He was heading for the door when there was a knock and it opened. ‘Sorry we’re late,’ Sammy Pye said as he and his sidekick stepped into the room.

  ‘Will it be worth waiting for?’ Skinner asked.

  Haddock smiled. ‘Oh yes, I think it will.’

  ‘There are few people more infuriating than a smug detective,’ the former chief constable growled.

  Alex ushered the newcomers to chairs at her small conference table. ‘So,’ she said, ‘are you dropping the charges?’

  ‘No way,’ Pye replied, ‘but we are dropping what we think will be a bombshell, unless you’ve been withholding from us.’

  ‘Which we have not!’ she retorted, indignantly. ‘I shared the result of my client’s blood analysis, didn’t I? That’s evidence of good faith.’

  ‘Agreed, Alex. You shared it, but you didn’t look at it closely enough. And to be frank, neither did we. It took Arthur Dorward of the Forensic Service to spot what was lurking in there. None of us thought to compare the DNA profiles contained within the report. There were quite a few in there for elimination purposes, but Baker’s wasn’t. His prints were all over the place so we decided we didn’t need to do one. It was only when you did, and it was added to the file, that Dorward, part genius, part pedantic bastard, picked it up: a connection between Baker’s profile and one other.’

  ‘Whose?’ Skinner asked, looking intently at the DCI.

  ‘The victim’s. There are strong similarities between the two, strong enough to suggest . . . a sibling relationship.’

  ‘They were brother and sister?’ Alex gasped.

  ‘Half,’ Haddock said. ‘Given Annette’s racial mix obviously they couldn’t be full siblings, but the likelihood of a relationship was overwhelming, according to Arthur.’

  ‘But not absolutely conclusive, surely.’

  ‘Not without a comparison with the DNA of a common parent,’ Pye agreed, ‘but there are other ways of confirming the link. That’s why we were late getting here. We’ve been chasing birth certificates.’

  ‘That couldn’t have been simple,’ Skinner suggested, ‘given that Annette was adopted.’

  ‘You know about that, Chief?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ He outlined the discovery he had made in Worthing. ‘Not material to your case, but of interest to us.’

  ‘I can see that. We got there eventually. First, though, we looked at Baker’s background. He was born in Croydon, forty-two years ago, to Conrad Baker, musician, and Mildred Pearce, nurse. His mother’s still alive; as for the father . . . I’ll get to that. The marriage was dissolved when Chaz was ten.’

  ‘And Annette? How did you trace her?’

  ‘We did the obvious;’ the DCI replied, ‘we asked Paco. He told us about her adoptive parents in Worthing. We went looking for them but we found that they’re both deceased. We thought we were stuffed then, with no obvious means of tracing the adoption, and no way of knowing what was on Annette’s original birth certificate. We went back to Paco in the hope that he might have it. He didn’t, but he did tell us that Annette had a very large indemnity insurance policy arranged through a London brokerage, covering her against any illness or accident that might end her career. When she took it out it required full disclosure.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘You went to the broker?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pye confirmed, ‘and after jumping through all sorts of data protection hoops, we were able to obtain the application document and an image of Annette’s birth record. She was born Anesha Gunawardena, twenty-eight years ago, in London, to a Sri Lankan mother, Keshini Gunawardena, and an English father . . .’

  ‘Conrad Baker,’ Alex exclaimed.

  ‘The one and only,’ Haddock chuckled.

  ‘Thing is,’ Pye continued, ‘Keshini was sixteen years and four months old at the time, and Conrad would have been forty-five. She’d have been under age when Annette was conceived, and he’d have been at risk of prosecution if it had been brought to the attention of the police. There’s no record of them ever marrying, nor has there been any trace of Conrad since he renewed his passport seven years ago, from an address in South Africa.’

  ‘What about Keshini?’

  ‘She could be anywhere. She could be dead. We didn’t go looking for her, Alex. If we ever needed to confirm a relationship between Annette and Chaz, she’d be no use. We’d need Conrad’s DNA for that as the common parent. For the purposes of our investigation, I’m content to rely on the paper trail that we’ve established.’

