Skinner's Trail

by Quintin Jardine

  Old, looking relieved, smiled in his turn, and shook his head vigorously.

  Skinner stood up, and his two colleagues followed. He led them out into the corridor of the command suite. 'Okay, into battle. Remember, every detail might fit together with another detail, and amount to something. So note every tiny piece of information. Good luck.'

  As Old and Higgins disappeared through the swing doors at the end of the corridor, Skinner turned to look for Maggie Rose — to find her standing behind him, comb-bound reports and photographs held in both hands.

  `That's Banks's report, is it?'

  The red-haired Inspector nodded.

  `Did the big man tell you all about his moment of glory last night, then?'

  `Oh yes, sir. Every detail, every fingerprint. I'm surprised he hasn't got himself into the photos.'

  Skinner smiled. Maggie Rose and Mario McGuire's eighteen-month relationship had just been formalised by an engagement, and by their acquisition of a new flat in Liberton, in the south of the city.

  `What he has got himself into is a stretch of overtime. He could be in for a few late nights.'

  Maggie's smile brightened. 'Good, that'll take care of the curtains.'

  As Skinner turned to go back into his office, she called after him. 'Oh, boss, Sir James's secretary called. He just got in. Can you look in on him.'

  Five

  The big silver-haired man rushed across the room, hands outstretched when Skinner entered. 'Congratulations, Bob! I couldn't be more pleased for you and Sarah. Both doing very well, I hear. What did he weigh?' He paused. 'Now why do people of my age always ask that?'

  Sir James Proud, the Chief Constable, was Skinner's mentor. Their relationship had become even closer over the past eighteen months, until Skinner had come to see Proud Jimmy — as he was popularly known — almost as a father figure.

  Skinner laughed. 'Thanks, Jimmy. Eight pounds and twelve ounces, they said. That's one thing that hasn't gone metric yet. Not in the Simpson, at least.'

  `So what the Hell are you still doing here? Why aren't you on paternity leave?'

  `Things to do, Chief. Getting the Tony Manson show on the road, for one.'

  `Yes. That fairly knocked our Royal Visit off the front page. What d'you think, Bob — is it a "gang war"?'

  `Buggered if I know. Tony Manson must have had a thousand small-time enemies, but obviously one was serious enough to put a contract out on him. At least that's how it looks. A thoroughly professional job.'

  As they sat at his low coffee table, Proud Jimmy pointed to the comb-bound documents which Skinner carried. 'Are those part of it?'

  ` M mm. Autopsy report and the picture gallery.' `Why the extra set?'

  `I'm taking them in to let Sarah have a look.'

  The Chief Constable's jaw dropped in a sudden comic gesture. 'You're joking!' He paused for a second, and a smile spread across his face. B ut of course you're not. That's typical Sarah. Off you go to see her, then. Her and wee James Andrew.'

  `That's Jazz, Chief.'

  ‘Eh!'

  Skinner smiled and nodded. His name. It suits him down to the ground. You'll get used to it.'

  `I'm sure I will,' said the conservative Proud Jimmy. 'Hope he does.

  Six

  If Sarah felt any reaction to her physical exertion of the previous day, none was on show to the world.

  She sat at the window, fully dressed and lightly made up, ready to receive callers. When Bob arrived just after eleven a.m. he found her reading a magazine. J azz was sleeping by her side, in his crib.

  `Mornin', Mom,' he said. He bent into the crib and kissed the baby gently on the cheek. As he did, he caught the sweet milky scent of his breath, and felt a totally unexpected thrill. For a second, Bob's eyes moistened once more. When he turned towards Sarah, she was standing facing him. He took her in his arms and kissed her long and lingering.

  `Sarah my love, you are an incredibly clever woman, to create someone like that.'

  She smiled. 'At another time I'd call you a patronising so-and-so. But right now, as it happens, I agree with you.'

  Her foot bumped against his briefcase, and she looked down. 'Have you got them? Good. Now let me try to show you what else I'm good at. Gimme.'.

