07 - Skinner's Ghosts

by Quintin Jardine

  Balliol sighed. ‘Well that’s a bastard, ain’t it? I’d do that for you, Bob sir, only I can’t.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because Salmon doesn’t work for me any more. I told my chief editor to fire him as soon as he had sent his information to your Lord guy.’

  ‘What for?’

  Balliol looked at him, genuinely shocked. ‘What for? Because he was caught with narcotics in his possession and in the company of a prostitoot. Either one of those things would have got him fired from any one of my companies. Both together! He’s lucky I didn’t set my Koreans on him.’

  ‘Dammit!’ cursed Skinner. ‘Now you have to turn out to be a closet moralist! And you the owner of Spotlight too.’

  ‘Nothing closet about it, son,’ the American protested. ‘Spotlight exposes the private sins of public figures. How can you have a higher moral tone than that?’

  Despite himself, the policeman laughed. ‘I’ll tell you a story, Mr Morality,’ he said. ‘A couple of years back, we had some really bad trouble at our Edinburgh Festival. Someone was after something very valuable, and went to extraordinary lengths to try to get it.

  ‘They didn’t succeed, and the people who caused all that mayhem were caught. But they were only the hired help. They had a paymaster, and we never did find out who that was.

  ‘Funny, is it not, that when I showed up here today, you really weren’t a hundred per cent sure what I’d come about.’ Skinner leaned over, his face very close to Balliol. ‘Am I ringing any bells here?’

  The American smiled, coolly. ‘Bob, son, I remember reading about that affair. The people who did those things were completely out of control, and they got their just desserts.

  ‘I tell you now, you can dig all the livelong day, and all of tomorrow, and all of the day after that and so on, but you will never tie me to that one. Believe me on this.’

  Skinner stared at him, evenly. ‘Oh I do, Mr Balliol, I do. But digging’s my job, and when I get started I’m like the seven fucking dwarfs, all rolled into one.’

  61

  Arthur Dorward stripped the last of the tape from the underside of the drawer. Hands encased in latex gloves, he lifted the receipt very carefully, and slid it into a large plastic envelope, with a fastening along the top.

  ‘We won’t do any tests here, sir,’ he said to Cheshire, as his sergeant placed the envelope in a document case. ‘I’d much prefer to have my full lab facilities available when we start to look for traces.’

  ‘Fair enough, Inspector,’ said the investigator, ‘but if you don’t mind, Mr Ericson and I will come with you.’

  Dorward’s face set instantly into a frown, as he sensed an implied slur on his integrity. Andy Martin stepped in quickly. ‘That’s all right, Arthur,’ he said. ‘It’s necessary to the enquiry.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The red-haired man nodded but his expression remained frozen.

  ‘Before we go to get on with it,’ he said, ‘could I have a word with you, and with the Chief, in private?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sir James Proud, who was standing near the door of Skinner’s office. ‘Come across the corridor.’ He glanced, unsmiling, at Cheshire and Ericson. ‘Excuse us, gentlemen.’

  He led his two officers out of the room, and into his own suite. The veteran Chief looked confused, angry and very upset. ‘I still don’t believe it, you know.’

  Dorward sighed. ‘Who wants to, sir? But if we find Mr Skinner’s prints on that receipt . . .’

  ‘Then you better hadn’t!’ Proud Jimmy barked.

  The Inspector glanced at Martin, with a look of panic, but the Chief soothed him almost at once. ‘Oh, Arthur, make no mistake, I want you to do your job as honestly and as well as you always do. I just hate all this, that’s all.

  ‘Now, what did you want to see us about? Here, man, sit down, you’re not on report.’

  As the Chief Constable ushered them to chairs, Dorward’s brows knitted. Looking at him, Martin thought that he might be trembling slightly.

  ‘I had a call this morning from a specialist unit which my lab uses on a consultancy basis. They were reporting on a task I’d given them.’ His voice was weak, faltering. ‘I hardly know how to put this, gentlemen,’

  ‘Try,’ said the Chief Superintendent, so tersely that Proud looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Very good, sir. It’s like this, then. Remember, we found a number of hair samples trapped in the plumbing of Mrs McGrath’s new bathroom?’ Martin nodded, almost as a reflex.

