twenties, much younger than his boss did, and he was quite certain about that. No, my belief is that Starr knew the man, but we’ll have to find him to prove that.’
‘Okay, go back to the sequence of events. An investigation into the faked robbery begins, but there’s no trace of the perpetrator slash victim. It’s hardly under way before Starr is found, trussed up, tortured and murdered. You and Bandit are now in charge of both investigations.’
‘Yes.’
McIlhenney leaned back in his chair until it creaked. ‘Why did you walk away from the idea that Nine-fingered Jack might have done it?’
‘For a variety of reasons. We had medical advice that someone with such a severe wound couldn’t have begun to do what was done to Starr. We considered that he might have enlisted help, but there were problems with that too. Just as Smith did, Starr appears to have admitted his killers to the house, and then to have been rendered helpless without a struggle. He wasn’t a soft touch: there was another bayonet in the house, and a shotgun. If a gang had turned up, he’d have gone down fighting. On top of all that, there’s the drugs that were used to subdue him. They weren’t over-the-counter stuff.’
‘So what’s the premise of your investigation, on the basis of what you know?’
‘I . . . we, DCI Mackenzie and I, believe that the murder is related to Starr’s apparent drug-dealing, rather than the incident in the shop.’
‘Turf wars?’
‘Who knows?’ Wilding replied. ‘New team in town, maybe? Sending out a message?’
‘If that’s so, we’ll hear more from them. But from what we’ve learned so far, Starr was the new team himself, or relatively so. I’d be more inclined to look among the old players. The trouble is, the way he was killed doesn’t fit any of them, or any of the boys through in the west. They’d just have shot him and dumped the body in a field somewhere. No, Ray, I think we know who did this already; that is, I reckon he’s within, or relates to, the circle you’ve encountered in your investigation.’
‘Did we get anything out of Spain, sir?’
‘Eventually. The SDEA were a bit sniffy about sharing the information, but Mario threatened to ask the Crown Office to order them to release it. They backed down at that. It’s pretty clear that the garage in Pamplona was a staging point for cocaine coming into Europe through North Africa. It was owned and operated by two Egyptian brothers, Darius and Garai Goma. They were gone when the place was raided. The Guardia Civil are pretty certain that they had a warning from a contact in the local police force.’
‘That doesn’t take us much further.’
‘On the face of it, it doesn’t,’ McIlhenney conceded. ‘It’s shut off the supply route, but that doesn’t help our investigation. So come on, let’s look at the cast of characters again. Starr, deceased. James Smith, alias Big Ming, deceased. Oliver Poole, solicitor? I’ve known Ollie Poole for years: he’s respected on both sides of the court, he’s a member of the Law Society council, and he’s making a bloody fortune. I’ll interview him again if necessary but I don’t regard him as a suspect. Mrs Kitty Philips?’
‘She’s got a whole bingo hall for an alibi, plus she’s got no motive. She took plenty from Starr in the divorce.’
‘The girlfriend?’
‘Can’t see it: the relationship was very casual.’
‘That just leaves Charnwood, the clerk. What do you know about him?’
‘DCI Mackenzie dealt with him, sir. His view was that he is what he seems, an employee who was trusted because he’s good at his job.’
‘Any previous?’
‘None at all: he’s an upright citizen, family man, with a wife named Sorry, and a young son.’
McIlhenney looked up. ‘What did you say the wife’s name is?’
‘Sorry, or so Kitty Philips told us.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Unusual, isn’t it?’
‘Mmm. Eddie Charnwood was with Bandit when he discovered the drugs and the money, wasn’t he?’
‘That’s right. DCI Mackenzie said he nearly fainted when he saw them.’
‘Indeed? Who opened the safe, Ray?’
‘Charnwood did. That’s why Bandit took him to the shop.’
‘And how did he open it? With a key?’
‘No, the boss said it had a combination lock.’
‘So, Gary Starr kept a fortune in drugs and cash in his office safe, and Eddie Charnwood knew the combination.’
Wilding stared at him. ‘He knew they were there? But he opened the safe for us?’
‘What choice did he have? Ray, he was Starr’s trusted clerk, the core of the business in a way, and there would be times when the boss was away and he had to lock up the takings. It’s inconceivable that he wouldn’t have known the combination.’
‘But it was him who told us that the fake gun belonged to Starr.’
‘Was there any way he could have known that Starr claimed it was used in the fake robbery?’
Wilding drew in a breath and let it escape in a great sigh of realisation. ‘Fuck! Starr was here for most of the afternoon after the incident. He was just leaving when I arrived to take over from Sammy Pye. I actually heard Oliver Poole say that he’d drive him home, and Starr say okay. Charnwood ran the shop all afternoon, and he never saw Starr. He wasn’t a witness, so we didn’t need him. Bloody hell.’
‘Exactly. Now consider this. Back in the eighties, when McGuire and I were the disco kings of Edinburgh, I pulled a woman one Saturday at Buster Brown’s. She was lovely, did a magnificent turn, and her name was Sorry. I ribbed her about it, and she told me it was short for Soraya. She was Egyptian.’
The superintendent stood up. ‘Come on, Ray, let’s go for them. We’ll take armed back-up, but I have a hell of a feeling we won’t need it. They’re too smart to be there waiting for us.’
Fifty-eight
‘You gentlemen seem to come in a rush,’ Sylvia Thorpe exclaimed.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ray Wilding.
‘I mean it: you’re like buses and bills. You don’t see any for while then they arrive in twos and threes. My office has had no contact with the police for over a year, and now we hear from you and your colleague Sergeant McGurk at one and the same time.’
‘It’s pure coincidence,’ the sergeant replied, wondering as he spoke what the DCC’s office-bound assistant had been up to. ‘I’m involved in a complicated investigation and the name I gave you has cropped up in it.’
‘Not nearly as complicated as Sergeant McGurk’s, or as interesting: I’m sure you’ll hear about it in due course. As for your enquiry, it was much simpler. Soraya Goma, pharmacist, of Cairo, Egypt, and Edward Charnwood, clerk, of sixty-two Glenochil Terrace, were married in Edinburgh four years ago; their son, Edward Hosni Charnwood, was born in June the year before last. I’ll fax the certificates to the number you gave me.’
Wilding noted the information on a pad. ‘I’d like some family background on Eddie senior: parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins. Can you do that for me?’
‘No problem. Give me an hour or so.’
‘Thanks, Ms Thorpe,’ he said, hung up, and looked up to see McIlhenney approaching his desk. ‘Guess what? Soraya Charnwood’s a ...’
The superintendent beat him to the punch. ‘Pharmacist; we got word from the DSS while you were speaking to the GRO. She’s employed in the dispensing department at the Western General. That means she’d have access to the drugs that were used to paralyse Starr. I’ve also been speaking to the SDEA, sharing our information with them; their operation with the Guardia Civil, the one that Bandit effed up, involved a butcher from Dundee called Joe Falconer. He made a trip to Pamplona as well: he was suspected of being involved in supply, so he was under round-the-clock surveillance. He dropped his car at the same garage, and picked it up a couple of days later. They went to lift him this morning and found him in his meat fridge, shot in the head. What does that sound like?’
