video monitoring of cameras throughout the house, and also at each entrance.’
Eden nodded. ‘That’s correct.’
‘Yesterday morning,’ Pye continued, ‘under the terms of a warrant granted to us in private by the Sheriff Court, we took possession of the full day’s recordings for last Thursday. They show Mrs Higgins leaving through her son’s flat at a quarter to six and returning by the same route at ten past seven. Ten minutes later they show her leaving by taxi. We have the cab number, and we’ve spoken to the driver. He confirmed that he took her to the airport. He said she seemed agitated, and told him to get a move on. Not a good idea,’ he added. ‘He made a point of catching every red light along the Queensferry Road.’
‘Do we need to prove it by DNA comparison?’ I asked. ‘It’ll be done easily and it’ll be conclusive.’
‘No,’ Rachel whispered, as everyone on board stared at her with the same intensity, even Dan Provan, whose last surprise had probably come fifty-something years earlier when a midwife picked him up by the feet and slapped him on the arse.
‘Silly man, he’d gone too far.’
‘Did he want more money?’ I asked. ‘Was the jewel money not enough?’
She looked at me, right eyebrow raised. ‘Did he ever want more!’ she snorted.
‘Rachel!’ Eden shouted, rushing across to stand between us as if he could protect her. ‘Shut the fuck up! Don’t say any more.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ she chuckled, ‘way too late. What he wanted, Bob, was for me to leave Eden and go off with him. He knew that half of all this is mine, and he was greedy.’ She patted her husband on the shoulder. ‘My husband may be a boring, neglectful little man, and I may have sought other options from time to time, but I’d never leave him.’
I nodded. ‘How long were you and Hurrell . . .’
‘A few months. It was my initiative. He was guilty and fearful for his job after the first time, but he was in my pocket by then.’
‘Was it also your initiative for him to kill Mackail?’ Mario asked.
‘Damn right it was,’ she retorted. ‘I was there when he assaulted Eden. I’d have called the police, but Eden wouldn’t hear of it. Pity about that; in hindsight I can see that if I had done, he’d have been arrested and none of the rest would have happened.’
She had a point; that hadn’t occurred to me.
‘When we found out from Hodgson that he’d stolen the boat, well, that was it.’ She looked at me again. ‘Walter went too far there,’ she said. ‘I was appalled when I heard what he’d done, but again, it was too late.’
‘So you told Hurrell to kill Mackail,’ I challenged.
‘I told him to scare him as badly as possible.’ I didn’t believe that, but I led her on. ‘Again, Walter went too far.’
‘And the child?’
‘You were right. She was to be held until her father told us where our boat was.’ She glanced at Eden, who had slumped on to a bench seat beside her. ‘His name is Gates, by the way,’ she told him, ‘but Bob’s right. He drives a missile submarine, and that, I imagine, makes him pretty much inviolable.’
‘And Francey?’
‘Walter did that, of course; he decided the man was a risk, and shut it off. There, I wasn’t too angry when I heard. The lout assaulted my son, after all.’
‘His girl didn’t, though.’
Rachel shrugged.
‘When did you decide that Walter was a risk himself?’ I asked.
‘Who says I did?’ she shot back. ‘You have no sight of me entering or leaving his place last Thursday, only my going and coming from Moray Place. As for my . . . my traces, as it were, I was a regular caller, so you can’t pin them to that night. The extra gunshot he could have fired himself any time, and if he washed his cock regularly, so what?’
Her self-confidence restored her husband. ‘You’re right, Rachel,’ he said as he stood. ‘Silence from now on and let’s fight this thing.’
I nodded. ‘You do that, Eden. But please don’t hire my Alex for the defence. I wouldn’t want her to go down in flames this early in her career at the bar.’
‘Don’t you have confidence in her?’ Rachel asked.
‘Oh yes,’ I laughed, ‘make no mistake about that. If you want to brief her to enter your guilty plea, that’ll be fine by me: because you are done, by two things.