Thursday legends - Skinner 10

by Quintin Jardine

  'The only thing he ever did that wasn't work-related was his Thursday night football thing ... a group of ageing men having a kick-about. He said that that man Skinner invited him along. Alec probably interpreted that as an order. He did that for a while, then stopped. When I asked him why, he told me that he had knee trouble.'

  'Wasn't he interested in photography, Mrs Smith?'

  The woman frowned in surprise. 'Not that I was aware of. Of the few family snapshots I have, Alec is in every one. I don't remember him ever taking a single picture himself

  'Oh he did,' said Steele, 'he did. We found a pile of photographs among his effects, and we believe there may be more; possibly records too, that we haven't found. We found some keys that we can't account for. I don't suppose you know if he had anywhere he might have kept stuff ... a small office maybe?'

  'Not a clue. There was nothing extraordinary around the house, that's for sure, or I'd have found it. I do clean occasionally. As for an office, I never knew of one, but then there was so much I didn't know.'

  'Did you know about the secret drawer in his desk?

  'What secret drawer? In that big old desk of his, you mean? No, I didn't know - and Alec, being Alec, never mentioned it.'

  'He never mentioned people, did he? For example did he ever let slip any hint that he might have been afraid of someone?'

  'Alec was afraid of no-one ...' She frowned. '... except. I remember once, about ten years ago. The television news was on, and Bob Skinner appeared, being interviewed about some crime or other. He wasn't as high-ranking then obviously, or as well known, but I remember Alec saying, not to me, really, more a whisper to himself, "There's something about that man that scares me shitless." That was all; it surprised me at the time, but I'd forgotten about it until now. But Bob Skinner hardly killed him, did he?'

  'Hardly,' Steele agreed. 'What made you leave him, finally?'

  'I just couldn't take being a non-person any more. After John died ...' She stopped as she saw the Sergeant's reaction. 'You didn't know?'

  'No. Not at all.'

  'Our son, John,' she continued, her voice very small at that moment, 'died five years ago. I never really needed Alec before, but I needed him then, only he withdrew completely into himself. He wouldn't talk to me at all after it happened. I just couldn't go on like that; I started to go out with girlfriends, and with a couple of the women who work for me.

  'One night I met Stan Greenwood: he was fun, he was friendly, he was free, and he fancied me. He didn't give a damn that I'm ten years older than him, or posh, as he calls me. He didn't give a damn that my son died of AIDS. He asked me to come and live with him, and I said, "Yes." I didn't even think about it.'

  The young sergeant took a deep breath; he felt his pulse hammering. The extent to which Alec Smith, even as a serving policeman, had guarded his privacy, had kept his two lives from touching each other ... it was astounding.

  'Your son died of AIDS,' he repeated, slowly.

  'Yes. John was gay, Sergeant. He knew it from an early age. He had sexual partners when he was still at school. Eventually as a student he formed a solid relationship - with a nice man, a lawyer, a few years older than him, but still in his twenties. Some might have said that John was promiscuous until then, but I prefer to see it as experimentation.

  'Unfortunately, somewhere along the line one of those experiments went wrong. When my son was twenty-one, he found that he was HIV positive. Three years later, in spite of being on viro-suppressant drugs, he developed full-blown AIDS. It attacked his brain directly and he died very quickly.'

  'When did Alec learn about him?'

  'I told him when John was twenty.'

  'And how did he react? Was he supportive?'

  Bridget Smith let out a short, snorting, bitter laugh.

  'Supportive? He never spoke to John again; literally. When he was dying, I told Alec. Yet even in that very short time he had left, he refused to see him. He didn't even go to his son's funeral. I almost left him there and then.'

  'What about your daughter? How did he feel about her?'

  'She cut Alec off because of his behaviour towards John. By condemning one of his children he lost both.'

  'He still sent her money, though.'

  'Did he? I wonder if she spent it. I didn't detect any tears when I told her he was dead. She didn't even ask when the funeral was. When will it be, by the way? Since Alec and I were still married ... There'll be no-one else to organise it, will there?' She paused. 'You haven't found a girlfriend, have you?'

