Pray for the Dying (25 page)

Forty-One

‘
Where have you been, Sarge?’ Banjo Paterson asked, as Provan came into the room. ‘The DI was on the phone looking for you.’

‘Did ye tell her I’ll call her back?’

‘No. I thought you might not want to. It’s awkward with her being suspended.’

‘She’s not fuckin’ suspended!’ Provan yelled, flaring up in sudden fury. ‘She’s on family leave. If I hear that word used once more Ah’ll have your nuts in a vice, son.’

The DC backed off, holding up his hands as if to keep the little man at bay. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’

‘Aye, well . . . just mind your tongue from now on.’

‘Understood. So,’ he continued, ‘where have you been? You went out that door like a greyhound. I’ve never seen you move so fast.’

‘Doesnae do tae keep the chief constable waiting,’ the DS said, a smirk of bashful pride turning up one corner of his mouth.

Paterson whistled. ‘A summons from on high, eh? What did he want?’

‘He wants us to do a wee job for him. Ah need you to get intae your computer and find me a phone number for the equivalent of the General Register Office in the Republic of Mauritius . . . wherever the fuck that is.’

‘It’s in the Indian Ocean. Give me a minute.’

Provan looked on as he bent over his keyboard, typed a few words, clicked once, twice, a third time, then scribbled on a notepad. ‘There you are,’ he announced, as he ripped off the top sheet and handed it over. ‘That’s the number of the head office of the Civil Status Division, in the Emmanuel Anquetil Building, Port Louis, Mauritius.’ He glanced at the wall clock. ‘I make that fifteen seconds short of the minute.’

‘Since you’re that fuckin’ clever, can you access birth records through that thing?’

‘I doubt it, but I’ll have a look.’ He turned back to the screen and to his search engine, but soon shook his head. ‘No, sorry; not that I can see. You’ll have to call them.’

‘Will Ah be able to speak the language?’

‘Possibly not; it’s English.’

‘Cheeky bastard,’ the DS growled, but with a grin. He dialled the number Paterson had given him. The voice that answered was female, with a musical quality.

He introduced himself, speaking slowly, as if to a child. ‘I am trying to find the record of a birth that may have taken place in your country two years ago.’

‘Hold on please, sir. I will direct you to the correct department.’

He waited for two minutes and more, becoming more and more annoyed by the sound of a woman crooning in a tongue he did not understand, but which he recognised as having Bollywood overtones. Finally, she stopped in mid-chorus and was replaced by a man.

‘Yes, sir,’ he began. ‘I understand you are a police officer and are seeking information. Is this an official inquiry?’ His voice was clipped and his accent offered a hint that he might have understood the lyrics of the compulsory music.

‘Of course it is,’ Provan replied, his limited patience close to being exhausted, ‘as official as ye can get. It’s a murder investigation.’

‘In that case, sir, how can I be of help?’

‘Ah’m lookin’ for a birth record. Ah don’t know for certain that it’ll be there, but ma boss has asked me to check it out. All we have is the name of the mother, Antonia Field.’

‘What is the date?’

‘We don’t know that either, just that it was two years ago, in the period between January and June. The lady took six months off work tae have the child, so our guess is that it was probably born round about May or early June.’

‘Field, you said?’

‘Aye, but when she lived in Mauritius she was known as Day Champs.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Day Champs.’

‘Are you trying to say Deschamps, officer?’ He spelled it out, letter by letter.

‘Aye, that’s it.’

‘Very good. I will search for you. If you tell me your number, I will call you back. That way I will know that you really are a policeman.’

‘Fair enough.’ Provan gave the official the switchboard number, and his own extension, then hung up.

With time to kill, he wandered into Lottie Mann’s empty office, sat at her desk, picked up the phone and dialled her number.

She answered on the first ring. ‘Dan?’

‘Aye. How’re ye doin’, kid?’

‘Terrible. Wee Jakey isn’t buying the story about his dad any more. I’ve had to tell him the truth, and it’s breaking his wee heart.’

‘Maybe he’ll be home soon,’ the sergeant suggested, knowing as he spoke how unlikely that was.

‘Get real, Dan,’ she sighed. ‘There’s more. On Sunday I gave Scott thirty quid to take the wee man out for the day. They went to that theme park out near Hamilton. It occurred to me, that’s a hell of a lot more than thirty quid’s worth, so I had a rummage in his half of the wardrobe. I found an envelope in a jacket pocket, with four hundred and twenty quid in it. The envelope had a crest on the back: Brown Brothers Private Hire.’

Provan felt his stomach flip. ‘Lottie,’ he murmured. ‘What are ye telling me this for? Ah’ll have tae report it now.’

