her personally, or do the wages. She was always Anna Harmony to me . . . although I did hear people calling her Singer.’
‘And she babysat for you?
‘Once or twice.’
‘And you had a relationship?’
He nodded. ‘For a while.’
‘Was she the cause of your marriage break-up?’
‘Hell no. Janine never knew about her, and anyway there were others. What I told you before, it was true; Janine and I just weren’t suited. We both wanted out. It was amicable, and Anna had nothing to do with it. When the divorce went through she and I weren’t seeing each other.’
‘But you thought you might re-start it?’ the DCI suggested. ‘Was that why you invited her to your party in North Berwick?’
Sullivan’s smile was fleeting, and had a touch of shyness about it. ‘Maybe.’
‘So you must have been pissed off when she and Dean Francey hit it off.’
‘You could say that,’ he snorted. ‘I didn’t even invite him, Maxwell did. I barely knew the guy, and anything I’d heard didn’t impress me. As it’s turned out, I was right. There was an incident,’ he continued. ‘One of my Edinburgh guests had a bit too much and got fresh with Anna. She could have handled it herself, but Francey rode in to her rescue like the Lone fucking Ranger. Maxwell and I had to pull him off the bloke. Anna was impressed, of course; so impressed that she left with him. That was that . . . and it got her killed.’
‘Eventually,’ Haddock agreed. ‘But let’s get back to wee Zena. Does the name Grete Regal mean anything to you?’
‘No. Why? Should it?’
‘I don’t know, that’s why I asked. Thing is, she was Zena’s mother, and at the moment she’s lying in the Western General, unconscious, having had her skull fractured by Dean Francey.’
‘That’s very sad, but . . . so?’
‘So, Mr Sullivan,’ the DS said, ‘you knew Francey, and you knew Anna Harmony. He assaulted the mother and kidnapped the child. She was going to help look after her in a rented cottage up in the Pentlands.’
‘Does that mean they were going to hold her for ransom?’
‘They weren’t taking her on her holidays,’ Pye snapped. ‘She was going to be exchanged for money, or something, that’s for sure, but what’s equally certain is that those two young people, Dino and Singer, weren’t acting on their own initiative.
‘They were being paid to do it. We know that beyond doubt. And what we believe is that when Francey screwed up, the person who paid them shot them both, to silence them for good and all.’
‘Okay,’ Sullivan protested, ‘but why the hell are you talking to me?’
‘Because we have a problem,’ Haddock told him, his ‘good cop’ tone calming the situation. ‘You bank with the Clydesdale in Lothian Road, sir. We know that. It’s quite a way from North Berwick, isn’t it?’
‘Yes I do,’ he agreed. ‘You want to know why? When I sold my company, I had to stay in there for two years because the price was profit-related, over that period. It’s called an earn-out. One of the sale conditions was that its banking had to be integrated with that of the new parent company. So the business accounts moved from HSBC to the Clydesdale. When it happened I was offered sweeteners to shift my personal accounts there as well, so I did. That’s what’s behind it. However,’ he added, ‘my car business accounts are still with Bank of Scotland in North Berwick. Satisfied?’
‘Not quite,’ the DS said. ‘In the middle of last month, you withdrew twelve thousand, in untraceable used notes of the bank’s own issue, from your Clydesdale account. When we searched Dean Francey’s flat on North Berwick Mains Street, we found five thousand, also in untraceable used notes, many of them from the Clydesdale. Given that it’s a relatively small bank and there aren’t a hell of a lot of those around, you might understand our curiosity.’
Sullivan ran his hand over his chin, muttering a muffled, ‘Oh fuck.’