Gravel crunched beneath Skinner’s feet as he walked up the long driveway that led to The Eyrie. When the house had been built, it had been christened Eagle’s Nest, but that name had been changed in the nineteen forties, at the insistence of Mrs Eaglesham herself, as a condition of her acceptance of Mr Eaglesham’s proposal. It was a large villa, in rattlebag sandstone with a slate roof, with bay windows on either side of an oak entrance door, on which there was a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle. Skinner was in the act of reaching out to grasp it when the door opened, with a creak, framing a large, formidable woman.
Mrs Eaglesham’s age was the subject of speculation . . . her date of birth was not recorded in the Ladies Golf Club lists . . . but Skinner knew that she was a month short of her ninety-fifth birthday. He had asked his secretary to check the Saltire library and she had found a record of her first Curtis Cup appearance, in which it was recorded. He had feared that isolation would be hard for her, but there was no outward sign of it as she gazed at him from her doorway.
‘Bob,’ she exclaimed, her voice as deep and steady as usual. ‘I assume that is you behind that mask and not the Lone Ranger. I should be wearing one myself, I suppose, but to be honest I don’t possess any.’
Buried in a pocket of his jacket he had half a dozen Saltire masks, each still in its sterile wrapper. He took out three and laid them on top of an umbrella rack beside the door. ‘Now you do,’ he said. ‘How are you doing, Anne?’ he asked.
‘I’m bored out of my noggin, truth be told,’ she admitted. ‘Everywhere’s closed . . . everywhere I want to go, that is. Most of all I miss the golf club. I could play, I know, but I can’t grip a club properly just now.’ She held up her left hand, and he saw it was twisted. ‘I have a tendon that’s misbehaving. It’s a simple procedure but not a priority, apparently, not even in a private hospital.’
Skinner frowned. ‘That’s too bad,’ he said. ‘What about food shopping? Can we help you there?’
‘I do it online,’ she replied. ‘Yes, Bob,’ she said, smiling at his involuntary reaction. ‘I joined the twenty-first century some time ago, although I doubt that I’ll see it out. I have a Tesco delivery every Thursday morning. Also, John the fish man comes with his van every Tuesday, and leaves me enough for two or three meals. My freezer’s still stocked too. I filled it full last November when it became obvious that we were heading for another lockdown. If I feel lazy and want a night off cooking, the Italian’s doing home deliveries and so is the place in Aberlady.’
‘How about cleaning?’ he suggested, feeling increasingly superfluous.
‘Bob, I live in four rooms in this place, most on the ground floor. The rest are all closed off. According to the Blessed Clive’s rules, I can’t have my cleaner in, just as I can’t invite you in just now, but I can still wield a duster and one of the Dyson man’s machines.’
He frowned. ‘Maybe you could have your cleaner in,’ he suggested. ‘There are exemptions for vulnerable people.’
‘Vulnerable?’ She seemed to stiffen; it was an act of pure theatre. In that instant, Skinner could think of nothing other than Oscar Wilde’s magnificent Lady Bracknell. ‘Do I seem to you to be vulnerable, Sir Robert?’
‘Not you, Anne,’ he assured her, suppressing the urge to grin. ‘It’s a generic term for people of a certain age, living alone.’
Mrs Eaglesham’s own smile broke through. ‘Those who are less resilient than others, to borrow the title of the group you spoke of when you called me.’
‘That would be another way of saying it.’
‘Say it however you like, I don’t know whether to be flattered or narked to be counted among their numbers. Who’s the ringleader of your gang? I know it isn’t you because your name never shows up on Facebook. Mind you,’ she added, ‘neither does mine. I’m there under an alias, GeeGee. I suppose people assume that I’m horsey, but actually it stands for Gullane Granny.’
‘Nice one, Anne,’ Skinner said. ‘I don’t think the resilience group has a leader as such, but I was brought in by Matthew Reid.’
