find out as soon as he sees the news on telly, Sauce,’ Pye pointed out. ‘It’s a suspicious death, Maxwell. The body of a wee girl was found in the boot.’
The boy cringed; his hand went to his mouth. ‘You’re kidding,’ he gasped.
‘I wish I was.’
In a flash, a hard, accusatory look came into his eyes. ‘And you thought I might have . . . Usual fucking suspects right enough.’ He reached for the door handle. ‘Let me out of here!’
Haddock caught his arm. ‘Son, we’ve got a tough job. We’re accountable, to our bosses, to the public, but most of all to that dead kid. We have to follow up everything; we can’t make exceptions. Everybody who’s been in that car has to be traced and eliminated until we’re left with only one person, the man who took wee Zena.’
‘Was that her name?’ Maxwell asked; he was calm once more.
The DS nodded. ‘I won’t lie to you. Your history did come up and it did interest us. We’d have been negligent if we hadn’t followed it up, but as soon as we established your whereabouts this morning, you were in the clear. The same goes for your uncle.’
‘Okay, fair enough. Where do you want to take my prints?’
‘We’ll do it in the local police station. We’ll use the back door, so you’re not seen going in and out. Mr Sullivan’s been printed already.’
Pye started the car’s engine. ‘We’ll need addresses for Hazel and Dean, Maxwell. Can you help with that?’
‘Sure. Hazel’s is . . .’ He stopped in mid-sentence. ‘That’s Dino there,’ he said, pointing across the harbour at a tall, lean figure, wearing navy blue denims and a grey hoodie, who was walking past the Seabird Centre, shoulders hunched.
‘That’s handy,’ Haddock chuckled. ‘We’ve got room for one more in here.’
He stepped out of the car. ‘Mr Francey,’ he called out. ‘Dean Francey.’
The young man stopped in mid-stride and spun round. He stared at the DS for a second, and another, then broke into a run. His trainers pounding the tarmac, he slid round a corner, then leapt on to a bicycle that had been parked in a rack, and pedalled off, along the beachfront road, then into a side street.
Pye had begun a three-point turn even before the DS jumped into the front passenger seat. ‘Seat belt on, Maxwell,’ he called out. ‘I think we’re going to need more than your pal’s fingerprints.’
Ten
‘Is this a precedent we want to be setting?’ Sir Andrew Martin asked, the computer screen showing his concerned frown.
‘Who says it’s a precedent at all?’ Mario McGuire replied, looking directly into the camera. He was alone in the room that he had commandeered in the Hawick CID office suite.
‘I see it as a one-off situation,’ the DCC continued. ‘A rich man’s five-million-pound toy went missing, and the Strathclyde force began an investigation that took months to get precisely nowhere. Our only role since replacing them has been to send a chief super in uniform to tell the complainant that he’s not getting his boat back. He’s not happy. Would you be?’
The chief constable raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Were you party to that decision?’
‘No, I bloody wasn’t, and somebody is going to find out how much I dislike being embarrassed by it. That aside, the situation is that Eden Higgins feels that he’s been poorly served by the police. He could have come to you or to me and asked that the inquiry be re-opened, but he didn’t. Instead he’s asked our former colleague to look into it.’
‘I haven’t spoken to Bob in a while,’ Martin remarked, ‘but last I heard he didn’t have an investigator’s licence.’
‘Then you’re out of touch. He does now.’
‘Even so, handing over a complete police report to a civilian . . . if we do it for him, where does it stop?’
‘It stops the minute the file lands on his desk, as far as I’m concerned.’ McGuire paused. ‘What’s the alternative?’ he challenged. ‘Clearly, Mr Higgins is unhappy. If we withhold access to the file and he or his lawyer comes to you or me, we won’t be able to ignore him. The very least we’d have to do would be to order a detailed review of the so-called investigation and appoint someone, a detective superintendent or higher, to do it. Would that officer, whoever he or she might be, do a better job than Bob Skinner? No, not in a light year.’
‘You make it sound like he’s doing us a