Would I take it on? That was a hell of a big question. Would I step into an investigation that the police had been running for four months without getting anywhere? Would I waste my time looking for a rich man’s corporate toy, one that had quite possibly been repainted, renamed, altered cosmetically and sold on for a couple of million?
Yes, I would, for the original Alison’s sake. And of course a success bonus of half a million pounds was an added incentive.
‘Very well,’ I agreed, ‘I’ll look at it, but before I do I have to tell you that this was not an opportunistic theft. It’s been planned and executed by people who knew what they were doing, and almost certainly by someone who’d seen the interior of the boathouse, because of the way the alarm was neutralised.
‘Whoever stole the Princess had some sort of insider knowledge; that’s a racing certainty, and it should have been the basis of the police inquiry. Tell me, were you ever asked for a list of all the people who’ve been on board her, going back at least a couple of years?’
‘No,’ Rory replied. ‘We never were. We’d be able to provide it, but only up to a point. Some of our hospitality invitations were general; key execs of some of our customers and client companies regularly joined us for a day’s sailing, with partners. We don’t have the names of all of those partners, and we can hardly go back and ask them, especially not the customers. “Excuse me, but can you tell me your other half’s name so she can be eliminated from police inquiries?” No, I don’t think so.’
‘No,’ I conceded, ‘but if I’d been involved in this I’d have wanted that list. Who was the senior investigating officer?’
‘His name was Detective Inspector McGarry,’ Eden volunteered. ‘First name Randolph, I think. He was based in Dumbarton.’
‘Did you meet anyone else?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Not until Chief Superintendent Chambers came to see me. McGarry was my only contact throughout. I met him on the estate, at the scene of the crime, so to speak. He visited me a couple of times after that, to update me, but nobody else came near me, no more senior officer.’
I was incredulous. I was still in command of the Strathclyde force when the Princess Alison was stolen, a five-million-pound heist that nobody had seen fit to report to the chief constable. A major rural crime, dropped into the hands of a detective inspector, whose caseload would be entirely urban and who would have no specialist marine knowledge. If I had known of it at the time, arses would have been kicked. As it was I was going to make a fuss. ‘You never thought to take it up the line?’ I asked.
Eden stared back at me. ‘To whom? I didn’t know anyone else.’
‘You know me,’ I retorted. ‘I was in Pitt Street when it happened, getting ready to hand over to my successor in ScotServe. I’d have raised merry hell if I’d known that a DI had been assigned as the investigating officer. I’m not saying that the outcome would have been different, but there would have been a hell of a lot more resources committed, that is for sure.’
‘What can you do after the event?’ Rory asked. ‘Do we have a realistic chance of getting the Princess back?’ I sensed his accountant’s mind at work.
‘I don’t know,’ I told him, candidly. ‘I promise you this: as soon as I see it’s hopeless, I’ll tell you. I won’t waste my time or yours.’
‘Fair enough,’ his father said. ‘How will you begin?’
‘By seeing how much influence I still have,’ I replied. ‘I need to get my hands on the police report.’
Six
‘As a deputy chief,’ Mario McGuire said, ‘I’m not going to be crawling over every crime scene like Bob Skinner did, but this one . . .’ He shuddered. ‘I’ve attended very few child deaths in my career, but every one’s burned into my brain.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ DCI Pye confessed. He looked up at his senior colleague. ‘To be honest I didn’t expect you to come here, sir. I thought you’d want to know, that’s all.’
‘You did the right thing, Sammy,’ the DCC reassured him. ‘And you’re not alone. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had half a dozen calls from crime scenes, from your opposite numbers in Aberdeen, Fort William, Dumfries, Inverness, Falkirk and Motherwell. Strictly speaking none of you should have called me, but we’re all still bedding into this new structure, at all levels, and until we all feel comfortable, I’m quite happy with over-reporting.’
‘You don’t look very comfortable in that uniform, sir,’ Sauce Haddock chipped in.
McGuire grinned. ‘Don’t let it fool you, lad,’ he joked. ‘This isn’t your ordinary woolly tunic, this is Hugo Boss.’ In truth he did feel awkward in the clumsy garment. He had spent most of his career in plain clothes, and had never dressed casually for work; on his first day as an acting detective constable, he had worn a pale-blue mohair tailor-made suit. When he recalled that time, he could still hear Bob Skinner’s gentle admonition: ‘This is CID. We do unobtrusive here.’
As the first chief constable of ScotServe, Sir Andrew Martin had taken a different position. His deputies and ACCs, and all divisional commanders, were required to wear uniform on duty. He had considered extending that to CID, and had backed down only in the face of the united opposition of Maggie Steele, his designated deputy, and McGuire himself.
‘When you called me, Sammy,’ he continued, ‘I was heading for Hawick, to visit CID down there. If I hadn’t been in the vicinity I wouldn’t have come here, but I was, and when you told me there was a kid involved, I felt that I should.’ He looked at Haddock. ‘Have the SOCOs got a paper suit to fit me?’
The DS nodded and handed him a package, containing a sterile overall with a hood. He put it on, then added paper bootees and latex gloves. Prepared, he followed his similarly clad colleagues into a large tent that stood in the centre of the cleared area of the Fort Kinnaird car park.
A floodlight had been set up beside the red saloon, focusing on the boot. The child lay as Pye and Haddock had found her, tiny, helpless, her dead eyes shaming them all for allowing what had happened to her.
There was one other person in the tent, a very small man. He wore a face mask in addition to his tunic, removing it as he turned towards them.
‘Professor Hutchinson,’ McGuire exclaimed. ‘I thought you had . . .’
‘Not yet, Mario,’ the pathologist replied. ‘I’ve got a few weeks till I retire. Even then, I imagine I’ll probably help out on a part-time basis, if I’m needed.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. You’re too good to lose completely. Have you any initial thoughts about this? Can you give us a time of death?’
‘No more than three hours ago. I’m certain of that.’
‘And the cause? How about that?’
The professor frowned. ‘I can’t say yet,’ he replied, ‘and I’m not even going to hazard a guess. All I can tell you is that I see no sign of trauma. There’s no bruising to the neck, nothing to suggest strangulation.’
‘Asphyxiation?’ Haddock suggested.
‘That’s a possibility, Sauce,’ Hutchinson conceded, ‘but how? No, I won’t speculate; you’ll all have to wait until I’ve done the post-mortem.’
‘Soonest, yes?’ Pye murmured.
‘This afternoon,’ he promised. ‘I have one observation, though. If you take a look inside the boot, you’ll see that it’s been lined, with thick foam rubber; it’s even been fixed under the boot lid. Why? The only thing I can suggest is that it was done to protect the wee lass from being bumped around too much while the car was moving. That leads me to suppose that poor wee Zena was still alive when she was put in here.’
‘Zena?’ Pye repeated. ‘Why do you call her that? We haven’t identified her yet.’
‘There’s a name tag in the neck of her jacket, beside the maker’s label. I believe that’s what you detectives call “a clue”.’
‘Is there a surname?’
He looked up at the DCI, with an eyebrow raised. ‘No, but I don’t imagine there was another “Zena” in her school class, so it wouldn’t be necessary. I’m finished here,’ he continued, briskly. ‘The poor child can be removed to the mortuary. I’ll schedule the post-mortem for four o’clock.’ He pulled up the arm of his tunic to check his watch. ‘That gives you just over four hours to find out who she is and let her parents have a chance to see her before I proceed.’