07 - Skinner's Ghosts

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Good idea. Let’s play it that way. You brief Mario McGuire and have him make the calls.’ He turned to the list once more. ‘Let’s see who’s here, then.’

  He had only just begun to read, and Martin was reaching for his telephone, when it rang. Frowning with momentary annoyance, the Chief Superintendent picked it up.

  ‘Mario,’ he said, surprised. ‘I was just going to call you.’ He fell silent as a look of pure horror crossed his face. ‘Oh no,’ Skinner heard him gasp. ‘Get down there, now,’ he snapped. ‘The boss and I will meet you there.’

  He slammed the phone back into its cradle. ‘Let’s have it then,’ said the DCC quietly.

  ‘See that speculation of ours?’ the younger man replied, hunching his shoulders and clasping his hands together. ‘I think it’s suddenly turned into fact. There’s just been a shooting in Abercromby Place. The victim is a Mrs Anderson.

  ‘Mario thinks that it’s the Secretary of State’s wife.’

  54

  Abercromby Place is little more than a connecting road, linking Dublin Street and Dundas Street. With few private residences, and much of its town-house office space vacant and available for let, its main value to the city is as a place for shoppers to park.

  When Martin and Skinner swung out of Dundas Street, they found the road partially blocked by a police car slewed sideways. The two constables on duty recognised the detectives at once, and waved them through, although one sneaked a second, surprised glance at the suspended DCC.

  They drove on but had gone barely any distance before, at a point where the road curved, they came upon two more police cars, an ambulance, and a knot of half a dozen uniformed officers, with men in plain clothes mingled among them.

  As they jumped from the car, Mario McGuire saw them and waved them through the crowd.

  ‘Are all these bystanders necessary?’ Skinner barked.

  ‘I’m waiting for someone senior from Division to take command, sir,’ said McGuire.

  ‘Will we do, d’you think?’ said Martin, curtly. ‘Senior officer forward,’ he called. A uniformed inspector stepped up. ‘Get this lot organised and searching. I want spent cartridge cases, and anything else that’s lying around.’

  He turned back to McGuire. ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘One. She’s in the ambulance, being looked after. She was just coming out of her flat in Albany Street when she heard a bang. She didn’t react at first, but finally she looked along here and saw something on the ground. She ran along, and realised what it was. By that time the manager of the pub on the corner had appeared too. He called us.’

  ‘How did you get involved?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘By luck, Inspector Good was in the first car to respond. He looked in the woman’s handbag, found this, and called me straight away.’ McGuire handed Skinner a laminated photo-pass, showing a blonde woman in her thirties. It bore a House of Commons crest, and a name: Mrs Catherine Anderson.

  ‘Oh shit,’ whispered the DCC. ‘It’s Bruce’s wife all right.

  ‘Let’s have a look at her, then,’ he said, resignedly.

  McGuire led them across the street, towards a car parked nose-in, in the only occupied bay in a group of six. The body lay on the ground beside the driver’s door, covered in a grey blanket, emblazoned with the crest of the Scottish Ambulance Service.

  Skinner knelt down and lifted it up by a corner, carefully. Two eyes stared out at him, vacantly, looking not in the slightest surprised, just very dead. There was a big ragged hole in the woman’s forehead, just at the hairline, from which blood and grey brain matter still oozed. He dropped the blanket quickly, fighting for control of his stomach.

  ‘Shot in the back of the head?’ he asked McGuire.

  ‘Yes sir. You can see the exit wound. It looks like he just stepped up behind her and . . . Bang! Poor woman never knew what hit her.’ He paused. ‘Eh, who’s going to tell Mr Anderson?’

  ‘I will,’ Skinner answered, ‘suspended or not. But we’ll need to find him first.’ He reached into a pocket of his jacket, to produce a small book. ‘I’ve got his private secretary’s home number here.’ He began to search again, for his mobile this time, but was interrupted.

  ‘Excuse me, sirs,’ said a nervous woman constable, appearing on the edge of the group, ‘but there’s someone here who says he might know the victim.’

