07 - Skinner's Ghosts

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Later, an aunt died, and left him a lot of money, the bulk of it in property in Perthshire, which he sold. He only needed part of that to buy the Spanish villa, which we use as a family. The rest was invested.

  ‘After that, when my grandparents died, he and I were the only beneficiaries. Oh yes, and the Edinburgh property is jointly owned by Pops and Sarah, my stepmother. There’s a small loan on that, because with mortgage tax relief it was cheaper to borrow than take it all from invested capital.’

  Now it was her turn to stare hard at her inquisitor. ‘Mr Cheshire, we’re all here looking into an allegation by persons unknown that my dad’s taken a bung of a hundred grand. If all you’ve done so far is check up on his assets, without checking how he came by them, you’re pretty shoddy detectives. No wonder the crime rate in Manchester is so high.

  ‘The fact is, gentlemen, my dad doesn’t need a hundred thousand. He has a hundred thousand, and quite a lot more.’

  Cheshire’s glare had softened, but he was still unsmiling. ‘Very good, Miss Skinner. I hear what you say, and if you thought I was trying to bully you, I apologise. The fact is, we know all of your father’s financial history. He’s been vetted several times in the course of his career.

  ‘But I have to tell you, I don’t care how comfortably off he is. I have never met anyone - even my own dear wife,’ he interjected, with his first flicker of humour - ‘who couldn’t use another hundred thousand.

  ‘I once knew a man; neighbour of mine,’ said the policeman, in his rumbling northern accent, ‘gynaecologist, he was, middle-aged, private practice, very successful, who was arrested for nicking a pound box of Cadbury’s Roses from W.H. Smith. His defence was that he was experiencing the male menopause. The prosecution case, which the Bench accepted, was that he was just a thieving bastard.’

  As he finished, the car drew to a halt. They had barely noticed their journey through St Peter Port, the island’s tiny capital; now they found themselves in what seemed to be a side street, outside a three-storey, white-painted building. As they emerged from the car they saw a single entrance door, with three brass plates and three door buzzers beside it.

  JZG Bank was the middle of the three. Cheshire stepped forward and pressed the button. Almost immediately a tinny voice sounded through the small speaker grille which surrounded it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Three visitors for Mr Medine.’

  ‘I am he. Please enter and come up one flight of stairs.’ There was a loud buzz, at which the policeman pushed the door open.

  Medine was waiting for them on the first landing. He was a small, thin man, aged around sixty, with a sallow wind-burned face and round, rimless spectacles of the type worn almost invariably by Gestapo officers in movies. Alex wondered, fleetingly, if they might be a relic of the days of the German occupation of the island.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said the little man, after Cheshire had made the introductions. ‘There is no-one else in the building. It is discreet.’ He was dressed, not in a business suit, but in the casual shirt, baggy cardigan and slacks, which Alex guessed he might wear for his weekend gardening. She had been expecting to hear French overtones in the Channel Islander’s accent, but in fact there were none. If anything, there was the merest touch of Home Counties South.

  He led them into a small office suite, which looked not at all like a bank. He caught Alex’s expression and smiled. ‘This is not a place where people come to withdraw fifty pounds, or negotiate an overdraft, for all that it says on the sign by the door. Here we handle fairly large amounts of money for people who require offshore banking services.

  ‘Normally they’re ex-pat workers, or people who’ve retired abroad - to Spain, France or Italy, say - but who prefer to keep their main money in the British Isles.’

  ‘For tax reasons?’ Alex enquired.

  ‘That’s their business. We don’t declare interest paid to the Exchequer in London, Paris, Madrid or anywhere else.’

  He showed them through a large office into a smaller conference room with a window which looked across the street, to an almost identical, white building as the one in which they took their seats.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us,’ Cheshire began, brusque, formal and forbidding once more. ‘This is an informal meeting, but Mr Ericson and Miss Skinner may take notes. Miss Skinner is here as an observer, but she may ask a few questions at the conclusion of our discussion, if she feels it necessary.’