  She sat down again while he unlocked his case, and took out the reports and photographs. 'There, get stuck into that lot. You can keep the report, but I'll take the pics back with me. We can't have them lying around here.' Behind him, Jazz made a small sound in his sleep. 'I'll tell you what. You get started, and I'll show my son off to the world, and the world off to my son.'

  Terribly carefully, as if he were h andling explosives, he lifted the baby from the crib and, holding him in the crook of his left arm, stepped across to the window. 'Good morning, Edinburgh,' he said, softly. 'May I present James Andrew Skinner, your newest citizen and potential man-about-town. Now there, Jazz, is a phrase that should be brought back into the language. That'll be you: Jazz Skinner, a man about town of your time.'

  The baby's eyes blinked open and looked up at him. Bob grinned broadly. The corners of the baby's mouth twitched upwards. 'Hey, Sarah,' he whispered. 'He's smiling at me!'

  Behind him she laughed. Wind, darling. It's wind.'

  He looked back down at Jazz, whose eyes were wider open now, peering, as if focusing on Bob's grin and mimicking it. Turning the baby to face the window, Bob tilted him up slightly. 'There you are, my son, let me present to you your city, Edinburgh as ever is. That nice tree-lined bit out there is called the Meadows. Looks nice, doesn't it. They play cricket there at weekends in the summer. Maybe you will too. And they have Festival shows there, in tents. I'll take you to one, soon. There are swings, too. We'll like swings, you and I. It's a real utility place the Meadows.'

  Jazz looked towards the window, as if weighing his father's words, and contemplating treats to come.

  `That's enough excitement for now, though,' said Bob. As gingerly as he had picked him up, he laid the child, still less than a day old, back down in the crib. 'We'll take another walk later.'

  He turned towards Sarah, and found her still-scanning the autopsy report, turning pages quickly, pausing every so often at something which she found of special interest. The bound sheaf of photographs lay at her feet, open at a close-up shot of the fatal wound.

  Bob sat on the edge of the bed and waited silently for several minutes, watching her as she studied, admiring the depth of her concentration, amused by the occasional furrowing of her brow as she considered the implications of different parts of the report, frequently snorting and shaking her head as she found something with which to take issue. Eventually, she laid the book in her lap and leaned back in her chair, looking over at Bob.

  For a professional report, this shows some of, but not all, the imagination of a particularly dense rock. It tells you that Manson was killed by a knife-wound to the heart — and that's it. Mary the tea-lady in my old surgery could have told you the same! No suggestions, no conclusions, nothing that will take your inquiry one step further. I suggest that in future you use this man for looking after the police horses . . . no, maybe not.'

  `What do you draw from it, then?' said Bob. 'Can you make suggestions?'

  She shot him a look which was almost withering. He smiled at her professional pride.

  `Yes. The first is a heavy probability; the second is a Goddamned certainty! I'll excuse Banks the first one, but the other . . . My God! A horse-doctor, I tell you?.

  She leaned over and picked up the book of photographs. `How big was Manson?'

  ‘ Tony? About five-eleven, I'd say. Weight? Let's see, he was a light-heavyweight boxer when he was young. That would make him twelve-and-a-half stone in his prime. He hadn't run much to fat, as you can see from the photos. Let's say fourteen stone, tops.'

  `Age? Oh, yes, the report said forty-eight. Reasonably fit?'

  `For sure. He could still have done his own bouncing in the pubs if necessary . . . not that any of his regulars would have
been so daft. What does all that tell you?'

  Sarah paused.

  `What I think it tells me is that whoever killed Manson was someone he knew, and he was either expecting or wasn't surprised to see.'

  `How do you work that out?'

  She paused again, considering her answer, examining her logic once more before committing herself. Eventually she leaned forward in her chair and looked him earnestly in the eye.

  `This is a tough guy, right. A no-nonsense guy. A hard man, as you would say.'

  Skinner nodded.

  She lifted up the book of photographs from her lap, and turned to a wide-angle shot of the death scene that she had marked with her thumb. 'This is exactly as your people found it, yes? I assume all of them knew to touch nothing.' Again, Skinner nodded. 'Right, look at the door. Fresh prints on the handle, and it's all the way open. That means that Manson was all the way into his bedroom when he was attacked. And a fresh thumb-print on the switch means that the light was on.'

