Skinner's Trail

by Quintin Jardine

  Arturo Pujol stepped between them. 'Bob, please. Look after Senora Alberni. I will deal with this.' He snapped an order to the stretcher bearers. The body was covered once more, and borne into the ambulance. He turned to the Policia commander and began to speak rapidly to him in Catalan. This time there was nothing placatory in his tone. It was quiet but ferocious. This was another side of Arturo Pujol, and Skinner could see at once from the fearful reaction of the Policia, and the silent, grim satisfaction of the Guardia officers, why his amiable friend was afforded such respect. This was old-style Guardia, and it made Skinner suddenly grateful that he had not been around in Spain during those former days.

  Leaving Pujol to continue his dressing-down, he guided Gloria Alberni along the path and into her home. Inside, she sat down in a big chair in the living room, and buried her face in her hands. Skinner left her to sob. He walked through to the kitchen, found coffee and a percolator, and made a fresh pot. When he returned to the living area, carrying the coffee in cups on a tray, Gloria Alberni's sobbing had subsided. She sat staring at the wall, expressionless, overwhelmed. Skinner fetched a small table, and put a cup of coffee close to her hand.

  `Senora Alberni, do you speak English?'

  She turned towards him slowly, taking in for the first time the kindly tanned face, the steel-grey hair, and the concern in his blue eyes.

  `Yes,' she replied. 'I work in the National Westminster Bank in Figueras. Good English is required.' The vestiges of sobs tugged at her words.

  `In that case, if we may, we will speak in English. I am a friend of Commandante Pujol of the Guardia Civil. My name is Bob Skinner. I am a policeman also. I am from Scotland, but I have a home in L'Escala.

  She nodded. 'What happened to my husband?'

  `Has no one told you anything?'

  `Nothing. The men from the L'Escala police, they just came to the bank and said I was to come. They said nothing at all on the way here. I asked but they said nothing: And then when I got here . . .' She broke down again, as the awful memory of the face on the stretcher swept over her. She controlled herself more quickly this time, gathering her inner strength to fight off hysteria.

  `What happened, Senor...'

  `Skinner,' he reminded her. 'Senora Alberni, it appears that your husband has killed himself' He paused as his words sank in, final confirmation for her that this was not a dream, that the face on the stretcher had been real, that the body on the stretcher had been that of Santi, her husband.

  When he was satisfied that she was ready to hear more, he went on. 'I came here to see him on a business matter. I called at the office but it was closed, and so I came here. There was no answer to the bell. I looked around, and found him in the garage. He was hanging. He was dead. I am very sorry.'

  Gloria Alberni shuddered in her chair. She picked up her coffee and took a sip. She shook her head. 'I do not understand, Senor Skinner. You say he killed himself. He hanged himself How can that be? Why would he?'

  `Senora, the Guardia will ask all these questions of you, once you are ready.'

  `I am ready now.' From long experience, Skinner recognised that this, the first moment after the shock of bereavement, might be the best time to interview the woman.

  Once the truth sank in, she would collapse again, and after that it could be days before she was able to talk sensibly about the morning of her husband's death. There was even a chance that her mind would reject the memory of it.

  `If you're sure, I'll fetch Senor Pujol.'

  `No!' she said vehemently. 'I do not like the Guardia men.'

  `Senor Pujol is okay.'

  `No. I would rather speak to you. You are a policeman, you said.'

  Skinner thought for a second or two. Finally he nodded. `Yes, okay. Arturo won't mind. I reckon he's got enough on his plate.' He sat down on a chair opposite the woman.

  `So tell me, Senora. At what time did you leave for work this morning?'

  She looked across at him. The tears had cut ridges through her make-up, but still she looked handsome; a classic Spanish face, Skinner thought.

  `It would be around fifteen minutes to nine, maybe twenty to. I was late. We had friends visit us last night for dinner. We ate late, and the men had a lot to drink.'

  ‘Your husband too?'

  `No, not so much as the rest. Santi does not drink a lot. Wine, a little whisky, but not a lot.'

  `Was he still in bed when you left?'

