07 - Skinner's Ghosts

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Now I will leave you to your discussions.’ He picked up his papers and strode from the chamber.

  32

  Andy Martin had only one phobia: heights. He also possessed an inherent will to win which had made him a feared opponent on the rugby field, and which would not allow him to be overcome by anything, not even mortal terror.

  He had tackled his secret enemy head-on by joining a rock-climbing club in his senior year at high school, and had taken this further at university by joining the mountaineering club. It had been hard, all the way through, but he had kept his jaw tight and his hands strong in a domestic climbing career which had taken in some of the finest climbs in the Cuillins, the beautiful mountains of the Island of Skye, and in the spectacular, craggy Lake District.

  Yet a true phobia is never banished; it is only overcome moment by moment. And so, as the police helicopter swept over the purple heather of the moorland, Martin, in the co-pilot’s seat, still felt a lurching in his stomach as he looked down, and still fought to master the panic at the back of his brain.

  ‘Okay, John,’ he said to the police pilot through his head-set, essential equipment given the booming noise within the cockpit from the engine behind them, and the whirring of the rotors above. ‘That’s the fifth sector on this map covered, and no sign of any recent activity up here, other than bloody sheep. One more to go: bank south please, down towards Longformacus.’

  The pilot nodded in confirmation and swung the craft round. They were flying at a height of around three hundred feet, high enough not to be easily identified from the ground, low enough to allow Martin to scan the area beneath with powerful wide-field binoculars. They flew on for ten minutes, sweeping the sector in swathes, east to west, west to east, as if they were mowing it from a great height.

  ‘There’s a bothy down to the right,’ Martin called out at last. ‘Drop us down a bit and let’s take a closer look.’ The pilot obeyed, dropping the helicopter by around fifty feet and slowing their steady speed still further.

  Martin peered through the glasses. The bothy, a stone-built shelter, was in poor repair. At one corner, its slate roof had collapsed. There had once been glass in its single window, but now its panes were smashed, and its door hung by a single hinge. All around, the grass stood high, and the narrow worn path which led to the door from the heathery pasture was overgrown and barely discernible.

  The Chief Superintendent shook his head. ‘No,’ he called, into his microphone, ‘another dud. There’s been no-one there for years by the look of it. Pick it up again.’

  The pilot flew on as ordered, through one swathe, then another, until finally they were almost over the village of Longformacus, beyond which the character of the land changed. They were to the west of the tiny community when Martin spotted the caravan. ‘What’s that doing there?’ he asked himself.

  It was a touring van, still shiny and new. Yet it was well away from the roadway, parked on the bank of a small, fast-flowing stream feeding into a small loch, over which they had just flown. There was no car alongside it, but the grass around it was crushed and torn, as if a vehicle had turned and reversed there, recently and frequently.

  ‘Where are we?’ Martin muttered again. He looked at his map, tracing their progress with a finger. The loch was marked as the Black Water reservoir, but there was no carriageway shown at all.

  ‘Know what that road is down there?’ the detective asked the pilot. ‘Either I’m misreading the map, or it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘That’s the Southern Upland Way, sir, the walkway that crosses the country from the Solway Firth to the East Coast. There’s going on for a hundred miles of it. You can manage a car along part of it . . . just about.’

  ‘Let’s see if we can find out who owns that caravan, then. We came over a farmhouse a couple of miles back. Put me down near there and I’ll see if anyone knows.’

  The pilot nodded and swung the helicopter around. He found a flat spot in an empty field just over a quarter of a mile from the house and set it down. Martin jumped out, gratefully, and set off across the dry grass. The gravelled road to the farmhouse ran beside the field, turning through a high-pillared gateway. As the detective slid through a gap in the beech hedge which served as a boundary, a man appeared at the head of the driveway.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked, cheerfully. ‘Mechanical trouble?’ He stood around six feet four, and despite the warmth of the day he was dressed in country clothes: twill trousers, heavy shirt and tweed jacket. But Martin noted his hands before anything else. They were, he thought, bigger than any he had ever seen.

