07 - Skinner's Ghosts

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Hello, Mr McGrath,’ said the DCC, advancing on him with hand outstretched. The two had met for the first time at the scene of the death of the old man’s son. On that occasion he had been dignified and purposeful. Skinner guessed that this would prove one bereavement too many. Harold McGrath seemed overwhelmed. Gently the tall policeman slid an arm around his shoulders and led him into the living room.

  ‘Neil,’ he said quietly, over his shoulder. ‘Whisky. Over there, on the sideboard.’ As the heavily built sergeant picked up decanter and glass, the dead woman’s father-in-law lowered himself carefully into an armchair.

  ‘Sergeant McIlhenney has obviously told you what happened,’ said Skinner, glancing across at his assistant as he spoke and noticing for the first time the strain in his normally jolly eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ the old man whispered.

  ‘There’s nothing I can say to lessen the shock, or the horror of it,’ said the detective. ‘We all knew your daughter-in-law; we admired her tremendously. We’re stunned too. But believe me, we will catch whoever did this, and we will put him away for the rest of his miserable life.’

  ‘It was a man then?’ asked old McGrath, bewildered, seeming to age before their very eyes. Skinner guessed that McIlhenney had spared much of the detail. ‘Beyond a doubt,’ he replied, gently.

  ‘Where’s my grandson?’ said the old man suddenly, urgently.

  A sudden desperation hit the DCC, the earlier pang of concern gripping him now with a fierce certainty. ‘He’s not with you, then?’

  The silver head shook. ‘No. Leona said she would bring him over before she went to her constituency meeting. When she didn’t turn up, my wife and I assumed that she had taken him with her after all. She did sometimes, like a sort of mascot.

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘That’s just the thing, Mr McGrath. We don’t know.’ The old man looked up at him, his mouth slightly open.

  ‘Look,’ said Skinner. ‘Does he have any pals around here? Could Leona have taken him somewhere else, before she was attacked?’

  ‘No,’ said the grandfather. ‘I don’t think so. All Mark’s friends are away on holiday just now. We were supposed to be going too, on Sunday, now that the House of Commons has risen.’

  ‘You’re sure there’s no-one still at home, no pal where he could have gone?’

  ‘Quite sure. Leona remarked on the fact just last night, on the telephone.’

  ‘How about Leona’s parents?’ asked Martin. ‘Are they still alive?’

  Mr McGrath looked round at him, over his shoulder, clutching the whisky which McIlhenney had pressed into his shaking hand. ‘Her mother is. Her name’s Mrs Baillie, Mary Baillie. She lives in Broughty Ferry. But she’s on holiday as well, in Greece with a friend. They left last Sunday, from Glasgow Airport.’

  Skinner turned to his assistant. ‘Neil,’ he said. ‘Fast as you can, get on to the tour operators and trace Mrs Baillie. This is going to break very fast through satellite television. I don’t want the poor woman to hear of her daughter’s death from a Sky newscaster.

  ‘Andy,’ he said quickly to Martin. ‘You’d better postpone your briefing till we’ve contacted the mother. Meantime, we’d better mobilise every available officer, CID and uniformed. I want an inch-by-inch search of the surrounding area. If Mark escaped from the house he could be hiding out somewhere. Whatever, if he’s anywhere around here, we’ve got to find him!’

  He stabbed the air with a finger. ‘Every available officer remember, whether they’re off duty or not. I’ll even call the Chief and ACC Elder. You turn out all your team.’ He paused, then added as a seeming afterthought, ‘Try and raise Pam Masters again. You never know. She might be home by now.’

  4

  ‘At this moment,’ said Andy Martin, surveying a hushed gathering of reporters and cameramen in the main briefing room of the police headquarters building in Fettes Avenue, ‘every available police officer in the City of Edinburgh is involved in an intensive search of an area within a three-mile radius of Mrs McGrath’s home.

  ‘That amounts to over a thousand officers, including Chief Constable Sir James Proud, Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner and Assistant Chief Constable Jim Elder. We’re searching public parks, railway embankments, unoccupied houses and other properties. Everywhere.’