Her augmented eyebrows rose. ‘The author, no less? He called on me a few days ago, but he didn’t say anything about resilience. He told me he was working on a book that involved golf in the days when we played with persimmon rather than metal woods and wanted to know how far they could reasonably be hit by the average lady golfer. He said it was relevant to the plot. I confess that I can’t stand his books, but he did bring me one as a gift, a signed hardback, so I won’t hold it against him. And it is good to know, I suppose, that people care. On reflection I could have been kinder to my last caller, although I doubt that he really was one of your crowd, although he claimed to be.’
‘Who was that?’ he asked.
‘A boy on a bike. He banged my brass eagle as if he was trying to knock the door down and asked if I had any jobs that needed doing. He was quite annoyed when I told him to be on his way, but he went. Raining silent curses on my head, I have no doubt.’
That’s not good, Skinner thought. ‘Can you describe him?’
‘He was like any other lad on a bike. Jeans, puffer jacket and attitude. Early teens, I’d say. It was well seen the barber’s is closed. I know that parents have a lot on their hands . . . not that I speak from experience; Sophia had a nanny . . . but the odd trim wouldn’t go amiss. If he comes back, as I’m sure he will, I might find something for him to do, as long as it’s outside. The same is true of your group.’ She scratched her chin. ‘There’s the Bentley, of course. I turn it over every so often, and back it out of the garage, to make sure there’s still a charge in the battery. There’s a chap in Dirleton who’s desperate to buy it, but he can wait until I’m dead. In the meantime, perhaps Mr Reid would like to clean it.’
Skinner shook his head. ‘I doubt that. He’s never been known to clean his own.’
Twenty-Two
‘They’re sure about that?’ Lynn Langham asked.
During her career, Noele McClair had understood the need to make allowances for the recently bereaved. She had been among their number herself when her ex-husband had been murdered. She had been summoned to the crime scene by the former chief constable, and had been barely rational in the aftermath. Nevertheless there was something about the tone of the late Michael Stevens’ daughter that set her on edge.
‘The pathologist’s report is quite clear,’ she replied. ‘Your father’s sample showed dangerously high levels of Dabigatran, his prescribed blood thinner. The absorption life of one tablet is between twelve to eighteen hours. Tests showed that he had at least a dozen in his system. While a cerebrovascular accident can occur at any time, there’s a very strong chance that it contributed to his death.’
‘What happens now?’
‘It’s happened already. I interviewed his carers this morning and they both assured me that they gave him only the prescribed doses of each medication. In the case of the Dabigatran that was twice daily, morning and evening, a hundred and fifty milligrams each time.’
‘Did you believe them?’
‘I have no reason not to. They’re trained, experienced people, both of them.’
‘How did you verify that?’
‘With the care company that employs them,’ McClair said. ‘The morning carer was a nurse before she had her family. The evening person has worked in personal care for over twenty years.’
‘And yet my father overdosed,’ Langham persisted.
‘He did, but the belief is that he did it himself. We found boxes of Tic Tacs in his kitchen and in his bedroom. They’re about the same size as the Dabigatran capsules.’
‘Yes, he was addicted to those things.’
‘Indeed? Well, our best guess is that he was confused. His medication was kept in a bathroom cupboard. In hindsight it should have been secured, but it wasn’t. The door was open and there was an empty Dabigatran box beside the basin. It l
ooks as if he’d been taking them like sweets, literally.’
The inspector heard a faint snorting sound. ‘Why did nobody think of this?’ Langham demanded. ‘Why wasn’t the stuff under lock and key?’
McClair’s patience wore out. ‘You tell me,’ she said, quietly. ‘You’re his daughter. You were obviously happy that he was still capable of independent living. The company told me that you made the care arrangements and that they reported to you every month, but his physical security was something else. Was he ever visited by an occupational therapist? Was his home ever assessed to see if he needed aids?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe he should have been. When did you see him last?’
‘Early October, after Mum’s funeral.’
‘Four months ago.’ McClair let the words hang in the air for a few seconds. ‘Was your father on a care home waiting list?’ she asked, although she knew the answer.
