Pray for the Dying (33 page)

Fifty-Seven

‘
Welcome back, Detective Inspector,’ Skinner said, with feeling. He jerked his thumb in Provan’s direction. ‘This little bugger’s been intolerable since you’ve been away.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Lottie chuckled. ‘He’s never been off the bloody phone. He’ll be wanting to adopt me next.’

‘Everything’s all right at home, is it?’ Her eyes went somewhere else for a second. ‘Sorry,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s none of my business and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine by me.’

‘Not at all, Chief, not at all,’ she replied. ‘I had a tough couple of days, but I’m okay now. Scott’s living with his brother out in Airdrie . . .  at least that was the address they gave when he made his court appearance this morning. He turned up at the house again on Saturday, but he was sober, and it was only to collect his clothes.’

‘Did you know that Sergeant . . .’

Her nod stopped him in mid-sentence. ‘Yes, I was told. Her husband got himself arrested for thumping her. I’d have put in a word for him if he’d battered Scott, but he must have decided that hitting her was less risky. Maybe she’s with him now. I don’t know and I don’t want to. Jakey’s come to terms with the fact that his dad won’t be back, and that’s all I’m worried about.’

‘Of course,’ Skinner agreed. ‘He’s the most important person involved. Right,’ he exclaimed, ‘if we’re all ready, let me explain to you what this is about.’ He smiled. ‘They thought it was all over . . .’ he chuckled. ‘But no, thanks to a large slice of luck, the game may still be on . . .’ He rose, stepped over to his desk, and returned holding a laptop, which he laid on the table. ‘. . . and those who don’t believe in miracles may like to have a rethink. That, lady and gentleman, is Byron Millbank’s missing MacBook, the place where his wife told Detective Superintendent Payne that he kept his whole life. Normally,’ he continued, ‘there would have been a team of experts huddled over it for a week, trying to work out the password. In this case Byron gave us an unwitting clue, when he said to Mrs Millbank that the chances of getting into it were the same as winning the Lottery.

‘So we had her rummage about among his personal things, and guess what she found? Yup, a payslip for a lottery season ticket.’ He opened the computer to reveal a slip of paper, with six twin-digit numbers noted on it. ‘There you are,’ he said, and slid the slim computer across to Mann.

‘Has anyone looked at it?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s all yours. I want you and that bright young lad Paterson to get into it, and see if you can find anything that doesn’t relate to the dull and fairly uneventful life of Mr Byron Millbank but to the rather more colourful world of Beram Cohen.’

‘What about me, Chief?’ Provan asked, with a hint of a rumble. ‘Am Ah too old for that shite?’

Skinner threw him a sharp look. ‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘But as it happens I’ve got something else in mind for you. I want you to get back on to your friends in Mauritius, and find the birth registration of Marina Deschamps. She’s thirty-two years old, so the probability is that it will be a paper record. Birth date, April the ninth, so you’ll know exactly where to look.’

‘Marina Day Champs? The last chief’s sister?’

‘Not quite,’ Skinner corrected him. ‘The last chief’s missing half-sister. There are things I don’t know about that lady, and I want to.’

‘Can Ah no’ just ask her mother?’

‘No chance. You do not go near her mother. Leave that to CTIS, Superintendent Payne’s new team. She says she doesn’t know where her daughter’s gone, but we’re tapping her phone, just in case. Like mother like daughters? You never know.’

Fifty-Eight

‘The chief seems in better form today,’ Dan Provan remarked, as they stepped back into the suite in Pitt Street that he had left the week before. ‘When Ah saw him on Thursday, when Ah wis closing this place up, he wis like a panda that discovered he’d slept in and missed his big date wi’ Mrs Panda.’

‘Why’s he interested in Marina Deschamps all of a sudden?’ Lottie Mann pondered.

‘How come you can say that and Ah cannae? Day Champs.’

‘Possibly because I have a wider outlook on life than you, and expose myself to other cultures,’ she suggested. ‘You’ve got no interest in anything that doesn’t involve crime, real or imaginary.’

‘Maybe no’, but Ah’m shit hot at that. Ah’ve thought about puttin’ ma name up for
Mastermind
.’

Beside him Banjo Paterson spluttered.

‘You can laugh, son, but tell me, how many murders was Peter Manuel convicted of?’

‘Eight.’

‘No, seven. One charge wis dropped for lack of evidence. What was Baby Face Nelson’s real name?’

‘Who was Baby Face Nelson?’

‘Eedjit. Lester Gillis. What was Taggart’s first sergeant called?’

‘Mike?’

‘Naw, he wis the second. It was Peter, Peter Livingstone.’

