Head Shot

'How hard have they tried?'

'As hard as they can. The company has no listing in the telephone directory or in Yellow Pages; nor are there any private subscribers named Magnus Essary or Ella Frances. We checked with the solicitors who registered the company; they're a smal firm out in Corstorphine.

'They know virtual y nothing about them; they took al the instructions at a single meeting which was attended only by El a Frances, handled the set-up for them, sold them one of the shell companies they keep for the purpose and registered the name change with Companies House, in Castle Terrace. They sent them a fee note and it was paid in cash. They haven't heard from them since then; no one could even recal an occasion, since that first meeting, when either one has called at the office.'

'Where did they send the invoice?'

'To the address they gave, 46 Leightonstone Grove, Hunter's Tryst. A couple of days later, a woman handed in an envelope to their reception desk with the exact amount in cash. The office was just closing, so she didn't wait for a receipt; it was posted out to them, same day.'

'You've been to the house?'

'Of course. No answer; the place was locked up.'

'Who's the registered owner of the property?'

'A Mr Lyall Butler; we've checked with the City Chambers. He's retired and shown as being normal y resident in Portugal, and getting a fifty per cent discount on his council tax.'

'Have you contacted him?'

'He's not on the phone there. It would mean asking the local police to interview him… if he speaks Portuguese, or they speak English.

Chances are they'd need to find an interpreter. If I did that, it would take a long time to get a result. No, what I was hoping, was that you might ask around for me within your family to see if anyone has actual y met these people, and knows where or how they can be contacted, other than at that address.'

'Didn't Stan tell you that?'

There was a silence, then a sigh. 'We didn't actual y ask him,' Jay admitted. 'I just tried to cal him back myself, but he's gone out. His secretary said that he'd gone for a meeting with a client and that he didn't take his mobile.

'I don't really want to send officers to his house in the evening, so I wondered…'

'It's al right for me to get involved when it suits you, eh, Greg,' said McGuire. 'Okay, I'l have a word with Stan. And I'l ask my mother about them. Beppe might have discussed the tenancy with her, you never know.'

'Thanks, s…' Jay stopped himself just in time.

51

Charlie Johnston was none too pleased to have been summoned from the betting shop in the middle of his day off, but the big career constable knew better than to show it to the acting chief superintendent. He stood to attention in front of her desk, in his hastily donned tunic, al too aware, suddenly, that it was covered in fine cat hairs.

'You wanted to see me, ma'am?' he began, his speech as stiff and formal as the rest of him.

'Yes. Relax and sit down, please. I want to talk to you about something that happened a week or so back, when you were on nights, minding the Oxgangs office. You were cal ed out to a sudden death, I understand; in a doctor's surgery.'

Johnston nodded, vigorously. 'Aye, that's right, ma'am. DrAmritraj.'

Then he paused, as if it had dawned on him that for all young Haddock had said, he might be on the carpet after all. 'Ah didna like leaving the office, like,' he assured Rose, 'but a'body else was busy, and the paramedics were gettin' bolshie.'

She read his thoughts. 'It's al right; I'm not questioning your judgement, Charlie, don't worry. No, I just want you to tell me what happened when you got there.'

The constable leaned back in his chair and scratched his head. 'Well, ma'am, there wisna much to it really. There was this bloke, and he was deid.' He chuckled, grimly. 'No doubt about that right enough. He was as deid as he's ever goin' taste be.'

'Tell me about the doctor.'

'There's no' much taste tell about him either. He was an Asian bloke… nothing unusual about that these days… and he was in a hurry taste get home.'

'Did you question him?'

Johnston looked offended. 'Oh aye, ma'am. It's al in my report.'

'Fine, but tell me. How did he explain the man being there in the middle of the night?'

'He said the bloke had cal ed him, complaining about chest pains. He said the guy was feart of hospitals, so rather than upset him, he took him taste his surgery to give him a check-up, put him on a machine, like, and he had hardly got there when the fella took a big coronary and popped off. He said he was ten minutes trying to bring him round, but it was nae use.

'So he just called the ambulance taste take him away.'

Rose looked him in the eye. 'Not the police? Only the ambulance?

You're sure about that.'

'Dead sure, ma'am. It was a wee paramedic lass that phoned me.'

'And how did the doctor react when you arrived?'

The middle-aged officer cocked an eyebrow. 'Ye mean was he pleased taste see me like?'

She nodded. 'That'l do.'

'Naw. He was just wantin' hame, like the ambulance crew were wantin' back taste the Royal.'

'Had you ever met him before?'

'Who? The deid fella, like?'

'No,' Rose said, patiently. 'The doctor.'

'Naw, naw, naw, naw, naw. Never in ma life. He was a new one on me, like.'

'Do you know many of the doctors up in Oxgangs, Charlie?'

'Ah thought Ah knew them a', ma'am, but like Ah said, no' this one.'

'Have you seen Amritraj since then?'

'No, ma'am.'

She leaned across her desk and pulled her in-tray towards her. 'The dead man, Essary,' she said. 'You'd remember him if I showed you a photograph, would you?'

'Oh aye, ma'am. Ah've got a good memory for faces… especial y if they're deid.'

She ripped off the second sheet of the Strathclyde memo, and slid it over to him. 'Is that him?'

Johnston picked it up and gazed at it for a few seconds. Then he nodded, slowly. 'He looks a bit better there, ma'am, a bit mair life about him, ken; but that's him a'right: no doubt about it.'

52

'I always meant to ask your father about this thing American men have with their dens,' Bob murmured, as he and Sarah looked around the converted cellar space beneath the mansion. It was a big room, with walls and ceiling panelled in pale beechwood, comfortably furnished, and geared to play rather than work.

'Simple; they express the part of them that never grew up. That was well over fifty per cent in some men I've met, I can tell you. In my father's case, probably about five, but he wasn't exempt, as this place shows.'

Like the rest of the house, the den bore the marks of a thorough sweep by the police and Bureau technicians. 'This photograph you remember,' asked Bob, 'he would have kept it here, would he, rather than in one of the public rooms?'

'Here, for certain,' she said, without a moment's hesitation. 'My dad wasn't showy; he met presidents and senators, and he had been one of those himself at state level, but he never talked about it unless he was asked, and he never displayed any photographs from those days. All those, and his few bits of memorabilia, were down here.'

Skinner laughed. 'I was in a guy's office once and you could hardly see the walls for pictures of him with the rich and famous. They were arranged in a sort of pecking order. The actors and pop stars were on the bottom rung, then politicians, then up one more to the royals, and right at the top of the ladder was him and the Pope.'

'Whom you'l be meeting yourself, quite soon.'

'Yes, but don't let's go into that. Where did Leo keep his photographs?'