‘If wishes were horses, gaffer, we’d all get a ride. What about his career?’
‘It says here that he joined the staff of Sky News as a researcher, straight from Keele, then moved on after a year to the
‘What self-respecting radical journalist hasn’t written one of those?’
‘Ah, but this one was subsequently discredited and condemned by both the British and French governments, and the editor of the magazine was forced to issue a retraction and an apology. According to this, Ballester was fed false information by an unknown contact who posed as a dissident member of the French Surete, and showed him a fake document, purporting to have been signed by the French justice minister, approving the plot, and giving the go-ahead. ’
‘Don’t piss off the government, eh?’
‘So it seems. Since then he’s been operating as a freelance, doing the same type of stuff for whoever will pay him. He’s been involved in a couple of stings on closet gay pop stars, on a kiddies’ TV presenter with a drug habit and on a footballer’s wife who was shagging his manager when he was away on international duty.
‘He lives in London, but . . . and this is when it gets interesting . . . periodically drops off the radar. His “periods of inactivity”, as they’re called here . . . an excuse for sloppy surveillance if you ask me . . . appear to coincide with the times he was living with Zrinka and then going out with Stacey. His whereabouts are currently unknown; he was last observed in London in February.’
‘That fits,’ said Wilding. ‘But what does it tell us, Stevie?’
‘Nothing of itself, but it poses some interesting questions. Why Zrinka? Why does this guy, with his track record, suddenly pop up in Edinburgh and latch himself on to the artist daughter of one of the richest men in Britain?’
‘Maybe he’d had enough of scratching around. Maybe he wanted to marry money.’
‘So he targets a girl who’s determined not to live off her father? No, that’s not the reason. I reckon he was on a fucking story, that’s why. He was out to dig up something on Boras. Think about it, Ray: Ballester made his name doing stories about business corruption, and what finer target than him? We know he’s dodgy, that he’s used Keith Barker to bribe a DTI official for useful inside information. Maybe that was the story Ballester was after, or maybe it was something else, but I’ll bet you one thing. Eventually Zrinka found out who or what he was, and that was why she gave him the bum’s rush.’
‘What about Stacey? Why would he move on to her?’
‘Because he didn’t want to give up on his story. Remember, she and Zrinka didn’t become friendly till after he was gone. He couldn’t get to Boras’s daughter any more, so he got to someone close to her. We know from Amy that she wouldn’t have given him the time of day, but Stacey didn’t know his history.’
‘So why did he kill them?’
‘A combination of rage over rejection, jealousy, and maybe frustration that his story was blown; that serious-assault conviction in his background suggests that he’s capable.’
‘It does. So where do we go now? We might know what his real name is, but he’s still disappeared.’
Steele leaned back, gazing up at the ceiling. ‘How did Zrinka find out?’ he asked himself aloud. ‘If I’m right, if he was researching a story on Davor Boras . . .’
He sat upright and looked at Wilding. ‘I want to interview Barker,’ he said. ‘No, I’m going to bloody interview him. Ray, we’re going to London. Maybe we could . . .’
He stopped short and looked at his watch. ‘Shit!’ he shouted. ‘Maggie’s leaving do starts in ten minutes.’ He stood up and grabbed his jacket. ‘We’re going tomorrow. You make the arrangements: book us on an early flight, then tell the Met that we’re coming and that we want to see Barker, wherever they’re holding him.’
‘What if he’s on bail?’
‘They’ll still have him; tell them not to give him fucking bail. If you have a problem with them, go to DCS McGuire. Meantime, I’m off to join my wife.’
Fifty-four
‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you came, sir,’ said Rose, to the tall, tanned man who stood by the window of the conference room in the Torphichen Place police office. He looked slimmer in the waist than at their last encounter, although the tightness of his jacket at the shoulders suggested this might be due to exercise rather than dieting. His steel-grey hair was cut much shorter than she had ever seen it, and seemed to shine, picking up highlights from the evening sun.
‘Mags,’ his sigh had a laugh in it, ‘for once in your life, will you please call me Bob?’ He glanced at his watch, awkwardly, since he was holding a glass in his left hand and a plate, laden with sandwiches, in his right. ‘It’s past five o’clock so you’re a civilian, for a while at least. To tell you the truth, I thought about not coming. A lot of people here haven’t seen me for a while, and might want to bend my ear about things. You’re the centre of attraction here and I didn’t want to take away from that.’
‘I’m glad you changed your mind.’
‘Thank my daughter. She told me that I’d an inflated idea of my own importance and that staying at home wasn’t an option. She’d have come with me, by the way, only she’s in Manchester today, on business. Bloody jet- setter; she’s flying higher by the month, that one.’
‘I know. Mario told me how highly Paula rates her, in what she’s doing for the business; he says that Viareggio PLC, as it is now, was very much her creation.’
‘Speaking of Mario, I don’t see him, or your new husband for that matter.’
‘Stevie will be here; he’s on a three-liner. As for my ex, he’s expected, but . . . they’re both under a hell of a lot of pressure just now.’
‘I can imagine. I feel a bit guilty about that too, Maggie. I did think about making my presence felt, and giving Stevie and the team my support, but the other lady in my life persuaded me that if DCC Skinner broke off a well- publicised sabbatical to take personal charge of the investigation, it would be seen by our enemies in the media as a vote of no confidence in them. That’s why I’ve stayed out of it.’
‘I guessed as much, and so did they.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Now if you hadn’t turned up today, that would have been a cause for guilt.’
‘You’re looking great, you know,’ he told her. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m just gobsmacked by the turn your life has taken.’
‘So am I, Bob; so am I. This time last year, if anyone had told me that . . . Jesus!’
Skinner thought he detected an edge in her voice. ‘You’ve no regrets, have you?’
‘Absolutely not. I have never in my life felt more fulfilled. I am totally focused on delivering this child safely into the world, and I can think of nothing beyond that.’
‘Having fathered some in my time, I know the feeling.’
‘Thanks. Actually you’re not looking too bad yourself, considering what you’ve been through.’
‘And thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m fine now. I’m over the divorce and I’m content with the arrangements that Sarah and I have made for the kids, especially now that I’ve seen how it’s working out. They had a great time in Connecticut at Easter and they’re looking forward to the summer holidays already.
‘Sarah’s happy too: she loves being a proper doctor again, rather than a pathologist, working, as she puts it, with people who ain’t dead yet, and trying to keep them that way.’
‘You’ve seen her there?’
‘I flew across with the nanny and the kids, hired a car and drove them up to her place. Then I headed north to Canada.’
‘Now I did know that. Stevie’s cousin’s with the force there, and he told him. It’s a tiny world.’
Skinner chuckled. ‘You can’t do a bloody thing, can you? The fact is, a sabbatical isn’t a holiday, it’s a working break. Since I’ve been away from Fettes, apart from my visit to the RCMP, I’ve spent some time with the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police force, and I’ve lectured at the FBI Academy in Virginia.
