Quintin Jardine - Skinner Skinner 07

by Skinner's Ghosts (pdf)

  'Sarah.'

  He said her name quietly and calmly, as nervousness, relief and uncertainty struggled for mastery within him.

  'Bob.' She replied cool y and cautiously, with no hostility, but with no hint of emotion.

  'What . . .?' he began. 'What do you want? Why have you come back?'

  'I've come back for a fight,' she said, her jaw set defiantly, holding her head proud and high, light glinting on her auburn hair.

  Within him, uncertainty triumphed over relief. 'Oh my love,' he cried out, sadly. 'I don't want to fight with you. I never did, and I never should have, only I was too big a fool to know.'

  She stepped towards him, skirt swinging, stepped right up against him, tal in her high heels, with her hands on her hips. 'I didn't say I was going to fight with you, honey.' She paused, stil without a smile.

  'After you called me, to tell me about you and the other woman, and to warn me about the Spotlight stuff, and I gave you that three-month ultimatum; after al that I sat down and I said to myself, "Hold on here a minute, Doctor. Have you ever stopped loving this man, since the day you met him? Would your life ever be the same if you lost him? Are you prepared to let some other lady enjoy your happy ever after?"

  'The answers were "No", "No", and "Hell, no!". Right there and then I decided that you were not getting rid of me that easily, with just one phone cal three months down the road.

  'I'm here to fight for you, Bob, my love. That's if I have to.' At last, a tentative smile came to her lips, and into her wonderful eyes.

  He shook his head as if to clear it, picked her up and pressed her to him. 'Oh but you don't,' he said, hugging her tight as relief, with 276

  an overwhelming counter-surge, swept everything else aside. 'My darling, you don't.

  'I am so, so, sorry for the fool I've been. Please, please forgive me. I accused you of being disloyal to me, and I drove you away in the process. But it's me who failed the loyalty test, in a big way.' He set her back on her feet.

  'Yeah,' she said, her smile gone once more, 'You sure did. But I have to tell you, husband, we're even on that score.'

  He felt a punch, a hard, winding punch, in the pit of his stomach, but he rode out its force. 'This Terry guy, yes?'

  She nodded.

  'Well,' he sighed, 'you were entitled. As far as I'm concerned it never happened.'

  'Oh but it did, lover,' she insisted. 'And you must listen to me.

  Like I said, I have to tell you why.

  'It had nothing to do with entitlement, or revenge. I was evening the score between us, yes, but with a good motive behind it, I hope.

  'I decided I should go to bed with Terry for one reason alone and I'm telling you for that same reason - so that I'l never in the future, if ever I was stupid enough, be able to brandish my fidelity over your head like a club.' She laid her forehead against his chest, and spoke quietly. 'This is what happened.

  'I invited him on a dinner date, and I even insisted on paying.

  Afterwards, I took him to a hotel room I'd booked, and I said, "Okay, Terry, now give me your best, and I'l give you mine." As it turned out, his was a lot better than mine - you'l be glad to know I'm lousy at casual sex - but it was nowhere, my love, nowhere near as good as yours.

  'When we'd done it - once was enough - I got out of bed, took a shower, said "Thanks and Good Night", and went home, feeling guilty about using Terry, but leaving my banner of virtue behind me as I had set out to do. I didn't feel like a whore, though. I was relieved, because I'd been able to do what I believed was necessary, and most

  of al because I was ready to go home.

  'I want to make a fresh start,' she whispered. 'Forgiveness on both sides.' She looked up to find his eyes looking solemnly into hers.

  'If Terry had looked in my bag when I was in the shower,' she said, 'he'd have found the plane tickets there: Edinburgh via Amsterdam,

  one way.'

  'Tickets?' he asked, hopeful y.

  'Of course we both came back,' she said. 'Jazz is with Alex.' She grinned. 'Hey, your gal's getting a touch broody, Pops. Maybe having her baby brother back will calm her down a bit.'

  She hesitated. 'Alex told me all about Pam; she told me the whole story That it was her who tipped off Spotlight? It was her who set 277

  you up with the bribe thing? And al because you put her brother away for something or other. How driven can a person be?'

  Bob shook his head. 'Alex doesn't know the whole story, love.

