Perfect Death. Helen Fields

mother stared out of the window. ‘I don’t know how to begin,’ she said. ‘I want to repair the damage I’ve done. I want my son back.’

      ‘Is there something you need to say that I haven’t already heard?’ Callanach asked. ‘Because I’m not here to repeat the conversation we had at my flat. You said you needed more time and I’m afraid it’s run out.’ He pushed his drink away across the table.

      ‘Luc, please,’ his mother said, reaching out to him. ‘I can’t stand the thought of losing you forever. There’ll be nothing left to live for.’

      ‘I felt like that too, when you left me. At least we have that in common. This is a waste of both of our time.’ He stood up. ‘Goodbye, Véronique. Safe journey home.’

      ‘Luc, no. There’s no easy way to tell you this. It was a long time ago, and I never talked about it. When Astrid accused you, her story brought it all back and I couldn’t cope.’ She paused, ran a shaking hand over her mouth, lowered her voice. ‘I was raped, a long time ago, but it never leaves you. I had no idea what Astrid told me would affect me so badly. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there when you needed me, but it was all too much. I know I failed you. Whatever I have to do for you to forgive me, I will.’

       Chapter Eleven

      ‘Turner,’ Ava answered her mobile.

      ‘DS Lively here, ma’am. We’ve been asked to attend a road traffic accident. Your car’s at the station, so I assumed you were still around.’

      ‘I’m walking through the city trying to find a cab. Why’s a car accident anything to do with MIT, Sergeant?’

      ‘It’s a bad crash, blood in and out of the vehicle, on the A702 where the road runs through the edge of the Pentland Hills Regional Park. I’m on my way there now. Only one car remaining at the scene but tyre marks indicate that a second vehicle was involved.’

      ‘Still not hearing a reason for this telephone call …’

      ‘There’s no body, ma’am. No one at the scene at all,’ Lively said.

      ‘So the driver was injured and the other vehicle opted to take him to the hospital. Who’s the Inspector on duty? You don’t need me for this. I’ve been out for the evening so there’s no way I can drive to a scene, no matter what’s happened.’

      ‘It has to be a DCI. The car involved in the crash is registered to a man called Louis Jones. He’s known to the police but his file is marked for review by an officer of the rank of Chief Inspector or above, as directed by Chief Begbie,’ Lively said. ‘It can probably wait until tomorrow, but I thought that should be your call.’

      ‘I’ll be waiting at the junction of The Mile and New Street. Have a car pick me up, and make it quick, it’s bloody freezing out here,’ Ava said.

      Coffee in hand, Ava was sitting at her desk twenty minutes later, staring at an envelope, the contents of which had yet to be reduced to the digital recesses of the cloud and trying to get her head straight. The food she’d consumed had soaked up a portion of the alcohol, but the room was still swimmy if she didn’t stay focused on a single point. The sealed envelope had Begbie’s confidentiality order on it, and a list of names and signatures of people who had accessed the file within the last few years. The last reader was George Begbie himself a few months earlier. Ava ran her fingers over the seal, imagining the Chief exactly where she was now, preparing to read the same sheets of paper, tapping his pen on the desk as he always did when he was impatient.

      Inside was a brown cardboard file with Louis Jones’ details on the front – name, date of birth, known addresses of residence and work – and it was remarkably thin. On opening it, Ava found what she had assumed she would find: a sheet of paper with the heading ‘Registered police informant, initiated November 1997. Contact: George Begbie.’ It was the only reason she could think of for the file being confidential. What she hadn’t expected to find was her own name in the contents. She scanned that document first.

      ‘Louis Jones – car scrapyard owner operating known car hire scheme without documentation. Utilising vehicles previously deemed scrapped, allowing or causing false number plates to be displayed on hire vehicles. Admits hiring vehicles to Dr Reginald King, denies knowledge of intended purpose. Vehicle hired from Louis Jones used in kidnap of Detective Inspector Ava Turner. Jones assisted in providing details of King’s lock up on Causewayside. Interviewed by DI Callanach, supervised by DCI Begbie. No resulting prosecution.’

      Ava closed her eyes. A dangerous psychopath, Reginald King, had pulled her from her car one night, taken her back to a concealed room in his house, and killed a teenaged girl in front of her. The teenager was one of three women who’d died at his hands. At trial he’d mounted a psychiatric defence and been remanded indefinitely for treatment. The hours in captivity had been the worst of Ava’s life, and Louis Jones had profited from lending King a vehicle, yet neither Callanach nor Begbie had so much as mentioned the man’s name to her. She turned the page, forcing herself to keep working rather than be sucked into the black mire that was her memories of what she’d witnessed. Whatever information Jones had provided to the police during his decades-old stint as Begbie’s informant must have been spectacularly valuable.

      The type-print was fading on the remaining pages. Ava switched on her desk lamp and settled down. The initial page was a case summary from a prosecution dating back to 1999. The prosecution’s case was that defendants Dylan McGill and Ramon Trescoe, joint heads of a Glasgow based crime gang, had committed an impressive list of offences from theft and conspiracy, to fraud, blackmail and assault. Their targets had been almost entirely banks, using employees to provide confidential information about security systems and performing unlawful money transfers under threat of violence. On the few occasions that the employees had been sufficiently brave to have refused to comply, the outcome was assaults using tools best restricted to farming. The court case had been heavily covered in the press. Ava recalled it in spite of having been only sixteen at the time. A major Edinburgh crime gang had been taken out of action. The trial had been a Scottish spectator sport for the three months it had lasted.

      The file contained witness statements, bank documents and the usual previous convictions, followed by a small selection of photos of the defendants and their victims. Dylan McGill was the tallest of the bunch, with a moustache that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Victorian villain, a cigarette in hand in every picture. Ramon Trescoe was dark skinned, with middle-eastern features and startling green eyes. Not someone you could mistake once you knew his identity, Ava thought. He had been photographed with several extremely attractive women, almost as if he always knew the photographer was around. There were references on file to deaths – rival gang members, henchmen who had defected, and at least one policeman – all of which were well beyond the scope of natural causes. None that had ever left a direct trail to either McGill or Trescoe though. The Procurator Fiscal had settled for putting the pair in jail for less serious offences but the result was almost as good. The sentences had been lengthy.

      At the end of the file was a document signed jointly by the Procurator Fiscal and Louis Jones. Jones, Ava read, known then to his associates as Louis the Wrench, had been the provider of vehicles and other necessary hardware. Begbie, then a mere Detective Sergeant, had acquired enough information on Jones’ activities to put him away for an easy decade. Instead, Begbie had approached Jones to provide information about Ramon Trescoe’s activities, victims and movements. Begbie worked with Louis the Wrench for two years gathering intelligence. They must have been tense times, Ava thought, both for Jones and for Begbie. Trescoe and McGill weren’t the sort of people you messed with, and no one seemed to have been beyond their reach. Begbie’s relationship with Jones had ended with an agreement to keep Jones out of court under pretty much any circumstance, and landed Begbie a promotion to Detective Inspector immediately after the defendants’ final appeals had failed.

      Now someone driving Louis Jones’ car was missing, although whether it was Jones himself