7
The Edinburgh media were less equipped to handle a murder story on a weekend morning. Nevertheless, Skinner knew that the tip-off machine would make it necessary for him to issue a short-notice statement. The journalists who turned out to High Street at 9.30 a.m. were a mixture of freelances and evening and Sunday paper writers. There was no sign of television, but the diligent Radio Forth was present.
Roger Quick of the Evening News asked the only question after Skinner’s brief factual statement. It seemed that no one, certainly not the Scottish weekend public cared too much about an incinerated wino. ‘When do you expect an identification, Mr Skinner?’
‘Quite frankly, Roger, I don’t know. Some of these poor people can’t remember their own names, far less those of the people around them in the hostels.’
And that was how it turned out. The body was too badly burned to be identifiable, and without a photograph, or any distinguishing feature, it was impossible to conduct a productive enquiry among the city’s alcoholic drop-outs. The hostel wardens agreed to check on absentees from their usual list of guests, but none were hopeful.
Thousands of questions were asked, but no leads uncovered. The charred corpse remained stubbornly anonymous over the weekend.
On Monday morning, Skinner anticipated press requests and called a news conference to report no progress in either case, and to renew his request for assistance from the general public.
Douglas Jackson of Radio Forth asked for an interview. ‘Chief Superintendent, do you believe that there is any connection between last week’s two Royal Mile killings?’
‘There is no proof of that at all. But I’ve been a policeman for a long time, and I have learned to mistrust coincidences.’
A few minutes later, Skinner sat at his borrowed desk in the old High Street office, studying once more the papers in the two cases. Professor Hutchison had worked hard over the weekend to complete his examinations of both bodies. His notes were extensive. ‘Yes,’ they read, ‘it is possible that the bayonet found at the scene of the crime could have inflicted Mr Mortimer’s injuries, if wielded by someone of sufficient strength and expertise. However there is no physical evidence to confirm this, no blood, bone, or tissue adhering to the blade.
‘In the second case, this unfortunate man died from shock as a result of immolation. However his physical condition was so low that the least exertion might have killed him. Had the man been compos mentis at the time it is possible that he could have beaten out the flames. I should have thought it impossible to categorise the crime from the circumstances. One cannot rule out the possibility that this was a youthful prank which went terribly wrong.’
‘Bollocks!’ Skinner shouted to the empty room. ‘The poor bastard was doused in high performance lead-free and set alight. Not much bloody room for error there.’
He looked at the two files. Where to go from here? One man on the threshold of an outstanding professional career, the other in the poorest state to which it was possible to decline in society. Each killed, savagely, in the same week, not three hundred yards apart. That was a link, if nothing else, and experience was shouting at him that there had to be others.
The telephone rang four times before it registered in his brain.
It was Martin. ‘Boss, are you free? I’ve just been given a lab report, and you’ll want to see it.’
Minutes later Skinner’s face wore an expression of triumph as he finished reading the report. The bayonet which had been thought to be clean had in fact yielded three black woollen strands, wedged in the finger guard. And on the handle of the Duckham’s can, of which the most recent contents had indeed been high-grade lead-free petrol, a wedge of black wool had been snagged. A series of tests of the samples had proved that they were identical, and had come from the same gloves.
‘That’s it, Andy. It is the same bloke. My God, what do we have here? Look at the two victims. Picked apparently at random in the same public street. This looks like a homicidal maniac with a taste for the dramatic, and we don’t have a fucking clue as to who he is. I want the patrol strength trebled after dark in the High Street, right down the Royal Mile. That Royal Visit is getting nearer, and we’ve got a guy leaving stiffs on the Queen’s doorstep.’
8
November is the drabbest month of the year in Edinburgh. There are no tourists, little money in the shops, restaurants and pubs, and, as a rule, bitter weather, fit to freeze the bronze balls off the Duke of Wellington’s horse, rearing on its plinth in front of Register House. But as December draws near, and the parsimonious merchants and benevolent City Fathers dig into their pockets to illuminate the Christmas message, ‘Spend, spend, spend’, the old grey city sparkles into life.