‘No you won’t. I’ve done that already, I called ACC Gorman and told her.’ She paused. ‘Here, did you think I was going to cover it up? For fuck’s sake, Danny!’ she protested. ‘Don’t you know me better than that?’

‘Aye, right,’ he sighed. ‘Ah shouldae known better. Sorry, lass.’

‘Have they interviewed him yet?’ she asked. ‘The big bosses?’

‘They’ll just be startin’ about now. Ah’m no long back frae seein’ the chief. He was just gettin’ ready to go down there, him and Bridie.’

‘Then God help my idiot husband. There’s no prizes for guessing who’ll play “bad cop” out of that pair, and I would not like that bugger sitting across the table from me. Why were you seein’ him anyway?’ she asked. ‘Are you telling me there’s been a development?’

‘No, just something he asked me to handle for him.’ As he spoke he heard a phone ring outside, then saw Paterson pick up his own line. The DC spoke a few words, then beckoned to him. ‘I think that’s ma contact now,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll need tae go. Ah’ll call ye if I hear anything from the interview.’

Forty-Two

The chief constable paused outside the door of the interview room. ‘Who’s his solicitor?’ he asked his deputy.

‘Her name’s Viola Murphy,’ Bridie Gorman told him. ‘She’s a hotshot in Glasgow, a solicitor advocate . . . that means . . .’

‘I know what it means. She takes the case the whole way through, from first interview to appearing in the High Court. I know about her too. She was one of my daughter’s tutors when she did her law degree. Alex couldn’t stand her.’

‘Will she know you?’

‘Not personally. She might from the media, though.’

‘Of course, she’s bound to. How do you want to play this?’

‘Very simply. We’re going to walk in there and inside five minutes Mr Mann is going to be singing like a linty. He’ll tell us everything we want to know. And you know what? It might even be true.’

Gorman was sceptical. ‘Mmm. I know Scott. He used to be a cop, remember, a DC. He’s interviewed people in his time, so he’ll know what’s going on in here. He’ll know that he has a perfect right not to say a single word, and you can bet that’s how Viola bloody Murphy will have advised him to play it.’

‘We’ll see. You keep her in her box and let me have a go at him. Remember, the right to silence goes both ways.’ He opened the door and stepped into the interview room.

Scott Mann was seated at a rectangular table. His solicitor was by his side, but she shot to her feet. ‘I don’t appreciate being kept waiting like this,’ she protested.

Skinner ignored her. He and Gorman took their places and she reached across and switched on the twin-headed recorder, then glanced up and over her shoulder to check that the video camera was showing a red light.

‘I mean it,’ Viola Murphy insisted. ‘I am a busy woman, and you’ve kept me sitting here for an hour and a half. I promise you, as soon as this interview is over I’ll be complaining to your chief constable.’

Now there’s a real kick in the ego
, Skinner thought.
She doesn’t know who I am after all.

‘For the purposes of the tape,’ the deputy began, ‘I am ACC Bridget Gorman, accompanied by acting Chief Constable Bob Skinner, here to interview Mr Scott Mann, whose legal representative is also present.’

Murphy glared at Skinner, but could not hide her surprise at his presence. He could read her mind.
If the top man is doing this interview himself, my client is in much deeper shit than I thought.

‘Well? Get on with it,’ she snapped.

‘Ms Murphy,’ Gorman said, ‘you’re here to advise Mr Mann of his legal rights and to ensure that these aren’t infringed. But you don’t speak for him, and you don’t direct us.’

As they spoke, Skinner fixed his gaze on Scott Mann, drawing his eyes to him and locking them to his as if by a beam. He held him captive, not blinking, not saying a word, keeping his head rock steady. The silent exchange went on for almost a minute, until the prisoner could stand the invisible pressure no longer and broke free, staring down at the desk.

‘Look at me,’ the chief murmured, just loud enough for the recorders to pick up. ‘I want to see what we’re dealing with here. I want to see what sort of person you are. So far I’ve seen nothing; a nonentity in the literal sense of the word. They say you were a cop once. They say you’re a loving husband and father. I don’t see any of those people; they’re all hiding from me. Look at me, Scott.’

‘Mr Skinner!’ Viola Murphy yelled, her voice shrill. ‘I won’t bloody have this! I protest!’

His head moved, very slightly, and his eyes engaged hers. She stared back, and shivered, in spite of herself.

‘No you don’t,’ he told her, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘You sit there, you stay silent and you do not interfere with my interview. If you raise your voice to me again and use any more abusive language, I will suspend these proceedings and charge you with breach of the peace, and possibly also with obstruction. Then we will wait for another lawyer to arrive to represent both Mr Mann and you.’

