‘Raul,’ he said. ‘You’re back?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sanchez said. ‘And Inge has told me what happened. Remarkable, Bob, remarkable. We can’t thank you enough for uncovering it all.’

  ‘Not me alone,’ he insisted. ‘I had help; very good help.’

  ‘Nevertheless, if you had not taken it on, the truth would never have been discovered.’

  ‘It probably would, Raul. The outcome would have been different, that’s all.’

  ‘Fifteen years, Bob,’ he exclaimed. ‘Will Emil Blazquez really spend fifteen years in prison?’

  ‘Nah,’ Skinner chuckled, ‘but he can think that for a while longer. The most he’ll get will be about three, and that’s really for giving terrorism a bad name. How does your wife feel about it?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s happy that the threat is over. Her business has even won out of it. I told you they resigned the account after the second incident? Well they’ve got it back. Sancho Blazquez contacted Inge and Andrea, her partner. He began by apologising for his brother’s misbehaviour. As you would expect the sale of the business collapsed as a result, so he has no choice but to carry on and rebuild its reputation. However he is an ambitious man, still. He doesn’t want to carry on being a run of the mill maker of fizzy drinks; he wants to build his company into one of the biggest in Spain and beyond, across Europe. To do that, Sancho said, he needs their help. They agreed; a three-year contract with a performance bonus built in. Inge couldn’t be more pleased, and it’s down to you.’

  ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘it’s not. It’s down to a couple of clever and unconventional young people. As I said, I was only the middle man.’

  ‘Take the credit my friend, please. Inge wants to know: these young people would they be interested in a career in advertising?’

  ‘One of them, certainly not. She’s being promoted within my organisation. Where she’ll go, I’m not quite sure yet, but we’re keeping her. The other, he has special skills, and it may be that he’d be useful to Inge and Andrea, as a freelance researcher.’

  ‘You can tell her about him, when we meet for dinner, which we must do soon, the four of us. There is something else that we would like to discuss. This time, it does involve a family matter.’

  ‘Oh,’ Skinner murmured. ‘That sounds ominous. What’s my son been up to?’

  ‘It’s not your son,’ Sanchez said, ‘it’s his mother.’

  Eighty-Seven

  In all the years that they had spent together, more of them as colleagues than as a couple, Dan Provan could not recall ever seeing Lottie so down and defeated, not even in the darkest days of her failed marriage to young Jakey’s father. She was slumped in her chair, staring at nothing in particular; the drink in her hand was not her first of the evening.

  ‘Let it go, love,’ he said. ‘Not even Muhammad Ali won them all.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘but the ones where it really, really mattered, he did. And Leo, Leo Speight, he did win them all. Maybe if he hadn’t, if he’d just been a run of the mill fighter who did okay, made a few quid and then retired, none of this stuff would have happened, and Sandra would still be alive. They might have got together, might not. Either way she’d be a chief super by now, running a division maybe, and he’d be . . . whatever he’d turned out to be. But that wasn’t to be, she is dead and we still owe her.’

  ‘We . . . you . . . the police . . . don’t owe her any more than any other murder victim.’

  ‘’s not the argument,’ she slurred. ‘I was so sure. Skinner was so sure that it was her. And the fuckin’ awful thing . . . she wished it had been. I put it to her; she hated her sister. Yes, she said. She wanted her dead, I said. Yes, she said, so badly that it hurt. So badly that even when she was with a guy, and there’s been a procession of them over the last five years, she would lie there on her back and think of ways of killing her, each one worse than the one before.’

  ‘She must be a great shag,’ Dan murmured.

  ‘Shut up you,’ she mumbled. ‘I put it to her that when Sandra came back, when she turned up after all this time, she just couldn’t contain herself. She went to her motor home, she hit her with an iron, she put a placky bag over her head, tied it and she watched her die. Then she moved the van somewhere and kept going back there like a ghoul, until she decided it was safe to let her be found. And you know what, Dan? Everything I put to her, every rock I put on her cairn she smiled, wider and wider, and nodded, harder and harder. And then she said, she said,

  “Yes, I did all of that and a fucking lot more in my head, and how I wish I’d been able to do it for real. But,”

  ‘Yes there was a fucking but,

  “But I couldn’t, not because I was afraid for myself, but for those two next door. If I had what would have happened to them. Gordon Pollock might have looked after them because he’s their brother or his mousey wee mother might have, but most likely they’d have been the richest kids in the children’s home. That’s why I couldn’t have done it.”