  ‘Are you asking for volunteers to help widen the search area, Chief Superintendent?’ The question came from a reporter in the front row of the audience, representing the city’s cable television channel.

  ‘No,’ he told the woman, ‘because we have to keep things under control. But you and all the other broadcast media can help us by asking your viewing and listening audiences to search their own premises right away, just in case a very frightened wee boy might be hiding there.’

  ‘What can you tell us about Mark, Andy?’ asked John Hunter, a freelance, and the senior member of the Scottish Capital’s media corps.

  ‘Well for a start, you can all collect his photograph on the way out, although I suspect that most of you will have him on file from the time of his father’s funeral.’

  He paused. ‘Mark is six years old, and beyond doubt he’s the most remarkable wee boy I have ever met. As you all know, undoubtedly, by a miracle he survived the plane crash in which his father was killed. Not only that, he was instrumental in helping us catch the man whose bomb brought the aircraft down.’

  Roger Quick, of Radio Forth, raised a hand. ‘Mr Martin, do you suspect any link between the murder of Mrs McGrath, and her husband’s death?’

  The Detective Chief Superintendent looked at the reporter for a moment, then shook his blond head. ‘No, none at all. We said at the time that we were satisfied that the bomber had acted alone, and that we knew what his motive was. As the man was shot dead at the scene of his subsequent crime, we have to regard the fact that both of Mark’s parents were murdered as no more than a particularly brutal coincidence.’

  ‘So,’ asked Hunter once more. ‘Do you see any motive for Mrs McGrath’s killing?’

  Martin shrugged his shoulders, rippling the cloth of his navy blue blazer.

  ‘John,’ he said, slowly, speaking clearly for the microphones massed around him, ‘I’ve told you all we know for sure at this moment. I’m not going to speculate on anything else, nor would you expect me to. Motive - if there is one - is anyone’s guess. I have to deal with established fact. Our thinking might crystallise once we trace Mark, but until then we’re throwing everything into the search.’

  ‘D’you think the boy’s been kidnapped?’ asked the old reporter, bluntly.

  ‘Possibly, but I don’t know,’ snapped the detective. ‘What I do know is that we are involved in the biggest search this city has ever seen. If it proves fruitless, then that possibility would harden into a probability.’ He picked up the notes on the table before him. ‘Now, let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  As Martin stood up, a hand was raised at the back of the room. The policeman’s eyes narrowed as he recognised Noel Salmon, a tabloid journalist recently declared persona non grata by Skinner.

  ‘Chief Superintendent . . .’

  The Head of CID turned to Alan Royston, the force’s civilian media relations manager, who was seated at the table beside him. ‘How did he get in here?’ he growled, with unaccustomed menace.

  ‘I had to let him in,’ Royston whispered. ‘He’s been accredited by that sleazy new Sunday, the Spotlight - you know, the rag they sell through supermarkets.’

  ‘Chief Superintendent,’ Salmon called out once more, a shout this time. ‘On behalf of the Spotlight, I have a personal question about DCC Skinner. Is it true that his wife has filed for divorce?’

  Every head in the room turned towards the untidy little journalist; then most swivelled back towards Martin, waiting for his reaction. The detective’s green eyes were like ice as he stared at the reporter.

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said loudly and clearly. ‘Congratulations, Mr Salmon,’ he went on. ‘You’ve
just been barred from this building yet again. You and your paper.’

  ‘Do you expect her to?’ the man shouted across the room.

  ‘No,’ Martin barked, losing his temper for the second time that day, just as a photographer rose from the seat next to Salmon and snapped off a series of motor-driven shots. ‘Now get out of here, before I run you through the door myself!’

  5

  ‘Royston did what?’

  Skinner roared his incredulous, rhetorical question across the floor of the Chief Constable’s office in the Fettes Command Corridor. ‘I’ll have the stupid bastard’s balls for paperweights! I personally banned that little shite Salmon from this office. For life, I said, yet our press officer lets him back in - and to represent that bloody downmarket rag at that!’

  He turned from Martin to Neil McIlhenney. ‘Sergeant, first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to find out for me all about the procedure for firing a civilian employee. Meantime, Royston’s suspended. By the time I’m done with him, he’ll be glad of a job on the fucking Spotlight himself.’

