turned up, but. . Jack couldn’t make it. He and his partner were going to a wedding rehearsal last night, and he’s the best man, so he begged off. Becky Stallings, the DI in overall charge of the operation, called Sammy Pye, down at Leith, and asked him if he could borrow a replacement. Ray Wilding, Pye’s DS, was off limits, obviously, not just because he and Becky live together, but also because he was on the verge of leaving on promotion, so big Griff Montell got the call.’
‘Montell? As in Alex Skinner’s ex?’
‘She’d probably deny that, say they were just friends, but yes, him. He and Sauce watched them arrive, Bass first, then Welsh. . they’d found a picture of him by that time so they knew what he looked like. They let the pair of them get settled into a booth with a table, and then moved in close enough for Sauce to use a very cute wee directional microphone, and eavesdrop on the conversation, while Montell filmed them with a video cam small enough to fit into his hand. They’d only been there for about a minute, talking about nothing much more than the weather, when one of the bar staff asked if there was a Mr Welsh in the place, for there was a phone call for him. He went off to take it. Because he’s a good cop, Sauce went with him, still close enough for the mike to pick him up as he took the call at the bar. I’ve heard the tape. Welsh says, “Freddy here. Who’s this?” There’s a pause, and then he says, “You’re fucking joking.” Another pause, and he says, “Thanks, you’re weighed in for this.” Then he hung up, turned around, and walked straight out the door without even looking at Bass.’
Paula was wide-eyed, hooked on the story. ‘What did Bass do?’
‘He sat there for a while, looking puzzled.’ I knew this for sure, because I’d seen the video too. ‘Eventually he figured out that Welsh wasn’t coming back, finished his drink and left. Sauce sent Montell after him, to make sure they weren’t meeting up outside. . which they weren’t. . while he went and asked the bar staff about the call. The girl who took it could only tell him that it was a man’s voice. When he tried to check the number on one four seven one, it came up as unavailable, but BT were able to trace it for him later. And guess what? It was a public phone box, about a hundred yards away from Gayfield Square police station.’
‘Which anyone could have used,’ she pointed out, ‘so how did you link it to your two? Come to that, how did you even think to?’
‘Young Sauce is going to be a great cop,’ I told her. ‘His gut, and some logical thinking told him there had been a leak, and a very recent one at that. So who was new on the team? Montell. He called Stallings on her mobile, and asked her to meet him. He was even bright enough, or brave enough even, to tell her to say nothing to Ray Wilding, because he worked with Montell. He told Becky what had happened. First thing she did was promise him she’d said nothing to Ray. The second thing she did was call me. I went straight to Special Branch, Dorothy Shannon and Tarvil Singh, and I told them to find out as much as there is to know about Freddy Welsh’s background. A couple of hours later, Shannon got back to me. Welsh is Inspector Jock Varley’s wife’s cousin, Jock Varley is DC Alice Cowan’s uncle, and Jock Varley’s based at Gayfield Square. Tarvil had checked the station CCTV. It shows Varley going out with his coat on a couple of minutes before the call was made, and coming back in ten minutes later. We’ve even got a usable print off the phone.’
Paula whistled. ‘Poor you, having to deal with that. I take it you’ve known Inspector Varley for a while?’
‘All my career. Now I’m going to have to end his, and possibly worse. When Welsh said “You’re weighed in for this”, that can be taken to imply reward, and that, my dear, is “go to jail” territory.’
‘So how is Cowan involved?’ she asked.
‘She works with Montell, and more besides. He’s been giving her one for months. He was supposed to see her that evening, and he told her why he had to cancel: in detail, far too much detail. Unfortunately Alice has a track record for helping her uncle; she knew who Welsh was and she called Jock. She’s done too. The best I can do for her will be to let her give evidence against him, but she’s probably finished in the force. It’s a bloody shame for Alice and I hate it, because I like the girl, and because she’s put her life on the line for the job in the past, but I can’t hold back on either of them.’
‘What about Montell?’
