‘It might be the other way around,’ the prosecutor replied. ‘I read in this morning’s Herald that you’ve been instructed by Chaz Baker. That’s going to take up a lot of your time, so I just thought I’d say that I can be flexible in scheduling the Fleming case if it helps you.’

  ‘How flexible?’ she asked.

  ‘I can either call it quickly or kick it into the long grass for a while.’

  She frowned, mentally assessing her workload. ‘Could you schedule it for Thursday morning?’ she ventured.

  ‘No problem. Do you simply want to enter a plea or proceed to disposal? I’m not going to press for a custodial sentence. Your client’s a popular local man, descended from a Lanarkshire legend, and his record is spotless.’

  ‘Subject to final instruction,’ she replied, ‘he’ll be pleading guilty. You know about the famous ancestor?’ she added.

  ‘Oh yes. Legend isn’t a word I used lightly, but Sir Mathew Fleming certainly was one. He led a very colourful life. He wasn’t a man to mess with either; your client seems to have inherited that quality.’

  ‘He’s not the only one,’ Alex chuckled. ‘Johnny Fleming’s a distant cousin of mine, and thus of my father.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Black exclaimed. ‘Sir Mathew had a reputation as an investigator too. There’s a story involving murder, conspiracy and an innocent man going to the gallows. He uncovered the truth, they say. See you in court on Thursday morning.’

  ‘Yes, I will. Thanks for your help, and thanks for that story too. I’d like to think that history might be about to repeat itself, but without the unfortunate outcome for the innocent man.’

  Thirty

  ‘You’re a hard woman, Sarah,’ Bob Skinner grumbled, as he climbed into the passenger seat of his wife’s off-roader in the southern car park of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, after making his way silently past a group of photographers who had been waiting for his departure. ‘I had about two hours’ sleep in that place last night. Jesus, but it’s noisy.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have slept any better at home,’ she assured him. ‘The kids would have been looking in on you to check that you were all right.’

  ‘How much do they know about this?’ he asked, as she drove off.

  ‘The boys know all of it,’ she replied. ‘One of Mark’s friends texted him a link to YouTube. He showed it to James Andrew, but happily he had the good sense to keep it from Seonaid.’

  ‘Are they okay about it?’

  ‘More than that: they’ve got serious street cred out of it with their pals. They were all impressed by you anyway, but now the legend of Bob Skinner has been cracked up another notch.’

  He smiled. ‘It’s strange that you should use that word. I’ve just heard it from Alex too, in another context. How’s the press coverage this morning? I haven’t seen a newspaper.’

  ‘Everyone’s catching up on the Saltire . June Crampsey released still images from the Webster woman’s video and all the other papers are using them.’

  ‘I know. She called me on my mobile . . . it was undamaged, by some miracle . . . just after you left last night, to get my approval. Xavi called too; as I expected, he was out for Lennox Webster’s blood, but I calmed him down. I suggested that if she’s that fucking ruthless he should ask June to transfer her to the parliamentary staff. He laughed at that and said he would.’

  ‘You’re being too magnanimous,’ Sarah said. ‘I’d have been happy to see her canned. That man could have killed you, yet she kept quiet, with her phone on video.’

  ‘She and I will have a further chat about that,’ he promised, ‘but let it lie for now. What are the media saying about it? Are they speculating about motive? Have the police named Grigor?’

  ‘Hah,’ Sarah chuckled. ‘The Solicitor General’s taken charge, it seems. He was on the TV news last night. He’s all over the story, soaking up the publicity and the glory. He named your attacker all right, but under his real identity, Valentin Afonin. He’s even issued arrest photos from Russia, along with details of his convictions there.’

  ‘He hasn’t been linked to Dimitri Rogozin?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘De Matteo must have been asked what it was all about, surely?’

  ‘Yes,’ she confirmed, ‘he was. He said the assumption was that it was a mugging that went wrong for the mugger.’

  Skinner laughed out loud. ‘And the media bought that?’

  ‘Are they going to call the Solicitor General a liar?’

  ‘He is a bloody liar! Why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘Do you want the truth out there?’