  ‘Does it weaken your belief in his guilt?’ she asked.

  ‘Why should it? If anything it strengthens it. Baker denies vehemently that they had a sexual relationship. Annette’s text can be read as a threat to reveal a secret. If that secret was their kinship and Baker didn’t want it revealed, it gives him a motive for killing her.’

  ‘Why would he want to keep it hidden?’

  ‘To prevent his father from being outed as a paedophile?’ Haddock suggested.

  ‘His father walked out of his life when he was ten,’ Alex countered.

  ‘We hold Chaz’s passport,’ Pye said quietly. ‘There’s a stamp on it showing that at the beginning of June, in the football off-season, he took a trip to Durban. Conrad Baker’s renewed passport was mailed to a Durban address.’

  ‘Oh,’ she murmured.

  ‘Alex,’ the DCI continued, ‘we want to convict your client because we think he’s guilty, but we don’t want to railroad him. At the very least, there are questions to be asked. We’re here to do you the courtesy of allowing you to ask them first.’

  Thirty-Nine

  ‘Ground Control to Detective Sergeant Haddock,’ Cheeky McCullough sang out, across the table. ‘Come in, please.’

  Her partner blinked, and shook his head as if to clear it, like a boxer who had just been caught by a lucky punch. ‘Eh? What? Sorry.’

  ‘You were gone,’ she said. ‘On another planet. In fact, you’ve been in outer space pretty much since you got in.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ he protested. ‘I was just contemplating the excellence of that dessert I knocked up out of a couple of bananas, a couple of pears and a scoop of spices.’

  She laughed, the gentle, deep-throated molasses laugh that helped make her the most attractive woman he had ever imagined, let alone met. He looked at her and melted yet again into the amazing surprise of realising that he was even happier than he had ever hoped to be.

  ‘Yes, it was wonderful,’ she agreed. ‘Since you got that smoothie machine, you have been unstoppable. And you know what? Give it a month and it’ll be in the back of the cupboard along with the juicer, the toastie maker, the milk frother, the percolator and the electric knife sharpener. Most couples our age move to a bigger house to start a family. We’ll do it because we’ve run out of room for bloody gadgets.’

  He grinned, sheepishly, wondering whether he should tell her about the garment steamer and fluff remover that he had just ordered from Amazon.

  ‘But that’s not what was on your mind. Come on, big boy, out with it.’

  ‘Nah, it’s work, and I don’t like to bring that home.’

  ‘Not any old work, though. I can always tell if you’ve been at a crime scene that’s upset you. It shows in your eyes; sometimes I think I can see it myself. This is different, as if you were trying to work something out.’

  He stood, picked up the dessert bowls and carried them through to the kitchen, knowing that he would not get off so easily, that she would follow him; as she did, taking two more Cobra beers from the fridge, uncapping them, and handing one to him.

  ‘You’re too shrewd for your own good,’ he murmured as they settled into the couch, back in the living room. ‘Your clients should be glad you’re working for them and not for HMRC. No, it’s not a new crime scene. It’s something that’s washed up in the current investigation.’

  ‘I thought that was all done and dusted,’ she said. ‘The “Tragic Annette Bordeaux” headlines are gone from the tabloids: probably holding their fire till the trial.’ She pierced him with a gaze. ‘There is going to be a trial, isn’t there? Baker’s still guilty?’

  ‘Yes he is,’ he replied. ‘The case against him is as solid as it ever was. Alex Skinner’s doing her best, but she hasn’t got anything to weaken it.’

  ‘Not even with her dad on her side?’

  He frowned. ‘How did you know that big Bob was helping her?’

  ‘I’d a phone call from my granny just before you came in.’

  ‘Your granny?’ he exclaimed, laughing.

  ‘Mia, my step-granny. She’s working very hard at being liked.’

