Thursday legends - Skinner 10

by Quintin Jardine

  'How was Alec killed, then?' asked McPhail.

  'You do not want to know, David,' Skinner frowned at the interruption. 'The point I was about to make was that I am assured by an eminent and highly skilled forensic pathologist - with whom I am currently sleeping - that Alec Smith and the Diddler were killed by two different people.

  'I can tell you also, in police speak, although I cannot go into detail, that I have reason to believe that the Alec Smith investigation will be closed pretty soon.

  'So relax, lads. We don't have a stalker.'

  'Yeah,' said Grant Rock, returning rapidly to normal. 'But what if there's a whole crowd of them after our time?'

  Mcllhenney looked at him from beneath his heavy eyebrows. 'If there was, the smart thing to do would be to give it to them.'

  'I'll never be hung for being smart,' said Rock.

  47

  'Are you going to tell me what happened today?' Maggie Rose asked her husband.

  Mario McGuire shook his head.

  'Never?'

  Mario McGuire nodded his head.

  'Don't you think this is taking Special Branch secrecy a little too far?' his wife asked.

  'Mags love, what happened today goes way beyond Special Branch secrecy. But that's not why I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm keeping it to myself because it was so fucking horrible that I cannot bear the thought of you knowing about it. I will never tell anyone about what I saw today, nor will anyone else who was there.'

  'What was Andy Martin's involvement in it?'

  'Who says he was involved?'

  'No-one, but... I heard there was some sort of a panic this morning, involving him; that Karen Neville had the whole Ops Room stirred up trying to find a car he was driving.'

  'If that happened, then that's all it was ... a panic. Karen got her knickers in a knot unnecessarily, until she was told by Neil to go away and untie them. Andy Martin is okay. I know this; I've seen him.'

  'What do you mean you've seen him? Where?'

  'Never mind. The DCS is okay, and you can bet that he will be back in the office on Monday, gung-ho as ever was.'

  'What about this man Lawrence Scotland? You haven't said anything about him for a while. You told me about Morrison, and what Alec Smith did to him. That was heavy enough, but now you're clamming up altogether about the other suspect.'

  'Mags,' he said, testily, 'stop trying to interrogate me, will you? Lawrence Scotland is missing.'

  'In that case, I have to find him. He's a potential suspect in my investigation.'

  'For fuck's sake,' he shouted, suddenly. 'Leave it!'

  She sat straight up on the sofa and stared at him, startled and hurt. His anger vanished in an instant; he took her hand and drew her to him. 'I'm sorry, Mags, I'm sorry.'

  'That's the first time you've ever raised your voice to me.'

  'And it'll be the last, I promise. Love, I keep having to countermand you these days and I don't like it; not just because of our respective ranks, but because you're my wife and I love you and not least because you're a brilliant detective and I admire you for that reason too.

  'But through no fault of your own, you are way over your head in this. The Boss has told me to rein you in on Scotland, very quietly. He told me to tell you that you are still in charge of this investigation and, further, that he couldn't be more impressed by the way you've handled it. Now you have to hold your horses for a day or two.

  'Lawrence Scotland is missing, like I said. However there will be no man-hunt. There will be the illusion of one, possibly, probably, but Lawrence Scotland will never be found. The way it's looking now, your investigation will not conclude with the conviction of Alec Smith's killer, but given what he was and did - far less what we know about him now - that was never likely anyway.

  'I know this runs against all your training and your personal beliefs, but that's the reality of it and you have to accept it.

  'Listen, Dan Pringle and John McGrigor will be going in the foreseeable future. Whichever of those divisional CID commands you want is yours for the asking. But do not shake this particular tree, otherwise what falls out might squash someone very important. If that happened, and you were in any way responsible, you wouldn't be forgiven.'

  'What do you mean?' She frowned, drawing back from him again.

  'Mags,- when he was in my job, Alec Smith did certain things that he shouldn't have. No-one knew about them then, apart from his side-kick, and no-one outside our very small group must ever know about them; otherwise questions will be asked. Questions like, "Why was no-one aware of what Smith was doing?" and then, "Who should have known?"

