One in particular stood out from the crowd: a merciless killer whose most striking feature – apart from his total lack of concern for his victims, or his own safety – had been his absolute coolness. Catching him had been the toughest job of Skinner's career. Yet, as he thought of his own peril, and of the danger he had faced on another occasion. Skinner recognised something of that killer in the way he himself had reacted to each situation.
Cool, unflappable and, if he was totally honest, ready – if it came to it – to kill another human being without a scrap of remorse.
That was the reason why, when the firearms had been issued earlier, he had declined to take one himself. For Skinner did know fear, deep in his heart: fear of the easy confidence and skill with which he handled a lethal weapon, and of his readiness to use it.
The final thing to strike him in this self-analysis was that it was now far too late to dream up a good story for Sarah to explain away the rip in his jeans. He would have to handle it as best he could. That thought snapped him back to the present, just as he turned the BMW into the narrow driveway of his home. He pressed a remote signalling device and the door of the double garage swung up. Running the car inside, he parked alongside Sarah's Frontera Sport, then entered the bungalow by the back door, closing the garage doors with his signaller as he didso. That was one of the small, routine security precautions which had become a fact of his life.
The kitchen was empty, neat as usual save for five crumpled Safeway bags lying on one of the work-tops. Skinner checked the fridge and found that it had been re-stocked. He took out an opened carton of orange juice and took a swig, leaning his head back and pouring it into his open mouth, Spanish-style. As he replaced the carton and closed the door, two brown arms wound round his waist and a chin dug itself into the centre of his back.
From its position he could tell that Sarah was barefoot. And from the warmth flowing through to him he guessed that nakedness was her overall condition.
'Hi.' Her voice was muffled slightly by his shirt.
As she spoke, he felt her right hand at work. In a few seconds, she had loosened the buckle of his belt and unzipped his denims.
At the same time, with her other hand she unfastened, quickly and skilfully, the buttons of his shirt. When she had finished, he turned into her embrace, facing her, shrugging off his shirt in the same movement. She threw her left arm round his neck, pulling his mouth down to hers. As they kissed, her right hand moved lower down, quickly finding and releasing the object of its search.
He gripped the top of her thighs and lifted her clear of the floor, feeling both her strength and her softness as she wrapped her legs around him, not really needing her guiding hand as she lowered herself, to draw him deep into her. He found her mouth as she gyrated against him, tasting slight saltiness. Gradually her movement grew faster, her body bucking and heaving, her legs gripping him tighter than he would have believed possible.
She cried out aloud, once, twice, three times, and then suddenly, so did he, as he felt himself erupt inside her – coming and coming until he thought he would never stop. But at last Sarah's movements began to slow, until she settled gently against him, and he became aware for the first time of her weight, on his hands, arms and shoulders.
He whispered in her ear. 'See, if the window cleaner came now…'
Bob felt her laughter weU up, from inside her. She hugged him, gripping him tight once more with her thighs.
He walked them, still locked together, through to their bedroom and laid her on the bed. He settled on top of her but she rolled him over and sat up, keeping him still hard and inside her, as she reached down to strip off the rest of his clothes. Then, slowly, she began to move again, her eyes misty and her body glowing with a light sheen of sweat. Her fingers ploughed their way into the ban- on his chest until he drew her down close to him again and rolled her over, thrusting deeper and hearing her gasp with what he thought for a moment was pain, until it stretched into a long sigh of pleasure. She arched her back and swung her legs up, gripping him yet again, and pushing with her thighs in perfect time with his thrusts. Her head was flung back. her chin upturned, her neck as if offered to the wolf. Strands of her auburn hair clung to her damp face. She began to climax again, throwing back her arms, using only her legs to pull her centre tight to him, and once more they came together, gasping and crying, and finally laughing at the skill and energy of their love-making, and glorying in the sheer pleasure of being one together.
Eventually he rolled away, to lie on his side, propped up on his left elbow. With his right index finger he traced the line of her nose, while smoothing back her damp hair, where it had stuck to her forehead and to the sides of her face.
'Love you, doctor.'
'Yeah. And I you, copper.' She reached up and rubbed his cheek. 'You're on the edge of needing a shave.'
Since their engagement on New Year's Day – and their subsequent April marriage – theirs had become the deepest, closest and most powerfully physical relationship that either had ever known. In their intimacy Sarah had been cautious at first, holding herself back, still with the memory of her earlier, failed engagement in New York. But as a wife, she had developed a sexual frankness and an appetite for congress which often astonished her and always delighted Bob. With his daughter Alex now independent of them, living in her Glasgow flat during university term-time and for most of the summer, they had full freedom to enjoy each other, and eagerly they took advantage of it.
Bob, despite being in his mid-forties, had evolved sexually, too.