  Medine nodded, straight-faced. ‘I have taken instructions from my head office in Germany. I am cleared to co-operate with you as far as I can.’ He rose from the round table at which they sat, and walked round behind Alex to a small filing cabinet.

  ‘You wish to discuss our account number UK 73461, I understand from the call which I received yesterday?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Medine took a small folder from the cabinet and resumed his seat at the table. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said, ‘all the detail of the instruction. The account details are on computer. I can get you an exact balance, if you wish. It will show the sum deposited, plus interest to date. There have been no withdrawals.

  ‘That would have been unlikely anyway at this stage,’ he added.

  ‘Why?’ asked Ericson.

  ‘Because the terms of the account specify ninety days’ notice of withdrawal. This account was set up only a few months ago.’

  ‘What’s the rate of interest?’

  ‘Currently nine-point-seven-five per cent.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ said the Chief Superintendent.

  ‘That’s why we are popular with our customer base. We give that little bit extra for larger deposits. Our minimum is fifty thousand, sterling.’

  Cheshire leaned forward. ‘Let’s get a bit more specific about your customer base, shall we. What types might it include?’

  The little manager’s eyes narrowed. He pinched his nose, below the cross-piece of his spectacles. ‘Most of them are corporate. Our private clients include engineers working abroad, I suppose; retired people, as I said; soldiers.’

  ‘Soldiers? Do they earn that much?’ Cheshire looked at him quizzically.

  ‘There are other armies beside ours, sir.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘You mean mercenaries.’

  ‘Maybe. In my experience, most prefer to be called military advisers.’

  ‘Are all your accounts numbered?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Medine. ‘that is simply a service which JZG offers. Most of our accounts are held in the name of the depositor.’

  ‘What about access?’

  ‘Always we require a signature, and proof of identity. We don’t go in for codewords or half banknotes or any of that nonsense.’ He smiled, thinly.

  ‘Yet if someone comes to you asking for a numbered account, what might that mean?’

  The manager leaned back in his chair. ‘Who am I to know?’ he countered. ‘You tell me of a private bank which asks a customer to provide references when he comes to it with a large sum of money to deposit.

  ‘If I am asked for a numbered account, I provide it without question.’

  ‘And that was how it was in the case of UK 73461?’ Cheshire asked.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So how was that account set up?’

  Medine opened his folder. ‘Around five months ago,’ he said, ‘a man arrived with a parcel. He didn’t give a name, and we didn’t ask. He said simply that he was a courier engaged by a third party, and he asked to see the manager.

  ‘I interviewed him, in this same room, and he gave me the parcel. It contained one hundred thousand pounds in sterling, in Bank of England notes of various denominations, and ages.

  ‘With it, there was a covering letter. I have it here.’ He took a sheet of paper from the folder, and handed it to Cheshire. ‘It instructed me to place the contents of the parcel in a numbered account for the benefit of Robert Morgan Skinner, born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, on April 7, 1951. Withdrawals from the account could be made only by
Mr Skinner, on his signature and on production of a means of secondary identification.

  ‘The letter asked me also to provide acceptable confirmation that the account had been opened. It was unsigned.’

  Cheshire read the document which Medine had handed over: once, twice, a third time. Then he passed it across to Alex. She picked it up and stared at it, peering closely. The letter had been typed, not on a word-processor, for printing, but directly on a manual typewriter. It was on a plain sheet of cream A4 paper.

  ‘ “This is an instruction . . .”,’ she began to read aloud. It was exactly as the manager had said. Her father’s name, his birthplace, his date of birth. ‘But anyone could have gone to the General Register Office and looked that up,’ she protested, her self-control beginning to slip for the first time that day.

  Cheshire raised a hand to silence her, glancing across. For the first time, his eyes were sympathetic, rather than unkind. ‘Shh,’ he said, ‘I know that.’

  He looked back at the banker. ‘What else, Mr Medine? How was the depositor to know that the courier hadn’t just legged it with the cash?’

  ‘He asked for, and I gave him, a signed, numbered receipt from this bank. It bore the number of the account. It’s part of our security requirement that account holders must quote the number of their receipt as well as the title of the account when requesting withdrawals.’ He took a copy of the slip from the file, and handed it over.