  'Alec's line commander at the time of these incidents was old Alf Stein, the Big Man's predecessor as Head of CID. Once Mr Skinner took over, Smith behaved himself; he knew better than to do otherwise. Stein's dead now, so if any of this shit hits the fan it can only splash on one man - Chief Constable Sir James Proud. If it became public he would be forced to resign; the Chiefs' Association wouldn't be able to protect him. Our zealous new Justice Minister would have him out.

  'You know as well as I do that Proud Jimmy is like a father to Bob Skinner. The DCC would do anything to protect him from an ignominious end to his career.'

  'Is that what he did today?' Maggie asked, quietly.

  He put a finger to her lips. 'No more questions.'

  'One more, Mario, one more. This thing you saw today; if it was so horrible you won't tell me about it, what will it do to you? How will you forget it?'

  'Darlin',' he said. 'I won't. I will take it to my grave. But in the short term - I'm going to drink another bottle of Amarone, then you and I are going to do what we do best.'

  48

  A great wall of mist, two hundred feet high, clung to the middle of the Firth of Forth, shrouding part of the main shipping lane. Onshore, the weather was as warm and sunny as it had been for over a week, yet incongruously, the sound of a foghorn boomed across the water.

  Bob Skinner sat on a dune, on the beach, looking at the haar, trying to assess whether or not it would sweep in from the sea before it burned off in the morning sun.

  "This time last Saturday, eh?'

  'Yeah,' Andy Martin, murmured, lying on his back beside him in borrowed shorts and tee-shirt. 'Seems like a long time ago. Fuck, it was a long time ago; I've been dead since then.'

  'Want to talk about it? Or not ... it's up to you. You'll never have to if you don't want. Boy's in a hole up the Pentlands; story's over.'

  'Best place for him.' Martin's voice; hollow, lifeless.

  'Man held a gun on me once,' Skinner murmured. 'Bastard shot me, but he made a mistake; gave me a chance. I got the gun. Shot him fucking dead. Someone, not Adam Arrow but like him, cleaned it up because of who he was, what he was. Different circumstances though. That was national security stuff; Scotland had to vanish to keep a lid on our local can of worms.'

  'I know, Bob. I know. Don't justify yourself to me; you don't have to. I know why you did it and you were right.'

  'I'm glad you killed him, Andy. Glad.'

  'He died the way he lived. Alec should have shot him ten years ago, or someone in Ireland should have taken him out.'

  'If he'd been on the other side, someone would have. Not all his orders came from the Loyalists; most of them did, but not all. Adam told me that.'

  'No great surprise.'

  They lay in silence, watching the mist evaporate.

  'He pulled the trigger, you know.'

  'Jesus. I'd hoped not.'

  'Twice. Two bullets second time.'

  'Andy...'

  'Third would have been curtains. I just bellowed and went for him; went through him like a fucking train.

  'I remember it all, Bob, in slow motion. Every single bit of it; the bitter taste of his finger ... I think that must have been bone marrow ... the blood. I was fucking swimming in it, but I couldn't let go. Could still be dead if I let go, I thought, and I couldn't die. Not there, not then, the time wasn't right.<
br />
  'So I hung on, till the soldiers arrived, after that even ... You know, looking at Alec, I thought, I'll never see anything worse than this ... far less that I'd do worse myself.

  'What did Scotland look like, Bob? When you saw him?'

  'Dead, Andy. Very fucking dead.'

  Skinner sighed. 'I didn't know at first, that he'd had you up there. Mario worked it out. Knew at once when he saw the bullets lying around and in the gun.'

  He took a can of Irn Bru from his knapsack, opened it and handed it to Martin, then opened another, for himself. 'So it was Scotland, eh?' he murmured. 'A blast from Alec's past, come back as a nightmare.'

  'Looks that way. He told me he really wanted to take him back up there, but knew he'd never manage it. I was second best. He knew someone would be for him eventually. Took him ten years to pluck up the courage, or to catch Smith off guard.'