  'No. No girlfriends. If you're prepared to make those arrangements. I'll have the Fiscal's office contact you as soon as they're ready to release the body. They may specify burial only, but I don't imagine that they'll take too long now.'

  She sighed. 'I don't suppose that there'll be many people there, other than colleagues. Will there be many of them, do you think?'

  'I shouldn't think so, Mrs Smith,' he answered, honestly, 'not many.'

  'Surprise.' She glanced across at the young Sergeant. 'What job did he do anyway?'

  Steele grimaced. 'One that I'm not supposed to talk about.'

  'Oh my! He must have been really good at it, then. Even his wife didn't know.'

  The detective smiled at the humour in her tone. 'There is something you can confirm for me,' he said. 'Your husband made an annual payment to a solicitor of twelve hundred pounds. He told his bank manager it was money for you. Is that correct?'

  'No. I never asked him for a penny after I left. He gave me my share of the house in Pencaitland when he sold it, and I was happy with that.' She laughed again. 'That's typical Alec, I suppose, to leave you with one last mystery.'

  Steele rose to go. 'More than one,' he answered. 'More than one.'

  She walked him to the door. 'That's everything then?'

  'Yes. Except...' he stopped, remembering. 'There was one more thing I was told to ask. Do you know where Alec walked his dog?'

  'That's a good one. You'd be better asking the dog.' She opened the front door... and stopped halfway. 'Wait a minute,' she murmured. 'There was one time: I had made up my mind to leave, and I insisted on talking to him. But he wouldn't sit down with me. Instead he said, 'You'd better come with me, then.' I got in the car with him, and the dog, and he drove us to Yellowcraigs, just past Dirleton.

  'He told me to sit on the beach while he walked the dog. He was away for a while, but he came back eventually and sat down beside me. I told him about Stan, and why it had come about. D'you know all he said? He just looked at me, after more than a quarter of a bloody century and he said, "Aye, right then."

  'Nothing else, just that. Then he stood up, called to the dog, and we all drove back to Pencaitland. Do you know, that was the last time I ever spoke to my husband.'

  30

  'He was a great believer in natural justice, was Alec Smith,' Andy Martin declared. 'But he went way over the top with Gus Morrison and Wendy Forrest.'

  'And did Morrison kill him?' Skinner asked.

  'Kevin O'Malley says absolutely not. He says that he has a persecution complex - which is not surprising since the poor bastard has been persecuted, wrongfully imprisoned and had his girl-friend driven to suicide - and that he is schizophrenic, but he says that he is a talker and not a doer. He says that if he's charged, he'll give evidence for the defence and he'll do it for nothing.'

  The DCC whistled. 'That's it, then. Let Kevin section him and treat him for a while, but let's make sure that he gets his job back when he's fit for it.' He paused. 'And Gavigan?' There was an edge of savagery in the question.

  'Like I said; I had him in last night and put the thumbscrews on him. He confirmed Gus's story. He said that the Sunday Post sent that anonymous letter straight to Alec. As soon as he saw it he knew who had done it. He didn't go apeshit - he never did, apparently - he just said "Better sort this, Tommy", then told Gavigan how they were going to sort it.

  'Everything that Gus Morrison described to me was exactly as it happen
ed. He and his girlfriend were no terrorists, just a couple of harmless fools with big patriotic dreams and big mouths.'

  'Poor guy,' Skinner murmured. 'He sure didn't deserve that. And that lass, to die as she did, miserable and alone, locked up for nothing.' His eyes narrowed as he spoke.

  'Alec must have known they were no threat,' Martin continued, 'but their big mistake was to embarrass him, by penetrating what he liked to think of as his own special world. From the moment he went into that SB job he was the wrong man for it, because he was a fanatic who had a narrow, unbending vision of right and wrong, as it applied to everyone, it seemed, except him.

  'What he did to Gus and Forrest was hellish. Yet the way he dealt with Basra and Lawrence Scotland ... it was effective, at least. Basra never raped and murdered another kid, and Scotland's been a model citizen ever since.'

