Hour Of Darkness (24 page)

Forty-Six

‘There was a time,’ Sammy Pye said, as he looked at the white building through its slatted stainless-steel gates, ‘about thirty years ago, when this was the cutting edge of modernist architecture.’

‘If that was so, it’s got a bit blunt over the years,’ Sauce Haddock observed. ‘That gate’s never thirty years old.’

‘No, it isn’t. It looks fairly modern. From Mario McGuire’s description I was expecting something solid. Let’s see if the doorbell works.’

In fact, there was no bell, only a buzzer, with a camera above. He pressed and they waited, Haddock muttering, ‘One quick spray of a paint aerosol and that’s fucked.’

‘Smart people put a layer of cling film over the lens,’ the DI countered.

‘Yes?’ A male voice came from the speaker grille.

‘Police,’ the DS said, holding up his warrant card for inspection.

‘Put it closer to the camera, mate.’

He did as he was asked.

‘What brings you here?’

‘A murder investigation,’ Pye snapped, ‘so open the gate, please.’

‘I don’t know if I will. This family’s got no reason to like you guys.’

‘To whom are we speaking?’

‘Derek Drysalter.’

‘And this is your house?’

‘My wife’s and mine, yes.’

‘It’s also the registered address of Peter Hastings McGrew, a life sentence prisoner released on licence.’

‘So what?’

‘So have you any idea what “on licence” means? If not, then get the door open, or you’ll find out.’

‘Hastie’s not here.’

‘Doesn’t matter, open up . . . please.’

The background crackle of the speaker stopped, and the light above the camera went out. A few seconds later the steel gate slid open, and the two detectives stepped into the grounds.

A long driveway led up to the house; by the time they reached the front door, it had been opened and a figure waited there, not a man, but a woman. Pye had done his homework and knew that, once, she had been a model; twenty years on she had retained a certain grace, but added two or three sizes, emphasised by the a black onesie that she was wearing.

‘I’m Alafair Drysalter.’ It sounded more of an announcement than an introduction.

‘DI Pye, DS Haddock.’

‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

‘Thank you.’

She stood aside for them and then ushered them through to a huge galleried living area, with a glass wall and two centred patio doors that opened out into a garden boasting a small swimming pool. It would have enjoyed a fine view up Blackford Hill, Haddock reckoned, but for a line of tall leylandii.

Derek Drysalter was waiting for them there, glaring as they entered. The former footballer had gained much more weight than his wife, and had given up the fight against male pattern baldness, shaving his remaining hair close to his skull. He was standing, but supporting himself on a Malacca cane with a silver handle.

‘Darling,’ his wife said, ‘I can handle this on my own. Unless these gentlemen want you here, why don’t you go and surprise Peri by picking her up from school. You know the bus from Mary Erskine can be a bind, and she does have the Olly Murs concert tonight. Is that okay, Inspector?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it’s fine by us,’ Pye replied, fixing his eyes on the man, and his cane. ‘Do you have a mobility problem, Mr Drysalter,’ he grinned, ‘or is that a weapon?’

‘My second knee replacement,’ he answered, unsmiling, ‘a month ago. I’m only just back on my feet.’

So you won’t have been walking upstairs at Caledonian Crescent
, Haddock thought,
far less helping to carry a body down in a trunk.

‘I’m okay to drive, though,’ Drysalter added, as he headed towards the hallway, with a careful shuffling gait. ‘My car’s an automatic.’

‘Now,’ his wife said, briskly, as he left, and as they took seats on a long curved sofa facing the garden, ‘what’s all this about? A murder inquiry? Really, guys, I thought those days were long gone. Hastie did what he did and he paid the price, more than he should have, in the circumstances.’

‘Who says we’re here to talk about your brother?’ Haddock shot back.

‘What else would it be?’

‘It could be a couple of things,’ Pye said. ‘For example, there’s the matter of your father’s death. That was investigated at the time and no conclusion was reached.’

‘Yes there was,’ she exclaimed. ‘The procurator fiscal decided that it had been a tragic accident.’

‘Actually, he didn’t. He decided that accidental death was a possibility. Alongside that, he had no solid evidence to proceed against anyone. I read the investigation summary before we came here. The established facts were that your father’s agency carers left him asleep in his powered chair and went off to the kitchen for a break. When they came back they found both him and the chair in the hydrotherapy pool. There was nobody else in the house at the time.

