Murder on the Second Tee (7 page)

She didn’t find it funny. ‘So I mustn’t be bossy in case I upset the Scots?’ Her voice caught.

‘It’s your job to give orders, but if you make men like McKellar think that you rate them, even if you don’t, they’re far more likely to come on-side. And if they don’t, they will make themselves seem bigoted.’

‘I’ll try. But I can tell he’s the type to bend the rules to get a result and justify himself by saying he’s old-fashioned. Not as bad as Inspector No, of course.’

‘At least you don’t have him to deal with any more. How did you find MacGregor?’

‘At first I didn’t like him. He’s chauvinist and patronising. But he was really helpful on the phone. Prepared to stick his neck out.’

‘He can be brilliant in court.’ He chuckled. ‘There was a murder case in which the deceased had been stabbed by one man then run over by another. Counsel for the man with the knife suggested MacGregor was wrong to say that the stab wound had been fatal. There was a moment’s silence. Then MacGregor picked up the knife, which was on the shelf in front of the witness box, and pointed it at the lawyer. “Mr Laverty, if I were to come across the court and stab you in the identical way, within five seconds you would be very, very dead.” It’s not often Craig Laverty’s stuck for words but his mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. And his client went down for murder.’

‘Well let’s hope we get someone in court for this,’ she said grimly. Then the phone rang. ‘It’s a bit late,’ she muttered as she reached for it.

‘Jamieson here.’ It was the divisional commander’s clipped voice. ‘That’s Inspector Fortune, I take it? I’ve had Lord Saddlefell bending my ear this evening so we’d better have a word. Nine am tomorrow. My office.’

Her heart sank. ‘Glenrothes?’ she asked, knowing she sounded stupid.

‘That’s where my office is, Divisional Headquarters. Goodnight, Inspector.’

‘And I thought today was bad. I bet he thinks I’ve been drinking,’ Flick said, then burst into tears.

* * *

‘Ma brains are in ma bum. It wis Hearts that put Celtic ootae the Cup.’

Baggo sipped his second pint of IPA beer as Sharon neared the end of her third vodka and coke. Half an hour earlier he had started the conversation on football, without reckoning on her encyclopedic knowledge of the history of East Fife FC, a team he had been only vaguely aware of. She had moved on to bigger and better teams, and required to be diverted.

‘Do you enjoy working in the Old Course?’ he asked as she drained the glass.

‘It’s alright.’

‘Do you get to do the rooms on the first floor facing the Old?’

‘Aye.’

‘The views must be wonderful.’

‘Aye.’

‘Did you do the room for the guy who was murdered?’

‘Aye.’

‘What are these bankers like?’

‘Like anyone else, I suppose. No’ perfect, ken whit I mean?’

‘No. How?’

‘Well there are these two poofs who share a bed, and they leave their mark, like.’

‘Yes. Tell me more.’

Sharon banged the table as she set her glass down. ‘Time for another?’

‘Same again?’ he hoped he was not wasting time and money.

‘And that Mrs Parsley,’ she whispered when he returned, ‘she’s no’ the devoted wife she’s made oot tae be.’

‘Really?’ He tried to sound casual.

‘There’s a man called Forbes along the passage from her. He’s supposed to be on his own, but this morning I found marks, ken, on his sheet. There wis a long hair, kinda gingery-blonde, on his pillow, and the pillow smelled of perfume – her perfume. Guilty, they call it. I notice these things, ken. I’d seen it in her room yesterday and had a wee fly sniff. It’s sort of flowery. And I liked the way they wrote the Gs of Gucci Guilty on the bottle. Do ye think she did awa’ wi’ her man?’

‘I don’t know. Someone did. Exactly when did you see this hair?’

‘Ho, you’re as bad as thae polis wi’ yer questions.’

‘Sorry, but it’s interesting. Did you tell the police this?’

‘Naw. Take me for a grass or something?’

It was time to move on. After a brief re-cap of East Fife’s problems over the last decade, the drinks were finished. Sharon lived at home in the town. Baggo offered to walk her back.

‘Naw. I dinnae need that. Ye may be a Paki, but ye’r a right fucking gentleman,’ she added. He took it as a compliment.

Chilled to the bone by a bitter wind off the North Sea, Baggo walked briskly back to the staff quarters. Cold, damp weather always made him miss the heat of Mumbai. Images of happy years spent there warmed him. He remembered his first girlfriend, a year older and the most beautiful person he had ever seen. They had done it only once, the evening before the Chandavarkar family moved to Britain. He had written to her but had received no reply. Suspecting that her father had found out, he waited with a mixture of dread and hope for his own father to ask him about her, but the silence had been deafening. After some months he felt relief, and was ashamed of that.

