Head Shot bs-12

by Quintin Jardine

  The airport announcer broke into their conversation, calling them to the boarding gate for their flight to Buffalo. Skinner glanced up at the departure hall clock; it showed twelve minutes after six. Through the glass walls he saw the lightening sky, realising that already it was breakfast-time at their destination, and that further east, Sarah and the children should be having lunch. A wave of homesickness washed over him; he took out his cellphone and called home.

  Trish, the nanny, answered; she was a friendly girl, the daughter of a Barbadian mother and a Yorkshire father who had met on a county cricket tour of the West Indies. 'No, Mr Skinner,' she told him. 'Sarah isn't here.

  She's up at the Royal, doing a post mortem on a murder victim.'

  He laughed. 'She can't resist, can she. I'm married to a workaholic, Trish.'

  'I guess you are, although she did say there were special circumstances involved with this one.'

  'Wonder what she meant by that?' he mused, aloud. 'She'll tell me, I expect. Meantime, let me have a word with Mark.'

  He had a brief conversation with his son as he walked to the gate, catching up on school news, then switched off the cellphone and put it away as his boarding card was checked.

  The flight was even and uneventful; after a while, Joe Doherty almost relaxed. This time there was no view, other than of a cloud blanket that lasted all the way to the Great Lakes. So, instead of sightseeing, Skinner passed the time thinking, searching in vain through his sketchy knowledge of his father-in-law's business and personal history for any pointers to the mystery of his death.

  The flight to Greater Buffalo International ended with a textbook landing and a sigh of relief from the Deputy Director of the FBI. As they stepped out of the aircraft they were hit by the warmth of the morning, a contrast from the Montana chil.

  'Nice day for a sail,' Doherty remarked.

  'Fuck off,' Skinner grunted, grimly.

  They collected Kosinski's fax, in a white envelope, from the airport information desk, and returned to the rental car in the long-stay car park.

  Doherty climbed in and turned the ignition. Nothing happened. 'Shit!' he swore. 'Dud battery.'

  Luckily, they were parked close to an exit booth; within ten minutes, an airport worker arrived with a ful y charged start-up pack, and they were mobile once more. Still, they had lost time and were tight for their scheduled water-borne meeting with Jackson Wylie.

  The Scot took the Special Agent's map as they set off; as soon as he looked at it, he realised that the drive would be longer than they had anticipated. The airport was around ten miles north of Buffalo, and Bayview, on Lake Erie, where the marina was located, looked to be the same distance to the south. The route that had been plotted for them took them round the outskirts of the city, but nonetheless, the Saturday traffic on Lakeshore was heavy.

  Fortunately Bayview was a small community; the signs were poor, but stil the marina was easy to find. They found a space at the rear of its dedicated car park, and set out to find Wylie's cruiser.

  The marina was a bustle of activity; Skinner guessed that most of the boat-owners were strictly fair-weather sailors and that the fine spring day had drawn them in droves to ready their vessels for the summer to come. 'Says here that we're looking for mooring number two-seven three,' Doherty muttered. 'The boat's called the Hispaniola.'

  'Treasure Island, eh. D'you think our man fancies himself as Long John Silver?'

  'Maybe so. Robert Louis Stevenson spent some time in New York State.'

  'Ah, come on, next you'll be telling me that John Logie Baird was an 140

  American.' Skinner paused. 'Hey, wait a minute.' He pointed along a boardwalk jetty not far from the gateway to the marina, where they stood. ' See that cruiser there; about ten boats along. A big bugger of a thing with an awning on top. There's a guy on deck, and I'm pretty sure that's Jackson Wylie.

  'Fuckin' hell,' the policeman chuckled, 'he's got a barbecue going.

  He's on a boat, and he's got a barbie lit.'

  'You should be pleased then; it means he really ain't planning to sail anywhere.' Doherty glanced at his watch. 'Come on then, let's go see him. It's not too bad; we're only just over five minutes late.'