  He smiled at the man, shaking his huge right mitt. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Nothing like that. I’m a policeman, from Edinburgh. We’re looking for someone, and we thought that he might just have a hideaway up here on the moors.

  ‘My name’s Martin, by the way. Detective Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘Robert Carr,’ said the ruddy-faced man. ‘I own this land. Thousand bloody acres of it, much of it useless for anything but sheep.’

  ‘Does that extend up there - ’ he pointed westwards - ‘past the reservoir?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Carr, ‘and a damn sight further.’

  ‘There’s a caravan up there, beside the stream.’

  The farmer looked surprised. ‘Is there? Still?’

  ‘You know about it?’

  ‘Yes, but I’d assumed that the fellow would have been gone by now.’

  ‘What fellow?’

  Robert Carr turned towards his big grey stone farmhouse, beckoning Martin to follow. ‘Chap rang the doorbell about a week ago. Said his name was Mr Gilbert. He told me that he was planning to do some walks along the Way, and that he had a caravan as a base. He asked me if he could park it somewhere out of the way.

  ‘He seemed like a decent chap, so I said okay, and gave him directions up the road. Told him he could set up by the stream, and take fresh water from it . . . just as long as he didn’t put anything back in! He offered me cash, but I told him I wasn’t that strapped.’

  ‘Have you seen him about much?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him at all, not since then. I’d thought he’d moved on.’

  Martin looked up at him as they reached the farmhouse’s kitchen door. ‘Can you describe him for me, this Mr Gilbert?’

  Carr ushered him indoors. ‘Mary!’ he bellowed. ‘Tea for two, lass!’ As he led the policeman through to a comfortable study, a small grey woman scurried in the opposite direction, smiling and nodding. ‘Housekeeper,’ he said. ‘I’m a widower.’

  He paused. ‘Gilbert,’ he went on. ‘Description. Right. Same height as you, few years older maybe. Clean-shaven, fair hair, though not as fair as yours. Short and very well cut. Slim build, but not skinny, if you know what I mean. Wearing light cotton trousers and a red teeshirt, with a badge saying Reebok or something. Also, wore sports sandals, without socks.’

  ‘What about his accent?’ asked the policeman.

  For the first time, the farmer looked puzzled. ‘Haven’t a bloody clue,’ he said eventually. ‘You know, I don’t think he had one.’

  ‘No? You sure? Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh?’

  Carr’s eyes narrowed, as he tried to hear again the sound of the man’s voice. But eventually he shook his head. ‘Sorry. Not Welsh or Irish: that’s all I can tell you with any certainty.’

  The study door opened, and the housekeeper appeared with tea and biscuits on a tray. She filled two cups and handed one to each of the men before leaving, still without having uttered a word.

  Martin declined milk and sugar. Actually, he disliked strong tea, but was too polite to say so. ‘What about his car?’ he asked.

  ‘Never saw it,’ his host retorted. ‘He left it at the foot of the road and walked up the drive. I could just see the top of the caravan over the hedge.’

  The tall man beamed. ‘So, could he be your quarry, my Mr Gilbert?’

  ‘No idea,’ Martin lied. ‘But I would like to talk to him.’ He smi
led across at Carr. ‘Can I use your phone? To be on the safe side, I think I’d better call in the Cavalry!’

  33

  Skinner, from the corridor, leaned into the ante-room to Sir James Proud’s office. ‘Is the Chief free?’ he asked Gerry, his civilian secretary. It was just after midday.

  ‘Yes, sir. He’s catching up with his correspondence, that’s all. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you.’ The young man looked efficient and crisp in an immaculately pressed short-sleeved white shirt. ‘That our officers should be half as smart,’ the DCC mused as he opened the door and stepped into Proud Jimmy’s long office.

  The Chief Constable looked up from the papers on his desk. ‘Oh, hello, Bob,’ he said, almost casually. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Skinner grinned. ‘You can give me your version of whatever the hell you said to the Police Board this morning. I’ve just had a call from Roger Mather, the Tory member from East Lothian; he was laughing so much I thought he’d have a stroke.’

