way.’ He picked up a knife from the work surface and began to slice carrots. ‘Now: what do want to talk about? What’s the bastard done this time?’
Haddock smiled. ‘Which bastard would that be?’
‘Take your choice,’ the fireman replied. ‘Thank God Donna takes after her mother. Her father and her brother are a couple of useless wasters.’
‘You have father-in-law problems?’
‘I would have, but I keep him at arm’s length.’
‘What does he get up to?’
‘Stupid stuff mostly. The nonsense with the fish was the last straw.’
‘What nonsense?’ Wright asked, intrigued.
‘Ahh,’ Rattray exclaimed, then shook his head. ‘Chic’s a lobster fisherman, right?’
‘So we understand,’ Haddock agreed.
‘Well, that’s not all he does. He supplies restaurants in Edinburgh with fish that he says is fresh caught . . . only it isn’t. He buys it off trawlers that are over their quota and he freezes it. The trouble is he uses our freezer when his is full up, without a by-your-leave. That’s to say he used to use ours. About a year ago, I found some packs of frozen vegetables in the bin, dumped. When I looked in the freezer, a big chest thing in the garage, I found it was full of salmon, whole bleedin’ salmon. He bought it from a Norwegian crew who’d brought surplus frozen farmed salmon across to flog in Britain. The things had been dead for a year, but Chic’s plan was to thaw them out and sell them as fresh wild fish to his contacts.’
‘What did you do?’ the DS chuckled.
‘Donna and I put it all in boxes. She gave some to her friends in the university, and I spread the rest around fire stations in Edinburgh. The old fart went ape-shit when he found out, until I told him that if he ever tried something like that again he’d be in the freezer himself.’ His broad black face split into a grin. ‘We haven’t spoken much since then.’
‘That’s probably just as well,’ Haddock agreed. ‘But it’s not Chic that we came to ask you about; it’s his son, Dean Francey. We’re looking for him. Has he been in touch with you recently?’
‘How recently?’
‘Like today.’
‘No. I can’t speak for Donna, but I haven’t heard from him for a month or more.’
Wright looked him in the eye, as he took some washed green beans from a colander and picked up his knife once again. ‘You are sure of that?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he retorted. ‘The little toerag’s Donna’s weak spot, not mine. Any contact I have with him, it’s through her. What’s he done?’
‘We can’t say,’ the DS told him, ‘but it’s a quantum step up from his previous. We need to question him about a very serious crime.’
Rattray’s eyes narrowed. ‘How serious?’ he murmured.
‘As serious as it gets. If he should get in contact with you, we need you to urge him to hand himself in at the nearest police office.’
‘I’ll do more than urge him,’ the man replied. ‘If he comes here, and Donna isn’t around, I’ll sit on him until you get here. If she is . . .’ he hesitated, ‘it won’t be so easy. She’s four months pregnant, and like I said, Dino’s her weak spot. Does she need to know about this at all?’
‘Keeping it from her won’t be possible, I’m afraid,’ Haddock replied. ‘We need to speak to her too, and she’ll have to know why.’
‘Little bastard,’ Rattray growled. ‘I always knew he was trouble. I hope he does come here; I’ll wipe the floor with him for bringing this to our door, whatever the hell it is.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ the DS urged. ‘I’ll go with a citizen’s arrest, Levon, but I don’t want a mark on him when he’s booked in.’ He paused. ‘All that said, I know you think Dino’s an idiot, but he must have enough brain cells to guess that this is the first place we’d go looking for him. Can you help us by suggesting other people he might go to for help?’
‘Friends, you mean?’
‘Yes. Has he ever mentioned any mates to you?’
‘Sure. He’s even brought some here. We’d a big party for Donna’s twenty-fifth and he turned up with a crew. Three of them, all with daft nicknames. There was a guy he called Jagger, on account of his big floppy lips, then there was another they called Drizzle; they said it was ’cos he was thick, wet and got on your tits after a while.’
‘Very good,’ Wright said, ‘but did these characters have real