‘Understood.’ They heard Haddock pause. ‘You’ve been in there already, Gaffer, haven’t you?’ he ventured.

  ‘I haven’t put a foot over the door, Sauce, and that’s the truth. But I do know what they’re going to find. Don’t ask any more, okay? You don’t want to compromise either of us.’

  ‘Do you want to phone the chief yourself,’ the superintendent asked, ‘and ask him to make the contact?’

  ‘Fuck no, Sauce. Neil would wet himself. You do it, and do it now. I can hear sirens in the distance . . . these boys do like to let the world know they’re coming . . . and I don’t want to have to explain myself to a couple of junior plods, as they probably will be.’

  ‘Okay,’ the detective said. ‘I’m just wondering who I should send out there,’ he mused. ‘If we do need to have feet on the ground, whose should they be?’

  ‘They should either be yours or be attached to someone with enough seniority to get respect,’ Skinner replied. ‘If you’re asking, I can think of somebody who fits the bill.’

  ‘Tarvil?’

  ‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘It’s your decision but the person I mean has a much heavier tread than his.’

  Thirty-Nine

  ‘The Chief Constable’s office passed on your request, Detective Superintendent,’ Deputy Chief Constable Mario McGuire announced over the video link. ‘The chief has no problem with it, but he’s delegated the job to me. I speak fluent Italian and my Spanish is passable, so it makes sense.’

  Haddock nodded.

  McGuire grinned. ‘Between you and me, Sauce, of the two of us, Neil and me, I’ve always been the fixer. Even back when we were plods, when they called us The Glimmer Twins after the Rolling Stones, mostly we made joint decisions, but it was my job to get things done. He used to say I was a better communicator than him, but it wasn’t that, it was more that people found it easier to say “No” to him . . . apart from Olive, that is.’

  ‘Who’s Olive?’

  ‘His first wife; the one who died. I brought them together, you know. I was going with a girl from an insurance company at the time and I asked her if she had a mate who might make it a foursome with Neil. He was reluctant; he was always a bit shy, but on the night it was as if me and Magda weren’t there. When Olive went, I thought it might have broken him but Bob Skinner and I got him through it, us and his kids of course. I’m their godfather,’ he explained. ‘I couldn’t take Olive’s place, but I spent a lot of time with them after she went. Then Neil met Louise and the whole course of his life changed. She lived in a world that’s basically driven by ambition, and it rubbed off on him. People who don’t know, think of him as aloof but he’s not: private yes, precious no.’

  ‘How old are his kids now?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘Lauren’s twenty-one, at university. Spencer’s just about there too. That’s if he doesn’t get side-tracked by professional sport. He plays cricket; Scotland under eighteens. I’m trying to encourage him to go to Loughborough University, where he can combine sport and study. So, Sauce,’ he squared his shoulders and straightened in his chair, ‘what’s the pitch I have to make to the Catalan cops?’

  ‘In summary,’ the superintendent replied, ‘the Gavin Ayre homicide investigation has thrown up a link to an entity in Spain, a bank account from which one of the bills for the construction of the house in East Lothian was paid. The account holder is a man named Gilbert Land, allegedly a Canadian resident in Spain. The name by itself aroused suspicion, and we were able to establish very quickly with input from the Canadian High Commission that, like Gavin Ayre has proved to be, it’s a false identity. The Spanish bank has been co-operative. As in Scotland, large sums of money have been deposited from abroad and invested in a multi-million-euro property. We believe that Ayre and Land might be one and the same, but without visual confirmation, we can’t prove it. We hope to find that in the Spanish house, when it’s opened, as it will have to be. The Mossos d’Esquadra need to be alerted to that link between Ayre and Land, and the fact that Ayre’s been murdered, but they know already that Land’s identity is questionable.’

  ‘How do they know that?’ McGuire asked.

  ‘The Spanish media have been looking into him . . . following an anonymous tip-off.’

  The DCC winced. ‘Do I want to know which branch of the Spanish media?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Haddock murmured, his face dead-pan.

