Skinner's Ordeal

by Quintin Jardine

  He turned and with a warm smile, leaned across to O'Malley, and shook his hand. 'Thanks Kevin, for the last three days, and for draining the mental abscess.

  `How do you feel now?'

  `Cleansed. The toothache's gone for good. All of a sudden I feel physically stronger too.

  I'm almost ready for action again. Know what? I'm looking forward first of all to a natural sleep, then to getting out of this place.'

  ‘Woah, hoss,' said Sarah. 'This is your physician speaking. She, and Braeburn your surgeon, are telling you that you have another week in here.'

  He glowered at her, in real annoyance. 'Well, if I have, I'm buggered if I'll spend it reading magazines. I want to see Andy tonight for an update on the crash investigation . . . AND I want him to set up a team meeting in here for tomorrow. We've got to get a result from this investigation, and fast.'

  She smiled. 'How do you know Andy hasn't made an arrest?'

  `Come on, if he had, not even you could have stopped him from telling me all about it.'

  'Ah, but you forget. He's not just dealing with your wife now. He's dealing with a potential mother-in-law. In fact, he hasn't just made one arrest. He and Jimmy have made four.'

  Skinner's eyes widened in astonishment.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  ‘You don't know how good it is to see you looking yourself again,' said Proud Jimmy. 'I don't mind telling you now that it scared me silly, looking at you lying there with that bloody great tube down your throat.'

  Ìt didn't exactly fill me with a hell of a lot of confidence,' said Skinner wryly.

  `But you were out of it all, weren't you?'

  Àye, most of the time, but once or twice I was aware of it. The memories are all coming back now, and one of them is of thinking, "Here, Skinner, this is not too clever." Still, as you say, it's all okay now, or it will be once my lung and my battered ribs heal up.'

  For the first time in a week, Skinner was dressed in a shirt and slacks, and seated comfortably in a chair. On the television in the corner, the cronies of Last of the Summer Wine wandered soundlessly through their dales.

  `Can you remember the attack?' the Chief asked him.

  He flashed his silver-haired friend a slightly scathing look. Òh aye, only too well! Those three clowns!'

  The one you hit in the throat; he's still in Ward 23, you know.'

  ‘life's a bitch, isn't it?' said Skinner. The girl isn't still here, though, is she?'

  No. She's on remand on an attempted murder charge.'

  ‘Mmmm. I can't make up my mind whether she was more scared than vicious. I'm sorry I broke her wrist, whichever it was.'

  `Listen man, if you hadn't, she'd have stuck that knife in you again, and we'd have been burying you on Friday, as well as young McGrath.'

  Àye, I know, but . . . D'you not think we could drop the charge to serious assault?'

  Sir James looked at him sternly. 'Absolutely no way. Whether it was premeditated or not, she was carrying a blade. You know the policy on that. She's going down for attempt to murder, and the Advocate Depute is going to ask for an exemplary sentence. That's cut and dried.' The frown was replaced by an amused chuckle. 'From the sound of you, this experience seems to have changed you. Is it going to be Gentle Bob, instead of the Big Man, from now on?'

  `Hah’ Skinner snorted. 'I've come out of this with a new set of objectives, Jimmy. And when I achieve them, you'll see just how soft I've become.' He stared grimly at the wall for a few seconds.

  `Talking about McGrath,' he said suddenly, 'Ali Higgins told me about Leona surprising them all, and putting herself up for the seat. She's a great wee woman, that one. Edinburgh Dean will do better with her than it did with her late husband, that's for sure!'

  Now, now Bob of the dead, and all that.'

  `You mean it ill becomes me in the circumstances?'

  Proud Jimmy laughed heartily. 'Something like that, I suppose. Here,' he said, 'I'll tell you of someone who didn't share your enthusiasm for the Widow McGrath as a candidate: her agent, Marshall Elliot.'

  Èh?'

  `Yes. I was speaking at the funeral to Dame Janet, the Tories' head cheerleader in Scotland. She told me that Elliot had been spitting blood about it to her, on an Agent to Agent basis, last Friday afternoon before her adoption meeting. He said that he felt she was doing it from the wrong motives.'

  Ànd what did Janet feel?'