  The three detectives looked across, to see a middle-aged man, dressed in a grey shirt, grey trousers and with greying hair and beard, standing with another officer. Martin and Skinner walked across towards him.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ the Chief Superintendent began. ‘First, can you tell us who you are?’

  The man, who was also grey-faced, nodded quickly. ‘I’m Charlie Kettles, I have the hair studio on the corner. Look, when I saw the car and heard what had happened . . . It’s not Mrs Anderson, is it?’

  ‘D’you know her?’ Skinner asked.

  Kettles nodded, anxiously. ‘She’s a customer. She has been ever since her husband became Secretary of State and they took over Bute House. She comes at nine thirty every Saturday morning, for a tidy up usually. She left my place not long ago.’

  ‘I see.’ The DCC nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is Mrs Anderson.’

  ‘God, that’s terrible,’ said the hairdresser, his eyes glistening suddenly. ‘What about Tanya?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Martin asked, yet knew the answer. A sinking feeling gathered in his stomach.

  ‘Her daughter. Tanya. She’s eight. Every second Saturday, she comes with her mother. She was here today. She’s not . . . as well, is she?’

  ‘No,’ Skinner replied. ‘There’s no sign of Tanya. Thanks, Mr Kettles. Someone will take a statement from you in due course. If you’ll excuse us, though, for now.’

  ‘Of course.’ The man nodded, turned and headed back to his studio, head bowed, as the DCC took out his mobile phone once more.

  He punched in a number. After a few seconds, the Secretary of State’s private secretary answered. ‘247- 348 . . .’

  ‘David. It’s Bob Skinner here. Where’s your boss?’

  ‘Bute House. Why?’ Hewlett sounded alarmed.

  ‘Never mind why. Just listen. How long will he be there?’

  ‘Quite a while. He’s expecting the Permanent Under Secretary of State and me for a working lunch.’

  ‘Okay. You contact the Permanent Secretary and cancel him. Then get along there yourself. Andy Martin and I will be there before you. This is a real emergency, so no questions for now, Dave. Just do it.’

  55

  ‘We spoke to the nearest thing we have to a witness before we came along here. When we pressed her, she said she thought she saw a silver or a grey car heading away from the scene, towards Dundas Street.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked the Secretary of State for Scotland, ashen-faced.

  ‘We believe that the man who killed Leona McGrath, and took Mark, drives a grey car,’ said Andy Martin.

  ‘I see.’ Dr Bruce Anderson nodded. He was standing by the tall fireplace at one end of the long, formal drawing room of Bute House, his official residence in Charlotte Square. He started to walk to the window, but Bob Skinner reached out and caught his arm.

  ‘Don’t do that. You wouldn’t want to be photographed just now.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Anderson. ‘You’re right. Wouldn’t do, would it?’ His cheeks were still wet with tears as he looked up at Skinner. ‘I was surprised to see you here, Bob, but now, I’m glad of your presence; yours and Mr Martin’s. Look, let’s go upstairs and have a seat somewhere less grand, so we can talk about this.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that yet, sir,’ said the DCC. ‘I mean to say, you’ve just lost your wife.’

  ‘Yes, and my child has just been kidnapped. I can’t do anything for the one, but if I can help you find the other . . . Come on.’ He turned to Hewlett who was standing close by. ‘David, you’d better find a phone and sort something out with the Information Office.’

&n
bsp; ‘The Director’s on his way, sir.’

  ‘Good. You wait here for him, then. I suppose you should get together with the police Press Officer, so that everyone knows everything that’s being said.’

  He led the way out of the public room and up a narrow staircase, to the floor which had been fitted out as private family quarters in the fine old Georgian House.

  ‘Why did you stay here every Saturday, when your main home and your constituency are in the West?’ Martin asked, as the three men entered another sitting room, much smaller than the first, but still finely furnished.

  Anderson smiled, as the three men sat. ‘Catherine liked Edinburgh. She was like a kid with a new toy when she found that this place came with the job. So every Friday evening, when she had finished teaching and I had done my constituency surgery, she insisted that the three of us pack the car and come through here.

  ‘Normally we stay till Sunday evening. The girls have to be back in Glasgow for school on Monday.’ His eyes moistened again, as his out-of-date tenses caught up with him.

