I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose even as I thought that it made a certain amount of sense. Bateman had mentioned The Confessions of St. Augustine. I was pretty sure that was something similar to The Life of St. Columbo. Haruto’s manuscript was in bad shape. Maybe these people had decided to fund the restoration so they could then steal it back and sell it for a lot more money. It seemed like a very complicated scheme to me, but I supposed some people were just like that.
“DI Bateman, thank you for coming all the way up here,” I said eventually and shook the blonde Englishman’s hand again. “You’ve been a real help.”
Bateman smiled, flashing pearly white teeth. “I’m glad. And please, keep me in the loop.” He patted his pockets and then passed me a slightly wrinkled business card. “Best of luck, Inspector.”
Dunnel left to escort Bateman to the door, shooing Fletcher and me out of his office so he could close the door. I watched the two of them go, still utterly bewildered by the meeting’s revelations.
“O’Connell?” Fletcher asked, and I nodded.
We waited by my desk as we had the man moved into the interrogation room by a constable who had paused in her task at just the wrong moment, followed seconds later by a short, black woman in a well-tailored pencil skirt and blazer.
“The lawyer?” I asked.
“Smith,” Fletcher replied. “Last I saw she was not in a good mood.”
Being stuck in traffic would do that to a person. “Well, let’s go see what we can shake loose.”
I fetched some coffee from the kitchen, and then we braced ourselves and headed into the small room. This would be our last chance at O’Connell. We had enough to charge him personally, what with his attack on Fletcher and me, but we needed more if we were going to nab his entire gang.
Smith sat beside O’Connell, conferring quietly with him, but she stopped talking as soon as the door opened. She stood, not offering her hand to either of us. “DCI MacBain, I presume?”
“Yes.” I set my coffee on the table and sat, forcing her to do the same.
“Regina Smith. Council to Mr O’Connell.”
“So I assumed,” I said with a smile. “I heard about your troubles with traffic on the way up from Edinburgh, wasn’t it? Quite a long way to come for one man.”
“Only the best for our clients,” Smith said and matched my tight smile.
I leaned back in my chair. “And expensive, too. Who pays the bills, Ms Smith? Surely it’s not O’Connell here. Is it Allraise Ventures, by any chance?” I watched their faces as I said the name of the phoney charity. It clearly meant nothing to O’Connell as his expression remained impassively angry, but Smith’s eyes tightened slightly as if she recognized the company but couldn’t place how these two things were connected.
“My employer is irrelevant, DCI MacBain,” she said.
“Except they’re not, are they? Since your employer is the one behind Finn Wair’s abduction.”
“You have no evidence,” Smith began, but I cut her off.
“I get that it’s your job to protect your clients, I really do. I respect that. You’re obviously very good at what you do since you’re wearing such a nice suit, but I’m asking you to help me find a child. A seven-year-old boy.” I slid Finn’s picture across the table to her so he could grin up at her while I spoke. I let her look at it for a moment. “A seven-year-old boy who was abducted off the street and is now being held captive somewhere, scared and alone, with no idea why this is happening to him. His mother is a wreck. We found a scarf with his blood on it outside the school where he was taken, so he’s hurt, too. Ms Smith, I just want to bring him home. Surely you can understand that?”
She picked up the photograph and stared at it as I turned my attention to O’Connell.
“We know about the scheme to find artefacts and sell them for a profit. We know that’s what you wanted from the Castle of Old Wick, and we know you had Alec MacGowan steal the castle’s deed to cover all your legal angles. Well, not your angles, since we all know you aren’t the brains behind the operation. We honestly don’t care much about that. We just want to find Finn.” I was going to use Finn’s name as much as possible so that hopefully O’Connell would be forced to face the fact that Finn was a child, not an object. “You tell us where we can find the kid, and maybe we can cut some kind of deal with you.”
O’Connell glanced at the photo as Smith set it down. I wondered how much of it she was in on. Did the law firm partake in these sales, or were they simply employed by the head of this organization? Who would they want to protect more: the client in front of them or the one who paid the bills?
“I’m sure you could exploit some kind of technicality to get O’Connell out of here,” I said to Smith, “but I sincerely hope you choose to help us find Finn Wair.”
“Could I have a minute alone with my client?” Smith asked.
“Of course. Please let us know when you’ve come to a decision.”
Fletcher and I stood, and I left the photo on the table as we walked out the door. My hands began to shake as soon as we left the interrogation room, and I shoved them in my trouser pockets to try to cover it up.
“That was some speech,” Fletcher said. She perched on the edge of my desk as I collapsed into my chair. “Do you think it will work?”
“I have no idea. I hope so.” I was so tired. I just wanted to close my eyes and disappear into the oblivion of sleep right then and there, but we were so close now, and I had