‘After what happened a year ago?’ Langham retorted. ‘No, he was not!’
‘He’d received his first vaccine,’ the inspector pointed out. ‘Things are different now. The proprietors have learned from experience and all sorts of safety protocols are in place.’
‘Even so! The cost of those places! They’re outrageous.’
So Prue Granton was right, McClair thought. ‘That’s not an issue for your father now, sadly,’ she said. ‘But if he had been in care,’ she added, twisting the knife, ‘he wouldn’t have had access to his meds, would he?’
Twenty-Three
The Merchant City had been trendy for so long that nobody could say for sure when it had attained that status. Once it had been what its name suggested, in the days when Glasgow had claimed to be the Second City of the Empire. It had fallen into decline during the twentieth century, only to undergo a process of gradual gentrification as it drew to a close, with lawyers, financiers and other young professionals adopting its poshed-up pubs and pushing up prices for old tenement flats, some in dire need of renovation. Without their intervention it was conceivable that many would have been demolished.
Philomena McBride had been a post person there for ten years and knew the area better than most. In her early days her round had been early too, and she had come to know many of its residents by sight and some by name. Latterly her deliveries had become later and most had left for work long before she slid their mail through their letter boxes. She had seen changes in their design; once they had been simple, a brass-covered slit with nothing behind it and a soft sound as letters hit the lino. Replacement doors though, they were different. The City Council was very fussy about anything that showed on the outside of the precious buildings, but inside, up the closes, that was fair game for the UPVC salespeople. More often than not the letter boxes in those doors came with two layers of fur lining and a powerful spring on the closer that could break a lady’s nails.
There was one of those on the second floor flat in Candleriggs, a real nail-cruncher. Philomena had never met the owner, but she could see that he took his security seriously, from the sensors that were set in the doorframe. She had been around long enough to know them as a sign of a sophisticated alarm system. As for the door itself, that was steel, not fancy plastic; to her it suggested one thing above all else: drug dealer. It was built to withstand a few whacks with the polis’s big red knocker, giving those inside time to flush the product down the toilet before entry was effected. An occasional user of nose candy herself, Philomena had nothing against such precautions, other than the beast of a letter box that went with them.
Her theory about its owner was given weight by the fact that there was no nameplate in sight, and by another, even greater, oddity. The address received absolutely no junk mail, a virtual impossibility in the new era of online and mail order shopping; she could think of no one else on her round to whom that applied. Also, he or she was anonymous. The few items of mail she delivered there were all addressed to ‘The Occupier’.
She had one that Tuesday afternoon, a slim envelope with something stiff inside, a replacement credit card, perhaps. She prised the letter box open and pushed it into the opening . . . and to her surprise, the door swung open. That was not uncommon in older dwellings with a Yale that had seen better days. A surprising number of householders were sloppy in the way they secured their property. For it to happen in Fortress Candleriggs, though, that was another matter.
Ignoring her training, and setting aside common sense, she stepped inside, hope rising in the back of her mind that The Occupier, if he was there, might reward her with a wee baggie of something nice.
There were four doors off the narrow lobby, but only one of them was ajar. ‘Hello,’ she cried out, moving forward tentatively. ‘It’s Phil the Postie. Your front door’s wide open.’ Nervousness caught up with her as she waited, her shout unanswered. Finally she summoned up the last of her courage, stepped into the open doorway and stopped.
The Occupier was male, and he was very dead.
Twenty-Four
Noele McClair checked her watch. It told her that her shift had another seventy-five minutes to run. She sighed, inwardly. The inspector had sounded off to nobody, not even her mother, but she was bored. After the shock of losing her former husband and her lover in the same violent incident she had been ready to leave the police service, but she had been persuaded to stay on by Maggie Steele, the former chief constable, with an offer of promotion, a move out of CID and a posting near to her home. At that time she had been horrified by the thought of ever visiting another crime scene, but her discovery of Michael Stevens’ body, although it had been a natural death, had disturbed her not at all. She was ready to re-join the action, but detective inspector vacancies were few and far between.
