good-looking, just a lovely guy.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a detective inspector.’
An explosion of breath covered ten thousand miles in an instant. ‘Bloody hell! Another copper? Don’t you have any imagination?’
For the first time that afternoon, Maggie smiled. ‘I did fuck an actuary once,’ she said. ‘That was enough to make me stick to my own kind. No, that’s not strictly true. Actuaries don’t fuck; like everything else, they do it by numbers. Actually, I shouldn’t blame the poor sod. Until Stevie, nobody ever rang my bell, not even Mario . . . and he certainly has some clapper.’
‘Confession time for both of us,’ Bet murmured. ‘I may live a free and single lifestyle, but I’ve always been pretty repressed too, in that respect. The difference is, I’m still looking for my Stevie. The guy in the bathroom? Nowhere near it.’ She paused. ‘You know, Margaret, this is the first sister-to-sister talk we’ve ever had, and it’s taken us more than thirty years. Tell me something. Have you ever travelled in your life? I don’t mean a fortnight in Shagaluf, I mean really travelled.’
‘I haven’t even been to Shagaluf. I went to Italy with Mario a couple of times, and once to Paris for a long weekend, but that’s it.’
‘In that case, why not come to Sydney?’
‘I think I’d like that, Bet, but there’s something getting in the way right now. I’m pregnant.’
‘You?’ Maggie’s sister gasped. ‘Oh, Christ, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that, but I can only take so many shocks at one sitting.’
‘Don’t worry about it; a year ago I’d have said exactly the same thing. But now it’s happened, I don’t know what to say, other than that it’s magic.’
‘How long do you have to go?’
‘About ten weeks. According to the scan, it’s a girl.’
‘That’s wonderful: I’m going to be Auntie Bet.’ There was a sound in the background. ‘Okay, Bradley, close the door hard behind you. Call me in a couple of days.’ Pause. ‘That’s him gone, face tripping him.’
‘Sorry again.’
‘Cobblers, you’ve done me a favour. He’s a sour-faced bugger in the morning.’ Maggie stared at the closed door of her office. There was something about her sister’s voice, its vivacity, that sent an enormous pang of regret running through her for all the years she had kept her at a distance; her eyes blurred.
‘Now, come on,’ Bet exclaimed. ‘I’m going to take it for granted that you’d have called me once the baby was born to give me the good news. But it’s five years since we’ve spoken . . . my fault as much as yours, I admit . . . so what’s made you call me right now, in the middle of my night? My super-efficient sister doesn’t get mixed up with time zones, unless there’s something wrong.’
‘It’s nothing, Bet, just something I need to ask you.’
‘Everything’s nothing with you. Out with it.’
‘There’s something on my last scan: my consultant says it’s probably an ovarian cyst, but he asked me about the family medical history. Have you ever had a problem like that?’
‘I had a polyp in my womb three years ago. Had it removed and that was that. Nothing else, though.’
‘Did Mum ever talk to you about Granny Kellock dying? I know we were only kids when she did; she never discussed it with me, but she never discussed anything with me. I think she blamed me for what happened with Dad.’
‘Come on, Margaret,’ Bet protested. ‘I remember her battering you when you told her about it, but blaming you, that’s daft. You were only a kid at the time: you hadn’t even started your periods.’
‘Nonetheless, that’s how she felt. We never spoke much after that.’
‘She only spoke to me about Granny once; I asked her when I was doing my nursing training before I turned to design. All she said was that it was a cancer “down there”.
That was how she put it; to Mum, everything below the navel was just “down there”.’
‘What about Aunt Fay? Hers was in her stomach, as I remember.’
‘Yes, but it was a secondary. It was discovered very late, and she was riddled with it by then. They never did know where the primary was. Margaret, this consultant of yours, he’s not worried about you, is he?’
‘No, no, not at all; just routine, he says. That’s the exact word he used, routine.’
‘Have you told your husband?’
‘No, but I only just found out today. I don’t see why I should, though; Stevie’s like any other new father-to- be. He’d worry himself silly for no good reason.’
‘Isn’t he entitled to do that?’
‘He’s got enough on his plate. I’ve got a follow-up scan tomorrow; once I’ve had the result I’ll probably tell him then. There’ll be no reason not to.’
‘And will you tell me too?’
‘I will, Bet, I promise.’
‘You’d bloody well better. And not in the middle of the night either.’
Eighteen
Stevie Steele happened to be glancing out of the window when he saw the Vauxhall pull up in the village-hall car park. ‘Just what I need,’ he muttered, as a tall, bald man stepped out, placing a heavily braided cap on his dome-like head. He walked to the door to greet the new arrival. ‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Don’t worry, Inspector,’ said ACC Brian Mackie. ‘I’m not here to crack the whip, but I thought that I should show my face. Moral support, nothing more: I even played it by the book and told DCS McGuire that I was coming.’
‘I appreciate it, sir. So will the uniformed troops: they’ve been on a thankless task all day. Come on inside.’ He ushered him into the headquarters of Operation Gabriel.
PC Reid was alone in the office; he stood to attention as they entered. ‘Relax, Ian,’ Mackie told him. ‘You’ll pull something, going all stiff like that. I know this old lag,’ he explained to Steele, ‘from when I was CID commander out here. I thought you’d have retired by now, Constable.’
‘So did I, sir,’ the PC replied mournfully.
‘Hard slog, is it, Stevie?’ the ACC asked.
‘Yeah, but we’re moving. We’ve got an identification from a woman in North Berwick, confirmed by a bus driver who picked her up, and a male companion, on Monday night. I’ve sent Ray Wilding and Tarvil Singh back along there to re-interview the witness, in the light of what DC Montell got from the driver. We know who she is; now we have to find out where she’s from, and where the hell the boyfriend is.’
‘He’s your prime suspect, is he?’
‘Not necessarily. My concern is that he might have got in the way. We believe that the two of them may have camped on the beach on Monday. I’ve got a chopper up there now, I hope, doing a scan of the area, looking for signs they may have left behind.’
‘That’ll be the one I saw when I was into the village.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ As he spoke, the phone rang. ‘Will you excuse me, sir? I’d better take this.’
‘Of course.’
Steele snatched the handset from its cradle. ‘Inquiry HQ, DI speaking.’
‘It’s me, sir,’ Griff Montell said. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long but the woman I spoke to at Barclays decided that she had to clear the release of this information at the top of the tree. It turned out that nobody was nesting there until after four. There was a management meeting under way.’
‘That’s okay. I half expected them to ask us for a sheriff’s warrant. You got it now, though?’
‘Yes. Zrinka Boras has been a Barclays client for three years: she’s twenty-four years old and the address they hold for her is High Laigh House, Wimbledon, London. According to their information she’s unmarried. She has an overdraft facility on the account, guaranteed by her father, Mr Davor Boras, also of High Laigh House.’
‘What else would they tell you?’