  'Maybe,' said the DCC. 'When are you going for him?'

  'Later on this afternoon. When it's quieter at the St Leonard's' office.'

  'Well, just watch it, eh.'

  'Sure, as always.'

  Skinner pushed himself up from his low seat and walked across to the big window of his office. 'Now, about Gavigan. Where is he now?'

  'In a cell up at St Leonard's. I was so angry last night, I just locked him up.'

  'Good for you. Mario had got rid of him, effectively; we were going to give him early retirement and send him on his way'

  'Not any more, I hope.'

  'Ah, it's not as easy as that. As President Johnson said of J. Edgar Hoover, the last thing I want is a guy like him outside the tent pissing in. It's always more comfortable the other way around.

  'Ask yourself. What can we do with him? We could charge him with perverting the course of justice, perjury and all the rest. But this is all undercover stuff. Christ, his perjured evidence was in camera. On top of that, Alec Smith's dead, Wendy Forrest is dead, Angus Morrison is unbalanced and that anonymous letter to the Sunday Post will have been burned to ashes and crushed up long ago.

  'Even if it was politically acceptable to try him, it would be legally impossible to get a conviction. Gavigan corroborates Morrison's story, but interview him formally with a lawyer present and he'd clam up, and all we've got is the unsupported allegation of a schizophrenic.

  'Gus Morrison will be pardoned and compensated; it'll have to be done very quietly, but I'll see to it. As for our man, he's going to have to walk, Andy ... but not before I've had a chat with him. Have Pye bring him down here.'

  The Head of CID nodded. 'Will do.' He rose and headed for the door. 'I'll let you know how it goes with the other fella.'

  31

  'What's she like, this Mrs Smith?'

  'She's a really nice woman, and very attractive for her age.'

  Maggie Rose looked severely at her Sergeant across her Haddington office. 'The menopause doesn't make you ugly, Stevie. I can think of any number of women who became even more attractive the older they got... my own mother among them.

  'I meant did she strike you as completely frank, or might she have been holding something back from us? Do you think she was telling the truth about Alec's apparent lack of interest in photography?'

  'Why should she lie?' Steele asked.

  'What if he had some photographs of her that she doesn't want found?'

  'I don't believe that for a second. Everything she told me bears out everything else I've learned about Alec Smith; that he was obsessively secretive. In their case, it turned the two of them into virtual strangers to each other.'

  'So what does it leave us to go on, apart from the keys? What did you get from her?'

  The Sergeant grinned. 'He walked his dog at Yellowcraigs.'

  'Once, that we know of... and we can hardly dig up the whole place. Anyway, if Smith did have a secret set of photographs and files, he was hardly the sort of guy to keep them in a knot-hole in a tree, was he? Whatever my daft husband or I may have said, the dog is not going to turn out to be our star witness.'

  'Okay, there's the gay son.'

  'Whom his father shunned. He's been dead for five years; how could he tie in?'

  'Like you say, his father shunned him. Maybe John Smith had a partner who hated him for it.'

  'A nice respectable lawyer, his mother told you. Maybe. Not. You can check it out if you like, but I don't see it as a runner.'

  'Mrs Smith said that he let slip once, about ten years ago, that he was afraid of Mr Skinner. She said it was just a casual comment, but should we ask him if there was a reason around that time why he should have been?'

  Rose chuckled, quietly. 'Nothing sinister in that, Stevie. All the villains in Edinburgh, and most of the coppers, are afraid of Bob Skinner. I'll ask him; but even if he and Smith did have a falling-out, way back, I don't see how it could connect to this investigation.'

  'In that case, we're just left with that standing order as our only unanswered question. Mrs Smith didn't know anything about it.'

  'Are you one hundred per cent on that? Maybe she hasn't been declaring it to the Inland Revenue and didn't like to admit it.'

  'I'm certain, ma'am. If that money was for her then it was invested somewhere that she didn't know about.'

  'Best tidy it up anyway. The Dundee solicitor firm was called Biggins and McCart. Give them a call and see what he was paying them for. Use my phone; ask the switchboard to get the number for you and put you through.'