I shook my head at that one. ‘I’m having nothing to do with that. I told big Bob as much. The guy insists he knew nothing about the family relationship with Welsh, but he’ll still face a disciplinary. The boss will pass that on to someone else too, for the personal reasons you mentioned. So I guess our new deputy chief constable will decide his fate.’
She frowned. ‘Will Maggie be tough on him? Could she kick him out?’
‘Oh yes, she could recommend that. Whether she will or not, we’ll have to wait and see. I can’t speak to her about it, and neither can the chief, other than to brief her. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If her predecessor, Brian Mackie hadn’t gone to the top job in Tayside, and he was dealing with it, Detective Constable Montell would be fucked. Brian’s a real hardliner.’
‘And what about this man Bass, what about the illegal fags?’
‘Oh, we picked him up this morning. We knew where the fags were from day one; the lads followed Bass to a lock-up he owns out in West Calder. Actually they were no big deal. They’re Spanish, a brand called Ducados; they had tax labels on them, so we found out very quickly they were part of a consignment stolen from a freight depot in Alicante. They’re crap. The street value’s maybe a few thousand quid, at the very most, and even then only if you could find anyone daft enough to put them on their shelves, or in a cigarette machine, given that a foreign brand would stand out a mile. Bass isn’t saying how he found out about them. Indeed he didn’t say a dicky bird to Becky and Sauce when they interviewed him and charged him. He is, as his brief’s told him to say, maintaining his right to silence; currently maintaining it in the remand wing at Saughton jail.’
‘How did he get them to Scotland?’
‘Again, we don’t know for sure, but given the quantity, he might have paid a trucker to smuggle them in. Either that, or Kenny could have gone for them himself. Maybe Varley’ll be able to tell us when we grill him. He was arrested this morning, and he’s being held overnight, down at Leith. There’s a lot we don’t know. Bass has been on our radar in the past, but not for anything like this. Then there’s Welsh; he’s a substantial businessman, so what was he doing buying dodgy fags from a small-time smuggler?’
Paula lapsed into cop-speak. ‘Has Welsh been lifted?’
‘For what? We’ve got no grounds. There was nothing incriminating in the texts they exchanged, and they don’t say a single significant word to each other on Sauce’s tape. They were interrupted by Varley’s phone call before they could. I did think about bringing him in for questioning, but Bob vetoed it. He says we need to find out more about him before we do that.’
I must have sighed, for she reached out and stroked the back of my hand. ‘You’re feeling really isolated just now, aren’t you?’ she whispered.
I knew what she meant, but didn’t say so. ‘Isolated? Of course not, I’ve got you. . you two, even, for wee Eamon’s starting to make his presence felt in there.’ That was very true; Paula was in her last month and I could see him kicking sometimes.
‘Don’t dodge the issue,’ she said. ‘The Glimmer Twins are no more; you don’t have Neil alongside you. You’ve lost your sounding board, and you must miss him a lot.’
I made no further attempt at denial, because I couldn’t. She was right. McIlhenney and I have been bosom pals from the day we joined the force. I made CID a few months before he did, but our careers had developed from then on, if not quite in parallel, then pretty close to it. When I made detective chief superintendent, and was appointed head of CID, he was moved in as detective superintendent in charge of all criminal investigation in Edinburgh, and my deputy.
Neil and I are similar physical types, but he’s much less volatile than I am, and when he has to be, he’s a calming influence on me. I was going to miss him by my side in dealing with the Varley-Cowan affair, and no mistake.
How did his move come about? I suspect that the occasionally subtle hand of Bob Skinner was behind it. He and Neil are pretty close as well, and when the Commissioner of the Met decided to look outside his force to fill a command vacancy in his covert policing department I wasn’t surprised when my pal was put in the frame. My suspicion was, and still is, that somehow Bob might have instigated the vacancy, before helping to fill it.
Quite apart from the prestige of the job, and the chief super promotion that came with it, a move to London was timely for Neil. Louise, the lady he married a couple of years after his wonderful wife Olive passed away, and with whom he has a third child, is an actress. She took time off from her career to have wee Louis, but her agent had been pestering her about making a comeback. The chief knew that, and it would be typical of him if he had gone out of his way to help.
