Pray for the Dying (23 page)

Thirty-Nine

‘
You’ll be DCS McIlhenney, then,’ Lowell Payne said as he approached the hulking, dark-suited stranger who stood at the entrance to the platform at Victoria Station where the Gatwick Express arrived.

‘How do you work that out?’ the other countered.

‘The boss’s description was enough. That and the fact that you’ve got his warrant card hung around your neck.’

‘Ah. I deduce that you are a detective. DCI Payne?’

They shook hands. ‘That’s me. It’s a pleasure to meet the other half of the Glimmer Twins.’

‘You know my Latino compatriot?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Bob never mentioned that.’

‘Yes, I do. I was involved in the investigation in Edinburgh that led up to the shit that happened at the weekend. That’s how I met Mario. He and I got to the Glasgow concert hall not long after the shooting. Now I find myself right in the middle of the follow-up.’

‘You were there?’ McIlhenney’s eyes flashed. ‘How’s Paula? McGuire says she’s all right, but I couldn’t be quite sure that he wasn’t spinning the truth to keep me off the first plane.’

‘Trust me, he wasn’t,’ Payne assured him. ‘She’s a tough lady. Everything happened so fast that I don’t think she had time to be scared. She was fine when we got there, shaken, but well in control of herself. From what the boss said when he called me last night she still is. Mind you, you can think about booking a flight this weekend, from what I hear. The baby’s expected by the end of the week.’

‘Is that right? That’s terrific.’ He laughed. ‘Mario has no idea how much his life is going to change. He reckoned nothing could ever slow him down, but this will. Who knows? I might even get to overtake him.’

He read the question written on Payne’s face. ‘He’s always been first to every promotion,’ he explained. ‘Then when I get one, he lands another. It’s the same again this time. I come all the way to London to make chief super, he stays in bloody Edinburgh, and gets the ACC post.’ He beamed. ‘There’s a longer ladder here, though; he’ll be struggling from now on. He’s got one more rung left in him, max, while I could have two in the Met.’

‘Good for you guys,’ Payne said. ‘I’m not on a ladder any more. I won’t see fifty again, I’ve reached my level, and I’m happy with it.’

‘Don’t write yourself off,’ McIlhenney murmured, ‘not if you’re working for Bob Skinner.’ He frowned, rubbing his hands together. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘enough career planning. You and I have got a grieving widow to interview.’

‘Does she know she’s a widow yet?’

The chief superintendent checked his watch, as they walked towards the station exit. ‘She should by now. We ran some checks on her and found that she’s not in employment, so we guess that she’s a full-time mum. The family support people were going to call on her at nine thirty, and I’ve had no message to say that she wasn’t in. It’s going on ten now, so hopefully by the time we get there, she’ll have had time to absorb what’s happened.’

‘Or not, as the case may be,’ the visitor countered. ‘It’s the worst possible news they’ll have given her. She might not be capable of talking to anyone.’

‘In that case, we get a doctor, we sedate her and while she’s in the land of nod we search the place, quietly but carefully.’

‘Can we do that?’ Payne wondered. ‘Legally, I mean?’

McIlhenney opened his jacket, displaying an envelope in an inside pocket. ‘I’ve got warrants,’ he said. ‘Everything the Met does these days has to be watertight. We are all book operators now. I hate to think how Bob Skinner would get on down here. He’d do his own thing, because that’s all he knows, and wind up on page one . . . just like his bloody wife! That was a shocker; it blew me right out of my seat when I saw those pictures. Some of my brother officers think it’s funny, fools that they are, to see the big man embarrassed like that. How’s it going down in Pitt Street?’

‘Very quietly. The new chief’s reputation travels before him. One of our ACCs might be found chortling in a stall in the gents, but he’s got his own secret to protect, so he’s poker-faced in public.’

‘Sensible man.’ McIlhenney slowed his pace as they approached a waiting police car. ‘I can’t get over Aileen getting herself compromised like that. She always struck me as super-cautious, given her political position. What doesn’t surprise me, though, is that the marriage was up shit creek even without the Morocco complication.’

‘No?’

‘No. Those are two of the most powerful people, personality-wise, that I’ve ever met. I never thought it would last. Just as I never thought he and Sarah would actually split, even though she can be volatile and though Bob doesn’t have quite the same control over his dick that he has over everything else. McGuire tells me that Sarah’s back in Edinburgh. Is that right?’

