‘My client wishes to cooperate as fully as he can,’ Frances Birtles declared, as the refreshments were distributed, and Haddock made a show of giving one specific mug to Booth. The prisoner looked at him suspiciously, as if he suspected him of spitting in it . . . exactly as the DS had intended.
‘However,’ she continued, ‘he has to know who he’s dealing with. You know what I mean, Sammy. He wants to be assured that if he offers you assistance you don’t then hand him over to the drugs squad, to face charges that will get him longer inside than the culpable homicide that he’s already up against.’
‘He’s dealing with me, Frankie. If his information results in an arrest for Bella Watson’s murder, and if it leads further up the drug supply chain, he’ll be a Crown witness in both cases. That’ll mean he can’t be charged with selling anything.’
‘Do you understand that, Patrick?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Will Ah have to go in the witness box?’
‘Probably,’ Pye said. ‘There’s a limit to what I can offer. As a minimum I want a list of all your meetings with the van driver, dates, times and places. The registration number would be a bonus. Did you note that, or can you remember it?’
‘Ah don’t even remember what make of van it was, only that it was white, and didnae have any names on the side. It was about Transit size, but I don’t think it was a Transit, ken.’
‘Okay, write down all you can and we’ll take it from there. It’s the best deal that’s going, make no mistake, and you’re in no position to haggle. Now let’s go back on the record.’
He restarted the interview, formally, repeating the introductions and reminding Booth that he was still under caution. ‘You’ve had time to think,’ he continued. ‘I want you to describe again what you saw in Miss Spreckley’s house after you broke in.’
‘Like Ah said, there was blood in the kitchen, on the walls, the floor, the worktops. It was like she’d been pulpin’ tomatoes and the lid had come off the blender. That’s what Ah thought it was at first, tomatoes, till Ah realised it wasnae.’
‘What made you realise?’
‘Ah stood in it. It was sticky and that’s when I kent what it was.’
‘What did you do next?’
‘Ah went into the bathroom and washed it off ma shoes. Somebody’d ripped up the carpet, by the way. Then Ah looked round for anything that might be worth having. Ah found a purse, and had a few quid out of that, and some other money in a drawer. The jewel box was in the bedroom, on the dressing table.’
‘How many rooms were you in?’
‘All of them.’
‘Was there anything in any of them that you remembered not having been there before?’
Booth frowned, and his eyes narrowed. ‘No,’ he said. And then his face seemed to brighten as if a light had gone on. ‘But there was something wasnae there, apart frae the carpet. When Ah was there before wee Susan was sleepin’ in her buggy when Ah went to collect her, and she was in Bella’s bedroom. The pram was right up against this long broon chest thing at the end of her bed. When Ah went back in there, after the jewels and stuff, it wasnae there any more.’
‘Was it strong, this chest?’ Pye asked slowly.
‘Fuckin’ solid. Ah banged my knee on it when Ah tried to move the buggy. It was wood, wi’ big handles at either end.
‘Did it extend the full width of the bed?’
‘Aye.’ He gave a small, nasty smile as if he had seen a mental image that had pleased him. ‘Deep too; big enough for a body if it was jammed in there . . . even wrapped in a rug.’
‘But too long for one person to handle?’
‘He’d need to be a gorilla.’
‘You’re sure about this?’ Pye asked. ‘If you’re trying to lay a false trail, we will know.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Okay, it’s a new line of inquiry and it answers a big question. You’ve got some points on the board. But you’d better not be kidding us about this van driver bloke either.’
Booth stared at him. ‘Ah never said it was a bloke,’ he exclaimed. ‘The van driver’s a woman.’
Thirty-Eight
‘Please tell me you’re going to have something positive for me, DI Mann.’ In all his life, Ray Wilding had never come as close to begging. ‘I’ve got my top floor watching me on this, and I’ve never felt so exposed.’
‘No positive leads yourself then?’ Lottie asked.
‘None. Mackenzie’s vanished off the face of the earth.’
‘Does anyone outside our circle have a sniff of it yet?’
