‘Do you live in Girona?’

  ‘No, I’m from Sevilla.’

  ‘That’s a long way from here. How have you been helping her?’

  ‘I do my research online.’

  ‘Anyone can do that these days. What’s your added value?’

  ‘I can go where other people can’t.’

  Skinner’s smile did not reach his eyes. ‘That’s a diplomatic way of saying you’re a hacker.’

  ‘Personally, I hate that word,’ Poch retorted. ‘I’m an online researcher. That’s what I do.’

  ‘By breaking through layers of data protection if you have to. I was a cop, son, before fate threw me into the job I do now. I have contacts in various places. If I were to ask them if they’d ever heard of you and if your name was on a list of people they wanted to locate, what might they tell me?’

  ‘Nothing sir. I’m not so stupid that I’d put myself in that position. My business is to uncover information for my clients, but within the law. Okay, the law can be grey and the lines can be wavy, but I manage to stay on the right side. If my subjects have systems that can keep me out, good luck to them. If not . . . they should have.’

  ‘Which of those categories do I fall into, Jordi?’ he asked, quietly.

  The question drew an intake of breath from Dolça Nuñez. ‘Jordi?’ she whispered, staring at him, but he waved a hand as if warding her off.

  ‘The second,’ Poch replied. ‘How did you know?’

  Skinner chuckled. ‘Are you fucking serious?’

  The young man winced. ‘I’m sorry sir, but when you involve my girlfriend in an off the books investigation, I want to know whether she can trust you or whether you’re setting her up as a . . . fall girl.’

  He nodded. ‘That, I respect. Okay, that’s dealt with, and I’ve already told the people you woke up in London that they can go back to sleep.’ His gaze switched to Nuñez. ‘Dolça, tell me your story.’

  ‘It’s a scam,’ she said, instantly and vehemently. ‘The whole Sisters of the Trinity scare. A complete scam, a set-up.’

  ‘Set up by whom?’

  ‘I’ll get there . . . but I wouldn’t have got anywhere without Jordi. The two labels, the images that you gave me, he traced from the bottling hall in San Cugat to a small Mercadona store in Lleida. They were bought by the same person, the manager told me, a woman called Maria Gallardo. That surname, I recognised. The company that makes Ciervorapido, it’s owned by two brothers, Emil and Sancho, and they are planning to sell it, for big money, maybe more than it is really worth. Blazquez is their first surname, their father’s name. The second, their mother’s in Spanish custom, is Gallardo. Maria is their cousin, the daughter of their uncle, their mother’s brother. It took Jordi no time at all to trace her, and to find where she lives in Lleida. His train to Girona from Madrid stopped there, so I told him to get off and I met him there.’ She paused, looking at Skinner. ‘I had to hire a car, sir. Can I put in on expenses?’

  He gazed back at her, took five one-hundred euro notes from his wallet and handed them to her. ‘Enough?’

  She smiled and nodded. ‘We found Maria after a short search. One of her neighbours sent us to a shopping centre where she said we’d find her singing. That’s how she makes her money, it seems. We did. When I told her what I had found, she collapsed, she went hysterical. We calmed her down . . . at least Jordi did, he’s very good that way. When she was able, she told us that her cousin Emil had paid her to buy the bottles and to deliver them in packages to the offices of an advertising agency in Barcelona and then a few days later to an address in Madrid. She told us Emil has personal problems that means he needs to get as much money as possible from the sale of the company. I asked her if she knew that one of the agency people’s car had been fire-bombed. She was genuinely shocked, sir.’ She turned to her companion. ‘Isn’t that right, Jordi?’

  ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘She gave a little scream that she couldn’t have faked. She’s a singer, not an actress. She said that Emil, when he was a student had spent some time as a labourer in a quarry, and knew how to handle explosives.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘What you’re telling me is that the Blazquez brothers have bet their future on this new drink. Only it’s a bit of a turkey, as far as sales and customer satisfaction are concerned despite the creative success of the advertising campaign. That’s a leap on my part, but am I right?’

  ‘Yes sir, that’s my belief.’

  ‘Okay so the brothers, believing that no news is bad news, come up with a scheme to get the product on to the front page.’

