Jack McGurk hit him; a huge right-handed punch on the side of the head, far harder than any he had ever thrown on the rugby field. "No, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he snarled at the unconscious figure on the ground, fingering his bleeding ear, "but you"d have let Harry there make my Mary a widow."
Pringle patted him on the shoulder, and turned to Mercy Alvarez. "I"ve got a vacancy for a Crown witness," he said. "Gates planned the whole thing, Anders is going down because he was there when the girl was killed, Harry"s dead, and that other one on the ground there, he"s having the f.u.c.king book thrown at him, whether or not the ACC"s married to his cousin.
"You tell us the whole story he just started, and you"ll be charged with defrauding your insurance company, you"ll plead guilty, and you"ll get a couple of years, max. If you get a really good lawyer, the judge might even suspend it. What do you say?"
She looked up at the burly policeman, a gleam in her dark eyes, as her lover began to stir on the ground at her feet. "Where do I sign?" she asked.AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.77."What"s the big surprise ending, by the way?" Neil asked as he and Louise stoqd at the entrance to Parliament House which had been allocated to the film crew.
"I"m not telling you that!" she said with a smile. "You"d find out if you " were here to see it, but as it is, only the kids get to know."
As he spoke, Sarah"s Freelander was waved by a security guard into the area between St Giles" Cathedral and Parliament House. She drove towards them, past the parked cars, and the equestrian statue. As soon as she stopped, the nearside doors opened and Lauren and Mark jumped out.
Sarah leaned over in the driving seat and she looked at the couple. There was still something behind Neil"s eyes, something that would always be there, but for the first time since his wife"s death, the big policeman looked content, as if a kind of peace had come into his life, as of course it had, against all hope and to his complete surprise.
"You two are looking pleased with yourselves," she said.
"Are we?" Louise replied. "I don"t know why he is. He"s going to work."
He squeezed her shoulder. "What are you talking about? So are you."
She laughed. "You know, even after all these years, I forget that sometimes. When it"s a scene I really fancy, it"s like going out to play."
"Have a good game, then," said Sarah. "And thanks for helping free up my Sat.u.r.day."
Neil leaned over and closed the pa.s.senger door. As she drove off, Louise took each of the children by the hand, and turned towards the hall. She raised herself slightly on her toes and kissed him. "Have a nice day," she whispered, as Lauren"s eyes widened.
He saw them into the building, into the safe-keeping of the uniformed police at the entrance, then walked the short distance to his car.
The Fettes headquarters were on Sat.u.r.day mode, and so he found a parking s.p.a.ce at the front of the building, beside a red Ford Ka which
I.seemed to look slightly self-conscious beside Bob Skinner"s BMW.
"The DCC said to tell you he"s in the technical unit, Mr Mcllhenney,"
the door officer advised him. Neil nodded and set off along the twisty route to Tony Davidson"s kingdom. He rapped on the technical director"s door, pened it, and stepped inside. Davidson himself was absent, but at his meeting table sat Bob Skinner and another man. Mcllhenney sized him up: early thirties, leather jacket type, a bit flash maybe, confident, but clearly in awe of the boss.
"Neil," said Skinner, "this is the Bandit. DI Dave Mackenzie. David, Neil Mcllhenney, my exec."
As they shook hands, Neil completed his appraisal with a look in the eye. Yes, he liked the bloke, even if he had given Ruthie a hard time.
"Tony"s off working his magic on the downloads that Dave brought with him," the DCC explained. "They"re videos, and we think they may show Ruthie"s uncle." Quickly he filled Mcllhenney in on the background to Mackenzie"s Internet trawl.
He had barely finished before Tony Davidson returned, to summon them to his neon-lit viewing room. "I"ve cleaned up Mr Mackenzie"s files as best I could," he said, "and edited them together into a single video. For ease of viewing, I"ve done a fast transfer to a Betacam tape, linked to a twenty eight-inch monitor." He handed Skinner a black device.
"Bob, there"s the remote. I"ve seen what"s on there, and frankly I don"t want to see it again." He turned and left the room, switching off the lights as he went.
Skinner felt himself tense as he pressed the "play" b.u.t.ton on the device.
The monitor screen flashed grey for a second, then black, then the t.i.tle appeared. "Estrella Azul Caida," he read. "Blue Star Fallen."