  It was fifteen minutes after midnight. Skinner, Chief Constable Sir James Proud, ACC Jim Elder, Martin and McIlhenney had gathered in the Chief’s room to review progress - or lack of it - in the fruitless search for any trace of Mark McGrath, or of his mother’s murderer. There had been no easy way for Martin to break the news of Salmon’s intervention in the press briefing. Even so, he had anticipated his friend’s reaction, and with the Chief’s support had told Royston to stay away from the office until further notice.

  ‘Bob,’ said Sir James, as Martin had guessed he would, ‘don’t you think you should pause for thought, before taking action?’

  Skinner looked at him, a thick vein standing out on his right temple. ‘Jimmy, Royston reports directly to me. Right?’

  The Chief nodded, waiting as his deputy took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ Skinner said at last. ‘In deference to you, I’ll think about it. Once I have, chances are I’ll still sack him, but at least I won’t have done it in the heat of the moment.’

  Proud Jimmy grunted. ‘That’ll be some consolation to him.’ He paused. ‘Bob, why would that bloody man Salmon ask such a question? You and Sarah aren’t . . .’

  Skinner shook his head, emphatically. ‘Sarah hasn’t raised the subject of divorce with me, nor I with her. Now, can we please talk about police business?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Chief, as keen as Skinner to change the subject, and ushering his colleagues to chairs. ‘You too, sergeant,’ he said to McIlhenney.

  ‘Will I sort out some coffee, first, sir?’

  ‘Good idea, Neil. Good idea.’ The big man left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  ‘Well,’ said Sir James. ‘No luck with our search.’

  Skinner shook his head. ‘Not that I expected it. I know that wee boy too well. Chances are he’d have defended his mother. If not, and he’d escaped from the house, Mark wouldn’t have hidden in fright. He’d have raised the street.’

  ‘D’you think the kid’s dead, then?’ asked ACC Elder.

  Andy Martin answered for Skinner, reading his mind as he had done a thousand times before. ‘No, sir. It’s likely that he’s alive, still. If he’d been killed, he’d have been left at the scene. Why should the murderer take him away, to kill him later? There’s a better than even chance that he’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘Why would anyone in his right mind . . .’ Elder began.

  ‘Who says he is?’ Skinner growled. ‘Andy’s right. We have to look at this as a kidnapping.’

  ‘How did he get away with it, then, in broad daylight?’ asked Proud, shifting uncomfortably in his uniform and running his fingers through his silver hair. ‘Did none of the neighbours see or hear anything?’

  ‘No, Chief,’ Martin replied. ‘The fact is that with the time of the day and the holidays there were damn few neighbours about. There were none on either side of the McGrath house, or across the street, and only a few at the end of the road. One of them thought he saw a silver or grey car in Leona’s driveway, but that’s the only lead we have. Leona’s car’s grey so when he drove past, the man thought nothing of it. Only the McGrath car was locked in the garage at the time.’

  The DCS paused. ‘As I see it, the killer drove right up the driveway. Unlike the footpath to the front door, it’s tarmac, so he wouldn’t have made much noise. In any event, Mrs McGrath was in the shower, getting ready for her afternoon meeting.

  ‘Once he’d jemmied the back door, I suspect that the intruder made sure of Mark right away. When the first officers arrived they found the television on in the living room. It was tuned to the Cartoon Network, on cable, the sort of stuff that kids watch all day, when they’re not at school.

  ‘After he had secured the boy - tied and gagged him, maybe - I guess the man went upstairs, for the mother. As Arthur Dorward pointed out, she must have been taken completely by surprise in her bedroom, still barely dry from the shower, wearing her bra and nothing else.’

  Sir James Proud frowned. ‘If kidnap was his motive, why would he do that? If he could have got away quietly, why attack the mother as well?’

  Skinner sighed. ‘There’s a difference between purpose and motive, Chief. This bastard may have gone there with the purpose of kidnapping the child. Or he may have gone there with the rape and murder of the mother on his mind.