  Skinner nodded, looked down automatical y to check his footing among the ropes and paint-pots that littered the wide walkway, and set out after him. He had taken two steps when, with no warning, he felt his head swim, and his knees buckle. The strangest sensation swept through him; it was as if he had stood in that spot before, had played the same scene in a parallel life. He felt as if he was in a throng of rushing, relentless people. 'Joe,' he heard himself call out, hoarsely.

  The American stopped and looked over his shoulder, frowning as he caught sight of his friend's face. 'Bob, you okay?' he asked.

  But Skinner's spell had passed, as suddenly as it had come upon "him.

  'Yes, yes,' he said, quickly.

  'You sure? You look as though you'd seen a ghost.' He walked back towards him.

  'For a minute I thought I had; it was… Shit, I don't know. For a second there, I thought I was going in the drink. You know what I reckon it was? The water; the way it moves as you look through the planks. I know I said I don't get sea-sick, but I think I was pretty close to it there.'

  'Listen,' said Doherty. 'Go back to the car if you want. I won't tell anyone, honest.'

  'Don't be daft, man. I'l be al right.' They waited for a minute or so, until Skinner nodded. 'No, it's gone; I'm okay. Come on. Let's not keep the man waiting any longer.'

  He took a step along the boardwalk… and then the whole world turned orange, and red, and black, all in the same instant.

  A great invisible force seemed to pick the two men off their feet and hurl them backwards, sending them crashing on to the jetty. They lay there, stunned, until the noise caught up with them, fol owed almost at once by the awareness of great heat. A second explosion sounded; not so fierce, but closer this time.

  Skinner propped himself up on an elbow and looked along, focusing his blurred eyes. The Hispaniola was nowhere to be seen; not in its original form. It was at the centre of an inferno; in the midst of which he thought he could see a figure, staggering jerkily around, a human torch, its arms waving in slow motion, and then seeming to sink into itself.

  The boat next to it was on fire too; that had been the second explosion, he guessed, since it was closer to them. Its flames, in rum, were licking another large cruiser, even nearer to where they lay If its tanks went up…

  He scrambled to his feet, looking at his friend as he did so. Doherty was unconscious, stunned either by the blast or by the force of his impact with the boardwalk. Skinner knelt beside him; grabbed his left arm and his right leg, and in a single powerful movement, stood once more, heaving the American over his shoulder.

  And then he ran, as if Doherty weighed nothing at all; as far and as fast as he could. Hearing the crackling of the flames and feeling their heat as they crept towards him, Bob Skinner ran, carrying his friend, for their very lives.

  35

  Mario had always been slightly in awe of his grandmother. As a child, he had loved Papa Viareggio almost to the point of worship, but Nana had inspired something different in him. She had never been forbidding, but there had been something about her that had marked her out from the norm, an inner strength that at times could make her seem aloof, even from her children and grandchildren.

  She had always dealt with the world on her terms, and never in his life had her grandson seen her give an inch in the face of misfortune.

  And so he was not surprised when he went to visit her, in the terraced house not far from Murrayfield Stadium that had been her home for sixty years, to be greeted at the front door with a steely look which betrayed not a sign of frailty.

  'Well?' she demanded. 'What have you come to tel me, son?'

  He did not answer her; instead he kissed her on the cheek, and allowed her to lead him into the living room, where his mother and Aunt Sophia sat, stunne
d by the loss of a brother and a husband.

  'Where are the girls?' he asked.

  'Our Paula's in the kitchen, cooking something or other for our supper.

  Viola's gone home to her family, where she should be. So, come on, laddie; out with it. Have your policemen caught the evil man who murdered my son?' Her voice was full of controlled rage; he read it at once, for he felt the same way himself.

  'We're doing al we can, Nana,' he began, but she cut him off.

  'I know that,' she snapped. 'I trust you not to let them do any less. But that's not what I asked you.'

  'In that case, the answer's no. We haven't caught him. The truth is, Nana, we don't even know where to begin to look. We've got not a scrap of physical evidence. We recovered the bul et that killed him, but as the pathologist predicted before she did the p.m., it was too distorted for us to have a chance of identifying the gun that fired it. If the weapon had been used in another crime, you see…'

  'Ach, I know that, Mario,' the old lady retorted. 'I watch Quincy.' She looked away from him for the first time. 'Can you tell me this? Did he suffer?'