‘Perry Holmes having been what he was, obviously the carers were treated as suspects, but they had impeccable records, and the stuff that the investigators found in the kitchen, dirty plates, et cetera, tended to support their story. The building was secure, and there were no signs of forced entry; the caring agency worked in shifts, and there was only one set of keys to the premises. In fact there were only two sets in all and you had the other one.’

‘Fine,’ Alafair snapped. ‘And I was at home when it happened, miles away from Dad’s place. Derek wasn’t that long out of hospital after his hit-and-run, and we had friends for dinner to celebrate, one of Derek’s Scotland teammates and his wife.’

‘High-profile witnesses, no doubt about that. So, a machine malfunction was the only feasible solution, since your father was completely paralysed and couldn’t have driven himself into that pool even if he had been suicidal . . . which he wasn’t since on the day of his death he’d called his bookie and put ten grand on the favourite for a big race that was due to be run in three days’ time.’

Pye paused. ‘I can see why the fiscal went with the possibility of an accident. And I can even see why the investigating officers were happy to accept that conclusion. But there were far more who weren’t, including a not long retired detective, Superintendent Tommy Partridge.

‘He spent much of his career trying to put your dad in jail, and he wrote a book about him after he was dead. I’m in the process of reading it. He claimed there was an anomaly. He claimed that your father’s house had security that included cameras all around the place and movement sensors. A month before he died, you reported that it was faulty and that you’d shut it down. The firm that monitored it tried to make an appointment to repair it, but they couldn’t come up with a date that suited you.’

‘So?’ she retorted. ‘Derek was in hospital at the time. He was my top priority.’

‘Tommy Partridge thought that a man called Tony Manson was your top priority at the time, although he never put that in his book.’

‘Then how would you know that?’ she snapped.

‘Mr Partridge told me,’ the DI replied. ‘I spoke to him this morning. He has a theory and I’m going to put it to you. He believes that when Hastie, your brother, went to prison, he was afraid that since he wasn’t around to manage the criminal side of your father’s business, and protect him in the way that your Uncle Alasdair had done, he was vulnerable, both to his rivals, and to the police.

‘With asset seizure looming on the horizon, he decided that the old man had become a liability, and that he had to go. The swimming pool accident, so the theory goes, was his idea and you set it up, probably through your gangster on the side, Tony Manson. Old Tommy spent years trying to prove that, but the fiscal didn’t want to know.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Alafair sneered.

‘Me neither,’ Pye admitted, ‘but if Tommy had discovered what I now know, that you paid your father’s previous carer, Vanburn Gayle, a serious sum of money as a so-called bonus and found him a place on a nursing degree course down in London, then the prosecutor might have taken a very different line.’

He was staring hard at the woman as he finished. After a while she met his eyes.

‘Then,’ she whispered. She continued, more loudly. ‘That was then and this is now. Vanburn was paid a legitimate bonus from a legitimate source. Anyway, why would I pay him off?’

‘Because he would never have left your father alone?’ Haddock suggested.

‘Supposition,’ she protested. ‘Anyway, the fact is that Derek and I were here, having dinner, when my father died, and you could never come close to proving that I gave my keys to anyone else.’

‘Because Manson’s dead?’ the young DS murmured.

For the merest fraction of a second Alafair might have been about to betray herself with a nod, but if she had she mastered the voluntary reflex, and contented herself with a cool stare back at him. ‘Really, sonny,’ she sighed, ‘you can do better than that.’

‘Until very recently we might have,’ Pye said. ‘You weren’t Tony’s only woman. He had another on the go; when your father went into the pool and the bubbles stopped coming up, the pair of them were on a Mediterranean holiday together.

‘Her name is Bella Watson, and if you know anything at all about your own family history . . . and I’m sure you know everything . . . you’ll be aware that the Holmeses pretty much wiped hers out, one way or another. You couldn’t get to her, though, not as long as Manson was alive. When he wasn’t she went back to her maiden name and moved into a place that was bought for her.’

He paused, looking for another reaction, but he saw none. ‘She probably thought she was safe there,’ he went on, ‘but fate can be a real bastard. By a sheer accident, not long before he was released from prison, Hastie was given a clue to her whereabouts, and shortly after he was released, somebody stabbed her to death and put her body in the Firth of Forth.’

‘Well, it wasn’t Hastie,’ she exclaimed. ‘I can tell you that.’

‘We know that. Physically he couldn’t have inflicted the injuries that killed the woman; he doesn’t have the strength in his hands.’

