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

  ‘Anything else come back to mind?’

  ‘There was something about a discount sticker. McDaniels said the security boy had mentioned it, the one who stopped her; an Asian kid on a summer job.’

  ‘Did she mention his name?’

  ‘She did, in fact: Butt, Zaqib Butt.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ the DI asked.

  ‘Certain. There was a kid in my class at school called Zaqib, and the name stuck with me. Why, is that significant?’

  ‘It might be. We recovered Carrie’s diary from the Cloud; there was an entry about a visit to a steel stockholder called WZB. It’s owned by a Wasim Butt, and he has a son named Zaqib. Butt senior said she never arrived there, but at last we now have the connection. What could Zaqib have told her about that discount ticket? Any idea?’

  ‘Not very much. He told her it was there when he stopped the woman, then it disappeared.’

  ‘Boss,’ Jackie Wright exclaimed, tugging lightly on Haddock’s sleeve. ‘Surely that confirms that Carrie was at WZB last Friday. Wasim wasn’t there, the temp hadn’t started, and Steve O’Donnell wouldn’t necessarily have seen her if she’d never been on the shop floor. When we spoke to him out there, I noticed that the viewing window in the office was one-way glass; you can’t see through it.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘But Zaqib’s gone to Pakistan to plan his wedding. Is that convenient or just a coincidence? We need to follow up on that; wherever he is, we need to contact him and interview him.’

  ‘So,’ Skinner said, ‘progress. Terry, is there anything else you remember about your meeting with Carrie?’

  ‘Only that she was looking hard into the conspiracy angle. That was Brown’s defence, and I included it when I typed up her statement for the report to the fiscal. McDaniels will have seen that if she had a copy. Brown had Spidey setting the whole thing up with his girlfriend, because of some spat between her and the girlfriend’s mother.’

  ‘Could that have happened?’

  ‘Bob, my notes are long gone, but from what I can remember, there was no evidence to back it up. As I said, the store manager crapped herself when she realised who’d been arrested, Spidey advised her to phone Mason directly, and that was that. The girlfriend, Vera Stephens, was never interviewed, because she wasn’t a witness. As for the person named Adrian who Brown claimed had distracted her while the goods were being planted, I went over the store looking for a trace of him, but there was no sign. Marcia wasn’t the only one to float that conspiracy theory. Her sister Joan, she bent my ear about it.’

  ‘When did you meet her?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘She ID-ed the body. And she turned up for the post-mortem; she was in a right state. I had to chuck her out. She said the conspiracy had something to do with a planning application that Stephens was rubber-stamping quietly because people would lose their jobs. She was raving; that was understandable, because Marcia was her twin. Later on, the son bought into that too, but he had to be careful not to cross the line of defamation in that fucking blog of his.’

  ‘You had reason to dislike that blog, Mr Coats, didn’t you?’

  ‘Too right I did, mate, but it didn’t exist at the time of his mother’s arrest so it couldn’t have affected my judgement. I did my job, played it by the book, and in no way did I stitch her up.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Mann said. ‘Now, can I turn to Councillor Brown’s death?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘You were the investigating officer in the theft case and you attended the scene. Wasn’t that unusual?’

  ‘I agree, it was, but blame Mason again.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘The postman; he had a recorded delivery letter that needed signing for. He rang her bell; there was no reply, but he knew her car and saw it parked outside. He took a look through her letter box. The way it was positioned, it had a view of her bedroom door. It was open, and he could see an arm hanging off the side of the bed. He battered the door, couldn’t rouse her. Just then, by sheer chance, a patrol car passed by; he stopped it, the officers effected an entrance and found her dead. They called it in to Mason, who hit her personal panic button again and rang me. She didn’t tell me who the victim was, just that it was a sudden death and she’d take it as a personal favour if I could follow it up.’

  ‘Were you and she close?’ Cotter asked, for no reason other than to register his presence.