Then he imagined making love to Sharon and found the notion surprisingly appealing. She was not pretty, but there was a sexy provocativeness about her. A few months earlier his only long-term relationship had ended. The girl could not escape from her own difficult history and his working hours did not make for an easy home life. More upset than he had at first been prepared to acknowledge, Baggo had immersed himself in his cases, in particular the Bucephalus inquiry. As far as sex was concerned, it had been a while … As he tried to get to sleep, the duvet in his narrow bed wrapped round him, he felt uneasy and root-less.

‘It’s three minutes past nine.’ Jamieson’s opening remark dismayed Flick. Allowing for slippery roads, she had left plenty of time for the journey, but traffic had been unexpectedly heavy for a Saturday, probably due to Christmas shopping, she thought. There had also been an unscheduled stop to bring up her breakfast.

‘Sorry, sir,’ she said meekly.

‘How’s this banker murder progressing? Sit down for God’s sake.’

That was more promising. She looked at him, bald and red-faced, across his vast, empty desk. She could almost feel his bloodshot eyes assessing her. ‘It’s difficult, sir. We’re following every reasonable line of inquiry. We have to look at the bankers staying in the hotel, and already we’ve found one who might have been driven to murder by the deceased, who was very homophobic. There’s a lot going on in the bank: electing a new chairman, lowering the wealth threshold for clients …’

‘Right. As I said last night, I’ve had Lord Saddlefell on the phone and he’s not happy. Now, this is your first real test up here and I want you to understand a few things.’

‘Sir?’

‘When I decide whether I want someone from another force, I take the formal references with a pinch of salt. Too many people give glowing references to duffers just to get rid of them. I look at who they’ve learned from, and I see that Noel Osborne was your boss in Wimbledon. He was a great copper in his day. I know he went off a bit, but he got results. And he didn’t get them by sticking to the bloody rule book. I don’t expect you to stick by the rule book, and I’ll back you up as long as I can. If I’d thought you were a girl guide I wouldn’t have let you into my force, but you are going to have to be very careful with Saddlefell. He is capable of making a lot of trouble. As long as you’re investigating this bank you’d better do everything by the book – or not get caught. It’s your inquiry and I want you to get on with it, but though I’d like to, I won’t be able to back you if the shit really hits the fan. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she stammered, astonished and appalled.

‘Is there anything I should know at this stage?’

‘Well, sir, there’s an officer from London, SOCA, who’s investigating a big money laundering case involving the same bank. He’s undercover as a waiter in the hotel, and I’m afraid we might get in each other’s way. I told him that our murder takes precedence.’

‘So it does, Inspector, and thank you for telling me. Forewarned is forearmed, but don’t piss off SOCA unless you have to. Mind you, they might have had the courtesy to inform me. Now I have other things to do. So good luck and remember: don’t get caught!’

As Flick got up she saw that while the divisional commander was wearing his black uniform jacket, his trousers were brown tweed. In the car park she sat digesting what had been said and spotted him emerging from the main door, his jacket now matching his trousers. He drove away at speed.

* * *

‘Mr Osborne?’

‘Yes. Who’s that?’ Osborne sounded cross and sleepy and didn’t care. In his dream he had been skinny-dipping with Maria in a private pool, swimming like a dolphin and inflating her breasts by blowing into her nipples. The phone had spoiled his fun.

‘My name’s Mark Forbes, and I know you’ll want to see me. The earlier the better as far as I’m concerned and I’d like to fix a time.’ The voice was grand, with drawn-out vowels. It reminded Osborne of judges, of whom he had learned to be very wary. He checked his watch.

‘Quarter to ten,’ he said firmly. He had sat up till after midnight, poring over the dossier Saddlefell had sent him, and had no qualms about sleeping late.

‘Could you not manage a bit earlier? You’ll have a lot of people to interview.’

‘Quarter to ten. Your room.’ Osborne’s instinct to have the upper hand asserted itself.

‘Well if …’ Osborne ended the call then realised he did not know Forbes’s room number. He dressed and shaved quickly. He was not going to talk to all these bankers without a full cooked breakfast. He’d get the room numbers from Saddlefell later.

In the Sands Grill, his plate heaped with fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, black pudding and sausages, Osborne was in heaven. Not as greasy as a good greasy spoon meal, but what it lacked in quality it made up for in quantity. As he mopped up the last of the yoke with a forkful of black pudding, his stomach gurgled loudly. A spasm gripped him. He knew what was happening. His prawn vindaloo was on the move. He rushed out in acute discomfort.