  'Where could he have got that animal tranquilliser?' 'He did night security at the zoo. He told me that ... deliberately, I suppose.' 'Ahh.'

  'He never actually said to me, "I killed Alec Smith" but...'

  'Maybe not, but the overwhelming probability is that he did. If we keep the investigation going, more than likely we'll be chasing an answer we've found already. I've asked Mario to explain to Maggie, without telling her too much.'

  'It just goes away then?'

  'It dwindles; after a while I'll tell Royston that we have a prime suspect but that he's disappeared, believed out of the country. He can leak that to the press; I might even let him leak the real name. The guy isn't going to turn up anywhere.'

  'Only in my dreams,' Martin whispered.

  'They'll fade, son. You don't think so now, but they will. Your mind protects you after a while.'

  Skinner took a slug from his Irn Bru. 'Just one small niggle ...' he said.

  'What's that?'

  'Alec's room; where he was killed. There was something odd about that. It's probably of no significance, but it's wrong. It's just a feeling I have ... only I can't figure out what it is.'

  49

  Karen Neville rarely smoked; occasionally in the pub after a couple of drinks, but never at home. She slammed her fourth cigarette of the day into the ashtray, knowing that none of them had done her any good.

  'Karen!' she cried aloud. 'It'll be the drink next.'

  She could restrain herself no longer; she picked up the phone and called Neil Mcllhenney. He sounded not in the least surprised to hear her voice.

  'Hello, girl,' he said, kindly. 'Doing your head in, is it?'

  'And how.'

  'I wish I could help, really, but you've just got to be patient.'

  'Neil, he really is all right isn't he? No-one's keeping anything back about him, are they?'

  'No, love. I promise you they're not. Believe me, he's okay.' He hesitated. 'I saw him myself last night.'

  'You did?' she exclaimed. 'Where?'

  'Gullane. He's out at Bob's. But you must not - understand, must not - try to phone him there. Wait till he gets back to Edinburgh; that'll probably be some time today.'

  She heard him hesitate. 'But when he does get back home, Karen. What are you going to say to him?'

  She fell silent, realising. 'I don't know,' she murmured, at last.

  He grunted. 'You don't? Well, it's bloody obvious to me. I don't know if it's going to make you any happier, girl, but I do know you've got to get it out.' And then he chuckled. 'But you never know. You might get a surprise ... stranger things have happened.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I mean there's always a chance he might beat you to the punch.'

  50

  'So this is where it happened,' said Skinner as he looked around the attic room. 'This is where the Diddler got done.' Detective Inspector Arthur Dorward's team had finished their crime-scene work; the bedding and the binding ropes had been removed for examination, but the bloodstains remained, disfiguring walls and ceiling.

  'Aye, this is it, sir,' Pringle replied, gruffly. 'Come on and I'll show you how they got rid of him.' He led the DCC back down the stairs to the hall where he found a brass handle, recessed into the floor, and lifted up a wide trap-door, revealing another flight of steps. The sound of lapping water came up from below.

  'Down there is a wee jetty place. He was shoved in the water from there in the middle of the night. The Water of Leith was still high and flowing fast last Friday night, after all that rain the week before. They probably thought he'd be out to sea by the next morning.'

  "They were hopeful, then,' said the DCC. 'If he hadn't snagged under that bridge, he'd probably have been bobbing along through Leith when the dawn came up.

  'You said there was no money in his wallet?' he continued.

  'No, it was cleaned out. They left his cards, but took his cash.'

  'His watch?'

  'Wasn't here, Boss, and there was no personal jewellery on the body when we found him.'

  'You keep saying "They", Dan. What evidence is there that there was more than one killer?'

  'Nothing hard, Boss, but... There's the hair, right; the one caught in his dick. We've got that. We found more hairs on the towels in the bathroom, and Dorward's preliminary report says that they match that one and that they're all female. So the woman took a shower after having sex with Mr Shearer.'

  '... and possibly also to wash off his blood.'

