‘They have her listed as a student; they volunteered that. They won’t give me any account details, but they did confirm that the most recent withdrawals were made by debit card, in Scotland, specifically Edinburgh and North Berwick. There have also been several deposits made to the account, all through their Edinburgh branch.’
‘Cheques from Daddy, do you reckon?’
‘I asked that question myself. No, they weren’t: the bank lady was quite open about that, although she wasn’t authorised to release names or amounts. There have been regular pay-ins over the last couple of years, most by cheque but some in cash.’
‘So she’s been economically active in Edinburgh, yet the bank doesn’t have a local address for her.’
‘She’s an online customer, sir, like a lot of people are, these days, my sister and I included.’
‘Me too,’ Steele admitted, then stopped. ‘Okay, Griff, you seem to be on a roll today, so I want you to keep playing. We’ve got two witnesses putting her in North Berwick, and that ties her to the bank slip. There’s no doubt about her identity. It’s time to get in touch with the father.’
‘Mr Davor Boras,’ said Montell, ‘age fifty-five, born Sarajevo, Bosnia, then part of Yugoslavia. Built a successful engineering business in his twenties, before selling to a larger company and moving to London in 1989. Set up Bolec, a retail chain selling electronic and household goods, focusing on out-of-town locations, and grew it into one of the biggest in Europe. Sold out seven years ago for an estimated one point two billion. Two years later founded a computer business selling hardware, peripherals and supplies, exclusively online, throughout the European Union. Continental IT, the new company, thanks to spectacularly low overheads, is hugely profitable and is now bigger than the one he sold. Personal interests include the arts . . . he has galleries in London and in Sarajevo . . . and football; he’s a significant shareholder in clubs in England, Bosnia and the USA. He and his wife, they were married in 1976, run the Davor and Sanda Boras charitable foundation, which has funded relief operations in Africa as well as postwar rebuilding projects in the Balkan states. He has two children, both born in the former Yugoslavia: there’s Zrinka, and a son, Drazen, aged twenty-eight. Davor, his wife and the children became naturalised British citizens in 1992.’
‘Are you trying to impress me, or maybe even the big chiefs?’ asked Steele, slowly.
‘I’m sorry, boss. It’s an unusual name, so I ran it through Google and that’s what I came up with. I found it on an Internet encyclopedia.’
‘It’s okay, Griff.’ The DI chuckled. ‘I’m not getting at you; that’s good police work, no kidding. It lets us know who we’re dealing with.’
‘Kid gloves?’
‘I reckon all bereaved parents should be treated the same, but the commissioner of the Met might not share my view. Leave it with me. The ACC’s here just now. I’ll talk to him about it.’
‘What’s that?’ Mackie asked, as Steele hung up. The inspector had made notes during Montell’s briefing: he referred to them as he relayed what the DC had learned from the bank, and what he had discovered on his own initiative about the dead girl’s father.
‘Montell,’ the ACC said, when he had been brought up to speed. ‘Is that Alex Skinner’s boyfriend?’
The question took the inspector by surprise. ‘It’s news to me if he is.’
‘And maybe news to Bob as well. That’s just idle gossip, though: my wife’s niece works at Curle Anthony and Jarvis.’ He frowned. ‘I agree with you about the father, Stevie. We do not send a couple of uniforms in a panda to this man’s door.’ He took out his mobile and dialled a number. ‘Ruth,’ the DI heard him say, and knew that he had called his secretary. ‘ACC here. I want you to do something for me: find out which of the Metropolitan divisions Wimbledon’s in . . . That’s right, as in Roger Federer . . . then get in touch with its commander: from what I remember he or she is probably . . .’ He paused as the landline rang and Steele picked it up once more. ‘. . . a chief super. Whatever, I need to speak to them at once, like ten minutes ago, on this number. Thanks . . . Yes, I’m still at Gullane. I don’t see me being back this afternoon.’