‘Enough!’ Lottie Mann laughed. ‘If they ever have a “Brain of Cambuslang” contest you might be in with a shout, but until then stop showboating for the lad. All these things happened before he was born.’

‘So did Christmas,’ Provan retorted, ‘but he knows all about that.’

He shuffled off to the desk he had adopted, and dug out the old-fashioned notebook that was still his chosen style of database. He opened it at the most recent entries and found the number of the Mauritian government. He keyed it in and waited.

‘Mr Bachoo, please, Registry Department,’ he asked. ‘Tell him it’s DS Provan again, Strathclyde Police in Glasgow, Scotland.’

Paterson grinned across at him. ‘You didn’t have any problem with that name,’ he said.

‘It sounds like a sneeze. Yes, Mr Bachoo,’ he carried on, without a pause, ‘it’s me again. Ah’ve got another request for ye, another registration Ah’m trying to trace. This one goes back thirty-two years, but Ah’ve got a birth date this time: April the ninth. The name of the wean . . . Ah mean the child, is Marina Day Champs. Could ye do that for me?’

‘Without difficulty,’ the official replied. ‘That period has not been computerised yet, and the records are kept on this floor. This time, could you hold on, please. Last week I was reprimanded for making a foreign call without permission.’

‘Aye sure. Sorry about that; your bean counters must be worse than ours.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothin’, nothin’. Ah’ll hold on.’

He leaned back in his chair, the phone pressed loosely to his ear, expecting more Bollywood music but hearing instead only the background chatter of an open-plan office. He glanced across at Paterson’s desk but saw that it was empty, and guessed that the DC and DI were pressing on with their task.

He passed the time by listing, mentally and chronologically, the fictional officers who had been Jim Taggart’s colleagues and successors, and the names of the actors who had played them. He was wondering, not for the first time, about the real relationship between Mike and Jackie, when he heard the phone in Mauritius being picked up.

‘I have it,’ Mr Bachoo announced, sounding pleased with himself. ‘The child Marina Shelby Deschamps, Mauritian citizen, was born in Port Louis on the day you mentioned and registered on the following day. The mother was Sofia Deschamps, Mauritian citizen, and the father, who registered the birth, is named as Hillary, with two ls, Shelby, Australian citizen. I could fax this document to you; my superior has given me permission.’

‘If ye would, Ah’d appreciate that.’ He scrambled through the papers on the desk, and found the Pitt Street fax number, which he read out, digit by digit. ‘Thanks, Mr Bachoo. Ah’m pretty sure that’ll be all.’

‘It was a pleasure, Detective Sergeant. As I believe you say, no worries.’

Provan smiled as he hung up, then added the name he had been given to his notebook. ‘Hillary Shelby,’ he murmured. ‘Hillary Shelby.’ And then he frowned, as another potential
Mastermind
answer popped out of his mental treasure chest.

‘Hillary Shelby,’ he repeated as he booted up his computer. ‘Now that name definitely rings a bell.’

Fifty-Nine

‘So what have we got here?’ Banjo Paterson asked himself, with his DI looking over his shoulder. ‘Standard MacBook screen layout. Let’s see where he keeps his email. Mmm, he’s got Google Chrome loaded up as well as Safari. Probably means he used that as his search engine. Let’s see.’

He clicked on a multicoloured icon at the foot of the screen. ‘Yes,’ he murmured with satisfaction as a window opened. ‘Big surprise, I don’t think; the Rondar mail order site is his home page. Let’s see what else he’s bookmarked. Okay, he’s got a Google account for his email.’

He clicked on a red envelope, with a two-word description alongside. ‘Byron mail.’

‘Auto sign-in,’ he murmured. ‘Lucky us, otherwise we’d have had to go back to the IT technicians to crack his password. His email address is Byron at Rondar dot co dot UK. Here we go.’

He inspected the second window. ‘That’s his inbox. He’s got three unopened messages . . . What the hell?’ He opened one headed ‘National Lottery’. ‘Oh dear.’ It was half sigh, half laugh. ‘The poor bastard’s lottery ticket came up last Wednesday; he matched four balls and won ninety-nine quid.’

He hovered the cursor over an arrow and the next message opened. It was from someone called Mike, confirming a squash court booking on the following Thursday for a semi-final tie in the club knock-out competition.

‘Lucky boy, Mike,’ Mann muttered. A wicked grin crossed her face. ‘Let me in,’ she told Paterson, leaned across him and keyed in a reply.
‘Can’t make it, have to scratch; good luck in the final.’
She hit the send button.

‘Should you have done that, boss?’ the DC asked, as she backed off.

‘Maybe not, but the guy deserved to know. Go on.’

