Skinner's Trail

by Quintin Jardine

  The flash of moonlight from the slivers of glass on the ground caught his eye before he reached the doorway. He froze for a second, listening, but heard nothing. Very slowly he advanced towards the entrance, moving lightly on his feet. When he had almost reached it, he broke away from the wall in a wide sweep and flattened himself against a tree opposite the doorway. One of the double doors was wide open, allowing him a clear view into the reception area. It was empty. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself off from his tree and reached the door in a few strides, taking care not to step on the broken glass lest he make a sound. Inside the small hallway, a corridor led off to the right towards offices and to the scientific centre. To the left, another door led to the glasshouse itself. He stepped past the reception desk and tried its handle. It opened silently, and Skinner slipped into the first gallery of the great glass structure.

  The door closed automatically behind him and, as it did, he looked around. Moonbeams shone through the higher branches of the trees and bushes, casting weird shadows on the paved walkways which led visitors through each section of the exhibition. He listened again, but still the silence was total. Then, through the foliage, he caught a flash of artificial light. He moved towards the source, almost on tiptoe, until he came to a second door. Through its glass, he could make out, to his left, a series of illuminated panels in which floated an assortment of aquatic plants, their fronds moving in the tanks' continuous aeration. He opened the door and stepped into the expected darkness beyond.

  At once, he knew that he had arrived too late for Paul Ainscow.

  The thick glass panel on his right was around ten feet wide and five feet high. It was back-lit and offered a view of the lily-pond which was the centrepiece of the upper area of the glasshouse. Ainscow's body was still settling on to the round stones and pebbles which made up the bed of the lily-pond —settling down to an eternal sleep. The corpse lay close to the glass, facing Skinner as he looked on in resigned horror. The eyes stared, wide and round. The normally sleek hair drifted, Afro-style, in the water. The head lay at an odd angle, strange enough to tell Skinner at once that drowning would not feature on the death certificate. The body lay on its side, the right arm thrown up and over the head, palm and wrist pressed against the glass. Skinner stepped forward and looked at the wrist. There, at the base of the thumb, vivid against the whiteness of death, he saw three small, pink semicircular scars.

  `Knew it,' he whispered, softly, to himself.

  Suddenly, his eye was caught by movement above and beyond the body, above the moonlit surface of the pond. There was a figure framed there, bent over as if peering into the pond to make sure that Ainscow was not about to resurface.

  Moving as if his life depended on his silence, and imagining that it might, Skinner slipped back out of the aquarium room and looked up. The pathway to the lily-pond gallery was ten feet above his head. The steps leading up to it were at the far end of the area in which he stood. He paused for a moment and looked around, until his eye lit upon a strange, long tree-trunk, similar to a palm, but with deciduous leaves. It reached up to and over the path above his head. He grasped it and began to climb, monkey-style, hands and feet digging for purchase into the rough, thick bark, sweeping small twiglet branches aside, scrambling up and up until the trunk began to curve and he was straddling it, perched above the walkway.

  He sat and stared at the door to the lily-pond gallery, trying to decide his next move. But it was decided for him.

  The glass door opened, framing a figure, silhouetted black in the moonlight — a huge figure.

  Skinner jumped down from the tree. The man froze, then moved back into the pool gallery. Skinner followed, watching him through the glass panel as he backed away. He opened the door and stepped through. The gallery was lit by the moon, and by its reflection from the surface of the pool.

  The man had stopped his retreat. He stood there waiting, a great dark slab, towering and vast. Skinner was six-two himself, but this giant stood almost a full head taller, straight-backed, wide-shouldered, and built like a bulldozer.

  Oh shit, Skinner thought, of all the times for the cavalry to go missing!

  `Hello, Lennie.

  He had forgotten just how big Lennie Plenderleith was. He felt eyes boring into him, even in the dark. Eventually the mountain spoke.

  `It's Mr Skinner, isn't it?'

  It was possibly the most incongruous voice that he had ever heard. While its owner was huge and threatening, the voice was soft, slow and gentle, almost soothing in its tone. It struck Skinner that it might just have been that of a telephone Samaritan. 'You sound as if you were expecting me.'