  The Chief chuckled again. 'She said that deep down, every Agent feels that he can do it better than the candidate, or the MP. She said also that Elliot is the most fanatical Tory she's ever met, and that he'd been going out of his mind with worry because he was convinced that Roland McGrath didn't have the stuff to hold the seat at the next election.'

  `No matter,' said Skinner. 'From what I've seen of Marsh Elliot, he's a good bloke.

  Whatever his private view, he'll give her his very best in her campaign, I'm quite certain of that. Remember that guy I nicked last summer?'

  The one who tried to kill you? Who could forget him?' `Well, I quite liked him, but I still put him away for life.' Proud Jimmy laughed out loud. 'Yes, and he sent you flowers and a

  "Get Well" card.'

  Skinner stared in astonishment. 'You're kidding,' he gasped.

  `No. Sarah has all your cards at home. You'll find it among them. Anyway, to go back to Elliot for a moment, I think you're right in your judgement of him. I chose my word carefully when I said that he didn't share your enthusiasm for Leona. Dame Janet went on to tell me that they watched her together at the adoption meeting, and Elliot changed his mind on the spot. She won him over, convinced him that whatever her motives, she'll hold the seat.'

  Too right she will,' said Skinner. 'That's not me revealing my politics,' he added, 'it's just a statement of fact.' Smiling to himself, he stood up and stretched, gingerly. 'Anyway, enough of the side-show. What about you, eh? Tell me, Chief Constable, when was it that you last arrested someone?'

  `God alone knows,' said Proud Jimmy. He grinned at his deputy. 'But at least when I arrest them they're taken away in a car, not a bloody ambulance!'

  `Still. Sir Stewart Morelli, and the whole surviving Noble family, save the cat: that's quite an afternoon's work. Andy told me all about it when he and Alex were in earlier. He brought me up to date on the whole investigation. I rather think we've got a problem — an embarrassment of suspects. You were dead right to pass it on to the Fiscal.'

  Sir James grunted. 'Morelli. Bloody man! I don't really think he had anything to do with the bomb, but the circumstances indicate that he could have. You know, when I got down to London, he'd got some of his courage back and tried to bluster his way out. Tried to treat me like some backwoodsman. Talked to me as if I was one of his tame Generals!'

  `Must be the uniform, Jimmy!'

  `Maybe. He's got more respect for it now, anyway. I wound up telling him that he was a suspect and that I was a copper, and that whether or not we were both knights of the same order he was getting no fucking favours from me, and that he and Mrs Noble would be putting their weekend travel bags to good use by travelling up to Edinburgh, under arrest.'

  Suddenly he gave a wicked smile. 'You're wrong about the cat, too. The woman insisted on bringing it with her.'

  Skinner laughed out loud. 'So what did you do with them last night?' he asked. lock them up in cells in St Leonards?'

  `Hardly. I wasn't that tough on them. In fact, I was probably too bloody kind in the end. I put them in rooms . . . separate rooms . . . in the Ellersley, with Donaldson and Mcllhenney as baby-sitters. The soldier, Noble's half-brother, spent the night in Redford Barracks, with Arrow and his sidekick.'

  Idly, Sir James strolled across the room and picked a handful of green grapes from a bunch on Skinner's bedside cabinet. `Morelli was a deal less bumptious this morning,' he said. 'Arrow sent copies of the tapes of their conversation at Swinbrook to the Cabinet Secretary, as soon as they were transcribed. They can move fast when they like, those buggers in Whitehall. The n
ew Secretary of State for Defence was appointed this morning

  ... a man from the Northern Ireland Office . . . and at the same time they announced that Morelli had taken early retirement, because of shock over the murders of Davey and Noble and over his own narrow escape.'

  He paused. 'The two lovebirds didn't seem too friendly today, either. She had formed the impression, justifiably, that he was trying to wash his hands of all responsibility, at her expense.'

  Ìs there a Lady Morelli?' Skinner asked. 'And is she aware of any of this?'

  `There is, and she is now,' said the Chief. 'He's an evil little bastard, that Arrow, you know. Before we left London, he went to see her, explained the whole situation, and suggested that she should brief the family solicitor!'

  ‘Huh’ said Skinner, cutting short his sudden exclamation as his wound gave him a twinge.

  'That's Adam behaving reasonably. Believe me, Jimmy, you really wouldn't want to know what happens when his evil side shows itself.'