Looking along the mound from the pavement opposite the Bank of Scotland’s modest front door, PC lain MacVicar, preparing for his first Christmas away from Stornoway, thought that the silver-lit tree on the slope in front of the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland was just about the brawest thing he had ever seen. It gave Edinburgh character, he thought, marked it out as a good Christian place after all. PC MacVicar was a Free Presbyterian by descent and upbringing, but his months in the city had shown him that there were other things in life than the grim island Sabbath, and colours other than dark blue.
Surely God can’t take exception to that, thought PC Iain, gazing at the silver tree.
The single scream seemed so out of tune with the moment that he almost thought that it had been a product of his young imagination, or the voice of God rebuking sinful thoughts. But as his attention returned to the job in hand, he knew that it had been real enough, and that it had come from somewhere down below.
The News Steps, a long open stairway turning through ninety degrees, run from the Mound down to Market Street. They are steep, and those who are less than fit think not twice but several times at the foot before beginning to climb.
PC MacVicar’s heart was in his mouth as he rushed to the head of the stairs, straining his eyes for movement in the orange-lit shadows below. It did not occur to him to think that there might be danger ahead, and even if it had, he would still have leapt headlong down the Steps. That was a woman’s scream and he was a policeman.
Iain screamed himself when he saw what was lying at the foot of the stairs. The woman had been short and dumpy, in her middle years. She still clutched a straw shopping bag in her right hand. The fingers were twitching slightly as the last motor messages reached them as she lay on her back.
A big kitchen cleaver had silenced the scream. It was embedded in the woman’s skull, from between her eyes to the top of her head. A woollen hat, split almost in two, had fallen away from the grey hair. There was, he observed, feeling ludicrously proud of his professional reaction, very little blood.
PC lain found that as much as he wanted to, he could not move his gaze from that awful sight. And so he only heard the slight sound as the black figure leapt from the shadow on top of the fence behind him. And he only felt the wool of the hard, gloved hand across his mouth, drawing his head back, and the cold of the knife across his throat. Somewhere he may have imagined that he heard the gulls crying over a far-away harbour, but all he saw, as he slumped to his knees, were the pretty Christmas lights, away up in Princes Street, as they winked and went out, one by one.
9
This time Skinner was alone when Martin’s call came through. The Detective Inspector had just been told himself of the double murder, but the sergeant who had telephoned had neglected, amazingly, to inform him that one of the victims was a policeman.
Sarah arrived at the scene after the two detectives. She had been contacted while seeing a cardiac emergency to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, not far away. She parked her Fiat in Market Street and turned into the Steps. When she saw Skinner there was a strange glaze in his eyes, and she recognised the tears held back.
Then she saw the policeman’s cap on the ground and her gaze swept past the terrible thing that had been the woman, to the ginger hai
r, innocent eyes and opened throat of young MacVicar. She looked at Bob and was in tears herself.
She put her head on his chest, sobbing. ‘Why am I crying for him, when I didn’t for the others?’
‘If you weren’t, I’d have something to worry about. It’s always worst when it’s someone you know, or can relate to. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.’
Skinner realised that he had enfolded her, quite naturally, in his arms, and that one or two of the uniformed officers were glancing furtively in their direction. Then, because life is hard, and because coppers have to be even harder, he broke the mood and became Chief Superintendent Skinner once more.
‘Come on, Doctor, let’s go to work.’
And Sarah did just that. Her first, quick examination told her that both the woman, an office cleaner on her way to work she guessed - correctly as it turned out - and MacVicar had been taken completely by surprise. The woman might have had time to cry out as her attacker appeared in front of her, but the blow had killed her instantly. There were no marks on MacVicar’s body other than the throat wound, which had been caused by a knife or a razor, indicating that he too had been taken completely unawares.
