Private Investigations (28 page)

Fifty

The family dinner was a strange affair. Sarah and I had decided that we were going to say nothing to the kids about the potential extra place at the table until the end of the first trimester, but I found it difficult to look at any of the three of them without a smile spreading across my face.

It didn’t take Mark long to notice.

‘What’s up, Dad?’ he asked, in his newly broken voice. ‘You look like Phil Mickelson.’

Nothing my middle son says will ever surprise me completely, but that came close. ‘Come again?’ I chuckled.

‘You know, the golfer. He’s always smiling, like he sees a joke that nobody else gets.’

It wasn’t an original quote, but Mark has a brain like blotting paper. If he sees something and it registers above zero on his scale of interest, it’s there forever.

‘Or like he’s very happy,’ I suggested, ‘which I’m sure he is. He’s probably as proud of his family as I am.’

‘I like it when you smile,’ James Andrew, his younger brother, chipped in. ‘You didn’t always.’

That almost cut the feet from under me. He’d never said anything like that before.

‘Didn’t I?’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought I was always jolly.’

‘No. Sometimes you were sad. Before Mum came back from America.’

That wiped the smile off my face. Had my marriage to Aileen been so bad that even my younger kids had noticed?

‘I had lots of things to worry me then,’ I said, to myself as much as to Jazz. ‘Now I’m not a chief constable any more I don’t have to look at serious stuff,’ the man who had spent his morning at a post-mortem added. ‘Now I can concentrate on happy things, like you three.’

‘And Alex.’ There’s something ferocious about James Andrew’s love for his older sister. She’ll never be without a champion as long as he or I are around.

I nodded. ‘And Alex.’ I drew Sarah to me and kissed her. ‘And Mum.’

‘How are we going to keep our secret,’ she asked later, ‘with you grinning like a Cheshire cat over every meal?’

‘Hey,’ I pointed out, ‘could be it has nothing to do with the baby. I am happy, that’s all.’

‘A week like you’ve had and you’re happy?’

‘I know. Fucking weird, isn’t it?’

I was still smiling next morning in my office in the
Saltire
building, when Andy Martin called and changed my mood . . . or to be completely accurate, when his executive officer called and told me that the chief constable was on the line. That’s what he said. Not, ‘Are you available to speak to the chief constable?’ just ‘The chief constable is on the line.’ As if refusal was not an option.

‘Andy,’ I said, when we were connected, not attempting to hide my irritation. ‘What’s up?’

‘I didn’t like the way we left things yesterday,’ he began.

‘Neither did I, but it is what it is. Now, what can I do for you?’

‘I’ve just asked Mann for a personal update on Hodgson. She took me through it step by step, and then she said that she needed to speak to you before she could go any further. She actually said that. I just blew up at her, Bob.’

‘You’re taking your life in your hands,’ I told him. ‘Lottie once entered a CID boxing night. It was men only but she insisted on fighting. She knocked her opponent out inside a round. The poor guy never had a chance. Now, tell me exactly what she said.’

‘She said that you’d suggested she find a phone that you’d seen in Hodgson’s car, and take a look at it.’

‘Correct.’

‘She said she’d done that and I asked her where it took her. That was when she said she’d have to get back to you before she could go any further. And that was when I blew up at her. This can’t go on, Bob. I made a mistake when I let you involve yourself; from now on it’s handled in-house. ’

I came close to blowing up at him, but I managed to restrain myself. ‘If you want to be that petty, chum,’ I growled, ‘that’s your privilege. But before I hang up on you, tell me exactly what Lottie said.’

‘She told me that she’d found the phone among the effects recovered, and she’s looked at it. She said there wasn’t a hell of a lot on it. The browsing history was clean and there was no email account attached to it.’

‘That’s odd for a start,’ I remarked.

‘Is it? Maybe all that Hodgson did was make phone calls.’

‘Was it a pay-as-you go phone,’ I asked, ‘or did he have an inclusive package?’

‘A Vodafone account, Mann said; thirty pounds a month. So what?’

‘Oh fuck,’ I sighed. ‘When did you stop being a detective? For that amount of money he’s paying for internet access, and if so, he’ll be using it. What else?’

‘The only thing she found on it were photographs. They were of various engines and boats, motor yachts mostly. One of them, the most recent in the sequence, she said, was very large. Could that be the boat you’ve been hired to find?’

