The Bad Fire (Bob Skinner series, Book 31): A shocking murder case brings danger too close to home for ex-cop Bob Skinner in this gripping Scottish crime thriller

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Even you?’

  ‘Even me. You might not realise it at the time, but the apprehension has more than one source. It took me a while to rationalise this. I never felt physically threatened in prison; I was who I was, and nobody questioned that, or me. At least that’s what I thought. The more subtle truth was that I was never challenged because I never raised the question myself. I never offered or invited a threat. Through all the time I was inside, I was aloof. I made no friends; I rebuffed all efforts to befriend me.’

  ‘So what were you afraid of?’

  ‘I was afraid of myself and of what effect my sentence might have on me. There was always an intelligent person hiding inside Big Lennie the minder. I feared that he might disappear through being institutionalised; I feared his loss.’

  ‘How did you conquer it?’

  ‘It conquered itself when I discovered that prisons have libraries and that they actually do offer rehabilitation; more than that, they offer an education. During my first sentence, I did my Highers; I walked out of there with university entrance qualifications.’

  ‘But you didn’t use them,’ Alex pointed out.

  ‘I didn’t have time,’ her host countered. ‘I got out, Tony Manson was murdered, and I went on my mission to take care of the people who did it.’ He frowned. ‘Your dad and I were in competition over that, but I was always a step ahead of him, until he caught up with me and we had our . . . discussion.’

  ‘Didn’t the intelligent man inside you tell you to leave it to him?’

  A grin flashed across his face. ‘He did,’ Dominic chuckled, ‘but Lennie told him to fuck off.’

  Alex did not return his smile. ‘When you and Pops had your . . . business meeting, if it had worked out the other way, would you – no, would Lennie have killed him?’

  ‘Never!’ he replied vehemently. ‘At the time, I thought I’d subdued him; I was going to tie him up, hide him somewhere it would have taken a while to find, and make my getaway. It would have worked, too. If it had, I’d have been living in Argentina and been pretty much untraceable. Yes, I thought I’d subdued him, then he just exploded on me and wiped me out.’

  She gazed at him. ‘You guys,’ she whispered. ‘You have a friendship that even a top crime writer would do well to imagine, and yet it’s for real, and I’m here.’

  She winced, and lines appeared around her eyes; lines that she had been noticing in the mirror for a while and doing her best to disguise. ‘I’m here because Carrie isn’t. And the police aren’t doing enough!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘They’re doing their best, I’m sure.’

  ‘That’s what Pops says, but there’s someone at the heart of it and they seem to be scared to confront her.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘The woman Marcia was convinced had framed her, Gloria Stephens, the West Coast Council leader. Nobody’s been to interview her, to put the right questions.’

  Dominic fell silent; she watched him as he thought. ‘I know that name,’ he said eventually. ‘I mentioned that I read the local paper when I was in HMP Kilmarnock, and she was never out of it. Plus, she visited the prison often, as an official visitor, but also as a councillor. There was a short-term population in there, guys and eventually some women, who were local people, and would be voting in the council elections when they were released. She’s the only councillor I ever heard of who did surgeries in jail.’

  ‘And Carrie didn’t go to interview her?’ Alex wondered. ‘I find that hard to believe somehow.’

  ‘Hey,’ he retorted, ‘didn’t you say that Bob told you the last trace of Carrie was when her credit card was used to buy fuel in East Kilbride?’

  ‘Just after midday; then nothing.’

  ‘What if . . .’ He pushed himself up from his chair on the deck. ‘Come on.’ He led her into the house, to the office area. ‘Let’s have a look . . .’ He wakened his computer from sleep mode and searched for ‘West Coast Council’. The official website was the top return; he clicked on it, then found the list of council members. Gloria Stephens was fourth from the top of the page. He selected her.

  The image of a middle-aged woman appeared on screen. ‘She’s smiling,’ Dominic observed, ‘but not with her eyes. There’s something predatory in them. She’s a control freak; and not someone who takes well to being challenged.’

  ‘You can tell that just by looking at her?’