  She turned back to the close-up shot of the wound. 'Look here. The angle of entry, as Banks describes it, and the force of the wound can mean only that he was attacked from the front by a strong right-handed person, let's assume a man. He was stabbed, and then he was run backwards, all two-hundred pounds of him, fast enough to smash that damned heavy balustrade when he was forced into it. For that to have happened, there must have been no defensive reflex at all from Manson as he was being attacked with the knife. If there had been, then not even Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been able to generate the sort of force and speed with which he was moved backwards. And he must have been travelling that fast for the body to have such an effect on that solid wood.'

  She paused, considering her words. 'Now you're Tony Manson, major operator, experienced villain of repute, afraid of nothing and very hard man. You walk into your bedroom, switch on the light and there's a stranger facing you with a knife. Even if he's coming at you fast, you react. It's your instinct. So even as he's sticking the knife into you, you're moving against him, resisting, your last active thought being to take a pop at this intruder. You're heavy, so even a strong man will have trouble holding you up, let alone moving you backwards.'

  She shook her head. 'No, Bob, I believe that Manson came into the room, switched on the light, saw someone that he knew, and was so surprised that he was frozen, his muscles completely relaxed as he was killed. Look at his face, even. He died with his jaw dropped and his eyes wide open . . . in surprise. The man just slammed right into him with the knife and kept moving, making sure to get him down, to be able to finish him if he had to. Only he didn't. He'd done the job first time of asking. That's how I see it. Questions?'

  Skinner looked at his wife, considering everything she had said. He stood up from the bed and walked across to the window. He gazed out at the Meadows for a few seconds, still thinking, then glanced back over his shoulder towards Sarah.

  `Could he have in fact resisted, and could they have struggled together back through the doorway on to the landing?'

  She shook her head with conviction. 'No way. The wound is too clean and too deep; and that way the body wouldn't have developed pace enough to smash the balustrade. Look at the photos — see how solid it is.'

  He cast his mind back to the day before, and nodded his agreement. 'Yes, you're right. They were built to stop people falling, those things, not to simply give way. Could he have been attacked from behind by a stranger, and stumbled backwards?'

  `Again, no way. The angle of the wound is wrong. No, either Tony was a closet wimp and froze with fright—'

  `You can rule that one out!'

  ‘ or he was surprised to death. ’

  Skinner looked at her for a few seconds more, then smiled. `Okay, Prof. If that's your heavy probability, I'll buy it. Now what's your certainty.'

  She smiled back, pleased, and picked up the photographs once more. As she flicked through them she asked, Was Manson left-handed?'

  `Eh? Buggered if I know.' Bob's forehead wrinkled as he searched his memory. 'Hey no! Wait a minute! I remember seeing him box once; must be twenty-five years ago. He was a southpaw. Yes, that would mean that he was left-handed. Why d'you need to know?'

  She found the photograph for which she had been looking. `See here.' She held it up to Skinner. Taken at the postmortem, the shot was a close-up view of the ends of the fingers of Manson's left hand, facing palm upwards.

  `Yes?'

  `Standard practice at an autopsy: look under the fingernails.' She turned to the next photograph. 'This is what they found under the nails of Manson's left hand' Skinner looked again. The ragged bits were magnified so that, in the colour exposure, Skinner recognised them easily as scraps of skin all flecked with blood, and one clearly with tissue attached.

  He stared back at Sarah, his question clear in his eyes, and she answered at once.

  `The knife's gone in. Manson's dead but he doesn't quite know it yet. Even as he's hurtling backwards, with the blade in his heart, his left hand clamps on to the wrist holding the knife. Like this.'

  She reached up and grabbed his arm, her palm underneath, her fingers touching the base of his hand.

  The nails dig in, deep. It's a death grip. When he goes down, the man rips his hand free, and Manson's nails tear a great chunk out of his wrist. Just about there.' As she released him, she stroked the area which she had held. 'When you find the man who killed Tony Manson, you may take it from me, he will have either deep, ragged scratches or — if you don't catch him that quick — small scars on the inside of his right wrist.'