‘So I believe. I have met her, you know. For example, a few years back, at my niece’s twenty-first . . . well, she’s my wife’s niece, really. Sarah and Bob weren’t long married at the time. She was well pregnant at the time.’ McIlhenney was staring at him, puzzled. ‘Alex,’ he explained. ‘Alexis, Bob’s daughter. I’m married to her mother’s sister, although Myra had died well before I came on the scene.’

The chief superintendent beamed, then laughed. ‘Jeez,’ he exclaimed, ‘the man’s like a fucking octopus; his tentacles are everywhere. He’s had a family insider in Strathclyde CID all this time and he’s never let on.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Payne protested, ‘you’re making it sound like I was his snitch. I rarely saw him, other than a few times when he came with Alex to visit our wee lass, or family events, like weddings and such, and before now our paths only ever crossed the once professionally, way back when I was a uniform sergeant and he’d just made detective super.’

‘Maybe so, but I’ll bet when you did see him, you spent a hell of a lot more time talking about policing than about Auntie Effie’s bunions.’

‘Mmm,’ the DCI murmured. ‘We don’t have an Auntie Effie, but yes, I suppose you’re right. It was mostly shop talk. Mind you, I’m not a golfer, and I don’t follow football, so there wasn’t much else on the agenda.’

‘Wouldn’t have made any difference,’ McIlhenney assured him. ‘Come on, let’s get on our way.’ They slid into the back of the waiting police car. ‘You know where we’re going?’ he asked the constable at the wheel.

‘Yes, sir,’ the driver replied. ‘There was a message for you while you were away,’ he added. ‘The family support gels say it’s okay for you to go in. The lady’s been advised, and she’s okay to speak to you.’

‘I hope she’s still okay after we’ve finished,’ the chief superintendent grunted.

The car pulled out of the station concourse and into the traffic. ‘Tourist route, sir?’ the constable asked.

‘Not this trip. We can show DCI Payne the sights later.’

The visiting detective had no more than a tourist’s knowledge of London, and so he sat bewildered as they cut past New Scotland Yard and along a series of thoroughfares that might have been in any developed city in the world, had it not been for the omnipresence of the Union flag and the Olympic rings, and for the Queen’s image beaming from shop windows displayed on a range of souvenir products from clothing to crockery. The sun told him that they were heading roughly north, and occasionally a sign would advise him that Madame Tussaud’s lay a mile from where they were at that moment, or that they were passing an underground station called Angel, or that the Mayor of London wished him an enjoyable stay in his city.

They had been on the road for twenty minutes when McIlhenney pointed out of the window to his left, indicating a modern steel edifice, its clean lines sharp against the sky. ‘The Emirates Stadium,’ he announced. ‘Home of Arsenal Football Club.’

‘Are you a fan?’

‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘Spence, my older laddie, won’t allow it. He plays rugby, pretty well, they say, and I usually follow him on winter Saturdays. Not that we’ve had too many of them down here, not yet. Next season, though; he’s been accepted by London Scottish. Dads on the touchlines can be bad news at junior rugby, but they like me, being a cop.’

And a brick shithouse into the bargain, Payne thought. ‘The stadium. Is that where we’re heading?’

‘Not quite. We’re going to the Gunners’ old home, Highbury. In fact,’ he paused as they made a turn, ‘there it is.’

Ahead the DCI saw a tall building with ‘Arsenal Stadium’ emblazoned in red along its high wall, with a wheeled gun underneath.

‘Who plays there now?’ he asked. As he spoke he glanced forward and caught in the rear-view the constable driver giving him a look that might have been scornful, or simply one of pity.

‘Nobody, sir,’ he volunteered. ‘It’s been turned into flats and stuff. They weren’t allowed to knock down the front of the main stand . . .  more’s the pity. Should have bulldozed the lot, if you ask me.’

‘I take it you’re not a follower.’

‘God forbid! No, I’m Totten’am, till I die.’

‘You don’t want to get into that, Lowell,’ McIlhenney advised. ‘Serious London tribalism.’

‘When you’ve been on uniform duty at an Old Firm match,’ the visitor countered, ‘nothing else can seem all that serious.’

‘Before I came down here, I might have agreed with that.’

The driver indicated a right turn, then waited for oncoming traffic to pass. Reading the street sign, St Baldred’s Road, McIlhenney tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t turn in there. Pull over here and we’ll walk the rest; this vehicle would tell the whole neighbourhood that something’s up.’

‘Sir.’ The PC changed his signal, then parked twenty yards further on. The two detectives climbed out, and crossed the street.

