‘Amanda, I don’t care whose decision it is. It’s got to happen, and that’s an end of it. We’ll need a cover story as well, to explain his death. If you’re sensitive about it, leave it with me and I’ll make arrangements.’
‘If you think you can,’ she said, ‘but you may not find it as easy as you think. Those MoD people can get hung up on secrecy.’
‘Eventually we all take orders.’ As if to make his point, he continued, ‘Now, what have you got for me on Ormond Hassett MP?’
‘Him?’ She frowned up at him. ‘He’s not the bumbling grain merchant that we thought. He graduated from Cambridge forty-one years ago, and won a rugby blue in the process. From there he joined the army, Royal Green Jackets; he did two tours in Ireland, then served in Germany for five years but there’s no record of what he was doing. That probably means he was watching the Russians.
‘Aged thirty-one, he was given a posting to the Washington Embassy as military attache and spent two years there. That was followed by a year in Whitehall, before he resigned his commission and went into the family business. He didn’t stay there long, though: he was elected to Parliament in the Conservative victory of 1979. He had a three-year spell as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State for Defence. Towards the end of his stint he wound up back in Washington, as the leader of a back-bench group lobbying American support for the Falklands war. There’s a curious coincidence here, although probably no more than that: the adjutant to that party was Major Joshua Archer, second battalion, the Parachute Regiment.’
‘Coincidence is a far rarer occurrence than people think,’ Skinner retorted.
‘Maybe; but there could have been little future contact between them, since Archer was killed a few weeks later.’
‘Did they know each other before?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll try to find out. If I compare their service records, it might tell me something.’
‘What happened to Hassett after the Falklands?’
‘He resigned as PPS after the 1983 election because he wasn’t given a ministerial appointment. There was some curiosity about that: received wisdom among the parliamentary lobby correspondents was that the Prime Minister of the day thought that he was too right wing.’
‘Jesus, that’s quite a statement.’
‘Indeed! It didn’t stop him getting on to the Defence Select Committee, though, or later from becoming one of the first members of the Intelligence and Security Committee. He sat on that until 1997. After that he seems to have confined himself to agricultural matters, until finally the most recent leader of Her Majesty’s opposition gave him a job as a shadow spokesman.’
Skinner smiled. ‘What the hell do they think we are? Hicks from the sticks, it seems. Did that man Frame really expect us to believe that a man like that wouldn’t know his son was a spook? And what about the question beyond that: if he knew that, did he know what he was up to? Amanda,’ he asked, ‘is there any way you can access Piers Frame’s service record? I’d like to see whether he’s crossed Hassett’s path before.’
‘Only the Director General of Six could authorise that, Bob.’
‘Then maybe we’ll have to ask him.’
Fifty-seven
‘I know about the drugs find, Ray,’ said Neil McIlhenney, seated in the chief inspector’s room in the Leith police office. The sergeant’s face reddened. ‘It’s all right, I’m not coming after you for it: I know you better than that. DCI Mackenzie put his foot in it, but that knowledge goes no further than you, me and Mario. The SDEA want his head on a pole, but they’re not having it; they’re not even getting his name.’
‘What about the chief, or the DCC, if they go to either of them?’
‘The chief knows: he’ll tell them where to go if necessary. The DCC’s frying other fish just now.’
‘So what happened in Pamplona?’
‘The local police went crashing into the middle of a Guardia Civil stake-out; they were working with the SDEA, following up a lead that came out of Dundee six months ago. They’d been watching the place all that time. They even had photographs of your man Ming dropping off the A Class, but they didn’t know who he was.’
‘Couldn’t they trace the car from the plates?’
‘They did, but Starr wasn’t stupid. They belonged on a BMW owned by an insurance broker in Hampshire.’
‘Couldn’t they have followed him back to Scotland?’
‘They didn’t appreciate what was going on then.’
‘What did they find when they raided the garage?’
‘Thin air. And traces of decent-quality cocaine. What did you do with the stuff you found in Starr’s safe?’
‘It’s here, locked up in ours, along with the money.’
‘Jesus! At the very least Bandit should have reported it to our own Drugs Squad, and given it into their custody.’ McIlhenney looked at the sergeant. ‘Ray, I know it’s only been a few days, but what’s it been like working with him? Off the record; nothing will get quoted to anyone.’
Wilding thought for a little, framing his answer. ‘Let’s say it’s been a learning curve, sir. He has his methods, and they’re a bit unorthodox, but that doesn’t make him a bad cop.’
‘If they work it might make him a good one.’
‘Granted. The thing I’ve found difficult is his unpredictability. Just when I think we’re starting to get along, he’ll flare up. Like this morning: we were interviewing Starr’s ex. She’s forthright, but no ogre, and she was co- operating, when out of the blue, the Bandit tore into her. When I asked him why the hell he’d done that, he tore into me. Wee things seem to set him off: today I reckon it was the fact that you’re moving Stevie Steele down to Leith.’
‘What does your gut tell you about him, Ray?’
Wilding frowned. ‘When I was a kid, I had an uncle with a drink problem, although I didn’t know about it till I was a bit older. He acted just like DCI Mackenzie.’
‘What time did he leave you at Queen Charlotte Street this morning?’
‘Eleven forty.’
‘He didn’t get to me until twelve thirty. I didn’t raise it with him, for I was too concerned with other things, but I copped a whiff of his breath when I was showing him into my office. I reckon he might have stopped off somewhere on the way. By the way, that is also just between you and me.’
‘Absolutely.’
McIlhenney nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s get on with business. Where are we in this chaotic investigation? By that I mean the murder of Gareth Starr, since that’s where it all started out. Take me through it.’
Wilding put a hand on the case folder on the desk. ‘With respect, sir, that isn’t where it started. The chain of events began when we were called to Starr’s betting shop, following his report of an attempted robbery, in the course of which he severed the so-called robber’s finger.’
‘So-called?’
‘Yes. We now know that it wasn’t Starr who called the police, but Big Ming, when he arrived back early from the corner shop and collided with the guy as he was running off. There was no hold-up; according to Eddie Charnwood, the clerk, the plastic gun we found belonged to Starr himself. Another thing: Starr told us he kept the bayonet in his safe, but according to Charnwood he kept it under the counter. The man faked the crime scene, sir.’
‘So Starr attacked the man, not the other way round?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘That’s how I see it. He said that the bloke came in, pointed the fake gun at him and demanded money. We know that didn’t happen. We know from Smith that the man was hanging about outside the shop when he left, as he did at eleven every morning, to go up to the corner shop. That suggests to me that the man went in there to talk to Starr, not to rob him.’
‘Or to collect on a bet? Could there have been a dispute about money owed?’
‘That’s possible: there was money on the counter, nailed down by the bayonet. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. In his statement, Starr was at pains to describe the man as drugged up to his ears, but Smith’s version doesn’t bear that out. There’s also a big disparity in the two stories when it comes to age. Big Ming put him early
