Stray Shot, page 17
part #13 of Keith Calder Series
‘Manpower being in short supply,’ Cathcart said, ‘I had an excuse to soft-pedal the Lucas investigation while I waited for the post mortem report. And we were busy enough with a bomb scare in Glasgow. An MP had a threatening letter and every available man was called in to protect him. It turned out to be a hoax.’
‘For a while, though, you thought that bombs were being made in Edinburgh,’ Keith said quietly.
‘We did.’ Cathcart sat up straight. ‘How the hell did you know that?’
‘You carefully didn’t give us the address for that phone number, but the papers mentioned a gas explosion. It had to be the right accident. According to the papers, the victim worked in a gaming club. That call was placed at nine p.m., their time. Who else would Reece have had a pre-arrangement to phone at what was already three in the morning over here, a time when only gamblers are still up and about? The phone directory confirmed the number and gave me the address. So I went to have a look. The gable was blown out, half the slates stripped off the roof and there were police all over the place. You thought that a bomber had blown himself or herself up by accident.’
‘It’s still difficult to find any other explanation,’ Cathcart said. ‘But our hoaxer turned out to be a disgruntled ex-employee with no intention except to make a damned nuisance of himself, so the explosion rests with Lothian and Borders and I’m back with the Donald Lucas case.’
‘I wouldn’t forget about the bomb just yet,’ Keith said. ‘What did the forensic scientists make of it?’
‘Not very much,’ Cathcart said. ‘A home-made explosive—’
‘Sodium chlorate and sugar?’ Keith suggested. ‘Or ammonium nitrate and oil?’
‘A little more sophisticated than either of those, and much more powerful, but just as easy to obtain. Plus some home-made napalm to make sure of a good blaze.’ Cathcart paused and for a moment I could see him as an old man. Then he shrugged and went on. ‘Bombers are getting too clever by half,’ he said briskly. ‘Wiring of magnesium alloys which disappear altogether in a fire. They’ve found no sign of a timer. The remains of some bits which look like radio components suggest that it may have been triggered that way.’
Keith shook his head slowly.
Cathcart looked at him very hard. ‘What the hell do you know about it?’ he demanded.
‘Did you ever see the deceased Mrs Conran?’
‘I saw what was left of her.’ Cathcart shivered. ‘Unrecognisable.’
‘You saw a photograph of her as she was before the blast?’
‘No.’
‘I think you did,’ Keith said. ‘In Donald Lucas’s cottage. She was his new girlfriend.’
Cathcart stared at him and then looked around Charlie’s drawing room. ‘Where’s your telephone?’ he demanded.
Charlie pointed to a telephone behind the Superintendent’s back, on the table where the Sergeant was taking notes. ‘Or you can be more private in the hall,’ he said.
Cathcart displaced his subordinate and dialled a number from memory. He held a short conversation with somebody whom he addressed as Ian and came back to his chair. ‘From the descriptions which they got from the neighbours, it’s possible. But, assuming that you’re right, how did you guess?’
Instead of answering, Keith turned to me. ‘I never met Reece, Simon, but you did. What did you make of him?’
‘An arrogant, handsome bastard,’ I said. ‘From what I saw of him, he fell within the classic definition of a psychopath, in that he didn’t believe that any laws of God or man applied to him.’
‘Would he hesitate to kill, to cover his tracks?’
‘Not for an instant,’ I said.
‘Blind guesswork,’ Cathcart said triumphantly. ‘Just for once you were right, but for the wrong reason. Reece didn’t kill Donald Lucas.’
‘I never said that he did,’ Keith pointed out, ‘only, some days ago, that he seemed a likely suspect. I suppose that the pathologist’s report on Donald Lucas fixed the time of death? They don’t usually,’ he added.
‘We had a stroke of luck,’ Cathcart admitted. ‘We can’t be unlucky all the time.’
‘Just most of it?’
