organise it, will there?' She paused. 'You haven't found a girlfriend, have you?'
'No. No girlfriends. If you're prepared to make those arrangements. I'll have the Fiscal's office contact you as soon as they're ready to release the body. They may specify burial only, but I don't imagine that they'll take too long now.'
She sighed. 'I don't suppose that there'll be many people there, other than colleagues. Will there be many of them, do you think?'
'I shouldn't think so, Mrs Smith,' he answered, honestly, 'not many.'
'Surprise.' She glanced across at the young Sergeant. 'What job did he do anyway?'
Steele grimaced. 'One that I'm not supposed to talk about.'
'Oh my! He must have been really good at it, then. Even his wife didn't know.'
The detective smiled at the humour in her tone. 'There is something you can confirm for me,' he said. 'Your husband made an annual payment to a solicitor of twelve hundred pounds. He told his bank manager it was money for you. Is that correct?'
'No. I never asked him for a penny after I left. He gave me my share of the house in Pencaitland when he sold it, and I was happy with that.' She laughed again. 'That's typical Alec, I suppose, to leave you with one last mystery.'
Steele rose to go. 'More than one,' he answered. 'More than one.'
She walked him to the door. 'That's everything then?'
'Yes. Except…' he stopped, remembering. 'There was one more thing I was told to ask. Do you know where Alec walked his dog?'
'That's a good one. You'd be better asking the dog.' She opened the front door… and stopped halfway. 'Wait a minute,' she murmured. 'There was one time: I had made up my mind to leave, and I insisted on talking to him. But he wouldn't sit down with me. Instead he said, 'You'd better come with me, then.' I got in the car with him, and the dog, and he drove us to Yellowcraigs, just past Dirleton.
'He told me to sit on the beach while he walked the dog. He was away for a while, but he came back eventually and sat down beside me. I told him about Stan, and why it had come about. D'you know all he said? He just looked at me, after more than a quarter of a bloody century and he said, 'Aye, right then.'
'Nothing else, just that. Then he stood up, called to the dog, and we all drove back to Pencaitland. Do you know, that was the last time I ever spoke to my husband.'
30
'He was a great believer in natural justice, was Alec Smith,' Andy Martin declared. 'But he went way over the top with Gus Morrison and Wendy Forrest.'
'And did Morrison kill him?' Skinner asked.
'Kevin O'Malley says absolutely not. He says that he has a persecution complex — which is not surprising since the poor bastard has been persecuted, wrongfully imprisoned and had his girl-friend driven to suicide — and that he is schizophrenic, but he says that he is a talker and not a doer. He says that if he's charged, he'll give evidence for the defence and he'll do it for nothing.'
The DCC whistled. 'That's it, then. Let Kevin section him and treat him for a while, but let's make sure that he gets his job back when he's fit for it.' He paused. 'And Gavigan?' There was an edge of savagery in the question.
'Like I said; I had him in last night and put the thumbscrews on him. He confirmed Gus's story. He said that the Sunday Post sent that anonymous letter straight to Alec. As soon as he saw it he knew who had done it. He didn't go apeshit — he never did, apparently — he just said 'Better sort this, Tommy', then told Gavigan how they were going to sort it.
'Everything that Gus Morrison described to me was exactly as it happened. He and his girlfriend were no terrorists, just a couple of harmless fools with big patriotic dreams and big mouths.'
'Poor guy,' Skinner murmured. 'He sure didn't deserve that. And that lass, to die as she did, miserable and alone, locked up for nothing.' His eyes narrowed as he spoke.
'Alec must have known they were no threat,' Martin continued, 'but their big mistake was to embarrass him, by penetrating what he liked to think of as his own special world. From the moment he went into that SB job he was the wrong man for it, because he was a fanatic who had a narrow, unbending vision of right and wrong, as it applied to everyone, it seemed, except him.
'What he did to Gus and Forrest was hellish. Yet the way he dealt with Basra and Lawrence Scotland… it was effective, at least. Basra never raped and murdered another kid, and Scotland's been a model citizen ever since.'
'Maybe,' said the DCC. 'When are you going for him?'
'Later on this afternoon. When it's quieter at the St Leonard's' office.'
'Well, just watch it, eh.'
'Sure, as always.'
Skinner pushed himself up from his low seat and walked across to the big window of his office. 'Now, about Gavigan. Where is he now?'
'In a cell up at St Leonard's. I was so angry last night, I just locked him up.'
'Good for you. Mario had got rid of him, effectively; we were going to give him early retirement and send him on his way'
'Not any more, I hope.'
'Ah, it's not as easy as that. As President Johnson said of J. Edgar Hoover, the last thing I want is a guy like him outside the tent pissing in. It's always more comfortable the other way around.
'Ask yourself. What can we do with him? We could charge him with perverting the course of justice, perjury and all the rest. But this is all undercover stuff. Christ, his perjured evidence was in camera. On top of that, Alec Smith's dead, Wendy Forrest is dead, Angus Morrison is unbalanced and that anonymous letter to the Sunday Post will have been burned to ashes and crushed up long ago.
'Even if it was politically acceptable to try him, it would be legally impossible to get a conviction. Gavigan corroborates Morrison's story, but interview him formally with a lawyer present and he'd clam up, and all we've got is the unsupported allegation of a schizophrenic.
'Gus Morrison will be pardoned and compensated; it'll have to be done very quietly, but I'll see to it. As for our man, he's going to have to walk, Andy… but not before I've had a chat with him. Have Pye bring him down here.'
The Head of CID nodded. 'Will do.' He rose and headed for the door. 'I'll let you know how it goes with the other fella.'
31
'What's she like, this Mrs Smith?'
'She's a really nice woman, and very attractive for her age.'
Maggie Rose looked severely at her Sergeant across her Haddington office. 'The menopause doesn't make you ugly, Stevie. I can think of any number of women who became even more attractive the older they got
… my own mother among them.
'I meant did she strike you as completely frank, or might she have been holding something back from us? Do you think she was telling the truth about Alec's apparent lack of interest in photography?'
'Why should she lie?' Steele asked.
'What if he had some photographs of her that she doesn't want found?'
'I don't believe that for a second. Everything she told me bears out everything else I've learned about Alec Smith; that he was obsessively secretive. In their case, it turned the two of them into virtual strangers to each
