‘No, I wouldn’t be that cruel. I’ll let Serra find him a new club in the January window . . . he won’t have to look far; I could name at least two who were sniffing around in the summer. He can go, Flowers will go, we’ll sign three or four decent players with the money they bring in and we’ll cut the overall wage bill at the same time.’

  ‘The man Serra: Merrytown seems to have a strong connection with him,’ Skinner observed.

  McCullough shrugged. ‘Nothing to do with me. I didn’t know him from fucking Adam when I got involved. He’s Dimitri’s man, his fixer. I think he’s a slimy little toerag, but he can get the deals done. Agents,’ he muttered, ‘they’re a necessary evil, and not just in football. Have you met the clown that looked after Annette Bordeaux?’

  ‘Yes. No comment.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He took a breath, then ventured, ‘Is your daughter going to get Baker off?’

  Skinner smiled, grimly. ‘I’d put it another way. She intends to establish his innocence, preferably before the case gets to trial.’

  ‘Is he innocent?’

  ‘I believe so. I took a bit of convincing, but I do now. And so do you,’ he added. ‘You recommended my kid to his wife, and I don’t think you did that as a casual favour.’

  ‘No,’ McCullough murmured. ‘I recommended her along with two others, each for a different reason, hers being that I guessed you’d come as part of the package.’ He paused. ‘But they were at it, weren’t they? Chaz and Annette, they were doing the business?’

  ‘No. They were close, yes, but there was another reason for it. In a few hours you and the rest of the world will know what it was.’

  His eyes narrowed very slightly as he contemplated the shock waves that would be created when the first copies of the Sunday edition of the Saltire hit the streets late that evening, and appeared on its website.

  ‘When it does,’ he continued, ‘maybe that smug little twerp of a Solicitor General will begin to contemplate the possibility of being wrong, and focus on the three key questions. You know what they are, don’t you?’

  ‘Who did it and why; I guess they’re two of them.’

  ‘Yes, and the third is how. How the hell did he do it?’

  ‘Any candidates for the first one?’

  ‘I might have, but I’m stuck on question three. I wouldn’t be saying unless I was sure of everything, and then I’d tell Sauce and his boss, nobody else.’

  ‘Not me?’ McCullough exclaimed. ‘Not even a hint? I have a major interest in this. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t looking for the answer within the club. If you’re right, it’ll have a hell of an impact.’

  ‘That’s just one line of inquiry,’ Skinner said, then caught his companion’s eye. ‘One thing I have picked up on today. When you talk about the football club, Cameron, you don’t sound like a minority investor. The fans, the press and the public see the Russian as the main man, but it doesn’t sound that way to me. Nothing about you is ever as it seems, is it?’

  McCullough laid his empty glass on the table. ‘Go and check at Companies House,’ he replied, evenly. ‘It’s all on the record there. Rogotron is the majority shareholder and Dimitri Rogozin is its owner.’

  ‘He’s a fucking balloon, man; we both know that.’

  He glanced across the boardroom to where the Russian stood, deep in conversation with Tank Bridges, to whom Skinner had not been introduced. The assistant head coach’s face was flushed, in contrast to the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped his beer glass. As Skinner looked on, Rogozin turned on his heel and headed in his direction.

  ‘Sir,’ he exclaimed as he approached, ‘it is a surprise to see you here today. Cameron did not tell me you were coming. Your lovely daughter; is she not with you? I would like to see her again.’

  ‘Why?’ Skinner asked, icily.

  ‘Because she is a lovely lady, and because I wish to assure her again of my support for Baker.’

  ‘You’ve already done that once; she got the message. Another meeting would not be appropriate.’

  Rogozin grinned. ‘Surely it is for her to decide whether to see me?’

  There was a lascivious sneer in the man’s expression that made Skinner wish that Rogozin himself had come after him in the car park.

  ‘As I said, you saw her a week ago, when you ambushed us outside the police station in Edinburgh. You don’t go near her again. End of discussion.’

  The Russian moved closer to him. ‘Is that a threat?’ he hissed.

  ‘Absolutely. Now back off, you’re invading my space.’