‘You’re not wrong. At first, nobody at the hotel was sure at what time he left there. According to the pathologist’s report, Lucas had eaten a ham roll and washed it down with a glass of shandy about an hour before he died. So we went back to the hotel. The waitress suddenly remembered him taking just such a snack around six p.m. on the Tuesday. At which time, Reece was already in Aberdeen and waiting for his plane.’
‘I thought as much,’ Keith said. He turned to me again. ‘Would you say that Reece was the type who could charm women into doing his dirty work for him?’
Remembering the phone calls, I said that he was.
‘There you are,’ Keith told Cathcart. ‘I never liked your idea of Reece holding a gun on Lucas and forcing him to drink vodka. Any beggar as thrawn and suspicious as myself would guess what he was up to and say, “Fuck you! Kill me if you want, but I’m not making it easy for you to get away with it.”
‘How much easier for a girlfriend to say, “We’re going to be rich and I’ve decided to accept your proposition and come away with you and I’ll be very hurt if you don’t join me in a drink to seal the bargain.” Lucas had an idiosyncrasy. It took very little alcohol to knock him out. I know that a vodka bottle was found in the car, but what was in his stomach?’
‘Vodka mixed with beer,’ Cathcart said. ‘Certainly not enough vodka to account for a nearly empty bottle – if the bottle was full to start off with. But I’ll give you this much – if he had such an idiosyncrasy, a girlfriend would have been the first to know about it. He may not even have known that he was drinking spirits.’ He looked at his watch. He was always a man in a hurry. ‘Now, I’ve said rather more than I came to say. It’s time for you to cough up anything you know. And then I must go and set the wheels in motion.’
Keith is not usually forthcoming with the police, but he surprised me by nodding vigorously. ‘Let’s run through it chronologically,’ he said.
Charlie, who had been sitting slumped, brooding over the inevitability of disaster to his reputation, looked up. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘If we must expose our sores, at least let’s stop leaping about in time and getting into arguments because all the facts aren’t out yet. I suppose it’s up to me to set the ball rolling.
‘David Reece was a professional industrial spy who walked out of the comparatively respectable agency where he worked and set up in business for himself last summer. His motivation seems to have been that he was paid by results and he felt that he couldn’t get results within the rules laid down by the firm. He was a skilled investigator and technician, and absolutely ruthless.
‘He decided that my organisation would be a profitable field for study. At that time, because of legislation impending world-wide, the market was becoming ripe for a whole new approach to the shotgun cartridge and we were bringing together some Swedish research, a British plastics manufacturer and several cartridge makers to develop and market a basic idea of Keith’s.’
Keith recognised Charlie’s glance as a signal to take over. ‘But,’ he said, ‘Charlie’s – Lord Jedburgh’s – security is thorough. Reece needed an insider, at least to tell him what to go after. He could hardly approach the staff, one at a time, rustling a fistful of fivers and whispering, “There’s another million where this came from.” As Simon confirmed, Reece was a man of powerful sex appeal and he seems to have been ready to use it. So he did what he and others had done before, found an attractive girl of low character and brought her under his spell. No doubt he suggested that her task was a one-off, aimed at setting the pair of them up for life in some paradise. And she attached herself to poor Donald Lucas, feeding him a similar line of bull. Lucas was vulnerable and he fell heavily.’
‘I feel bad about Donald,’ Charlie said. ‘As his employer, I should have seen what he was going through. But who could guess, when the only symptom which he showed was contentment?
‘Donald was our expert on patent law. So he could get his hands on our papers but without understanding the technicalities. I think that that part of the paperwork which might have been of use to Reece went through Donald’s hands well before Reece and he got together. And I make damned sure that nobody has access to any papers which he does not need at that time. Which, of course, is why the only photocopiers in the place are visible from my office. So on its own what Donald knew or could supply was relatively useless.
‘It happened, however, that we were due to send samples to a large Italian manufacturer. We had reason to believe that Reece had managed to interfere with the mails. But it also happened that Donald was due to send a pair of his trained Dobermanns to Italy. In a moment of aberration – which I’ll admit was my fault and which in retrospect looks crazy – we decided to send the samples to Italy in the dogs’ travelling boxes, with a guard to watch over the dogs.’