He moved on to the last unopened message. The sender was identified as ‘Jocelyn’ also using the Rondar mail system. ‘The mother-in-law, as I understand it,’ the DI told him.

‘Mother-in-law from hell, in that case,’ Paterson replied. ‘Look at this.’

Mann peered at the screen, and read:

I have just received the latest quarterly management accounts. These show an operating loss of just under seventy-seven thousand pounds and make this the seventh successive quarter in which this company has lost money. Our auditors estimate that at this rate we will be insolvent by the end of the next financial year.

I have analysed the situation and have reached the inescapable conclusion that we have been on the slide since your father-in-law passed away. He and I always knew that the key to this business is not only what we sell but, as importantly, what we buy. We have to offer our customers attractive products at attractive prices while maintaining our profit margins. When Jesse was our buyer, we were able to do so very successfully. He was sure that when you took over from him, this would be maintained, but it is now clear to me that this confidence was misplaced.

I cannot allow this situation to continue, simply to sit on my hands and watch my company go out of existence. Son-in-law or not, I am going to have to relieve you of your duties and to declare you redundant. You and I both know that you are not suited to this line of work and never have been. So does Golda but she is too loyal to admit it. I intend to handle the buying function myself, with the assistance of my niece Bathsheba. When we are back in profit, Golda can expect to receive dividend income, but until then you are on your own.

‘Lovely,’ the DI said. ‘Byron Millbank doesn’t seem to have had a hell of a lot of luck.’

‘Neither did Beram Cohen,’ Paterson pointed out, ‘culminating in them both being in a cool box in the mortuary.’

‘Aye, but we’re not so lucky ourselves. This doesn’t tell us anything about Cohen, and that’s what we’re after. How about old emails? Could there be anything there?’

‘I’m checking that, but I don’t see anything. There’s nothing filed or archived, not that I can see. I’ve checked the bin and even that’s empty. He must have done that manually, the sign of a careful man.’

‘What about the rest of it, other than his correspondence?’

‘Gimme a few minutes. Please, gaffer.’ He looked up at her. ‘I don’t really work best with somebody looking over my shoulder.’ He smiled. ‘A mug of tea wouldn’t go amiss, though.’

‘You cheeky bastard,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m the DI, you’re the DC; you’re the bloody tea boy around here. However, in this situation . . .  how many sugars do you take?’

‘Me? None, thanks. Just milk.’

She left him in her room and crossed the main office. She glanced across at Provan, but he had his back to her and a phone to his ear. She shook the kettle to check that it was full, then switched it on. And watched. And waited.

As she did, her mind wandered to her shattered family. Scott had been remanded on bail to a future court hearing, and to its inevitable conclusion. He had shown some contrition when he had come for his clothes, but she had smelled stale alcohol on his breath, and that had been enough to maintain her resolve. There would be no way back for him, no way, Jose.

And for her? There would be nothing other than her career, and bringing up her son.
I will not be making that mistake again
, she told herself.
There are no happy endings; sooner or later fate will always kick you in the teeth
 . . . 
and very much sooner if your husband is an alcoholic gambler who was shagging another woman within the first year of your marriage.

The forgotten kettle broke into her thoughts by boiling. She made the tea, three mugs, one for Provan, stewed, as he liked it, distributed them and sat at her desk, waiting patiently for Banjo to finish his exploration of the dead man’s double life.

Eventually he did, and turned towards her. ‘Byron Millbank,’ he announced, ‘liked Celine Dion, Dusty Springfield, Black Sabbath, Alan Jackson, and Counting Crows, at least that’s what his iTunes library indicates. He loved his wife and child, respected his late father-in-law but had no time for his mother-in-law. That’s obvious from a study of his iPhoto albums. There’s only one photograph of her on it, it’s as unflattering as you can get and it’s captioned “Parah”, which I’ve just discovered is Hebrew for “Cow”.

‘He was a fan of Arsenal Football Club, not unnaturally, given where he lived. He had an American Express Platinum card, personal, not through the company. He had an Amazon Kindle account and his library included the complete works of Dickens and Shakespeare, the biography of Ronald Reagan and a dozen crime novels by Mark Billingham, Michael Jecks and Val McDermid.

‘He had an Xbox and liked war games, big time. His most visited websites were Wikipedia, Sky News, the BBC and ITV players, the CIA World Factbook, and a charity called Problem Solvers.’

‘Wow!’ Mann exclaimed, with irony. ‘How much more typical could this man have been? You’re just described Mr Average Thirty-something.’

The DC nodded. ‘Agreed. There is nothing out of the ordinary about him at all . . . apart from one thing. The charity: it doesn’t exist. And that’s where he does get interesting.’