one too. Neither of them even made it out of the car.’
‘Do we assume the shooter was the person who planned the abduction?’
‘That’s the only logical conclusion we can come to. There’s no obvious indication that Dean Francey had a personal motive for attacking Grete and abducting wee Zena. He must have been hired to do the job. And when he bungled it, he became a danger to whoever is behind it. Let’s go on the assumption that he was lured to a meeting here, for example by the promise of cash for a getaway, and was eliminated.’
‘Fair enough,’ the DS agreed, ‘but why was Anna Harmony here as well? That’s assuming it is her.’
‘She must have been going away with him. Ilse did say she was “smitten by him”, to use her phrase. Maybe she was part of it, maybe she knew nothing of what he had done; either way we’ve no way of knowing, or of finding out. For now, Sauce, we’re left with only one line of inquiry, and that’s Grete Regal’s business problem.’
‘Agreed. Let’s pull Mackail in now, tonight.’
‘No, we can’t do that,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘He’s a person of interest, but no more than that, so far. Plus we’ll be tied up here for a while. I don’t know about you, but I’m shagged out, and I’d rather tackle the man when I’m fresh. Tomorrow morning, we can draw up a workable strategy for him.’
‘If you say so, Sammy. I must admit, I’ve had enough for today too. Wee Zena was bad, and now this. I need some domestic therapy from Cheeky.’
‘Then let’s get ready to brief the CSIs,’ Pye declared, ‘if the buggers ever get here. Meanwhile, I’d better follow bloody protocol, and advise the city commander of a major incident.’
‘And phone the DCC?’
‘Too right; this is something else he won’t want to find out about via the TV news.’
Twenty-Four
I have to confess that I was at something of a loss when I arrived home from Edinburgh. I had passed a couple of gainful hours in my office, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I signed myself out. All I could think about was the wee girl in the car; she just wouldn’t leave me alone.
Seonaid and the boys were home from school when I got back to Gullane. I granted them some Playstation time, then took my daughter’s hand. ‘What would you like to do till Mum gets home?’ I asked her.
‘Story,’ she replied, without hesitation.
Trish, the children’s live-in carer, had a date to meet a friend at Ocean Terminal; I persuaded her to leave early so that it was just the two of us. I was very glad of that; I needed very badly to spend time with my youngest child.
We settled on How the Grinch Stole Christmas and went into the garden room, where she squeezed herself into an armchair beside me, her little face serious as I eased her into the classic yarn. She listened without a murmur, from start to finish, then looked up at me.
‘Have you ever seen a Grinch, Daddy?’ she asked me.
‘I’ve seen a few grumps,’ I told her, ‘and a few groaners, and even some people who looked pretty green, but no, I’ve never actually seen a Grinch.’
‘That’s because he’s not real, silly,’ she laughed.
For a moment my mind was overwhelmed by an image of another child, not too many miles from where Seonaid and I were sitting, probably playing out the same scene with her mother less than twenty-four hours earlier.
To fight it off, I picked up another book, A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six. My daughter isn’t, but as soon as she turned five, she declared herself too old for the companion volume, When We Were Very Young.
‘Let me read you a story about someone who was real,’ I said, and launched into King John’s Christmas. It took me a little while, for I had to stop to explain what ‘supercilious’ means, and to explain why he might have signed his name ‘Johannes R’, but settled for ‘Jack’, and what India rubber was, and why Seonaid couldn’t have a pocketknife that really cuts.
‘Was King John really a bad man, Daddy?’ she asked when the poem was over.
‘That depends on who’s telling his story,’ I replied. ‘I doubt if any king was completely good in those days. But I suspect,’ I added, conspiratorially, ‘that he was a reasonably good man with bad PR.’
To deflect further discussion on the nature of public relations, I