* * *

Baggo had been unable to decide whether No’s indolence would overcome his greed. Would it be room service or restaurant breakfast? If he went down for breakfast, Baggo could access his computer and see what ‘homework’ was on it. He had promised the hotel manager that he would not exceed his powers and would respect guests’ privacy, but this had to be done. Feeling conspicuous, he had hung about the corridor, making sure the CCTV camera would not pick him up until No had left the room.

His staff access card got him in and the laptop was in plain view on the table. Baggo had called a colleague in London who had given him the words and figures No was most likely to use as a password, but after several attempts the computer remained locked. Baggo sat back and thought. There was a sergeant No had learned most of his tricks from, whose exploits he had described in tedious and repetitive detail. Thumper, he was called. Thumper, Thumper … Binks! Baggo typed in ‘thumperbinks’ and the computer welcomed him. Soon he was in the documents. A zip file named ‘BB’ looked promising, but contained an album of big breasts. Baggo smiled and told himself to get on with the job. All the files were named ambiguously so Baggo decided to put them all on his USB memory stick and sort them out later.

He had only just started this process when there was a frantic scrabbling at the door. Baggo seized the laptop and rushed into the bathroom. The shower curtain in the bath was closed so he went behind it and stood still, hoping that the computer would not make a noise. The light came on and Baggo heard the unmistakable sounds of a man who needed the lavatory very badly. Standing silently behind the curtain, barely daring to breathe, he hoped No had got there in time and would not need a shower afterwards.

* * *

Flick looked round the incident room. There were eight men and three women. Half of the men were older than she was; all were bigger. Some had faces hewn from stern granite. Whisky and harsh East winds had polished others to an angry red. Moncrieff and Robertson finished handing out mugs of coffee then leaned against the wall. The tight-lipped Scottish mutterings sounded to Flick like a distant gravel-grinder. She wished she could run away.

‘Alright! Attention!’ she shouted, conscious of her English accent. The faces didn’t alter but the gravel-grinding stopped. ‘I hope you’re all familiar with the information on the whiteboard. Is there anything new in this morning?’

Wallace stood up. ‘Yesterday evening I accompanied Mrs Parsley and Mr Eglinton to Dundee where they identified the body. Mrs Parsley was very tearful, and while Mr Eglinton’s a stiff upper lip type, I could tell he found it distressing.’

Flick said, ‘He had known Parsley since schooldays. Did either of them say anything interesting?’

‘No, ma’am. Almost nothing was said during the whole business.’

She was not surprised. ‘Is there anything from the lab?’ she asked.

Wallace replied, ‘Yes, but nothing surprising. There are no prints other than the deceased’s on the i-phone, the wallet, the ball or the putter. There are traces of human blood in the grooves of the putter face and in the manufacturer’s name at the back. The local inquiries have brought in nothing useful. There’s been little in the press, just the basic facts, no name yet. I asked them to put in the usual “any member of the public who knows anything” bit, but there’s been nothing so far.’

Flick cursed herself for not thinking about the press. Murders attracted more interest here than in London. She asked, ‘Have we got anything interesting off the deceased’s computer or mobile?’

‘Spider’ Gilsland stood, his appearance transformed. Hair combed, the feeble beard shaved off, he wore a clean shirt and cord trousers. With his big head and long, flapping arms, Flick could see how he got his nickname. His bony hands waved about jerkily as he talked. ‘I have his i-phone call records, ma’am, but they don’t mean much at the moment. He used a lot of initials and nicknames in his address book. It was on voicemail on Thursday night. There are four messages. Do you want to hear them?’ He held up the i-phone.

‘Yes,’ Flick said, hoping for something helpful.

The first was timed at Thursday at 21.12. The voice was female, slurred and could have come out of
Eastenders
, ‘Hugh, my darling, Tricia here. When are we going to have that drinky-winky you promised me?’

The next two had come in on Friday morning. At 07.31 a man with an accent from the Deep South called, ‘Webb speaking. I’m at Heathrow, just gotten off the red-eye and have a bunch of meetings in London. I’ll be in Saint Andrews this evening. We need to talk.’ Like all Americans he gave ‘Saint’ full emphasis.

At 08.12, ‘Good morning, Sauce! I don’t care about your hangover. Stir your stumps so you and Belinda can join me and Simon on the Eden. I’ve just booked a time at ten past eleven.’ Flick immediately recognised the plummy voice.

