‘Yes, I remember very well. She told me that she has an appointment,’ her husband twitched at her linguistic slip, but said nothing, ‘in North Berwick the next evening, with a gallery-owner who was interested in putting some of her work on show. She was going to take ten pictures down there, and she hoped he would take them all. She was pleased because his commission on his sales was less than the Edinburgh galleries. Zrinka was annoyed by the amount some of them wanted to charge her.’
‘She sold her work from a stall, I understand,’ said Steele.
‘That’s right. She told me that suppose she sell only one picture a week, the rent of the stall was less than the commission she would have paid to a gallery. If she sell two ...’
Davor Boras seemed to rally. ‘She was my daughter, sir,’ he barked. ‘She knew that the fewer people between her and the buyer, the more she would make.’
‘Was she happy?’ McGuire asked the mother.
‘Yes.’
‘You never sensed anything troubling her, especially recently?’
‘No. My daughter was always happy; she loved Edinburgh, she loved her work.’
‘What was her ambition?’
‘She wanted to be famous in her own right. She loved to paint people caught off-guard in unusual situations. She had her own hero; she wanted to be another Jack Vettriano, with her work on posters all around the world. She signed everything “Zrinka”, with a great flourish, but never with her full name.’
‘Your family owns galleries. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes,’ said Boras, ‘but the collections there are very serious. They are not places to indulge one’s daughter. Zrinka understood that she could not be hung there until she had come to justify it.’
‘But you have a passion for art, too?’
‘Passion? No it’s strictly business: art is a good investment. If one buys, and then puts the work on public display while it appreciates, that makes sense. My galleries do not offer free admission, and they do not run at a loss.’
‘I think I understand that,’ McGuire conceded. ‘But, if you’ll forgive me, I think you have a greater interest than you’re letting on. No matter, though. We know from her bank records that Zrinka was doing fairly well. Did she have any well-known customers?’
Sanda Boras smiled for the first time since they had come into the room; for the first time, Steele guessed, since the chief super from the Met had driven up to her door. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘She sold a picture to a footballer once; she was very pleased about that, although none of his team-mates followed his example, as far as I know. The most excited I remember her was a few months ago, early this year. She said that a man and his family had come to the stall, and that one of them, a woman, the man’s daughter, although the rest of them were children, had bought a picture for him, an expensive picture. She told me that she recognised him from his picture in the papers, and that he was a very important man in Edinburgh.’
‘Can you remember his name?’
‘No. I don’t think she say his name. I had to go before she could.’
McGuire turned back to Boras. ‘Your son, sir: does he know of his sister’s death?’
’Not from me,’ he replied. ‘Drazen and I do not speak very often, either. I have not seen him in almost a year. Nor has his mother, I believe . . .’ he paused ‘. . . although maybe I am wrong about that.’
‘No,’ said his wife, quietly, subdued once more.
‘You didn’t give him a little help?’ the head of CID asked her.
‘He wouldn’t ask, or accept it.’
‘My son has done well enough for himself,’ Boras exclaimed curtly.
‘Doing what, sir?’
‘Trying to prove that he is a better man than his father. Three years ago, once I had seen him through LSE and Harvard Business School, he turned his back on Continental IT, which he would have been running before he was thirty, and set up on his own, in direct competition to me, only his company runs entirely through a website. I wouldn’t have minded, but there was no original thinking in it at all. Everything he did, he copied from me. The last time we spoke I told him as much. He replied that I couldn’t expect to have all the market, and I should be happy with what he had left me. Hah! A website!’
What’s it called? DrazenBoras dot com?’
‘My son doesn’t use his family name any more. He anglicised it when he went to Harvard. Now he calls himself David Barnes. His company is called Fishheads dot Com. A nonsensical title.’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ McGuire admitted. ‘Nonsense maybe, but it’s not a name you’d forget. It supplies our family business with bulk stationery and consumables. Paula, my partner, swears by it.’
‘Mr Boras is more inclined to swear at it,’ said Barker. The beginnings of a smile at his small joke appeared on his face, but vanished under his employer’s glare.
‘It’s doing well, then?’ Boras said nothing. ‘I’ll take that as yes,’ the head of CID continued. ‘Don’t you think you should contact your son, though? This is going to go public very shortly.’
‘I told you. We have no contact with him. My son betrayed me; he is a stranger to me and to his mother, God damn him.’
‘I’ve tried to reach him.’ Camilla Britto’s voice came across the room, from a chair beside the window. ‘I have a home number for him. He called me one day, and gave it to me, for use only in case of extreme family crisis. I called it this morning, while Sanda was asleep, but it was on answer mode. I left a voice message, telling him where we are, and asking him to call his parents urgently.’
Boras twisted powerfully in his chair. ‘Did you not hear what I just said? You interfere in my family affairs, woman? As soon as we get back to London, you’re fired.’
‘No, she’s not, Davor,’ his wife told him calmly. ‘Camilla works for me, not you. If there’s any firing to be done I’ll do it, and I wouldn’t start with her. She’s handled this exactly the right way, as you’ll see when your anger lets you think logically again.’
Twenty-nine
Maggie Rose looked around her dingy office. When she had moved in there, into a senior command position, she had not given a second’s thought to the end of her police career. If by some chance she had imagined that day, she would never have foreseen that it would have come there, or then.
She smiled at the prospect, simultaneously amused and amazed that she had reached her decision.
Overnight, she had managed to put her meeting with Aldred Fine into perspective. She had done some Internet research and had seen that there were many potential explanations for her ovarian shadow. The one that she favoured was that it was a simple mistake, a misleading shading caused by the technology that had spotted it. She was confident that everything would soon be clarified and the worry removed, without Stevie ever having to learn of it. She was pleased, oddly, that her decision to leave the force had not been influenced in any way by what might be or, much more likely, might not be wrong with her.
There was a soft knock on the door. She looked up and called, ‘Enter.’ It opened and a young man stepped into the room, with a hesitancy that was unusual for him.
‘Yes, Sauce,’ Chief Superintendent Margaret Rose said cheerfully, on her last day in command. ‘What can I do for you?’
Police Constable Harold Haddock stood stiffly before her. He had changed since the day she had appointed him as her unofficial leg-man, when first she had taken temporary command of the division. The gawky lad she had seen then had grown an inch or so and had filled out. From seeming to be composed almost entirely of elbows, he had become broad-shouldered and thick-chested, someone not to be messed with in a bundle, as he had proved on street patrol on more than one occasion. Maggie was not known to play favourites, but if she had been so inclined, young Sauce Haddock would have been one of them.
‘Nothing, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry if I’m being presumptuous, but I’m going to do it anyway. I know we’re having a goin’-away do for you tomorrow afternoon, and I’m coming in for it, but I’m off from lunchtime today. While I’ve the chance I’d like to thank you, just myself, for doing so much for me.’
She swallowed, completely taken aback and uncharacteristically touched. She looked at him, masking her
