DARIAN WAS in no hurry to leave in the morning and Maeve was in no hurry to let him. They spent a couple of hours together that we don’t need to describe in excruciating detail. Let’s leave it at the fact that they were a young couple who had just kicked down the thin fence that had been holding them apart since they’d first met and they were, understandably, full of imaginative and exhausting ideas about what to do with each other.
Eventually he left because he was contractually obliged to get to work. Had to stop at a petrol station on the way to fill up the Skoda, which was more expensive than he had been hoping for and more than the car was worth. He drove home to change and shower and then went round to Cage Street. Sholto was there long before him, and didn’t try to hide his annoyance.
“You know this job isn’t optional.”
Darian said, “I’m here, and I’ve been working long hours, late into the night.”
“Is that what you were doing last night, working?”
“Sort of.”
“Maeve Campbell?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, if you’re not sure either it wasn’t much of a night or it was a hell of a night. We need to talk about that girl, I told you that already. We need to have a good, long, detailed, angry conversation about her, but before we do that we need to have an even longer one about Uisdean Kotkell.”
“Go on.”
“I was actually hoping you’d be able to start it because I have nothing. We need to make some sort of progress instead of running down more dead ends. It won’t be long before Durell Kotkell is phoning in a huff wanting an update and I don’t have half a sentence to say to the man.”
“You could tell him to ask his son. We know Uisdean is holding something back, holding a lot back maybe, so point the finger in that direction.”
“That’s not what he wants to hear so it’s not what I want to tell him.”
They sat at their desks and they talked through everything they’d learned so far, a tactic Sholto swore by. In his mind it got them thinking of all the little details, got them talking to each other about things they’d noticed that they might not have mentioned before, the subtle hints they thought they’d picked up along the way. Darian was happy to talk about the Kotkell family rather than Maeve, so he kept the conversation going.
He said, “What I find strangest of all is the fact that he didn’t sack us when we upset him. You saw how annoyed he was, didn’t you?”
“I saw. I remember everyone who’s ever complained about me. I need a good memory.”
“It would have been easy enough for him to cancel the contract and go and hire Raven instead, but he didn’t.”
“Maybe he knows what a shower of piss that lot are.”
“I hardly think that would bother him. He works with worse people than them every day of his life, not least himself. Maybe he didn’t sack us because he thought we were doing the right thing, even if he didn’t like it. Us questioning his son like that, upsetting him, it showed we were willing to do the dirty work. He liked that. But we weren’t on the right track and he knew that, too. He’s convinced it wasn’t random otherwise he wouldn’t be pushing us this hard, and he already knew it had nothing to do with Uisdean’s private life.”
“Are you implying that the father shares the son’s habit of holding back information that would tell us what happened?”
“Why did he hire us, rather than Raven, in the first place? Raven handle contracts for Sutherland, don’t they?”
Sholto tutted at the gaudy sums of money his rivals were making from that and said, “Yeah.”
“So it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to go and hire them. He’s probably met all their senior investigators before. Instead he came out of his way to get us.”
“It might just be that he heard we’re good at our work.”
Darian didn’t look at all convinced. “Might be, might not. Did he say who had recommended us?”
“I think he might have said it was a cop the first time he called, I don’t really remember. He wasn’t what you would call keen to give me details, just orders.”
Darian got up and went out of the office, fishing his phone from his pocket. He stood on the stairs, sure that no one could hear him, and phoned DC Cathy Draper. Took a little while for her to answer, but she did. They hadn’t spoken since they’d met at the record store to talk about Corey and the Moses investigation.
“Cathy, do you remember if you spoke to Durell Kotkell, his son got beaten up outside Himinn a wee while back?”
“Yeah, I spoke to him. I think it was the morning after it happened. He was looking to hire someone in and I suggested you and your boss instead of his usual people.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t want anyone that was connected to the bank, I don’t think. When I mentioned you two he asked if you had any connections to Corey, and I said not good ones, you had stood up to him already and he didn’t like you for it. I figured he wouldn’t hire you because of that.”
“Oh. Well, he did.”
“Good, that’s another favor you owe me.”
“I’m really not sure it is, you’ve dropped a nightmare on our heads and we’re struggling to wake up. Anyway, thanks, Cathy.”
Darian went back into the office. “Kotkell hired us after hearing we’d stood up to Corey. You know I’ve been digging around in the Corey stuff, right?”
Sholto nodded and grimaced at the same time, making him look like he’d swallowed a spider that was trying to crawl back out.
“Well, I know that Corey was connected to an accountant called Moira Slight and I know she was connected to Moses Guerra. What I don’t know is what companies those two were using to filter money through. I think I might just have worked out the answer. We need to go round and see Kotkell.”