‘I don’t believe so. The official line is that he’s having time off to deal with personal issues. That’s holding, not least because he’s just had a run-in with the ACC; most people within CID believe that he’s been benched till he cools off. They’ll be benching me if I don’t come up with something soon. What have you got?’
‘I don’t know. My nee’bur and I …’
‘Your what?’
Mann laughed. ‘Ah sorry; that’s a Glasgow term. I meant, my colleague and I have just spoken to his priest, out in the arse end of Argyllshire. We left him ten minutes ago and now we’re sitting in a hotel car park, getting ready for the long road home.’
‘I didn’t know Mackenzie was a religious man,’ Wilding said. ‘He’s never given me that impression.’
‘I don’t know how religious he is, but the man we’ve spoken to has been a major influence in his life. How much have they told you about him?’
‘I’ve seen his service record, and had a very quick look at his HR file, that’s all. I’ve also spoken as discreetly as I could to some of his neighbours . . . his real neighbours, that is, not the Weegie kind, and it seems he never mixed with them. The upshot is that still I know very little personal about him. I would have spoken to his friends within the force, the problem being that he doesn’t have any.’
‘The same was true when he was a Strathclyde officer,’ Mann told him. ‘I never worked with him, but Dan Provan, my sergeant, did. He says there was something about him that grated on everyone; he was arrogant, a glory-hunter, and he was anti-authority, when authority wasn’t listening, that is. Dan describes him as a Ned with a warrant card, a bandit with a sheriff’s badge. But he got results, very good results, and he got promotion.’
‘He sounds like the original mystery man,’ Wilding observed. ‘He’s certainly been an outsider here, a boss’s man when Bob Skinner was around, but without a patron since he’s been gone.’
‘We can unravel some of the mystery, thanks to the man we’ve just left.’
‘The priest?’
‘Yes.’ She explained who Father Thomas Donnelly was, and how he had come into the troubled life of the young David Mackenzie. ‘He took him under his wing, and to paraphrase his words, he put him on the right pathway.’
‘A pathway that led him into the police force.’
‘Yes. But something from his childhood wouldn’t necessarily have kept him out.’
‘Granted, but it happened, and I’m just gobsmacked that you and I are hearing about it for the first time from a priest up in Auchna-wherever-it-is. We’ve been fearing something bad, but not really wanting to believe it. Now, it looks as if we might have to.’
‘Not according to Father Donnelly,’ Lottie Mann said.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, when we talked to him we got round to asking him whether or not Mackenzie was capable of murder.’
‘Was that not a bit risky?’
‘No, we were on his boat. Clearly, he’s at his most comfortable there; he regards it as a sort of confessional. He didn’t laugh off our question, not quite, but he did say that for all they might have squabbled like any other couple, Mackenzie cares for Cheryl, and he dismissed any thought that he might have harmed her. He was emphatic about it.’
‘That’s why you’ll never find a priest on a jury,’ DI Wilding retorted.
Provan chuckled. ‘That’s gey cynical, chum. S
ounds to me that you’ve been hanging around Bob Skinner for too long.’
Thirty-Nine
‘Is one pleased with oneself?’ Sauce Haddock asked as he closed the door of the small office.
‘Dunno what you mean,’ Pye murmured.
‘Not fucking much! We went in there handcuffed and you wind up getting to drive the whole bloody train.’
The DI permitted himself a small smile. ‘There is that,’ he conceded. ‘Mary’s a good boss. She’s constructive, and not obstructive, like fucking Mackenzie. By the way,’ he added, ‘you never heard me say that, or that I’m not looking forward to him sorting his personal issue.’
‘I don’t think anyone in Edinburgh CID is, Sammy. He’s a strange man, is our superintendent.’
‘Well, at least he’s not here to get in our way. Priorities, Sauce. We’ve got Booth’s list of meetings with the van driver. This is not going to be easy, but I want you to contact all the petrol companies, including the supermarkets, and ask them if they can identify all sales of fuel made on and around those dates and in those localities that were settled with a Spanish credit or debit card. They should be able to do that.’
