She hesitated. "There was one; a blue Dodge people-carrier. The driver was a woman; she was collecting a kid."
"From where?"
"From a party; in the house across the street from Ron's."
"How did you know it was a party?"
"There were balloons tied to a tree in the yard; and there were still a couple of children playing outside, even though it was nearly dark."
"Good. Anything else?"
"No. After that I pulled into Ron's driveway." She opened her eyes.
"Does any of that help?"
"No, in that you didn't see the real killer driving away," he said.
"But maybe the old man with the dog did. Or maybe the woman in the Dodge van did. The police can find them and ask them. If they'd done a proper job from the start they'd have traced them by now."
He frowned. "A party, eh," he mused. "What do you do at a party these days?"
"Play, if you're a kid. Drink beer if you're you. What else?"
"You take photographs."
Sarah sat upright, suddenly. "Or you film it!" she exclaimed, showing her first sign of excitement. "Bob, there was a lady filming the kids when I drove up. It was nearly dark, but that's no problem to a modern movie camera."
Instantly, Skinner was as excited as his wife. "In that case, let's hope she took plenty of footage." He jumped to his feet. "Come on.
Tell Trish to pick up Mark from school when it's time. You and I are going out."
"Why? Are we going to see Brady?"
"Bugger him," he laughed. "We're going to find the woman with the camera."
Fifty-Three
The young Steven Steele had been brought up in Dunfermline, and it had gone against the grain with his police superintendent father when he had applied to join the force across the river rather than his own life constabulary.
He had dug his heels in nevertheless, refusing to consider a move that would have led to comparisons between them for years ahead. In Edinburgh, Stevie had never felt himself to be involved in a race to match his dad's progress up the promotion ladder, and indeed that of his father, before him; in life that is exactly how his career would have been seen.
As it happened, he had made inspector at thirty-two, five years faster than Steele senior. He believed that his success owed a lot to the understanding of the police culture that had been built into him in the family home; it had made him less in awe of senior officers than other young coppers, made it easier for him to relate to them, and consequently for them to notice him. Just as he had never paced himself against Superintendent Steele in life, neither had he picked any of his fellow officers in Edinburgh as a benchmark. However, he had on occasion looked at Maggie Rose as an example; she had taken longer than him to break out of the mass of constables with potential, but as far as he knew there was no police tradition in her family. Once she had, though, her ability had been recognised with a series of promotions.
Steele knew that he and Maggie worked well together because they brought the same skills to the job, and because, intellectually, they were well matched. Okay, he was a couple of rungs below her on the ladder, but time would take care of that. He had wondered on occasion about her family; she never spoke of anyone, other than Mario. His speculation was that she had been an orphan; perhaps she had lost her parents in an accident, for there was an unexplained hurt within her that he could see. Their exchange the day before had been the first time they had ever spoken of personal matters; until then it had always been work, or the occasional piece of social nonsense over an after-hours drink with other colleagues. There had been a spark between them; it had been very faint, no more than a firefly on a cold night, yet he had felt it. He had the sense to know, though, that she was territory beyond his limits, not just because of the formidable, dangerous Mario McGuire, but because he sensed that there were depths to her that no one would ever reach, or be allowed anywhere near.
As he stood on the stone landing outside the Albany Terrace flat, it occurred to him that Margaret Rose and Andrea Strachan had two things in common. They were both troubled women, and maybe, he suspected,
Maggie's problems ran deeper than Andrea's; also, neither of them seemed to have any grasp of how attractive they were to a normal, healthy male like Detective Inspector Steven Steele, copper-about-town.
As he pondered them both, thoughts of a third woman came to him; someone with whom, a few months before, he had shared a bottle of Pesquera, in sombre mood, in a dark wine-bar, after a post-mortem examination which he had witnessed, and which she had carried out.
Sarah Skinner had her troubles too; she had not spoken of them, but they had been there to see, and he had known lonely women before.
Unlike Maggie and Andrea, however, the deputy chief constable's wife knew exactly how attractive she was, and was in no way afraid of herself. He still was not sure what had made him kiss her, or whether it was she who had kissed him. He only knew that it had happened, and that for her, as for him, it had been the opening of a door. It had only been pure, abject cowardice that had made him close it again, without stepping through, by offering her the excuse of coffee at his place. He wondered whether, if they ever had the opportunity to play the same scene again, he would be braver.
He frowned and put the thought out of his mind as he pressed Andrea's doorbell. He heard her footfall, lightly on the other side of the door; grinning, he put his eye to the spyglass for a moment, then stepped back, so that she could see who he was.
She was smiling when she opened the door, and he felt his heart lift; he had seen the woman who lived on the other side of this Andrea. For a moment he wondered if he would have the same feeling every time they met. She seemed smaller than before, and he realised that she was barefoot, wearing jeans that were frayed at the hems and a university sweatshirt that he was sure did not date back to her dowdy student days. Her brown hair was tied back from her face in a ponytail.
"Have I missed something here?" she asked, glancing at her watch. "Did we decide to make it tonight for the pictures?"
"No," said Stevie, brightly. "I've been thinking about what you said at lunch. We've hit the wall with our investigation and I wanted to talk to you some more about it."
He sensed her tense a little. "You're not coming back to me as a suspect, are you?" She was still smiling, but some of the light seemed to have gone out of her eyes.
"Absolutely not," he said at once. "If we were, it wouldn't be me who came to see you."
"Why not?"
He grinned at her. "Work it out."
"Ahh," she exclaimed. "So the police are a bit like doctors; not allowed to get personal with the clients. You'll have to forgive me, Stevie; I really am naive in these areas."
"You sure are. When are you going to invite me in?"
She started, with a tiny jump, and put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry," she laughed, and threw the door open wide. "Straight through there."
He followed her pointing finger and stepped from the tiny hall into a square living room, with two big windows that reached almost from ceiling to floor. They were uncurtained, but still had their original wooden shutters, a popular feature with the Georgian and Victorian architects who designed the New Town. Andrea's flat faced north-west, and the room was bathed in the warm light of the evening summer sun.
He looked around as she closed the door and joined him. The room was a strange mix of austerity and colour. The two armchairs were upholstered in stiff, old-fashioned, imitation leather, with brass studs on their facings, and the sideboard and occasional tables were dark, dull things. In contrast there were bright, primary-coloured cushions scattered around, and vivid landscapes on the walls, with not a hint of Van Gogh about them. A vase of fresh cut flowers stood on the sideboard and alongside it a compact Sony hi-fi was playing something breezy by Jools Holland.