  Neither does Andy. Only you can ever know it. Sit down.' He took her hand and led her to the couch, sitting her down and facing her along the leather cushions.

  'I put Pam's brother away all right, Sarah love. Six feet deep.

  'Remember the time we had the President of Syria here, and he was kil ed? Remember the man who shot him, and who was going to kil me, and you too, because I found out the truth?'

  Her face went white. She leaned, suddenly and heavily, against the back of the sofa. 'The man you shot dead? That was Pam's brother?'

  'Yes, that's who he was. His real name was Ross Masters. Just like Heuer, he was a soldier who'd become a professional assassin, and he worked within the intelligence community. He and Pamela were very close . . .' He hesitated, and she caught his meaning.

  'Incestuous, you mean?'

  'That's right,' Bob grunted, grimly 'Incest, the game the whole family can play! Ross called her Polly, by the way. She came to hate it if that name was used by anyone else, even by her poor mug of a husband. The marriage was Ross's idea, she told me. Purely for show.

  'The two of them were so close in fact, that she knew what Ross did, and the risks it involved. They had an arrangement. He always contacted her, in person or by telephone, within a three-month period.

  He told her that if ever he failed to do that, it would certainly be because he was dead. If that happened, she was to go to a private safe depository in London and present a key which he had given her.

  'Just over three months after Ross and I had our fatal encounter, she made that trip. She was given a box which her brother had kept.

  Inside, she found a hundred thousand pounds, in Bank of England notes, and a letter.'

  He reached into the pocket of his soft brown leather jacket and took out a folded piece of paper. 'This is it.' He began to read.

  'My darling Polly

  'You re reading this, so I'm dead. You can be sure of that, and you can be sure also that my end will have been unrecorded.

  The work I have been doing lately has been so secret and potentially calamitousor those who commissioned me, that if I fail or die in the act, it will be as if I have disappeared from the face of the earth. My real identity died a while back, as you know, in a genuine helicopter crash in Oman, in which Ross Masters was listed among the dead, burned to ashes in the process.

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  'Yesterday I met a man. His name is Bob Skinner, and he works in Edinburgh. I do not expect to die on this assignment, but if I do, then I know within myself and with a great certainty that it will be Bob Skinner who will kill me. He is a career policeman, but he has a certain quality too, one which only people like me can see in others. He may not even know it himself, but Mr Skinner is a killer, just like me. He is tenacious, he is very good, and it is possible that before this commission is complete, he and I wil have a confrontation. Should that not happen I wil have been in touch as usual. But should Skinner get too close, then one of us wil not survive, and you may have to read this letter.

  'Pol y, as you know, I don 'tfear death. But I am proud, as you are, and I am vengeful, as you are also. Take al the money in this box, most of my savings from my career as a contractor.

  I would like you to use some of it, at least, to ensure that Skinner accounts for my death in a meaningful way. Don't have him kil ed, though, unless you have no other choice. He does not fear death either, and in any event, you would have to be certain of success, or he would be very dangerous.

  'You we always been a c
reative girl. Use your talents, and this money, to even my score with my executioner. Take Skinner's life from him, not in an instant, but in a way that wil hurt him for as long as he breathes. But be careful, touch none of his, or he wil hunt you down. Hurt him alone.

  'There is a man who wil help you. He is an acquaintance of mine, in the same line of work, and he has met Skinner also.

  His name is Peter Gilbert Heuer, and he is very bitter. He can be contacted by placing a personal ad in the Northern Echo on any Tuesday, under a Box Number, simply asking PGH to respond. Peter, with you and only three other people, knows my real name: ask him for it, to confirm his identity.

  'Do this for me Pol y, as best you can. I leave you my heart and my undying love, for you and I are soulmates.

  'Goodbye, Ross'

  Bob folded the letter, put it back in his pocket, and looked again at his wife.

  'So Polly, or Pamela, rather, took the money, took her marketing degree and experience, and joined the police, my force naturally, as a late entrant. Once there she took the service options which would bring her closest to me. She even had an affair with the Force Press Officer, who knows me better than most, as part of her preparation.

  'When the time was right she contacted Heuer. When he heard that it was me she was after, he was only too willing to help her.