  ‘Shit. Now you understand why I’m the fixer. Is there anything else that I don’t want to know?’

  ‘You’re probably best to be unaware that a media representative checked out the property itself, and that as a result the Mossos are there now. They won’t be able to effect an entry without specialist equipment and, I believe, a warrant from a judge, but my understanding is that when they do get in a criminal investigation will begin and will link very quickly to ours.’

  ‘Therefore we need to be part of it? That’s the case I make to the Mossos commander?’

  ‘Yes, that there needs to be mutual cooperation. Spain gives us access and we do the same with them.’

  ‘Feet on the ground?’

  ‘Big feet, sir. I’m thinking DCI Mann. I know she isn’t part of the Ayre investigation, but she can be brought up to speed.’

  ‘Does Lottie speak Spanish?’

  ‘I doubt it, but that would be their problem, just as it might be ours to provide a translator for anyone they send here.’

  ‘Okay, Sauce. I’ve got all that. You are sure there’s nothing else that I don’t need to know?’

  ‘That’s all I know myself, sir.’

  ‘If I didn’t know better,’ McGuire ventured, ‘I might think that your informant might have done something that’s slightly illegal and didn’t want to involve you in it.’ He frowned into the camera before adding, ‘One more thing, Sauce, and this comes from both the chief and me. Why did you bring this directly to us? ACC Stallings is Serious Crimes’ line manager. Why have you broken the chain of command? Were you told to?’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ Haddock said, ‘I make my own operational decisions, whatever advice I might be given. In this case, I felt and still do that the chain needed to be as short as possible.’

  The DCC nodded. ‘Right answer, Sauce. It is too long and not only today; we appreciate that. ACC Stallings will be reassigned; from now on you report on all investigations directly to me. I’ll make the call and get back to you. While I do that, tell Lottie Mann to pack her sunscreen, and . . . get her uniform out of mothballs. In my experience the police in Spain aren’t big on plainclothes detectives.’

  Forty

  ‘We got out of there just in time,’ Alex said. ‘Rather than go back the way we’d come we took another route back to L’Escala. We were on the road for less than a minute when a Mossos patrol car went bombing past us going in the other direction. It had blues-and-twos full on even though it was open countryside and there was hardly any traffic apart from us.’

  ‘What do you expect will happen next?’ Dominick asked.

  ‘Pops reckoned that there was no way those guys would get into that house. Even if they had a ram in the car, he said, it would never get that door open. They would need special equipment, or they would need the keypad code.’

  ‘Which he had?’

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘It was the same as the code for Gavin Ayre’s house that Sauce had given him. It sounds as if the security systems were identical in both places. Meaning for sure that Ayre and Gilbert Land are, or were, one and the same.’

  ‘And Ayre is dead in Scotland?’

  ‘Stone ginger; his brain’s in a glass jar in Sarah’s pathology lab.’

  ‘Did your dad have any idea who that could really be in the house overlooking the canyon?’

  ‘None at all; I’m certain of it.’ She looked at him across the outdoor dinner table. Around the garden citronella candles burned, keeping the mosquitos at bay. Three places had been set, but only theirs remained occupied, Skinner having left for Girona as soon as he had finished the meal, which they had eaten in near silence.

  ‘He sure as hell did not want to talk about it tonight,’ Dominick observed.

  ‘No, and not just because he didn’t want us to know anything we don’t need to. I’m sure that he didn’t want what he saw in that house to get back in his head. I’ve never seen him so shaken. Christ, I’ve never seen him shaken at all. Should I be worried about him, do you think?’

  Jackson shook his head. ‘If what he saw was that gross, you should probably be relieved that he reacted in that way.’

  ‘Will he be okay tonight?’

