Murrayfield, leaving Nana to comfort her daughter-in-law, and her daughter.
'We're here,' he said, gently; not knowing what else to do, he reached across and patted her on the shoulder. 'Come on; I'l see you inside.'
'Okay,' she mumbled, through the handkerchief, and then waited.. . Un-Paula-like again, he thought… as he walked round the car to open her door.
She took his arm as they walked towards the building. Normal y he would have driven into the courtyard, but it was Saturday, and he had guessed, correctly as it happened, that the car park would be ful and that maneuvering would have been difficult.
As they turned in off the street, two figures were waiting, both young men, one of them holding a camera, the other what looked like a smal tape recorder. They turned to look at them, and as they did McGuire heard the reporter exclaim, 'That's her.'
Before the photographer could fire off a single frame, the big detective stepped slightly in front of his cousin. 'Don't do that, mate,' he warned.
The man moved to his right, hunting for Paula with his lens, but he was too slow. Mario's hand shot out, grabbed the camera and ripped it from his grasp.
'Hey, gimme that! You can't do that!'
'I just did. Now stop shouting or I'l give it back to you piece by piece.'
'Want me to get the police?'
'He is the police,' said the reporter quietly. Close to, he looked a few years older than the photographer, as if he had left his thirtieth birthday behind him on the road. As he turned back to the couple, the evening sunlight seemed to glint on his designer jacket. 'You're Chief Inspector McGuire, aren't you? I'm Christian Sanderson, of the Sunday Mail. I'd like to talk to Miss Viareggio about her father's murder. We've just come from Mr Pringle's press conference at Fettes. Are you involved in the investigation, Chief Inspector?'
'That's Detective Superintendent, Mr Sanderson,' Mario told him. As he looked at him he could see the front page of the fol owing day's Sunday tabloid, but he knew that if he held back the truth and Sanderson found out, the headline would be that much bigger. 'And the answer's no; I'm not part of the CID team. This is a family matter; Beppe Viareggio was my uncle.'
He heard the reporter's gasp above the sound of a van roaring past on the street outside. 'Mr Pringle and Mr Jay never told us that.'
'Why should they? I'm as entitled to privacy as the rest of the family.'
'Aye, but now it's known, can I talk to you about it?'
'No!' McGuire bellowed. 'Don't be daft. I might be family, but I am stil a copper, and I couldn't tel you anything about my col eagues' enquiries, suppose I knew anything.'
'It's been suggested that this was a contract kil ing,' said the journalist. 'Is that right? Was Mr Viareggio involved with the Mafia?'
'You…' He heard his cousin, standing beside him now, begin to explode, but he squeezed her arm hard enough to silence her outburst.
'What bright spark suggested that?' he asked.
'My news desk had a phone call half-an-hour ago. A guy rang in and told us that it was.'
'And did he leave his name and number?'
Many a journalist would have looked sheepish at that question, McGuire knew, but Sanderson kept a straight face. 'No. It was anonymous.'
'Surprise, surprise.' The big detective laughed, but only for a second.
'Right,' he said, abruptly. 'I wil give you a statement, but it's not from the police, it's from the victim's family, represented by my cousin and by me as the Viareggio trustees. My uncle was an honest, upright, wel respected businessman, as was his father before him. Anyone who suggests otherwise in the press or elsewhere, will find themselves dealing with our solicitors.
'You give that to your news desk, word for word.' He looked Sanderson 150 in the eye. 'Now the policeman's back; this is private property and my cousin is asking you to go.'
'Fair enough,' said the journalist. 'But what about my col eague's camera?'
'Sure, here you are.' He held out the Nikon to the photographer, pressing the shutter button as he did so and hearing the whirr of the motor drive as the rest of the film inside was exposed. 'By the way,' he cal ed after the two men as they left, 'don't approach any other members of my family. You've been fairly reasonable so far, but you don't want to piss me off
'Thanks,' Paula whispered as he took her key and opened the door to the building. 'I don't know what I'd have done if I'd come in on my own.'
Mario grinned. 'Probably the same as you did to that copper on the door last night. It would have made a great photograph.'
'Bloody vultures,' she muttered.
'Nah,' he countered. 'Just guys doing a job.'
'What? Acting on an anonymous phone cal?'
'No, just checking it out. The police get anonymous tip-offs all the time. Do you think we don't follow them up just because the caller doesn't leave his name? To tell you the truth, cousin,' he said, 'the thing that worries me about the call to the Mail is that it was bloody close to the mark. Your father's murder did look like a professional job.' They stopped at the elevator and he pressed the call button; the doors slid open at once. 'I think I'l come up with you; there are a couple of calls I should make.'
Paula's flat was on the top floor, not unlike her parents' in that the living space was open plan. Mario had never been inside in the two years she had lived there; he looked around, taking in the fabrics wound round the pillars, the tasteful modern paintings on the walls, and the expensive lighting which hung from the high ceiling.
'The sauna business must be good,' he chuckled.
She bristled at once. 'Not bad, thank you very much. God, you sounded just like my dad, there.'
'Never in my life have I sounded like your dad, rest his soul.'
'Wel, stop going on about it, then. I saw a chance to get a wee business for myself, and I took it. What's wrong with that?'
'In principle, nothing; it's the 'wee business' you chose to get into that I don't like. You know what these places are, Paula; they're knocking shops.'
'They're all licensed by the city council,' she protested.
'Which turns a blind eye to what goes on in them because it gets the girls off the streets. Tell me this. Do you pay the girls who work there, or do they pay you?'
'They don't pay me a penny, and they get decent wages! The punters pay for their saunas, cash or credit card. What happens between them and the attendants is their business, but I do not take a cut.' She stepped up to him, her dark eyes flashing, with real anger. 'I'll tell you what I do, though; I insist that they use condoms and I make them have monthly blood tests… not just for the clap, but for drug use. If someone's working just to feed a habit, she won't get through the door.
If someone's working to feed her kids, she's welcome.'
'That's very moral, cousin, very moral,' he flared back, his gaze as fiery as hers. 'You're a madam with a heart of gold! But what about the guys whose kids go short because they spend their dough getting blown on your massage tables? What about them, eh?'
'Would you rather have them prowling the streets looking for it?
Better they pay for it, otherwise even some of those kids you're talking about might not be safe.'
'You…' He stopped himself short, as a vision of his wife filled his mind; until then he had been at pains to keep it at bay, but in the heat of the argument it managed to sneak under his defences.
Paula turned away from him. 'Let's cal a truce, Mario. Just make your phone cal s, then you can go.'
'Fine,' he agreed, 'but tell me this. Did Uncle Beppe know about those places?'
She paused. 'I never told him,' she answered. 'You only know because you're a clever bastard copper. But my mum doesn't know, nor does Nana.'
Mario smiled at her. 'The latter goes without saying. I'll tell you this too; if she ever finds out she'l boil you down for soup.'
