was.

Dottie Shannon, the inspector, saw them as soon as they stepped out of Mackenzie's car, which he had parked in the roadway outside the warehouse. She was a contemporary of the Special Branch commander, and he had no worries about her discretion.

'No press around?' he asked.

'Not a sign. We've made as little fuss as possible, as you asked; I've even let the warehouse stay open. You'll see that the vehicle was left well away from the business entrance, so we've cordoned it off and let them carry on as usual, in the meantime at least'

'That's fine.'

'The only thing that concerns me, Neil, is that we don't have a medical examiner here.'

'Is he dead?'

'Oh, yes, he's dead all right.'

'In that case, unless you can find me one who specialises in resurrection, we don't need a doctor. Dot, I don't need to spell anything out here, do I?'

The inspector looked up at him from under her cap. 'You've done that already.'

'What about the kids over there? How much have they seen?'

'Hardly anything: the girl looked in the van but from what she says, she didn't hang around to see much detail. The other officer wasn't that curious; he took the word of the warehouse manager and called it in.'

'Do you know them?'

'Yes. They're both sound; they'll accept what you tell them.'

'Do they know who I am?'

'No.'

'They don't need to find out, then. Tell them that this is a suicide, that the guy's a copper from another force, and that there is to be no talk about it. I'll deal with the manager.' He turned to Mackenzie. 'Bandit, let's take a look.'

The two chief inspectors walked round and into the car park. 'Hey, Neil,' Mackenzie said quietly, as they approached the van, 'something's just occurred to me. Shouldn't Amanda Dennis be here? This is her guy, after all.'

'She's otherwise engaged.'

They reached the Transit: a foul odour wafted out to greet them through the rear doors, which lay very slightly ajar. McIlhenney glanced around to make sure that they could not be seen from the road outside the compound, and opened them to their full width. He sensed his colleague flinch beside him as he saw Sean Green's purple face, and his dead bulging eyes. 'Easy now,' he murmured. 'He might look scary, but he's not going to bite you. Poor guy: he paid a heavy price for chibbing Andy Martin's jacket.'

'I'm supposed to be the flippant one around here,' Mackenzie reminded him. 'We knew this man. How can you talk like that?'

'I find that it helps.' He gulped a lungful of relatively fresh air then squeezed himself up on to the platform of the van, for a better view. He saw that Green was wearing what he assumed was his waiter's uniform, black trousers and a white shirt. It was buttoned all the way up to the neck, as if his tie had been ripped off and used to strangle him.

'Was he killed in the van?' his colleague asked.

'I don't think so. Sean would have been trained to handle himself, and the space in here is limited. My bet would be that it happened in or near the restaurant, given that he's still in his working clothes.'

'What do we do now?'

'You call in for a black van to take him to the city morgue. I'll check to see if there's anything on him that might help us.'

A little gingerly, he reached inside Green's right trouser pockets; he found a wallet and withdrew it. On flipping it open he found that it contained thirty-five pounds in cash, two credit cards and a photographic driver's licence, all in the name of John Stevenson. He handed it to Mackenzie, who stared at it, looking puzzled. 'They didn't take it?'

'They couldn't have needed thirty-five quid,' McIlhenney replied, tersely.

The left trouser pocket held a small cell-phone. He withdrew it and tried to switch it on, but was asked for a passcode. He slipped it into his own pocket, for the technical people to explore, then bent over the body again, and rolled it on to its side. There was a back pocket on the right-hand side of the slacks. Even more gingerly, since Green had soiled himself in death, he felt it from the outside, then reached in with two fingers and slipped out a folded sheet of paper.

He opened it, carefully, and could just determine that it was a map, a street plan of the town of St Andrews. He frowned, peering at it, but it was dark inside the Transit and so he jumped out, back into the grey afternoon, where there was just enough of the fading daylight for him to see.

In fact it was only a section of a map, a graphic guide to the north end of the town. Landmarks and prominent buildings were shown in miniature and a seagull flew over St Andrews Bay. Lines across the top and bottom told him that it had been downloaded from the internet, then faxed. 'Why?' he asked himself, as his colleague joined him, looking over his shoulder. 'I doubt if he was planning any sightseeing while he was up here.'

'What are those marks on it?' Mackenzie asked, pointing.

McIlhenney followed his finger and saw that two circles had been drawn on the page. One was round the Sea Life Centre while the other encompassed a tiny illustration of St Salvator's College and its quadrangle. They were linked by a line, running along a street called The Scores. On the map, there was a cartoon of a boat in the bay, heading out to sea. It, too, had been circled.

The chief inspector cleared his mind and concentrated, the page hanging loosely in his fingers as he thought. And then he gave a long, soft whistle. 'Salvator,' he murmured, 'Salvator. Bandit, what was the Albanian word the Dutch lorry drive overheard? Remember?'