‘Yes?’ Mackie heard the inspector exclaim, as he finished his call. ‘That’s excellent. I’ll take it from here.’
‘What now?’
‘The chopper: it’s got a result. They spotted a tent pitched in a clearing in the bushes, just where Reid said it might be. They’ve photographed it, and they have the technology to transfer an image straight into our system. I can pick it up here, from an e-mail, so that we know exactly where to go.’
‘Good man. I’ll come with you. You know,’ Mackie said, ‘I used to wonder about Bob Skinner and his insistence on being hands-on whenever he can. Now I think I understand him. I think maybe I should phone him, leave or not, and see if he wants to get in on the act.’
Nineteen
It was one of those embarrassing moments: Alex Skinner was in conference with the chairman of the firm when her mobile sounded. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Mitchell Laidlaw. ‘I forgot to switch it to silent.’
‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘It might be a client. Take it: we’re done here anyway.’
‘Thanks.’ She picked up her papers in her left hand and the phone with her right, hitting the accept button as she stepped through the door, which the chairman held open for her. ‘Alex,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘You could cheer me up by coming out with me tonight,’ Griff Montell exclaimed. ‘I’m having a hell of a busy day and I need to relax.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘Movie?’
‘I can’t think of anything I fancy at the moment, truth be told. I was at the Ocean Terminal multiplex on Sunday with my dad and my young brothers. None of the trailers appealed to me. Let’s just go and eat.’
‘Sounds good. Anywhere in mind?’
‘No,’ she said, as she settled behind her desk. ‘We’ll take a taxi up to George Street and pick somewhere; it’s midweek, so we’ll have plenty of choice. Ring my doorbell at seven thirty: we’ll have a drink first.’
‘Okay.’ Alex was about to hang up, but he continued. ‘Speaking of your dad, how is he?’
‘He’s fine. I was worried about him a few months ago, but the time he’s spent by himself seems to have done him good.’
‘Why were you worried about him?’
‘For a couple of reasons: he was involved in a very big incident towards the end of last year. You’ll remember it: there were people killed. He’s had a few very rough scrapes in his time, has my father, but I don’t recall ever seeing him so badly affected as he was by that one. Then, just after it, he went off to London on some hush-hush inquiry. He didn’t tell me anything about it, but I got the definite impression that it was fairly nasty too. On top of all that, he’s had to deal with the break-up of his marriage.’
‘Bad timing?’
‘Not good, but it was more than that. Pops isn’t used to failure in any aspect of his life: if he undertakes something, he has to succeed. He’s bad enough when a four-foot putt lips out, so imagine what he was like when he had to admit that he and Sarah weren’t going to make it work. He took it personally, carried all the blame on his shoulders.’
‘Shouldn’t he? Isn’t he . . .’ Montell started to venture.
She cut him off: ‘I know what you’re going to say; you’ve heard the gossip too. Well, it’s wrong. Aileen de Marco wasn’t a factor in the split. It wasn’t all his fault, either: he and Sarah both made mistakes, and in the end there wasn’t enough left to hold them together. But everything came to a head at once, her going, the horrors he was involved in.’ She paused. ‘Griff,’ she asked, ‘have you ever met my father?’
‘Once,’ he replied. ‘After you had your own trouble, and I was on hand to sort it, he sent for me, called me up to his office, to thank me personally.’
‘You never told me that. He wouldn’t, but you might have.’
‘I didn’t like to. I don’t know why, unless I was embarrassed at being thanked for just doing my job.’
She laughed. ‘That’s all I am, is it? Just another victim?’
‘That’s what I tried to tell him . . . although not quite in those words . . . but he wouldn’t have it. He said he owed me one, as a man, not as the deputy chief, but if he could use his office to repay it, he would. So I asked him if I could carry on working with DI Steele and Tarvil; they’re my kind of cops, see. He fixed it there and then.’
‘Good for him. And at that time, how did he seem to you? What did you think of him?’