St Baldred’s Road told a story of comfortable middle-class prosperity. The Millbank family home was four doors along, on the left, a brick terraced villa, smart and well-maintained like all of its neighbours.

A blue Fiesta was parked outside, out of place between a Mercedes E-class, and a Lexus four-wheel drive with a child seat in the back. Payne glanced inside the little Ford and saw two female uniform caps on the front seats.
Discretion seems to be the watchword in the Met these days
, he thought.

The door opened before they reached it; one of the pair, a forty-something, salt-and-pepper-haired sergeant, stood waiting for them. ‘How is she?’ McIlhenney asked, quietly, as they stepped inside.

‘Shocked, but self-controlled,’ the woman replied. ‘She’s got a kid, little Leon. In my experience that usually helps to keep them together.’

‘The child’s here? Not in a nursery?’

‘He’s here, outside in his playground. Molly, PC Bates, my colleague, is looking after him. I’m Rita,’ she added ‘Sergeant Caan.’

‘Has she called anyone? Friends, family?’

‘No, not yet. She said something about having to phone her mother, to let her know. I said we could do that for her. She felt she had to do that herself, but she hasn’t got round to it yet.’

‘Do you know,’ Payne began, ‘if we’re right in our assumption that the husband worked for her family business?’

Rita Caan nodded. ‘Yes, spot on. The mother runs it; Golda’s father’s dead.’

‘Thanks, that’s helpful; one less question for us. Have you picked up anything else?’

She frowned at him. ‘Other than the fact that she’s four and a half months pregnant, no.’

‘Doctor on the way?’ McIlhenney asked.

She sighed. ‘Of course he is. It’s standard in a situation like this. She didn’t want to bother him, but we persuaded her that he’d want to be bothered. He’s coming after his morning surgery.’

‘Good. Sorry, Sergeant. I wasn’t doubting you; I just had to know for sure. Let’s see her, then, before the doc gets here.’

‘Okay. She’s in the living room. This way.’ She led them to a solid wood door, as old as the house, tapped on it gently, then opened it. ‘Golda,’ she called out. ‘My colleagues have arrived. Chief Superintendent McIlhenney and Mr Payne, from Scotland. Mr McIlhenney is too, as you’ll realise very quickly, but he’s one of ours.’

The widow was in the act of rising as they stepped into the room, which extended for the full length of the house, with double doors opening into the garden. As Payne looked along he saw a ball bounce into view, and heard a toddler’s shout, as Caan’s colleague retrieved it.

‘Don’t get up, Mrs Millbank, please,’ McIlhenney insisted. ‘I’m the local,’ he added, ‘he’s the visitor. First and foremost, we are both very sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you,’ Golda Millbank, née Radnor, said. Her voice was quiet, but strong, with no hint of a quaver. ‘Please, can you tell me what happened to Byron? All that Rita could say is that it was a brain thing.’

‘That’s correct,’ Payne confirmed. ‘An autopsy was performed; it showed that your husband suffered a massive, spontaneous subarachnoid cerebral haemorrhage. Death would have been almost instantaneous, the pathologist said.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Last week.’

‘Last week?’ she repeated. ‘Then why has it taken so long for you to tell me?’

‘When your husband’s body was found,’ the DCI explained, ‘he had no identification on him. It took the police in Edinburgh some time to find out who he was.’

‘What does Edinburgh have to do with it?’

‘That’s where he was found.’

‘But he was supposed to be in Manchester, then in Glasgow, at a jewellery fair, and then in Inverness, visiting one of our suppliers. I don’t understand why he would be in Edinburgh.’

‘When was he due home, Mrs Millbank?’ McIlhenney asked.

‘Not until today; I expected him back this evening.’

‘When was the last time you spoke to him?’

‘On the day he left for Scotland. Byron doesn’t like mobile phones; he won’t have one. When he’s away on business, I don’t expect to hear from him, unless he sends me an email. He tends to do everything through his computer. He has a laptop, a MacBook Air. It goes everywhere with him; he says that all his life is on it.’

‘When did you meet him?’ The DCS kept his tone casual.

‘When he came to work for my parents’ business; I called in there one day, a few months after he started. Neither my father nor mother were there but he was. He introduced himself and,’ she smiled, ‘that was that.’ She shook her head. ‘He was such a fit, strong man. I can’t believe this has happened.’ She stared at McIlhenney, and then at Payne. ‘Are you telling me the truth?’ she asked. Her voice was laden with suspicion. ‘Has somebody killed my husband?’