  ‘I looked at eyes like those every day for years of my life. Let’s see what her page says.’ He clicked on the arrow at the foot and it was refreshed. ‘Well, well, well,’ he whispered. ‘On Saturday afternoon she had an open surgery in Newmilns. To get there from Edinburgh, avoiding Glasgow as you’d probably want to, you would go through East Kilbride. Would you bet against Newmilns as Carrie’s destination?’

  ‘No, I would not,’ Alex declared. ‘The only question is whether she reached it.’

  ‘You should pass this on to your father, or to young Haddock directly.’

  ‘I have a better idea. Let them go on at their own pace. That list says she has a surgery in Galston community centre at seven tomorrow evening. Why don’t we ask her ourselves?’

  Fifty-Seven

  ‘Have you ever felt you were being used as a stalking horse, Hitch?’ Lottie Mann asked her sergeant.

  He considered the question for some time before replying. ‘When I was sixteen, I had this Mackem girlfriend, a couple of years older than me. I won’t go into detail, but she opened my eyes in all sorts of ways. Everybody but me wondered what she was doing playing around with a naïve Geordie twerp. Then the guy she’d fancied all along chucked his woman, turned up from Sunderland, kicked the shit out of me and carried her back across the Wear. Does that count?’

  ‘I’d say it does,’ the DCI conceded.

  ‘The relevance being?’

  ‘This investigation that Skinner and McGuire have set us on. Nine years ago an incompetent pathologist fucked up an autopsy and wrote a homicide off as a suicide. We’ve been tasked with finding out whether it was just that – incompetence – or something more sinister, and if so, who wanted the lady dead. But nobody gave us any backstory, just the name and the circumstances. I should have asked for more, but I didn’t. I was so fucking star-struck at being picked out by those two that I asked no questions. I said as much to Dan last night.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘You’re too young to hear most of it,’ she replied, ‘but when he was finished, I googled our victim and found that she was high-profile – as high as your profile can be in Ayrshire at any rate – a public figure who was accused of shoplifting and couldn’t face the consequences. That was the story.’

  ‘You don’t believe it?’ John Cotter asked.

  ‘It’s not a matter of what I believe. It’s why we weren’t told, that’s what I can’t figure out. I’ve spent most of today trying to remember who it was that said he was only a prawn in the game, for that’s how I feel.’

  ‘Brian London.’

  She stared at him from the passenger seat. ‘Who?’

  ‘Brian London,’ the DS repeated. ‘An old-time boxer; he said it after he was chinned by Muhammad Ali back in the sixties. Where I come from, Ali was an idol; my grandad met him when he visited Tyneside in 1977. He knew all about him and he told me that story.’

  ‘In that case, I know how Mr London felt,’ she declared as she took a ticket from the machine at the entrance to the Edinburgh Airport car park and watched the barrier rise.

  After a fruitless ten-minute search for a free space in the open short-stay area, they headed for the multistorey; the only vacancies were on the top two floors. ‘How do we find the security office?’ Cotter asked as they stepped out of the lift. ‘It won’t be advertised, and this place is a maze.’

  ‘Easy,’ Mann replied.

  As soon as they reached the main concourse, she headed for the first uniformed police officer in sight, holding her warrant card high. The sergeant seemed unimpressed; he n
odded recognition but kept his eyes fixed on the milling crowds, and his Heckler & Koch carbine at the ready. ‘We’re looking for Terry Coats,’ she told him. ‘He works in security.’

  ‘I know Terry,’ he said. ‘His office is airside. One floor up, go to fast-track and show your ID there. You’ll probably have to go through the X-ray gates like everyone else, but you’ll find him there. Does he know you’re coming?’

  ‘No, and keep it that way. I don’t want you warning him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. He’s a popular man today.’ He moved off to join his armed colleague.

  ‘What did he mean by that?’ Cotter wondered aloud as he followed his DCI towards the escalator.

  Security was busy, but Mann had experienced worse on the one occasion she had flown through Edinburgh, taking her son Jakey for a week-long holiday in Turkey. As the sergeant had predicted, the staff member who inspected their credentials insisted that there were no exceptions to the rule. ‘Everybody does it, going airside,’ she said, ‘even though Terry’s office is just to the left of the baggage roller. You’re not the first, but I expect you know that.’

