‘Joe,’ I replied. ‘And I’m glad. It’s going to be tough enough across the dinner table in our house tonight without Sarah having been involved.’
I left her to it and went back to my own office, quietly pleased that I hadn’t known any more about the investigation. I felt a loyalty to my new employer, and didn’t like the potential for conflicts of interest with my old one.
That situation was not improved when my mobile rang. It was Sauce Haddock, and he was in a hurry.
‘Sir, we need your help,’ he began. ‘We’re in North Berwick. We’ve pretty much eliminated the owner of the BMW as a suspect, but we’ve come across someone else who might be a possibility. He has a record, and I’ve established that we have a recent image on file.’
I didn’t need him to go any further. ‘Email it to me right away, and I’ll take a look. I’m in my Edinburgh office so I’ll be able to view it on a decent size screen. Make sure they send it maximum resolution. I only had a glimpse of the guy, so my eyes will need all the help they can get.’
I switched on my computer, opened my email programme and waited, but not for long. Within five minutes a small window in a corner of the monitor told me that I had mail. I clicked to open the message and then again for the attachment.
The man had been photographed against the usual dirty white background. I’d seen that sullen expression a few thousand times, and read the same bored resignation that showed in his eyes. There was a booking number on the image, and a name, ‘Dean Francey’. It meant nothing to me, but the face did.
I had seen him before. I looked at the mugshot closely, then closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the face that I had seen, briefly, behind the wheel of the BMW before the reflected sun blinded me, and then again for a fraction of a second as he jumped out of the vehicle and took to his heels.
It was him, I told myself, and yet . . . could I put my hand on a bible, take an oath and then declare that to a jury?
The truth was, I wasn’t sure. My gut said ‘Yes’, but my professional caution said ‘Wait a minute’.
Haddock had called me from North Berwick; the town is three or four miles from where I live and I go there regularly, alone, with friends, and with the kids, when they want to swim in the town pool. Assuming that Francey had a local connection, it was possible that I might have seen him casually in a completely different context.
However I judged it probable that he was the driver, so I called Sauce back and told him as much. By that time, he and Pye had viewed video footage from the shopping centre and were prepared to go firm on the identification.
I thought about going back to June’s office and sharing, but only for a couple of seconds before deciding that would be a breach of trust.
As it happened I didn’t have time to dwell on it, for my phone rang again, almost immediately. I stared at it. ‘If ever I want a quiet life,’ I told the empty room, ‘all I need to do is drop this fucker into a bucket of water.’
But I’m not in that place yet, so I slid the indicator across the screen to answer, knowing from the readout that the caller was Mario McGuire.
‘Yes or no?’ I asked him, passing on the preliminaries.
‘Yes, of course,’ he replied. ‘You’re not surprised, are you?’
‘Maybe just a little,’ I admitted. ‘I thought Andy might take a position of principle.’
I couldn’t see Mario, but I could sense his smile. ‘That did cross his mind, but fortunately it didn’t dig itself in. I assured him this would be a one-off, and that satisfied him.’
I felt a flash of annoyance. ‘Gracious of him.’
‘Come on, Bob,’ the big guy said. ‘You know he wouldn’t have done it for anyone else.’
‘Do I?’ I countered. ‘Do you think he’d have turned down Jimmy Proud, or Graham Morton, his old boss in Tayside? I don’t, not for a second. With me, it has to be seen that he’s doing me a big favour.’
‘He is,’ Mario suggested, ‘but that’s not how this played out. Look, as far as he’s concerned you’re like Banquo’s ghost, only potentially worse, ’cos you’re