  ‘I don’t know what the truth is. The chances are that the guy was trying to get even for our disagreement on Sunday, no more than that. But I meant what I said to Sammy Pye; I would like to be sure that his boss, Rogozin, didn’t set him on me to send a warning to Alex.’

  ‘And if he did?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘If he did, if I was sure that he did . . . he’d better leave the country too.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Bob,’ she murmured, as she turned left at traffic lights on to the Wisp. ‘It makes me nervous.’

  ‘Relax, love, I’m not saying I’d do anything physical to him, but I know that if I put my mind to it I could find ways of making him very unwelcome here. For a start there’s his odd relationship with Grandpa McCullough. I suspect that if I shone a light on that, Cameron might not like it. That might make him see Rogozin as the liability that I am sure he is.’

  ‘What makes you sure?’

  ‘I did some Googling on those two last night, during my sleepless hours. The story was that they knew each other through both having interests in the leisure industry, and that when he took over Merrytown, Rogozin brought Grandpa in on the deal, in case the football authorities didn’t fancy him as a controlling director of a club. Sounds plausible but there’s no reason why they should have. Rogozin has no criminal convictions in Russia or anywhere else. His business success is down to his own foresight and efforts, and didn’t involve putting guns to old ladies’ heads to force them to sign over shares in oil and gas companies.’

  ‘So why bring in McCullough? Is that what you’re asking yourself?’

  Skinner shook his head. ‘No. I’m wondering whether it happened the other way around. Did Grandpa bring Rogozin in on the takeover to keep himself out of the spotlight?’

  ‘You could always ask his wife when you meet her,’ Sarah suggested.

  He sighed. ‘Yes, I need to do that. We need to talk about our son.’

  ‘Do you?’ she murmured, her eyes set on the road ahead.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, quietly.

  ‘For almost twenty years,’ she replied, ‘Mia made all the decisions about your son’s life, because you didn’t know that he existed. Okay, now you do, but does that mean you need to be involved? She’s a rich woman now, thanks to her marriage. She doesn’t need your resources.’

  ‘It’s not about resources, is it?’ he protested. ‘He’s my son. It’s about blood. Yes, love, you’re right, I could stand back from him. I could say to Mia, “You’ve raised him for all those years without me, so just you carry on.” But look what she did on her watch; she let him take a path that led him straight to the Young Offenders Institution. Do you think I should forget about that? Do you think I should abandon him to the influence of his unscrupulous mother and a stepfather who’s either the most misunderstood man or the most successful criminal I’ve ever met?’

  ‘I’m not saying that. I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking a question, that’s all.’

  ‘Would you resent Ignacio becoming part of our family?’ he countered.

  ‘Not for one second, I promise you. He’ll be welcome any time . . . but that’s assuming he wants to be part of it. Bob, what I’m leading up to saying is that you can’t suddenly explode into the boy’s life and expect your word to be law. If you and Mia are going to be jointly involved in guiding him from now on, you have to be prepared to compromise, both of you. If you can’t do that . . . and you don’t have a great track record in that respect . . . maybe you should stand back.’

  He smiled. ‘I hear what you’re saying. I have to be diplomatic, I know.’ He glanced at her. ‘My big hope is that Alex can be my secret weapon. She was involved in organising Ignacio’s defence and she’s built a relationship with him since he’s been inside. If I can make her his role model, that’s the best way forward, and that’s what I’ll say to Mia when we meet.’

  ‘You might want to say it to Alex first,’ she suggested.

  ‘Of course I will, but I know she’ll be up for it. I may be getting this wrong, but I feel she needs a strong connection in her personal life, but not romantically. She hasn’t said as much, but the second break-up with Andy Martin destroyed her confidence in her ability to sustain a relationship. She’s past thirty now, resolutely single. Yes, she loves her brothers and her wee sister, and she’ll love the new one she’s going to have in a couple of months, but she’s more of an auntie to them than anything else. Ignacio will be good for her.’

  ‘How will Mia feel about that?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Strangely enough, I think she’ll be as enthusiastic as me. She likes Alex and she’ll welcome her input.’

  ‘And her husband?’

  ‘When I want his advice,’ Bob retorted, ‘I’ll ask for it. His daughter’s in jail, just like my son. It’s the one thing he and I have in common.’