He often thought of himself in the fifteen years between Myra's death and Sarah's arrival in his life: a quiet, private, thoughtful man, a loner; good qualities for a high-achieving detective but barriers on the road to happiness. For all of those years he had been wounded inwardly, like Sarah, but more severely. His few brief sexual encounters with available women – never at his home, and always when Alex was away with her grandparents or at school camps – had been deeply unsatisfying and had left him grieving afresh for his daughter's dead mother. So when he had first met Sarah, in the line of duty, and had felt immediately drawn to her, it had been in spite of himself, and his nature, that he had followed his instincts. And now he was, he knew, a far better man for it. He had still only a very few close friends, Andy Martin and James Proud top of the list, but he had become more approachable, more ready to laugh with others, and to share his thoughts with them. He perceived, too, that he was now more active in his support of those in trouble, where before he might have offered no more than sympathy. At first he had worried whether the new Skinner might be too soft as a commander, but he had realised quickly that the qualities which he had felt himself developing were strengths rather than weaknesses.
He had now lapsed into a reverie, from which Sarah recalled him abruptly, by propping herself up on an elbow and tweaking his nose.
Hey! I'm still here, you know.' She glanced down towards his right leg. 'Going to tell me about that now?'
Bob glanced down to see the red raw scrape on his knee. He looked at Sarah and grinned.
All right. I'm in Charlotte Square, and I'm watching this motorcyclist outside Alan Ballantyne's place, you know Number 6.1 think he looks a bit iffy, so I decide to check him out.
I'm on my way over to talk to him when he reaches inside his jacket. That bomb must have got to me more than I thought, because I decide he's going for a gun, and I dive for cover. In fact, what's he got in his hand is nothing but a mobile phone. Did I feel like a prat? Yes I did. Worst of all, big Denis from the Scotsman saw it all. Ask him.'
He said it all with a smile, thinking: That last part was a clever touch. Hope it does the trick.
Sarah's eyes narrowed as she weighed up the plausibility of his story. 'What did the biker do?'
'He got the fright of his life. Imagine. He hears what he must have thought was a nutter shouting and running at him, then sees him diving about in the street. He revved up his bike and bombed off. What else
would you expect?' Bob kept smiling, his fingers mentally crossed, as she looked at him for a few long seconds.
Well, if that's all. Lie there and I'll clean up that knee.' She swung herself off the bed and walked on tip-toes into their shower-room. A few seconds later she reappeared, leaning on the doorjamb with an uncapped bottle of Dettol and a wad of cottonwool in her hand.
As always, the sudden sight of his wife naked gave Bob a rush of pleasure, even although he had seen her thus only a few seconds before. He smiled as his eyes took in her long legs, her smooth belly with the dark heart of mystery at its base, her high, proud, full breasts.
In her turn she looked at him, stretched out on the bed with the special relaxation that only follows great sex: grey-maned but still vibrant with the spirit of youth, long, lean and muscular. He smiled at her again, but she kept her face straight.
'Think it's funny, huh. Spread 'em, boy, and take your medicine.'
He did as he was told, rolling on to his back, his legs forming a V. She knelt alongside him and padded the scrape on his knee with the cotton wool, now well soaked in the antiseptic. She held the bottle of Dettol upright in her left hand as she worked.
He winced as the antiseptic stung, smiling a stage smile through clenched teeth.
'That's a brave soldier,' she cooed.
Then, suddenly, she straddled him again, sitting on his legs, immobilising him. She switched the Dettol bottle to her right hand, holding it, not upright this time, but almost horizontally with her thumb over the top. It hovered menacingly above his lower midsection.
'This stuff stings. Don't it just?' she said.
Bob laughed involuntarily, taken by surprise. He looked at the bottle, unsure of what would happen next.
'Was that really how you scraped your leg, big boy?' she said, mock menace in her tone.
The grin stayed on his face. 'Well, no. The truth is, I was at the zoo, and I got too close to the alligator. Naw, that's not it, I was crossing Princes Street, and I was run over by a bus. Or maybe it was when I tried to jump the food queue in Marks and Spencer.'
'Ok, ok, ok! I give up already.' She jumped to her feet and put the bottle on the bedside table.
'Now, for God's sake, get a move on. It's almost seven and we have to be at the theatre for eight.'
His grin grew wider. 'Exactly. So what's the rush.'
He reached up and drew her to him.
14
They arrived at the Pleasance theatre complex with only three minutes to spare.
For eleven months of the year, the Pleasance is used by Edinburgh University and its graduates as a leisure and recreational facility, and thus makes little or no impact on the life of the city. But during August it is transformed into a cosmopolitan centre for the performing arts, throbbing with activity eighteen hours a day. Bars, cafeterias and two theatres are set around a central courtyard filled with benches, chairs, and tables. Around one corner of the cobbled yard, rows of canvas seats are set out, making the area into a third and impromptu theatre, used by the ragbag of idealists and solo performers who, unable to find or fund a venue, flock to the Fringe regardless, ready to make use of even the crudest stage to further their dreams of glory.