  ‘Of course I have no idea what the courier did with the receipt, but he did ask me also to telephone a UK telephone number and leave a message on its answering machine, saying simply, “Consignment received” and giving the date. This I did.’

  ‘Do you recall the number?’

  Medine nodded. ‘I wrote it down. Here it is.’ He took a slip of paper from the folder and passed it to the policeman. Before he slid it across to Alex, she had seen the first numbers, 0162. Even so, when she saw her father’s unlisted Gullane number, a shaft of cold fear swept through her. She wondered if she had gone pale, and if Cheshire had noticed, until she realised that if the investigators had checked his financial details they would also know all of his telephone numbers.

  ‘And finally,’ asked Cheshire. ‘The signature. How was that to be verified?’

  ‘Easily,’ the banker answered. ‘This was in the parcel.’

  He took the last document from the folder and handed it to the investigator. Cheshire looked at it, his face set once more, and passed it to Alex. It was another sheet of plain A4 paper, cream-coloured. She read, aloud once more. ‘ “This is a sample of Mr Skinner’s signature. He will also identify himself by producing his police warrant card, issued by his office in Fettes Avenue, Edinburgh”.’

  Below the typescript, there it was, in a clear hand which she knew so well. ‘Robert M. Skinner.’

  ‘It’s all right, Alex,’ said Cheshire, speaking suddenly almost like a kindly uncle. ‘I’m not going to ask you.’ She found his sympathy so much harder to take than his aggression.

  ‘Are there any questions you’d like to ask?’ he offered.

  She pulled herself together and nodded.

  ‘The money in the package, Mr Medine. You said that it was in Bank of England notes?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘A mix of denominations and ages?’

  ‘Yes, nearly all twenties and fifties. I remember, because I had to authenticate every one of them. Most were in sequence, but not continuous. Not new, but most, if not all, unused. It was as if the whole sum had been gathered together piece by piece, over a period of time.’

  ‘And all of them were Bank of England notes?’

  The banker looked at her, puzzled. ‘What else? As I said, the deposit was in sterling.’

  ‘Mmm, okay. Can we go back to the courier now?’ Alex asked. ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Let me think.’ Medine knitted his brow in concentration. ‘He was tall,’ he said at last, hesitantly, ‘and slim-built, wearing a grey suit. He had fairish hair, as I recall. I would say that he was in his thirties.’

  ‘How about his accent?’

  ‘I’m bad on UK accents. I can barely tell a Jock from a Geordie. This chap just sounded bland; that’s all I can say about him. He didn’t give me any regional impression.’

  On Alex’s left, Chief Superintendent Ericson opened his briefcase, reached into it and, after fumbling with his papers, took out a single sheet which he handed, face-down, to the bank manager. ‘Did he look anything like this?’ he asked.

  As Medine turned the paper over, Alex started in surprise. It was the photofit of Mark McGrath’s kidnapper. The Channel Islander nodded at once. ‘Yes. This could have been him. I’m not saying that it was, mind you, but in terms of general appearance, yes, that’s in the ball-park.

  ‘Apart from the glasses, of course.’ He looked up. ‘Oh. Didn’t I say? The man wore glasses.’

  52

  ‘So you do have open minds after all?’

  Alex smiled at Ericson as the car moved off. ‘Course we do,’ said Cheshire. ‘It’s unthinkable to me that another deputy chief would take a bung from anyone, but in this task, you have to entertain the unthinkable.

  ‘You have, as your dad would be the first to tell you, to look at all the possibilities. Having studied everything about DCC Skinner, we just happened to have that photofit with us. When Medine gave us that description, Ronnie sparked on it right away. Incidentally, I was going to ask him to describe the courier, before we left.

  ‘Pity about those bloody glasses, though?’

  He smiled at Alex, suddenly. ‘All right young lady. We’ve given you something, now pay us back. Why were you going on about that money?’