‘I’d guess that it is. It sounds as if Hodgson photographed the vessels he worked on.’

‘Sounds like it,’ Andy agreed, grudgingly. ‘The only other images that Mann found were of the inside of a building. When I asked her what that was about, she said that she couldn’t comment without speaking to you first. And that’s when I blew up at her. ’

‘Bloody hell,’ I gasped. ‘What she told you was the literal truth. She doesn’t know any more than she told you. I didn’t know what was on that phone but I’d a bloody good idea what might be. Rather than guess, though, I kept my thoughts to myself until Lottie had recovered it and checked.’

‘I see,’ he murmured.

‘Yes, so do I,’ I said. ‘I see that you’ve made an arse of yourself and alienated one of your best detective officers. But,’ I sighed, ‘it’s my fault.’

‘How do you work that out?’ he asked quietly.

‘Because you’re making exactly the same mistakes I made as a chief. Andy, in the history of modern warfare there’s a reason damn few generals were killed. They had to stand back from the action and see the broad picture, not just the hot spots. It’s the same with the police service. A chief constable’s a director, not an executive. That’s where I got it wrong; now you’re doing the same thing on an even bigger scale.’

‘You flatter yourself,’ he retorted. ‘I wasn’t checking up on DI Mann, I was checking up on you. So, are you going to tell me what you would have told her, if I hadn’t forbidden her to have any more to do with you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll only speak to Lottie, for it’s none of your fucking business really. All you need to do is bask in the glory of the clear-up rate; it isn’t your job to create it.’

‘Effectively,’ he laughed, bitterly, ‘you’re telling me to apologise to her.’

‘Yes I bloody am,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t you think you owe her one?’

‘Probably,’ he retorted, ‘because I shouldn’t have created a situation where she felt she had two masters.’

‘Over to you, then,’ I told him. ‘Just one final piece of advice: do it yourself, don’t get your exec to make the call.’

Finally, I did hang up on him. I was feeling bad about Lottie Mann, but I was feeling worse about the future of the service to which I’d devoted too much of my life, putting it too often before the people I love.

One of my favourite sayings, one I will repeat at the drop of the smallest hat, is as follows, ‘The noblest of all dogs is the hot dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.’

I came upon it when studying the philosophy of a Canadian named Laurence Johnston Peter. The management theory that he defined is globally famous, yet he is not. Millions know of the ‘Peter Principle’, but most have forgotten the man after whom it was named.

Peter argued that anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging situations, until it fails. In human terms, he argued, the potential of a person for promotion is commonly based on their performance in their current position, leading to their rising to their highest level of competence and ultimately to the one beyond, the level of their own incompetence.

If I had spent more time studying management when it mattered, I would have realised much sooner that as a chief constable I was a classic example. I see it now, and with the benefit of that self-knowledge, I recognised that morning that so was Sir Andrew Martin.

That’s when I knew for sure that he’d never cut it as head of ScotServe.

I’d just been listening to a man who was out of his depth, and running out of the energy required to keep himself afloat. It was a matter of time before he drowned, or grabbed a lifebelt and was hauled out of there.

I hadn’t expected Lottie to call me, any more than I’d expected Andy to call her, so when she did ring, half an hour later, I reached a logical but erroneous conclusion.

‘He saw reason, did he?’ I asked.

‘Who?’ She sounded puzzled or a second. ‘You mean the chief?’ The pieces slotted together. ‘You know I’ve had a bollocking? He’s spoken to you?’

‘He’s spoken to me. We had a frank exchange of views. I told him he should apologise to you; I’m glad he’s taken my advice.’

‘He hasn’t,’ Lottie said. ‘My ears are still ringing from his one and only call.’

‘Then what the hell are you doing speaking to me?’ I exclaimed.

‘I’m not.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I am, but I dialled a wrong number. These damn phones; it’s too easy to auto-redial by mistake. But if I was speaking to you, I might want to ask you . . .’

‘Lottie,’ I warned her, ‘this is career-threatening stuff. You’re working for a seriously insecure man.’

‘And I’ve got a seriously unstable murderer to catch. I’ve had a look at Hodgson’s phone, like you suggested.’

‘I know. Andy told me what was on it and what wasn’t.’

‘What do you take from it?’ she asked.