She looked up at Skinner. ‘The way the wound is, I’d say that the man pulled his head back from behind and cut his throat.’
Skinner nodded. ‘That’s how it looks. There are no other marks that I can see, or any other signs of a struggle. The poor laddie can’t have had a chance to defend himself at all.’ He looked at Sarah, a glance of enquiry. ‘Can we make any assumptions about this guy’s height?’
‘I’d say that he would have to have been as tall as MacVicar to have cut him at that angle. He needn’t have been a Superman though. If he caught him completely unawares it would all have been over in a second.’
Skinner shook his head sadly. He looked round towards Martin. ‘Andy, what was the boy’s last reported position?’
‘He radioed in from the top of the Mound, boss. Said it was all quiet and didn’t the Christmas tree look nice.’
‘Well, my guess,’ said Skinner, ‘is that he hears something, maybe the old lady gets a shout off, and charges down the News Steps. Being MacVicar, he doesn’t think to call in first for assistance.
‘Now from past performance we can assume that our pal — or does anyone want to tell me that it could be someone else — is pretty agile, quick enough to have got off his mark before a big, blundering bobby, whose feet he must have heard from a mile off, could have got anywhere near him.
‘That says to me that he was looking for, or at least wasn’t afraid to chance, a double act. As you said, Sarah, our poor lad barely knew what happened to him.’
He looked around the scene, and at the high fence behind which the bulk of the Festival Office building cast a dark shadow.
‘He probably hid up there after he whacked the woman. Maybe he heard MacVicar up there on the Mound. Maybe she did scream, and he decided to hide until he could be sure that no one had heard. Whatever it was, MacVicar appears and he jumps down and does the boy in.’
Anger blazed in Skinner’s eyes.
‘If that’s right, then we surely don’t just have a random loony here. We’ve got someone who moves and kills like a professional. Maybe a martial arts freak who’s seen one too many Kung-fu movies, who knows. But whatever he is, he’s here, and he’s leaving the proof all over the Royal Mile!’
As Skinner finished, the Chief Constable arrived, called to the scene by Martin. One of his men had been killed. He should be there.
‘Good morning, Bob, Inspector.’ He nodded and smiled courteously at Sarah. Skinner took the cue. ‘Chief, may I introduce Dr Sarah Grace, the duty Police Surgeon. She’s picked the wrong month to be on call!’
The Chief Constable bowed slightly and removed his heavy glove to shake hands.
The Chief turned to Skinner. ‘A word in private please, Bob.’
The two men, one heavily uniformed, stepped out into Market Street. Skinner had never managed to feel the bond of comradeship with Chief Constable James Proud that he did with other senior officers. He had always put that down to the burden of the highest rank in the police force, and he had afforded the man every respect, insisting that those under his command do the same. But he knew that many of his colleagues disliked the Chief, taking the view that he had reached his office by a political rather than by an active route.
James Proud, known universally as ‘Proud Jimmy’, was three years short of the official retirement age. He had been in the job for sixteen years, and even his critics still marvelled, grudgingly, at the skill with which he had achieved it. Cynics said that he had been picked because he looked the part. For that he surely did. In his heavily braided uniform, Proud Jimmy represented authority. And with his crinkly silver hair, peering from the sides of his uniform cap, and his bright blue eyes, he spelled out reassurance to the public that they were in safe, sure, hands.
It had once been said by a critic that the Chief was the incarnation of PC Murdoch, one of the many great creations of the cartoonist and genius Dudley D. Watkins, whose comic strips were part of the Scottish culture. The wit had gone on: ‘Bet if his father had been Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and a member of the New Club, PC Murdoch would have made Chief Constable too!’
But Skinner knew that there was far more to the man than that.
