must know, yes I am.’
‘And you’re not Jewish.’
‘Of course not. You don’t have to. .’
‘I know,’ I said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. ‘That’s what Sarah explained.’ I paused, for a little effect. ‘That’s before she said firmly that our man was.’
‘Come again?’ the DI murmured, dryly. ‘Did the rabbi who did it put his initials on his work?’
‘Hardly,’ I replied, slightly narked by her sarcasm. I shook my head and repeated what Sarah had told me. . leaving out only the line about the blonde and the matzohs.
Her reaction was the same as if I’d shaken her awake. She blinked, once, twice then focused on me. If Becky Stallings has a fault as a team leader, it’s her occasional tendency to slip into cruise mode, rather than driving full on at the task in hand. When she snaps out of it, though, she’s a formidable operator. Half an hour earlier she’d begun to echo Jack, chuntering on about her team having been stuck with a job that uniform should be doing, putting a name to the dead man from the evening before, when we should have been tasked with putting the screws on Kenny Bass. That disappeared in an instant as she started to gnaw on the bone I’d given her.
‘She’s a hundred per cent certain about that?’ she exclaimed.
‘As near as damn it. “That’s the way to bet,” is what she said.’
‘How much do you know about the Edinburgh Jewish community? How big is it?’
‘I’ve got no idea,’ I admitted.
‘Then find out.’
Half an hour later, after some intensive research, followed by a few phone calls, I was up to speed. ‘There are around eight hundred Jewish families in the Edinburgh area,’ I reported to the DI. ‘They worship in two active congregations but there’s only one full-time rabbi in Edinburgh, Rabbi Hyman. I’ve just spoken to him. He doesn’t know of anyone who’s missing, and he’s certain that if there had been a death among his flock, he’d have been called in. But he’s willing to look at the body, to see if he knows him.’
‘When?’ she asked.
‘Right now. It’s Friday; their Sabbath starts in a few hours. He’s preparing for this evening’s service, but he’s agreed to meet me at the mortuary in half an hour.’
‘No great hopes, though?’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I described our man. He said that it only fitted three or four people, no more than that. Those are all active in the community and he said that if any of them died it would be big news. He was shocked when I told him how we found the body, but he did say that the white shroud was “appropriate”; his word.’
‘Okay,’ Becky said. ‘You’d better get down to the Cowgate, now.’
‘Yes, boss, I will, but there’s more. I did a search on kosher food as well. Like the pathologist said, there’s only that one vegetarian place in Edinburgh, and the food itself wouldn’t be easy to source. There’s one supermarket that stocks a range of kosher products, but it’s not extensive. However, I did find a kosher restaurant in Glasgow; it’s called Solomon’s, and it isn’t veggie. I phoned it, and spoke to the guy who owns it; it’s named after him, by the way. Chicken broth with matzohs and geffilte fish are both regulars on the menu. The timescale we’re looking at, according to the autopsy findings, has Mortonhall Man eating his last meal on Wednesday evening. Mr Solomon says he was open then, and busy, but when I described the man, he said yes, it was possible he might have been a customer.’
‘Did you tell him that we’re trying to find a dead man?’
‘No. I didn’t need to do that. All I said was that we were trying to trace a man who might have eaten there. Then I said that I’d pulled his menu off the internet, and I asked him how the broth and the fish were, casual like. I said they were my favourites. He said they’re his best sellers, and that I should call in.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘Sure.’ I checked my notebook and read it out.
‘Then what are you waiting for? Get the most presentable face shot that we have of the body and take him up on his invitation.’
I raised a slightly impertinent eyebrow. ‘Is that before or after I go to the morgue?’
‘Sod that,’ she grunted. ‘I’ll meet the rabbi. It’ll be a waste of time anyway. I’m beginning to get an idea of what’s happened here.’
Lowell Payne
It’s as well that Bob had told us that the Special Branch guy was new. It went a long way to explain the caution with which he greeted us when his monstrous Indian sidekick showed us into his office.
‘George Regan,’ he said, almost apologetically, as he extended his hand to me. His grip was firm, that of a golfer. He was immaculately dressed, in a blue suit with some silk in it.
David and he seemed to be sizing each other up. I wondered whether their obvious appraisal of each other had something to do with the fact that they both seemed to enjoy Bob Skinner’s confidence, and that they saw themselves as rivals as a result. If that was so, I’d be watching my back if I was Regan. The Copper Formerly Known As Bandit might have cleaned up his act, but whatever his bosses think of him I suspect that it was because he had no other option, and that an ambitious, calculating bastard still lurks close to the surface.
He was under wraps, though, as we took seats at Regan’s desk. ‘Quite a task we’ve been given, George,’ he said. ‘The chief’s briefed you on what we’re doing, I take it, and how you relate to us.’
The DI nodded. ‘Yes, he has.’ He paused. ‘But I’m not completely reactive in this. He’s given me a separate task.’
He went on to explain what it was. ‘Look,’ he continued, ‘I know you’re reviewing the Varley career files, to check for any possible improprieties, across the board. We know, for example that he’s got a track record with women, and he was even, briefly, a murder suspect because of it.’ That was news to me; I suspected it was to Mackenzie as well, although he did his best not to show it.
‘In practice though, all we have on him at the moment is his warning to Freddy Welsh. We have nothing at all on Mr Welsh, so that gives him priority status in my book, and in the chief’s. He’s told me to fill in the blanks. So, what I suggest is that you gentlemen concentrate on Varley’s dealings with Welsh, while my colleague and I do the same thing, but in reverse; we go for Freddy and tie him to Varley. Hopefully we’ll meet in the middle and get the complete picture.’
CoFKAB nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he agreed. ‘What about this man Kenny Bass? He seems to be pig in the middle between them.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Regan pointed out. ‘There’s no evidence of any connection between Varley and Bass. However, we don’t need to get involved in that, not for the moment anyway. Bass will be re-interviewed separately; hopefully it’ll be more productive this time.’
‘Who’s doing that?’ I asked him.
‘The head of CID; DCS McGuire.’
‘Ouch,’ Mackenzie chuckled. The SB man smiled too; an insider joke, I guessed. It passed me by because I was too busy wondering what the hell I’d become involved in. Bob Skinner seemed to be playing us all like the conductor of a small orchestra. Yet he was the chief constable. Jesus! Things were a lot different in Strathclyde where you rarely saw anyone more than two ranks above you, and didn’t want to either because it usually meant you were in the shit.
This was very true, by all accounts, of our new gaffer, Chief Constable Antonia Field. She hadn’t been in Pitt Street long before she became known as ‘the queen of mean’, for the way she scoured the place, identifying weak links and showing them the door. Quite a few senior faces were no longer around, and there were even rumours that Max Allan, our old school ACC, was for the chop. The one thing that worried me about the Edinburgh assignment was that it was bound to bring me into her field of vision.