  ‘Well, as we thought, we were able to identify four of them very easily. The victim, the child, the nanny and the cleaner: all the people we knew had used the basin. That left us with two hair samples.’ He hesitated again. This time it was the Chief Constable who urged him on with an impatient frown.

  ‘We’ve subjected both of them to intensive analysis. They’re both from men, for a start. Also they have different blood groups. One is perfectly common, almost regulation issue you might say. But the other is unusual.

  ‘It’s not a one-in-a-million type, but it is very unusual. Now as you know, ordinary medical records don’t necessarily include blood type, so we have no way of knowing, other than statistically, how many people have this group, and we certainly can’t identify them all. But where a person has been treated in hospital, there you’ll find a note.’

  Inspector Dorward gulped. ‘Naturally, we checked at once with the hospitals in our Health Board area. They gave us a quick response. Five men with that blood group have been treated in Edinburgh hospitals since the beginning of last year. Two of them are dead. One of them is still in the Western. A fourth is seventy-seven years old. The fifth . . .’ He faltered once more. He glanced at Martin, but he was looking at the floor.

  ‘The fifth,’ he said at last, ‘is Mr Skinner.’

  Silence has a quality and a value of its own. It may allow time for reflection. Between loving partners, it may contain expressions which need not be committed to words. But the silence which enveloped Sir James Proud’s office as Dorward finished his story, was the type which follows the lighting of a fuse.

  Eventually, the explosion came. ‘Sweet suffering Christ!’ boomed Chief Constable Sir James Proud. ‘Are there any more rabbits in this fucking hat?’

  He glowered at Martin, then looked across at Dorward. ‘Thank you, Arthur. Difficult job, telling us that. On you go with Cheshire now. Not a bloody word about this to him, though, not even if he asks you straight out. He does that, refer him to me.’

  Neither of the senior officers stood as the Inspector left the room. ‘Jesus Christ and General Jackson,’ barked the unusually eloquent Proud as the door closed behind him. ‘Bob’s up to his neck in the shit with this corruption thing. Does this make him a murder suspect now?’

  Martin, impassive, shook his head. ‘No it doesn’t, Chief. He was with Pam at the time of the murder.’

  ‘Could he have left the hair when he visited the murder scene?’

  ‘No. He was suited up then, and he didn’t use the basin. He left it there on another occasion.’

  ‘Did you know about this?’ the Chief asked, suddenly, his eyebrows rising. ‘You were awful quiet when Dorward came out with it.’

  The Head of CID nodded. ‘Bob told me about it, yesterday. He said that he was pretty certain that one of those hair samples would turn out to be his.’

  Proud Jimmy’s mouth hung open slightly as he stared at the younger man, with incredulity spreading across his face. ‘Oh, in the name of . . . He wasn’t screwing Leona McGrath as well, was he?’

  In spite of himself, Martin smiled, momentarily, at the Chief’s reaction as the truth dawned. ‘It happened just once, he told me, before the Pam relationship began, but at a time when he and Sarah were having very real difficulty. Ever since the air disaster, when Bob rescued the wee chap, and with all the things that happened afterwards, he always took a special interest in Mark.

  ‘After Leona was elected, he used to look in o
n them on a Friday evening, after work, just to say hello, and check that they were okay. The role that Ali Higgins would have filled, had things not . . .’ He paused, as he and Proud exchanged glances.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘there was one Friday when Bob was dropped off there, rather than calling in his own car. He’d been visiting one of the Midlothian offices, I think, and he’d used a driver. Leona invited him to stay for supper. They had a couple of drinks, he was down, she was pretty low too. After wee Mark went to bed one thing led to another, and so did they.

  ‘Afterwards, Bob told me, they agreed that it would be a one-off, for everyone’s sake. He started to phone her on a Friday, or at the weekend, instead of looking in. He told me that he was never in the house again until I called him on the day of the murder.’