It vanished and a caption appeared, also in Spanish. He translated it for the others. "Dark star at play. The dark side of a famous lady? It is for you . . .
"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" he murmured, as figures appeared, their movements slightly jerky from the download, but clear enough. An old man, silver haired; a woman, wearing a white carnival mask, much younger, long-limbed, dark hair well cut, above shoulder-length. Both naked, her flesh firm, his sagging, but still showing solid musculature. Left side on to the camera as she teased him, coaxed him, stirred him, first into life, then into prodigious size.
"Jesus!" Mcllhenney murmured, looking away in disgust as she straddled268.him. When he looked back, he could tell by the lighting and the position of the camera that the scene had changed. Something else too; the old man seemed diminished, weaker, slighter in his build, if not in his genitalia, as the woman bent over him, her right side to the camera.
"Jesus!" This time it was Skinner who blasphemed, but his was an exclamation of horror. He froze the image on the scene. "David," he snapped.
"Leave us alone for a minute."
The Strathclyde detective looked at him, puzzled, but obeyed without question. As the door closed behind him, the DCC stared at his a.s.sistant.
"Look!" he said, his hand pointing towards the screen. "That birthmark on the woman"s right hip; in the shape of a blue star. Louise has one, exactly like it. A few years back, she did a movie with a nude scene. It showed that birthmark; I remembered it straight away."
Mcllhenney looked at the image, then back at his friend. He read shock in his face; saw that he was shaking. "No, Boss," he said quietly. "Lou used to have a birthmark like that one. But not any more. She had another nude scene in her last movie but one; a long one. She didn"t fancy the idea of showing it again, and so she had it removed, surgically, and new skin grafted on where it had been. As it happened, the director shot the scene mostly in darkness, so it didn"t show.
The graft wasn"t perfect. There"s still a faint mark there. I asked her about it, and she told me all about it.
"That isn"t Lou, but it"s some sick cow who wants us to think that it is; someone who knew about the birthmark, but doesn"t know that it ain"t there anymore."
The sound of relief which burst from Bob Skinner was more of an explosion than a sigh. "Bandit!" he shouted towards the door. "You can come back in now."
As the young inspector re-entered the room, he pressed the "play"
b.u.t.ton once more. They watched the home movie to the end, to the last awful scene. The woman, still naked, still marked, injecting the poor, sad, old man, needle into a vein in his erection, making him jump with pain, holding him until the drugs took him to the edge of a stupor.
Then the bath, hot, steam obscuring the lens but not enough to hide his feeble struggle, first as he felt the scalding heat, then as she held him beneath the surface, her hands and forearms protected by long rubber gloves.
And then it was over. The three policemen sat, breathless, staring at the
270.AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.
screen, silent until Mackenzie spoke. "Do you think it was McConnell?" he asked.
"I"m sure it was," Skinner answered. "Ruth showed me a photo once."
"And the woman, sir? The way you reacted back there. Do you know her?"
"We were meant to think that it was Louise Bankier, the film actress,"
said Mcllhenney quietly. "It wasn"t, though."
"Bankier?" the younger inspector exclaimed. "One of John McConnell"s old workmates was a bloke called Malcolm Bankier. I was tipped off by a contact in ScotRail. He lives out in Bearsden. I went to see him last night, but he"s f.u.c.king ga-ga. There was no point even trying to question him; poor old b.u.g.g.e.r doesn"t know whether it"s breakfast time or Easter."
Mcllhenney"s eyes narrowed. "Who else was there when you saw him?"
he asked.
"There was a nurse, and his daughter. Lucy, her name was. Here, was that Louise Bankier"s old man?"
Skinner ignored the question and picked up the telephone on the table.
"Get me Detective Sergeant Steele," he ordered the switchboard operator.
"Wherever he is. I"m in Mr Davidson"s viewing room." He replaced the phone and sat waiting, he and Mcllhenney staring at each other, eyes locked together, oblivious of the third man in the room.
Skinner answered the return call halfway through the first ring. "Stevie?
DCC here. I want to ask you something. From the Balmoral video you saw, from the description the woman in Newcastle gave you, could John Steed be a woman?
"Think hard, man, before you answer." He waited. "You sure?" Another pause. Thanks." The phone slammed down.