  He reached out and patted her arm, gently. ‘If I ever wrote an autobiography . . . which I won’t . . . it wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit within it that I am a complete fuck-up as a parent.’

  ‘No,’ she protested. ‘I know four kids who would disagree with that. You haven’t been a parent to Ignacio yet, so the jury’s still out on him.’ She laughed. ‘Fuck-up as a husband, yes, but that’s not the issue.’

  ‘Fuck-up as a detective too,’ he grumbled, with a light grin on his face.

  ‘You’re not a detective any more,’ she pointed out. ‘But what brought that on?’

  ‘I have this nagging feeling that I’m letting my daughter down,’ he confessed. ‘She’s put her professional credibility on the line with this man Baker, because she’s convinced herself of his innocence. I want to help her, I’m desperate to help her, but I spent a lot of last night reading and re-reading the police report but I just cannot see the way.’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t a way,’ Sarah suggested quietly.

  ‘There has to be,’ Skinner insisted. ‘If her faith is going to be vindicated there has to be.’

  ‘And your faith in her?’

  ‘By extension, yes.’

  ‘That means that you believe in Baker’s innocence too.’

  ‘Goddammit yes, it does,’ he conceded. ‘I’ve met the man, I’ve listened to the man, and for all the report says he’s guilty, I find myself setting aside all my training and experience and coming down on his side. But,’ he sighed, ‘when it comes to proving it I’m stuck.’

  He shifted in his seat as she turned right at traffic lights.

  ‘The case against him is comprehensive. She was strangled with his belt, her blood was found on his clothing, his prints on her phone and he was at the place she died at the time she died. Rock solid, but in the absence of a witness to the killing it’s circumstantial. Now you can undermine a circumstantial case by demonstrating an alternative possibility . . .’

  ‘Such as?’ she asked.

  ‘Place another person at the scene; that would be a good start. Trouble is the crime scene team have scoured the place and the only people they can put there apart from Annette and Chaz are Paco Fonter, Sirena Burbujas, Cisco Serra, Cope the concierge and Elsa Golota, the cleaner, who found the body. The husband was out of the country when it happened, and the two agents were in London and Geneva respectively. There isn’t a trace of anyone else. Ouch!’ he winced, as the car hit a rut and the shock reached his cracked rib.

  ‘You see my frustration,’ he went on. ‘Our client might be innocent, but it’s that rare situation where the Crown doesn’t actually have to prove his guilt. All it has to do is satisfy the jury that nobody else could have done it.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ she said, ‘but couldn’t you go at it from another location, from the training complex?’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘The bloodstained garment was found there. If Chaz really is innocent they were put there. Could there be a trace, I don’t know, CCTV, a register showing who was in the complex at the time?’

  He nodded. ‘In theory, although I doubt that anyone would put a security camera in the laundry room. As for a register of who’s on the premises, that’s a health and safety standard these days, but what it’s most likely to do is prove that Chaz Baker had the opportunity to dump the stuff himself. Add on the fact that any frame’s been put together very effectively. I don’t see the perpetrator signing his name to it.’

  ‘Dammit,’ she muttered, eyes ahead as she took a roundabout, ‘you’re right, on all counts. We have a register in the office. When it comes to forgetting to sign it, I’m the worst offender, but nobody ever pulls me up over it.’

  She drove on for a while, in silence, until they had joined the A1 and were past the junction with the Edinburgh bypass. ‘Wait a minute,’ she whispered as a smile spread across her face. ‘There might be . . . It’s an outside chance but worth pursuing. You know that the SOCOs found powder traces in Annette’s en suite. They were near her cosmetics so nobody got too excited, but a sample was sent for analysis. So was the victim’s blood.’

  Skinner straightened in his seat, eyes brighter than before. ‘There was nothing about that in the police report to the fiscal,’ he said.

  ‘Sammy probably didn’t think it needed including, otherwise he’d have waited for the test results. They came back from the lab yesterday afternoon. The powder wasn’t talcum, oh no, it was good quality cocaine. But Annette’s blood sample showed no trace of drug use. Do you see where I’m going with this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bob exclaimed, ‘I surely do. Did Sammy and Sauce take a sample of Baker’s blood for analysis? I saw no record of it in the police file and Alex has never mentioned that being done. How long does cocaine stay in the blood stream?’