  ‘Only Emil,’ Dolça interrupted. ‘I have no evidence that Sancho is involved.’

  ‘Right, Emil on his own. Maria plays her part, by delivering the threatening mail, and he boobytraps the car. The flaw in the theme is the advertising agency. It knows only too well that most news is bad news, so it protects the brand by covering up the incidents and carries on with the account. That’s it.’

  ‘That’s it,’ she agreed.

  ‘What have you done with this,’ he asked, ‘other than talk to me?’

  ‘This morning we phoned Emil Blazquez,’ Jordi replied. ‘Maria gave us his mobile number. We placed the call through my laptop, so that we could record it.’ He took the computer from the backpack that lay at his feet, laid it on the table and opened it, then looked around to check that there was nobody within hearing distance. ‘This is where it gets serious. Dolça’s told him what she’s found and asked him to comment, and he says,’ he clicked his trackpad.

  ‘What do I have to say, lady?’ a rough voice snarled. ‘Let me give you some advice. As you found my cousin, so she can lead me to you. If I have to do that, the bomb on your doorstep won’t be a fake, the milk you feed your cat will be poisoned. If you have children, one day one of them won’t make it home from school. These things I promise you. Now fuck off or die.’

  As the pair looked at Skinner, waiting for his reaction, they saw his expression change. What had been simple interest became something else, something that made Dolça and Jordi feel a little afraid.

  ‘What do we do, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘InterMedia will run the story,’ he replied. ‘It will go online at sixteen hundred hours, and into print after that on all our titles. You and I, Dolça, will meet with Hector Sureda and Mario Fuentes, the GironaDia editor, and we’ll brief them both. It’ll be your by-line all the way, and you’ll do the story to camera for the video, and sound for the audio outlets. By that time you’ll have met with Comissari Lita Roza of the Mossos, and made a full statement to her.’

  ‘But what about Emil Blazquez?’ Poch exclaimed. ‘What about his threats.’

  For less than a second, Skinner’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t you worry about him, son. He’s all mine. Dolça,’ he said, ‘go outside and get us a taxi. I’ll join you when I’ve squared up for the coffee and croissants. On your way out, tell the waiter to bring me a bill.’

  As she left, he turned back to her associate. ‘You’re quite impressive, mate,’ he told him. ‘I appreciate that you might prefer to be self-employed . . . and that might suit us best too, all things considered . . . but how would you feel about the InterMedia group putting you on an exclusive retainer?’

  Surprise showed on the fox-like features. ‘That would depend on the size of the retainer,’ he murmured.

  ‘You and our HR people can agree that, and sort out legal terms too. It’ll have to come through me, meaning there will be no problem.’

  ‘Would I have to live here?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want to. You and Dolça . . .?’

  ‘Very good friends,’ Jordi said, ‘but I know she would rather keep me at a distance.’

  ‘Understood. Be accessible, all the time, wherever you are, that’s all I’ll ask.’

  ‘In that case, thank you very much sir, I accept.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Skinner declared. The younger man made to rise, but he waved him back to his seat. ‘Before we part,’ he continued, ‘I have another project that I’d like to give you. Nothing to do with InterMedia, nor for reporting anywhere else. This will be entirely between you and me, not a whisper to Dolça or anyone else. There’s someone I’m interested in. I want to know everything there is to know about him . . . as soon as you can tell me, starting right now. Stay here, drink as much coffee as you like on expenses, but get it done. This is the brief.’

  Fifty-Six

  ‘I’d hoped to tell you by now,’ Alan Dossor said, ‘that my people had accessed Sandra Bulloch’s computer, but no such luck. When she was serving did she have any experience of investigating cyber-crime? They reckon she had a very high-level password.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Sauce Haddock replied, ‘but I can find out. Would it help if I did?’

  ‘Probably not, but there’s one thing you could do. Beyond the password, the keyboard requires fingerprint access. Are Ms Bulloch’s on file?’

  ‘Yes, they are. I know that for sure. I’ll get them to you, highest quality possible. That should do it.’