  Coats glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he snapped. ‘Are you asking if I was shagging her? She was fifty-one, plug-ugly and she had a moustache. Grow up, son.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll ask it in another way,’ Mann said. ‘Did Chief Inspector Mason, a very nice woman I knew well in my first uniformed posting, but who was, as you suggest, a bit of a panic merchant, have any expectation that you would cover up inconvenient facts or findings? In other words, did she have something on you?’

  ‘No, she did not; there was never anything to have,’ he added firmly. ‘She didn’t trust anyone else in the station with a sensitive inquiry, simple as that.’

  ‘Okay. Can you tell us what you found when you arrived at the scene?’

  ‘A dead woman, aged around fifty, lying on a bed; two uniforms, one of them very green, literally and metaphorically; a doctor who had certified death and would have fucked right off had I not told him to examine the victim again in my presence.’

  ‘What was your immediate reaction?’ the DCI continued. ‘Did you recognise her at once?’

  ‘Of course I did!’ Coats snapped. ‘I’d interviewed and charged her a couple of weeks before. I was shocked; I hadn’t prepared myself for that or been given the chance.’

  ‘Was the nature of the death obvious?’

  ‘If you mean was my immediate conclusion that she had committed suicide, no, it wasn’t. She was lying on top of the bed rather than under the duvet, but she was wearing pyjamas. I’d seen a few sudden death victims in my career, and she looked like any one of them. She looked like my dad,’ he murmured, his eyes softening. ‘He had a cerebral haemorrhage in his armchair while he was reading the Glasgow Herald. He just looked as if he’d fallen asleep. So did Marcia Brown.’

  Mann paused for a second, giving Coats time to come back to them. ‘When did you first realise that she might have topped herself?’

  ‘When I found the capsules in the pedal bin in her en suite; a lot of them, and their boxes. The labels said they were Oramorph, morphine by mouth.’

  ‘What made you look there?’

  ‘Training, and years of experience. You’d have done the same . . . I hope.’

  ‘Was there anything on the boxes to indicate their origin? The belief was that she’d stolen them from the hospital where she was manager.’

  ‘There was nothing that I saw, and I did look for it. I did a proper job; I searched the whole house carefully.’ He looked at Mann, then at Skinner. ‘I know you guys are going to ask whether I read any significance into that. The fact is, I didn’t; I knew from my previous encounter with the victim that she was a hospital manager. In the absence of labelling, you’re right, Chief Inspector, my presumption was that she had stolen the drugs she used from her work, probably on the day she died so that the theft wouldn’t be discovered until after she was gone.’

  ‘Did you make any attempt to verify that?’

  ‘Personally, no. I did what I was asked to do by Mason, and reported back to her. Look, Lottie,’ He paused. ‘I know your first name; I’ve heard of you, and you can take that as a compliment . . . Whatever that bitch Toni Field, our late chief constable in Strathclyde, might have thought, I was very good at my job. If I had thought for one second that there was any possibility of the death being other than natural, accidental or self-inflicted, I would have called for backup and forensics and got everybody out of the place until they arrived. But I didn’t, because I looked; I went over the flat room by room, window by window, and there was no sign of intrusion anywhere. There were no extra glasses in
the sink or anywhere else, just the one at the side of the bed, with the dregs of red wine in it. There was a single plate, one cup, one fork and two teaspoons in the dishwasher. In the kitchen bin I found the box for a ready-made curry, and a yoghurt cup. The wine bottle was on the work surface with not much left in it. Merlot. I remember that because I hate fucking merlot.’

  ‘The uniforms broke in,’ Skinner reminded him. ‘If there had been signs of intrusion, they’d have been destroyed.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I looked for them, as you do, and I didn’t see anything. There were two locks, Bob, a night latch and a mortice. I asked the plods about that. The older one was a big bloke; he said they were both engaged, and he’d had a hell of a problem kicking the door in.’

  ‘Was there a chain in place?’

  ‘That I don’t know.’