  ‘Catherine found the hairdresser, Charlie What’s-His-Name, through the wife of one of my colleagues. She was very particular about her hair, and about Tanya’s.’ He broke off. ‘Look, Bob, when can I see her?’

  ‘As soon as possible. Before the post-mortem, certainly.’

  ‘Where was she shot?’ the bereaved husband asked, quietly.

  ‘Back of the head, once from close range,’ Skinner replied. ‘She’d have died in an instant.’ He touched his forehead. ‘The bullet exited here. It was a medium-calibre weapon; from the cartridge case we found, I’d say nine-millimetre. ’

  ‘Christ, and I thought we’d banned all handguns,’ Anderson moaned.

  ‘You might as well have banned the wheel. In my experience, murderers don’t mind using illegal firearms. The fact is they nearly always do. With one or two notorious exceptions, when a person used his own, registered firearm to kill, it was nearly always a suicide.’

  He smiled, grimly, for a second. ‘See those blokes you’ve brought up to investigate me? In their home city you can buy a gun in a pub for a few quid. There are so many shootings down there, they barely make the papers now, unless they’re fatal. Eastern European weapons usually. Half the Red fucking Army seems to have sold its weapons on the Black Market. Nine-millimetre pistols, many of them are, and they change hands a lot.

  ‘When we find the bullet that killed your wife, Minister, it will tell us whether the gun has been used in an earlier crime, but it’s highly unlikely that it will tell us who pulled the trigger.’

  Anderson nodded. ‘I understand.’ He sighed. ‘To think that I turned down the chance of Protection Squad cover. What a bloody self-confident fool I am.’

  ‘No,’ said Skinner, quickly and emphatically. ‘Don’t torture yourself with that one, sir. They’d have been with you, not your wife and daughter.’

  ‘Okay. That’s some comfort. Now what can we do to catch this man?’

  ‘We’ve already blocked every main road out of Edinburgh, ’ Martin replied. ‘However, he may have gone to ground in the city itself. Alternatively, he had plenty of time to make it out of the city before our officers were in place.

  ‘To be frank, sir, I don’t see this man simply driving up to a roadblock. He’s too thorough.’ The Head of CID paused. ‘How long had your wife been going to Charlie Kettles on Saturday mornings?’

  ‘About three months.’

  ‘And taking Tanya every second week. The man must have been watching her for all of that time, establishing a pattern, planning. He must have watched Leona McGrath in the same way.’

  Anderson twisted in his chair, to look at Skinner. ‘Need this be the same man? Couldn’t it be a copy-cat?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Skinner, ‘it could. But it isn’t. It’s the same man. I received a tape this morning.’ He looked round, and saw a midi hi-fi unit on a sideboard behind the couch. ‘Listen to this.’

  He took the copy of Mark McGrath’s message from his pocket, slid it into the tape player, and switched it on. Anderson listened in silence, as the child’s voice filled the room. Gradually, his face twisted in anguish, and he began to sob.

  The two detectives waited, as he composed himself once more. ‘Sorry, gentlemen,’ he said at last. ‘It’s all just too much.’

  ‘I know,’ Skinner whispered. ‘My daughter was kidnapped once.’

  The Secretary of State looked up at him. ‘Did you catch the man who did it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the detective, even more softly than before. ‘I caught him. He won’t do it again. I’ll catch this bastard too, and neither will he.’

  Anderson smiled, weakly. ‘I’d better lift your suspension, then, pending the outcome of the enquiry.’

  ‘No. Don’t do that. I don’t know for sure, but it may be better if this man thinks I’m out of the action.’

  ‘Whatever you want. So how will you catch him, Bob?’

  ‘I’ll wait. The next move is his. When he makes it, I’ll be ready for him if he makes the slightest mistake. Sooner or later, he will.’

  Anderson sighed. ‘Oh my God, but I hope so.’ He looked at the two detectives, numbly, from one to the other. ‘Is this political, gentlemen?’ he asked, bewildered

  ‘It has to be,’ Skinner replied. ‘Two MPs’ children snatched. A Member and a Member’s wife murdered. And yet it could be personal too in some way. The man chooses to contact me. There’s a link between Leona and me, and between Mark and me. There’s a link between you and me, Dr Anderson. So it could be aimed at me, somehow. Or it could be all about money.