  ‘If I thought he wouldn’t I’d have persuaded him to stay. But he’s still the toughest guy I’ve ever met. Okay, for the first time he’s let someone else . . . other than Sarah, maybe, or your mother . . . see a chink in his armour, but he’ll deal with that. He said that he expected another phone call and that it might be better if he was in Girona when it happened. I’d take that at face value.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Alex murmured. ‘Maybe just as well he’s gone,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t do this in front of my father.’ She rose from the table, pulled her ankle-length pale blue dress over her head, took four short steps towards the pool and dived in, naked.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ Dominick sighed. He stood, unbuttoned and discarded his shirt, and followed her.

  Forty-One

  ‘How are Alex and her friend?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Tanned, relaxed and very comfortable in each other’s company,’ Bob declared. ‘If you ask me, I’d say that I’ve never seen her as contented in all of her adult life. She’s not chasing anything any longer; when she was with Andy Martin or any of her other flings, she was always restless, never able to take any time out just to be herself. She’s content now, it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘And are you content? About her and Dominick, I mean? You know his back story better than anyone. Are you completely okay about the two of them together?’

  ‘They’re not together,’ he protested, ‘not in that way. You said it yourself, they’re friends.’

  ‘Granted, but don’t you think they ever . . .’

  ‘That’s their business, end of story.’

  ‘Have you ever asked her? Directly?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No, and why not? Because you know she can’t lie to you, and you don’t know how you’d handle it if she said yes.’

  ‘Bollocks! I’d be fine with it.’

  ‘You weren’t fine with Andy.’

  ‘That’s different. Anyway, they’re not. She told you so.’

  ‘Yes, but she could lie to me, if she chose.’

  Bob laughed, only to be interrupted by the sound of his entry system. ‘What the . . .’ he murmured. ‘Love, there’s someone downstairs. I can’t think who it is, but I’ll need to check it. Speak tomorrow.’

  He closed his laptop and crossed the open living space to the door. The evening light was almost gone. Enough remained for him to see a male figure, but the features were indistinct. ‘Yes?’ he said, into the active microphone.

  ‘Senor,’ a voice replied. As its owner moved closer to the street camera, Skinner saw dark eyes and a neatly clipped beard. ‘I am security for Senor Mateu. He is in Girona tonight and wondered if you are free for him to come up.’

  Skinner’s eyebrows rose. Manuel Mateu was the security minister in the Catalan Government, the acquaintance he had called to trigger the interest of the Mossos d’Esquadra in the Gilbert Land property in Riudaura. He was a smart politician and understood the value of a healthy relationship with the head of the autonomous region’s most influential media group. ‘He’s welcome,’ he told the minder. ‘You and the driver as well, if you wish.’

  ‘Thank you but no. We will stay on the street. You understand why.’

  He did: the pro-independence Mateu was generally accepted as the real power within the ruling Catalan party, a man who was happy to be leader-in-waiting, for the time being. As such he was potentially a target for the extreme Right nationalist faction that had been growing in Spain. Skinner pressed the buzzer that unlocked the door.

  He was in the lobby to greet the minister as he stepped out of the lift. Manuel Mateu was in his mid-forties, ten years younger than Skinner, of medium height, lean, tanned and with a black moustache. He had been a regional official at the time of the unilateral declaration of independence that had led to intervention by Madrid and the imprisonment of the Barcelona leadership. Mateu had been detained briefly himself by the Policia Nacional but had narrowly escaped prosecution, leaving him free to grow his influence and his personal power base. An economist by profession, his early career had included a few years in London with a merchant bank, making him the most fluent English speaker in his party.

  ‘Good evening, Bob,’ he said. ‘I checked with your office that you were still in Spain. I was pretty certain of that from the location of your call this afternoon but it was always possible that you had stepped straight on to your private jet and got the hell out of town.’

  Skinner smiled as he led his visitor to his sitting area. ‘The private jet’s in Italy, so that would have been a long step. Why would I have done that anyway?’

  ‘Possibly to avoid being detained as a material witness?’

  ‘A witness of what?’

  ‘Of whatever is in that house you said I should bring to the attention of the Mossos. You chose your words carefully: “A member of your staff had checked the place and become suspicious,” if I recall them accurately.’