  ‘Can I move on to the post-mortem examination, Terry?’ Mann continued. ‘You attended it, I believe.’

  ‘I did. Again, it was at Chief Inspector Mason’s request; she felt that since I’d attended the scene, it would be best if I carried on. That was reasonable; I couldn’t argue with it. Well, I could have,’ he acknowledged. ‘I might have suggested that as Ms Brown’s arresting officer there might be a conflict of interest, given that she’d protested her innocence right up to the day she died. But I didn’t; I was upset by her death and just wanted the business over and done with, so I did as I was asked.’

  ‘I don’t have an issue with that,’ the DCI told him. ‘Personally, I fucking hate autopsies; once they’re over, I try to put them out of my mind. So I will understand if your recollection’s hazy, but how much do you remember about it?’

  ‘Quite a lot, as it happens. For starters, I thought the pathologist was a wanker. He wasn’t one of the people I knew. They were all busy elsewhere, so they’d pulled this bloke in, from Edinburgh I think, on a sort of locum basis. He was disinterested; he’d a student assisting him, and I remember thinking it would have been better if she’d done the job. As it was, all he let her do was the photography, probably because he didn’t know how to use the camera in that mortuary. My impression was that he’d been told it was a suicide, and all he was interested in was joining the dots, because it was a very short examination. When the blood analysis came back, he said “Eureka!” like he was fucking Aristotle, and pretty much closed her up.’

  ‘Who else was present? Hitch and I were told there was another man.’

  ‘That’s right. Cedric Black, Marcia’s lawyer when she was arrested.’

  ‘Why was he there?’

  ‘He didn’t say, but I didn’t find it unusual that he should be. It never occurred to me to query it.’

  ‘Did you hear him speak to the pathologist?’

  ‘No, but I saw them talking. I asked him why, and he said they’d met years before when the man – Banks, that was his name – was an expert witness in a case where he was instructing solicitor.’

  ‘You said earlier that Joan Brown was there,’ Mann reminded him.

  ‘Was she ever. It was fucking scary to look at her. She and Marcia were identical twins, so she was the living image, literally, of the woman on the examination table. She was hysterical, yelling at Black. It was entirely inappropriate for her to be there, considering what Banks was about to do to her sister, so I took her right out of there; all the time she was shouting about the so-called conspiracy. Eventually I quietened her down, bollocked the people who’d let her in and made sure she was off the premises.’

  ‘What happened to the empty Oramorph capsules and boxes?’ Mann asked.

  ‘I put them in an evidence bag at the scene and gave them to Mason with my report.’

  ‘I take it you wore gloves as you searched Marcia Brown’s place,’ Skinner murmured.

  Coats looked offended. ‘Standard procedure, Bob.’

  ‘You didn’t ask for the capsules to be fingerprinted?’

  ‘How often do I have to say this? The C in CID stands for Criminal: this was a uniform branch procedure that I did as a favour.’

  ‘Fair enough. One last question. Did you see a syringe anywhere in the apartment?’

  ‘Absolutely not. If there had been, I would have found it, believe me.’

  ‘I do, but I had to ask.’

  ‘Is that what they’re saying now? That she was injected with the Oramorph?’

  ‘That’s the theory. Is it possible that the officers who were there when you arrived might have removed one?’

  ‘Anything’s possible, but tell me why they would.’

  ‘Should we interview Chief Inspector Mason?’ Cotter asked.

  ‘She died last year,’ the DCI told him. ‘Skype doesn’t reach that far.’

  Fifty-Eight

  ‘If any one of you,’ Skinner focused on Haddock, but Mann was in his field of vision, ‘still feels that you were set up at that meeting, I apologise.’ Then he grinned. ‘But it was priceless to see the expressions on your faces when you walked through that door.’

  They were still in Coats’ office, but he had gone, ‘on my rounds’, leaving them to have a debrief.

  ‘The day you stop surprising me, gaffer,’ Haddock replied, ‘I’ll know that I’m taking the job for granted. But why don’t you just rejoin, FFS?’