‘He doesn’t have the strength anywhere,’ she retorted. ‘He’s in a nursing home. He went into our limo hire business a couple of weeks after he got out. He has to show the probation people that he’s working, and he decided to get involved with that as a starter. He’d only been there a few months when he had a funny turn; he was taken to hospital from there and he’s been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Go on; go and check if you doubt me.’ Her face twisted into something very unattractive. ‘And they said the Watson family was hard done by,’ she exclaimed.

‘Yes, they did,’ Pye agreed, ignoring the irony, ‘and they still do. Your brother might be out of commission, and your husband too, but you’re a big strong woman, and I’m sure Hastie could have found you a helper from his hospital bed. I’m going to require a DNA swab from you, Mrs Drysalter, and your fingerprints . . . for elimination of course,’ he added. ‘DS Haddock has all the kit. We can do them here, and if we hurry, we’ll be done before your daughter gets home. If not, and you have to explain, I’m sure the story will give her bragging rights at Mary Erskine for a long time. You know what kids are like. You used to be one, after all.’

Forty-Seven

Friday was the day I’d meant to do something about the decision I’d reached while Sarah and I were in Spain. I had faced a straight choice: embrace the future and shape it to my will, or look to maintain as much of the status quo as I could. Either way would have to be best for my family, among whom I included Sarah, for me, and for the police service, in that order.

I knew how I’d jumped and I was sure it would please at least two of those, and maybe all three.

It was the day I was going to tackle it, but it was sidetracked, because I found myself up to my oxters . . . that is, my armpits, to those who don’t speak Scottish . . . in events that ran pretty quickly beyond my control.

I’d been at my desk for just over an hour when Sandra knocked on my door and stepped into my room without waiting for an answer. I was with my deputy, Bridie Gorman, at the time, talking about the practicalities of the handover to the new unified Police Scotland, or rather its impracticalities, as far as Bridie was concerned, so neither of us minded the interruption.

‘I’m sorry, sir, ma’am,’ Bulloch said, ‘but you did say that when this came back you wanted to see it right away.’ She handed me a package, about the same size and shape as the one Maggie Steele had sent through from Edinburgh.

I thanked her and told Bridie that it concerned a sensitive matter that I had to deal with on my own. I could tell that she was miffed that I didn’t trust her enough to share, but I decided to apologise later.

I tore the package open and found the Mackenzie HR file, and an added bonus, a second envelope containing a handwritten note from Arthur Dorward . . . it couldn’t have been from anyone else; his style is unique.

You asked me to dust the first entry document in this extensive file for fingerprints, and to run comparisons of all the results through the national fingerprint library. You did so, in your usual cryptic and enigmatic ******* [his asterisks, not mine] way without giving me any clue about who I was ******* looking for. As usual, you assume that I can work blindfolded at one hundred per cent efficiency. As usual I have proved you right.

From seventy-three fingerprint traces in total, I’ve managed to find three matches in the library. All three relate to individuals whose prints are held for purposes of elimination, and not as convicted persons.

Not unnaturally, one of those sets is your own. Jesus Christ, Chief Constable, will you ever learn to wear disposable gloves? Another belongs to one David Mackenzie, currently, as I am advised, a detective superintendent in Edinburgh. Since the document is his employment application, that’s hardly a surprise. The third and final set, left thumb, partial left palm print, right thumb and right index finger, belong to the recently retired Assistant Chief Constable Max Allan.

I have no idea what any of this means. Maybe one day you’ll tell me, maybe you won’t, but whatever, you can go to court on it.

Arthur D

Was I surprised? Was I hell. Max had professed little knowledge of Mackenzie’s background to Dan Provan, and yet he had told Tom Donnelly that he was the investigating officer when the boy had chucked the chips at his uncle.

I thought about sending the file back to Arthur and telling him to dust every entry looking for Max’s prints, but that really would have been pushing my luck. I reckoned that I had enough to go on, so I left it at that. Instead I called the head of Human Resources, direct.

‘Chief Constable here,’ I said; I was thinking too hard to exchange pleasantries. ‘I want to see the HR folder on ACC Max Allan. I know he’s retired, but if you tell me that you’ve destroyed it I won’t be happy.’

‘Then you can relax, Chief,’ she said. ‘We’ve just finished processing his pension, and because of his rank, it came to me to be signed off. His file’s still in my office, awaiting return to storage. You’ll have it in five minutes.’