  ‘Three days, give or take, that’s received wisdom; but when the stuff is metabolised it leaves a by-product, benzoylecgonine. That can stay in the system for a month.’

  ‘Better and better. Alex needs to have a sample of Baker’s blood sent for testing soonest. If it’s clean, it raises the question, whose was the Colombian marching powder? It wouldn’t clear him, not by a long way, but it would be the first step to establishing the reasonable doubt we’re going to need.’

  ‘And if it isn’t clear?’ Sarah ventured.

  ‘Then Chaz may have to get used to the sound of slamming cell doors. But I’m not going to consider that. I just don’t see Baker as a drug user; he’s strait-laced, he’s a family man and on top of that he’s plain fucking boring. This could be a break, a crack in the wall of evidence, and we have to widen it as far as we can.’

  Thirty-One

  ‘Are you really telling us, Mr Rogozin,’ DCI Pye snapped, ‘that you had no idea that your personal bodyguard was a convicted murderer and a fugitive from justice?’

  The Russian stared at him across the coffee table in his suite in Glasgow’s Grand Central Hotel. ‘How many times, Mr Policeman, I have to say it? To me, Grigor Yashin was his name, always. He had papers, he had passport; he do a good job for me. Why should I question that?’

  ‘How did you come to employ him?’ Sauce Haddock asked.

  ‘I told my secretary place an ad.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the papers, where else?’

  ‘A specialist employment agency would have been a good start,’ the DS suggested.

  The Russian snapped his fingers, impatiently. ‘So? She place the ad and she got Grigor. Is her fault. When I get back she’s fired.’

  ‘When you hired him did he provide references?’

  ‘Don’ understand.’

  ‘Letters from former employers recommending him.’

  ‘I don’ know. I tell her hire someone, she hire Grigor, okay?’

  ‘What did he do for you?’

  ‘He drive me, he carry my bags, he make sure that everywhere I go I have everything I need and that things are ready for me when I arrive. He make sure the plane is always there at airport. He look after me.’

  ‘And if you have a problem with a person, you send Grigor to fix it?’

  Rogozin smiled, reaching out for his coffee cup. ‘Please, sir. I no have problem with anybody.’

  ‘You seemed to have a problem on Sunday outside the police building.’

  ‘That was misunderstanding. I need to speak to the lawyer of my worker Mr Baker and that man get in the way.’

  ‘That man was our former chief constable; he believed that you were trying to intimidate his daughter, and he didn’t like it.’

  ‘Intimidate? What is?’

  ‘To frighten her.’

  ‘No, no, not frighten, but I want tell her that she must do her very best for Baker, make sure he is released soon. I want to tell her but this man, her father you say, he knock down Grigor and he get between us.’

  Haddock stared at him unsmiling. ‘You have a habit of getting up close and personal with people, Mr Rogozin. You tried it with my boss in the Edinburgh hotel. We see that as aggressive behaviour.’

  The Russian met his gaze. ‘I see it as making my point,’ he murmured in suddenly improved English.

  ‘What do you do if your point isn’t understood? Do you send Grigor to make it more forcefully? That’s his real job, isn’t it? Did you send him after Mr Skinner with the intention of throwing a scare into his daughter?’

  The man’s eyes flickered. ‘I not send Grigor anywhere. He is my driver, that is all.’

  ‘No, Mr Rogozin,’ Pye exclaimed, stepping back in. ‘That doesn’t cut it with us. You liked to have Grigor around because it makes you look tough, simple as that. And I flat out do not believe your story that you picked him up through a newspaper small ad. Neither, incidentally, does your country’s vice-consul in Scotland. He wasn’t amused by the news that a convicted killer had open access to Edinburgh in a private jet. The media haven’t got that part yet, but if they do, Russia will be seriously embarrassed. As it is, you’ll have questions to answer when you get home. The vice-consul called this morning to tell me you’re under investigation for sheltering a fugitive. When your plane lands in Moscow, you’ll be met at the airport.’