‘But will they do it for me? I’m just a humble detective sergeant . . . and a very junior one, as the boss pointed out when she made me get the fucking coffee!’
‘Just drop your voice an octave or so,’ the DI suggested, ‘and they’ll think you’re a grown-up. Ask Jackie to help you. Going by the results she’s been getting with her phone research, nobody could say no to her.’ He looked up. ‘And speaking of DC Wright . . .’
The glass-panelled door opened and the young detective stuck her head into the room. ‘Excuse me, Inspector,’ she began, ‘but I was wondering, do you still want me to go with the DS to interview this man Gayle. It’s just that I’ve . . .’
‘Got a date tonight?’ Haddock ventured.
She flushed. ‘As it happens, yes . . . not that I can’t cancel it.’
‘No,’ Pye replied. ‘Your love life’s secure. The game’s changed; I’ve got another task for you and Sauce. I’ll talk to Gayle myself.’
‘Thanks, boss,’ she said, a smile lighting up her face. ‘In that case, I’ve established from the Western General that he’s working today, until ten o’clock, when the night staff come on. I thought I should check that, rather than go all the way to Tranent only to find out that he wasn’t in.’
‘Did you get me a parking space as well?’ the DI asked, deadpan.
‘Oh no, boss,’ she gasped. ‘I’m sorry; I forgot.’
He grinned. ‘Don’t let it ruin your day. You probably forgot also that the Western General is bang next door to our headquarters building. I don’t think my car’s going to be a problem.’
Forty
I confess that I couldn’t see further than my own embarrassment and wounded pride after Detective Inspector Mann’s phone call had updated me on the David Mackenzie situation.
Although she and Provan were helping out in what was a confidential Edinburgh inquiry, I wasn’t going to be kept out of the loop. At the same time, I didn’t want to be seen to be leaning on my former colleagues, hence my instruction, no, my informal request, that everything she reported to Ray Wilding should come to me as well.
I thought back to my first meeting with the officer then known as Bandit, a DI at the time, in North Lanarkshire. He’d run away with the idea that Ruth, my then secretary, now Mrs DI Sammy Pye, might have murdered her uncle.
In the course of an interview during which, as Ruth described it, he had ‘sprayed the room with testosterone’, he’d made some unfortunate remarks about me, off tape. They might have been true, but they were unfortunate for him, as Ruth had her own recorder running, and they found their way back to me.
I paid him a private visit, and gave him what I will describe only as ‘a good talking to’. I had the power, then, to finish him in CID, forever, but I didn’t because a good friend who knew him and had worked with him gave him a half decent reference. In fact, Willie Haggerty described him as the cockiest, most conceited bastard he had ever met but added that he had the potential to become a great detective officer.
Of course, yours truly, the great Bob Skinner, who could probably have outdone Mackenzie in the conceit department any day of the week, I decided that I was the man to straighten him out and release that potential. So I poached him from Strathclyde, never once wondering why Jock Govan, his chief constable, took it so well, and I put him in charge of our drugs squad.
He was pretty good in that role; with hindsight I should have left him there, but I didn’t. Instead I promoted him into a division. It was unfamiliar territory, and his manner didn’t go down well. Soon afterwards, he found himself with a gun in his hand and in a situation where his courage was tested. It failed, and I had a problem on my hands.
To paraphrase something Lennie Plenderleith said, there’s nothing worse for a tough guy than the realisation that he isn’t actually all that tough. Bandit took it hard; in fact, he stopped being Bandit altogether and became a candidate for early retirement on health grounds. If I had left the decision to Sir James Proud, the chief, or even to the ACC, Brian Mackie, he’d have been gone, but I didn’t.
No, I couldn’t face up to my own flawed judgement, so I stuck him in a uniform and made him Command Corridor exec. In that role he managed to piss off most people in his circle, even getting himself into Mario McGuire’s bad books. That’s very hard to do, but if you succeed, you find that it’s not a place anyone would want to be.
