‘It will,’ Fox stated, straightening his shoulders. ‘We just need to work at it.’
Tuesday 17 February 2009
18
Tuesday morning, Fox was waiting for Annie Inglis outside her tenement. Duncan appeared first, slouching his way to school under the weight of his backpack. Ten minutes later, it was Inglis’s turn. Fox, seated across the road in his car, sounded his horn and waved her across. Traffic was busy – people on their way to work or dropping their kids off at the school gates. A warden had paused his scooter beside Fox’s car, but had scuttled off again when he saw that the indicators were flashing and there was someone behind the steering wheel. Annie Inglis stood her ground for a moment, and when she did cross the road she didn’t get into the car. Instead, she leaned down so her face was at the passenger-side window. Fox slid the window down.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. He handed her a business card, on the back of which was written the number of his new mobile phone.
‘That’s in case you need to reach me,’ he explained. ‘But keep it to yourself.’ Then: ‘I need a favour, Annie.’
‘Look, Malcolm…’
‘It would be easier to talk if you got in. I can even give you a lift.’
‘I don’t need a lift.’ When he made no answer to this, she sighed and opened the door. He’d removed the sweet-wrappers from the passenger seat. There was a street map on the floor, which she handed to him. He tossed it into the back.
‘Is it to do with Jamie Breck?’ she asked.
‘Gilchrist’s being obstructive.’
‘You’re suspended, Malcolm! It’s not his job to help you out.’
‘All the same…’
She gave another heavy sigh. ‘What is it you want?’
‘A contact at the Australian end – someone from the team there. Name, phone number, e-mail… anything at all, really.’
‘Do I get to ask why?’
‘Not yet.’
She looked at him. Her work face differed from the one she wore at home – there was a little more make-up. It hardened her features.
‘They’re going to know it was me,’ she stated. She didn’t mean the cops in Australia; she meant Fettes.
‘I’ll say it wasn’t.’
‘That’s all right, then – after all, there’s no reason for them not to take you at your word, is there?’
‘No reason at all,’ he said with a smile.
Annie Inglis opened her door and started to get out. She was still holding his business card. ‘What’s the matter with your old phone?’ she asked. Then: ‘No… on second thoughts, I really don’t want to know.’ She closed the door after her and crossed the road again, unlocking her own car.
It took Fox five minutes to drive to the café on Morningside Road, but another five to find a parking space. He put enough coins in the meter for an hour, and walked the short distance to his destination. Jamie Breck was already there, plugging his laptop into one of the power sockets next to the corner table he’d secured.
‘Just got here,’ he told Fox as the two men shook hands.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I didn’t get much sleep, thanks to your confession.’
Fox’s mouth twitched at the word. He shrugged off his coat and asked what Breck wanted to drink.
‘Americano with a spot of milk.’
Fox did the ordering, adding a cappuccino for himself. ‘Anything to eat?’ he asked Breck.
‘Maybe a croissant.’
‘Make that two,’ Fox told the assistant. By the time he got back to the table, Breck had angled the laptop so that the low sun wouldn’t hit the screen. Fox drew a chair round to Breck’s side of the table. This had been Fox’s idea, and looking around at the other customers he felt vindicated. Even if someone was outside in a surveillance van – and he’d taken a good look, spotting no obvious candidates – there were half a dozen people in the café logged on to the internet, courtesy of the free wi-fi. Most looked like students, the others business people. Naysmith had told him once how hard it was to untangle one user from another in such a cluster.
‘So what is it we’re looking for?’ Breck asked. He looked and sounded businesslike, the shock of the previous night assimilated and squeezed into a compartment in his mind.
‘Something you said a while back,’ Fox began, leaning forward in his chair. ‘You’ve come across the PR company before.’
Breck nodded. ‘Lovatt, Meikle, Meldrum have a lobbying arm.’ He got online and searched the firm’s name, coming up with the home page of their website. A further couple of clicks later, he was showing Fox a photographic portrait. The man was bald and bullet-headed and smiling. ‘Paul Meldrum – LMM’s political Mr Fixit. I was telling you about the local councillor – Paul here bent my ear about it. He said he was representing the council.’
‘Who was the councillor?’
‘Ernie Wishaw.’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘He runs a lorry business out by the Gyle.’
‘What’s he supposed to have done?’
‘One of his drivers was delivering a few packages too many…’
‘Dope?’
Breck nodded. ‘Drug Enforcement got him, and he’s due to serve five years. But they wondered how far up the ladder things went. Wishaw had a meeting at the Oliver with the driver’s brother-in-law. DEA reckoned maybe it was hush money to be given to the wife. If she was kept sweet, the driver wouldn’t go blabbing.’
‘How come you got involved?’
‘DEA wanted local knowledge. Their boss was tight with Billy Giles, so they got us.’
Fox frowned. ‘Was Glen Heaton part of the team?’
Breck nodded. ‘Up until then, I hadn’t really doubted him.’ ‘Something changed your mind?’
Breck offered a shrug. ‘I think they were on to us from the start – don’t ask me why; it was just a feeling I got.’
‘So you weren’t surprised when there was nothing from the Oliver’s CCTV?’
‘No,’ Breck agreed.
Fox took a sip of coffee. ‘How long ago did you say this was?’
‘Best part of six months.’
‘It never came up.’ Breck looked as if he didn’t quite understand. Fox enlightened him: ‘We’d been looking into Glen Heaton for nearly a year, and this is the first I’ve heard of it.’
Breck shrugged again. ‘He didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘You could have voiced your suspicions.’
‘Seemed to me you were doing fine on your own. And like I say, I’d nothing to back them up.’ Breck reached for his own drink, then changed his mind and bit into a croissant instead, brushing crumbs from his trousers. Fox stared at the photo of Paul Meldrum.
‘The drug-smuggling had nothing to do with the council,’ Fox stated. ‘How come LMM got involved?’
‘Good question.’
‘Did you ask it at the time?’
‘Ernie Wishaw had bought out a rival firm a few years earlier. It all got a bit ugly, and he used LMM to win round the media.’
Both men looked up as a new customer entered the café. But she was pushing a baby buggy, so they dismissed her. When they made eye contact, they shared a smile. Better safe than sorry…
‘So they might have been working for him personally, rather than the council?’ Fox asked.
Jamie Breck could only shrug once more. ‘Anyway, the whole thing ended up going nowhere. DEA dropped it and thanked us for our help.’
Fox concentrated on his breakfast, until he thought of something else to say.
‘You’re not the only one who was under surveillance, Jamie. The Deputy Chief Constable let slip that I’d been watched all last week, but Vince’s body wasn’t found until Tuesday morning – it takes a bit of time to decide that a cop might be breaking the rules and you should put a watch on him.’