Death's Door

‘To him, you mean: when it comes to corrupting the civil service, there’s zero tolerance. The man Dailey has agreed to be a Crown witness, not to protect himself from prosecution, because they will do him, but to keep himself out of jail, and to hang on to his pension rights.’

‘Will that be enough to charge Barker?’

‘They think so: most of the payments are in cash, but they think they’ll be able to establish a link between the two men through phone calls. They also hope to recover photocopied documents from Barker’s office.’

‘Unless he has time to destroy them.’

‘He won’t. Very soon, if it hasn’t happened already, he’ll be arrested by Met detectives and held in custody while his office and home are searched under warrant.’

‘Is this likely to go public?’

‘Do we want it to?’

‘If charges are laid, we won’t have a say, but right now? To be selfish, the headlines about this investigation are about to get bigger than ever. If something that might or might not relate to the case happened to divert some of them, I wouldn’t mind a bit.’

Fifty-two

‘You’ve had three murders in four days,’ said a woman in the second row, ‘and you’re telling the public not to panic.’ She was new to Fettes briefings, a London journalist parachuted into Edinburgh in the wake of the sensation caused by Zrinka Boras’s murder and her father’s million-pound reward.

The chief superintendent looked at her as if he was trying to decide whether she deserved scorn or pity. ‘Would you like me to?’ he retorted, stone-faced. ‘Would your readers prefer me to declare a state of emergency and to advise people not to go out unless they have to?’

She shrugged, a gesture that annoyed the detective even more. ‘I’m only asking a question. That is what we’re here for, isn’t it?’

‘Actually, love,’ he replied (he knew that Paula would kill him for using the term, if she saw the exchange on television, but he could not have stopped himself, even if he had tried), ‘you didn’t ask a question, you made a statement, designed no doubt to fit somewhere into a knocking piece you’re planning to write. I’m not going to play your game.

‘For the benefit of the serious people here, I’ll repeat for the avoidance of doubt that, on the basis of what we know at this moment, we do not believe that any of these three killings, or the earlier, related, murder of Stacey Gavin, took place at random. All four victims knew each other; that’s fact. Obviously they each had a wider circle of friends and family. I don’t believe the threat extends to them, but they’ve all been given advice on personal security, and offered police surveillance if they want it.’

‘Is anybody under police protection?’ asked John Hunter, from his usual front-row seat.

The question did not surprise McGuire; he and Alan Royston had agreed that it might be asked, and had agreed that there was no point in deflecting it. ‘Yes,’ he told the old reporter, ‘but purely as a precaution . . . and don’t bother asking me who it is.’

‘Chief Superintendent,’ came a voice from the back row. It belonged to Grace Pretty, a Scotsman reporter with whom Royston was on particularly good terms. ‘I’ve just been advised by my London office,’ McGuire glanced at the media manager, seated by his side, and saw him wince slightly at the lie, ‘that Keith Barker, who sat in on yesterday’s press briefing with Mr Davor Boras, has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police. Are you aware of that?’

The head of CID held on to his deadpan expression. ‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell us whether it has anything at all to do with this investigation?’

He looked at her over the heads of the people between them. ‘Grace, you know me, and you know that I like to give straight answers whenever I can.’

‘Yes.’

‘No comment.’

He waited until the buzz subsided.

‘You’re not saying that Keith Barker is a suspect, are you?’ the woman in the front row demanded.

‘Is there anything about “no comment” that you find hard to understand?’ he replied. ‘Any other questions?’ As he spoke, he saw that Alice Cowan was approaching his table; he paused as she slid a note in front of him, then scanned it quickly. ‘Thanks,’ he said, as she left, looking up once more at his audience. ‘Yes?’

‘Dominic Padstow,’ a television reporter intoned, ‘the man we’re all assuming is your prime suspect. Have you made any progress towards tracing him since you issued his image to the media last night?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ McGuire answered, pocketing the note and beginning to rise, ‘as of this minute, we may know who he is. That’s all, folks.’

Fifty-three

‘He’s a journalist?’ Stevie Steele exclaimed.

‘That’s what MI5 believe,’ said Shannon. ‘They’ve e-mailed me a photograph and if he’s not the man in the painting, he’s his twin. I’ve forwarded it on to you, along with his file. Show it to your surviving witnesses and see what they say.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Daniel Ballester.’

‘Unusual.’

‘His grandfather was on the wrong side in the Spanish civil war; he dodged the firing squad and escaped to Britain. It’s all in the file. It should be in your mailbox by now, so you can see for yourself.’

‘Why does MI5 have a folder on him?’

‘For the not uncommon reason that he’s a pain in the arse. He’s a freelance whose speciality is upsetting the government, enough for somebody to have ordered that tabs be kept on him.’

‘Thanks, Dottie, I’ll read it right now.’

‘Five aren’t done with this, Stevie,’ Shannon told him. ‘They have access where we don’t; they’re going to do what they can to trace his movements. In the meantime they’ve raised the alert at all points of exit from the country.’

‘You must have a good contact there.’

‘As good as they get. I’ll be back if and when I hear anything more.’

Steele hung up, switched on his computer terminal and waited while it booted up. As soon as the cursor switched from hourglass to simple arrow, he clicked the internal mail icon and watched the screen. True to her word, Dottie Shannon’s message was there; he opened it and clicked on the attachments, first to download, and then to display the photograph.

He called to Wilding and waved to him to join him. ‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, holding a print of the face from Stacey Gavin’s portrait beside the monitor.

‘That’s the boy,’ said the sergeant, at once. ‘Mrs Dell was right: Stacey really could paint. He’s a good-looking bastard, isn’t he? What do we know about him?’

‘Let’s have a look.’ Steele opened the other file, and read aloud, ‘Daniel Ballester, aged thirty- two, white British subject, heterosexual, unmarried. Son of Archimedes Ballester, stockbroker, and Hilda Roberts, formerly of Hounslow, now retired and residing in Scottsdale, Arizona. No other known relatives. That’s fucking magic; sounds like a dead end already. Graduated with honours in media and politics; vice-president of student union in his final year and a member of the executive of the National Union of Students.’

‘They probably started watching him then,’ Wilding muttered.

‘Could be. What’s next? Hey, he has two criminal convictions, one for being part of a disorderly crowd during his university days, but . . . get this . . . another for causing actual bodily harm to a girlfriend when he was twenty. He was given a jail sentence of one year, suspended. Jesus, Ray, if Zrinka had only known . . .’