‘Ingenious,’ the Superintendent said. He laughed suddenly. ‘What I’d have done would have been to seal the stuff up in a large bone. I wouldn’t fancy anybody’s chances of taking a bone away from a trained Dobermann.’ He chuckled again at this quaint flight of imagination.
Keith and Charlie locked eyes.
Charlie sighed deeply. ‘This is in confidence,’ he said. ‘My organisation may survive looking incompetent, but never looking funny. We did exactly as you just said.’
Cathcart, again the responsible and humourless policeman, kept a straight face. But as Charlie and I unfolded between us the story of the bones, and of Boss’s part in their adventures, he broke down and laughed until tears hopped down his cheeks. He sobered suddenly when I came to my encounter with Reece at the roadside. ‘This should have been reported.’
‘But not to you,’ Keith pointed out. ‘Nor would it have helped. Reece was out of the country long before you could have caught up with him. He had only hung around, trying to borrow the dog again, because he wasn’t sure whether the package he had was the real one or the dummy. By mischance, Simon uttered some words which gave him the idea of opening up one of the ordinary cartridges in his possession. That’s how some pellets got spilled in the car he was using. When he saw that the shot and the wad bore little or no resemblance to those in the stolen package, he knew that he was already on a winner. He’d had what he wanted all the time.
‘The girl’s job, apart from winkling out the information and persuading Donald Lucas to co-operate, was to keep him out of the way until the goods were out of the country. She had taken a few days off her work at the gaming club—’
‘She phoned in to say that she was ill,’ the Superintendent said.
‘And she stayed with Lucas at the Greenmilns Inn,’ Keith resumed, ‘conveniently forgetting to post his card to his employer. But here, Superintendent, you may be able to fill a gap. Between Newton Lauder and Aberdeen, Reece must have met up with Mrs Conran. The times don’t allow for his doing a circular tour of Scotland.’
‘You’re guessing a lot,’ Cathcart said, ‘but your guesses seem to be near the truth. You’re thinking of the sweater which was used in the fake suicide?’
‘That’s just what,’ Keith said.
‘I thought as much. Forensic said that it had been worn by a red-haired man. According to the hotel receptionist Mrs Lucas, as she knew her, got a phone call at around noon on the Tuesday. She left Lucas to cool his heels for the afternoon. She could have met Reece somewhere on his route.’
Keith nodded. ‘We had word of a possible sighting of Reece in Perth,’ he said.
‘Go on guessing,’ said Cathcart. ‘You can leave me to prove or disprove your guesses later.’
Keith nodded again, more slowly. I was thinking through a layer of treacle but, although he must have been as tired as I was, I could see that Keith’s mind was racing ahead. ‘So they met. Probably, Reece had delayed until the latest possible minute before telling the girl about the last part of her job. From what we know about Reece, he was both thorough and ruthless.
‘Donald Lucas could still undo all the good work. He was expecting his reward from the woman – who, it can be assumed, had every intention of dropping him as soon as Reece beckoned – and when the promised life of love and nooky failed to mature he would blow his stack.
‘Now, take note of this. Evidence of an illicit sale of the secret, from Lucas or the girl, could render it worthless by tying it up in litigation until others had grabbed hold of the market. Lucas had to die. Reece needed a personal meeting with the girl to put this across. He explained exactly what she had to do. He probably provided the tube and the vodka. He certainly gave her a sweater with which to stuff up the gap over the window. And he promised that if she would do this one little thing for him they would go off into the sunset together and live happily ever after.’
‘Exactly what Mrs Conran would have said to Donald Lucas,’ Cathcart said. ‘The most you can say about Reece is that he was consistent in his evil.’
‘He remained consistent,’ Keith said. ‘Superintendent, we have only just started on Reece. Mrs Conran, in her turn, was a potential embarrassment to him. If he failed to come back for her, she was going to be in the classic position of a woman scorned. It would be a toss-up whether her fear of a murder charge would outweigh her desire to get back at her faithless lover by telling the whole world about stolen secrets. Reece knew this from the beginning. And he was not the man to risk it.
