what the hell to say to each other, he came out with a story that the ex had told him in confidence.’
‘Under similar circumstances no doubt.’
‘Probably. Her name’s Luisa, and she’s Eden Higgins’s PA. The tale was that after the liquidator had done his worst, Hector Mackail turned up unannounced at Eden’s office up on the Mound. He accused him of being in cahoots with the See You Next Tuesday at the bank . . . in which Higgins has a substantial stake, did I forget to mention that? . . . and of masterminding the whole thing.
‘Eden told him to go away, or words to that effect, and Mackail lost it. He banjoed him and knocked him down a flight of stairs, buggering his ankle in the process. Luisa was going to call your lot, but Eden told her to do no more than chuck Mackail out. He wanted no police involvement, no exposure of the story. He walked about with a cast on his ankle for five weeks and never told anyone why.’
‘I can see why he’d want to keep that quiet,’ Pye said. ‘Did you think about running it?’
‘No, and neither did my one-night stand. The fight would have been denied, Luisa would have been fired and nobody would ever have proved any collusion between Eden and See You Next Tuesday.’
Macy finished the pie and stood up, abruptly. ‘I hope that was all worthwhile, guys. I’ve got to go now; Goldman Sachs is having a champagne reception in the Balmoral Hotel. There will be food.’
She leaned over and kissed Haddock on the cheek, leaving a lipstick impression. ‘Bye, Sauce, your secret is totally unsafe with me.’
‘Fuck me!’ Sammy Pye gasped as she left. ‘Now I understand why you wanted a minder.’
Forty-Seven
‘It’s a hell of a story, boys,’ Mario McGuire said, ‘but how does it relate to your inquiry? Your target is the person who killed Francey and the Polish girl, because it’s almost certain that he paid them to kidnap Zena. The other thing, this corporate skulduggery, there’s no way that it relates.’ The DCC scratched his chin. ‘Mind you,’ he mused, ‘I’m interested, for other reasons, that Eden Higgins is caught up in it.’
Sammy Pye had called him the previous evening, almost as soon as the doors in Bert’s Bar had stopped swinging after Macy Robertson’s departure, to ask for a review meeting on the investigation. McGuire had been on his way south from Inverness at the time, and had been only too eager to grab an excuse for avoiding the chief constable’s routine morning meetings with his deputies and assistants. He would admit it to nobody but his wife, but he was becoming irked by the micromanagement of the new force at the very top level and the spread of that culture downwards.
‘Surely Bob Skinner was a classic micromanager?’ Paula had argued, when he had voiced his concerns, over dinner.
‘Bob was an interfering so-and-so at times,’ he had replied, ‘on the criminal investigation side, but when he did stick his nose in, it was always to support the people on the ground, never to second-guess them. Andy Martin is trying to keep a grip on everything that’s going on, rather than trusting people to do the job he’s given them. Today he came down on me like a ton of bricks because Sammy Pye took a decision that he saw as questioning his judgement. I never told Sammy, but he ordered me to take him off the case and replace him with Lowell Payne.’
‘Who’s Lowell Payne?’
‘He was a Strathclyde man, the head of organised crime and counter-terrorism; what we used to call Special Branch. Bob appointed him, and I’d have kept him in post, but Andy told me to move him out and replace him with Renée Simpson from the old Grampian force. So now Payne’s a detective superintendent without portfolio.’
‘Did you replace Sammy?’
‘Like hell I did! I told Andy that I wasn’t going to undermine one of my best detectives and that he could replace me if he had a problem with that. He backed down, but the boy Pye’s future in CID is hanging by a very thin thread if he doesn’t get a result.’
‘And you? How are you placed with him?’
‘Honestly? I have no idea. I don’t know the man any more.’
He was still brooding as he sat with the two Edinburgh detectives in the Fettes canteen, a mug of tea enveloped in his very large right hand. He was focused on