  ‘The location of my call,’ Skinner murmured. ‘You traced it, Manuel.’

  ‘Of course we did; that’s automatic. ‘We don’t have a secret service as such, but we do protect our Catalan national security from threats at all levels.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. We do the same in Scotland, although we don’t regard London as hostile.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Mateu continued, ‘we both know that you were the InterMedia staffer who checked out that house. The fact that the commander of the Mossos had a call an hour or so later from your Deputy Chief in Scotland registering an interest in the same property, that suggests to me that you might know what my people will find when the judge allows them to go in there.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Skinner asked, blandly. ‘If you want a beer it’ll have to be Corona, but I do have a decent Albarino.’

  ‘Corona will be fine. You can skip the lime.’

  He crossed to the kitchen area, returning with two bottles of the Mexican beer, one with a wedge of lime in the neck. He handed the other to Mateu. ‘The most practical thing I can tell you is that the place appears to have the same entry and security system as a property in Scotland that belonged to a man named Gavin Ayre, whose murder is currently under investigation. The Mossos might want to check the entry code with them before they go knocking things down.’

  Mateu swigged his beer, a thin smile playing with the corners of his mouth. ‘Couldn’t you just tell them?’

  ‘Fuck off, Manuel,’ Skinner chuckled.

  ‘Who was he, this man? And how does he relate to the property in Riudaura?’

  ‘The investigating officers would need to tell you that. My role in this has been . . . let’s say peripheral. I’ve been something of a mentor to the SIO in Scotland; he still bounces things off me sometimes.’

  ‘Hence your reporter’s interest in the man named Gilbert Land? The owner of the Riudaura house?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Should the Mossos agree to Mr McGuire’s request to second an officer to the investigation? Should we send one to Scotland?’

  ‘Yes, they should. Has he given them a name?’

  Mateu nodded. ‘Mann. Detective Chief Inspector Charlotte Mann.’

  Sauce can still read my mind, Skinner thought. ‘I know her,’ he said. ‘A good choice. She tried to chuck me out of a crime scene once.’

  ‘Did she succeed?’

  ‘She might have if I hadn’t been her acting Chief Constable. Lottie is, as we say in Scotland, as tough as fuck. She once insisted on entering a police boxing night; the only woman on the bill. Flattened her opponent inside a minute.’

  ‘I’ll warn my people to treat her with respect. What about us having someone in Scotland?’

  Skinner shrugged. ‘Up to you.’ He frowned. ‘Why are you so interested in this, Manuel? Okay, I reached out to you, but I didn’t expect you to become so involved.’

  ‘You tripped a switch,’ Mateu replied. ‘As I told you, we have our own security apparatus. We cast an eye over ex-pats with residency in Catalunya even though we’re not part of the registration process. We’ve never been a major destination for foreign hoodlums . . . too cold, they all prefer the Costa del Sol . . . but we don’t want to become one. So yes, Gilbert Land was on a list of people whose movements we monitored. When my people heard that your reporter was asking about him, we stepped up our interest. We’re still waiting for confirmation of his identity from Canada.’

  ‘You should be talking to his bank.’

  ‘We are. So is a Detective Inspector McClair, I am told.’

  ‘Is she indeed? Noele’s on maternity leave, but she found the body of the Scottish victim. I guess she felt a personal connection, asked to be involved.’

  ‘But what would send her looking for Land through his bank?’

  ‘Again, that’s something you should ask Scotland.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll pass that on. I’ll make sure that Detective Mann is given a good reception and shown every courtesy.’ Mateu finished the remaining half of his Corona in a single swallow. ‘You’ll keep me in touch?’

  ‘With what?’ Skinner asked. ‘My former junior officers who’re now in charge of the magic fucking roundabout that is our Scottish national police service, they like to be seen to be their own people. They keep me at arm’s length . . . or they try to. I can understand why, for the same reason that the Girona Mossos are wary of InterMedia. We own the Saltire, the most influential newspaper in Scotland. They don’t want to piss off the others by being seen to be too close to us.’