Pray for the Dying (36 page)

‘I confess that it passed me by,’ the chief said. ‘But nineteen ninety-six was a busy year for me; my mind was full of other stuff, on my own doorstep. Anyway,’ he carried on, ‘you can imagine that after Shelby disappeared, his whole life was dug up. It didn’t take the investigators long to find out that in fact he ran out of business steam in the mid-eighties, after a series of bad currency deals that he managed to cover up. Everything he’d done after that had been a huge Ponzi scheme, paying investors with their own money, as he drew more and more in with the promise of attractive profits that were evidently being delivered. If Harry Shelby hadn’t had such a big reputation, chances are he’d have been caught, but because he was such a hero he got away with it.’

He stopped to sip his tea, only to find that it had gone cold.

‘Why did he run?’ he asked, then answered. ‘It may have been because he knew that all Ponzi fraudsters are caught eventually, unless they shut up shop before it’s too late.’ He paused. ‘However, Provan happened upon another theory, one that the Australian authorities . . .  Dan checked this with the Australian Embassy . . . believe to this day, possibly because it suits them so to do. They think, indeed they’re pretty well sure, that a couple of his biggest investors were Americans, Mafia figures, using his investment scheme to launder money. The scenario is, they caught on to the swindle, so they dealt with it the old-fashioned way. They made Shelby and his money disappear at the same time. On the day that he did, Australian air traffic control traced an unregistered flight out of Canberra heading for Tasmania. The investigators had a tip that Shelby was on it, until they dropped him out halfway there over the ocean.’ He gazed at Marina. ‘But we know that’s not true, don’t we?’

She stared back at him, silent. He took a photograph from the case, held it up for Payne to see, then passed it to her.

‘That’s Harry Shelby, aged about forty.’

He produced a second. ‘That’s Peter Friedman, photographed, to his annoyance, at a charity dinner last winter. He’s over thirty years older, but I’ve had the images run through a recognition program, and it confirms they’re one and the same man.’

He went back into the attaché and took out a third image. ‘And that’s you,’ he said, ‘from your HR file in Pitt Street. You can’t hide from it, Marina. You are your father’s double.’

She picked up his mug, and drank his cold tea in a single gulp. ‘And proud of it,’ she whispered.

‘It was the newspaper photograph that did it, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Antonia was in her first month in Glasgow when it appeared. She read every newspaper, every day, to familiarise herself with the place, and she saw that. She used CTIS to trace him, then one day, just as you have, she turned up here, alone. When he got over the shock, he assumed that she had come to arrest him, but no. I mean, why would she have done that? There would have been nothing in it for her.

‘Your assumption was correct; she did to him what she had done to Lawton and his wife. She showed him the brochure for the house and told him that she wanted it. She told him to forget about trying to vanish again, as she would know about it the moment his helicopter took off, or he boarded the ferry. But in truth she knew that there was no point in him running. He was dying, and even then the house was being turned into a hospice, a place for him to be as peaceful as he could be in his last days. So he bought the Bothwell place for her.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘He told me she should have chosen a bigger one.’

‘Why did he go to the damn dinner? That doesn’t sound like typical behaviour.’

‘He was in Edinburgh, seeing an oncologist for tests,’ she explained. ‘It was that day, and he had a feeling the news wasn’t going to be the best, so he went, in the hope it might cheer him up. As it turned out it did the opposite.’

‘Does your mother know any of this?’ Skinner asked.

‘None,’ Marina insisted. ‘Maman is not a stupid woman. She had a good job in the civil service, but she was looked after by men for much of her life, first Anil, and then Papa. She’s naive in some ways, so when Antonia told her that she had done well in property in Britain, she believed her.’

‘How did Sofia meet your father?’

‘He was part of an Australian business delegation to the island, in nineteen eighty, after her thing with Anil was over. Maman was in charge of official government hospitality. That’s when it began.

‘I was born two years later, and for all my childhood he spent as much time as he could with us. He was as good to Antonia as he was to me. That’s what made her behaviour all the more despicable. You were right. She was just a nasty little blackmailer.’

‘When did you get back in touch with him?’