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  'She had her plan al along, and it worked better than she had ever dared to hope. Had it not been for a couple of mistakes that she made, I could have been convicted. As a minimum, if things had worked out, I'd have had to leave the force under a very big cloud.

  'My splitting up with you was a tremendous bonus for her. She's a wonderful actress, is Pamela. She played it so well, so properly.

  She was there to lend me a shoulder to moan on, yet she refused to sleep with me before you and I were legally separated. She was in the final act of setting me up when it al went sour for her. She told me she wanted to get married. That's how confident she was.' His face was twisted with anger.

  Sarah looked at him, almost fearful y. 'What have you done with her?' she asked. 'Alex said that al you told them was that she had left.'

  'I haven't done anything with her,' he answered bitterly, 'or to her.

  I could hardly have her arrested and charged, in al the circumstances.

  With the national security interests that would have been involved, a trial would have been unthinkable.

  'So instead, I signed the hundred thousand back into her name, I drove her to the airport to catch her plane, and I told her to get as far away from me and mine as she could. I promised her also that I would let my contacts in MI6 and the CIA know that Ross Masters had a sister who is aware of the work he did for them.'

  'And have you? Wil you?'

  'No, but she believes that I wil . And that wil keep her on the move, and wil keep her mouth shut, for the rest of her life. She'll disappear like her brother, I guess. Like him, she'l find a new identity.'

  'This man Heuer,' Sarah broke in. 'Didn't he kil Leona McGrath, and the Secretary of State's wife? Wasn't he the man you shot yesterday, when you rescued the children?'

  Bob nodded. 'Yes, but Pam had no idea about that until Andy and I made the connection.

  'She only used him as a courier to set me up with the bank in Guernsey. She swore blind that she didn't know he was planning the kil ings or the kidnapping. Eventually, she made me believe her.'

  'And if you hadn't accepted it?'

  He looked at the wall, suddenly cold as ice. 'I'd have handed her over to Adam Arrow,' he whispered, and she knew that he meant it.

  'Anyway,' he said, softening in an instant, 'Heuer's dead and Pam's gone for good. Both of my persecutors are dealt with.'

  Bob leaned back wearily on the couch beside his wife and drew her to him, to lay her head on his shoulder. 'I feel as if I've been haunted for the last few months, Sarah, my love, visited by all my ghosts and horrors from my past. God wil ing, now they're al 280

  exorcised, and the demons, the misunderstanding and the anger, which drove us apart are gone as wel .'

  She drew his head down and kissed him, for the first time in months, long and slow.

  'Yes,' she said, 'they're gone. So if you've any more secrets to reveal, now's the time to do it. Nothing you say wil be taken down, or held against you.'

  He took a deep breath. 'Well,' he began. 'About Leona McGrath . . .'

  She put her fingers to his lips. 'It's okay, I know. Alex told me that. I half-guessed at the time too. Although we were barely speaking, I remember that when you got home late that night, I thought that it was the first time I had ever seen you with a guilty look on your face.

  'Poor woman,' Sarah sighed. 'No grudges borne. And, oh, her poor little boy.'

  He looked her in the eye, so close to her that he was almost squinting. 'Speaking of Mark,' he murmured, 'I know this is a biggie, but how would you and Jazz feel about adopting an older brother?'

  'I think we'd feel okay,' she replied, without a moment's hesitation.

  She leaned back and gazed at him for a moment. 'You know, Ross Masters didn't have a clue about the real you,' she said, smiling.

  'Oh no? Which of us is dead?'

  'And which of you was on the side of right, as almost invariably, my darling, you are?'

  She was silent, contemplative, for a few seconds. 'One thing I learned from Ross, though,' she added, at last.

  'What's that?'

  'He told Pam that he and she were "soulmates",' she said. 'Until this moment, I've never real y considered, far less understood, the meaning of the term.'

  She looked up at him, and saw a glistening in his eyes. 'Oh Sarah,'

  he sighed, with the relief of someone who has stepped into a chasm in the dark, only to have his foot land safely upon a bridge, 'then maybe you'l know just how glad I am that you're back.'

  'Cuts both ways, honey,' she drawled in her finest American, beginning to unbutton his shirt. 'Now let's give each other our very, very best. For today. Skinner's ghosts aren't all that's gonna get laid.'

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