‘He says he see you again,’ Rogozin warned.

  ‘If he does, he won’t enjoy it any more than today. Now, talk to me.’

  ‘It was Lita, Chaz’s wife. She tell me the lady, your daughter, will be here.’

  ‘So why did you feel the need to talk to her?’

  ‘I have lot of money tied up in that man. I want,’ he paused, ‘I need him out of prison.’

  Skinner glared at him. ‘And you thought that bullying his lawyer would speed the process? What were you going to threaten her with?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Rogozin protested. ‘I just need her to understand how important is to me.’ He sighed, then added, quietly, ‘And I want to know too; Lita says Chaz did not do this, but is that right? Or did he kill Anya, Annette?’

  ‘The court determines that, not us,’ Alex replied. ‘My job is to prepare his defence against any charges. Do you hear what I’m saying? He hasn’t been charged yet.’

  ‘But you think he will be?’

  ‘Yes,’ Skinner admitted. ‘That’s pretty much certain, or they wouldn’t have detained him overnight. We’ll know for sure in a couple of hours. Meantime, my best advice to you, friend, is to get back in your box, stop behaving like a Mafioso hoodlum and leave my daughter to do the best she can for her client.’

  ‘I will give her a bonus if she can prove he did not do this.’

  ‘I’m not paid on the basis of results,’ Alex retorted. ‘Nor is it my job to prove his innocence. All I have to do is prevent the Crown from proving his guilt.’

  ‘The latter not being dependent on the former,’ her father added.

  The Russian looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘The issue isn’t whether he killed her or he didn’t,’ Skinner explained. ‘It’s whether the prosecution can persuade eight out of fifteen people on a jury that he did.’

  Alex opened her case and took out a business card. ‘You have my father’s,’ she said. ‘That’s mine. If you feel the need to speak to me again, call me . . . during office hours.’

  ‘We shall see,’ he murmured, but he accepted the card.

  They watched him as he walked to a black saloon and slid into the back seat. As they moved off, the driver eyed Skinner, who smiled and waved.

  ‘You love that, don’t you?’ his daughter murmured. ‘You can’t resist any sort of a challenge, mental or physical.’

  ‘He was trying to stop me from getting to you,’ he insisted. ‘I couldn’t have that.’

  ‘Pops, that . . . that . . . gorilla is half your age!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What if there had been two of them?’ she persisted.

  He shrugged. ‘It might have taken me a few seconds longer.’

  ‘Pops!’ she exclaimed. ‘Seriously, you have to be more careful. You’re not getting any younger.’

  ‘I’m still young enough; anyway, experience counts for more than youth.’

  ‘You have responsibilities!’ She stared at him, scolding.

  ‘And you’re one of them.’

  ‘You’re not a cop any more.’

  ‘I have a right to defend myself.’

  ‘Using proportionate force.’

  ‘He got up, didn’t he?’

  ‘You realise he could accuse you of assaulting him?’

  He laughed. ‘You’d get me off. Come on, it’s over, and you’re free of a pest. Time to go to work.’

  They walked the few yards to the gateway then up the curving roadway that led to the front entrance of the police offices. As they approached, Skinner’s eyes were on the windows of the office that had been his, as assistant chief constable and then as deputy. He had preferred it to the one he had inherited as chief constable. It allowed him to see all of the building’s comings and goings, whereas the other had made him remote, removed from the action, the one aspect of top-level command against which he had always rebelled.

  Pye and Haddock, both halves of the Menu, were waiting to greet them as they stepped into the entrance pod.

  ‘What happened out in the street?’ the detective chief inspector asked. ‘Who was that bloke you were eyeballing, Chief?’

  ‘Chap from out of town,’ Skinner replied lightly. ‘He was lost, but I’ve put him on the right direction.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Haddock ventured, ‘and was the other one just tying his shoelaces, or had he tripped over something?’

  ‘I didn’t notice him at all. To business, gentlemen; are you ready to proceed with your interview, or have you decided to release my daughter’s client without further delay?’ His eyes gleamed as he gazed at the pair.