  `No. He was up. But he said his first appointment at the office wasn't till ten, so he was not in a hurry. He made the coffee and heated the croissants, while I was getting ready. I remember I was worried by the mess. We went to bed last night without cleaning up. But he said it was okay: he would take care of everything.'

  Did you feed the dog?'

  `No. Santi always does that. I don't like dogs much. That one outside, Romario it is called, after the footballer — that was Santi's.'

  `What about the lawn-sprinkler?'

  `Why? Was that on?'

  Skinner nodded.

  `Santi must have done that too. He is determined that the grass should be good from the start here. We got this house at a good price. Santi believes that once this area is fully developed we will be able to sell it and make a big profit.'

  `How did he seem this morning?'

  `Okay. As usual.'

  Did he say anything else to you?'

  `No, only to hurry up and get to work. He shooed me out the door, but before I left he kissed me and told me he loved me. Then he patted my — how you say? — my bum, and pushed me out of the door.'

  Did he seem sad, preoccupied?'

  Senora Alberni leaned back in her chair. She was silent for a few seconds, then she shook her head. 'No. He was quiet, that is true, but he has been that way for a few weeks now. He never talks to me about his business, and I don't talk to him about mine, but I think that there was something there that has been concerning him.'

  Skinner stood up and strolled across the room. 'Senora, it looks to me as if, whatever it was, it worried him enough for him to kill himself.'

  She shook her head again. 'No!' The word came out like a wail. Skinner thought that the tears would start again, but she held herself together. `Santi would not do that.

  Skinner looked down at her sadly for a while, until she returned his gaze. He held her with his eyes, big, blue, kind, and full of concern. 'Senora, I have met very few people in your situation who are prepared to believe that their partner would choose to desert them in this way. It happens, though. I am very sorry, but that is the way it is. If I were you, I would try to come to terms with that. If you choose to believe the alternative — and there is only one alternative — then you will be headed for a load of grief. Pujol's people will investigate the business, and they will find whatever was worrying Santi. I hope that will put your mind at rest. I'll go and speak to the Commandante now, and tell him what you've told me. There will be no more questions, I think, but they will want to look around — and through Santi's papers. So far, they haven't found a note, but there might be one. Do you have a safe here?'

  Gloria Alberni nodded. 'Si. It is upstairs, in Santi's wardrobe.' She pointed to a bunch of keys lying on a low coffee table in the centre of the room. 'Those are Santi's. That little gold key is for the safe.

  Skinner picked up the bunch and slipped the gold key from the ring. 'Thanks. Senora, is there anyone you can ring? You should have someone here with you — a relative, a friend.'

  `We have no relatives here. Santi and I are both from Tarragona. He has only his mother. I will call my father now, and ask him to tell her what has happened, then to come here if he can. My best friends are the people who were here last night, but if one of them came, it would only make me think of us all happy together such a short time ago.'

  `When will your father arrive?'

  `Tonight, I hope.'

  `Well, until he gets here, I would be happy if you stayed with my wife and me. She's a doctor, and that may help you, too. Wi
ll you do that?'

  She looked at him gratefully, and nodded. He picked up a pen from the sideboard, scribbled his address on a piece of paper from the memo pad beside the phone, and handed it to her. 'When you make your call, tell your father to come here.'

  She took the paper from him, as she stood up, and walked over to the telephone. She was starting to dial as Skinner left the room in search of Pujol. He found the Commandante, his composure almost restored, in the kitchen. Through the small window Skinner could see only green uniforms outside. There was no sign of the local police, or of the ambulance.

  `That man!' Pujol spat, as soon as Skinner entered the room. 'I say that I have to live with him. Well, no more. After that outrage, he has to live with me — and live very carefully.'

  Skinner laughed. 'Don't worry about it. Every police force has a guy like that somewhere.' He explained to Pujol that he had questioned Senora Alberni, and the reason for it, which Pujol accepted readily.

  `Of course, Bob, you were quite right. You are much more experienced than me in these matters, and perhaps to a Spanish person a little less intimidating than .someone in a Guardia Civil uniform.' He looked around the kitchen. 'She said Alberni made the coffee, eh.' He pointed to a full cup lying on the work-surface. Alongside it a croissant lay, untouched, on a plate. 'It looks like he could not face his. I suppose he was only trying to behave as normal until she left, and he could then do what he had to do.'