  The DS would have asked her what she meant, but he was hustled onwards and through the regimented security procedure. The unsmiling officer who watched them load their baggage containers raised an eyebrow when he saw their extendable batons. He picked up Cotter’s and examined it. ‘I don’t think I can let you through with this,’ he declared. ‘You’ll have to go back downstairs and check it into the hold.’

  ‘You may be having a bad day,’ Mann barked at him, pointing out the warrant card that lay in the tray beside the DS’s phone, ‘but if you try to obstruct us, trust me it will get a hell of a lot worse.’ She thrust both containers onto the rollers and stalked off towards the metal-detector gate.

  They retrieved their belongings and moved on. ‘To the left of the roller,’ the DCI murmured. She stepped past the area where baggage that had been singled out from the rest was being opened for closer inspection, and saw a corridor that had been hidden from view until then – a corridor where two figures stood, one of them very familiar. ‘Hey,’ she called out. ‘Sauce Haddock! What the hell are you doing here?’

  He turned towards her, taken by surprise. ‘We’re going to interview a potential witness in our investigation. Now I’ll ask you the same thing. I know we’re one big happy family now – or meant to be – but this is a fair way from Glasgow. What’s your interest here?’

  ‘The same as yours. We’re investigating a murder, and we need to talk to someone.’

  ‘What’s your man’s name?’

  ‘Terry Coats. He used to be a DI until the force got too small for him, or he got too big for his boots, depending on what story you believe. Yours?’

  ‘This is surreal,’ Haddock said. ‘What’s your victim called?’

  ‘Marcia Brown,’ Mann replied. ‘She died nine years ago; it was marked down as a suicide until new evidence came to light – or rather after old evidence was re-examined by someone competent. Yours?’

  ‘You’ll have read about her: Carrie McDaniels. She disappeared while looking into the criminal complaint against Marcia Brown that led to her death.’

  ‘Then you’re fucking right it’s surreal, Sauce. Nobody told me that your investigation was linked.’

  ‘And nobody told me about yours period. So what do we do here, Detective Chief Inspector? Will we take turns with Coats? Do we toss a coin to see who goes first?’

  ‘Stuff that!’ the DCI exclaimed. ‘We see him together; we don’t give him a bloody second to gather his thoughts. Come on.’

  She led the way into the corridor, in which there were two doors, a little apart, the second bearing a name plate: Mr T. Coats. She rapped on it briefly, then opened it without waiting for a response and stepped into the room.

  ‘Mr Coats,’ she began, ‘I’m DCI—’ then stopped in mid stride and mid sentence. There were two men in the office. One she assumed was Terry Coats; the other she knew for certain was Bob Skinner. ‘What the f . . .’ she hissed as her colleagues gathered around her.

  ‘Nicely timed,’ their mentor said.

  ‘What’s going on here, gaffer?’ Haddock asked him quietly.

  ‘You could call it convergence,’ Skinner replied. ‘You and DCI Mann have been heading up entirely separate investigations, with the same person a factor in both; I was going to say at their heart, but that wouldn’t be quite correct. Make no mistake, the murder of Carrie McDaniels is at the heart of yours.’ He rose from his chair. ‘Those at the highest level wanted nothing to get in the way of that, so when it was discovered that Marcia Brown’s death wasn’t the suicide it was deemed to be nine years ago, it was agreed that DCI Mann would pursue it without knowledge of or interaction with you . . . and vice versa. I was asked to assume informal oversight of both of you.’

  ‘But how could you separate the two?’ Mann protested.

  ‘Why would you not?’ Skinner countered. ‘There was no evidence that Councillor Brown’s death was linked to the charge against her, nor is there yet. There’s only one existing link between your cases, one living witness, and he’s here. So when each of you told me separately that you were planning to interview Mr Coats, unannounced, I decided that was the moment of convergence. When I suggested to each of you separately that ten thirty was always a good time to catch him, I did so because I told him to be here.’

  Jackie Wright felt like a spectator rather than a participant. She looked at Haddock, then at Mann, wondering if one of them would erupt at having been set up. Neither did, but the DI’s voice had a chill in it when he spoke.

  ‘Now that he is, and we are, are you going to leave us to get on with it . . . gaffer?’

