Head Shot bs-12

by Quintin Jardine

  Skinner watched as his friend spoke to the Special Agent. His expression was serious, matter-of-fact, as he listened, until all at once it broke into a wide grin. 'You say?' he exclaimed. 'Kid, you've made my day. Thanks, I'l see you Monday, back in Buffalo. Meantime, if you want to spend the weekend in Vegas continuing your investigation, that's al right with me… just don't let me see any roulette chips on your expenses claim.'

  He pushed the 'end' button and put the cellphone back in his pocket.

  'Well?' Skinner demanded. W 'You're going to love this, pal,' said Doherty. 'Superintendent Barbara Weston will not, but you will. The guy who iced Sander Garrett stole his Cubans, Bob. He took his Goddamned cigars!'

  33

  Mario McGuire, clad in a white scene-of-crime suit, looked at the sheet in the corner of the room and shivered at the recent memory of what lay under it. To escape it as much as anything else, he rose from his seat by the wide window and walked through to the apartment's main bedroom.

  His aunt lay on her bed, fully dressed; she was staring at the ceiling.

  He sat beside her and took her hand. 'How you doing, Sophia?' She turned her head to look at him; her eyes were rimmed all round with red, made al the more vivid by the paleness of her face.

  'Mario…' It was a whisper and it was all she could say.

  'Yeah, yeah.' He stroked her arm, doing his best to soothe her. 'Listen,' he said, his voice not much louder than hers, 'the doctor wil be here soon. She'l give you a shot, and then I want you to go with Maggie, back to our place. She's downstairs in a patrol car. You can't stay here.'

  She frowned, her eyes almost crossing as she tried to focus on him.

  She raised herself off the pillow, bracing her weight on an elbow. 'But will the police not want to talk to me?'

  'Yes, we wil, but no one's going to do that until you're fit and ready for it; and the guy who'l decide that is me. You're my auntie and no one's going to impose on you.'

  'But who's going to tell the girls? Who's going to tell Nana? Who's going to tell your mother?'

  'I'll do al that, don't you worry.'

  She nodded, and lay back on the pillow once more, staring upwards again. 'Why, son, why?' she murmured. 'Why would anyone…'

  He had no answer for her, not so soon. He was about to tell her as much, when the silence of the big flat was shattered by a scream. He jumped up from the bed, his foot slipping for a second on the plush carpet, and headed back to the great open-plan living room, almost at a run.

  His cousin Paula was standing, with the sheet in her hands, staring down at her father's body. She was wearing a designer trouser suit, and most of her long dark-skinned back was bare as he looked at her.' Jesus!' he gasped, crossing the room to her side in four long strides, as Detective Superintendent Jay, drawn by the commotion, emerged from the kitchen.

  'Greg!' McGuire roared at him. 'Are your people asleep out there?'

  He turned her round forcibly, twisting her away from the sight on the floor. 'Who let you in here?' he asked.

  'A guy outside tried to stop me,' she hissed, 'but I kicked him on the knee and came in anyway. Mario, what is this? What's happened?'

  She wriggled in his grasp; she was big and, in her heels, almost as tal as he was, but stil he was much too strong for her.

  'We're way short of being able to answer al of that,' he said, quietly,

  'but your father's been shot, and he's dead. Aunt Sophia found him when she came in from the theatre; she and my mum took Nana Viareggio to the show at the Kings.' He paused, letting it sink in. 'What brought you here at this time of night?' he asked her.

  'I was out for a meal at the Malmaison; when I was leaving I looked across the water and saw the ambulance outside the building. Then when I got here, I saw Maggie sitting in a patrol car. Oh, Mario

  …' Finally, Paula's hard outer casing seemed to crack. She laid her forehead on his shoulder and cried like a baby. He released his grip on her, and enfolded her in his arms, hugging her to him; as he did so, something came to him, a fragment of memory from a very drunken night many years before.

  'Okay, kid,' he whispered, feeling her tears dampening the front of his tunic. 'Let it out, let it out.'As they stood there, embracing, his own grief for his dead, clownish, clumsy, but ultimately likeable uncle came to him. He buried his face in Paula's silver hair, kissing it gently. 'Okay, okay, okay,' he murmured, over and over again, feeling her hold tighten on him, feeling the warmth of her al the way down his body, feeling himself reacting, involuntarily, to it.