‘That was Mrs Eglinton,’ she said. She turned to McKellar. ‘Please check that she did make that booking and when she made it. Is there another one?’

Gilsland replied, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Timed at 16.18 on Friday, a rich, deep, male voice with African intonation said, ‘Mr Parsley. I want to talk about my bonds. Phone me, on this number as usual, tomorrow afternoon. I’m hunting in the morning.’

‘Do you have the number?’ Flick asked.

‘Yes, ma’am. I had to get it from the provider. In the address book that’s the number of “XPB”. I haven’t got any further yet.’

Flick wondered if Baggo might know who that was. ‘What about the computer?’ she asked.

Gilsland shrugged, his bony shoulders nearly touching his ears. ‘It’s full of business stuff. I couldn’t make anything of it. Oh, he had a Twitter account, too. His tweets were usually about TV programmes or sport.’

She shook her head. She could not understand intelligent adults who bothered with Twitter or Facebook. She asked, ‘Has di Falco anything useful to report this morning?’

Wallace replied, ‘When I spoke to him he was busy as a party of Japanese was checking out, but he had nothing for us.’

Flick said, ‘Has anyone heard any gossip, even if it’s only old wives’ tales? McKellar, can you help us?’

McKellar, whose eyes had been almost shut, started. ‘Well, ma’am, the murder’s the talk of the steamie, as we say in Scotland, but I haven’t heard anything interesting.’

‘Well keep your ear to the ground,’ she said. ‘Anyone else?’

Some shook their heads but most didn’t react.

Flick was determined to sound upbeat. ‘In the absence of something better to go on, I’m working on the assumption that the killer is someone connected with the bank, so I want to know what they were all doing late on Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday. I’ve prepared a list of the times each one claims he or she went to their room and stayed there for the night, and I want all of you to have a copy. This morning I want you to question hotel staff to see if they can support or contradict these accounts. I’m thinking particularly of porters, receptionists, waiters, including staff at the Jigger Inn. McKellar, will you organise that please?’

A twitch of his nose showed his surprise. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, not disrespectfully, then added, ‘And I could check the CCTV in the corridors too. Sergeant Wallace told them yesterday that we’d need it.’

Flick winced inwardly but ignored the implied rebuke. ‘Thank you, but I think that’s a job for Gilsland. Wallace and I shall re-interview the bankers. I want to find out how that bank works, and what’s been going on in it. If any of the hotel staff can tell you things they overheard, take a note, however trivial it may seem. I’ve asked the Met to let us know if any of our bankers have form, and I expect to hear from them today. Any questions?’

There were none. As the briefing ended her sullen team filed out, giving her an inkling of what Maggie Thatcher had been up against. She saw Wallace take McKellar’s arm as if he intended to say something to him.

Gilsland was one of the last to go. She called him over. ‘You’re looking smart today. Well done,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Between you and my mum I didn’t have any option, ma’am.’

‘I’m sorry about the wedding,’ she said.

‘I’m not really that bothered, ma’am. My mum is more upset than I am, but she can go round telling everyone I’m working on an important murder inquiry.’

‘Well let’s hope the CCTV cameras will help us,’ she said, wishing that the uniformed officers were more like Gilsland and di Falco.

* * *

‘Good morning, Mr Osborne, thank you for seeing me.’

Osborne nodded. He was surprised that Forbes, who had come across in the file as a complete bastard, did not complain about his lateness. By the time he had pacified his gut, sprayed himself with after-shave and obtained a list of room numbers from Saddlefell he was quarter of an hour late for his appointment. Forbes had to want something from him, simple as that.

In truth, Osborne was uneasy about his assignment. He could sense there was something funny going on in the bank. What that was he could only guess at, but it looked as if Parsley had been involved. Monmouth’s murder was a complete mystery, if murder it was, and as far as Parsley’s death was concerned, he was reduced to suspecting the spouse and as Thumper Binks always had, the last person to see the deceased alive.

Osborne sat at the table near the window, opposite Forbes. The man had cold, calculating eyes, like lawyers and serious criminals. ‘Well?’ Osborne said.

Forbes got up and went to the door. ‘We don’t want to be disturbed,’ he said. He walked slowly back to his seat, but did not sit down and leaned across the table so he was close to Osborne’s face. Speaking quietly, he said, ‘You are not here because you’re a brilliant detective. And you’re not a brilliant detective.’ He let that sink in. Osborne raised his eyebrows. Forbes sat down then continued, ‘You’re here because you want money.’ Osborne said nothing, thinking that Forbes’s mouth looked like a talking belly-button.