‘Indeed? Who opened the safe, Ray?’
‘Charnwood did. That’s why Bandit took him to the shop.’
‘And how did he open it? With a key?’
‘No, the boss said it had a combination lock.’
‘So, Gary Starr kept a fortune in drugs and cash in his office safe, and Eddie Charnwood knew the combination.’
Wilding stared at him. ‘He knew they were there? But he opened the safe for us?’
‘What choice did he have? Ray, he was Starr’s trusted clerk, the core of the business in a way, and there would be times when the boss was away and he had to lock up the takings. It’s inconceivable that he wouldn’t have known the combination.’
‘But it was him who told us that the fake gun belonged to Starr.’
‘Was there any way he could have known that Starr claimed it was used in the fake robbery?’
Wilding drew in a breath and let it escape in a great sigh of realisation. ‘Fuck! Starr was here for most of the afternoon after the incident. He was just leaving when I arrived to take over from Sammy Pye. I actually heard Oliver Poole say that he’d drive him home, and Starr say okay. Charnwood ran the shop all afternoon, and he never saw Starr. He wasn’t a witness, so we didn’t need him. Bloody hell.’
‘Exactly. Now consider this. Back in the eighties, when McGuire and I were the disco kings of Edinburgh, I pulled a woman one Saturday at Buster Brown’s. She was lovely, did a magnificent turn, and her name was Sorry. I ribbed her about it, and she told me it was short for Soraya. She was Egyptian.’
The superintendent stood up. ‘Come on, Ray, let’s go for them. We’ll take armed back-up, but I have a hell of a feeling we won’t need it. They’re too smart to be there waiting for us.’
Fifty-eight
‘You gentlemen seem to come in a rush,’ Sylvia Thorpe exclaimed.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ray Wilding.
‘I mean it: you’re like buses and bills. You don’t see any for while then they arrive in twos and threes. My office has had no contact with the police for over a year, and now we hear from you and your colleague Sergeant McGurk at one and the same time.’
‘It’s pure coincidence,’ the sergeant replied, wondering as he spoke what the DCC’s office-bound assistant had been up to. ‘I’m involved in a complicated investigation and the name I gave you has cropped up in it.’
‘Not nearly as complicated as Sergeant McGurk’s, or as interesting: I’m sure you’ll hear about it in due course. As for your enquiry, it was much simpler. Soraya Goma, pharmacist, of Cairo, Egypt, and Edward Charnwood, clerk, of sixty-two Glenochil Terrace, were married in Edinburgh four years ago; their son, Edward Hosni Charnwood, was born in June the year before last. I’ll fax the certificates to the number you gave me.’
Wilding noted the information on a pad. ‘I’d like some family background on Eddie senior: parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins. Can you do that for me?’
‘No problem. Give me an hour or so.’
‘Thanks, Ms Thorpe,’ he said, hung up, and looked up to see McIlhenney approaching his desk. ‘Guess what? Soraya Charnwood’s a …’
The superintendent beat him to the punch. ‘Pharmacist; we got word from the DSS while you were speaking to the GRO. She’s employed in the dispensing department at the Western General. That means she’d have access to the drugs that were used to paralyse Starr. I’ve also been speaking to the SDEA, sharing our information with them; their operation with the Guardia Civil, the one that Bandit effed up, involved a butcher from Dundee called Joe Falconer. He made a trip to Pamplona as welclass="underline" he was suspected of being involved in supply, so he was under round-the-clock surveillance. He dropped his car at the same garage, and picked it up a couple of days later. They went to lift him this morning and found him in his meat fridge, shot in the head. What does that sound like?’
‘It sounds like Eddie and Soraya have been closing the book on anyone who could give evidence against them and her brothers.’
‘Exactly. These are dangerous people: they’re armed and on the run, we assume, with their kid. I only hope they know when the game’s up, for his sake. Those photos we took from their place: you’ve had them distributed?’
‘Yes, but they still may be hard to catch. They left their passports behind them at their flat; that has to mean they’re travelling with forgeries. If they pick a really busy place to exit through, and change their appearance. .’
‘They can change theirs, but disguising the wee boy will be more difficult.’
‘It may be too late already. They could have been on their way out of the country by the time we found Big Ming’s body. His place isn’t that far from Edinburgh airport. DVLA told me that Charnwood drives a blue Escort: I’ve circulated the number with the photographs and I’m having the airport car park checked.’
‘Of course, but even if it’s there it could take the best part of a day to find it.’
‘True.’ Wilding sighed. ‘I’m sorry, boss,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘We should have been where we are now three days ago.’
‘That’s not your fault. I know you did your best to keep the inquiry on the right lines.’
‘I could have come to you when I saw how it was going.’ McIlhenney smiled and shook his head. ‘No, you couldn’t, Ray. Two or three days into a new job, with a new DCI, and you go behind his back to complain about him? I don’t think so. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s big Bob’s, for sticking him down here without thinking it through.’
It was Wilding’s turn to grin. ‘Are you going to tell him that?’
‘No, I am not, and neither is Mario. But he’d figure it out for himself if he knew what’s been happening. Actually I suspect he has already: it was him that suggested I move Stevie Steele down here. Strictly within these walls, Bandit wasn’t moved off the Drugs Squad as a reward for outstanding results. He was shifted because he took too high a profile in achieving them. He’s a very visible copper, is Mr Mackenzie; he can’t help it. Short-term, in the right situation, that can be valuable. But long-term, in a job that calls for a low profile, it’s not.’
‘So how’s the long-term going to be in this office?’
‘That, my friend, is going to be up to him.’
Fifty-nine
‘I’m so glad you could make it tonight,’ said Alex, ‘even if it’s only for a drink in the Traverse Bar. You’ve made an honest woman out of me.’
‘Hey, come on,’ Gina protested. ‘You may not be a criminal lawyer but even you should know that an alibi doesn’t count if it’s fixed up after the event.’
‘Maybe not but I don’t like to think of myself as telling out and out porkers.’
‘Speaking of which, what’s he like, this guy Guy?’
‘He’s a Mr Smooth: he looks the part, I have to admit, even if he is carrying a bit of flab. The trouble is, he knows it.’
‘That doesn’t make him a bad person.’
‘He isn’t a bad person. It’s just that he has this smugness about him that infuriates me sooner or later, but as soon as it does, and I let him know, like I did this morning, he has this way of making you feel sorry, and you wind up apologising for saying what you really think.’
‘Ahem. You said “this morning”?’
Alex smiled awkwardly and shrugged. ‘Well. .’
‘Hussy.’ Gina chuckled throatily.
‘No! It’s not as if we hadn’t been there before. I slept with him a couple of times when I was in London.’
‘I see. So now he gets himself a stopover in Edinburgh, consults his palm-top, and says, “Let’s see, who’s a likely bet around here? Ah, good old Alex.” That’s how it was?’
‘Lexy.’
‘What?’
‘He calls me Lexy.’
‘As in Sexy Lexy? And you let him?’
‘Let’s say I humoured him for a while. But you’re right: that’s how it was, or at least that’s how it turned out. If I’m being really honest, it started off the other way round. I was needing some uncomplicated male company in the flat after these bloody calls, and he was handy, so I pulled him, or let him pull me. Oh, what the fuck? It doesn’t matter.’