Gavin shrugged his shoulders. ‘She was a grown woman, Doreen.’
‘Perhaps, but if you’d been here to back me up I would have objected. When you were away Stacey used to bully me.’
‘Oh, come on, love.’
‘Well, maybe not bully me, but she was firm with me, and always had her own way.’
‘Doreen,’ Steele said gently, ‘we’re not interested in Stacey’s bedtime habits. We’re here about your safety. One person who knew Padstow has just been killed. You and Russ are the only people left who can give hard evidence against him, even if you can’t link him directly to Zrinka. With your permission, I propose to put you under police guard, twenty-four hours a day. You’ve got an alarm system and that’s good. Russ,’ he asked, ‘does it have a night setting?’
‘Yes. While we’re asleep there are sensors active in all the rest of the house.’
‘Fine. Obviously, Russ, you have to go to work, but we can look after you there. Doreen, during the day you don’t leave the house without a plain-clothes escort. For night cover, we’ll install video cameras front and back, and we’ll have armed officers monitoring them in a van parked just up the street.’ He paused. ‘I don’t really believe that Padstow would try anything here, but if he does, he won’t get in, and he won’t get away either. Are you both okay with that?’
‘One hundred per cent,’ said Gavin, anxiously.
‘Good. We’ll get it done, then.’ He put a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Russ, I think you should cancel your business trip this weekend, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Stevie, absolutely.’
‘Fine.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Now, Griff and I would like a word with you in private.’
‘Sure. Hold on.’ Gavin smiled at his wife. ‘Doreen, since I’m home I might as well stay for lunch.’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I’ll rustle something up. Gentlemen, would you care to join us?’
‘That’s very kind of you, Doreen,’ said Steele, ‘but we’ll need to get back.’
As she left the room, the two detectives turned back to her husband. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Is the risk greater than you’ve been letting on?’
‘No, that’s as we set it out for you; it’s there, but we have it under control.’
‘Do you think this man will try to attack us?’
‘It would be out of character. He’ll probably assume that, after Amy’s death, we’ll be protecting you. This guy’s very careful: he doesn’t do suicide missions.’
‘Stevie, didn’t you anticipate that something like this might happen?’
The question riled Steele. ‘Mr Gavin, if I had,’ he said testily, ‘the kid would still be alive. We didn’t know she existed until yesterday, and there was nothing about her that marked her out as a potential target. All that she could have done was identify Padstow as Zrinka’s boyfriend, and later Stacey’s. That alone wouldn’t have convicted him. Taking her out was . . . well, overkill is the best word I can think of. Literally true.’ He glanced at Montell. ‘But that’s not what we want to talk to you about.’
‘No, then what?’
‘Mr Gavin,’ the South African asked,’ ‘what was your relationship with Zrinka Boras?’
Another flash of consternation showed in the man’s eyes, and he seemed to pale just a little, before recovering his composure. ‘I never knew Zrinka Boras,’ he replied. ‘My daughter might have, but I didn’t.’
‘Oh, Stacey knew her all right; that’s been established by Amy Noone, by other friends of hers, and by a barman at the Pear Tree pub, where they used to go. Have you ever been to the Pear Tree, Mr Gavin?’
‘God knows. I’ve been to a few pubs in my time.’
‘It’s near Bristo Square, beside the mosque.’
‘That still doesn’t mean anything. There are so many bloody monuments in Edinburgh you ignore them after a while.’
‘The barman I spoke about has a very good memory for faces. He told one of my colleagues that, as well as seeing Zrinka with Stacey and Amy Noone, he saw her there on a few occasions, last summer, with a man; an older man.’
‘So?’
‘So let’s stop fucking about,’ Steele hissed. ‘We’re doing you a favour here, Mr Gavin. We could be having this conversation with your wife in the room, and we will if you don’t stop lying to us.
‘For a period last year, beginning in July and stretching through to October, Zrinka’s engagement diary, the one she kept on her computer, shows regular meetings with a man referred to as RG. Interestingly, these nearly all took place on Fridays and Saturdays. Most of them have venues attached, like the Pear Tree, on several occasions, the Bar Roma, the Edinburgh Rendezvous, and often just “here”. Since her computer wasn’t a laptop, I take that to mean that they met at her place.’
‘The telephone directory’s full of men with those initials.’
‘Yes, but only one of them has a certain mobile number, one we found listed on Zrinka’s palmtop. We’ve traced it, Mr Gavin. It’s yours. It’s the mobile your wife doesn’t know you have, the one you use to call your girlfriends, to set up your Friday “business trips”. If I really wanted, I could go to the mobile network and get a list of every call made from that phone, and then go and interview the recipients. At the moment my thinking is to do just that, unless you give me a bloody good reason not to.’
Gavin glared at him. ‘You would too, wouldn’t you? Okay, you win. I did know Zrinka. I met her last year, one Saturday when Stacey was selling work from her market stall down in Leith, and I went along to see how she was doing. We got talking; I liked her. She was one of those people who brighten up your day. Know what I mean?’
‘Sure,’ said Steele, ‘I’m married to one of them. And if you took a really close look, instead of putting her down and treating her like a skivvy, you might find that you are too.’
‘Are you a fucking marriage-guidance counsellor as well as a cop, Stevie?’
‘No, and if that’s your attitude, let’s stick to “Detective Inspector Steele”. Go on.’
‘If you insist. I took one of her business cards; it had her website, her e-mail address, and her mobile number on it. I had a look at the website, and I sent her an e-mail congratulating her on it, and suggesting that she might help Stacey set one up. I got a reply saying, “Thanks. If she wants I’ll do that.” A couple of days later I called her and said that I’d like to thank her by taking her for dinner.’
‘Did you call her on your mobile?’
‘No, that time I called her from work.’
‘What age are you, Mr Gavin?’ asked Montell.
‘Forty-nine. Why?’
‘No comment; carry on. Where did you go?’
‘The first time, to the Rendezvous; her choice, she liked Chinese.’
‘Then back to her place?’ asked Steele. ‘It isn’t far.’
‘Not that time; it was just a friendly dinner. A week later we met for a pint after the stall closed . . . yes, at the Pear Tree . . . then went to a movie. I took her home and she kissed me. She kissed me, mind. We made a date for the next Friday, and that time I stayed over.’
‘You spun her a story, yes? You told her your marriage was cold and loveless.’
‘Which it is.’
‘Whose fault is that?’
‘Listen, I’m not going to discuss personal stuff between me and my wife.’
‘Fair enough: we don’t have time anyway. Go on. You were telling us how you wound up sleeping with your daughter’s friend.’
‘I know, it sounds callous. But we didn’t have sex, not at first; it was just touching, know what I mean? Zrinka said she wasn’t in love with me or anything, she just liked me. But eventually we did. The first time, when it was over, she just lay there, stroking my hair and looking sad. Looking back, I think she probably felt sorry for me; she was that sort of girl.’
‘Who ended it?’
‘She did. It went on for a couple of months more, until one night she told me that it was over. She said that she felt guilty, about Doreen, and about keeping what she called her dark secret from Stacey and Amy. To be brutally honest, as she always was, it was more than that; she said that I couldn’t make her come, and she saw that as a sign that it was wrong. She said what she thought, did Zrinka; she told me that she had this feeling that I
