that were recovered from the cabin.'
'Okay. I'm looking for a brass five-pointed key, with no manufacturer's name, and for aYale-type latchkey, again without a manufacturer's name.'
'They were supplied by my company,' Kelly Lance whispered to him.
'As part of our security they are unmarked in any way.'
'No, sir,' Schultz replied, in a slow, deliberate tone, after a few seconds' perusal. 'I have nothing like that here. I two Chubb keys, and two mailbox keys, and that's al.' He paused. 'Can I ask what this is about, sir? Do you have a problem in Buffalo?'
'I think we might have. In fact, I think your investigation's just moved about three hundred miles west.'
'We'd better get there, in that case. I'll clear it with my boss.'
'Put a hold on that for a bit,' said Skinner. 'I'l have a look around here; after that we'll get back to you.' He ended the call and turned to the two special agents. 'Leo Grace might have been over seventy,' he told them, 'but he was as meticulous a man as I ever met. No way did he call
Ms Lance's office to report that he was leaving town, then forget to set his alarm.
'Somebody's been in here.'
'Impossible,' Kelly Lance protested.
'No it isn't,' snapped Skinner. 'Nothing's perfect, nothing's foolproof.
How do you keep your records?'
'On computer.'
'All of them?'
'Yes.'
'And if someone hacked into it, would you know?'
'Yes, we'd know straight away…' She hesitated. '…Ifthe system was in use.'
'Exactly. But if it wasn't you'd have to check back to know that it had been accessed. Do that; cal your office and have them do it now.'
His eyes flashed back to the FBI men. 'Whose bloody jurisdiction are we in now, out here in the suburbs?'
'This stil belongs to the Erie County Police Department,' Brand answered.
'Okay. I want them here, now. I'm not going to see Sheriff Dekker; in the circumstances I think it's better that he comes to me.'
'Ah bet you thought I'd have cotton wool stuffed in my cheeks.' Beppe Viareggio's voice boomed around the room, drawing sharp glances from his mother and sisters. The look that Maggie gave him was a mixture of genuine bewilderment and forced tolerance. From the moment he had stuffed an envelope ful of cash into her hand at their wedding reception, she had never cared for Beppe.
Hopefully he looked at her, eager for the slightest sign that she understood his joke. 'Marion Brando, ken?' he offered, final y giving in.
'In The Godfather That's how he was able to mumble like that; he had his cheeks stuffed with cotton wool.'
Mario laid a hand on his uncle's shoulder. 'Okay, Don Beppe,' he said quietly, with a grin and a mock Italian accent. 'I come to you and I ask you humbly for your aid. I ask you to do me a smal favour, as my godfather and as my friend. Please to knock off the Mafia patter. You know it real y annoys my nana, and my mum looks none too happy either.'
Beppe shrugged his shoulders. 'Okay, my boy,' he mumbled. 'I wil do you this favour; but one day I may ask you to do me a smal service in return.'
The policeman shook his head as he ambled away, before casting his eye around the living room of Beppe's penthouse, the biggest flat in a new development looking across the water to the offices of the civil servants who served the Scottish Executive. There were ten members of the clan at the party in addition to Maggie and himself. His gaze took them all in: his nana, his mother, his Uncle Beppe and Aunt Sophia, his unmarried cousin Paula, her younger sister Viola, with her husband, Stanley Coia, and their children, Ryan and David… Stan was a Manchester United fan… and finally the venerable Auntie Josefina, Papa--reggio's ninety-four-year-old sister. Brought by Beppe from her nursing home, she sat in a chair by the window, sipping from a glass of dark Amarone, having forgotten at least half an hour before where she was or why she was there.
Taking his wife's arm, Mario led her over to his grandmother. 'Honest to God,' the old lady muttered glowering across at her son. 'Sometimes I wonder how that one manages to get up in the morning, wi' the little brain he's got. If your papa had heard him talk that nonsense.'
She looked at Maggie. 'I'm sorry, lassie. We don't get together enough as a family, but I can hardly blame the two of you for steering clear of that son of mine.'
Nana Viareggio may have been eighty-seven years old, but her back was stil ramrod straight, and she carried herself with the air of a woman in her seventies. She was tal and slim, with piercing brown eyes and silver hair, which was always bound tight in a bun, and she dressed predominantly in black. From Mario's earliest memory of her, she had never seemed to change; indeed, there were moments when he fancied that she was growing younger. Her Christian name was Maria, he knew, but he had never heard anyone other than his grandfather address her by it; she was 'Mama' to Beppe and Sophia, and to Christina, his own mother, and 'Nana' to everyone else. She and her only grandson had been close before Papa Viareggio's death and they had grown closer since. He and Maggie saw more of her than of Christina, and visited her for lunch on the first Sunday of every month.
She frowned at Beppe once more. 'Listen to him,' she muttered. 'You know, son, for al that big bog-Irish father of yours… God rest his generous soul… you're more Italian than your uncle ever was or ever wil be. When they named you after your papa, I think much of him passed into you. You understood him, and you stil value the things he did. Like your dad, he died too soon, or a lot of things might have been different.'
She put a strong hand on his elbow and drew him into a corner.
'That's what we want to talk to you about, your mother and I,' she said, quietly.
'What do you mean?' As he spoke, he realised that Maggie was no longer by his side; Aunt Sophia had taken her off to meet the two boys, who were dressed, inevitably, in Manchester United shirts. As he glanced across at them, his mother moved towards him, as if answering a private summons by Nana. Christina McGuire was tal and handsome, like her mother, and like her she was a one-man woman, who regarded her widowhood as a period not of mourning, but of waiting.
'I mean,' Nana continued, reclaiming his attention, 'that there's family business to be talked about.'
'Such as?'
'Such as your part in it,' his mother answered, pausing for a moment to let her words sink in.
'I've made a decision, Mario; I'm retiring. I'm selling my share of the business to Rachel and Bert.'
Christina McGuire was an Edinburgh player in her own right; she had trained as a personnel manager after leaving university, and had worked in industry, until, two years after Mario's birth, and with backing from her father, she had set up a recruitment consultancy. She had begun by specialising in finding staff for the financial services industry, and she had shared in its success and expansion. Over the years the scope of her business had broadened, taking in new sectors, including law and accountancy, and adding on a training division. Christina had refused several offers for the company, preferring to control her own destiny with the support of the two partners who had joined her in the eighties, Rachel Dawson and Robert Ironside.
Her son stared at her in surprise; through all of his life, her consultancy had been part of her. When his father, big Eamon, had died of cancer ten years earlier, it, more than anything or anyone else, had helped her deal with the tragedy.
'You serious?' he exclaimed.
'Never more so,' she assured him.
'You realise that as soon as you're gone those two'll sell out?'
'Good luck to them if they do. I'm happy with my deal.'
He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. 'In that case, good for you. Mum. If it's what you want to do, I couldn't be more pleased for you.' He frowned, suddenly. 'But what the hell's it got to do with me?'
'I'm not just retiring from the consultancy, son,' Christina answered.
