photographs on a wall unit. 'Is this Mr Coghill?'
'That's Dean. I still miss him, you know.' Hood guessed that the chair the widow now sat in had been her husband's. The photos showed a bear of a man, thick arms and neck, back held straight, the chest prominent and gut sucked in. His face told you he'd be fair as long as you didn't muck him around. Cropped silver hair. Jewellery around his neck and on his left wrist, a fat Rolex on the right.
'When did he pass away?' Wylie was asking, her voice trained in dealing with the bereaved. 'Best part of a decade ago.'
'Was it a medical condition?'
'He'd had problems with his heart before. Hospitals, specialists. He couldn't slow down, you see. Had to keep working.'
Wylie nodded slowly. 'It's hard for some people.'
'Were there any partners in the business, Mrs Coghill?' Hood had rested his backside on the arm of the sofa.
'No.' Mrs Coghill paused. 'Dean had hopes for Alexander.'
Hood turned to look again at the photos: family groups, a boy and girl from their pre-teens through to their twenties. 'Your son?' he asked.
'But Alex had other ideas. He's in America, married. He works in a car showroom, only over there they call them automobiles.'
'Mrs Coghill,' Wylie said, 'did your husband know a man called Bryce Callan?'
'Is that why you're here?'
'You know the name then?'
'He was some kind of gangster, wasn't he?'
'He had that reputation, certainly.'
Meg Coghill got up, fussed with some ornaments on the mantelpiece. Little china animals: cats playing with balls of wool; spaniels with floppy ears.
'Is there something you want to tell us, Mrs Coghill?' Hood spoke quietly, his eyes meeting Wylie's.
'It's too late now, isn't it?' There was a tremor in Meg Coghill's voice. She kept her back to her visitors. Wylie wondered if she took any tablets for nerves.
'You tell us, Mrs Coghill,' she suggested.
The widow's hands kept busy with the ornaments as she spoke.
'Bryce Callan was a thug, wasn't he? You paid up, or you got in trouble. Tools would disappear, or the tyres on the van would be slashed. The job you were working on might end up vandalised, only they weren't just vandals, they were Bryce Callan's men.'
'Your husband paid protection to Bryce Callan?'
She turned towards them. 'You didn't know my Dean. He was the only one who stood up to Callan. And I think it killed him. All the extra work and worry... Bryce Callan as good as stuck his hand into Dean's chest and squeezed his heart dry.'
'Your husband told you this?'
Lord, no. He never said a word, liked to keep me separate from anything to do with the business. Family on one hand, work on the other, he'd say. That's why he needed an office, didn't want work coming home with him.'
'He wanted his family kept separate,' Wylie said, 'yet he thought maybe Alex would help in the business?'
'That was in the early days, before Callan.'
'Mrs Coghill, you heard about the body in the fireplace at Queensberry House?'
'Yes'
'Your husband's firm worked there twenty years ago. Would there be any records, or anyone who worked for your husband that we could talk to?'
'You think it has something to do with Callan?'
'The first thing we need', Hood said, 'is to identify the body.'
'Do you remember your husband working there, Mrs Coghill?' Wylie asked. 'Maybe he mentioned someone disappearing from the job...?'
When Mrs Coghill started shaking her head, Wylie looked to Hood, who smiled. Yes, that would have been too easy. She got the feeling this would be one of those cases where you never got a lucky break.
'His business came here in the end,' Mrs Coghill said. 'Maybe that will help you.'
And when Ellen Wylie asked what she meant, Meg Coghill said it might be easier if she showed them.
'I can't drive,' the widow explained. 'I sold Dean's cars. He had two of them, one for work and one for pleasure.' She smiled at some private memory. They were walking across the mono-blocked drive in front of the house. It was an elongated bungalow on Frogston Road, with views to the snowcapped Pentland Hills to the south.
'He had his men build this double garage,' Mrs Coghill went on. 'They extended the house, too, added a couple of rooms to either side of the original.'
The two CID officers nodded, still unsure why they were headed for the twin garage. There was a door to the side. Mrs Coghill unlocked it and reached in to turn on a light. The large space had been almost completely filled with tea chests, office furniture and tools. There were pickaxes and crowbars, hammers and boxes filled with screws and nails. Industrial drills, a couple of pneumatics, even steel pails splashed with mortar. Mrs Coghill rested her hand on one of the tea chests.
'All the paperwork. There's a filing-cabinet somewhere, too...'
'Under that blanket maybe?' Wylie suggested, pointing towards the far corner.
'If you want to know anything about Queensberry House, it'll be here somewhere.'
Wylie and Hood shared a look. Hood puffed out his cheeks.
'Another job for the Time Team,' Ellen Wylie said. Hood nodded, looked around. 'Any heating in here, Mrs Coghill?'
'I could bring you out an electric fire.'
'Show me where it is,' Hood said, 'I'll fetch it,'
'And something tells me you wouldn't say no to that cup of tea now,' said Mrs Coghill, seeming delighted by the thought of their company.
Siobhan Clarke sat at her desk with 'Supertramp's effects spread before her. To wit: the contents of his carrier bag, his building society passbook, the briefcase (which its most recent owner hadn't given up without a fight) and the photographs. She also had a pile of crank letters and telephone messages, including three from Gerald Sithing. It was one of the tabloids who had coined the name Supertramp. They'd also dragged up the sex- on-church-steps story, with an archive photo of Dezzi. Siobhan knew the vultures would be out there, trying to track Dezzi down for an interview, for some juicy morsel. Maybe Dezzi would tell them about the briefcase. It wouldn't be chequebook journalism - she doubted Dezzi had a bank account. Call it cashpoint journalism then. Maybe they'd talk to Rachel Drew, too. She wouldn't say no to a cheque.
A few more titbits for the readers and gold-diggers.
And as long as the story ran, the letters and calls would keep coming.
She rose from the desk, pushed at her spine until the vertebrae clicked. It was gone six, and the office was empty. She'd had to move desks - the Grieve murder had taken priority - and was squeezed into a corner of the long, narrow room. No window near by. Mind you, Hood and Wylie had it even worse: no natural light at all in the shoebox they'd been given. The Chief Super had been blunt with her this afternoon: take a few more days, but if there was no ID on Supertramp by then, that was an end of it. The cash went to the Treasury; the suicide, Mackie's whole prehistory, would remain unexplained.
'We've got real work to be getting on with,' her boss had said. He looked like a candidate for a stroke. 'Dossers kill themselves every day.'
'No suspicious circumstances, sir?' she'd dared to ask.
'The money doesn't make for suspicious circumstances, Siobhan. It's a mystery, that's all. Life's full