‘You’re joking,’ she gasped.

‘I have a long and distinguished record of never joking, Ms Murphy. I advise you not to test me.’ He turned back to Mann who was looking at him once more, astonished. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I have your attention again.’

He fell silent once more, then reached inside his jacket, and produced what appeared to be three rectangles of white card. He turned the top one over, to reveal a photograph, of Detective Inspector Charlotte Mann, then laid it in front of her husband.

‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a photo of his wife, a senior CID officer.’

He turned the second image over and placed it beside the first.

‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a photo of his son, Jake Mann.’

He turned the third over and put it beside the other, watching Mann recoil in horror as he did so.

‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a close-up photo of the body of Chief Constable Antonia Field, taken after she was shot three times in the head in the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, on Saturday evening.’

He paused, as the shock on the prisoner’s face turned into something else: fear.

‘What I’m asking you now, Mr Mann,’ he continued, ‘is this. How could you betray your wife and compromise her career, how could you condemn your wee boy to the whispers and finger-pointing of his school pals, by being part of the conspiracy that led to Toni Field lying there on the floor with her brains beside her?’ His gaze hardened again; in an instant his eyes became as cold as dry ice. He reached inside his jacket again and produced a fourth image. It was grainy but clear enough.

‘For the tape,’ he said, ‘I am showing the prisoner a photograph of himself in the act of handing a parcel to a second man, identified as Mr Basil Brown, also known as Bazza.’

He glanced at the solicitor. ‘To anticipate what should be Ms Murphy’s next question, we know that Mr Mann was not receiving the package because that image was taken from a CCTV recording that shows the exchange. However, Ms Murphy, your client did receive something from Mr Brown and that is also shown on the video.’

His hand went to his jacket once more, but this time to the right side pocket. He produced a clear evidence bag and slammed it on to the table. ‘For the tape,’ he announced, ‘I am showing Mr Mann an envelope which his wife discovered today in their home and sent to us. It bears the crest of Mr Brown’s taxi firm and contains four hundred and twenty pounds.

‘It hasn’t yet been tested for fingerprints and DNA but when it is we’re confident it will link the two men. We can’t ask Mr Brown about this as he was found dead in Glasgow on Sunday. However, Mr Mann, we don’t need him, or even that evidence. We’ve recovered the paper from the package you handed over and we’ve got your DNA and prints, and his, from that. We can also prove that the package contained two police uniforms, worn as disguises by the men who assassinated Chief Constable Field.’

He stopped, and locked eyes with Mann yet again. His subject, the former detective, and veteran of many interviews, was white as a sheet and trembling.

‘All that means,’ Skinner continued, ‘that we can prove you were an integral part of the plot to murder my predecessor, and it is our duty to charge you with that crime.

‘You’ll be lonely in the dock, Scott; it’ll just be you and Freddy Welsh, the man who supplied the guns. Everybody else in the chain is dead, bar one, the man who gave the order for the hit, recruited the planner and funded the operation.’ He paused. ‘I think we’ve reached the point,’ he went on, ‘where you bury your face in your hands and burst into tears.’

And Mann did exactly that.

Skinner waited, allowing the storm to break, to run its course and then to abate. When the prisoner had regained a semblance of self-control, he asked him, ‘What’s your story, Scott? For I’m sure you have one.’

‘My client,’ Viola Murphy interposed, ‘isn’t obliged to say anything.’

The chief sighed, then smiled. ‘I know that as well as you do,’ he replied. ‘And you know as well as I do that given the evidence we have against him, if your client takes that option and sticks to it, then the best he can hope for is a cell with a sea view.

‘Silence will be no defence, Ms Murphy. The best you will be able to offer will be a plea in mitigation, and by that time it will be too late, because once he’s convicted, the sentence will be mandatory. I’m offering the pair of you the chance to make that plea to me now, and through me to the fiscal, before he’s charged with anything.’

‘He said he was only borrowin’ them,’ Scott Mann blurted out. ‘He said he would give me them back.’

‘Okay,’ the chief responded. ‘Now for the big question. Did he tell you why he was borrowing them?’

‘He said it was for a fancy dress dance, for charity. He told me that he and Cec wanted tae go as polis, and that they wanted it to be authentic.’

Skinner leaned forward. ‘And you seriously believed that?’ he exclaimed.

‘I chose to. The fact is, sir, Ah didn’t want to know what they were really for, because I didn’t have any choice.’

