‘Consider it done, and get on with your day.’
‘No, it’s not as easy as that. When you say it, I need to be looking you in the eye.’
‘Princess, nothing’s as easy as that. Would you like to go out tonight? Somewhere nice and expensive?’
‘I’d prefer somewhere nice and quiet, like your place.’
‘Pasta supper?’
‘If you cook it, that’ll be nice. Bacon rolls for breakfast?’
Mario chuckled. ‘You go for them, that’ll be great. See you tonight.’
Sixteen
‘Campers?’ Ray Wilding’s tone was almost scornful.
‘That’s what the bus driver said.’
‘Montell, she must have been winding you up. There are no camp sites in Gullane.’
‘This lady would not wind people up. She’s a straight talker. What she told me was what she saw. They had rucksacks and the guy was carrying a tent; they crossed the road, for what that’s worth.’
‘That doesn’t mean they were going to pitch it that night. Chances are they were heading for an address in the village. I suppose that now we know what side of the road they were on, that might give us a clue, unless, of course, they were going for a last drink in the Golf Inn.’
‘Listen, Sarge,’ said Montell; it was hard to irritate him, but not impossible. ‘I’ve interviewed the bus driver, like I was asked to by Tarvil, and I’m making my report. That’s what the witness told me and I have no reason to doubt her. What you guys do with the information, that’s up to you.’
‘Okay, thanks. When you get back to the office, do the usual: turn it into a formal note and send it to me through the Intranet so I can enter it in the investigation file.’
He hung up and glanced at Steele, seated at a desk close to the table, at the far end of the room. He too was finishing a phone conversation, on his mobile. ‘Yes,’ Wilding heard him say, ‘do that, and get back to us.’ The DI ended the call and swung round to face Wilding. ‘She used a Barclays Visa debit card,’ he said. ‘The Z stands for Zrinka: that’s our victim’s name, Zrinka Boras.’
‘There can’t be too many of them to the pound. What is she? Asylum-seeker?’
‘Don’t know yet, but I wouldn’t have thought so, not with a Visa card. I’ve got someone on to Barclays just now, to track down where she keeps her account and to get an address for her.’
‘That might not be as easy as you think. My waitress in North Berwick forgot to mention something. Montell’s bus driver says that she and her boyfriend were carrying rucksacks and a tent.’
‘A tent. And it was a nice warm night, nearly a full moon too. Shit.’ Steele glanced to his right at the uniformed officer, who sat at the table. ‘PC Reid,’ he said, ‘you’re a local guy. Is there a place in Gullane where you can camp if you want to, without being obvious?’ There was an awkward silence. ‘It is fucking obvious, though, isn’t it?’ the inspector added, as he answered his own question in his mind. ‘Right down to the sand traces in her vaginal swab.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said the constable, carefully, ‘there’s the beach. We don’t encourage it, but there’s no by- law against it so it happens. We get youngsters camping out there sometimes. If you go into that buckthorn in the high dunes at the east end, there are wee clearings where you can pitch a tent. I don’t mean local kids, like: their parents are too responsible to let them do that. If they get camping out, it’ll be in the garden. My own have done that in their time. Naw, I’m talking about students and the like, going down there for a bit of, well, peace and quiet, and maybe to smoke a wee bit grass where they’ll no’ be bothered by us.’
‘Or by anybody else?’
Reid frowned. ‘No’ necessarily, sir. That area’s got a bit of a history.’
‘And somebody might just have written a new chapter.’ Steele pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I’m off to the Mallard. Sergeant McNee should still be there on his break. I want a search of that buckthorn.’ He paused. ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s an easier way than that. Ray, get on to the traffic boys. I want a helicopter to over- fly the area, as soon as possible. We can bet that Zrinka’s boyfriend’s long gone, but maybe he left his identity behind.’
Seventeen
‘Who?’ the belligerent telephone voice exclaimed.
This was not someone, she thought, who would ever hold down a job in a call centre. ‘It’s Maggie,’ she repeated. ‘Your partner’s sister. Is Bet there?’
‘Of course she’s here.’ Sarcasm took over. ‘It’s twenty before three in the bloody morning. Hold on: give her a second to come round.’
She waited; the man’s voice became indistinct and then she heard a rustling noise as the phone was passed over. ‘Margaret, it’s you?’
‘Yes, it’s me. Hello, Sis, how are you doing?’
‘I’m fine. I’m even awake now.’
‘God, I’m sorry: I thought you were ten hours behind us, not ahead.’
‘No, it’s tomorrow where I am.’
‘I’ll call you again, tomorrow morning our time. How would that do?’
‘Margaret, I’m awake now, so talk to me. Who’s dead?’
‘Nobody.’
‘You’re not calling to tell me that Dad’s surfaced again, are you?’ Suddenly Bet’s tone was fearful. ‘You’re not going to say he’s in Australia, are you?’
‘No,’ said Maggie, hurriedly, ‘you can relax on that score. Look, he is dead, for sure: he was shot . . .’ she hesitated ‘. . . that’s to say he shot himself, a couple of years ago.’
There was a long silence, until ‘Our father died,’ her sister repeated, ‘and you didn’t call or write to tell me?’
‘I chose not to. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t think you’d want your life tainted by him again; not after what he did to us when we were children.’
‘No, when I think about it, you’re right about that,’ Bet conceded. ‘It would have been good to know that they’d finally screwed the lid down on the bastard, though. I haven’t forgotten, you know, any of it, even though I was younger than you when it all happened.’
‘How could we forget? It’s haunted me all my life; or at least it did, until recently.’
‘And me. I went halfway round the world to get away.’
‘You can’t run away from memories, or bad dreams.’
‘I know that. I ran as far as I could from the possibility that he might ever come back into my life.’
‘I guessed as much, even though you never spelled it out at the time.’ Maggie sighed. ‘He’s kept us apart, you know, as sisters.’
‘At least he didn’t prevent us making lives for ourselves. ’
‘No, he didn’t do that. Who’s the guy? Husband?’
Bet laughed; the sound seemed to disperse the dark cloud that had linked two continents. ‘No, thank you very much. Boyfriend, that’s all; he doesn’t live here. In fact he’s just gone stumbling off to dress and hit the road. How’s the bloke you married? Do you still outrank him?’
‘Not any more, but I’m not married to him any more either. We divorced last year; I’m on my second husband now, and you, sister, haven’t even scored up one.’
‘Is that why I haven’t had a card from you, the last two Christmases? Or a birthday card?’
‘Mainly. I was a bit screwed up for a while, and I didn’t want to inflict it on you.’
‘So you’re giving me insomnia instead?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Just kidding. Tell me about the new man.’
‘His name’s Stevie, Stevie Steele; he’s almost three years younger than me, very bright, very calm, dark hair,