‘I was never out of touch. Gifts would arrive, and letters, never traceable, only ever signed “Papa”. The theory is wrong, incidentally, about the Mafia. They were his partners in the Ponzi business, not his victims. They all made lots of money and when the time came to close it down, they helped him get away, and they planted the idea that they had killed him. In fact he lived in the West Indies for six years, as Peter Friedman. He moved to Mull ten years ago, around the same time as I came to Britain. It was then he told me his new name.’

‘Whose idea was it for you to join MI5?’ Skinner asked.

‘A shrewd question, because I think you know the answer. Papa suggested it. The idea was that if the Australians started looking for him again, in Millbank I would be well placed to hear about it. By that time I was in a security department within the Met, so when I applied, it seemed a natural step, and I was accepted. Brian Storey was my boss then, and he endorsed me. Antonia never knew, though, not ever. The service, as it does, gave me a front as an importer for a chain of florists.’

‘That sounds like an Amanda Dennis touch.’

‘It was. She’s a good teacher.’

‘You were a good student, Marina. You could have been Amanda yourself, if you’d stayed the course, instead of letting them move you out to spy on your sister.’

‘But if I had stayed, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with her when the need arose.’

‘By telling your father how to get rid of her? No, I don’t suppose you would.’

‘Papa never knew,’ she said.

Both police officers stared at her.

‘It’s true, I swear,’ she exclaimed. ‘If I had told him he would have forbidden it, absolutely. All he ever did was make a donation of three hundred thousand pounds to a charity I told him about. He was a sucker for charities, especially those involved with cancer research; I told him it helped patients with difficult personal circumstances. I approached Cohen, using a contact email address I’d picked up in the service. I gave him the commission and he named his price. No conscience, that man, only a cash register. I also gave him Brown as a resource on the ground in Glasgow. I’m sorry they had to kill him, but not too sorry, as he was a traitor to his own kind. No, the decision was mine, and the orders were mine. Knowing what Antonia was, and what she might have become, I don’t regret them. I’m sorry for Maman, and for Anil, and for Lucille, of course, but they will bring her up as if she was their own. Maman is still young and fit enough to see it through.’

‘But what about Papa?’ Skinner murmured. ‘He isn’t, is he?’

‘Yes, Papa,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose you have come to take him away, as Antonia did not.’

‘We haven’t come to ask for a raffle prize for the policeman’s ball, that’s for sure. As for taking him away, we’ll see about that. But I would like to meet him.’

‘Then come with me, Chief Constable, and you shall.’ She stood; Skinner and Payne followed suit. ‘In your car? You have a car, I take it.’

‘Yes, but Superintendent Payne can take that. I’ll come with you, just in case the minder panics at the sight of strange vehicles. By the way, no nonsense up there, Marina. There are firearms in my car; that’s a practice your sister introduced.’

‘He isn’t that sort of minder, I promise. Rudolf is a driver and a pilot, that’s all.’ As she spoke, they heard the heavy engine sound of an aircraft. She looked up and pointed, towards a helicopter above them, gaining height. ‘In fact, that’s him.’

‘Hey!’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘Are you . . .’

‘No. Papa is not with him. He’s still at the house. Come and meet him.’

The chief frowned, still cautious, weighing her up, not anxious to be taken twice. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t you want to collect your mail?’

‘It can wait. Come on.’ She led him across the road to the waiting Range Rover.

With the police car following close behind, they drove out of Tobermory, taking a narrower road from the one they had used earlier, passing a campsite on the edge of the small town, then climbing for two or possibly three miles, although its twists and turns made it difficult to judge distance travelled.

She slowed as they approached a gate on the right, with an unequivocal sign beside it: ‘Private’. It was shut, but Marina pressed a button on a remote control and the barrier slid aside.

The surface of the estate road was gravel, but better than the one they had left. Their tyres crunched beneath them, early warning, Skinner thought, for anyone waiting.

The house itself was a grey mansion, large but not ostentatious. It reminded him of some of his neighbours on Gullane Hill, although the stone was different. She drew up at the front door, then waited until the second car stopped alongside and Payne climbed out to join them.

He was holding a pistol, in the manner of a man for whom it was a new experience. Skinner frowned and shook his head; he handed it back to Davie Cole.