  He could see, out of the corner of his eye, his mother and his aunt tense as she asked the question.

  'No,' he answered, as firmly as he could. 'Not a bit. It was instantaneous; I doubt very much if he even heard the gunshot.'

  'Paula heard a policeman say there was a silencer.'

  He glanced at his cousin as she came into the room. 'They just muffle the noise, Nana,' he said. 'And this was a big gun.'

  'So what have you been doing all day?'

  'I've been helping my col eague Detective Superintendent Jay. You have to realise, Nana, that I'm a witness in this investigation, not a participant. I've spent most of the day so far in Uncle Beppe's office with two specialist detectives, going through al of the books of the business in the hope that we might find something that pointed to a reason for the murder.'

  'You mean you were trying to find out if Beppe had been up to no good?'

  'No, Nana, I didn't mean that.'

  She patted him on the arm and settled stiffly into her high-backed armchair, throwing him a faint smile. 'Of course you did, son; but you don't need to soft-soap me. I could have told you you'd be wasting your time there. Your poor uncle might not have been about to win the Businessman of the Year award, but he wasn't a crook.

  'And remember, even if he had been that stupid, your mother was there as the second trustee. She'd have stopped him in his tracks.'

  'I know, I know,' he agreed. 'But this is a police investigation, and things can't be taken on faith. They have to be looked at. We've done that now, and of course there was nothing there. In a way I wish there had been, it would have given us a bloody lead.'

  'Aye,' the old lady said sharply, 'and dragged our name through the mud at the same time. I would rather that you didn't catch the man who shot Beppe, than for that to happen.'

  'Oh, we'l catch him, Nana, don't you worry about that. The man's not walking away from this. As for the family name, I'l keep it as safe as I can. I may carry my father's surname, but I'm as much a Viareggio as anyone in this room.'

  'Mario.' His mother cal ed to him, from across the room. He turned to face her; she was as red-eyed as her sister-in-law, and at the sight other the memory of his father's death flooded into his consciousness. 'I've 144 been thinking all day about this, ever since you told me about Beppe. I think I'd better stay for a while; stay in the trust, I mean.'

  He shook his head; there was a slow finality about the gesture. 'No,' he said. 'That's not going to happen. I've been thinking about it too, don't worry. This day was always going to come, one way or another; Beppe's gone and you're gone. Paula and I are in control of the businesses now, and that's how it's going to stay. It's Papa's wil , and you can't fight that.'

  'But won't it conflict with your duties as policeman?'

  'It's unlikely, but if it did, there's a way around it. I have a lawyer, someone I know and trust. On Thursday, I had her look at the trust provisions; they allow for me to appoint her, or someone else suitable, as my proxy, to exercise al my powers on my behalf. If I'm advised that it's necessary, I may well do that, but first… we're going to find the bugger who made my Aunt Sophia a widow.'

  36

  'Of al the fatally stupid things I have seen, sir,' said the sheriff's marine patrol lieutenant, 'they don't come any more stupid than that… or any more fatal. Lighting a charcoal barbecue in the middle of a crowded marina, with al that fuel around…'

  Dwayne Traylor shook his head and looked at Skinner. 'So far, in addition to Mr Wylie's cruiser, we've lost four other boats, and had serious damage to three others. There are no dead… other than the guy himself, and he's as dead as you can get… but one lady has gone to the emergency room with burns to her arms and face, and with most of her hair frazzled.'

  The young man glanced into the treatment bay, behind the yacht club's reception area. Joe Doherty lay on a long leather-topped table; a doctor was leaning over him, putting stitches into a long gash on his cheekbone. 'How's your buddy?' he asked.

  'Okay, I hope,' the Scot answered. 'He was out for three or four minutes after the explosion. I told him he should go to hospital; he told me I should go to hell.' He glanced at the officer. 'Did you call Sheriff Dekker?'

  'As instructed, sir. He was on the tennis court, but when I gave him your names and told him what had happened, he said to give him ten minutes to shower and he'd be on his way.' Traylor frowned. 'He called you Deputy Chief Skinner, sir. From where, exactly, may I ask?'