  ‘No, I am not, Detective Inspector.’ Skinner smiled. ‘Don’t swing the other leg over that high horse, son. You wouldn’t stay on it and the fall might hurt you. Informal oversight, I said earlier, but I’ve got a warrant card too – yes, I still have; I’m officially a special – and it says that I do what the chief constable asks me to do. Yours says you do what she orders you to do. I’m staying, Sauce, because I believe it’s the constructive thing to do, and also because I want to ensure that this unusual situation plays out in the proper manner. Myself and Mr Coats here, who has probably never been silent for so long in his entire life, have baggage; his kid’s my kid’s best pal, even if he and Noele are no longer together. That apart, he is a former police officer, of equivalent rank to you; he isn’t a suspect, or a person of interest, he’s a witness, and I intend to see that he’s treated with appropriate courtesy. Think of this not as an interview, but as a general discussion of circumstances and events.’ He looked Haddock in the eye, then Mann. ‘Are we square with that?’

  The DCI allowed him a faint smile. ‘This takes me back, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m clear.’

  ‘What she said,’ Haddock muttered.

  ‘That’s good. Now, this room’s just about big enough for all of us, but we need three more chairs.’ He looked at Cotter. ‘Hitch, you and Always fetch them from the security area, please. I saw some there when I came in.’

  ‘How does he know my nickname?’ the DS whispered to Wright.

  ‘He knows everything,’ she murmured in return, ‘even mine, which I don’t like at all, as it has another context.’

  ‘If anyone tries to stop you,’ Coats called out, breaking his silence, ‘tell them I sent you.’

  ‘What do you do here?’ Mann asked him.

  ‘Mostly I manage the people out there, and I’m responsible for perimeter security. It’s a big site, so it’s a big job.’

  ‘Mostly? What else?’

  ‘I’m on the lookout for scams, security of goods, stuff being smuggled into and out of airside. Also money laundering; that’s not an official function, but as an ex-cop I keep an eye out for situations where it might be happening.’

  ‘Illegal immigration?’

  ‘No, that’s Border Force; they’re a very tig
ht crew.’ He stopped as Cotter and Wright returned with the chairs and the detectives arranged themselves round his desk. ‘Okay,’ he resumed, ‘who wants first crack?’ As he spoke, he took out his phone and set it to voice memo mode. ‘I assume you want to record this; I certainly do.’

  ‘As long as it remains confidential,’ Skinner cautioned him.

  ‘For my own protection, that’s all. Fire away.’

  ‘Carrie McDaniels,’ Haddock said. ‘We know that she had a meeting with you scheduled for Saturday morning, but we don’t know what you discussed.’

  ‘That surprises me,’ Coats exclaimed. He tapped his phone. ‘She recorded all of it.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No. I didn’t take it too seriously, to be honest; a nine-year-old investigation that never reached a conclusion . . . not in court, that is. It’s annoying that it’s never gone away, but it’s history. Why haven’t you got McDaniels’ recording?’

  ‘All her data, her files, and the fiscal’s report that was the basis of her investigation were stolen in two thefts early on Sunday morning.’

  ‘That’s why you’re certain her death is linked to this investigation?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the DI confirmed.

  ‘I don’t see how it can be. It was small-time stuff. Brown was as guilty as sin. She was advised to plead that way for her own good, but she was insisting on going to trial until the negative publicity in the local press, which was always in the Labour council’s pocket, got to her and she took an overdose.’

  ‘Can you run through your discussion with Carrie McDaniels, as far as you can remember it?’

  Coats nodded. ‘Sure. I told her I got involved because I was asked to by Shereen Mason, the station commander. She’d been called by a PC called Parker, known as Spider-Man, also Spidey, not just for the name but because his mates said he was so fucking ugly he needed a mask; he’d been asked to go to her directly because the store manager was bricking it about Brown being a local councillor. Mason promised me that if I did it she’d sign off on the report, although in the end she never did, left me twisting in the wind. I went there, interviewed everyone involved – store manager, security guards – then confronted Councillor Brown back at the station. I interviewed her, inspected the goods and charged her. In those days,’ he added, ‘she didn’t need to have a lawyer present.’