  ‘And you know what Dan?’ Lottie said with tears in her eyes. ‘I fucking believed her. I was wrong, Skinner was wrong. She didn’t do it. We still owe Sandra; bottom line, she was one of us, and we’ve failed her.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, you haven’t, lass. You still have two major suspects, Baxter and your man Rutherford . . . he sounds like a right psych to me.’

  ‘He is, and we’ve got him on half a dozen charges, but we’re nowhere near proving that he killed Sandra . . . even if it was him, which honestly, love, I doubt. As for Baxter, he’s just a . . .’ She shook her head and held out her glass. ‘Give’s a top-up. You never know, you might get lucky tonight.’

  ‘What?’ he chuckled, reaching for the almost empty bottle. ‘While you lie on your back thinking of ways to fit up Faye Bulloch?’ He refilled her glass, and picked up his own Peroni. ‘It’s done, love. Some we just don’t win.’ He paused, for more than a few seconds.

  ‘You know,’ he murmured, ‘thinking about everything you’ve told me, there’s one question that as far as I can see nobody’s asked, far less answered. If Sandra was flying back to the Bahamas, via London, what the fuck was she going to do wi’ that great big motor home?’

  Eighty-Eight

  John Stirling had never been one for self-analysis. He had been content for all the days that he could remember; he had never experienced unhappiness, other than when his Grandpa Maclean had died, and that had faded as he came to understand that it was part of the natural order of things that a person could expect to happen in the course of a lifetime. One day his parents would go too and while he had never anticipated that in his thoughts, he knew that he would cope.

  But as he drove west, heading for the St Mirren stadium and the Buddies’ clash with his own beloved Saints from Perth, he knew that there had been a sea-change in his existence. His perspective on life was altered, irrevocably; his mind was altered, even his physical being felt different. He had no need to search for the cause of this metamorphosis. He knew it and he rejoiced in it. Her name was Maya Smith, and she felt the same way. He had moved beyond contentment, beyond everyday happiness, a way beyond that state. He, Detective Sergeant John Stirling, LlB, was thoroughly, completely in love. Everything in his life was perfect. There was no way St Johnstone were going to lose that afternoon.

  But first, there was the call he had to pay, before the match. Leaving the motorway, he made two turns and reached his destination,

  By most people’s standards, Stirling thought as Maps told him he was there, Trudi Pollock’s house was tiny, the smallest in the street. It sat at the end of a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Paisley, a red sandstone bungalow with a very small front garden, blue pots on white gravel flanking the path to the front door. He remembered Gordon telling him that Leo Speight had bought it for his mother and him with his first meaningful ring earnings, after the hated Grandpa Pollock had gone to make closer acquaintance with the devil he had carried within him through life. ‘She could move any time she liked, but she doesn’t want to,’ Gordon had said. ‘The place ties her to my dad and him to her. Once, I suggested that she sell it; just the once, but never again. She’s not very big, my mum, but by God she can be fierce.’

  Stirling pressed the bell and waited, but not for long. Trudi opened the door within a minute, with a small gasp when she saw him on the step.

  ‘Sergeant,’ she exclaimed, smiling, ‘I wasn’t expecting . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry to spring a surprise on you,’ he said. ‘I was hoping to catch Gordon. Something’s come up in the investigation that I wanted to tell him about.’

  ‘You’ve arrested somebody?’ she asked. ‘That man Baxter, that your colleague mentioned to Gordon?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. I can’t discuss individuals, Trudi, as I’m sure you’ll understand. That said, though, there are a couple of possibilities that are still very much open. But what I can tell you, as I was going to tell Gordon if he’d been here, is that Sandra’s left a will. It was found in her house in the Bahamas. It’s hand written, but it was witnessed by the estate manager, and the lawyers say it’s absolutely legal.’