  Andy Martin shook his blond head. ‘Think about it, Chief. One evening Bob’s in that room, in her bed; next time he’s there, he’s looking at her raped, battered, strangled body. He said to me that holding it together was one of the most difficult things he’s ever had to do.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Proud. ‘Why didn’t he tell you about this sooner, though, or tell me for that matter?’

  ‘He didn’t think we needed to know, Chief. It was only when he worked out how Arthur Dorward would conduct that investigation that he realised it would come out anyway.’

  Sir James stood up, and walked to his window. ‘It’s a mess, Andy, a horrible mess. I never thought I’d see a day like this. What d’you think Cheshire will make of this development?’

  ‘If we tell him,’ said Martin. ‘This is part of the McGrath investigation, not his.’

  ‘Careful, son,’ warned the Chief. ‘You have to remember to think like a policeman here, not as a friend. This has to do with Bob; Cheshire’s investigating Bob. We don’t have any choice but to tell him. He won’t think Bob’s implicated in the murder, not for a second, but he’ll be entitled to consider it to be evidence of moral instability.’ The Chief Constable shook his silver head, wearily.

  ‘I mean, if we look at this thing dispassionately, if we just think in terms of Mr X and do our jobs, what have we got? A secret account for a hundred thousand for the benefit of Mr X. His signature lodged with the bank. The deposit receipt found, concealed, in his office. Against all that, what is there? Alex’s point, which you mentioned, about the Bank of England notes, and the fact that the courier may or may not have been Leona McGrath’s killer, who may or may not have a grudge against Mr X. Not the strongest defence I’ve ever encountered.’

  Proud Jimmy sighed. ‘Let’s face it, all we have is the fact that you and I can’t believe that Bob Skinner could possibly be corrupt. Yet take your mind back twelve months, and ask yourself at that time whether it’s possible that in a year, he’ll be split from his wife and son and living with another woman.’

  He looked back at Martin, who looked at the floor and shook his head, slowly.

  ‘Anyway, Andy,’ the Chief Constable went on, ‘none of that is either relevant nor proper. We are senior police officers, with a public duty. If this was anyone else, he’d be charged by now, on the basis of those facts alone.

  ‘See if Cheshire and Ericson are still in the building, will you. We have to tell them what we know.’

  62

  ‘It’s grim, isn’t it?’ asked Alex.

  ‘No, love,’ Andy replied, sincerely. ‘It’s much worse than that.’

  ‘What’ll they do now?’

  ‘They’ll continue to look into every aspect of your dad’s recent investigations to try to find a link with the bank account.’

  ‘Okay, and they won’t find it. So doesn’t that make it a stalemate, at worst?’

  He reached out and turned her face round towards his. ‘Alex, this afternoon Proud Jimmy had to remind me to think like a policeman. Now I’ve got to remind you to think like a lawyer.

  ‘Al Cheshire doesn’t need to find any more. There needn’t be any link to a past enquiry. The Crown can argue that the money was a down payment for future services. Finding that receipt hidden in Bob’s desk was a real killer. They can go back to Lord Archibald any time they like and recommend prosecution.

  ‘Cheshire said he’d let me know when they finally decided to do that. He said he’d keep me informed of anything else they turn up.’

  ‘Anything else! Such as?’

  ‘Who knows, after today?’

  Tears of helplessness sprang into her eyes. ‘Andy, this is a nightmare. I know Pops has had a terrible time over the last few months, but he hasn’t changed that much. This is my dad and he’s still one of the two best men in the world.’

  He drew her to him, and hugged her, as they stood in the window of the Haymarket flat, looking up towards Princes Street, and the Castle. ‘I know, sweetheart. The Chief may tell me to think like a policeman, but I just can’t in this case. I don’t give a bugger about the evidence, Bob didn’t do it, and that’s that.’

  Alex was sobbing now, in his arms. ‘But Andy, what if he’s convicted?’

  ‘Then I’ll leave the force, if necessary, to prove his innocence.’

  ‘You mean because he won’t be able to, where he’ll be?’

  ‘Shh, wee one. Don’t imagine that even for a second.’

  ‘I try not to, but . . . The thing you told me about last night, about Pops and Leona. How much harm can that do?’