  ‘We’ll know soon, when he contacts us again. For now Andy and I will just have to do the thing we’re worst at.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The waiting.’ He rose from his seat. ‘We’ll send a car for you, Dr Anderson, when your wife is ready for a visit. It’ll be within the hour, I hope. We’ll use the back entrance for your privacy.’

  ‘Also,’ said Martin, ‘I’ll put armed officers in position, front and back.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ replied the Secretary of State. ‘The horse has bolted.’

  ‘Still.’ The Head of CID followed Skinner out of the room, all the way down the stairs to the back door at the sub-basement level.

  ‘Here,’ he began, at last, as they slid into the Mondeo, ‘upstairs, when you were talking about motives, you said something odd: about links.’

  ‘I know,’ said Skinner. ‘I should have told you before, and I better had now. Because I’m pretty certain you’re going to find out anyway.’

  56

  It was the most tumultuous press conference that Martin had ever attended, let alone chaired. The murder of a cabinet minister’s wife, and the kidnap of a second politician’s child.

  For the first time in his life, he had felt that the media were out to get him, and although he had been as careful as he could not to allow words to be put into his mouth, he knew that he would be lucky if only a few newspapers questioned his competence and hinted that Skinner’s suspension was compromising the investigation.

  The DCC was gone when he returned to his office, en route for the airport to pick up Pam from her return flight. Martin sat with his head in his hands, feeling helpless, as the first radio news bulletins were already beginning to say, and very alone.

  He was grateful for the sound of the telephone, even though he did not have the slightest expectation that it might be bringing him good news.

  He snatched the hand-set out of its cradle. ‘Martin,’ he said, eagerly.

  ‘Hi, Andy. I like it when someone’s pleased to hear from me.’

  Such was the clarity of his voice that the man on the line might have been in the next room, but the Chief Superintendent knew that he was calling from Washington. ‘Hi Joe,’ he responded. ‘Yes it is good to hear from you. I feel like I’m running out of friends, and luck, just at the moment.’

  ‘Jesus, kid,’ drawled the American.
‘What size of dog’s crapped on your lawn?’

  Quickly, Martin told him of the morning’s atrocity, and of the earlier surprise in Skinner’s morning mail. ‘I see what you mean,’ said Joe Doherty, tersely. ‘I would say that you are dealing with a real Lulu there. Yes indeed, a real peach. I take it you’ve looked for a terrorist connection.’

  ‘Joe, we’ve looked for every sort of connection, and come up blank. Like Bob says, all we can do now is wait for the guy to make his next move, and hope that he makes a mistake. You never know, maybe we will get something from Mark’s message tape.’

  ‘Yeah, you never know. But just don’t hope for anything; then at least you won’t be disappointed.’

  There was a pause: as Doherty drew on a cigarette, Martin guessed. ‘How’s Bob bearing up?’ he asked at last.

  ‘He’s like a grizzly with a hangover . . . and piles. After all that’s happened in his life over the last year or so, he really did not need this nonsense from Spotlight. Did you appreciate that Pam, who called you yesterday, is the new woman?’

  ‘I put two and two together. Bob called me, beginning of last week, and asked me to make sure that Sarah wasn’t bothered. He told me then about his . . . domestic alterations, let’s say.

  ‘What’s gone wrong with him, Andy?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joe. Truth is, I don’t think he does either. Did you speak to Sarah?’

  ‘Yeah, I called her.’

  ‘How did she sound?’

  ‘Hurt and confused. Just like Bob, really.’

  ‘Ahh!’ cried Martin, despairing. ‘I just feel helpless. And for these corruption allegations to come on top of it all.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Doherty. ‘Ms Masters told me about that. What the fuck is that about?’

  ‘Someone’s set him up. He has people working on it, Alex among them. I hope she’ll bring back some good news tonight. We sure as hell need some.’

  He forced himself to sound more upbeat. ‘Anyway, why this call at the US Government’s expense? Have you got anything for me on this miserable rag that’s crucifying my friend?’