  ‘Dimitri,’ McCullough said quietly. ‘Behave yourself; I’m not having any more of your shit. Be warned, and leave us alone.’

  Skinner noted Rogozin’s instant deference. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘now that your colleague understands the situation, there is one thing I’d like to ask him.’

  ‘Then fire away, but do it quietly, Bob, please.’

  ‘In a whisper. A couple of weeks ago, on a Thursday night, when Merrytown had a Europa League tie in Finland, you used the untenanted apartment below the penthouse block in the King Robert Village building. Why?’

  Rogozin stared at him for several seconds. Skinner read his thoughts in his eyes; surprise, confusion and possibly a little fear.

  ‘Who says I did?’ he murmured, eventually.

  ‘It’s a secure building. Invisibility is difficult to pull off there.’

  ‘Then my bizniz is none of your concern.’

  ‘When I’m investigating, as a cop or now, as a civilian, I don’t have concerns, I have questions.’

  ‘Then I not answer. My bizniz is private.’

  ‘Your privilege, for now. That may change. Seven days ago,’ Skinner continued, ‘at eleven thirty-five in the morning, Annette Bordeaux’s body was discovered in her apartment by a cleaner. She had been dead for a maximum of eighteen hours by then. In their investigation the police reviewed the security tapes around that period, looking at the movement into and out of the building around the time of the murder. I went a little further than that; I had a look at the footage that was shot on Saturday morning.’

  He paused, his gaze locked once more on to the Russian’s eyes, seeing them widen involuntarily. ‘At nine a.m.,’ he went on, ‘the three occupants of the tenanted apartment, Mustard, Flowers and Pike, accompanied by Alice McDade, the club physio, left via the garage to join up with the squad at the Merrytown training complex, for the away weekend at Seamill.

  ‘Just over one hour later, at eleven minutes past ten, you arrived in the underground car park, in a black Lexus, driven by the man who was known then as Grigor Yashin. You left him there and took the lift to the seventh floor, where you let yourself into the untenanted apartment with a key. At ten twenty, a call was made to the landline in the Fonters’ penthouse from the phone in the untenanted apartment that you were by that time occupying. Half an hour later a second call was placed to that same number. Not unnaturally, there was no answer to either one. At two minutes past eleven, you left, just before Annette’s’ body was found.’

  ‘Dimitri.’ The low growl made Skinner glance to his right: Cameron McCullough’s urbane mask had slipped and what had replaced it was full of menace.

  ‘I haven’t shared this with the police yet,’ Skinner said, ‘but when I’m ready I will. When I do, I’ll tell them also that you flew into Scotland, not on that same morning, but twenty-four hours earlier, through Prestwick Airport. You picked up the Lexus there and checked into the Central Hotel in Glasgow, at twelve fifteen. What did you do after that, Mr Rogozin, in the twenty-two missing hours between then and turning up at King Robert Village? And what was between you and Annette Bordeaux?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself!’ the Russian hissed.

  ‘You understand the question, then? That’s good. Because there’s more. As part of their thorough investigation into the murder my former colleagues looked at the victim’s mobile phone records, and what they found was included in the report that was disclosed to my daughter. Almost everything there is accounted for, normal business and personal traffic, but there’s one item that isn’t.

  ‘Several calls are shown as received from a UK number, all incoming; she never called the number back. It’s a pay and go phone, one of these untraceable things that you can re-credit over the counter or at an ATM. The last call was registered at fifteen thirty-eight hours on the day Annette died. The one before that was made eight days earlier, when you were in Edinburgh, in the King Robert Village apartment.’

  He paused and turned to McCullough. ‘Cameron, I know that mobiles are frowned upon in here, but please, indulge me.’ He took out his phone, selected a number, and pressed the red icon on the screen. A few seconds later, a ringtone sounded, muffled, from within Rogozin’s jacket, until the call was discontinued.

  ‘I could call Detective Sergeant Haddock in here right now,’ Skinner said, ‘but I won’t, because it’s his day off and young Cheeky wouldn’t appreciate it if I broke into it.