  ‘Thanks. One more thing,’ he added. ‘I ran that check on the neighbours, the Browns. He was a car dealer in Colchester before he moved out here, and, he was on the police radar in Essex. He was suspected of providing the wheels for a couple of armed robberies, but it could never be proved. He must have felt the wind in his sails though. Not long after the last incident they sold up and moved here, with the assistance of a lottery win; two and a half million.’

  Haddock laughed. ‘That’s priceless. Liz told me he was a consultant proctologist.’

  ‘Did she indeed? That fits with what I was told about her. She had a sideline: she was quite well known in the Essex clubs as a stand-up comic. She must have seen you as a chance to keep her hand in.’

  ‘It’s as well for her I’ve got a sense of humour,’ he said, ‘otherwise I might be asking you to charge her with wasting police time.’

  ‘Apart from taking the piss, did she tell you much?’ Dossor asked.

  ‘Nothing we didn’t know before, but she did confirm our understanding of why she left the Bahamas and went back to Europe. She also gave me a lead to a friend of Sandra’s, a golfer who plays out of a club here. My hotel has access to it, so I’m going to hit a few balls there and look for him.’

  ‘Your wife’s okay with that?’

  ‘Two days ago she thought she’d be in Edinburgh for at least a year. Right now, she’d be okay with most things.’ Haddock paused. ‘Alan, there’s something else that’s been niggling away at me. I’ve had a couple of mentors in my career. One’s still around. He’s not in the police any longer but we still speak quite often. Both of them used to hammer on at me about covering all the basics, turning every stone, etc. Both of them are in my head right now, saying the same thing. You and I did a quick search of Sandra Bulloch’s place this morning, and found nothing apart from the computer, but that’s all it was, quick and perfunctory. As I said earlier, I need more than that. I know you’ve got manpower issues like everyone else, but if you could spare a team to look the place over, I’d be grateful. I’m not talking about a full forensic examination, understand, just a detailed search by people who know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Sure,’ his colleague replied. ‘No problem. It’ll be tomorrow morning, but I can do that. You’ll need to let my people in, as you’ve got the keys and the code. I’ll have them there at nine. While I arrange that, you get me those fingerprints.’

  Fifty-Seven

  ‘What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?’ John Stirling muttered, mimicking his grandfather mimicking a comedian from an era before his grandson was born.

  ‘What?’ Maya Smith asked, overhearing him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘I was having a conversation with my grandpa, that’s all.’

  ‘What was it?’ she persisted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The worst job he ever had?’

  ‘Trust me,’ he assured her, ‘you don’t want to know. In my case this is running it close, trying to determine what it was that Charles Baxter did for Sandra Bulloch. His online profile, and his firm’s, is big and brash, but it doesn’t actually tell you anything. They publish a client list, but all of them seem to be big international property outfits; there are no individuals included in the list.’

  ‘Could Bulloch’s property holdings be incorporated, held by companies?’

  ‘Probably but if they are, they must fall beneath whatever the benchmark is for inclusion in the LJMcF website. They boast about individual transactions, but only for the listed clients. I’m wasting my time here, Maya.’

  ‘Maybe look at his personal socials?’ she suggested.

  ‘I did, but they told me two things: sod and all. Charles Baxter does have a Facebook profile, but he hasn’t posted on it for eight years. Coincidentally,’ Stirling added, ‘that’s when his original firm, Delgado Baxter, became part of LJMcF. LJMcF isn’t just Charles Baxter,’ he explained, ‘although looking at the business press I think he likes to give that impression. It’s Canadian in origin. It was founded thirty-seven years ago by the merger of two practices, McFarlane’s, of Toronto, and Lionel Jinks and Partners, of Vancouver. McFarlane’s was founded in the fifties by a Scottish immigrant, but getting information about the other one, that’s like drawing teeth. Together, though, they grew and grew; they expanded strategically in North America, the site says, absorbing partner firms in New York, Houston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. In ninety-nine, they began to expand out of North America, going into Paris, then Malaysia, then Milan, then Madrid.’

  ‘Not London?’ Smith asked.