‘It satisfies me beyond any reasonable doubt that Jock Hodgson was involved in the theft of the
Princess Alison
. I don’t even need to see the images of the building that your chief mentioned to know that they show the interior of Eden Higgins’ private dock on the Gareloch where the boat was kept.’

‘I can send them to you,’ she offered.

‘No you can’t. This might be a misdialled call, but if you email me photos it’ll be sackable. I won’t put you at that risk. Let me think aloud for a while.’

‘Think away,’ she laughed.

‘Okay.’ I paused to get some things in a row, then continued. ‘If I was running the Hodgson investigation, I’d be assuming that the dead man sent those images, and maybe gave other assistance, to a third party. The boat was normally crewed by two people. The other is a man called Walter Hurrell. Like Hodgson, he’s ex-Navy. However I wouldn’t waste time exploring whether he was part of the theft. If it had been a joint operation between the two of them, there would have been no need for the pics.’

‘Couldn’t the third party still have been involved?’

’No need: three would have been a crowd in the theft. Hurrell wasn’t a party to it; trust me on that. But,’ I added, ‘if I was investigating I would like very much to know whether Mr Hurrell has been to a DIY store lately to purchase a blowlamp.’

‘You think . . .’

‘The man isn’t only ex-Navy, Inspector,’ I told her. ‘He was Special Forces. My investigation would focus very strongly on him; I’d be looking for his DNA and fingerprints. If they weren’t taken for elimination purposes at the time of the
Princess Alison
theft, then Bridie Gorman’s boyfriend really plumbed the depths of incompetence in his investigation. I’d be finding them and looking for them to show up in Hodgson’s cottage.’

‘Couldn’t he have been there anyway, if they were crew colleagues?’ Lottie suggested.

‘It’s possible,’ I conceded, ‘but if they were concentrated in the vicinity of the body, that would be significant.’

‘Would you be hauling him in for interview?’ she asked.

‘First I’d try to establish his whereabouts at the time of Hodgson’s killing, and at the time of the break-in to his house. In his day job Hurrell is Eden Higgins’ minder; if he was off with the boss and can prove it on either or both of those dates, it’s an abortive line of inquiry. If he wasn’t, I might be having a chat with him, and trying to persuade a sheriff to give me a search warrant for his house to look for the laptop and other stolen items.’

‘Hold on, sir,’ the DI said. ‘If he’s close to Higgins, could he be involved?’

‘No,’ I replied, firmly. ‘Eden didn’t get to be a billionaire by being stupid enough to invite me to investigate a theft knowing that it might, that it would, lead me to other crimes in which he was involved.’

‘So why would Hurrell . . .’

‘I don’t know, and I’m not saying he did. I’m offering him to you as a suspect, that’s all. You might get lucky and find Hodgson’s ring in his house, but I doubt it. No,’ I concluded, ‘whoever did it, this is what I think happened. Hodgson was a suspect, because Hurrell wasn’t; that could make Hurrell the killer, but not necessarily. The first step that was taken was the theft of Hodgson’s laptop. Knowing what we do about his phone being clean says to me that the laptop didn’t give up anything either, so the killer went back and tortured him.’

‘Until he talked?’ Lottie asked.

‘Who can say?’ I replied. ‘But we haven’t found the boat yet, have we?’

‘You are sure his death is connected to the
Princess Alison
?’

‘Have you and Provan come up with anything else in the man’s life,’ I challenged her ‘that could have led to someone torturing him and then shooting him?’

‘No, nothing,’ she admitted. ‘He was an ordinary man with no bad habits.’

‘Other than involvement in a multimillion-pound theft,’ I pointed out. ‘There’s just one thing,’ I added. ‘My hunch, and please do take my hunches seriously, is that he talked before he died. In my experience, and I’ve seen a couple, one last year in fact, torture murderers don’t stop until they’ve got what they want, but once they have, then it’s goodnight. Hodgson only had one burned foot; that tells me he didn’t hold out long.’

‘So what can we expect to find, Mr Skinner?’

‘That I really don’t know.’

‘So we might find it and never realise,’ she suggested.

‘That’s possible,’ I admitted. ‘There’s only one other thing I’d do,’ I added, ‘if I was leading this hypothetical inquiry. I’d go through Hodgson’s credit card and bank card activity in the weeks before the theft of the
Princess
.’