house.’
He returned to his car, drove past the patrol vehicle and turned off the loch-side road into a long drive that led up to an impressive stone villa. The roadway was covered by a heavy layer of red gravel chips, which crunched under the tyres, giving an audible warning of their approach.
As they drew up at the front-door steps, a tall man walked round from the side of the house. He wore a green sweater over a white shirt, and his dark trousers were tucked into an outsized pair of old-fashioned wellington boots. His complexion was ruddy, and crinkly grey hair was swept back from his forehead.
‘You’ll be the police,’ he exclaimed, in a crusty accent that sounded only faintly Scottish. He focused on the fair-haired ACC. ‘And you’ll be Mr Martin,’ he added. ‘I recognise you from your picture in the last community newsletter.’
‘That’s right, Colonel Paul, and this is DCS McGuire from Edinburgh.’
‘Colonel, eh?’ Travis Paul retorted. ‘You’ve been doing your homework. My military handle’s only used in official publications these days; my company’s annual report, that sort of stuff. You’ll be getting used to this, Mr McGuire,’ he said to the detective grimly. ‘I suppose you’ll have had a similar meeting with the Boras girl’s parents.’
‘There are some things that you never get used to, sir.’
‘I suppose not.’ He sighed; his face bore the lines of one who had missed a night’s sleep. ‘I had that duty myself, in the army, a long time ago. I lost a few men in Ireland, and more in the Falklands. I appreciate the guard you’ve given us,’ he said to Martin. ‘I’d have been rather abrupt if I’d had the press knocking on the door today, I’m afraid. Come into the house: my wife’s waiting for us there. I’ve been killing time, and weeds, in the garden.’
He led them up the steps, pausing to remove a little mud from his boots on a black iron scraper by the door. The entrance hall was wide and imposing, panelled from floor to ceiling in oak that the police officers guessed had been there since the house was built. Paul pointed to the right. ‘In there.’
As they entered, Marietta Paul rose from a big wicker-framed armchair that looked entirely out of place in a Scottish drawing room. As he introduced her to the visitors, her husband caught Martin’s quick glance. ‘I’m a collector,’ he explained. ‘I brought that chair back from Savannah, Georgia.’ He pointed to a massive display case against the back wall. ‘That thing came from Nairobi. If you look inside it you’ll see various bits of metal that came from the Falklands. They were dug out of me, after one of my guys stepped on a land-mine. He was killed, I was torn up by sharpnel.’ He looked directly at McGuire. ‘I suppose you’re going to ask me to look at Harry in much the same condition.’
‘No, sir, I’m not. We’ve got a positive identification on your son’s body from his medical records.’
‘The plate in his leg?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But we want to see him,’ the ghost-faced mother protested.
‘There’s no need,’ McGuire told her.
‘But it’s our right.’
‘It is,’ he agreed, ‘but maybe you’d better not.’
‘Exit wound?’ Paul asked quietly, looking away from his wife, so that she could not hear the question.
The big detective shook his head, moving closer to him. ‘No, sir, but Harry’s body was hidden for over twenty-four hours, and exposed to scavengers.’
‘I understand.’ He turned back to Mrs Paul. ‘We’ll take the officer’s advice, dear. It’s in our interests. Now, Mr Martin, Mr McGuire, please sit and let’s get down to business. What happened to our son?’
‘He was shot twice in the head from a range of about four feet. We believe that the murderer had been stalking them since the previous night, and that he must have followed them to North Berwick, where they went to sell some of Zrinka’s pictures. They caught the bus to Gullane; we guess that he followed them in a car, from a distance. We know that he wasn’t a passenger himself. We’re not sure about what happened next, but we reckon that he trailed them all the way down to the beach, where they pitched their tent.’
‘Why there? Why did they go there?’
‘We know that Zrinka visited the vicinity with her parents, when she was nine years old. It’s our guess that camping there was her idea. They may have been there before, for all we know, but last Monday was probably the first night of the year that’s been warm enough.’
‘And he killed them there?’
‘We believe that he watched them all night, from somewhere very close by. Zrinka was found on the beach. Harry was killed in the tent; we know that for sure, thanks to our lab people. Our supposition is that she decided to go for a walk, and that Harry stayed in the tent. When she had gone, the murderer emerged from his hiding place and shot your son. He then followed Zrinka and killed her, probably at the spot where she was found.
‘Finally, he went back to the tent and hid Harry’s body, clothes and rucksack, while leaving her things for us to find. He was probably hoping that we’d assume that Harry was the killer and that we’d waste time starting a search for him.’ McGuire paused. ‘But our people at the scene didn’t fall for that one.’
‘I see.’ Colonel Paul sighed. ‘What can we do?’ he asked. ‘How can we help you catch this murdering bastard?’
‘We need to know everything you can tell us about Zrinka Boras,’ the chief superintendent answered, ‘anything that Harry might have told you about her.’
‘Are you looking for a jilted lover?’ Marietta Paul asked.
‘It’s too early to say that, although we are trying to find any connections between Zrinka and Stacey Gavin, a girl who was killed two months ago, and a man remains a possibility. At the moment our thinking is that Zrinka was the target, not Harry; he may have been killed just because he was unlucky enough to have been there.’
‘Stacey Gavin?’ the woman repeated.
‘Yes. Harry didn’t know her too, did he?’
‘Not that I know of.’ She looked at her husband. ‘Did he ever mention her to you, Trav?’
‘He did, actually, but only in the context of a television report of her murder that we were both watching. It was midweek, but Harry used to come up then, since most of his band engagements were at weekends. They showed a picture of her, and he said, “Poor kid, she looks really nice. I hope they catch the . . .” I won’t repeat the word he used, dear.’
‘What about Zrinka?’ McGuire continued. ‘Were you aware of their relationship?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Marietta replied. ‘Harry brought her up here. She was a lovely girl.’ Her voice faltered for a moment, as she fought to keep a sob at bay. ‘It’s just devastating that this should happen to two young people; young, so young. How could it? How could it?’ As the two police officers looked on, embarrassed and sympathetic, she broke down.
‘Do you mind if we continue this without my wife?’ asked Paul.
‘For the moment, not at all, sir,’ Martin told him.
‘In that case, let me take her upstairs. I’ll rejoin you in a moment.’
‘Sure.’
‘So Harry was still well in the bosom of the family,’ McGuire murmured, as the couple left the room.
‘Going back to what you were saying earlier,’ his colleague said, ‘would you cut yourself off from a place like this? Look at that view.’
They stood and gazed in silence through a big picture window that offered a panoramic vista from the hillside across the shining waters of Loch Tay and down its length. The day was calm and one or two boats were out, anglers with rods in the water. ‘I take your point,’ the Edinburgh policeman conceded eventually. ‘Even for a boy with dreams of making it big as a musician, this is fucking paradise. Not a lot to do, I guess, but a hell of a place to practise.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Travers Paul from the doorway, as he rejoined them. ‘We’ve both been devastated since we heard the news. It took a big effort on Marietta’s part to meet you at all; she really isn’t up to it, you know. Not for now, at any rate.’
‘Sure,’ said McGuire, as they returned to their seats. ‘We both understand that, so don’t worry about it.’
‘Thanks. You were asking about Zrinka, before.’
‘Yes. What did you know of her?’
‘Very little; Harry only brought her here twice. I knew that she was British, because the first time I asked her what her nationality was. She laughed and said that sometimes she wondered herself, given her Balkan ancestry,
