Martin glanced into the Torphichen Place CID room. He was pleased to see that it was empty: it meant that everyone was where they should have been, out on enquiries, trying to put a definite name to the man with a provisional face.
Everyone, that was, but Dan Pringle and Jack McGurk; they were waiting for him in the Superintendent's office, where he had told them to be.
'Hi guys,' he said, as he walked into the room. 'How's it going?'
'Imagine, if you will, an old lizard's dick,' Pringle said. 'Imagine how dry and wrinkled it must get, after long years of being dragged around deserts, hot rocks and such, with not so much as a sniff of a lady lizard. Then take that concept and transfer it to the fruits of this investigation. That's how we've come out so far in terms of results… dry as an old lizard's bone.'
'You should know about that, right enough,' Martin chuckled. 'The door-to-door's given you nothing, then?'
'Well, it did turn up a boy in the new flats opposite the Roseburn pub who acted shifty when Sammy Pye knocked his door. Without any pressure at all, he confessed to growing cannabis plants in his back window box. Apart from him though, it hasn't given us a fucking thing. We've still got a lot to do mind, but…'
'Did Sammy lift the guy?'
'Aye, but there were only a few plants. I gave him a warning and let him go.'
'You both did right. What about empty properties? Have you checked them out?'
'There are none; not in the area we're looking at. Every flat and house is occupied, or at least there's Council Tax being paid on every one; there are registered voters at almost every address. They're still looking for possibles in Glasgow too, but so far all their gangsters are present and correct. I could have told you all this on the phone, you know. You've had a wasted journey.'
'That's not why I'm here,' said the Head of CID. 'I wanted to tell you personally, you and Jack here, that I've tracked down the leak to the News'
'Who was it?' asked Pringle, eagerly.
'Me.'
He looked up at McGurk. 'Your brother-in-law and I have someone in common. Her name's Rhian Lewis. She's a final-year medical student. I let something slip the other night; I also fixed it for her to sit in with Sarah on Mr Nobody's autopsy. She, in turn, passed it on, in similar circumstances, to your man Blacklock.
'I've spoken to Alan Royston already. Now I want to apologise to you both; to you, Dan, for compromising your investigation and to you Jack, for getting you implicated.'
'Not your fault, sir,' said Pringle, tactfully. 'We all talk in the dark.' He paused. 'The Margot girl's older sister, right?'
'Right.'
McGurk said nothing; Martin glanced at him again. 'I want him sorted, Jack.
'I don't want you to ruin your sister's life, necessarily; whether you tell her or not, that's down to your judgement. But I want you to let that brother-in-law of yours know from me that if he ever goes near Rhian again, far less tries to use her to get sensitive information out of me, then he is fucking dog-meat. 'Understood?'
The giant Sergeant looked down at him, his face thunderous. 'Don't you worry, sir. After I've finished with him he won't be touching anything female for a long time, especially not my sister or your friend.'
25
'Where do we start?' Stevie Steele looked round the big living room of Shell Cottage. The blinds were open; outside the untypical spell of early summer sunshine continued unbroken. The tide was out and people were walking, in ones and twos, on the wet sands, some of them giving their dogs a chance to run off the leash.
'The most obvious place,' said McGuire, beside him in the doorway. 'With that desk over there.' He looked around the rest of the room. Smith's clothes were gone, bagged as evidence and sent to the lab; the whisky glass was gone too. All of the ornaments which he had seen on the previous Saturday, each one carefully positioned, now stood together on the table.
The room seemed souless; Mario thought of a house which he and Maggie had looked at before their marriage — the home of a dead person, being sold by her executor. It had given them the same chill that came now from Alec Smith's cottage.
'That's an antique, that thing. There may be a panel in it, a secret drawer, that Arthur Dorward's lot missed.'
'It couldn't be big enough to hold much in the way of papers,' Steele pointed out.
'No, but there could be something inside it that tells us where they are.'
'True.' The Sergeant crossed the room and examined the heavy desk. He slid out every drawer in the two pedestals, pulling each one free from its runners and turning it over, looking for anything that might have been taped underneath. He looked inside the empty space which they had left, then examined the panel above the kneehole, pressing it but finding it unyielding.
Finally, he and McGuire lifted the empty carcass of the desk from its position beneath the window and examined its front. The Inspector leaned over, peering at the section which mirrored the central panel on the other side. He looked at it, at the line of its inlay to the rest of the woodwork, then he blew, gently, at the joints, sending motes of dust flying, and rapped on it with his knuckles, quickly and firmly as if he was knocking on a door.
With a click, the panel sprung two inches clear of its surround, revealing a shallow drawer. 'How about that then?' he said, beaming with undisguised pride.
'Papa Viareggio — my mother's father — had a desk like this with a secret drawer; and no-one knew about it but him… and me. When I was ten, he told me about it, and showed me how to open it. When he died, six years later, he left it to me in his will. He was a well-off man, my Italian grandfather; owned a chain of fish-and-chip shops. My uncle inherited the business, my mother got a big bequest, and he left ten grand each to my two girl cousins. I was his only grandson and yet all he left me was his bloody desk.
'My mother was bloody livid; she said he had always been a crazy man. She was going to ask my granny to keep the desk and give me ten grand like the girls, but I told her to wind her neck in. 'That's what Papa wanted,' I said, 'that's what's going to happen.' So they brought the desk to our house and I made space for it in my room.
'The first time my folks were out, I tapped the panel, just like Papa Viareggio told me, and the drawer popped out, just like that one. There was a key inside to a safe deposit box and a letter from Papa giving me the address of the bank where it was kept, and another addressed to the manager. My letter said, 'When you turn twenty-one you can open this. Meantime, sell the bloody desk; it s a cumbersome thing but it 's worth a few quid.' Some man, my Papa.'
'What did you do?' Steele asked, fascinated.
'I did as he told me. The desk was far better quality than this one. I got ten grand clear for it at auction, the same as he left the girls… he never liked them. When I was twenty-one, I opened the safe deposit box and found all the paperwork related to a trust fund in the Cayman Islands. Papa had set it up with fifty grand when I was ten and it had been growing big-time ever since: it still is. I won't tell you how much it's worth, but the income — all legal, tax paid and everything — will pay off our mortgage by the time I'm forty.'
'What happened to the business?'
McGuire laughed. 'Ah, Stevie son, that's another story. Just before he died, Papa put together this plan to float it as Viareggio pic and develop it, nationally and internationally, on a franchise basis. A week before he was due to push the button on it, he took a heart attack in his office and dropped down dead. My uncle didn't think it was such a good idea, so he cancelled everything.
'Every time I drive past a Harry Ramsden, I think of my Uncle Beppe, and I marvel at what a stupid fucker he is.'
He looked at the desk again. 'Alec's estate might get a couple of grand for this thing, but that's all. Still, let's be careful with it.' Gently, he drew out the hidden drawer. Inside, the two detectives saw a small cloth pouch, secured by a red drawstring, a box, and three keys on a ring. McGuire picked up the bag, loosened the binding cord,