  ‘In either case, the kidnap, or the killing, may have been spur-of-the moment action. Alternatively there could have been a single game plan from the start. But none of that takes us any nearer the killer’s actual motive. It still doesn’t tell us why.’

  ‘What do you think, then, Bob?’ asked the chief. ‘Do you have any notion of what’s behind this?’

  The DCC looked at his only superior officer. The closer he had come in rank to James Proud, the more he had come to value the man, and to appreciate his humanity. He knew how much the brutal death of a woman, and the disappearance of her child, would be affecting him, and the effort he would be making to keep his emotions in check. He knew also, and made allowances for the fact, that the Chief Constable’s career path had been one of administration rather than investigation, and that, as good a leader as he was, he lacked the detective’s instincts.

  ‘Maybe we coppers place too much stress on motive sometimes,’ Skinner replied, eventually. ‘Genuine evil doesn’t need reasons to be. Sometimes it just is. That’s a difficult concept for normal, balanced people to grasp, and so it’s easy to discount it.

  ‘But it could be that all this man sought was gratification; from the rape, torture and murder of a vulnerable, defenceless woman, and from the taking and terrorising of a child. If that’s the case it’s awful.’ His voice rose suddenly and he slammed his right fist into his cupped left palm. ‘Not just for what happened to Leona, but for what could be happening to that poor wee boy right now.’

  ‘And presumably,’ continued Proud Jimmy, in an ominous tone, ‘because he could do it again.’

  Skinner shot him a quick glance. ‘Not could, Jimmy,’ he said, quietly. ‘I’d say will.’

  He paused. ‘And of course, he may have done it before. At the moment, our best hope is that DNA sampling will give us a match to a known offender, a sociopathic rapist, perhaps, with a previous conviction, who’s done his time but hasn’t exhausted his urges.’

  The Chief shook his head. ‘It’s a nightmare, right enough.’

  ‘But there’s something else that we mustn’t forget,’ broke in Andy Martin, as McIlhenney returned with a tray of steaming mugs. ‘This was no ordinary single parent, but a very high-profile lady. A Tory MP. That gives us the possibility also that this crime could have political involvement.’

  ‘Terrorism?’ said ACC Elder.

  ‘Who can say at this stage?’ growled Skinner. ‘The only certainty just now is that here we all are, as we’ve been a hundred times before, in the middle of the night, without a bloody clue.’

  6

  Pamela stirred and
looked at the bedside alarm. Its red digits told her that it was 1.34 a.m. as Skinner slid into her bed.

  ‘Sorry, pet,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  She kissed him, feeling the harsh stubble on his chin. ‘That’s all right. I wasn’t sure whether you’d come here.’

  ‘I almost didn’t. I thought of going to Fairyhouse Avenue. I even thought of crashing out in the office. But then I thought of you, and I realised that I needed to be with you.’

  In the dark, she stroked his cheek. ‘Was it bad? In the house, I mean.’

  She felt him shiver, although the summer night was hot. ‘I’ve never been good at a murder scene,’ he muttered. ‘But this one - someone I knew; someone I admired; someone who’s had enough tragedy in her life.’ She felt the touch of his forehead on hers, and his arm slip around her.

  ‘I tell you, lover. When we catch this guy, I hope I’m there, and I hope he resists arrest. Because I want the privilege of personally tearing out his heart.’

  ‘Shh! Shh!’ she whispered, quickly. ‘Don’t say that. I hope you never get near him, in that case. You’re too good a man to have anyone’s blood on your hands, even his.’

  She was shocked, even a touch frightened, by his sudden ironic laugh in the darkness. ‘You think that, do you, Pammy? God, lass, but you don’t know me as well as you think!

  ‘Andy, now. He’s shot someone dead, and it’s broken his heart. Brian Mackie: he’s had to do it, and never given an emotional twitch. But me, now: I’ve had to kill in the course of my career, more than once. And each time, when I’ve looked at the body at my feet, this person inside me, this voice, has said clear as you like, “Quite fucking right too!”

  ‘Believe this, if you’ve ever believed anything. Whoever killed poor wee Leona had better never give me a clear shot and legal justification, or I’ll shoot him like a dog and say “Got you, you bastard”.’