‘You wouldn’t have been an accused, you’d have been a witness, but that case was never going to come to trial, ’cos you can’t put dead people in the dock, and by that time, Hastie had taken care of the Newcastle end.’
‘So why did you warn me?’
‘I did it to protect you. Not from Tony Manson, for he’d never have crossed me, but from Bella. She was another animal altogether.’
‘You mean she knew that I’d invited Marlon to my place?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing.
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘I told her.’
‘You told her,’ she whispered, incredulous. Her expression froze. ‘Why, in God’s name, did you do that?’
‘Because I wanted her to know,’ I said. ‘I wanted her to see how she’d destroyed her children, I wanted her to see what an evil cow she was. That’s why I told you never to come back to Scotland, and to forget that you ever had a mother. You were so much better off without her.’
‘Jesus,’ Mia gasped. ‘You told her. Bob, you don’t know what you did.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I’ll get there,’ she replied, ‘but first tell me, how much do you know about her death?’
‘I can only tell you what the Edinburgh investigators have pieced together. As you know, it’s not my force any longer. But why should I do that? Let me guess. You want to know whether they’ve found out about you and the methamphetamine supply. Right?’
She nodded and offered a small grin.
‘What’s so fucking funny?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll deny any involvement in that.’
‘Sure, because you were smart enough to burn your bodega to the ground before you did a runner from the Spanish drugs cops. Yes, they know about it in Edinburgh. Why, for God’s sake, Mia, did you get into that racket? Tell me; it won’t go any further.’
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘You know the old saying about taking the boy out of the ghetto? Maybe in my case it runs along the lines of, you can take the girl out of the family, but you can’t take the family out of the girl.’
She picked up her glass in both hands and took a sip. ‘Let me tell you how it was with me, Bob,’ she murmured. ‘I struggled for a few years after I moved to Spain, getting by on presenter jobs on English shows on local radio, until my Spanish became good enough to get me into the mainstream stations. It was tough, but over the years I managed to put a little money together.
‘Then I did something fairly daft. I bought a sherry bodega in a place called El Cuervo. It’s not quite the end of the earth, but probably a stopover on the way there. The guy I bought it from stayed on for a while, to show me the ropes, and we ran profitably for a while. Then, about two years ago, he died, very suddenly, just as the recession was starting to bite. That’s when Ignacio came in.’
‘Ignacio being?’ I asked, although I knew from Pye’s file.
‘My son.’
‘I don’t recall him in Edinburgh.’
‘No, he was born in Spain, eighteen years ago. He told me that he knew someone who had a brother who could put the place to good use, if we didn’t ask any questions. I could see myself being penniless again, so I said yes, and I didn’t ask. Sure enough, reasonable money started to roll in, and there was no comeback. . for a while, that is. Then, about nine months ago, Ignacio came to me again and said that his pal wanted to quit, as the local markets were becoming a bit risky, not so much from the police but from other people, a crew of Mexicans who didn’t like what he was doing.’
I recalled a note I’d read on the file, by Karen Neville, after an unofficial chat with Alafair Drysalter. ‘So you had the bright idea of creating another route?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you approached Hastie McGrew, fresh out of the nick?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘At first he was suspicious; I’d had no contact with either him or Alafair since I left. He doubted me at first; he was worried that the cops might be trying to set him up again, but I was able to tell him some family stuff that convinced him I was who I said I was.
‘Hastie said he’d think about my proposition. A week or so later he came back and told me that he’d set something up, although he could not get anywhere near it himself. You understand why?’
I nodded. ‘Of course. But he never would have. He must have learned from Perry: never let anything be traced to you, anything that can be proved.’
‘Just so,’ she agreed. ‘It was simple,’ she continued. ‘I couriered the drugs across to Britain in a van loaded with stuff I was taking back home for the ex-pat Brits that are bailing out of Spain in the thousands. That was my cover. I always hid the drugs in their items, never in the van, so that if I was caught. . unlikely as that was on the crossings I used. . I’d be able to claim innocence.’
Good thinking, Mia, I thought. You’re the smartest Watson of them all. . not that that would be too hellish difficult.
‘I was met,’ she went on, ‘wherever I said, by a guy I knew only as Patrick. He took the consignment, and that was that. The money flowed to me by a different route.’ She leaned forward, looking at me earnestly. ‘That’s the truth, Bob.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘not quite. At least it’s not quite as the Spanish drugs police see it. They believe that Ignacio synthesised the stuff himself, that there never was any pal. They checked his school records and found that his chemistry results were off the scale.’
‘Shit,’ she murmured. ‘Then I need your help even more.’
‘How do you imagine I can help you with all this?’ I protested. ‘I have no jurisdiction here, and as for Scotland, it’s gone too far for that. Remember my young DC, Andy, the blond boy with the green eyes? He’s now the head of our Drug Enforcement Agency, and he takes his job very seriously. I can’t call him off.’
She stared hard at the tablecloth.
‘The guy Patrick,’ I went on, ‘if you’d been checking up on him in the Edinburgh online papers as well as on me, you’d know that he was busted last week. In the process, he shot his girlfriend dead, instead of the cop he was trying to kill. As you can imagine, he’s singing his fucking head off.’
‘Oh Jeez,’ she sighed. ‘It never rains, eh? Bob, I’m not too worried about the Spanish police. They’re too busy chasing the Mexicans and the Colombians to bother about little old me. But your people, they’re different. You couldn’t tell them the route’s closed down now, could you?’
‘They know that already, Mia. But they’re not going to send you a letter of thanks, and they can’t just forget it ever existed.’ I thought for a second or two. ‘However. . if they stuck you in a line-up, what are the chances of Patrick Booth identifying you?’
‘As long as I’m not the only one there wearing a poncho, a woolly hat and shades so big they almost cover your face, I’d say they were pretty poor.’
‘Then maybe you don’t need help,’ I suggested; then I frowned. ‘But something tells me that’s not your biggest worry, is it?’ I ventured.
‘No.’
‘That has to do with this deep dark secret, I guess, the one you say will hole my career below the waterline.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I suppose it’s time you found out what it is.’
She took a mobile from her small gold handbag, keyed in a text and sent it, then leaned back in her chair. I did the same, catching up with the Albarino in the silence. If I hadn’t glanced to my left I wouldn’t have seen the look on John’s face, the surprise in his eyes as he looked at a point behind me and exclaimed, ‘Nacho?’
And then he was standing beside me, the newcomer, the third place at the table. I’d seen him in a similar position before, but then he’d been wearing a waiter’s uniform.