  EIGHTY-NINE

  ‘It’s nice to see so many friends coming to visit me, all at the same time.' Skinner smiled as he looked at the faces gathered around the big table. Ì'm still amazed that my wife allowed it.

  Ì must thank the NHS Trust Chairman for letting us use his Boardroom.' He turned to Detective Constable Pye. 'Sammy, ask Ruth, my secretary, to type a letter for my signature, please. She'll know what to say.'

  He looked from one to the other: at Andy Martin, and on to Brian Mackie, Mario McGuire, Dave Donaldson, Adam Arrow, John Swift, Neil Mcllhenney, Sammy Pye and finally to Joe Doherty, who had flown up both to attend the update briefing and to visit Skinner as an old friend.

  `Well . .' he went on, with a smile. His face looked drawn, still, but he was regaining his colour, and all the old vitality shone from his eyes. In fact, Martin thought, it was as if there was something extra there: a new certainty, a new assurance, something, perhaps, that came from having lain at the doorway to eternity, and taken a look inside.

  Did you have any out-of-body experiences, Bob? he had joked, when he had visited his friend on the previous evening. Not quite, Skinner had replied, entirely seriously, but I did have an out-of-mind experience. When I'm ready, and it'll be fairly soon,tell you about it.

  ‘• • • you lot seem to have been pretty busy, while I've been having my mid-life crisis. The Chief Constable and Chief Superintendent Martin . . .' the references were formal, as if to emphasise that the DCC was back in business . . have brought me up to date with every aspect of the investigation.

  The first thing I have to do is to congratulate you all on some terrific work. Quite honestly, I thought we'd be grinding away at this one for months, years even. Okay, I know we still don't have a conclusion, but as I keep on thumping home, especially for our military pals at the end of the table, that isn't our job.

  `My dad used to say that there are two sorts of people in the world, the thinkers and the labourers. We're labourers, to a great extent. We go out there gathering in the bits and pieces of evidence and dragging them all together into a bloody great pile. Once that's done, we hand it all over to the Crown Office, to let them do the thinking and take the final decisions on prosecution. I can't recall an operation in my career where the labouring, the gathering-in of evidence, has been done more effectively.'

  He paused, and looked round the table once more. 'In fact, you've been so efficient that I don't begrudge the Fiscal his job. Up to now, all the pressure, all the international attention including the heavy breathing from friend Joe here, has been focused on you lot. Now it's on poor old Davie Pettigrew, and I don't envy him one small piece.

  `By now, he should have held the press conference at which he was going to announce his decision on action, after interviewing the various suspects. That's where the Chief is just now.' He pointed between Donaldson and Arrow, to the corner of the room. 'We'll switch the telly on in a few minutes, and catch what he's said. I don't know any more about that than the rest of you.'

  `Yes, Bob,' said Arrow, 'but what do you think he'll do?'

  Skinner shrugged his shoulders, but carefully. 'It's all about options. I gather that the international possibilities we identified at the start have all been ruled out.'

  'That's right,' said Doherty. Yahic is dead, and the Iraqi network seems to be in full retreat.'

  Ànd Agent Robin?'

  Àgent Robin has been traced and deactivated, Bob,' said Adam Arrow carefully. Skinner nodded without comment, but made an unspoken assumption.

  Ìn that case,' he went on, 'Pettigrew and the Crown Office have got five suspects on their hands.' Around the table, one or two faces looked at him curiously.

  Ìn custody, or at least co-operating with them, they have Morelli, Ariadne Tucker, Lieutenant Richards and the guy Sawyer. They're all heavily implicated by their own actions, and they all qualify in different ways, so let's look at them, one by one. Okay?'

  Nine faces looked back at him, expectantly. Several heads nodded.

  `Let's take Morelli first. Frankly, gentlemen, there's as much chance of him winding up in the dock, for this crime at least, as there is of me winning the next Miss World. The fact that he was having an affair with Noble's wife was if anything an incentive to keep the man alive.' Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Sammy Pye's puzzled expression.

  He elaborated. 'Morelli and Ariadne were both enjoying a substantial bit on the side, neither asking any more of the other than sex. That was fine as long as they both had partners to deceive, but if one was single, especially if it was a demanding, selfish person like I'm told Ariadne is, the balance of power would change.