  ‘I’m not saying that you killed Annie,’ he added, ‘because you made those two calls after she was dead, and I haven’t persuaded myself that you’re smart enough to have done that as a smokescreen, but there’s a lot of mystery surrounding her murder and you are part of it, no mistake.’

  The Russian’s normally handsome face was twisted into something that was anything but, eyes bulging in fury.

  ‘I reckon you have forty-eight hours, tops,’ his tormentor continued, ‘to get your story right. Have a pleasant weekend. I’m sorry your team lost.’

  Rogozin spat in his face, turned on his heel and stalked from the room. McCullough, enraged, made to pursue him, but Skinner held him back with one hand, reaching for his handkerchief with the other. Several faces in the room had turned towards them; almost as one, they looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry about that wee drama,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t planned to square him up here, but the opportunity was too good to miss.

  ‘I don’t know the story between you guys, Cameron,’ he continued. ‘Whatever it is, you want to distance yourself from him right now. I’m going to call Sammy Pye tonight, and I’m going to suggest that he calls the Russian vice-consul, who owes him one for handing over Grigor slash Afonin without a fuss, and ask him to have a background check done in Moscow on your colleague.’

  ‘That’s a hint you didn’t need to drop, Bob. I’d run out of patience with him anyway. Dimitri’s going to find that he’s just resigned as chairman of Merrytown Football Club, and a lot more besides.’

  Forty-Five

  ‘What the hell’s rattled his cage?’ Sauce Haddock exclaimed as Dimitri Rogozin stormed through the hospitality room on his way to the exit.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah Grace said, ‘but from the look he threw you, you won’t have many invitations back here.’

  ‘You’re welcome any time you like, Sergeant,’ Mia McCullough exclaimed. ‘Your other half might be a director one day, you never know. Roll on the day, if it ends that misogynist boardroom men-only tradition.’

  ‘No chance,’ Cheeky declared. ‘If I was on the board my firm would be barred from acting as the company’s auditor and tax adviser. So please don’t let that thought lodge in Grandpa’s busy brain.’

  ‘You think I have that much influence? If he did think about it he probably wouldn’t tell me. Suppose he did, once he’s made up his mind about something, that’s it. Ladies in the boardroom, though, I’m working on that.’

  ‘I wonder what was up with Rogozin?’ Haddock murmured, still musing upon the man’s furious exit.

  ‘His team lost,’ Sarah chuckled.

  Mia shook her head. ‘Truth is, Dimitri doesn’t give a shit whether Merrytown wins or loses. He’s here for the prestige. Owning a football club’s a status symbol for men like him in Russia.’

  ‘Do I sense you don’t like him?

  ‘The man doesn’t have a likeable bone in his body, Professor. You can make money, but you can’t make class. You’ve met him, Sauce. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Haddock replied. ‘I’m a detective; I deal with the facts I see before me, and with the actions of individuals. Personal feelings about people could get in the way of my judgement, so I try not to have any.’

  ‘Bob used to say the same,’ Sarah admitted, ‘but he never quite managed it. I remember two villains he dealt with in his time, Tony Manson and Jackie Charles: you may have heard of them. Manson was probably the more ruthless of the two, until somebody did him in; Bob had spent half his career pursuing him and yet there was something about the man that he liked . . . although he’d never admit it. Charles, on the other hand, he loathed. He had a party when he was put away.’

  ‘Is he still away?’ Cheeky asked.

  ‘Yes. He’s due for parole in the next couple of years. He’d better behave, though. If he steps out of line, retired or not, Bob will be after him.’

  ‘He never caught Manson,’ Mia said, quietly. ‘I know, because my brother worked for him for a while. I imagine he’s told you.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I forgot.’ Sarah fell silent, realising that she had stepped into a part of Mia McCullough’s past that she had been unwilling to revisit.

  ‘If you really twist my arm,’ Haddock exclaimed, breaking the tension between them, ‘I will admit that I don’t like Rogozin either. I’ve met him, and I was watching when he tried to ambush Alex outside our office. Whatever happened in there, I have a fair idea who was involved in it.’

  Sarah looked at Mia. ‘He wouldn’t do anything silly, would he? Like wait for Bob outside?’