  'Edinburgh.'

  'As in Edinborough, Scotland?'

  'More or less.'

  'Deputy Chief of what?'

  'Well, I'm not a fucking visiting fireman, however you put it here,'

  Skinner snapped, irritably. He stopped, then apologised. 'I'm sorry, son.

  No need to bite your head off. I'm a policeman; deputy chief constable.'

  'And your buddy, Mr Doherty there; is he Scottish too?'

  'Son of a bitch!' came a shout, from the treatment table.

  'Does that answer your question?'

  Lieutenant Traylor grinned. 'I guess so.'

  'Tell me,' the Scot asked, 'do you have many incidents involving moored boats?'

  'Not like this one, sir, I'm happy to say. Last Thanksgiving I arrested a guy who was drunk and launching fireworks from his boat in a marina complex a little further down the lakeside. He told me they were distress flares. They may have been, but I stil charged him with public disorder and breach of half-a-dozen county ordinances, and took him into custody, for his own safety, and everyone else's.

  'That was an exception, though; most boat-owners are responsible people. They have to be. They're indulging in a very expensive hobby.

  Apart from the capital cost of these cruisers, the berths in places like this are expensive, and marine insurance doesn't come cheap.'

  'So what Jackson Wylie did was exceptional too?'

  Traylor hesitated. 'Cooking on deck on an open fire, rather than in an enclosed galley, is stupid, sir, like I said, but truth be told, it's common enough behaviour.'

  'Have you seen many accidents like this one?'

  'A couple of smal fires, maybe, but nothing on this scale. Do you know if there's a Mrs Wylie?'

  'I don't believe so. I heard she died a few years back.'

  'Children?'

  'None that I know of.'

  'In that case, the executors, whoever they are, had better pray that the insurance company takes a sympathetic view, otherwise the other boat owners, and especially that lady with the frazzled hair, will sue the ass off the estate. If that happens, Mr Wylie better leave a hell of a lot of money to pay off al the claims.'

  The lieutenant was looking over Skinner's shoulder as he spoke, towards the door to the marina reception. Suddenly he stood, and came to attention. 'Good afternoon, Sheriff,' he exclaimed.

  'Afternoon, Dwayne,' said Bradford Dekker, barely glancing
at him.

  Instead he looked anxiously at the big Scot. 'Bob, how are you? How's Mr Doherty?'

  For a second Skinner's inbuilt cynicism came to the surface, and he wondered whether the sheriff's concern was for his friend or for the potential fall-out from the FBI if its deputy director had been injured seriously in a sloppily managed facility in his territory.

  'I'm fine,' he answered. 'Joe's got a hole in his head, but they're stitching it up right now.'

  'What happened? Traylor gave me the outline, but…'

  'There wasn't much more than an outline, Brad. We were walking towards Wylie's boat when it went up like a fucking candle.'

  'There wasn't any warning?'

  The DCC shook his head. 'Not that I can remember. Al I saw was the fireball.' He frowned as the recollection of his dizzy spell came back to him. For a second he thought he was about to have a recurrence, but the feeling passed. 'I can't really swear to anything.'

  The neither,' said Joe Doherty, from the doorway to the treatment room. 'I remember turning to talk to Bob, then coming round in here.

  Was there anyone else on Wylie's boat?'

  Traylor sucked in his breath. 'We have no reason to think that there was, sir. None of the other owners saw anyone else. However, we won't be able to say for sure until we've been over what's left of the Hispaniola.'

  'You mean it's still afloat?'

  'Just and no more. They have pretty good fire-fighting equipment here, and the local volunteer crew responded quickly. They got the fire under control before she burned down to the waterline.'

  Doherty raised his eyebrows as he looked at Skinner, wincing as the gesture tugged at the fresh stitches along the side of his head. 'That's a break, eh, Bob?'

  'Maybe, but if it is, it'll only be a small one… and none at all for Jackson Wylie.'

  'What…' The young lieutenant looked at them, puzzled.

  'Tell your technical people to stand down. Sheriff,' said Doherty to Dekker. 'I'm bringing my best team up from Quantico to go over that wreck.'