  Pringle looked at Skinner, doubtfully. 'I just don't fancy a woman as the murderer,' he said. 'The battering that Mr Shearer sustained was ferocious.'

  'Okay, but I ask you again. What evidence for this male accomplice?'

  'Other people used that shower too, sir; males other than the victim. Let's say the woman set him up and someone else did the butchery. Arthur found several different hair samples down there, trapped in the wastepipe. Some belong to Mr Shearer and some will be from his son, but there are others. There's a possibility that some of them came from the bloke who used that baseball bat.'

  'They won't help us find him though; not unless they match with something on the DNA database.'

  'No, but we do have something that will identify him. Arthur's got a print from the bar of soap ... over one of the blood streaks. Whoever left it did so washing off Mr Shearer's blood.'

  'We haven't matched it, though?' 'No, not yet.'

  'Could he tell anything from it?'

  'It came from quite a big hand; that's all he could say.'

  'A great help,' the DCC grumbled. 'What have you got to take this thing forward, Dan? I'm just about to meet Edith Shearer at the airport and I would like to tell her we're making progress without lying in my teeth.'

  'McGurk's been interviewing Mr Shearer's partners, sir. One of them seemed to know a bit about his private life. He told Jack that he used this organiser thing - a palm-top, he called it - and that it had a lot of Mr Shearer's personal information on it. It wasn't here, so the man's taken McGurk into the office to look for it.

  'There's the missing watch too; the Rolex. Ms Bryant, the secretary, said that it was bought from Laing's a couple of years ago. We're going round all the known receivers and the licensed pawn shops with a description. If anyone tries to flog it, we'll get them.'

  Skinner looked at the Superintendent, scathingly. 'Do you really believe that, Dan?' he asked. 'You don't batter somebody unrecognisable just to steal a few quid and a watch that you'll probably get nicked trying to sell. That Rolex was only taken to fool daft coppers like you and me.

  'You get those divers back out and have them look at the river out there. I would not be astonished if they found it stuck in the mud. If we really get lucky we'll find a palm-top as well. I remember that thing; the Diddler even brought it to the football sometimes. He didn't leave it in the office; no bloody way.'

  'Could this have been business-related, sir. D'you think that could have anything to do with it?'

  'Now you're on my wavelength, Dan. The Diddler was a fund manager, one of the very best. His death will have an incredibly damaging effect
on Daybelge, and a whole flock of their business rivals could be in a position to benefit from it.

  'I think you should get involved yourself in the interviews with these partners; but first, I would have a long talk with Janine Bryant. If anyone in the financial community had a real down on the Diddler, she'd be the person most likely to know.'

  'Do you want to sit in, sir? You know the woman.'

  'Thank you for that kind offer. I've just had a couple of days the like of which a man would go to jail to avoid, I am about to collect off a plane the grieving widow and daughter of a good friend of twenty years standing, to get them home before Alan Royston tells the world that he was battered to death, and you ask me if I'd like some more.

  'I've been accused, properly of being a dodgy delegator; but this time, Dan, I'm going home to the arms of my wife and kids.'

  51

  She couldn't wait any longer; she picked up the phone and dialled his number. It rang, once, twice, three times ... she hung up before the answer machine could pick up the call. She looked up his cellphone number and called that, but a programmed voice told her simply that it was not responding.

  'No, he isn't, is he, you smug bitch,' she snapped back.

  She switched on the television; anything to distract her. Athletes raced round a tartan track somewhere. She had no idea where, or who they were, or whether they were competing for gold medals or gold coin, but she watched anyway.

  The door buzzer sounded; not the entry phone call from the street, someone at the door itself. That bloody girl from downstairs wanting to borrow her hair dryer again. Once was enough, twice was too much, three times was going to get a dusty answer. She stepped into the hall, and swung the door open, ready to do some serious telling off.

  He lifted her up in his arms as he stepped inside and hugged her to him, so tight that it hurt, but she didn't care. She stroked the back of his head as he buried his face in her hair, kissing her neck.