smartarse, and you want to be sure that you never step over it when you interrupt me.’ The detective constable gulped. ‘Happily, this time you’re just about all right,’ Skinner continued. ‘Have you ever seen a suicide by hanging?’ he asked.
‘No, boss,’ Montell confessed, ‘I haven’t. A couple of lynchings, in my early days on the job back home, but that’s all.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve come across a few, and quite recently I saw one that was supposed to be a suicide, but wasn’t. If you want to do yourself, you don’t need a hook, or a tree branch or anything other than a ligature. In the case I’m talking about, the guy was on his knees, but if circumstances hadn’t proved it otherwise, it would have been accepted that he’d topped himself.
‘So the hook’s irrelevant; it was handy, that’s all. He was strangled by the rope, as intended. Once he was, the message was typed on the laptop, by someone wearing gloves, so that nobody could ever prove that the dead man hadn’t done it, and the grenade was put in place.’
‘I don’t get that part, sir,’ said Pye. ‘Why do that?’
‘I don’t get it either, Sammy, not at the moment. But let’s not get sidetracked by it. Who are we looking at? Who are our potential suspects?’
‘Surely the two guys from Aeron,’ said Wilding, emphatically. ‘Spicer and his mate. They have to be first on the list.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Ray, but didn’t the man you and Stevie spoke to say that they left for Wooler around midday?’
‘Maybe he lied.’
‘You were there. Is that what you thought at the time?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘So let’s assume that he didn’t. When does the pathologist reckon Ballester died?’
‘She says around eleven o’clock, but she can’t be precise about it, since there was a fire burning. The place doesn’t have central heating, and it had been a cold morning in Wooler. Ballester must have lit it when he got up, but as the sun got higher the room must have got a lot warmer.’
‘Yes,’ McGuire agreed. ‘It was still pretty warm when we were there, even though the fire had burned itself out a while before. But even at that, he must have been killed well before Stevie spoke to the man Spicer on his mobile.’
‘Precisely,’ Skinner continued, ‘and they were still there. According to your statement, Ray, they were even prepared to keep the place under observation until the police arrived; in fact, they did just that. If they’d just rigged a lethal trap they’d hardly have hung around to watch it sprung, would they? Let’s agree they’re in the clear. So . . .’ He paused and looked at each officer one by one. ‘. . . that points us straight at one man, the man who gave them their orders, the man whose daughter is one of the murder victims, the only other person who knew where Ballester was, and the man who put a price on his head: Davor Boras. It’s time that he and I had a conversation.’
‘Boss,’ said Wilding, ‘we’re not allowed to go near him. Becky told Stevie and me that she’d been specifically ordered not to bring him into the Barker investigation, by one of her big bosses. And that woman from the Home Office was all over our interview. He’s got protection, from political contacts, Becky reckons.’
‘Ray,’ the DCC replied quietly, ‘we’re investigating the murder of one of our colleagues, one of our friends. If Boras knows something about that, there is no power in this land that will protect him from me. Have you spoken to DI Stallings yet?’
‘Yes, boss, while you were in there.’ He nodded towards the now empty room.
‘Well, call her back, and tell her that her secondment starts this afternoon. Mario, you and I are going to see Boras, and Inspector Stallings can come with us.’ He looked back at Wilding. ‘Tell her not to worry. By the time we get there, all the arrangements will have been made. I’ll send her flight details as soon as I have them.’
‘What if the Home Office try to get in the way, sir?’
‘Then somebody’s getting arrested for obstruction. Sergeant, I’ll lift the Home fucking Secretary if I have to.’
Sixty-eight
‘You realise, boss,’ said McGuire as he and Skinner strode along the air bridge at Heathrow, ‘that we have no legal right to be here. We’re investigating two homicides; everybody but us thinks that one was a suicide, and that the other is a closed case. But neither of them took place within our area. By the book, we should be reporting what we believe to Les Cairns and letting his CID take it from here.’
The DCC smiled. ‘It’s not too often I say this, Mario, but bugger the book. Les Cairns and his people have got access to the same information as us, and they yet don’t see anything in it to contradict their assumptions. We’ve found Ballester and you and I are happy to sign off on him as the guy who killed the three girls and Harry Paul, on the basis of motive, weapon and everything else.
‘They’ve got him dead as a suicide, killing Stevie Steele in a last, bitter, random act of violence, and they haven’t looked beyond that. They’ll have read Arthur’s report, and they’ve either missed or ignored the significance of the eyelets.
‘I’m not bloody prepared to trust this investigation to them. Now I’ll admit, privately, that Arthur was a wee bit naughty bringing those skin fragments back to Scotland and leaving that out of his findings, but what the hell? One of them was his own!’
He looked at his colleague. ‘Are you nervous about this? Because if you are, we’ll collect DI Stallings and take the first plane back home.’
McGuire snorted. ‘Did I say I was nervous? I’m sure Les Cairns will welcome our assistance at the end of the day.’
‘That’s the spirit. But if you want justification, what are we doing? Officially, we’re going to see a bereaved father, a man who has just announced the donation of a million sterling to the Police Dependants’ Trust, to advise him that the man who killed his daughter is dead himself. That’s common courtesy, man, and to prove it, when we get back to Scotland, we’ll pay similar visits to the parents of Stacey Gavin, Amy Noone and Harry Paul.’
‘You really do think that Boras killed Stevie, don’t you?’
‘Or had him killed. I’m absolutely certain of it, not that I believe he was trying to. The trap was set for someone else, but I’m a way off knowing why.’ As he finished, they reached the end of the arrivals corridor, to see a tall, attractive, dark-haired woman, walking purposefully towards them, against the flow of disembarked passengers.
‘Now I know why Ray stayed over,’ McGuire murmured. ‘But I’m wondering what the hell she saw in him.’
‘When you can answer that,’ said Skinner, ‘you can chuck the police and start the dating website to end them all. DI Stallings?’ he asked, as she came within hailing distance.
‘Yes, sir. Deputy Chief Constable Skinner?’
‘That’s right, and this is DCS McGuire, my head of CID. You’ll be reporting to him during your brief secondment to us. Do we have transport?’
‘Nearby: I’m in the short stay.’
Stallings led the way out of Terminal One and into the car park. She showed her warrant card at the exit booth and the barrier was raised.
‘Where are we headed?’ said Skinner, in the front passenger seat.
‘We’re going to the Continental IT office, in central London. I checked with them to confirm that Mr Boras would be there all afternoon, and made an appointment for both of you to visit him.’
‘All three of us: you’re coming too. You’re playing on my team for the present.’
‘When are we going back north?’ she asked. ‘If it’s today, I’ll need to make time to go home and pack.’
‘That’ll be okay. If we go back tonight, you can fly north tomorrow morning. But we’re flexible; it depends on how we get on with Boras. As you saw when we met, we’ve both brought overnight bags, just in case.’
‘Ahh.’ Stallings fell silent as she drove out of the airport and picked up the M4.
The DCC glanced at her. ‘Something on your mind, Inspector?’ he said quietly.
‘No, sir.’