Proud the Provost’s second son, with no head for figures and no desire to enter the family bakery, had joined the force on leaving Edinburgh Academy. He had pounded an upper-class beat in the New Town for four years, before becoming, at twenty-three, one of the force’s youngest ever sergeants. He had risen steadily through the ranks and had become Chief Constable on the long-awaited retirement of the venerable worthy to whom his career development had been entrusted by his father long before. Once in the post, he had been a staunch public defender of the traditional values of law and order, and an advocate in private of his force’s case for more money, against a local authority whose commitment was to spending on social workers to treat the effects of crime and indiscipline, rather than on policemen to cure the problems at source. Yet while his views had irked the councillors, they had not filtered through to his men, to many of whom he seemed a remote, austere figure.
Skinner was a traditionalist at heart. He was grateful for the added resources which Proud had won through his battles with the Police Committee, and he had more respect than most for his instincts as a policeman.
Once he had defended him in public against a critic within the force. ‘There may be things that the man hasn’t done in his career, but he’s done all he can in the job to learn about them, and to understand the problems of the guys on the ground. And he’s made a point of going alone, on foot in uniform into every one of the toughest places on his patch, places where I would think twice about going. He may not have the sharpest mind on the force, but he’s bloody shrewd, and he’s loyal to his men.’
Proud’s least noticed virtue was the skill with which he spotted potential in his officers, and advanced them, if necessary, ahead of the normal police promotion timetable. He had first noticed Skinner sixteen years earlier, as a recently promoted Detective Sergeant, when Proud himself had just become Chief Constable. He had been impressed by the young man’s intellect, judgement, and most of all by his devotion to the job. He had sensed the driving force which set him apart from his contemporaries. He had made discreet enquiries into his background, and had learned of his widowhood, and the task with which he had been left, of bringing up his young daughter. From that time on Skinner had been his unsuspecting protégé.
Proud had determined that he should become Head of CID at the first opportunity. When the time had come for Skinner’s predecessor, old Alf Stein, to retire, the Chief’s tentative suggestion had met with a ready endorsement, although Skinner was still a relatively newly promoted Detective Superintendent, with only two years seniority in the rank.
‘If you want CID to be tight, efficient and effecti
ve, Jimmy, then you’ll give the job to young Bob, no doubt about it.’ Proud had been happy to have his own judgement backed up.
So Bob Skinner had been appointed Head of CID, and as Stein had predicted it had run like clockwork, maintaining the highest detection rate of any Scottish force, and achieving reductions, against the national rend, in the crime figures.
But it was a rattled Proud Jimmy who now took Skinner for a walk in Market Street. ‘Bob, what’s the score here? What have we got on our hands?’
‘Look, Chief, let’s get into my motor. I don’t want the Record to snatch a picture of the two of us.’
Proud nodded and the two men climbed into Skinner’s Granada. The Chief was white-faced. Skinner was sympathetic, understanding that viewing the remains of butchered people was out of his normal line of duty.
‘On the face of it, Jimmy, we have what the Yanks like to call a serial killer. My lads prefer to call him a fucking loony. He’s killed four times inside a week, in the same area, in different ways, with no apparent motive other than bloodlust.
‘I won’t try to kid you about our chances of catching this guy from the evidence that he’s left behind him. At best they’re bloody slim. All that we can do for now is make sure, as best we can that he can’t do it again, and be ready to nab him the moment he gets careless. But so far all the luck has been on the bastard’s side; luck, I’m afraid to say, matched with some highly developed killing skills.’
‘What are we going to tell the public?’
‘We’re not going to lie to them. But at the same time we have to try to keep them calm. I was only a wee lad in Lanarkshire when Peter Manuel was on the loose, but one of my earliest memories is of the fear in the air at that time. You remember what Gary Player said about luck? “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” That’s all we’ve got to show the people. Hard work by the police. Every door in this part of town is being knocked. Everyone who lives here, and who works here is being interviewed, then if necessary interviewed again. I’ll have men on the street all night and every night, and I’ll let it be known that some will be armed. The pubs’ll hate it but I’m going to ask the punters to stay away from this area in the late evening, for their own security and to make our job easier.’
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