  ‘We’re ready for you,’ Pye replied. ‘That’s to say we’re ready for Ms Skinner. Chief, I’ve discussed this with the chief,’ he paused, embarrassed at his clumsiness, ‘and neither of us feel that . . .’

  Skinner raised a hand, palm outwards. ‘Stop right there,’ he said. ‘I have no wish to sit in with you. It wouldn’t be proper, given our past history, and it wouldn’t be fair to Alex to have me looking over her shoulder. Anyway, my presence would need her client’s approval, and neither she nor I are going to propose it to him.’

  The DCI smiled. ‘That’s a load off my mind,’ he admitted. ‘Now it’s sorted, would . . .’

  He anticipated the question. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I would like to see it through a video link.’

  ‘I guessed you would. It’s set up. You’ll have company; the chief decided she wants to sit in too.’

  The two detectives led them past the reception desk and along a corridor that Skinner knew well. He had spent several years of his career in that wing of what had been the headquarters of the old force before it was swallowed by unification and the Scottish National Police, its bastard offspring. He had used that phrase in what he had been told would be a private after-dinner speech to the Glasgow Bar Association, only to be reminded of the speed and the reach of social media. His words had left the room via Twitter before he had sat down, and had become online headlines before he had left the Hilton Hotel.

  There was an unsubtle difference about the atmosphere in the building. Throughout his service there, which had encompassed most of his career, it had been alive, with a constant buzz of activity, seven days a week. That had gone, and he knew that there would be no difference on a weekday. The place was as good as dead; it was just another ugly office block, half of its rooms were unoccupied, and the highest-ranking officer there was a chief inspector. It gave him the creeps, but who was he to complain? He had walked away. Perhaps, if he had stayed, perhaps if he had become its first chief rather than the ill-fated Andy Martin, who had been destroyed by the job in only a few months, he might have been able to impose himself upon the bastard creation and thwart the politicians as best he could.

  They stopped at a doorway halfway along a corridor, close to what had been the Special Branch suite in Skinner’s time in the command corridor. He wondered what had become of its last occupants, George Regan and Lisa McDermid.

  ‘We’ve set you up in here, sir,’ Haddock said, as he opened the door. ‘The chief constable’s waiting for you, and coffee will be on the way.’

  ‘And chocolate digestive biscuits, I hope. If unification’s done away with them as well, we really are stuffed.’

  Maggie Steele occupied one of two seats, at a table on which a TV monitor stood. She rose as he entered, hand outstretched in greeting. ‘Morning, Bob,’ she exclaimed. ‘Welcome to the Chateau d’If. We meet two days on the trot. Maybe we’ll get to finish lunch once this is done.’

  He nodded. ‘Let’s try to do that.’

  ‘Have you given any more thought to what we discussed yesterday?’ she asked.

  ‘I confess that I have,’ he admitted. ‘I’m still not won over, but while I’m still officially undecided, maybe I could use that status to seek a favour.’

  ‘Of course you can, without strings attached. What is it?’

  ‘I’d like to know everything that you can find out about a man called Dimitri Rogozin.’

  ‘Consider it done. Am I allowed to ask why?’

  ‘He owns Chaz Baker’s club, and he’s stepped very close to the line with Alex. If he crosses it, I’d like to be able to hit him where it’ll hurt the most.’

  Sixteen

  ‘If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I’d like a private word with my client.’

  Neither Pye nor Haddock was naive, but both were taken aback by the transformation of Alex, the chief’s daughter and their friend, into Alexis Skinner, solicitor advocate, in the instant that she stepped into the interview room and saw Chaz Baker, seated, wearing the previous day’s shirt, frowning, unshaven, bleary eyed and nervous.

  They paused, thrown off balance. Misreading their silence she smiled, with mischief in her eyes.

  ‘If you do mind,’ she added, ‘I insist. And please kill the video feed.’

  ‘Of course,’ the DCI replied, his tone formal, his composure restored. He stepped across to the camera, on its tripod, and switched it off. ‘Just open the door when you’re ready. We’ll be outside.’

  ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector. My client would like his jacket, and his tie. We’d be grateful if someone could bring them.’

  ‘Are they not your favourite people?’ her client asked as soon as they were alone.

  She grinned, relaxed once again. ‘Actually, they’re among them. I’ve known them for years. I was just marking out my territory, that’s all.’ She opened her case and took out a toilet bag, opening it to reveal a portable electric shaver, a comb, and some facial wipes. ‘Tidy yourself up,’ she instructed. ‘We want you looking your best on camera.’

  He looked, curiously, at the Philishave as he took it from her. ‘Do you always carry one of these?’

  ‘On occasions like this I do.’

  ‘Will your other half be looking for it?’

  ‘I don’t have another half; I’m one hundred per cent myself. I bought that as a business expense, and I keep it charged. It’s quite possible that the recording made this morning will be shown to a jury. I want them to see a man who’s neat, alert and assured of his innocence, not some blinking, unshaven slob in a crumpled shirt.’

  She stayed silent as he went to work on his stubble, but he read a tension in her eyes, a question waiting to be asked. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Your boss has been asking after you,’ she told him.

  ‘My boss?’

  ‘Dimitri Rogozin. Russian. Good looking, well dressed, gold tooth in the middle of the bottom row. That’s how close he got when he waylaid me in the street outside.’

  ‘Rogozin’s here?’

  ‘He’s anxious about you, he says. He wants to offer you his full support.’ She smiled. ‘He offered me a win bonus; he must think I’m a footballer.’

  ‘Fuck him!’ Baker hissed. ‘Pardon my Russian. Whatever your fee is, Alex, I’ll cover it. I won’t be any more in hock to that bastard than I am already.’

  ‘In hock?’ she repeated. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I owe him money. I was in a legal dispute with my French club after I left. Its chairman broke a couple of verbal promises, I quit and he sued me for breach of contract. I’d have taken it all the way, but Rogozin bought me out. He paid the Frenchman off, without my knowledge, and then told me it was a down payment on a contract at Merrytown.’

  ‘You didn’t have to sign it,’ his solicitor pointed out.

  ‘That wasn’t how he saw it,’ Baker said. ‘Threats were made.’

  She nodded. ‘Having met him, I can imagine that.’

  ‘He leaned on you?’ her client exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, but my father was there, and he leaned back.’

  ‘What about Grigor, his minder?’

  ‘He was having an identity crisis at the time. My dad can have that effect on people who get in his way.’

  ‘Your old man decked Grigor?’ Baker was incredulous.

  ‘I don’t know what happened. My back was to them at the time. All I heard was a thud followed by the sound of a man in pain.’

  Baker grinned. ‘You’ve made my morning.’

  ‘Good,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s carry that into the interview. This is how it will go. They will put questions to you, about your relationship with the victim, and about your presence in the apartment. Say what you like about the first, but my advice to you is to decline to answer the second. You don’t need to explain yourself at this stage. Are you okay with that?’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ he murmured, combing his hair.

  ‘No, you are. Never forget that. Beyond those two questions, we’ll be fishing, waiting to see what they put to you.’

  ‘What do you think that could be?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ she admitted, ‘but my expectation is that it will be significant. You might not like what you hear, but don’t react with any sort of surprise, or show apprehension. Whatever they put to you, be as open as possible unless I intervene. Don’t deviate from that. The only unprompted statement you should make while the camera and the audio tape are running is to declare your innocence of the death of Annette Bordeaux.’

  Baker nodded, then continued to massage his face with a cleansing wipe.

  ‘You’re clear on everything, Mr Baker?’

  ‘Crystal.’

  ‘Then let’s have them back in.’

  She repacked the toilet bag, returned it to her case, then moved across to open the door.

  ‘My client is ready to be interviewed,’ she announced to the two detectives, who were waiting in the corridor.

  They stepped into the room. As Pye switched on the camera and audio recorder, Haddock handed their prisoner the clothing that his lawyer had requested. He fashioned a double Windsor knot, slipped on his jacket, squared the lapels and took his seat at the table.