As I sat in my office contemplating Lottie Mann’s briefing, I was forced to face up to a few truths. It wasn’t that I’d misjudged Mackenzie; I’d always seen him as a mix of intelligence, arrogance, and aggression. He’d displayed the last two of those traits in his confrontation with Ruth. I’d thought I’d knocked the aggression out of him when I’d sorted him out, but as I looked at the situation Edinburgh was facing, it seemed likely that it had only gone into hiding, to re-emerge with a vengeance.
I thought more deeply about the man. His intelligence; that would always be there. His arrogance? From what I’d heard, Mario had put him in his place, well and truly, forcing him into a fairly public climbdown, a serious loss of face for a person to whom front was all-important. Would that have been enough to make him potentially violent? Possibly.
Christ, Skinner, I asked myself, what have you done?
I’d have given myself a more severe mental kicking but for one thing. Mackenzie’s back story had been complete news to me.
When Lottie told me of Father Donnelly’s remark about Mackenzie’s troubled childhood, it was only the priest’s name that convinced me to follow it up. In my own teenage years he’d been quite a famous man in Lanarkshire for his progressive work with young people, in a diocese that was on the right of conservative.
If he’d been Mackenzie’s mentor, well, it fitted what I’d read about the man back then, a dog collar who took no nonsense, a bit like my friend Archbishop Gainer, only he’d been a rough diamond himself in his younger days.
It wasn’t difficult to come up with his phone number; it couldn’t have been because it took Sandra Bulloch all of ninety seconds to find him.
I dialled him myself, before realising that he might still be on the boat that Mann had told me about. I was about to hang up when my call was transferred to a mobile number. As the retired cleric answered, I could hear seabirds in the background.
‘Father Donnelly,’ I began, ‘my name’s Bob Skinner. You’ve just had a visit from two of my officers.’
‘Hello, Mr Skinner,’ he replied. His voice was younger than I’d been expecting. ‘I know who you are. As a matter if fact, I’ve known for years. I kent your faither, as we say in Scotland. I was involved in a youth initiative in Motherwell way back when, and he was one of my financial backers.’
‘That surprises me,’ I said. ‘My father wasn’t Catholic.’
‘No, but he was a good man. He told me that if I
could prevent kids from growing up to be defended in court by the likes of him then he was happy to help me take the burden off the legal aid system.’
Fucking hell, Bob! Another entry in the long list of things you never knew about your dad.
‘You must have been around ten then. I remember him talking about you. He said you were a very quiet, withdrawn boy. You seem to have got over that.’
‘With the help of a good woman; no,’ I corrected myself, ‘two good women. Did he ever mention my brother, Michael?’
‘Not really; I remember him saying that he was a bit of a mystery in his own way too, but that’s all. Now, young Bob, what’s all this about? Are you checking up on your subordinates?’
‘Check up on DI Mann? How brave do you think I am?’
‘No, maybe not. What can I do for you then?’
‘I want to ask to you some more about David Mackenzie. How did you come across him?’
‘Is this important, Mr Skinner?’ he asked.
‘Yes it is, Father. And please call me Bob.’
‘Thank you, Bob. How much do you know about David?’
‘As a police officer,’ I replied, ‘everything. As a man, very little.’
‘Ahh well,’ he sighed. ‘In that case I’d better tell you the full story. I had assumed that it was known within the police service, at senior level, at least. I’m more than a little surprised that it isn’t.’
There was something in his voice that made me grip the phone a little harder.
‘David Mackenzie, the boy David,’ he began, ‘spent half his childhood in a children’s home in East Kilbride. His father was a long-distance lorry driver who put his truck down a mountainside in Italy when David was only four years old. His mother never got over it and took an overdose a year later.’ He paused. ‘This is all news to you?’
‘Completely,’ I said, flabbergasted. ‘He was orphaned?’
‘Yes, but it got worse.’ Father Donnelly continued. ‘The child was taken in for a while by an aunt, his mother’s sister, but her husband turned out to be a very bad lot.
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