  ‘I was. Officially we've been setting traps for a Frenchman, but I was pretty certain that it would be you who turned up. I did some private research on you, Lennie. You're not the big thick muscleman that you and Tony wanted us to see, are you? You were going to night-school classes even when you were working in that pub in Leith Walk. And while you were inside you were never out of the library. Correspondence courses in — what were they? — business admin, economics and Spanish. Who paid for them? Linda?'

  Plenderleith shook his massive head. 'You're joking. No, Tony did.'

  'He was grooming you, Lennie, wasn't he? You were going to be his right-hand man when you got out, weren't you? His adopted heir? What was that about a will in Cocozza's message? He had told us he couldn't find one. Was that just a way to get Ainscow here, or does it exist?'

  There was a gleam in the dark as the big man smiled. 'Oh yes, Tony left a will all right. He gave it to me when he visited me in Shotts just before I got out. He thought it would be a long time before it was needed, though. He didn't think anyone could touch him.' Lennie gave a soft tinkling chuckle. `He reckoned even God would think twice about having a go at him. Tony took me under his wing years ago. I was giving some trouble to the manager of one of his launderettes. Back then, I thought I could make it big in the protection racket. I read The Godfather and thought that was for me. So I went into this launderette, and told the manager it was ten quid a week or his windows were in, and after that his face. And then the real Godfather came to the launderette to see me: Tony Manson. He was younger then, and not quite as smooth as he was later on. The hardest man I'd ever seen. It just radiated off him. He never said a word, just looked at me, and I knew that this man could kill me, and would if it came to it. So I said, "Sorry, I didn't understand. I won't bother this place again," and Tony said, "That's good. I like a quick learner. Sit down." And he talked to me. He asked me about myself, and I told him. We sat there for about three hours, cracking a few beers and talking, and at the end of it Tony offered me a job. He said he fancied making me his secret weapon.

  `Most folk, aye even someone like you, look at a big guy like me, and all they see is size and muscle.' Lennie tapped the side of his head. 'They can't cope with the idea that there's anything going on in here. Tony wasn't like that. He realised that I could think as well as punch people's lights out, but he knew that I needed control. So he put me to work where he could keep an eye on me, and he began to teach me. Gradually he told me more and more, till I knew almost everything about his business. He even began to ask what I thought about things. It was a sort of test, I suppose, but once or twice I'd suggest ideas that he hadn't thought of, and he'd accept them. When you folk got lucky and I went to jail, he was gutted, but I said "What the hell. I'll put the time to good use." And I did.'

  Did he tell you about Ainscow's operation?' Skinner queried. The great head nodded in the dark. 'Aye. He asked me what I thought.'

  `What did you tell him?'

  `I said "Do it. It sounds okay." I said that it was a clever way of generating a pile of black money from a clean source, and that if Ainscow wanted a few quid to get started, he should give it to him. But I told him that, if it was ever tumbled, he should cut his losses and get his dough back. Tony's great secret was in keeping the money separate. Too many guys like him pump money from legit business’, again, th
e giant laughed softly in the dark, taking Skinner by surprise, ‘or more or less legit, like knocking-shop saunas — straight into the other side. He never did that. He lived well from the pubs and the casinos and the rest, and he put the profits back into that side of the business, or into the stock market. If he'd used a penny of it on a drugs buy, you guys would have had a chance of tracking it down. All the drugs money was black, from armed robbery, extortion, stuff like that. When Ainscow came along with a long-term scheme for generating a million in funny money, it was a natural for him.'

  Skinner shifted from one foot to the other. 'How did Ainscow know to come to Tony?'

  'He was a casino punter. And he used to deal in a small way. Tony's organisation supplied him.

  `Mmmm. Did Tony have anything to do with the Spanish business?'

  `Absolutely not. He gave Ainscow the money and told him to get on with it. Dick Cocozza was the only link. He was supposed to check on it occasionally. But there was never anything on paper. No correspondence. The cash that Tony gave him came from the black side.'

