found the Torphichen Place CID number and hit the button; when Becky Stallings answered I was surprised. ‘What are you doing there?’ I asked. ‘You’re not on today.’
‘No, sir,’ she agreed, ‘but my newly promoted partner, the shiny new DI Wilding, is being conscientious. He decided that he needed to go into Gayfield to do some more reading up on the open investigations.’ I understood that. Ray’s new division had rather a lot of unsolved files; that was one of the reasons why he’d been put there. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘faced with a choice between redecorating our bedroom or coming in here to chum McGurk. .’
‘No contest,’ I agreed, ‘but come on, Becky. Get the professionals in. You’ve got two inspectors’ salaries coming into the house now; put some of it back into the economy, even if it is the black part. Anyway I’m glad you’re there; this is probably a senior officer job. I want you and Jack to find Mr Freddy Welsh, and invite him to join us for a chat.’
‘I thought we were holding off on him, boss,’ she said, ‘till we had something firm on him.’
‘We have,’ I told her. ‘He’s got an offshore company that we didn’t know about, and weren’t meant to, I’m sure, and he’s been using it to bung the Varleys regular slabs of cash, also out of the reach of the tax man.’
‘Nice one. That will be an interesting chat. Will Inspector Varley be sitting in on it?’
‘That’s what I’d hoped, but the so-and-so’s disappeared. He seems to have jumped bail and done an effing runner. I’m waiting for Gayfield to get me his registration number so I can put out an alert.’
‘That’ll be a waste of time,’ Stallings chuckled. ‘I had my old man in my earhole last night about Varley’s bloody car. It’s still in the station park, in Ray’s space, so he can’t get his in. He had to put it up in Greenside yesterday. It cost him eighteen quid, so maybe this isn’t the time to be telling him to get the decorators in.’
‘Oh Christ,’ I moaned, ‘that’s all I need. Becky, run with this, will you? Varley was bailed yesterday lunchtime; he was lifted from Gayfield first thing Thursday morning, and told not to go back there when we let him go, so he couldn’t have picked up his car. I should have worked that out. I doubt if he’d have time to get on a flight to anywhere last night, but he would have this morning. Alternatively, he could have caught a train.’
‘He or they, boss?’
‘Yes, yes, both of them of course; she’s gone too. Get people on to checking all the Livingston taxi firms. See if any of them picked up Jock and Ella. If so, where were they taken? That’s not exhaustive though; they may have had a lift from a neighbour. Get some uniforms into their street knocking doors, asking of anyone did help them out but also when they were seen last. Then check with the airlines; find out if anyone flew them out, not just from Edinburgh either, Glasgow and Prestwick as well. They could be in Spain by now. They could be any fucking where.’
‘What about the train?’ she asked.
‘Yeah I know,’ I conceded, ‘that’s just as likely, maybe more so. Not all train tickets are booked on the internet. Simple souls like me can still roll up at Waverley, buy a ticket and get on.’
‘Not so easy on a Friday,’ she pointed out. ‘They’re packed that afternoon and evening, with English people who work here going home for the weekend.’
‘Do what you can, Becky,’ I sighed. ‘They could be on bloody Eurostar by now. They could be in Paris. They could be in Bruges. . that’s in fucking Belgium,’ I added, lifting a line from one of my favourite movies of all time.
‘Get it under way, then you and Jack go and lift Welsh. He’ll probably scream “lawyer” at you. Let him have one, without question, but don’t talk to him until I get there. The chief’s steaming about this; he may even want to sit in on it himself. Go to it; you’re a star. Princess Leia, no question.’
‘Who?’
‘Sammy Pye’s sister,’ I chuckled. ‘Never mind; it’s my day for movie metaphors, that’s all. It’s a habit I picked up from Bob Skinner.’
The van was fifty yards away from where I’d parked. Sammy hadn’t mentioned it when he’d called but I knew that was where the action was, as there were lots of people in paper suits gathered around it. Payne was among them by that time; the look on his face made me glad that we’d been summoned before we’d eaten and not after. Arthur Dorward met me halfway there, with a suit for me. The Edinburgh force’s forensic genius works for a national resource centre now, but he’s still the peppery, irreverent wee bastard that we’ve all come to know and tolerate over the last twenty odd years.