‘What do you mean by that? You had a very simple choice. You could have told your wife that Bazza Brown had asked you to acquire two police uniforms for him, and let her handle his request. Jesus, man, even if your half-arsed story is true, by not telling Lottie and co-operating with Brown, you condemned a woman to death.’

‘I ken that now,’ Mann wailed. ‘But like I said, I didnae have any choice. Bazza’s had a hold on me from way back, since I was a cop. It’s no’ just the drink that’s a problem for me. Ah’m an addictive personality. Anything I do, I do it to the limit and beyond.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Not that: gambling. Horses, mostly, but there was the cards too. Bazza’s old man was ma bookie, and then he died and the brothers took over. Bazza gave me a tab, extended credit, he called it, but what he was really doin’ was lettin’ me pile up debt. One night he introduced me to a poker school. Ah did all right early on, but I think that was rigged, to suck me in. Then I lost it all back, but Ah was beyond stoppin’ by then. Bazza kept on stakin’ me, letting my tab get bigger and bigger. It got completely out of control, until before I knew it I was about seventy-five grand down, on top of twelve and a half that I’d owed him before.’

He paused, and his eyes found Skinner, reversing their earlier roles. ‘That was when I was truly fucked. He pressed me for the money, even though he knew I didnae have it. He got heavy. He threatened me, he threatened Lottie and he even threatened wee Jakey, even though he was only a baby then.

‘I threatened him back, or Ah tried to, told him he was messing wi’ a cop and that I could have him done. He laughed at me; then he put a blade to my throat and told me that it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to be found up a close in an abandoned tenement with a needle hangin’ out my arm and an overdose of heroin in ma bloodstream. And Bazza did not kid about those things. So I agreed tae pay him off in kind.’

‘How?’ the chief murmured.

‘I became his grass, within the force. I told him everything we knew about him. Every time he was under surveillance he knew about it. If one of his boys was ever done for anything, Ah’d fix the evidence, or I’d give Bazza a list of the witnesses against him and he’d sort them.’

‘You mean he killed them?’

‘No, he never needed to go that far. That would have been stupid, and he wasn’t.’

‘So you were his safety net within the force?’

‘Aye. And I got uniforms for him, once before.’

‘You did? When?’

‘About six months before I was kicked out. He gave me the same story: a fancy dress party. That time he did give me them back, after they’d been used in a robbery at an MoD arms depot. All the guys that were in on it were caught eventually, apart from Bazza.’ He frowned. ‘That was a funny one, a Special Branch job rather than our CID.’

And I know why
, Skinner thought.
Bazza was off limits on the NCIS database because he’d grassed on his accomplices in the robbery
 . . . 
or possibly set the whole thing up for MI5.

‘How did you get the uniforms, then and this time?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a friend who works in the warehouse. I asked for a favour.’

‘I don’t imagine it was done out of the goodness of your friend’s heart.’

Mann shot him a tiny smile. ‘It was, as it happened.’

‘Eh?’ The chief constable was taken aback. ‘So why did you have that cash from Bazza Brown?’

‘Ah told him that Ah had to pay the supplier.’

‘What’s your friend’s name?’

‘Aw, sir. Do ye really need it?’

Skinner stared at him, then he laughed. ‘Are you kidding me? Of course we do. The guy’s as guilty as you are, almost. Name, now.’

‘Chris McGlashan,’ the prisoner sighed. ‘Sergeant Chris McGlashan. And it’s no a guy; it’s Chris, as in Christine. Please, sir,’ he begged. ‘Can ye no’ leave her out of it? Can you not say I broke intae the warehouse and stole them?’

‘Why the bloody hell should I do that?’

‘She’ll deny it.’

‘I’m sure she will, but we’ll lift her DNA as well, from the package and the equipment.’

‘Aw Jesus, no! Lottie . . .’

The obvious dawned. ‘Aw Jesus, indeed!’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘You stupid, selfish, irresponsible son-of-a . . .’ he snapped. ‘This Chris, she’s your bit on the side, isn’t she? You’re an addictive personality right enough, Scott. The booze, the horses, the women . . . Is she the only one you’ve been two-timing Lottie with, or have there been others?’

Mann seemed to slump into himself. ‘One or two,’ he sobbed.

‘Mr Skinner,’ Viola Murphy ventured, ‘is this relevant to your investigation?’

‘Probably not, but it does demonstrate what a weak, untrustworthy apology for a husband and father your client is . . . let alone what a disgrace he was as a serving police officer.’

He turned back to his subject. ‘How did Bazza react when you were chucked out of the force, Scott? I don’t imagine you could have worked off all that ninety-odd grand, just in doing him favours.’