matter a damn, as all of you must realise. Suppose Eden was behind it all, you will never prove it. This gathering is about finalising a report to the Crown Office, end of story.’
‘What’s this jewel theft doing in the timeline, Bob?’ Mario asked.
‘Maybe nothing,’ I replied. ‘But . . . Francey was paid five grand, probably to kill Mackail, and he’d have been getting more for snatching the child. That wasn’t going to be done by bank transfer. It’s possible that Hurrell opened that hotel safe during the night and took the jewels . . . pretty easy since he’d seen the combination . . . then flogged them to raise some black cash, knowing that the loss to Rachel would actually be a hit on the Edinburgh Co-operative insurance company.’
‘Makes sense,’ he admitted. ‘But here’s another question. Why would Higgins hire you to find his boat if he knew that Hurrell was in the process of killing off the people who stole it?’
‘He didn’t hire me to do that, not really,’ I told him. ‘He hired me to review the police investigation and to cover any bases that Inspector McGarry hadn’t, so that he could compel his marine insurer to settle for the full amount of the loss. And suppose he did know, when he and I met he had no idea that Zena Gates had been found dead or that you were on to Dean Francey and his girlfriend.’
I looked beyond Mario, at Provan. ‘What do you think, Dan?’ I asked.
The sage frowned. ‘Ask me again when they’ve compared that bullet wi’ the others.’
I nodded. ‘It’ll match,’ I said.
Lottie Mann spoke up. ‘Come on, Mr Skinner, what do you really believe? I can’t take “It doesn’t matter”, not from you. Did Higgins order everything, or was Hurrell acting on his own, without any instruction?’
‘How often do I have to say it?’ I retorted. ‘There’s no evidence to implicate anyone but Hurrell. That’s what I believe: it’s what I know.’
‘Then it’s done,’ she murmured, ‘because we can tie him to everything, but nobody else. In his flat, we found Hodgson’s laptop, and a couple of silver cups that were on the stolen property list from the Wemyss Bay break-in. We also found seventy grand in cash, old notes. DCI Pye says they’re similar to the money he found in Francey’s place.’
Haddock leaned forward. ‘Now that we know what we’re looking for,’ he volunteered, ‘we’ve been able to match a couple of partial prints on Dino’s stash to Hurrell.’
‘There’s something else,’ I confessed. ‘It’s not in the folder because my source can’t be named, but it’s a fact, nonetheless. Hurrell was kicked out of the Special Boat Service for being trigger-happy.’
‘That cracks it,’ Mario declared. ‘He planned it, he funded it and he paid for it. I’m calling it a result.’ He turned in his chair and looked me in the eye. ‘Are we agreed on that?’
I sighed as I picked up my folder and opened it. In fact that outcome was deeply unsatisfactory to me: Walter Hurrell had been other ranks, not an officer. He obeyed orders; he didn’t give them.
I flipped through the pages, letting each one fall on the one before, until notes gave way to photographs and they began to turn over less smoothly. Finally, they stopped, at a print I hadn’t seen before, and yet one that was strangely familiar.
‘Fuck!’ I whispered.
Then I slammed the folder back on the conference table.
‘No, Mario,’ I said, ‘we’re not.’ I pointed at the four detectives. ‘You lot,’ I ordered forgetting my civilian status, ‘get back to Hurrell’s place, get down on your hands and knees and start looking.’
‘Looking for what?’ Haddock exclaimed.
‘Another bullet hole,’ I told him. ‘I’d join you,’ I added, ‘but I’m taking my other half to dinner.’
Sixty-Three
No, I hadn’t said anything about Gates being back from his mission. At that moment it wasn’t relevant, and there was a further possibility holding me back; if I’d told Mario that the Ministry of Defence had banned ScotServe from its premises, it might have triggered a pissing contest that would have got in the way of progress.
Sarah and I made it to La Potinière. The Hurrell post-mortem had been uncomplicated, so routine that she even had time to write up her report. She’d printed a copy for me, but absolutely forbade me from reading it over the dinner table.
Next morning, I had Saturday breakfast with the family, light, to preserve the glow of a superb meal the