  ‘Is she succeeding?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I can’t make up my mind about her. She’s got pizzazz, personality, but I can’t help wondering if that’s just the radio presenter talking to me, and the real Mia’s someone else.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that she is,’ Sauce observed. ‘This is a mother who allowed her teenage son to crystallise methamphetamines in an old sherry bodega in Spain, then set up a distribution network in Scotland. She got away with it because the people who could have given evidence against her were all dead. That’s your granny. By any measurement she’s a dangerous woman. If I was Grandpa I’d be putting my own sugar in my tea.’

  She dug him in the ribs. ‘He doesn’t take sugar,’ she laughed. ‘This driftwood that’s washed into your investigation, what is it?’

  He drank some of his beer before replying. When he did, it was with a question. ‘Suppose you had a brother,’ he asked. ‘Or a half-brother. One you didn’t know about until you were grown up. If he came into your life, how would you feel about him? Would there be an instant bond between you?’

  ‘I can’t say with any certainty that I haven’t,’ she pointed out. ‘My mum got herself knocked up when she was still at school. My dad got out of town, did a runner, disappeared, rather than face Grandpa and Auntie Goldie. I never knew him, so I have no idea what he did after that. I could have half a dozen brothers and sisters, for all I know. It’s not something I fantasise over, but the thought does cross my mind on occasion.’

  ‘If you did, and one of them came into your life . . .’

  ‘I’d probably feel the same about him as I do about Mia . . . uncertain. But no, maybe not; he’d have my blood, she doesn’t.’

  ‘If he proved a threat to you in some way, would you live with it or would you try to eliminate it?’

  ‘That would depend on the threat, but if it was serious enough I’d want it to go away.’

  ‘Would you take extreme action to get rid of it?’

  ‘What? I don’t get you, Sauce. What are you asking me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he murmured, shaking his head. ‘I know the answer. You wouldn’t because you don’t have it in your make-up. Someone would need to have a special kind of ruthlessness to do that, and you don’t have any. The question is, does Chaz Baker? I’m not sure that he has.’ He looked down at her, smiling at her puzzled expression. ‘Forget about it; I have. Tell me, what did your granny want?’

  ‘She rang to invite us to the Merrytown game on Saturday. Posh seats in the directors’ box.’

  ‘Football? Me? Did you tell her no thanks?’

  ‘No, I said yes, we’d love to. Lunch in a hospitality suite, then the game.’

  ‘I’m golfing,’ Sauce protested. ‘It’s the monthly medal on Saturday.’

  ‘You can miss one without losing your handicap,’ she said. ‘I want to, love. Please?’

  ‘I don’t know if I should be going near Merrytown in the circumstances. Or being too close to your grandfather in any circumstances, given my job and his reputation.’

  ‘Why not?’ Cheeky countered. ‘Bob Skinner will be.’

  ‘He’s going?’

  ‘So Granny Mia says. She told me he called her to invite himself, and she wants to keep the playing field level.’

  ‘In that case she’s on. If the big man’s prepared to be in the same room as Grandpa, he’s up to something. I have to see what it is.’

  Forty

  ‘He asked you rather than me?’ Cameron McCullough grumbled. ‘So he still doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.’

  ‘Don’t take it that way,’ his wife said. ‘He has my mobile number, not yours. And he did ask me to pass on a request to you.’

  ‘One that you felt able to grant yourself.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she declared, defending herself against the criticism implied by his tone. ‘You’re as keen as I am to normalise relations with Bob; don’t tell me otherwise.’

  ‘I’ll grant you,’ he admitted, ‘that our shared interest in your son makes it desirable that I get on with the guy, but it isn’t something I lie awake thinking about.’

  ‘I don’t notice you lying awake at all,’ she laughed. ‘You could sleep through a hurricane. Come to think of it, you did, when we were in Florida. It attracted me to you, truth be told: I took it as the sign of an easy conscience.’

  ‘That’s interesting, coming from an insomniac. Okay, Mia, I don’t mind you inviting Skinner to the game, but you have to remember that for the best part of my life people like him have hounded me. Because I was incredibly successful in a range of businesses, they assumed I was bent and put me right at the top of their fucking to-do lists. He’d still put me away given half a chance; I don’t hold that against him, by the way. It’s what he does.’

  ‘Not any more. He’s retired.’