  `Mmm, maybe,' said Skinner. 'But maybe he didn't know he was going to do it until after she'd left. In my experience most suicides don't sit down and plan their end. It starts off

  with a worry, which gets a little worse week by week, then day by day, until full-scale depression sets in. They don't threaten suicide, they probably don't even contemplate it. The great majority of people who threaten to kill themselves don't do it. What they're really saying is, "I'm in trouble here. Will someone give a shit, please!"'

  He glanced once more through the window, then continued. With guys like Alberni, the worry, the depression, deepens until, one day, it's there. The big idea. The urge to opt out. And they rush at it. It's very much a spur-of-the-moment thing. It has to be. If they thought about it, they wouldn't do it. They just swallow the pills, and half a bottle of gin, or they pick up the gun and go bang! right then, or they wander out to the garage, tie a noose in a rope, make it secure and kick the chair away. That's how it's done. Oh Christ, I've seen a fair few. A few too fucking many. They're rarely planned; almost invariably they come from a fatal urge which, for that short time, is just too strong to resist. That's how it would have been with Alberni this morning. She goes off to work, and he's left with only his nightmare, whatever it was, for company. And his time comes. His big idea. He goes into the garage, and out of this life.

  `I have to admit that oiling the rope to make sure that the noose would run was a nice touch. I haven't seen that one before. Rivers of blood, yes. Brains on the ceiling, yes. But never an oily rope. That's a first. He's still a selfish bastard, though, to do that to her.' He gestured with his thumb towards the living room.

  Skinner was unaware that his voice had risen, almost to a shout. Pujol touched his shoulder, gently. 'Hey, my friend, I think you care more than you like people to know. And I think that maybe you have seen too much of death by violence.'

  The shout dropped to a whisper. 'Oh, Arturo, old son, you don't know the half of it.' Bob held up his big, tanned hands. `See these things. I killed a guy with these once. Not so long ago, at that. I am a martial artist of the first rank, Commandante. With just one of these hands, I could put your lights out for good in about a second and a half. And that's not all. I am a fully trained and expert marksman, with experience. In doing my duty as a policeman, I have killed three people, and seriously wounded a fourth. Not one of them could have had any complaint about the outcome. They were all armed and offering violence, and I killed them all without a moment of hesitation. Because, in those circumstances, that's my job. Just as it's yours, my friend.

  `You've never killed anyone, Arturo. Though you carry a gun, you've never used it. I can tell. Because it marks you, you see. You carry it with you like a piece of luggage you can't throw away, and when you meet someone with a matching piece, you can tell. You know you both belong to the same club . . . the AES, the Authorised Executioners' Society. My best friend's a member. He'll never get over his initiation. It's a club I hope you never join. So yes, Commandante, I have seen too much of death. And yes, I care. Thank Christ, I care. It's the caring that makes the difference between the likes of my friend Andy and me, and the guys on the other side of the argument. That's why, in the end, I get so angry with people like Alberni. When you've had to take life yourself, and know the hellish taste of it, the selfishness and the waste and the sheer bloody un-necessariness of suicide just makes you mad.'

  He smashed his right fist into his left palm. Beside him, Pujol, struck silent by his friend's confession, jumped at the explosive sound.

  ‘But life goes on, and all that. I've got a wife and son I want to see soon, so let's do what has to be done here, and I'll take Gloria away with me.' He held up the key. 'This opens Alberni's safe. Your guys still haven't found a note anywhere?' Pujol shook his head. 'Okay, let's you and I take a look and see if it's upstairs. Come on.'

  He led the way up the curving, tiled staircase to the upper floor of the house, and into the Albernis' bedroom. The safe was where Senora Alberni had said it would be, but it was bolted to the floor. Skinner knelt beside it and unlocked it with the small golden key. Even with the doors of the wardrobe wide open, it was dark inside and difficult to see. He felt inside the safe, and lifted out two boxes, its only contents. He carried them across to the dressing table and set them down. One was a jewel box, secured by a clasp. Skinner flicked it open, and found not jewels but an assortment of documents. Pujol examined them one by one. 'Marriage certificate, birth certificates, life insurance, household insurance; all of these are personal documents. I see no letter from Alberni.'