  ‘Much as I’d love to see it,’ Mia replied, ‘that’s not going to happen. He may be an arrogant slimeball, but he’s not suicidal.’

  Forty-Six

  ‘How did your introduction to the football culture go?’ Sammy Pye asked his sergeant as he walked into the office. It was eight twenty and the DCI had been at his desk for half an hour. As always, BBC-TV’s Breakfast was in full red-hued swing on the wall-mounted television: as always, it was drawing little attention.

  ‘The game was a bore,’ Haddock said, ‘but the social side was fascinating. How about your weekend?’

  Pye poured a little milk into his builder-strength tea. ‘It was quiet, until Saturday night when I had a call from the big man.’

  The DS switched on the kettle and spooned some Colombian instant coffee into the Santa Claus mug that Cheeky had given him nine months before and that he had used ever since, season through season. ‘About what? Did he give you a run-through of the game?’

  ‘No, he put me off my dinner.’ He grimaced. ‘He’s been taking a broader look at the Annette Bordeaux case than we did, Sauce. My back’s still tender from all the pats it’s had over the last week from Rocco de Matteo, Mary Chambers, the chief herself. Mario McGuire even phoned from his holiday in Italy to say “Well done” for wrapping it up so quickly.’

  ‘We did,’ Haddock pointed out as he stirred his mug.

  ‘Yes, we did, and as things stand I am still reasonably confident that we’ll get a conviction, even with the bombshell about Baker and the victim being half-siblings. But Bob’s as confident that we won’t. Between you and me, he’s starting to piss me off.’

  The DS stared at him; Pye’s unflappability was legendary.

  ‘Maybe it was personal with him,’ the DCI went on, ‘after his run-in with the Russians and the thing in the car park, but he’s come up with stuff that passed us by, because we were so sure of our case against Baker that we went for an early winner.’

  ‘Enough of the football analogies please, Sammy. What did he say?’

  Succinctly, Pye related the substance of his call from Skinner and the information he had uncovered about Rogozin’s movements, his use of the untenanted apartment and his calls to Annette from the landline and the pay and go mobile.

  When he was finished, Haddock grinned. ‘That explains why he went storming out of the Merrytown boardroom like his arse was on fire.’

  ‘The big man didn’t mention any of this to you?’

  ‘No, or I’d have called you myself on Saturday. We talked about the case, but in broader terms. He thinks that Baker’s been set up and that we have too, that we’ve been shown a line of evidence and reeled it in exactly as we were meant to.’

  He sampled his coffee. ‘Oh yes, and he said we should all forget about the cocaine, because Alex is going to. It was Paco’s, and he’s not about to lay any more grief on the guy.’

  ‘He’s all for laying it on Rogozin, though.’ Pye shook his head, slowly. ‘I dunno,’ he grumbled ‘it’s as if he’d never chucked it. He more or less ordered me to ask the Russian consulate to look into the guy’s past in his homeland, to see if there’s anything interesting in it.’

  ‘Is he saying that Rogozin killed Annette?’

  ‘Not flat out, but he’s pointing us at some sort of link between them. I’m not sure it’ll help Alex and him, though. If that was the “secret” in Annette’s text, it offers a new scenario. She tells Chaz, he’s outraged, they have a fight and he throttles her.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘That’s because it isn’t convincing,’ Haddock countered.

  His boss eyed him, quizzically. ‘Are you losing faith?’

  ‘I don’t operate on the basis of faith, gaffer, and with respect, neither should you. Classic definition: faith is based on spiritual conviction rather than proof. The evidence, the proof, of Baker’s guilt is still there. But it’s so strong that it’s closed our minds to anything else. Mine is open again.’

  He paused, his eye caught by something on the TV screen. Breakfast had reached the Scottish news opt-out section. The presenter faced the camera presenting the day’s hot story earnestly and clearly, but the detective sergeant was ignoring her words, concentrating instead on the scene behind her, the usual live backdrop fed from a camera on top of the BBC building, of morning traffic flowing across Glasgow’s famous Squinty Bridge.

  Something was happening in the river below: two small boats, one with police Day-Glo markings, floated side by side pointing upstream, away from the camera. The figures on board were discernible as they tried to secure something in the water.