  ‘Was he?’ remarked the Chief, blandly. ‘What was the outcome? I left before the end.’

  ‘No vote was taken. Apparently Aggie Maley did some ranting, but didn’t quite get round to proposing the motion.’

  Proud Jimmy nodded. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s good. Best that it ends that way. Best for you and best for the force.’

  ‘Aye,’ laughed Skinner, ‘but according to Roger, most of the ranting was about you. Christ, Jimmy, did you really accuse Maley of being shacked up with a married man?’

  ‘Certainly not. Not directly, at any rate. But what if I had? It’s true.’

  ‘And did you really threaten to rattle all the skeletons in their cupboards if they put the motion to a vote?’

  The old Chief leaned back in his chair beaming, now, with undisguised pleasure. ‘Too bloody right I did, my son. Too bloody right I did. If those bastards thought that they could have a go at you and I’d just sit there and allow it; or worse, if they thought they could just ignore me . . .

  ‘They fucking well know different now, don’t they?’

  Skinner shook his head, still laughing quietly. ‘You know, Chief. When you drop the old avuncular act you drop it with a real vengeance.’

  Gradually, though, his expression grew more serious. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘you’ve made an enemy of Aggie Maley.’

  ‘Nothing new in that. Councillor Maley’s the enemy of everyone in a uniform . . . unless it’s got a red star on it somewhere. I can handle her, and the troublemakers behind her. Hopefully Ms Topham will have a bit more control over them, now that I’ve set her the example.’

  He slapped his palms flat on the desk. ‘You’ll find out for yourself at the next meeting. I’m on holiday, so you’ll have to be there.’

  Skinner scowled. ‘Maybe they’ll have another go.’

  ‘No danger of that,’ said Proud. ‘They’re paper tigers, with a lighted match held at their tails. They might shout the odds for a day or two, but they won’t cross me again . . . or you. No, Bob, you don’t have to worry about the councillors.’

  He paused and frowned. ‘Ministers, though, that’s another matter. I don’t know this new Secretary of State at all. What’s he like?’

  Skinner shrugged his shoulders. ‘I barely know him either,’ he said. ‘I’ve met him twice, to brief him on outstanding matters. On each occasion he just listened, barely said a word.’

  ‘What do we know about him?’

  ‘He’s squeaky clean. He’s a doctor by profession. He was a GP for five years, till he landed his seat in the wilds of Glasgow.’

  ‘Pro-police or anti, would you say?’

  The DCC thought the question over. ‘Pro-himself more than anything else. He wants to climb the tree. I reckon he’d step on his own granny to reach a higher branch.’

  ‘Watch him, then,’ warned Proud.

  He swung round in his chair. ‘Bob,’ he ventured, suddenly tentative. ‘About Pamela. Would it make life easier for you if I gave her a job on my personal staff?’

  Skinner looked at him, surprised. ‘Yes, Jimmy, it would. But it would make life more difficult for you, so I would be against it.

  ‘The thought’s much appreciated,’ he said. ‘But Andy and I are considering Pam’s career options. And soon, I’m going to have to let her in on our thinking.’

  34

  ‘This could be nothing, but there is a chance that it could be a life-or-death situation.’ Detective Chief Superintendent Martin looked round the group of officers gathered in Farmer Carr’s driveway.

  There were twenty of them, all but one of them men, and apart from the Head of CID, Detective Superintendent Mackie, and DCI Rose, they were all in uniform. Most were carrying carbines.

  ‘The caravan’s in the middle of open country,’ he said. ‘The chopper’s just done another overflight, and there’s still no sign of any car. There’s no obvious place close by where one could be hidden either. There’s an old barn a mile away, but that’s been checked.

  ‘Now there is no hard evidence of a connection with the kidnapper. However, Mr Carr’s description of the man’s featureless accent is in line with the tape the boss received. Added to that is the fact that we’ve checked the number plate on the caravan. It’s entirely fictitious.

  ‘Because of all that, I’m not taking any chances.