  `And no family jewels either. Maybe they kept them in the cigar box.' Skinner lifted the wooden lid of the second box. Pujol gasped with surprise, and muttered a Spanish imprecation. Skinner's reaction was confined to a slight raising of the eyebrows.

  The cigar box was stuffed with Spanish banknotes. Pujol picked up a handful and flicked through it — then another, then another. 'It is in notes from one thousand pesetas to ten thousand.'

  `How much d'you reckon is there?'

  Pujol did not answer at once. Instead, he took out all of the cash from the box and arranged it in separate piles of one-thousand, two-thousand, five-thousand and ten-thousand peseta notes. He picked each bundle up in turn, flicking through it with his thumb, nodding continuously as he did, as if keeping count. Eventually he put the last bundle down. 'I'd say that there is a little over five million pesetas there.'

  `In sterling,' said Skinner, 'that's twenty-five grand.'

  'So Senor Alberni did not have the money problems of which we were told.'

  `Maybe having all this money was his problem. It all fits together, Arturo. Alberni's a thief. He does Pitkeathly, then word gets to him on the L'Escala grapevine that a Scottish copper's in town and looking for him. He panics — so much so that this morning he goes up the rope.'

  `Who would know you were going to see him? I did not tell anyone.'

  `You wouldn't have to. Scotland does a check on Alberni through your police national computer. A copy comes in for you. You come to see me. And you have to leave word with your office where you are. Yes?' Pujol nodded in confirmation.

  `Okay, you run a police force, and police forces, regrettably, run on gossip.' Pujol smiled a wry smile of agreement. 'By yesterday afternoon it's bar talk wherever your people drink, maybe in that bar up in Avinguda Girona, that there's a problem with Alberni, and that a guy's come all the way from Scotland to see him, a guy so heavy that the Commandante goes to visit him. A friend of Alberni hears this and passes it on.
Or maybe Alberni has a source in your building: someone who feeds him information. Don't be offended; corruption happens in many places, and stupidity is universal.

  `Professionally I hate easy answers. But this one is so fucking obvious that even I can't ignore it. We have to ask the lady about this cash. I'll do it. She'd probably still be frightened by that green uniform of yours.'

  `Si, please do that. You take the money. I will lock the safe.'

  Skinner picked up the box and went downstairs at a trot. Gloria Alberni had finished the phone call to her father, and had resumed her seat. She was dabbing her eyes with a small white handkerchief. Skinner guessed that the first aftershock was heading her way.

  `Senora, what can you tell us about this?' He showed her the box, and raised its lid.

  The woman's tear-filled eyes opened wide with surprise. `Where did you find that?'

  `It was in your husband's safe.'

  `I have never seen that before. How much money is there?'

  ‘Pujol reckons five million pesetas.'

  `Five million,' she gasped. 'What was Santi doing with five million in his safe?'

  `Could it have been cash he was holding for a client?'

  `No way. Santi always banked clients' cash as soon as he received it. He banked with Banca Catalana, here in L'Escala.

  I know he had a special arrangement with them, so that he could make deposits even when the bank was closed.'

  ‘Pujol will want to find out where it came from. You understand?'

  `Si. I want to know where it came from! Five million pesetas! Almost under my bed!'

  Thirty

  ‘Boss! What can I do for you?' Brian had been expecting a call from a friend to confirm a golf tie. Instead he heard Skinner's voice, crystal-clear, via satellite.

  `You can listen and do what I ask. It'll keep my phone bill down if it's arranged at your end. I want you to contact Paul Ainscow and get him on the first plane out here. He's needed here now to go through the accounts of InterCosta. But you'll have to break some bad news to him. His partner Alberni hanged himself this morning. We found twenty-five grand's worth of used notes in his safe. It looks as if Pitkeathly's just the tip of the iceberg.'