'I won't, don't you worry. Do you think he's gone, then?'
McGuire shrugged. 'He hasn't been home since Sunday night, of that I'm sure; plus he hasn't been to work since then. Maybe he's had an accident. I'l need to check that out. Or maybe he's got second sight; maybe he felt my hot breath on his neck, and decided to leave town.'
'I don't think I'd like your hot breath on my neck,' Ivy said. She paused and looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. '… Or maybe I would.'
He felt heat on his own neck, and found himself hoping that it did not show on his face.
'Did you really mean that George is over sixty?' she asked him, stubbing out a fledgling fantasy.
'He's sixty-three.'
'Well that's something else he lied about. He told me he was fifty five.'
McGuire shook his head. 'I don't think there's any truth in his life.' He looked at her, then around the room. 'Are you on the phone?'
'I use a mobile. Let me guess. You want me to cal you if he shows up here again?'
'Got it in one. These are my numbers.' He gave her a card from the supply in his breast pocket.
She showed him to the door and out of her oasis, back into the smelly grey place outside. 'Nice to meet you,' she said. 'I will call you, I promise. Maybe I'll call you even if George doesn't show up.'
He heard the door close behind her as he stepped back across the landing and into Rosewell's flat. The living room had cooled a little while he had been gone, but it was stil uncomfortably warm. He wanted to get out, to leave the place behind him, but there was something he had to do first.
He took a pair of surgical gloves from his jacket pocket and slipped them on. Other than the newspaper, he had touched nothing since he had been in the flat, and he wanted to leave the scene untainted. The sideboard had three drawers. The first contained cutlery, and the second was empty, except for a few tea towels. He opened the bottom drawer, the third, and saw what he was after; piles of bank statements and credit-card slips, laid side by side. He took them out and laid them on the table, then leafed through them, careful y. There was nothing exceptional about either group. The bank account showed Rosewel 's salary paid in on the last day of each month, plus regular debits for council tax and other withdrawals by cheque or cash card. It was always in credit with a minimum balance of one thousand pounds.
The other stack of bills showed that the credit card was used infrequently, but that when it was, the balance was always settled in ful, before interest charges could accrue.
McGuire noted down the numbers of the bank account and the credit card, plus the address of his Clydesdale Bank branch, then picked up the piles, in the same order as before, to return them to the drawer.
He was about to put them in, when he saw what had been lying underneath, and froze in his tracks. It was a cutting from a newspaper
… the Scotsman, he guessed, by the typeface… beginning to yellow with age. It was a report on a high court trial, and it carried a photograph of one of the crown witnesses.
He had no need to read the caption, but he did: Seen leaving court after her evidence. Detective Chief Inspector Margaret Rose.
25
'I guess this means you won't be at the footbal tonight,' Neil Mcllhenney grunted. He stood in his living room with his sport bag in one hand, and the phone in the other. He had been on the point of leaving for North Berwick, only to be halted by its summons.
'You guess correctly,' Bob Skinner agreed. 'Give my apologies to the rest of the Thursday Legends and tell them I'll be back as soon as I can.'
'And when wil that be, d'you reckon?'
'Jeez, Neil, I wish I could tell you for sure. The bodies will be released tomorrow by the coroner in Loudonville, and I've instructed an undertaker in Buffalo to collect them and make all the arrangements.
Sarah's booked a flight arriving next Monday, but there's no certainty that we'll be able to have the funerals next week. Leo was an important guy so the service will be public; from what Brad Dekker tells me, half the city wil want to be there.
'Not just that, the new senator and her husband want to put in an appearance. That wil get the Secret fucking Service involved. I didn't break that news to Sarah when I spoke to her; I'm saving it until I see her, so keep it to yourself for now.'
'Of course.' Mcl henney hesitated. 'Boss, what do you think you've got yourself into over there?'
'I wish I knew, mate. Al I do know is that these three murders are linked. As soon as I read the reports I was certain of that; so's Joe, now he's looked at them. Every one of them was a professional job; in every one of them the items taken were the same; mere bloody trifles. You do not put three bullets in the middle of somebody's forehead just to steal his Rolex.
You do not ram a stiletto into someone's head just for his credit card. You do not garrotte a man and his wife because you want his cigars.
'On top of all that, you have the professional and political links, and the fact that the three kil ings have al taken place within a two-week period. I can't be wrong, can I?'
'Well… Motherwell could win the Premier League next year,' said the inspector. 'I think the odds would be about the same. No, you're right. But what makes you think it's the same man who did al three?'
He heard a soft familiar laugh on the other end of the line. 'That's a question none of my distinguished American law enforcement colleagues has asked as yet. Who says I do think that? We're talking in terms of one man, because that's the way the hare started running, but it's no certainty at all. Still…' There was a pause. 'We're into hunch territory now, but my feeling is that it was. Like I said, no one's questioned that assumption; not til you.' He paused. 'I'd expect no less of you, mate, but… My gut still says it's one man. There's been an efficiency about each murder that's like a trademark. If I'm wrong and there's a team of them out there, we're in real fucking trouble!
'On that basis, the FBI's flexing its muscles. Joe has agents checking al passenger movements through Greater Buffalo Airport, McCarran in Las Vegas and Great Falls International… that's around atfcidred miles from Helena, and it's where we're going this afternoon. People go to Vegas from all over the States for all sorts of reasons, but if we find someone who's been there, been to Buffalo, and been to Montana, all in the last couple of weeks, he's going to be put under the microscope.'
'It's right up your street, all this, isn't it,' Mcllhenney observed. 'I don't mean burying your father-in-law; I mean jetting across umpteen states with an FBI big-wig on an investigation. If it wasn't for the circumstances, you'd be like a kid with the key to an ice-cream factory.'
'You're not wrong there,' Skinner admitted. 'I'm glad Joe asked me to get involved, otherwise I'd have gone out of my tree just sitting here doing nothing. God, I might even have started my own investigation.'
'That's fine,' said his friend quietly, 'until Monday, when Sarah gets over there.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that when she does, you should only be thinking of one thing; that she's lost her parents. She's borne up very well in Scotland, but when she gets back home, it's going to hit her hard. She's going to want to see them. She's going to want to see where they died. She's going to have a lot to come to terms with.
'So, Bob…' it did not occur to either of them that Mcllhenney had only once before addressed Skinner by his Christian name, '… you have to be with her, and completely focused on her personal and emotional needs, rather than tear-arseing around America on an inter jurisdictional investigation which, professionally at least, is none of your business.
'I'm sorry to be so blunt,' he concluded, suddenly awkward, 'and if 102 that didn't need saying I apologise. But, well… What the hell, I thought it did.'
Silence hung there for a couple of seconds. 'Aye,' said Skinner finally.
'And you were right. Thanks, pal, I appreciate it. The only thing is, I think that one of my big problems may be in keeping Sarah from getting herself involved in the bloody investigation!' He paused again.
'I do want to see her, though. I'd rather be with her than here, make no mistake about that, but that's how