‘Wear it please,’ he said. ‘We’re not anywhere near finished yet and I don’t want you contaminating my crime scene; especially not you. With your lineage your DNA must be like a kaleidoscope.’
I did as I was told; there’s never an option with Arthur. I approached the burned-out vehicle carefully stepping round several wheel tracks that the SOCOs had marked off for impressions to be taken. I doubted that it could do any good, since some of them must have been made by the van itself and its tyres no longer existed to be ruled out, but thorough is thorough, and it is spelled D. O. R. W. A. R. D.
I knew what was inside the van. I’d been at another fire scene a few months before and I was still having flashbacks to that, but I couldn’t bottle it. Word would have spread faster than the flames that had consumed what had once been a Vauxhall Movano, according to the half-melted markings on its grille. I put on a face mask then took a look inside; a long look. The trick is to imagine a bonfire, one made with tree trunks rather than logs and twigs, and pretend that’s what you’re examining. As I did that, in the same moment I realised what Sammy had meant about Paula.
I had a vague recollection of her getting up in the middle of the night and muttering something when she came back to bed about ‘kids having a party over there’, and about Guy Fawkes night not being in July.
Mario, Mario, the things we come to dwell on; the destinies, the lives, that hinge on a single action, or on the lack of it. If only you’d got up to see for yourself, and raised the bloody alarm, a lot of things might have been different and maybe, just maybe. . somebody might still be alive.
But you didn’t; instead you merely grunted and went back to sleep.
The logs seemed to be hugging. ‘What the hell?’ I murmured, to the person who had climbed into the wreck after me. ‘Could they have been screwing? Caught in the act by a jealous husband with a petrol bomb?’
‘That’s if they’re man and woman,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll tell you that in a couple of hours.’
‘Men get up to naughties as well,’ I pointed out.
‘But not face to face. . well, not in that position, if my understanding of these things is correct. Besides, if they were having sex, it was necrophilia on somebody’s part.’ She used a pen to point to a lumpy bit of the log nearer to us. ‘This one was dead before the fire was set. There’s a massive hole in the back of the head that, in my opinion, can only be an exit wound. And if he or she was, then the assumption must be that so was the other.’
‘Maybe jealous husband. .’ I persisted.
‘Or jealous wife,’ she interrupted.
‘If you insist. . or jealous wife. . caught them in the act and shot them, then torched the van. Or shot them somewhere else, put them in the van and brought them here?’
‘And drove two vehicles? Arthur’s certain there was another here.’
‘In which case,’ I offered, hopefully, ‘maybe jealous husband of one and jealous wife of another.’
She nodded and jumped out of the van. I followed her. ‘That I cannot rule out,’ she admitted, pulling off her face mask, ‘not until I’ve separated them from their grotesque dance of death, as at least one tabloid is bound to say when this comes to court.’
‘Okay,’ I told her, ‘you’d better do it. You can have ’em.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she grinned. She seemed exceptionally full of life; or maybe it was simply the contrast with her surroundings. Whatever, I found myself smiling with her. She was like the old Sarah back again, the one we knew before everything between her and Bob got buggered up.
‘Roshan,’ she called to another paper suit, ‘the boss man says we can have ’em. Let’s go to work.’
‘What are you going to be able to give me?’ I asked.
‘Their genders, and cause of death, certainly. Time of death, no, not unless I’m wrong and the fire killed them. Place of death, the same applies. Identification? Given the material, I’ll probably have to do DNA comparisons with people reported missing. I’ll give you as much as I can as quickly as I can, Mario. That’s all I can offer.’
‘I’ll take it,’ I said.
I stood back and watched as the mortuary crew began the task of removing the bodies. I didn’t know where Lowell Payne was while it was happening, but I was bloody sure he hadn’t gone for a takeaway. Sammy, though, he stood beside me, shoulder to shoulder, putting down yet another marker.