  He looked at her, then laughed. ‘Do you actually believe that? He’s still connected in some way or other. When he wound up in A and E on Monday it was a race between the CID and the Solicitor fucking General to be the first at his bedside.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  He tapped the side of his nose with two fingers. ‘Sources, like they say on telly. Bob Skinner may be on the non-executive director circuit, and making very nice money out of it, but he’s the police equivalent of that old Pope who retired. “The Servant of the Servants of God”, they call him. Skinner’s the servant of the servants of Mammon; he’s still the go-to man. His successor, the guy Martin, he tried to distance himself, and look what happened to him. That bastard,’ he muttered, grimly. ‘He gave me a hard time when he was deputy chief in Dundee.’

  ‘I remember him from twenty years ago,’ Mia remarked. ‘The first time I ever met Bob, Andy Martin was with him. He was a raw young detective constable then. You could see he fancied himself with the ladies, and he had the light of the zealot shining out of those weird green eyes.’

  ‘Good riddance to the . . .’ McCullough growled, then switched off the scowl that he showed very rarely. ‘Why does Bob want to come to the game? Did he tell you?’

  ‘He said he’d like to get a feel for the ambience of the club. He told me he believes that Annette’s murder originated there in one way or another. He asked me if Dimitri would be there, and other stuff about him too.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘How much time does he spend in Scotland? Why was he here the week before last? Who controls the use of the spare apartment in King Robert Village?’

  ‘Does he know that you own it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s interested in who owns it, just in who uses it and when.’

  ‘Not many people,’ McCullough said. ‘Was Dimitri here the week before last?’ he pondered. ‘He told me he was missing the game in Finland because he had business in London. I really am going to have to sort that bastard out,’ he murmured. ‘He can play all the silly games he likes, but I will not have him on my patch without my knowing about it.’

  ‘No,’ his wife agreed, ‘you shouldn’t. Cameron, I don’t like the man, and I do not trust him. He’s a lecherous, bullying, dangerous creep and I wish we were rid of him.’

  He grinned. ‘I can think of a way of bringing that about.’

  ‘How?’ she asked.

  ‘Drop the word in Bob’s ear,’ he replied, ‘that Dimitri really did send Grigor after him to put the wind up Alex.’

  ‘There’s no way of proving that.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be worried about proving it. Dimitri’s on dodgy ground for bringing that guy into the country. Bob Skinner is owed favours by people in London as well as in Scotland. If he called one of them in, I’ll bet you that my fellow director would suddenly find himself persona non grata in Britain.’

  ‘Would you drop that word . . . or would you want me to do it?’

  ‘Neither at the moment. Let’s see how Saturday goes. Is he bringing his wife?’

  ‘Yes, he is. Technically she’s still his ex-wife; they’re back together but they haven’t remarried.’

  He grinned. ‘Doesn’t she trust him? He has a couple of ex-wives around, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Just the one, apart from Sarah; Alex’s mum died in a car crash. Whether she trusts him or not, I couldn’t tell you. She’d be wise not to. When we had our mini-fling, there was someone else on the scene. Alex made that clear; I think it was her way of warning me off.’

  ‘Was that why it didn’t work out between you?’

  ‘No. The truth is, he frightened me. Scary man.’

  ‘And I never have?’ he asked.

  ‘No, you never have, but you hide things away. Bob can’t do that; everything’s out there with him. By the way,’ she added, changing the subject, ‘you’ve invited someone else to the game.’

  ‘I have? Do we have any seats left in the directors’ box?’

  ‘You have for these guests: your granddaughter and her partner.’

  He stared at her, with a wide, incredulous smile. ‘What? I’m getting to meet the detective sergeant, officially?’

  ‘In a crowded room.’

  ‘Even that’s a step forward.’

  She patted him on the shoulder. ‘When we married, successful businessman with a shady reputation and top-rated radio presenter with a mysterious past, I promised that I’d make you respectable. This is a step along the way.’

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘What’s the next?’

  ‘Getting rid of that Russian wannabe hoodlum. But, one step at a time.’