‘While he was living in her house, he planted his bomb. It was linked to the telephone. And when he phoned her from the States at a pre-arranged time, nine p.m. Central Standard Time and three a.m. by ours, she answered the phone with the code-word which told him that all was well. Without even bothering to say a word, he sent the signal which triggered the device.’
The recording of Reece’s phone call to Scotland had been transferred to a separate cassette. Charlie played it. Cathcart listened to the short burst of electronic noise and his eyebrows went up. ‘That could trigger a bomb?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Without any difficulty,’ Charlie said. ‘You’d need little more than matching microchips. The one at the receiving end recognises the signal, passes a tiny current, a relay closes and a much larger current fires a detonator.’
‘And that’s about all that we have to tell you,’ Keith said.
Cathcart got out of his chair. He walked the length of the big room and back while he thought. He stopped beside his Sergeant. ‘You’ve got all that down?’
The Sergeant nodded. ‘Sir,’ he said.
Cathcart moved to the Adam fireplace and leaned on the mantel. ‘It all fits together,’ he said suddenly. ‘And it fits all the evidence we’ve got so far. I must go. The Bomb Squad can re-examine the remains from the Conran house and we can do a more thorough check into the movements of Reece and Lucas and the girl. Forensic may turn up some more evidence, now that we know what we’re looking for.’
Keith had seen my photographs. ‘Tell the Dallas police to look again through Reece’s things,’ he said. ‘They’ll probably find the electronic gubbins – and a cassette player, if he’d transferred the electronic noise to tape.’
Charlie’s quick mind had already absorbed the shift of circumstances and was rushing ahead. ‘So I don’t get my car back for another few weeks,’ he said.
‘That’s right. But,’ Cathcart said, ‘look on the bright side, my lord. If the whole story checks out, the participants are dead. With no prosecution to come, publicity can be kept to the minimum. And now I must get going. The taking of statements can wait.’ He got to his feet and looked down at me from his considerable height. ‘You seem to have removed your beard, Mr Parbitter. I hear some strange stories from Dallas. But, luckily for you, that’s a long way off my patch and the Dallas police have not asked for our help. Let’s hope that nothing changes. No need to see us out, my lord. Sergeant.’
When the policemen were out of the room we all began to speak at once. Keith and Charlie were deep in argument as to whether the questionable advantage of enlisting the Dallas police to recover the samples outweighed Charlie’s concern about publicity, while I was demanding to know whether such a move would bring me to the attention of any police force, anywhere.
Alice stirred in her chair. She had been so quiet that we had forgotten her. She spoke softly, but there was something in her tones which cut through the other voices. ‘Now that they’ve gone,’ she said, ‘can I say something? I think it’s urgent,’ she added uncertainly.
Chapter Twelve
Alice is very easy to look at. Our stares seemed to throw her into confusion. Unusually for a woman, she never likes to be the object of male gaze. ‘What you said about Dave Reece,’ she said, blushing. ‘His character. His evil. His consistency. I don’t think you’ve thought it right through.’
‘Probably not,’ Keith said. ‘We haven’t had it for very long.’
‘I think maybe you’ve taken too long already,’ Alice said. ‘Simon told me a little about the phone calls. I wondered about the Sunday evening one. The one from the woman. That wasn’t the same person he phoned two days later?’
‘I assumed that it was,’ I said. ‘I didn’t notice any difference between the voices. But, thinking it over, he wouldn’t have let her go off to Florida for a few days if she was holding his package and he was expecting to do a deal.’
‘Unless he had access to her house,’ Keith said.
‘Could we . . .’ Alice paused. She always felt herself to be an intruder in such discussions although her suggestions were never far from the point. ‘Please, would you play the tape of that call?’
‘Of course.’ Charlie said. He still had his cassette player beside him. I took the cassette out of my pocket and we listened in silence to the recording.
When it was finished, Keith called on the Almighty in terms which that Being would certainly not have appreciated. ‘We’ve been stupid,’ he said. ‘Blind stupid. What was the Zuckerman woman’s number?’