  `Where did he keep that sort of money?'

  `Switzerland. Tony used to go there every year, with a party from the curling club. He'd run a bus, and every year he'd just take it out in a suitcase and stick it in a bank account. Then, after a couple of years, he'd move it into a private investment trust in Liechtenstein. Guess who owns that trust now?'

  `So that's what was in the will,' said Skinner. 'That's your legacy, Lennie?'

  `That was the will, Mr Skinner. A document transferring the trust to me in the event of Tony's death. It's worth millions. The pubs, and all the other stuff over here, they didn't matter. As far as we were concerned, they could pass to the Crown, like with any death where the estate's unclaimed. Wonder how the Queen'll take to living off the earnings of a string of dodgy saunas?' The big man chuckled again. 'My name's not Plenderleith any more, of course. I'm somebody else now, and now that I've tied off all the loose ends here, that's who I'll be from now on.

  `There's one big obstacle to that, Lennie.

  `Not too big, though, Mr Skinner. There's room in that pond for two.'

  They stood there in silence in the silver moonlight, for several seconds. And then the giant took a pace forward. `Why did you kill Alberni?'

  The question stopped Plenderleith in his tracks. He seemed to stand even taller in the dark. 'How did you know about that? I thought it was perfect.'

  Skinner chuckled. 'You might be bright, Lennie, but nothing planned by the human mind is ever perfect. Remember Alberni's dog, in the garden?'

  Lennie nodded. 'Yes, I was going to feed it, only I couldn't find anything to give it. Then I heard a car coming, so I got off my mark.

  `Christ,' said Skinner, life's full of it. If you had fed that dog, I'd have bought the suicide. The investigation would have stopped right there and we wouldn't have linked Cocozza and Ainscow, at least not until far too late. You'd have been free and clear — if you'd just found a can of dog-food!'

  He saw the big man smile and shrug his shoulders.

  `But that's history. What happened? How did you wind up in L'Escala?'

  `Tony came to see me in Shotts. We'd already set up the trip to Spain to look over that Rancho place. I was going out first —then Linda.' He paused. 'She was going to join me. But Tony said that there'd been a change of plan. He told me that he had found out, by accident, from a guy at the curling club, that the InterCosta thing was going to be rumbled. He said that he'd sent Cocozza to tell Ainscow to wind up the show and give him his dough back — plus profits, of course. He told me to pull my cash out of the bank as soon as I got to Spain, then go to L'Escala and tie off the loose end. Tony told Ainscow at the start that he should cut the guy in on the deal, but he wouldn't. He was greedy. So the wee Spaniard had to go. Shame, but there it was.'

  `How did you do it?'

  `It was easy. I'd already decided how I would do it. I just watched and waited. Then, when the guy's wife went to work, I nipped into the garage, set things up, and kicked over an oilcan to make a noise. When he came in to investigate, he was a goner. I didn't like killing him, but Tony was right. If he'd been left to talk to the police, the whole thing could have come back on Ainscow, and God knows where it would have gone from there. And, after Linda, it wasn't difficult at all.'

  `Funny thing, though,' said Skinner. 'You needn't have bothered. The bloke at the other end of the chain, Vaudan —he was going to do it as well. You just beat him to it.

  `Tell me about Linda. That's the bit that I don't understand. You go to jail and your boss shags your wife — not just that, he puts her on the game. When you come out you butcher her, then he's done in. You're the obvious choice for that one too, yet here you are telling me that Tony was like a father to you. Does that mean that you sold Linda to him, like a piece of meat?'

  For the first time, the gentle voice hardened. 'No, Skinner. You've got that all wrong. Linda was a tart, before I married her, and she stayed that way. She was a nympho: she couldn't get enough of it. She was always flashing her eyes around, and sometimes other bits as well. Of course, when I was about, no one would even look in her direction, but once I was sent up, she was off the leash. Tony gave her the flat, and he would have paid the housekeeping, but she told him that she wasn't being kept by him. She said she was going back to her old career. He offered to get her a job in Cocozza's office, but she'd have none of it. So he decided that if he couldn't persuade her, the next best thing was to control her. So he took her into the Powderhall place, and vetted the punters she saw. If anyone got too keen, he moved them on. He never laid a finger on her. When he took her out to the house, it was for a night off, nothing else. Tony couldn't stand her. If it hadn't been for me, she'd have been in the Water of Leith. Tony said that everyone has to have a weakness or they'd be too dangerous to let live. He said that she was mine.'