  Seven

  ‘W hat are you implying, Mr Skinner?'

  Richard Cocozza, Tony Manson's lawyer, and now executor, leaned forward aggressively. Skinner disliked the man intensely. He had always believed that he must be completely aware of all the details of Manson's business activities, legitimate and covert. Though he was not by nature vindictive, he had long harboured a secret dream of catching Cocozza in some situation that was either criminally or professionally compromising. With Manson dead, that dream had dwindled to the faintest of hopes. Now the little man's reaction fanned that antipathy once more.

  `Implying, Richard? What should I be implying? In the two days since your client was murdered, we have learned nothing from our inquiries that suggests any motive. Now, I am asking you and Mr John to allow my officers access to his personal and business bank accounts to see if they throw up any line of inquiry.'

  The two men, lawyer and detective, sat facing each other on either side of a grey-surfaced designer desk in the office of the senior manager of the Greenside branch of Bank of Scotland. The banker, Andrew John, a burly, bearded figure, leaned back in his swivel chair, sensing the animosity, but remaining silent as the exchange developed.

  `You expect me to believe that's all you're after?'

  Skinner shook his head. 'I don't give a toss what you believe. I've explained to you what we want. Tell you what, though, the way you're going on, I'm beginning to think there might be something in there that you don't want me to find. We've always taken the view that Tony Manson was far too careful ever to have tried laundering any drug money through the legitimate businesses. Don't tell me we were wrong about that. Because if it turns out that we were, if we can trace large unaccounted movements of cash in and out of any of those accounts, we'd have to take a very close look at you and at what you might have known. Is that what your problem is, Richard? Is that why you're being obstructive?'

  The fat little lawyer sat bolt upright, trembling with indignation. Whether this was real or pretence, Skinner did not know, but he was pleased that the man's customary arrogance had been rattled.

  `I'm not being obstructive!'

  `Then why the questions? Why aren't you falling over yourself to help us find out who killed Manson? You can't want me to go to Court. We both know what the Law Society would think of that.'

  He stood up and walked over to the first-floor bay window, his back turned to Cocozza as he looked
across Picardy Place, past the life-size bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes — his fictional colleague — and beyond to the Paolozzi sculptures, vastly different in concept and execution, which dominated the pedestrian way in front of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Skinner watched the traffic, as it circled the Picardy Place roundabout and exited in three directions: towards Princes Street, towards Leith, towards the west. In mid-morning May the traffic was relatively light in comparison with the peak summer months, when tourist cars and camper vans would abound.

  For almost a minute only the traffic noise could be heard in the panelled office. Finally, Andrew John broke the silence. `Look, Mr Cocozza, we're all busy people. You've no good reason not to agree to this, and you know it. So can you stop wasting our time!'

  Skinner turned around. 'It's all right, Richard. There'll be no comeback. Tony's dead, remember.' He paused. 'Or is it the guy who killed him that you're scared of?'

  Cocozza flushed, and suddenly Skinner knew that he had hit the mark.

  `Very well. If i t's in the interests of justice, I'll agree. With the proviso that the files do not leave this office, and that I am present whenever your people have access to them.'

  Skinner nodded. 'Suits me. I'm sure points will come up that we'll have to ask you about.' He looked towards the manager. Do you have a spare office for my people?'

  `Sure. When?'

  `Now. They're waiting outside.

  Eight

  At times like this, sir, d'you never wish you were back in the clean air of Special Branch?'

  Detective Sergeant Neil Mcllhenney leaned his broad back against the drab grey wall of the windowless room. It still smelled of its last occupant, and perhaps, of two or three earlier ones.

  Andy Martin smiled. 'Come on, Neil. We're doing a worthwhile job here too!

  `Maybe so, sir, but these low-lifers . . . It's the constant procession of the miserable bastards that wears me down. Shifty-eyed, lying so-and-sos, and every one o' them in need of a good scrub. At least the agitators and general nutters we used to keep tabs on in the SB had nothing, against underarm deodorant.