  She hesitated, but finally grinned. ‘Okay, guv,’ she said, ‘I’ll cough. Those Bank of England notes. If this so-called bung originated from Scotland . . . and where else would it? . . . and it was put together over a period, like Medine said, not in a single wodge of cash, it’s very unlikely, to say the least, that there wouldn’t be any Scottish banknotes in it. Most of the notes in circulation in Scotland are issued by our own clearing banks, the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank, and the Clydesdale. Medine obviously doesn’t know that.’ She looked from Cheshire to Ericson. ‘Neither, equally obviously, do you.’

  ‘Touché, sir,’ said the Chief Superintendent to his boss. ‘Nice one, Alex.’

  The Deputy Chief nodded. ‘Yes, it is. But I won’t lie to you, lass. Things still look dodgy for your dad. First and foremost, there’s his signature. We’ll have to check that, but I could tell when you looked at it that you thought it was genuine.’

  ‘It took me by surprise,’ she protested, ‘but it could still be a good forgery. It must be.’

  ‘Time, and the calligraphy experts will tell. Of course, if it is a phoney, then the whole allegation is a fit-up. But if not . . .’ He gave her a meaningful look.

  ‘Anyway, on top of that there’s the confirmatory telephone call, to his unlisted number in Gullane. And that receipt: I’ve got a feeling in my water that it has to be kicking around somewhere.

  ‘You going to let us look for it, or do I get a warrant?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll ask Pops, but he’ll say yes. As for the telephone number, the McGrath kidnapper has that.’

  Cheshire looked at her in genuine surprise. ‘My fiancé lets me in on some secrets, you know,’ she said. ‘The first contact from the man was in a telephone call to my dad’s unlisted number in Gullane. Andy’s people are still tearing British Telecom apart looking for the person who sold it to him.’

  The Deputy Chief frowned. ‘If I was in my nasty bastard mode,’ he muttered, ‘I’d say that maybe your dad gave it to him. That maybe the link between them’s stronger than we think. That maybe this man’s after a king-size ransom, and that your dad’s got reasons for making sure he gets it. Maybe the hundred grand was a down-payment from him.’

  He saw a look of horror cross her face. ‘Of course, that’s just my nasty basta
rd imagination running away with me,’ he said, ‘but he is facing a divorce petition from your stepmother, and since his assets are mostly in property or long-term investments, maybe another nasty bastard, in the Crown Office, say, might think that he did need some cash in a hurry . . . maybe a bit more than a hundred grand.’

  He stopped. ‘That’s what I really hate about this job,’ he said, gloomily. ‘It’s not just about looking under stones. It’s about really rummaging around under ’em, for the most horrible things you could ever imagine.’

  53

  ‘How are we doing, Andy?’ asked Skinner from the door of Martin’s office. He had just returned from Edinburgh Airport, where he had put Pam on the 11 a.m. flight to London, bound for MI5 with the original of Mark McGrath’s horrific taped message.

  ‘Just about there. Strathclyde called back a couple of minutes ago. I’m only waiting for Fife.’

  ‘The buggers over there are probably all on the golf course,’ the DCC growled. But he had barely spoken before the telephone rang.

  ‘None?’ he heard Martin say. ‘You sure? Yes, okay, that’s fine. Thanks.’

  He hung up and looked across at Skinner. ‘They only have five MPs. One’s a bachelor, another’s newly married, a third’s getting on a bit, and so on; end result zero. So no additions to my list.’

  He picked up a sheet of paper from the desk. ‘Seventy-two Scottish MPs, and only nine of them with children under twelve. Twenty-five others have teenagers, but let’s discount them, for now at least.’

  He handed the list to Skinner, who barely glanced at it. ‘How do we go about this?’ he mused. ‘It’s pure speculation on our part. If we act on it, and give them all protection, it’ll cost a fortune, and probably start a parliamentary panic.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Martin, ‘but given the threat on that tape, it’s speculation we can’t ignore. Look, why don’t we ask Special Branch offices to make quiet contact with all the names on our list, to advise them to keep their kids under constant observation, and to offer them protection if they want it?’