She was entertaining thoughts of uploading her profile to LinkedIn when her office door swung open after the briefest of knocks and a tall man in a black tunic stepped into the room.
She had never been introduced to Deputy Chief Constable Brian Mackie, but knew him instantly from his image on the police service website. He was the third highest ranking officer on the force, after Mario McGuire and the new chief, Neil McIlhenney, all three graduates of what older cops and cynics referred to as ‘The Skinner Academy’. She made to rise, in deference to his rank, but he waved her back down.
‘Don’t get up, Inspector McClair,’ he said. ‘This is an informal visit; I’m doing the rounds in the absence of your divisional commander.’
‘I’d heard he was off sick, sir. Not Covid, I hope.’
Mackie shook his dome-shaped head. ‘No, the poor bugger’s got shingles. That’s bad enough from what they tell me. All going well in your sub-division?’ he asked, briskly.
‘Fine,’ she confirmed. ‘I could do with another couple of uniforms, but we’re coping.’
‘That’s a smart young lass outside.’
‘Tiggy Benjamin? Yes, she shows promise.’
‘That’s good. Look, Inspector,’ Mackie continued, ‘a couple of things. The first is something I didn’t want you to hear through official channels, or the grapevine. Chief Inspector Sammy Pye passed away this morning. You worked with him, I believe.’
A wave of sadness swept over her. ‘Yes sir, I did. Not for long, but long enough for me to get to like him.’ Pye had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease two years earlier; his wife had discouraged visits from colleagues, as she had feared they would upset him. Only Sauce Haddock had visited regularly, but he had never spoken about it. An unbidden thought appeared in her mind. For sure, Sauce would be confirmed as DCI in charge of the Serious Crimes Edinburgh team. Would that create a detective inspector vacancy? The notion was washed away by a wave of guilt that overwhelmed the sadness; she felt her face flush and hoped that the DCC had not been able to read her mind.
‘There’ll be an announcement from the Press Office at five o’clock,’ he continued, apparently oblivious. ‘Ruth Pye has agreed to that. T
he funeral will be subject to Covid restrictions, of course, but we’re going to have video links to the service in all the stations where he worked.’ He smiled, sadly. ‘Do you know what his nickname used to be? Luke Skywalker: because he was such a high flyer, they said. Then Sauce Haddock appeared on the scene and people started calling him Master Yoda.’
‘So that’s why,’ McClair murmured. ‘Sauce always called him Luke, but it was like a private joke. They were very close; he’ll be devastated.’
‘We all are. I remember Sammy as a young plod, in this very station.’ He smiled. ‘There was a story about him and a female officer, in the stationery cupboard, I seem to remember.’
‘In flagrante?’
‘Not quite, but I’m told there was substance to it. Said female officer had form in that respect.’
‘Do tell, sir.’
He grinned. ‘No names, Inspector, and no more detail. She’s still in the service.’
She looked up at him, deciding that she liked DCC Mackie.
‘There’s one other thing,’ he said. ‘Who’s Lynn Langham?’
His question took her by surprise. ‘She’s the daughter of a senior citizen found dead in his flat in Gullane last week. Tiggy and I had to break in, after his carer reported that he wasn’t answering. He’d had a stroke and died in his chair. I asked my friend Sarah if she’d attend. She’s a pathologist,’ McClair added.
‘I know who Sarah is,’ Mackie told her. ‘I was Bob Skinner’s exec for a spell.’
‘In that case you’ll know how good she is at her job. She certified the death and I sent the papers off to the fiscal. Next thing we knew the Langham woman was on the phone doubting Sarah’s finding and demanding a post-mortem. Her mother was a sudden death last September and her head was full of wild ideas about them being suspicious. I sent her off to the fiscal. She folded, of course and Sarah did an autopsy. That found that the old man had unfortunately overdosed on his blood-thinning medication, to the point where, basically, his head exploded.’ She hesitated, before adding, ‘Why are you asking, sir?’
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