  The weight of Greg Jay's hand on his shoulder brought him back to the time and place. 'Mario,' said the superintendent, gently, 'the doctor's here.'

  He blinked and nodded. 'Paula.' She looked up at him, her face a mess of smeared mascara and eye shadow. 'Go see your mother,' he told her.

  'She's in the bedroom.'

  'Okay,' she agreed, beginning to gather herself together once more.

  'Thanks, cousin. Look, take care of things, will you? Viola's going to be out of it, that brother-in-law of mine will be no better, and Mum's going to need me. Can you do that?'

  'Of course. I'l handle everything.'

  She kissed him on the cheek. 'Thanks,' she murmured. 'Love you for it.'

  He turned, steering her towards her parents' room; as he did, he saw Sarah Grace Skinner standing in the doorway, waiting for him.

  'Sarah,' he exclaimed, 'thank Christ it's you. I'm so glad you were able to come.'

  'No problem,' she assured him. 'I haven't retired you know. The nanny's living in, for now at least, so I could leave the kids.'

  She frowned at him. 'This is your uncle, Mr Jay told me.'

  'Yes.'

  'Should you be here?'

  'Try to keep me away,' he grunted. 'Should the Boss be with the FBI?'

  'You got me there,' she admitted. 'Let's get to work, then.'

  'Okay, but first, could you talk to my aunt? She needs a sedative; then Paula and Maggie can take her out of here.'

  'Paula? Oh yes, that was your cousin; I remember her now, from your wedding reception, a striking-looking woman, isn't she. How's she taking it?'

  'She's made of solid steel inside; she'll be all right.'

  'I'll decide that; I might just stick a needle in her anyway. You wait here.' She turned, medical bag in hand, and fol owed in Paula's footsteps, going into the bedroom after a gentle knock on the door. Mario heard the sound of his aunt's sobbing as she entered.

  He stood in the living room for several minutes, watching Inspector Arthur Dorward and his crime-scene team beginning their task of gathering all the tiny pieces of potential evidence that the room might hold, watching the photographer as he took picture after picture of Beppe's body.

  Final y, Sarah reappeared, looking sombre. 'This is unusual for me,' she confessed quietly to McGuire. 'In fact it's unique. Invariably, when I arrive at a scene the grieving relatives are long gone, but not this time.'

  The detective looked at her with a trace of alarm in his eyes. 'You want us to get someone else?' he asked.

  'Oh no. I'm ready to go to work… once your aunt and cousin have gone.'

  'Okay. I'l see to that. Meantime you real y should talk to Greg Jay; this is his division, and his investigation.'

  'Sure. But isn't Andy here?'

  'No. He ruled himself out of this one; technically he might still be in post, but that's only for another day or so. As for his successor, he'd had a couple of pints too many at the leaving do. Please, go and talk to Greg.'

  Sarah did as he asked, while he went back into the bedroom to take charge of Sophia and Paula, and escort them down to Maggie in the waiting car.

  When he returned, she had put on a white overal suit and was waiting for him, standing beside Beppe's body with Detective Superintendent Jay. She looked at McGuire. 'You absolutely sure you want to see this?' she asked him.

  'Absolutely certain.'

  'In that case, to business, gentlemen.' She took a smal tape recorder fr
om her pocket and switched it on. 'First of al, I need to know if the body has been moved.'

  'No,' Jay replied.

  'I understand that Mrs Viareggio found her husband. You're sure she didn't touch him?'

  'No way,' Mario volunteered. 'My aunt's a nervous woman; she's 6k scared of her shadow. She told me that she took one look, screamed and ran to the downstairs neighbour.'

  'How about him?'

  'Her. She's a single lady; her name's Dr Alexander, and she's a civil service medical adviser. She came up and took a quick look to verify that Beppe was dead, then closed the door and cal ed the police.'

  'She didn't touch him in checking for life signs?'

  'No,' said Greg Jay. The Leith divisional CID commander was tall and pear-shaped, with shoulders that appeared narrower than his waist, and a small round head. His manner was as ponderous as his appearance. 'She didn't need to, doctor. Take a look.' He pul ed back the sheet from the body.