  ‘I don’t want to. I put in my time, and I’m not coming back to what I was. Okay, I have experience and maybe skills that are still of value, but I want to do other things with my life. When Andy Martin was chief, he didn’t want me around; that suited me, for I didn’t want to be around him either, not by that time.’

  ‘Hmph,’ Mann grunted. ‘Why do I think of Manchester United after Fergie retired?’

  Skinner peered at her over the spectacles that he wore very rarely. ‘Not quite, Lottie. The Police Authority did get it right at the second attempt. This mentoring role was his successor’s idea, and it suits me. I have no rank; my warrant card does give me a degree of authority, but my oversight is no more than that, and any views I express are suggestions, not orders.’

  ‘What are you going to suggest now, gaffer?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so presumptuous; you’re all good officers. I’m a mentor, remember, no more. Sauce, you have clear lines of inquiry. Lottie, you and John were tasked with investigating Marcia Brown’s homicide, and you still are. Graham Scott will go into the witness box and swear that she was murdered, but you still need physical evidence to find the perpetrators and convict them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘That’s what Graham thinks; two people at least, given the way she was restrained.’

  Cotter raised a hand. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Hitch?’

  ‘Isn’t DI Haddock’s team looking for the same person?’ he asked. ‘If Marcia Brown was murdered to stop her from going to trial, and Carrie McDaniels was killed to stop her investigating her death, surely those crimes must be linked?’

  ‘Surely? In what way is it sure? The methodology in the two crimes was completely different. Brown’s death was staged to make it appear self-inflicted, and that went unchallenged for nine years. Carrie started to look into the events that preceded it, and a couple of days later she was abducted, killed, and her body disposed of in a cruel and unsubtle way, along with that of someone else, whose role in the business we still don’t understand. The bodies were burned so that the investigators couldn’t be sure whose they were. I don’t believe that was an attempt to conceal a crime, as with Marcia; I suspect it was a tactic to hinder the inevitable investigation. If they hadn’t forgotten about her watch, it would have worked too.’

  ‘So you’re saying we’re looking for two separate killers?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘Until you can prove otherwise, yes. Four, actually. Two men took Carrie and attacked Alex, and the belief is that two people killed Marcia. The most effective way to find them is to run two separate investigations, surely? That’s my view, but I wouldn’t force it on you, even if I could.’ He looked from one senior officer to the other. ‘
What do you two say?’

  The young DI looked at Mann; they made eye contact for a couple of seconds. ‘Like Sir Robert says, Sauce,’ she murmured, ‘you do your thing, we do ours; maybe we’ll meet in the middle again, maybe not. Anything else?’ she added, turning back to Skinner.

  ‘One more thing,’ he responded. ‘We’ve heard lots about Joan Brown, but why aren’t either of you talking to her?’

  ‘Because she’s walking the Camino de Santiago,’ Haddock explained. ‘You know Spain; it means she’s virtually untraceable among the crowds. We did ask the Spanish Policía Nacional for help, but we’ve had nothing back.’

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It means we know where she is. Nobody’s untraceable, Sauce, and nobody goes on the Camino without planning. There are ATMs in Spain too, and cash is needed for a journey like that. Lottie, she’s your witness, I’d say, rather than Sauce’s. I suggest . . .’ he paused for emphasis, ‘that you find out where and when she last used her bank card and take it from there.’

  Fifty-Nine

  Tarvil Singh was a lifelong fan of the Walker Brothers; he was also proud of his voice, a fine baritone, he believed. The second of these truths he kept to himself. For all his Sikh heritage, his wife was a committed Scottish Presbyterian; they had been married in her church and he often accompanied her and her parents to services. He had never understood why song was a fundamental part of Christian worship, but he did not question it. Instead he went along with it, up to a point. Surrounded by reedy voices, some singing in tune, most slightly off key, invariably Tarvil would mime.