  `All that time you were inside,' said Skinner quietly, 'did you plan to kill her?'

  Big Lennie's shoulders slumped; he shook his head. 'No.' It was a whisper. 'I was tormented by the idea of leaving her again. I took the knife into the bedroom to cut her. I was going to mark her face. Not to get even; but to spoil her for the punters. Not for the sake of making her ugly, but as a sign to other guys: one that said "Be very careful of the man who did this." I took the knife in with me, tucked into the back of my jeans, and there she was, lying back wide open, saying "Come on, gimme." And so I did. And even as we were doing it, she was taunting me. She had her ways to torture you. I had forgotten how much they hurt. Then she talked about Ainscow, and how she loved it when he fucked her because he was so rough. She said that, beside him, I was just a big pussy. That was the last thing she ever said. I lost it. I snapped. Only one time in my life have I ever done violence in hot blood, and when I did — oh Christ, it had to be hers! Another reason for killing Ainscow.'

  He began to move towards Skinner once more.

  `Come on, Lennie, the whole story, then you can try your luck. You're right. My boys aren't backing me up tonight. So tell me, then we'll go at it. When did you hear about Tony?'

  `I read about it in Spain. I bought a copy of the Daily Record, and there it was. And I knew. I knew straight away.'

  `You knew that when Tony sent Cocozza to tell Ainscow to shut the InterCosta operation down, Ainscow decided to do something completely different.'

  Big Lennie nodded. 'That was Tony's one great weakness, you see. He trusted people. Part of it was because he couldn't imagine anyone ever having the balls to cross him, but most of it was just plain gullibility. Tony was a savage guy at times, but he had standards. If Tony' said you had a deal, you could take it to the bank, and if he said you were dead, you could book Warriston Crematorium. The last true man of his word.'

  `Do you know how they did it?'

  `Oh yes. That was one of the things Cocozza told me when we had our chat — when he didn't have that towel stuffed in his mouth to stop him screaming. Cocozza — Tony's good friend
Cocozza — had keys to the house. He let Ainscow in. They fixed the alarm later to make it look like a break-in. They both waited in the bedroom for Tony to get in. The wee shit Cocozza hid in the wardrobe. Tony switched on the light and Ainscow was on him with the knife. He never had a chance.'

  Lennie Plenderleith paused, with a smile of satisfaction. `Neither did they. You should have seen Cocozza's face when he saw me. He looked like a spectator at his own funeral. As for Ainscow, he didn't even know who I was. I told him that Dick had sent me, and he followed me up here. He was a strong guy — but nowhere near strong enough to stay alive. Treacherous bastards,' added Lennie quietly. 'No way were they going to do that to him and live.

  `I could have been off for good, Mr Skinner. I was free and clear, with a new identity and the income from that trust. The whole world was my bloody oyster, but it would always have tasted sour if I hadn't come back to pay my debt to my friend, and finish with these people.

  `So after I did the business in Spain, I went to Liechtenstein with Tony's document, Tony's will, and took possession of his trust, my inheritance. Then, with my new passport and my new, genuine, Liechtenstein licence, I bought a car and made my way home. And now I've done the business here, almost. With you out of the way, I'll be free and clear again. So, Mr Skinner, it's time, as you said, to try our luck — and it's yours that's run out.'

  Big Lennie moved forward with a speed and balance which were as unexpected as his voice. Skinner knew that the talking was over, and that he faced a fight for his life. The light was bad, and the path was narrow, with the pool on his left, and foliage on his right. He backed off before the giant's advance, weighing him up as best as he could. Muscles bulged beneath his attacker's black top, and his jeans were tight around massive thighs.