‘I took French and Spanish at school, sir. Quite easy really. Latin roots. I’m just starting on Italian. Arabic was much harder.’
‘Ye-es,’ Beard said, ‘I can imagine.’ Not a flicker of a smile. ‘At any rate, it’s your Spanish I’m interested in. It’s two weeks since you finished up at the Met, yes?’
Mackenzie nodded.
‘I know that technically you don’t start with us until Monday. But I want to farm you out on loan to my counterpart on the Fugitives Unit for a small job at the beginning of the week, and I need to brief you on it now. I owe him a favour, so I’m in his debt. If you do this for me I’ll be in yours.’
‘A little like guanxi, sir.’
Beard frowned. ‘Gwanshee?’
‘It’s a concept in Chinese culture. A favour given is a favour owed.’
‘Exactly. And a good way for you to start off on the right foot, don’t you think?’
‘Not really, sir. I’m assuming we operate on a command basis here, not an exchange of back-scratching. Since you are my boss I will do what you order me to.’
Beard held him in his steady gaze for a moment. ‘I can see why nobody likes you, Mackenzie.’ He sighed. ‘I want you to go to Spain to accompany a prisoner back on a flight from Malaga. His name is Jack Cleland. Number one on our most wanted list. He pretty much ran the traffic in cocaine here in London until a deep-cover sting operation went wrong and he killed an undercover cop. Unfortunately he got away. We’ve long suspected he was hiding out somewhere on the Costa del Crime. We still have a good relationship with the Spanish police. Ran a joint operation for several years called Operation Captura. It netted us quite a few villains who’d secreted themselves away on the costas, but we’ve never had so much as a sniff of Cleland.’ He paused. ‘Until now.’
‘How did they get him?’
‘Pure fucking chance. A couple of local cops in a district not far from Gibraltar went to investigate reports of a burglary at a villa in a very upmarket development overlooking the Med. Turned out not to be a burglary at all. It was Cleland’s place. He’d been living there under an assumed name. Ian Templeton. His idea of a joke, apparently, since that was the name of his old headmaster at Glenalmond College.’
‘He’s Scottish, then?’
‘You’ve heard of Glenalmond?’ Beard clearly hadn’t.
Mackenzie said, ‘Of course. It’s in Perthshire. They call it the Eton of the North.’
‘Do they,’ Beard said dryly. ‘I take it you have no objection to nicking a fellow Scot?’
‘None at all, sir. Particularly a toff. They teach them to be like little Englishmen up there.’
‘Not like this fucking Englishman.’
‘No, sir. I did say toff.’
Beard glared at him, but could detect no irony. He supposed that Mackenzie was probably incapable of disingenuity. ‘Anyway, he and his girlfriend had left the house earlier in the day, telling neighbours that they were taking a short holiday. But it seems they’d left something behind, and returned only to discover they’d mislaid the keys. So they broke into their own place, and disabled the alarm before it went off. A neighbour saw lights in the house and called the police. Of course, when the cops arrived they had no idea that the couple in the villa weren’t burglars. There was a shoot-out, and somehow Cleland managed to gun down his own girlfriend. Shot her dead. A British citizen. Angela Fry. He was arrested, we were alerted, and a European Arrest Warrant was issued. He hasn’t contested it in court, and the Spanish are happy to offload him on to us, since there were no Spanish casualties. He’ll come back here to face charges of drug trafficking and murder.’
‘When is it you want me to go, sir?’
‘Fly out Tuesday afternoon. The Spanish will hand Cleland over at the airport. Armed escort on to the plane. Just a few formalities to be dealt with in Spanish, then you’ll come back with him on the return flight. It’ll get you in around eleven pm, and officers from the Met will meet you off the plane to take him into custody.’ He smiled. ‘Not too difficult for you?’
But Mackenzie was already wrestling with demons. He had realized at once that if he agreed, it would mean missing Sophia’s school concert. Though much as it pained him, even he realized he could hardly offer that up as an excuse for not going to Spain. He fell back on a more valid pretext. ‘I am afraid I have a family funeral in Glasgow on Monday, sir. I was going to alert HR. My aunt. I’ll be there until Tuesday.’
Beard stroked his chin thoughtfully then reopened the file and sifted through the top sheets until he found what he was looking for. ‘You were brought up by your aunt and uncle after the death of your father.’
Mackenzie said nothing.
‘Is that right?’
‘I was fostered by my father’s brother and his wife after I was removed from the care of my mother.’
‘Why were you taken from your mother?’
‘She was an alcoholic. Apparently.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘I have no idea, sir.’ He paused. ‘And I don’t really care.’
Beard regarded him curiously for a moment, then closed the file. ‘I’ll get them to reserve you a seat on a flight from Glasgow to Malaga on Tuesday then, and you can get the London flight back.’ When Mackenzie did not respond immediately he canted his head to one side. ‘Is there a problem?’ Almost daring him to say that there was.
Mackenzie closed his eyes for a moment. An image of Sophia’s sad little face creased with disappointment floated up through dark red, and he felt tears welling up behind the lids. He blinked several times. ‘No, sir.’
Chapter Five
A smell like old socks drifted from the kitchen and followed him up the stairs. He had no idea what it was the old couple fried up in there, but it seemed only ever to reek of cabbage and onions. It was a depressing smell, one that had become synonymous with this house. And his unhappiness.
Earlier he had walked the length of Oxford Street in search of a black tie. Perhaps, he thought, black was no longer de rigueur at funerals. He was unpractised in contemporary burial rites.
The sun was out, the wind had swung to the south-west, and it was a balmy warm spring day. Pavements in sidestreets were crowded with tables and chairs, Londoners enjoying the promise of summer over the first premature salads of the year. Mackenzie had found a dark pub and ordered Scotch pie and beans, sipping on a beer, and putting off the moment when he would have to face the inevitable.
Back now in his gloomy bedsit, he indulged in further procrastination. The dormer faced north, so while sunshine washed across the rooftops beyond it, none found its way into Mackenzie’s room. He turned on the anglepoise and settled himself in his armchair with the file on Cleland that Beard had provided to brief him.
Cleland was thirty-six years old. Just eighteen months younger than Mackenzie. But while they belonged to the same generation, their experiences throughout what Mackenzie still thought of as his prologue years could hardly have been more different. Nor did they share a name, as might reasonably have been deduced. For while Jack was commonly a diminutive of John, it was what Cleland’s parents had actually christened him.
Although his family lived in Edinburgh, he was boarded from the age of seven at Fettes, one of the most prestigious schools in the capital. Almost as if his parents had wanted him out of the way. And as soon as he turned twelve they sent him to Glenalmond. Neither school came cheap, and while there was nothing in the file about his family background, Mackenzie could only assume that his parents were independently wealthy.