  Steele gave the instruction to the constable who answered the Haddington switchboard, replaced the phone and waited. Eventually it rang; he picked it up. 'Miss Malone, of Biggins and McCart, Sergeant,' the constable announced.

  'Hello, Miss Malone,' said the detective.

  'Hello,' a young female voice answered in an unmistakable Dundonian accent. 'Fit can ah do for you?'

  'I'm Detective Sergeant Steele,' he began. 'I'm involved in an investigation here ... a murder investigation,' he added to capture her interest, as well as her attention. 'We've discovered that the victim, a Mr Alexander Smith, of Shell Cottage, North Berwick, maintained a standing order in favour of your firm, paying you one thousand two hundred pounds, annually.

  'We'd like to know what it was for.'

  'Ah'll need tae check, like. Can ah ca' you back?'

  'Sure, but as soon as possible.' He gave her the Haddington number then hung up once more.

  This time, they had to wait for ten minutes before the phone rang again. 'Miss Malone,' the constable repeated.

  'Yes?' asked Steele as the girl came on the line. 'What have you got for me?'

  'I've found that payment,' she said, brightly. 'But Ah'm no allowed to talk tae yis about it. It's one o' Mr McCart's files; and only he's allowed tae talk about it. Ah'm no.'

  'Okay. Can I speak to him then?'

  'He's no here. He's away till Monday.'

  'Monday. Is there no-one else?'

  'Well, there was Mr Biggins ... but he's died.'

  'Miss Malone,' said Steele heavily. 'This is an important investigation.'

  'Ma job's important to me. Mr McCart said Ah was never to give information off his files tae anybody.'

  The Sergeant looked across at DCI Rose. She shook her head. 'Leave it. Alec's not going to be any deader, or any less dead, by Monday; this can wait till then. The chances are it's nothing anyway.'

  'Okay,' Steele conceded, finally, to Miss Malone. 'But you tell Mr McCart to be there. I'm coming up to see him myself.'

  32

  DC Tommy Gavigan was thin-faced, weaselly. The desiccated shell of a man, Skinner thought as he looked at him across the table of the small room. He was wearing a brown suit that was overdue a trip to the dry cleaners, he needed a shave, his grey hair looked lank and oily and he smelled of sweat. A night in the cells had done him no favours ... or did he always look like that?

  Gavigan, a Detective Constable, was older than the Deputy Chief Constable himself. He had been around for all of Skinner's career, and yet not around, since for almost half of that time he had been buried in Specia
l Branch, doing the bidding of Alec Smith and his successors, Martin, Mackie and McGuire. Too convenient to transfer, too stolid to promote, he had stayed there, anonymously.

  The big DCC took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the empty chair opposite the prisoner policeman. The room was hot; it was in the basement of the headquarters building and he had chosen it deliberately, knowing that Gavigan would have conducted more than a few interviews there himself, in his time.

  He made as if to sit, but instead leaned across the table. A big hand flashed out and slapped the other man, powerfully, on the side of the head, sending him tumbling from his chair on to the floor.

  'That wasn't just from me, Tommy,' he said, as the Detective Constable stared up at him, earlier apprehensiveness turned to sheer terror. 'That was from the Chief, ACC Elder, DCS Martin, Inspector McGuire, and everybody else whose work, whose very lives, you've soiled.

  'Get up man!' he snapped. 'I'm not going to hit you again; you'll walk out of here ... for now.' He waited as Gavigan, hair dishevelled, tie askew, clambered back on to his chair. Finally, Skinner sat himself.

  'I know that I'm rarely accused of sentimentality,' he went on, 'but the fact is I love this force. I have done from the moment I joined, from the first day I put on its ill-fitting, uncomfortable uniform. I'm intensely proud of the job we do; I mean, in essence, that we protect the innocent and pursue the guilty.

  'It makes me want to chuck my breakfast to learn of a case where the innocent have been persecuted. And it compounds it to know that in this case, I'm going to have to protect the guilty ... by which I mean you, you little toe-rag, and if you show me even a glimmer of a smile of relief, I will break my word and put you back on the deck again.'