  ‘My God,’ Trudi gasped. ‘Come on through. I’m in the middle of cooking.’

  He followed her inside. She led them to the back of the house, and suddenly it was much bigger. It had been extended to the rear, to create a dining kitchen and living space that was bigger than the totality of the small rooms facing the street.

  ‘The will,’ she said, turning to face him. ‘What’s it got to do with me?’ It occurred to him that it was the first time he had seen her without her florist’s tunic. Yes, she wore an apron but it was tied round her waist, smeared with white flour and with the top of a large pair of kitchen scissors showing from a pocket in front.

  ‘Technically it’s got nothing to do with you, Trudi,’ he said. ‘It’s Gordon. I shouldn’t really be telling him this but he’s going to find out quite soon anyway. He told me he was going back south, but since I was passing close by on the way to the football . . . Paisley Saints versus the Perth Saints, may my team win . . . I thought I’d call in and give him advance warning if he was still here.’

  ‘Tchh,’ she tutted, ‘that’s too damn bad. Gordon left an hour and a half ago. He’ll be on the London plane by now. What does it say? The will?’

  ‘Most of her estate goes to Leo’s children,’ Stirling replied, ‘equally, in four parts. As Gordon’s the only adult, he’s named as trustee for the other three.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she exclaimed. ‘Most of it, you said. What about the rest?’

  ‘There’s an individual bequest,’ Stirling replied. ‘Sandra had a man friend in the Bahamas, an American professional golfer. She’s left him five million US dollars.’

  Trudi Pollock seemed to stiffen. Her hand went to her throat and for an instant there shone in her eyes a flash of the purest rage, he thought, that he had ever seen. And then it was gone, so quickly that he thought he must have imagined it.

  ‘I see,’ she said, quietly. ‘She’s left five million of Leo’s money to some guy, some stranger. And she thought she was doing me a favour when she said she was giving me her swanky German motor home, as if you need one of them in fucking Paisley. I think I’ll need to process that, Sergeant.’

  Stirling frowned. ‘She was going to what?’

  ‘I told you: give me her motor home. What a gracious lady Sandra was,’ she murmured. ‘Her fucking motor home, indeed! It came from my Leo, like everything else in her life. Her and her bloody sister came out the same pod right enough. Leeches, the pair of them.’ She looked up at the detective. ‘You know son, I think a medicinal glass of Sauvignon Blanc’s called for. Would you like one?’ she asked as she walked past him, towards a large fridge freezer.

  ‘No, I’m good, thanks,’ he murmured, inexplicably disturbed. ‘Trudi,’ he asked, ‘when did she tell you that?’ Stirling felt that he had stepped out of one world and into another, one where gentle bonhomie had been replaced by something dark and dangerous.

  ‘The last time I saw her.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Work it out.’

  As her voice came from behind him Stirling replayed that moment earlier when her hand had gone to her throat, in a reflex gesture, feeling for something . . . something missing. Feeling for the silver chain, that she had worn in the shop, around her neck, half hidden by her tunic.

  And there it was, on the work surface, before his eyes, with its adornment, a circle of shining silver. He picked it up and stared at it; the words ‘Jeux d’Olympique’ screaming at him.

  He turned towards her. ‘Trudi,’ he murmured.

  ‘Sorry, son,’ she sighed. Left-handed, she threw the contents of a wine glass into his face. As he recoiled, instinctively, she plunged the kitchen scissors into his abdomen, and upwards, twisting them as hard as she could.

  John Stirling’s last breath left him in a great gasp. He stared at nothing, his blood spurting on to her white blouse as he brushed against her in his fall to the floor.

  She stood over him, eyes narrow, lips clamped together, breathing hard. After a few moments, as the blood flow slowed, she gathered herself together. She took her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. Her fingers worked its screen, until she found and called a number.

  ‘Gino,’ she began, calmly, as she was connected. ‘I’m going to need your help again; not your paddock this time, but it’s messy, not like it was with her.’ She grinned, icily, at his reply, at his fear. ‘What makes you think you’ve got a choice?’

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