‘This way,’ she said, leading them inside, walking briskly through a chandelier-lit hallway, and, ignoring a wide mahogany stairway, into a room on the far side of the house.

It was large, decorated with old-fashioned flock wallpaper. A bay window faced south over a sunlit garden, laid out in shrubs and fruit trees, with stone statuary among them. Soft music was playing, a female singer with a gentle voice; the chief guessed at Stacey Kent.

There was a smell about the room, a smell of disinfectant, a hospital smell, one that seemed fitting given the metal-framed bed that was positioned facing the window. Skinner saw an oxygen cylinder on the far side as they approached, and beside it, in a stand, a vital signs monitor.

All the lines on it were flat.

The man on the bed was old, but his face was unlined. He looked peaceful, with his eyes closed.

‘Papa died just over two hours ago,’ Marina murmured. ‘Rudolf has gone to Oban to fetch an undertaker, and to take Sister Evans to the station. She’s been with us for the last month. She did a great job; he was pain-free all the way to the end. The doctor from Oban was with him at the end. He was kind enough to stay overnight. He caught the first ferry back this morning.’

‘I suppose I should say I’m sorry for your loss,’ Skinner told her. ‘And I am, honestly, even if he was a billion-dollar fraudster, and you’re a sororicide . . . if that’s a word. You are a first, Marina. I’ve come across plenty of conmen in my career . . . although not on your dad’s scale, I admit . . . but I’ve never met someone who’s killed her own sister.’

‘What are you going to do with me?’ she asked. Payne, standing on the other side of the bed, saw a hint of trepidation in her eyes, for the first time since their encounter in the café.

‘What do you think?’ the chief retorted. ‘I’m duty bound to arrest you and charge you with murder. You’ve admitted it, and even if you recant that, I know enough now to put a case together.’ And then he sighed. ‘That’s my duty, but the judge would be bound to knock out so much of my evidence on national security grounds that you would walk. Your problem would then be that you wouldn’t walk very far, before you were hit by a runaway lorry, or killed in a random mugging, or died of a peanut allergy that nobody knew you had, or just plain disappeared.’

Her trepidation turned to undisguised fear as she acknowledged the truth in what he said.

‘Who are you now?’

His question took her by surprise. ‘My new identity, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a Jamaican passport, in the name of Marina Friedman. My father obtained it for me, in case we both needed to move on in a hurry.’

‘What was your next move? Your plan for life after Papa?’

‘His will is with his lawyer in Jersey. It names me as his sole heir. He told me to go there, with the death certificate and my passport, to claim my inheritance.’

‘That won’t be happening now,’ Skinner said.

‘No, I realise that. So, what will you do with me? Will you save the expense of your abortive prosecution by handing me straight over to Amanda Dennis?’

He took a breath and blew out his cheeks. ‘Like she would thank me for that,’ he exclaimed. ‘It would be better all round if I just shot you myself and buried you somewhere on this big island.’

She backed away, staring at him in sudden naked terror.

‘Hey!’ he exclaimed. ‘Calm down. Better all round, but I’m not one of them, Marina. Besides,’ he added, with a half smile and a nod in Payne’s direction, ‘there are witnesses, and your man Rudolf will be back from Oban soon. So,’ he told her, ‘here’s what you do. You take whatever you can pack quickly, and as much as you can in the way of cash and valuables, you get in that car and you drive it straight on to the ferry. When you get to Oban, keep on driving, in any direction you can and in any direction as long as it is out of the jurisdiction of any Scottish police force.’

‘But not Jersey, I take it.’

‘No; there’ll be nothing there by the time you get there. Whatever fortune your father’s left isn’t for you, it’s for the people he swindled, even if some of them will be dead themselves by now.’ He gazed at her. ‘This is what’s happened,’ he said. ‘Lowell and I arrived to arrest him, following my discovery of some papers in Toni’s safe. Sadly, we were too late. You were never here. When Rudolf gets back and asks, “Where’s Marina?” I will say, “Marina who?” That’s the outcome. We get Papa, you get lost. We will be fucking heroes, Lowell and me, in Australia most of all. As for you, you will be alive.’