‘I’d better get on with it, then, boss.’ The line went dead.
‘That’s under way,’ said Skinner, reaching for his jacket. ‘Let’s book ourselves in here for another night, just in case.’
‘We’re not going straight home?’
‘Hell, no. We’re going back to where I was last night.
You’ve done your Special Branch stint, now it’s time you saw where the real game’s played. Let me stretch that memory of yours. When you saw Drazen on Saturday, can you remember how he was dressed?’
‘Yes, I can. No way could I have forgotten it.’
Seventy-six
‘I am not comfortable with this, Bob,’ said Amanda Dennis. ‘You giving two fingers to the people in Langley is one thing, but my being seen to help you do it, that’s quite another.’
‘Mandy,’ Skinner cajoled, ‘we both know that you’re as annoyed with them as I am. Besides, eventually I’ll get what I’m looking for; all I’m asking you to do is save me some time.’
‘You are a persuasive old sod,’ she exclaimed. ‘On second thoughts delete the “old”: you’re younger than me. Come on.’
She led Skinner and McGuire, the latter unusually silent, out of her office and across to the lift. They took it down to the third floor and stepped into a corridor with a door at the end. She entered a code into a keypad on the wall then swung it open. ‘This is our counter-terrorist section,’ she said, for McGuire’s benefit. ‘Not nearly as flashy as you see on the telly, but the job is much the same.’
Heads turned as they crossed the floor; Skinner recognised one or two faces from previous visits. They stopped at a desk the size of a dining table where a man was working at a computer terminal. He was in shirtsleeves, wore glasses and was totally bald; whether by nature or design, neither visitor could tell. ‘Adrian,’ she murmured, ‘these are two friends of ours from the north, Bob and Mario. They’re working on something very sensitive and need your help; give them what they need, please. Gentlemen, come back up when you’re done.’
‘Thanks, Amanda.’ Skinner turned to Adrian as she left. ‘Before we start I need to make a phone call. May I use yours?’
‘Sure,’ the man replied affably.
‘Mobiles are a last resort in here,’ the DCC explained to McGuire, as he dialled. ‘They give too much away. Sammy, how goes?’
‘So far so good, boss. David Barnes was a passenger on a flight to Heathrow Terminal Three on Saturday morning, from JFK, onward from Jamaica. He then caught the twelve-fifteen shuttle to Edinburgh, and returned on Sunday. The last part I knew because Griff picked him up and took him to the airport.’
‘What about the rest of it?’
‘Neither David nor his company owns an aircraft. However, Continental IT does. The Embraer is Davor’s personal property, but the company owns a Beechcraft Bonanza. It’s kept at its depot in Surrey. There are no flights logged for Saturday, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything since the depot has its own landing strip.’
’Is Drazen licensed to fly it?’
‘Not under that name, but I can’t say for sure. There are three qualified civilian pilots in Britain with the name David Barnes. I’m trying to get hold of file photos for each of them, but I’m getting Data Protection Act resistance from the Department of Transport.’
‘Tell them we’re investigating the carriage of illegal armaments, and that you can arrange to have the security service shit on them but that you’d rather not do that. If you have any further problems I’ll attend to them myself. Sammy, I want you to find out all you can about the performance limits of that type of aircraft, then see if you can find a small airfield in Northumberland where it could have landed.’
‘Understood.’
‘Cheers.’ Skinner hung up and turned back to their helper. ‘Adrian, I want you to access camera footage from Heathrow early Saturday morning, showing passengers disembarking from the American Airlines flight from JFK. We need to see them all. Can do?’
‘Give me about two minutes.’
‘I’ll give you a clue,’ said McGuire. ‘We’re looking for a man, late twenties, possibly wearing a denim jacket with a big coloured logo on the back, and with a baseball cap covered in parrots.’
‘They’re pretty tight search parameters.’ Adrian chuckled, and set to work with mouse and keyboard. The monitor screen flashed as it ran through a jerky series of choices, until finally he found the one they sought. The two detectives watched intently a line of people walking along a narrow, tube-like corridor; it was covered by two cameras giving a full frontal, then a back view.
Skinner had expected a wait, but after only three disembarking passengers had passed under the camera’s eye, Adrian called out, ‘How about him, then? As described, plus a pair of wrap-round shades.’ He froze the back view and enlarged it, until they could read the logo on the jacket ‘Margaritaville, Jamaica’.
‘That’s the man,’ McGuire exclaimed. ‘It looks like him, even with the shades, and anyway, I could not miss that jacket or that cap.’
‘Good lad,’ the DCC told Adrian. ‘Now, get the images as sharp as you can, then print them out as big as you can. We’ll still have to look at the lot, just in case there is someone else on that flight who’s been to the same bar, but I don’t expect to find him.’
It took twenty minutes to print the images, then to run fruitlessly through the remaining passengers; to the Scots it seemed like much longer, but finally the line ended, and the aircrew were seen to leave, rolling bags behind them. ‘Thanks,’ said Skinner. ‘Now I want to see everybody embarking for Edinburgh, same day, on the twelve- fifteen BA shuttle. Can you do that?’
‘On an internal flight, probably not, but I should be able to find something from the security area.’ He exited the tape and entered a ‘search’ command, with date and time. Seconds later a new location appeared, showing passengers stepping through a metal detector as their carry-on luggage was X-rayed. ‘I’m starting two hours before flight time,’ Adrian explained. ‘Generous, but now that I know who I’m looking for I can run it through fast. Go and get yourselves coffee from our filter, if you like.’
‘I could use some,’ McGuire admitted. ‘Where is it?’
‘In the kitchen, just round the corner. Leave twenty pence in the saucer, like we do.’
‘Leave forty pence and bring me one,’ said Skinner.
‘Actually . . .’ Adrian called out, as McGuire left.
When he found the coffee-maker, the jug was empty, and so he had to brew a fresh batch. There was no change in the saucer, and so he left a pound coin: being Scottish, he poured five cups and carried them back to the work-station on a tray. ‘I put milk in yours, Adrian, okay?’
No reply came: he looked up and saw Skinner and the technician staring at the monitor, at a still figure framed there, clad in a denim jacket and a garish baseball cap, with half of his face hidden by a pair of wrap-round sunglasses.
‘Bugger,’ the DCC whispered.
McGuire laid down the tray and peered at the screen, for thirty seconds or more. ‘Let me see him move,’ he said eventually. Adrian rewound the recording and played it, at normal speed, until the man had moved out of shot, with a flight bag over his shoulder. ‘Again.’ The recording was repeated.
‘What are you thinking?’ Skinner asked.
‘There’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is; maybe it’s the way he moves. Have you called up prints?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Let’s have a look at one; front view only this time.’
Again they waited as Adrian went back to find the best available image of the man, then sharpened it and sent a command to the networked printer. When the picture was ready, he picked it off the output tray and laid it on the desk beside the others.
‘Same build,’ McGuire admitted, ‘same height, same overall appearance. If only he wasn’t wearing those fucking sunglasses.’