  The DCI eyed him with a faint, narrow smile, understanding the scenario that had been created.

  ‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Samuel Pye,’ he began in a clear voice, ‘accompanied by Detective Sergeant Harold Haddock. Also present is Charles Lofthouse Baker and his legal adviser, Ms Alexis Myra Skinner. Mr Baker has been detained in connection with the murder,’ a fractional pause in his delivery emphasised the word, ‘of Annette Brody or Fonter, also known as Annette Bordeaux, and he has been cautioned. Do you understand the terms of the caution, Mr Baker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you understand why you are here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Before we go any further do you wish to make a statement?’

  Baker looked into the camera lens and frowned. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I did not kill Annie and I have no knowledge of her death.’ His gaze switched back to Pye. ‘Now you can carry on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the detective replied, without a trace of sarcasm. ‘Mr Baker,’ he continued, ‘you’ve denied something of which you haven’t yet been accused, but do you deny visiting her apartment on Friday evening?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I was there, but she wasn’t.’

  ‘Why did you go there?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘She sent me a text, asking me to come and see her. About something important, a secret, she said.’

  ‘We’ve seen that text,’ the DS confirmed. ‘Did she give you any indication at any other time of what that secret might have been?’

  The prisoner shook his head. ‘No, not a clue.’

  ‘Did you consider any possibilities?’

  He shrugged. ‘I imagined it must have been something to do with Paco; I’ve got no idea what. Footballers, they can be a wild crew, but he isn’t; he’s one of the best pros I’ve ever worked with in fact. Crackin’ player though; way too good for the Scottish League . . . not that he was bought to play there. Europe’s the goal for Merrytown, and that is,’ he stressed, ‘his level.’

  Pye tapped the table. ‘If Mrs Fonter wasn’t there when you arrived, Mr Baker, how did you get in?’

  ‘Who says I did?’ Baker challenged. ‘All I said was that I went there.’

  ‘We do,’ the DCI replied, abruptly. ‘Mr Baker, what would you say if I told you we have a video recording that shows you opening the unlocked door of the victim’s apartment?’

  ‘I’d say I never saw no camera, mate.’

  ‘Nonetheless there was one. What do you have to say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the prisoner murmured.

  ‘Speak up, please, for the recording.’

  His solicitor leaned across and whispered in his ear. ‘No comment from now on; we want to see where they’re going with this.’

  ‘Nothing!’ he repeated. ‘No comment.’

  Pye intervened. ‘Very good; that’s your right. Have you been there before, Mr Baker?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘What would you say if I told you that we’ve found your fingerprints in nearly every room in that penthouse, including Mrs Fonter’s en suite bathroom?’ he asked.

  ‘I would say nothing, nothing at all.’

  ‘What would you say if I told you that we found your prints on the table beside Mrs Fonter’s bed?’

  ‘Same answer; no comment.’

  ‘Do you own a brown leather Hugo Boss belt, Mr Baker?’ Haddock fired across the table.

  The prisoner glanced to his left; his lawyer nodded. ‘I own three Hugo Boss belts,’ he retorted, ‘one brown, two black.’

  ‘When did you last wear the brown one?’

  ‘I can’t be certain. A few days ago, maybe.’

  ‘How would you respond if I told you that Annette Fonter was strangled with a brown Hugo Boss belt?’

  ‘I’d be appalled, whatever she was strangled with.’

  ‘How do you respond to the fact that your fingerprints are all over it?’

  Alex Skinner put a hand on his shoulder. He drew a long breath, exhaled, then continued. ‘No comment.’

  ‘Also noted,’ Pye said. ‘What were you wearing when you visited Mrs Fonter’s apartment, sir?’

  ‘If you’ve got me on camera you will know.’

  ‘For the tape, please tell us.’

  ‘I was wearing chinos and a Merrytown training top.’

  ‘Were there any distinguishing marks on it?’

  Baker shrugged. ‘It carries the club’s shirt sponsor’s logo, and the maker’s name.’