  Beppe Viareggio lay on his stomach, with his backside sticking up in the air, and his arms by his sides, palms facing upward. His forehead was on the birchwood floor, in the centre of a smal, round pool of blood, which had run in streaks down both sides of his face. Sarah whistled quietly. 'This was not a suicide,' she murmured.

  'No gun at the scene,' Jay told her.

  'You could have found an arsenal here, and stil that couldn't have been self-inflicted, not from that angle. Look at that.' She knelt and pointed with her tape recorder at a great wound, just at the point where the spinal column descended from the skul. She peered at it closely, taking in a mass of congealed blood, hair and bone matter. 'To shoot yourself there you'd need to be a contortionist, not a fat man on the 134 threshold of the third age.' She pushed herself up and walked around the body, slowly looking at it from every possible angle.

  'Okay,' she said finally. 'Has the photographer finished?' She looked across at the red-haired Inspector Arthur Dorward, who was lifting fingerprints from the front door. He nodded in reply. 'Then turn him over, please, gentlemen.'

  McGuire and Jay did as she asked, Mario flinching slightly as he rol ed his uncle on to his back, expecting to see a grotesque exit wound.

  But there was none; apart from the blood on his forehead and his cheeks, Beppe's dead face was unmarked.

  Sarah read his thoughts. 'Whoever did this used a hol ow bullet, and probably a large calibre firearm. This was an execution, pure and simple; very similar to a case we had a couple of years back. I'd say from the way he's fallen that the victim was forced to kneel and was shot once through the base of the skul. The bul et flattened out on contact with the first and second cervical vertebrae, shattered them and passed on through into the brain, pulverising it. I wouldn't look to get bal istic markings when it's recovered; it'll be pretty much destroyed.

  'This wasn't a contact wound, or else it might well have blown the man's head clean off. The kil er probably fired at a distance of two or three feet.'

  Sarah looked at Jay. 'Was Dr Alexander in all night, do you know?'

  'Yes,' McGuire answered her.

  'And did she hear anything at al that could have been a gunshot… or hasn't anyone interviewed her yet?'

  'I spoke to her, and I asked her that. No, she didn't. The only unusual sound she remembered was a thud coming through the ceiling at around nine thirty, as if something heavy had been dropped in the flat above.'

  She leaned over and touched Beppe's waxy face. 'He isn't stone cold, and there's no rigor as yet, so that may well be the time of death. The thud could have been your uncle falling forward as he was shot, Mario.

  Big gun like this, he must have used a silencer, otherwise she would have heard it.

  'There's no doubt in my mind, gentlemen,' she said, firmly, 'that this has all the signs of what the media love to call a gangland-style killing, or a contract hit. For what it's worth, I haven't had anything like this on my autopsy table.'

  'What about that other case you mentioned, the one a couple of years ago?' asked Jay.

  'There were two of those, in fact, but that investigation was solved at that time. In any case there are some significant differences here. In those murders a rifle was used, a lower calibre, higher velocity weapon, and there was another signature, a very distinctive thing. No, this isn't related.'

  'I'll trust your judgement on that… especial y if the person involved is locked up,' the superintendent said.

  'He's dead, actually.'

  'Couldn't have been him, then,' McGuire grunted, from the side.

  'When can you do the post mortem on Mr Viareggio, Dr Skinner?'

  'Tomorrow morning, Mr Jay; first thing, if that's good enough for you.'

  'Yes, that'll be fine.'

  She looked at the other detective. 'Mario, can I ask you something?

  Are you aware of any health problems your uncle might have had, anything I should look out for in my examination?'

  'No, none at al. Beppe might have been a bit on the plump side, but he took his health seriously. He had regular BUPA medicals and came through them al with flying colours. Come to think about it, he had one a few weeks back; he was crowing about it at our family party on Wednesday night.

  'Why do you ask?'

  She grinned at him, wryly. 'Thoroughness, that's al.'

  'Convince me of that.'

  'You're too suspicious by half, McGuire. Okay,' she confessed. 'I saw a case like this back in the States once, when I was working there. It was similar to this, a prominent man shot dead in his home, and the cops tore up half of gangland over the next couple of days. Then the coroner found that the man was riddled with cancer. Subsequently, the police spotted a large cash withdrawal from his bank, made just a couple of days before his death.