  ‘Strangely no. I found a Financial Times article about the firm that suggested the London market was too big for them to find a strategic partner of the right size. If that’s true then Charles Baxter may have had his eye on them before theirs ever fell on him. He had family money, his rugby connections and three years’ experience with another Edinburgh surveying firm when he started Delgado Baxter and he used that to build up the practice pretty quickly.’

  ‘Who’s Delgado?’

  ‘There never was one. Delgado, in Spanish, means slim; Baxter eventually confessed to a journalist that he called the firm after his old football idol, from an era way before Messi and Cristiano, back in Bobby Charlton’s time.’

  ‘Why didn’t he pick a rugby idol, since that was his game?’

  ‘He was asked that. He said his idol was Gareth Edwards, who is, unfortunately Welsh. Anyway, if you look at the growth of Delgado Baxter you can see that it was an ideal fit for the LJMcF profile, with a lot of its client list good sized English businesses, not just Scottish. Eventually the invitation to join was made, and Baxter seems to have made the most of it. He’d been in the group for only two years when he moved into his present office, the one the DCI says is a listed building. I say “seems to have”, because his financial performance is hidden. Legally LJMcF is what you call a general partnership, as was Delgado Baxter before it. That means that none of the individual members or the Toronto parent have to file annual accounts.’

  ‘What about the companies it advises?’ Smith asked. ‘Don’t they have to publish accounts?’

  ‘That depends on where they’re incorporated. Half of those on the list are offshore.’

  The DC pursed her lips. ‘Baxter might be a big fish in Scotland, but how big is he in the group?’

  ‘Pretty big, I’d say. He’s on the management board, and that’s only five people. The listed head of the partnership is, believe it or not, one of the founders, Mr Jinks. He’s life president, in his mid 90s. Looking at Baxter’s public persona, my guess is that he sees himself as his eventual successor. But none of that helps me find out what he did for Sandra Bulloch, or why, according to Gordon Pollock, she was intendng to see him.’

  Fifty-Eight

  Emil Blazquez Gallardo had digestive problems, a sensitivity that made him liable to bouts of debilitating acid reflux. It could be triggered by several factors, but stress was at the top of the list. The call from the journalist woman had unsettled him, even though his terrified cousin Maria had given him advance warning.

  He had been ready for her, and would be if he could find her, or if she approached him again. Emil was a man of his word, as a would-be union activist had discovered when he had attempted to organise strike action by the company’s work force. He had been dissuaded by a couple of hired guys with baseball bats, and by two broken kneecaps. That would be nothing on the vengeance he would visit on the journalist woman when he caught up with her, as he would. The business editor of GironaDia was a schoolfriend of his uncle. When he heard of Maria’s surprise visitor, he would be sure to help trace her, he reckoned, as another wave of stomach acid bit hard.

  He was standing by his drinking fountain, in the act of washing down a third omeprazole tablet, when his office door swung open and a large man strode into the room. He looked to be in his fifties, with grey hair and weathered features, but he moved like someone younger, and with authority.

  ‘Who the fuck are . . .’ Emil began as the newcomer moved towards him, only to be cut off in midsentence as a large, hard hand clamped round his throat and lifted him clear off his feet, before slamming him against the wall.

  ‘I’m your worst fucking nightmare,’ the invader said. He spoke English, which Emil understood, but with an accent that he could not place.

  The hand squeezed harder. Emil could feel his face redden as he fought in vain for his next breath. His eyes swam and his feet kicked; the panic that had engulfed his anger turned to fear. He felt his bladder loosen.

  And then the man threw him away, literally. He flung him across his desk like a discarded garment, leaving him scrabbling on the floor on the other side.

  ‘Get up!’ his attacker snapped, in Catalan but with an accent that was close to impenetrable, as the first had been. ‘Get up, you little bastard,’ he said. ‘You want to play at being a hoodlum? Okay, this is what the game involves, if you overreach yourself. I’ve heard your threat to my reporter, Blazquez. I know you’re full of wind and piss, but you scared her. You do that, and you deal with me, personally: such things I don’t delegate. Son, you’re lucky there are people in this building. You’re even luckier that the police are on their way here and will expect to find you in one piece, otherwise I’d spend the next ten minutes kicking you around this room.’