  ‘Probably none, in jury terms. I doubt if it would be admissible in evidence. No, its damage is in the way that it makes Cheshire and Ericson see Bob: as being flawed, vulnerable. Open to offers, if you like.’

  He squeezed her shoulders again. ‘Listen, you’re one of his team. You have to keep fear at bay. You’re seeing old Christabel tomorrow. She should be good for morale.’

  ‘I never asked you,’ said Alex. ‘D’you know her?’

  Andy smiled. ‘I don’t know how to answer that. She isn’t an acquaintance, yet I know the old witch all right. She cross-examined me once in the High Court. I was only a baby DC then, in some breaking-and-entering thing. I’d only been involved in interviewing the minor witnesses.

  ‘The Advocate Depute took me through it, a bit casually, maybe, then it was her turn. She stood there over her papers, and by God did she put a spell on me. She started going on about Witness A, Witness B and Witness C, and by the time she was finished I hadn’t a bloody clue who was who.

  ‘Every question she asked, her voice got louder and louder, until she was bawling at me like an old cow across a field. My mother was there, too, to watch me give evidence in the High Court for the first time. So proud she’d been.’ He laughed. ‘Afterwards, outside in the corridor, I’d to stop her from tearing into Christabel, for bullying her boy.

  ‘I tell you, with her on his side, Bob’s got a chance, whatever the evidence that’s been set up against him.’

  63

  The clock on the BMW showed 1.11 a.m. when Skinner pulled into a vacant parking space outside Pam’s converted warehouse. He had expected her to be in bed, asleep, but as he turned his key in the lock and opened the front door, he heard the sound of music, playing softly from the stereo.

  There was no light in the living room, other than that of the city outside, diffused by the muslin drapes, but he could see her silhouette as she sat waiting for him in her armchair, her legs doubled beneath her.

  She turned towards him as he entered the warm room. From the slope of her shoulders and the swell of her breasts, he could tell, even before his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness of the light, that she was naked.

  She rose and came towards him, to wrap herself around him, to press her body against his. ‘I was just beginning to worry,’ she whispered, pulling his head gently down and kissing him.

  ‘It’s been a long day for you. Did you find Balliol? Did he tell you what you wanted to know?’

  He swept her up in his arms and carried her through to the bedroom. ‘The music . . .’ she began.

  ‘Let it play out.’

 
; He laid her down on the bed, and began to undress. ‘Yes, I found Balliol,’ he said quietly. ‘No, he didn’t tell me, because he doesn’t know either. Salmon’s been fired, into the bargain.’

  ‘That’s good news, at least.’

  Skinner shrugged his shoulders as he stripped off his polo shirt, all in a single supple movement. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I hum, what with the golf and the journey. Think I’ll take a shower.’ He stepped out of his slacks and briefs. ‘Salmon was just a commodity to Balliol,’ he went on. ‘Something to be bought and traded in once it was used up.’

  As he headed for the bathroom she rose to follow. ‘Incidentally,’ he called over his shoulder, his voice loaded with irony. ‘Everard sends his regrets for your personal embarrassment. I told him it’d make your day. Over dinner, I told him you were still thinking about suing. Made your mind up yet?’

  She nodded, as she watched him step into the bath and twist the shower control, standing back for a few seconds till it reached the set temperature. ‘I’m not going to. I just don’t need the extra embarrassment it would bring. Even if they settled, the press would still get hold of it.’

  He looked at her as the water began to play on his chest. ‘We’d be talking serious money, here. From what Balliol said, I suspect he’s already told his solicitors to deal if you press it.’

  ‘Still,’ replied Pam. ‘I want to bring no more embarrassment into your life, or rather into our life . . . because that’s the way I want it.’

  Skinner frowned, just as he plunged his head into the spray.

  ‘Bob,’ she went on, over the splashing of the water. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this until morning, but I can’t keep it in. Alex called. She said that Andy had gone out, on purpose, so that she could phone.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘He’s been forbidden to have contact with you on a personal basis.’

  ‘What? Why?’ He stepped back, out of the spray.

  ‘Because Cheshire and Ericson searched your office. They found the receipt, taped underneath one of your desk drawers.’