  'They never did find the shooter, but they started asking different questions, and came up with the answer. The man knew he was dying, and had actual y chosen to put a contract on himself. But if your Uncle Beppe was physical y fit, and financial y sound…'

  'Which he was,' Mario confirmed.

  Sarah glanced down at the body once more; her smile had disappeared.

  'Then that can't apply here. So how did your uncle come to have upset someone badly enough for them to do that to him? Do you know much about his business?'

  'Not as much as I'm going to. As of three hours ago, control of it passed to me.'

  'What? I thought your mother was the cotrustee.'

  'My mother's retiring,' he explained. 'I'm taking her place, and with Beppe dead, I'm the senior partner, with the casting vote.'

  'God, won't that make things difficult for you?'

  'I guess it wil. I didn't ask for this, Sarah, I assure you, but it all goes back to my grandfather's wil; I can't walk away from it, however messy it is.'

  'Not even if there was a conflict of interest with your duty as a policeman?'

  'Not even then.'

  'Couldn't you persuade your mother to stay on for a while?'

  He gasped. 'After this? What if Beppe's murder is connected to the business? Do you think I'd put her in the firing line?'

  'No, of course not,' she replied, quickly. 'I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking straight.'

  'There is one up-side, though,' he told her. 'Greg Jay won't have any trouble gaining access to the books and records of the Viareggio Trust.'

  34

  'You ever been in an air terminal that you really liked as a place?' asked Joe Doherty.

  'Barcelona.'

  'Lucky you. I hate 'em, all of them, whether they're monsters like Heathrow and O'Hare, or small-town operations like this one. And when it's dark outside, I hate 'em even worse.'

  'Bollocks!' Skinner laughed. 'What you're really saying is that you hate flying.'

  His friend's lip curled into a sneer. 'Show me a man who says he actually likes it… especially since September 11… and I'll show you a liar.'

  'You don't have to like it, Joe; you just have to do it. Personal y, I cannot see how heavier-than-air machines ever make it off
the ground, but they do, so I take it on trust.

  Now if you were talking about sailing, that would be different.'

  'Uh? You don't like boats?'

  'The smal er they are, the more I dislike them. I'l go on cross channel ferries when I have to, like when I take the kids on holiday, but that's it.'

  'You get sea-sick?' Doherty's sallow face was lit by his broadest smile. 'The great Bob Skinner gets seasick?'

  'No. I've only ever felt sea-sick once in my life, and that was on the waltzer at Portobello funfair with Alex when she was a kid. All I could think about was how wide it would spread if I actually did throw up. I made it to the end of the ride… just. But boats; I don't like them, that's all.

  'It's a childhood thing; my mum used to tel a story about a time she and my dad took me to Mil port for the weekend, when I wasn't much more than a baby. Somehow, my old man managed to miss the last ferry on Sunday night, and since he had to be at work next morning, he hired a local bloke with a motorboat to take us across to Largs. I've got no conscious memory of it, but Mother said that it was a hell of a 138 chooDV trip, and that she was terrified. I suppose that communicated itself to me and that it's stayed with me ever since.'

  'Oh' said the American. 'In that case there's something I'd better share with you: the location of our meeting with Jackson Wylie, your father-in-law's ex-partner.'

  Skinner stared at him. 'Not his fucking boat! Christ, when I met the guv at Leo's place I had to dredge the bottom of the barrel to find an excuse not to go out fishing with the two of them. Joe, tell me Kosinski hasn't booked us on to his fucking boat!'

  'Wylie cal s it his cruiser, but you got it, buddy; that's where it's at.

  You want to duck out?'

  The stare became a glare. 'Duck out? So you can tell your pals in Washington all about it? There's two things in this life I don't like; small boats and looking at dead bodies. From time to time, I have to do the one, and I'l fucking well do the other if it's necessary. Not liking is a human feeling; not doing is a human weakness. I'l go across Wylie's gangplank, don't you worry.'

  'In that case, the good news is that it'l be moored in the marina. This ain't no fishing trip… other than for any information the guy might have.'