  ‘The road approach to the van is blocked off already. Now I want a dozen armed men deployed on vantage points around the area, out of sight in the heather, just in case our suspect is in there.

  ‘The best outcome here will be for the child to be in the caravan, alive and alone. I needn’t say what the worst would be, but the most difficult would be if the kidnapper and Mark were both inside.’

  He looked around the officers once more. ‘So how do we approach the caravan? The thing is bang in the middle of open country. If we try to rush it and they’re both inside, chances are we’ll be seen before we’re halfway there.

  ‘There isn’t any way we can sneak up on it safely either.

  There are windows all around. No,’ said Martin, ‘I propose that two people, man and woman, should walk right up to it and knock on the door, as if they’re hikers asking for directions; water; to use the toilet; anything.’

  He looked at Mackie and Rose. ‘Brian, Mags, it’s down to you, I think. My face has been all over the papers, and the telly, since this started. I can’t take the chance that he’ll recognise me. You two okay with that?’

  Mackie nodded. Rose replied, ‘Of course, sir. I’ve got a better plan than just walking up to the door though.’

  ‘Fine, so just make it work. Now you’ll both be armed. If the man does open the door to you, grab him, down him and put a gun to his head until he’s cuffed.’

  The Superintendent looked up at Martin. ‘What if he opens the door with a gun in his hand?’

  ‘If he does that,’ the blond detective replied, ‘then both of you stand aside. I’ll be covering you myself. If he shows a weapon, then he goes down.’ He waited for a few seconds, then nodded to one of the uniformed officers. ‘Inspector Brown, get the marksmen in position.

  ‘Chief Inspector, fill me in on your plan of approach. Let’s get this operation moving.’

  35

  Skinner picked up the nearest of the three telephones on his desk and punched in an extension number.

  ‘Sergeant Masters,’ said the bright voice on the other end.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant. DCC Skinner here. Word from the Board meeting. The motion was not pressed.’

  He heard her gasp with surprise. ‘That’s great. What happened?’

  ‘The Chief read his own version of the Riot Act, and put the fear of God into the enemy. I’ll tell you tonight how he did it. So long for now.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He had barely hung up, when there was a knock on the door. ‘Okay!’ he called. It opened and Alan Royston came into the room. He was holding a mini-cassette.

  ‘I thought you might like to hear
this, sir,’ he began. ‘It’s a tape of the Radio Forth news bulletin at the top of the hour. Councillor Maley’s on it complaining about the Chief bullying the Chair of the Police Board, as she puts it.’

  The DCC grinned. ‘From what I hear, she’s right about that. Does she say anything about me?’

  ‘She says that in the circumstances she didn’t press for a vote, because she knew that the Chief would ignore it anyway. She winds up complaining about his generally threatening behaviour . . . her words again.’ The press officer paused. ‘And she says she still thinks that you should be censured,’ he concluded.

  What about Pam?’

  ‘Her name wasn’t mentioned.’

  ‘How will the written media report her?’ asked Skinner.

  ‘I don’t think that it’ll be too serious, sir. She isn’t saying anything about you that she hasn’t said before. As for the Chief, he’s like Edinburgh’s favourite uncle. No-one can really see him as a bully and a tyrant.’

  The DCC laughed. ‘Apart from the Police Board, that is. So, Alan, are Pam and I yesterday’s news?’

  Royston’s mood changed in an instant. ‘I hope so, sir. But I hear from a source that Salmon’s still hell of a pleased with himself. He’s giving everyone the impression that there’s another exclusive coming out this weekend.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s my job to ask you this. You can’t think of any other potential skeleton, can you?’

  Skinner frowned. ‘What, you mean like Pam being pregnant?’

  Royston reddened.

  ‘Don’t worry, Alan, she’s not. Bad-taste joke, sorry. No Salmon hasn’t been near Sarah . . . nor has anyone else from the Spotlight, or I would know about it. So it won’t be anything involving her. Apart from my relationship with Pam, I can’t think of anything else that Salmon could possibly have on me that would interest his readers.