  `Morelli cleared the way for their out-of-hours nookie by putting Noble into the Private Office job. If Davey had fired him, as he intended, he could have dealt with that by posting him somewhere far away, like the Falklands, or Hong Kong, as part of the hand-over team. Even if he was a serial killer, rather than just a serial shagger, doing away with Noble would be the furthest thing from his mind.'

  Dave Donaldson raised a hand. 'What about the thought that Morelli might have been under threat from Davey?'

  Àgain,' said Skinner, 'why kill him? Davey was under pressure himself after the Reaper decision, and there's going to be a General Election before too long. The odds were all against him being in office in six months' time. Even if he was after Morelli's scalp, there was no chance of him lifting it. So let's set Morelli aside for now. Quite frankly, if I'd been interviewing him, I'd have taken a statement, handed him over to the CPS for prosecution for extortion, and left it at that. But he pissed off the Chief, and that is always a mistake.'

  Èxtortion?' queried Mackie.

  `Something along those lines, Brian. He used his position to force young Richards to let him use his house in the Cotswolds for the purposes of screwing his half-brother's wife.

  What sort of verdict d'you think a jury of Sun readers, or Telegraph readers ... or even Guardian readers . . . would bring in on that one?'

  `Will that case be brought?'

  Skinner looked at Arrow. The soldier laughed softly, and answered for him. 'No danger.

  Too messy. The deal's already done. Morelli retires early and collects his full pension in the process. His punishment is having to spend the rest of his days with Lady Morelli, who struck me as a woman with a long memory and a bloody good recipe for humble pie.'

  `Let's look at Ariadne now,' said the DCC. 'She's in the same boat as Morelli. Why should she want Maurice dead? She earns three or four times the money he did, so she's not tied to him financially. He was obsessive about her, but if it bothered her all that much she'd have walked out on him long ago. Her punishment for his suspicion was to let Morelli into her knickers, and that seems to have suited her fine. As for her wanting to kill Davey, she hardly knew the man. There were loads of people in the queue before her.'

  He paused, as if to gather more air into his recuperating lung.

  `But let's say she, or she and Morelli t
ogether, did want Maurice dead. How would they do it? There's only one realistic way. They forced young Richards to make them a device, then either Ariadne planted it in the Red Box during the night, or she let the boy in and he rigged it for her.'

  Ì checked,' said Arrow, interrupting. 'Richards was on an exercise that night.'

  Òkay, delete that option. It would have to be Ariadne who planted the bomb. Now Adam, you say that you can be certain that the box stayed intact for at least part of the night. Can you put a time on that?' The little soldier glanced to his right, at his colleague.

  Ìt had to be clear still at three-thirty,' said Lieutenant Swift. 'I followed Miss Mirzana . . .'

  His face fell, as Arrow glared at him, enraged.

  Ì'm sorry, Adam,' he said desperately. 'It just slipped out. But we're all friends here, aren't we?'

  `So Robin was the girl who was found dead,' drawled Joe Doherty, 'not the guy who killed her. You had Agent Robin tagged from the start, and you were running her. You fed her phoney information and they swallowed it, until finally, you scared the Iraqis into folding their tents. Hey, I'll bet even the detailed CIA information on our Agent Eagle came from your source, not from their investigation.'

  Arrow nodded, glowering again at his colleague. ‘Yes, you're right. Agent Robin was a double all along, only she didn't know it. Neither did the Iraqis. The prosecution case against the man Rafiq will be that he read the final message and killed her when he saw that the network had been rumbled, rather than leave her to face possible arrest.' Along the table, Skinner, struck by his choice of words, shot him a quick, but impassive glance.

  Dave Donaldson leaned forward. 'Could she have planted the bomb, then?'

  `No way,' said Arrow. 'She wasn't trained as a saboteur or an assassin, only as a spy. She didn't have the knowledge, or the materials. She broke into Noble's house to photograph a document in the Red Box that she couldn't copy during the day, and she passed on her film at an evening meeting in the safe house two days before she was killed. The box was clean when it left the office, and Mirzana didn't carry anything into the Noble place other than her camera. We know that because Swifty was watching her every step of the way. He sat six rows behind her at a Van Morrison Concert, then watched a late night showing of Reservoir Dogs, before trailing her out to Putney. No, Dave, Agent Robin was not our bomber.'