'… so you're saying, Andy, that we should forget all the drama that we see in the movies and on the telly? You're saying that real detective work is boring?'
Martin laughed easily. 'Not at all, Spike. CID is only boring to those who are bored by life itself. At the centre of a major criminal investigation lies a lot of hard work, gathering information, from scientific analysis of potential evidence found at crime scenes or, sometimes, revealed by post-mortem, to the picture of the event painted by witness statements and by wider canvassing through door-to-door interviews, or occasionally re-enactments to trigger the memories of people who might have seen something important without realising it.
"The skilled detective will sit and look at all this and build what amounts to a virtual-reality model of the crime. From that he or she – and these days, more and more women are filling senior CID posts – will draw conclusions and follow any signs which may lead to the perpetrator.
'Once everything has fallen into place, an arrest is made and we present a report to the Procurator Fiscal – whose agents we are under the Scots system – saying, "This is whodunit and this is our case against him."
'The public think of the term "forensic science" in a very narrow sense. The skilled detective who looks analytically at all of the physical facts of an investigation, and determines what they say about truth or untruth, innocence or guilt – he or she is the true forensic scientist.'
'So what you're saying is, if you wanna be a detective, you have to have a mix of analytical skills and patience.'
'That's right. Although I mustn't miss out the magic ingredient.'
Spike Thomson seemed caught off guard. 'What's that?' he asked. 'Luck.'
'Nice one, Andy,' said Maggie Rose as she switched off the car radio. 'What he didn't say, though,' she murmured to her husband, in the passenger seat beside her, 'is that to get to the very top, you need to be a bloody good communicator as well – just like him.'
She swung their car off the Dirleton by-pass as she spoke, entering the village from the eastward side, then made another quick right turn, following the sign which read, 'Yellowcraigs 1' and showed a caravan symbol.
'Don't tell me that Alec Smith's safe house is in the middle of a bloody caravan site,' Mario exclaimed.
'I doubt it,' Maggie replied. 'There's a lot of land down there – a hell of a lot. Some of it's public but most of it's landed estate. The Kinture holding is relatively small, isolated between the sea and Eilbottle Forest.'
She drove along the narrow twisting road, until she came to a large parking area with only a few cars dotted about. As she turned into the entrance, an elderly attendant approached, only to back off at the sight of her police warrant card. She drew up as close as she could to the gate which led to Yellowcraigs beach, switched off and reached into the back seat for her briefcase.
'I've got a map of the area,' she said. 'Have you got the keys?'
'Of course. I'm a true forensic scientist; I wouldn't overlook something like that.'
She smiled. 'Don't take the piss out of the Head of CID; he might hear you.'
'I wouldn't be surprised. Tell you, Mags, I'll never underrate that man again.' He paused, as they walked down the widening path to the beach. 'Which reminds me. What did you think of this morning's sensation?'
'What are you talking about?'
'Ah, of course; you didn't go to the Divisional Heads' meeting this morning. Karen Neville's gone: resigned the force.'
'Why?'
'Because she and Andy are getting married. She's moved in with him already.'
'Bloody hell! I'd heard stories about them, but I never imagined
… I mean, we all know Andy but… Och, good luck to them both. They deserve it. Still… wow.'
'Aye, last week a sergeant; next month, our next Chief Constable's wife.'
'What? Andy? To succeed Proud Jimmy? Rather than…'
'Put money on it.'
'Time will tell. Here, do you think there's a message for us in Karen leaving the force?'
'When you're Head of CID and I'm a Divisional Commander – or the other way around – maybe, but not right now. The Boss has kept us a distance apart on purpose, from the very start.'
'Yet here we are on the same job,' she pointed out.
'On a very special job.'
'Very Special Branch, you mean.'
They stopped as the path which they were walking ran down to a curved golden beach. The island of Fidra lay only a few hundred yards offshore, a green hill rising steeply from the sea and surmounted by a white lighthouse. 'Picture postcard stuff,' said Mario. 'Where do we go from here?'
She pointed to her left. 'Eastwards, into that opening in the whins, as far as I can see. This is shown on the map as a Right of Way, until it hits the Kinture land, then it skirts round it. Come on.' She led the way forward along the narrow pathway, cut by ground-care workers through high, prickly gorse bushes; at once the seascape was obscured from their view, but they could still hear the slow, languorous sound of waves splashing on the shore.
They walked on for ten minutes, with the bushes thinning out gradually, and the tidal sounds becoming fainter. At last, the gorse to the north disappeared altogether, the path curved and was bounded by a waist-high fence made up of three strands of barbed wire. The land on the other side was forest, mature trees, with dark, threatening shadow beneath. Maggie stopped and looked at her map. 'A bit to go yet,' she murmured. 'We should see it soon.'
They carried on until at last they came to a small wicket gate in the fence. Beyond, a path ran through the wood to a clearing, where stood an old grey cottage. Mario put a hand on his wife's shoulder. 'If we get into that cottage and there's an old woman inside, chuck her in the oven and slam the door. I fancy a piece of gingerbread.'
'Don't joke; we might find worse than that.'
The gate opened easily; they stepped through and walked up the path towards the cottage. When they reached the front door Mario produced Alec Smith's keys from his pocket. He slid the Chubb into a keyhole, the newer of two, and turned it, once, twice, then used the McLaren key on the second, brass-faced, lock.
They stepped inside. The cottage was gloomy, but there was no Hansel-and-Gretel feel about it. 'No-one's lived here for a long time,' said Maggie, shivering. 'A heat wave outside and yet in here it's freezing.' She saw a light switch beside the door and flicked it on. 'Electricity's working though.'
'Okay,' Mario muttered, opening a door on his right. 'No hide-and-seek games, Alec, please.'
His wish was answered at once as he stepped into the cottage's living-room-cum-kitchen. There in the centre of the floor stood a big, grey, cubic metal shape. He switched on the light and knelt beside it.
'Bugger it!' he called out at once. 'He didn't need to hide this thing. This is a Guardian safe; hand-built, top security, with a combination lock. Whatever the third key's for, it's not this.'
'Can we open it?'
'Johnny Ramensky couldn't have opened this in a hurry, Chief Inspector. I know all about this bastard; it's got a heat-resistant titanium-alloy outer casing over a lead lining, making it virtually explosive-proof. You get two shots at the combination; get it wrong twice and the locking mechanism freezes for good.'
'So how do we open it?'
'Unless Alec's left the combination somewhere, or unless we get very lucky, we're going to have to cut it open; and that'll take something hotter than the blowlamp that was used on ex-DCI Smith. We'll need to get the thing back to Fettes and work at it there. Can we get a heavy vehicle in here and the six guys it's going to take to lift this?'
'There is a vehicular access on the map, from a road that leads up to Dirleton, but it's overgrown. Mr McCart suggested that we come the way we did because it's easier.'
'It can't be that bad, because this thing was brought here. But if the road has grown over again since then we'll just have to bulldoze a way through it.' He sighed, in frustration. 'This is going to hold us back by a couple of days at least, you know; Alec Bloody Smith's done us again.'
'Maybe,' said Maggie, 'but he's told us something too. If he invested in this level of security, then he really did have something to protect.'