‘Those of my employer, Mr Davor Boras.’
‘How were those instructions conveyed?’
‘In a conversation in Mr Boras’s suite in the Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh.’
‘Was anyone else present?’
‘No. Mrs Boras and Miss Britto, her secretary, had gone to the funeral director’s office to make arrangements for Zrinka.’
‘Arrangements?’
‘To choose a coffin and make sure that she was properly . . .’
‘I understand.’
‘When did you receive your instructions from Mr Boras?’
‘On Thursday afternoon, at approximately four p.m. That was not long before Mrs Boras and Miss Britto returned, and shortly before we left for the airport to return to London.’
‘You’re sure about that timing?’ asked Steele, as Wilding re-entered the room and took his seat at the table
‘Certain.’
‘Are you aware that Mr Padstow’s name and image were not released to the press until late on Thursday evening?’
‘I am now.’
‘You were also present at a discussion in the same place that morning, when Detective Chief Superintendent Mario McGuire and I interviewed Mr and Mrs Boras.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Do you recall Mr Padstow’s name being mentioned at that time?’
‘Yes, I do, by Mrs Boras. She said that was the name of a man who had lived with Zrinka for a while, in Edinburgh.’
‘Had you ever heard the name before?’
‘No.’
‘To the best of your knowledge, had Mr Boras?’
‘No, I don’t believe he had. When we returned to the hotel, after the press briefing with Mr McGuire, he asked me if I had any idea about this man before, and if I knew anything about him. I told him that I hadn’t, and that I didn’t. He looked puzzled, concerned.’
‘When he gave you your orders, did Mr Boras tell you why he wanted to trace Mr Padstow?’
‘No, all he told me was that I should trace him as quickly as possible and obtain a photograph of him.’
‘Did he tell you how to go about this?’
‘Yes he did. He told me to contact Patrick Dailey, in the Home Office, and ask him to use his influence to obtain the necessary information and photograph from the passport agency.’
‘For the record,’ said Steele, ‘Mr Dailey tried to comply with this request, but was apprehended. Those circumstances are under investigation elsewhere and are not directly relevant to our enquiries. So, Mr Barker, you obeyed your boss’s instructions, without asking questions.’
‘You don’t question Davor Boras. You may advise him professionally, but ultimately, if you work for him, you do what he tells you, and that’s an end of it.’
‘Did you ask yourself any questions? Did you wonder why he might want to trace this man?’
‘I did.’
‘What was your conclusion?’
‘The obvious one: that Mr Boras wanted to find out for himself whether Padstow knew anything about Zrinka’s death.’
‘With respect, Keith, that isn’t obvious to me. My first assumption would have been that he intended to use his contacts to help the police investigation.’
‘Then you didn’t know Boras. He is not a sharing type. Why do you think his son left him to set up his own business, in competition with his father, and why are they now bitterly estranged? I’ll tell you, because that much I do know. Davor simply assumed that his son would join him in Continental IT, and for a while that might have happened. Only Drazen asked his father to draw him a career path, putting a rough date on when he would retire and hand over control of the business. Davor told him that would never happen until God made it so. In other words, as long as he was alive, Drazen would always be subordinate to him.’
‘How do you come to know this?’
’Because Drazen told me. I met him once after he struck out on his own, and I asked him why he had done it. He came right out with it, chapter and verse.’
‘Did it surprise you, what he told you?’
’Not when I thought about it. Drazen and Zrinka were very much alike, from what I knew of them. Neither was prepared to stand in anyone’s shadow for ever. He had plans for Zrinka too: he wanted her to run both of his art galleries; her brother told me that as well. She managed to deflect him, though. She persuaded him that nobody in the art world would respect her until she had established herself. She was supposed to settle in Edinburgh not just to paint but to find work in a national gallery, and gain experience there. Once she got up there, she forgot about that side of it, conveniently.’
‘So back to Padstow: you’re saying that Boras wanted to get to him himself, to get information out of him. How would he have done that?’
‘I do not know, and I do not care to speculate.’
‘Would he have used physical persuasion?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you believe him capable of it?’
Barker glanced at the recorder, then back at Steele. ‘I believe that if he has succeeded in finding Padstow before you, and if he is convinced, as you seem to be, that he murdered Zrinka, then you have a better chance of finding Lord Lucan than of catching up with the bastard. Boras won’t leave a single trace of him.’
‘Just as well that the Home Office woman didn’t hear that,’ Stallings murmured.
‘Maybe she should have,’ Steele replied quietly, his head turned away from the recorder. ‘Maybe she knows things about him that could point us in the right direction.’
‘Want me to go and get her back?’ Wilding whispered.
‘Except,’ said Barker, startling them all, ‘that there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that.’ They turned back towards him. ‘Now I’ve seen Padstow’s image, I know why Boras wanted me to find him. I should have worked it out for myself straight away, but I didn’t.’
‘Go on,’ said Steele.
‘Almost three years ago now,’ said the prisoner, ‘not all that long after I went to work for Boras, I became aware that someone was asking questions about us, about the business, about Boras himself, about me and what I had been recruited to do for him. Word filtered back to me, from employees, from suppliers and from former associates of mine.
‘I had no idea who the man was, but I knew that he was hostile, as such people almost invariably are. I made that assumption because no approaches were ever made to me, to any of my subordinates in the press office or in the consultancies that we use. At that point in time, I didn’t want to go to Boras, as I knew him well enough by that time to understand that you didn’t bring him suspicions, you brought him facts. So I began to seek the man actively, and to build up a dossier on what he was up to. I intended to trace him myself, but I never did. He was too good, too thorough. Finally, I decided that he was probably an industrial spy, hired by one of our smaller European rivals or, more likely, by an American outfit. That I had to take to the boss.’
‘How did he react, when you didn’t bring him hard facts?’
‘To my surprise, he was fine. He thanked me and he told me to leave it with him. A week later, he called me into his office. I should tell you that he never discusses anything sensitive outside his room at Continental; he has the place swept every day for listening devices. He showed me a folder and said, “That’s our man.” It contained photographs and a complete biography of a man called Daniel Ballester. He was a journalist, that sort of spy.’
‘Where did the information come from?’
‘He told me he’d hired a private security firm: its name was Aeron, according to the heading on the report I saw.’