Bob and Sarah saw Alex before she spotted them. Wearing her stage make-up, she stood at the top of the stairway which led into Pleasance Theatre 2. Her eyes scanned the crowd; her arms were folded tight across her chest and her brow was knitted with impatience – and gathering disappointment. Even caught off guard, the girl still looked stunning: tall and slim, with big, round blue eyes and a jumble of long dark hair, shining with natural highlights, which fell around her wide shoulders like a shawl.
As they approached. Bob and Sarah saw her rise on her toes, stretching up to peer as far into the crowd as she could. Then, with a shrug of frustration, she dropped back on to her heels and made as if to turn away. •Alex!'
At Sarah's cry, she turned and caught sight of them at last, as they reached the end of a snaking queue of around forty people leading towards and then up the stairway entrance.
'Where have you two been?' she called down to them. 'I was beginning to feel like I'd been stood up. Listen, when you get in, do me a favour and sit well to the back. I don't want to be able to see either of you, or catch your eye during the show, in case it makes me freeze. Wish me luck!'
Bob smiled up at her. 'Break a leg, kid, or whatever!' he shouted. Sarah blew her a kiss. Alex waved to them and disappeared into the theatre.
There were only a few of the steeply tiered seats left when they entered, but they found two in the third row from the back, close to a spotlight. None of the cast would look in that direction for fear of being blinded.
Alexis Skinner was five weeks short of her twenty-first birthday.
She was the only child of Bob's youthful first marriage, which had been cut tragically short by the death of his wife in a simple car accident when Alex was only three years old. She had no clear memory of her mother, and Bob had brought her up virtually alone – with the occasional help of his parents – in the cottage in Gullane, the East Lothian golfing village, where he and Sarah now shared their off-duty time. Myra, Alex's dead mother, had left a sizable endowment policy to provide for her education at one of the Merchant Company schools in Edinburgh. However, the young Alex had demanded that she be allowed to stay with her friends in East Lothian, stamping her tiny foot to emphasise the point. Eventually, Bob had let her have her way. Gullane Primary and North Berwick High it had been, and both schools had done well by her. University had been a different matter, as she had chosen to read Law at Glasgow. Now, three years on, she was about to enter her Honours year, on track for a First, with a string of commendations and prizes to her name. She intended eventually to pursue a career at the Scottish Bar. To her father's private delight, recently she had been awarded a Faculty of Advocates' Scholarship, to help her through her period of pupillage and over the first months of her career in advocacy, where traditionally a newcomer had little or no earning capacity.
When Alex was five, Bob had invested her school endowment fund in a Ivory Sime capital growth trust, switching to an income fund when she was ready to leave school. Her 'private means' – as sometimes, with mock grandeur, she described her mother's legacy – allowed her to live a frugal but comfortable student existence. Freed from the need to find a part-time job, she had been able to pursue her interest in the theatre, which had been developing since the start of her university career, gathering pace as she gained more confidence in the progress of her studies. After a year in the University drama club, she had joined a rather more ambitious theatre society founded by, but no longer restricted to, Glasgow's wealthy and influential Jewish community. Bob and Sarah had seen her perform in two productions, each a musical, and had been surprised by the way her naturally powerful singing voice had developed under coaching. It was now good enough to have attracted interest outside the theatre group. As Sarah knew – daughter and stepmother having decided to keep it a secret, from Bob until the release of the album – she had been used as a backing singer by a Glasgow rock-group which was already internationally successful, and still seemed to be moving on an upward career path.
This Fringe show was far different from anything she had attempted before. In fact, Alex had said, it was the most difficult thing their group had ever tackled: a stage version of Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff, telling the story of the pioneering American Mercury astronauts. No music, just straight drama. And for the first time Alex played the female lead. She was cast as 'Glamorous Glennis' Yeager, the wife of the first man to break the sound barrier. When not involved in dialogue, she narrated in spotlight from side stage, as the story developed. She had enlisted Sarah as American accent coach and, throughout July, the Skinner household had rung to the sound of Transatlantic conversation.
On occasion even Bob had found himself joining in.
Bob and Sarah settled into their seats, as the last light dimmed to blackness. Then suddenly
in a brilliant stage illumination there were Alex and the male lead, miming a chase in which Alex was steadily overtaken and thrown to the ground, in what the skilful stage-lighting effect made believable as desert. The Yeagers' strange courtship ritual began a play which unfolded its gripping story over two and a half hours. Before the show. Bob had held private reservations about a play which attempted to tell the whole story of early space exploration in a makeshift theatre. However, when it was over, he conceded to himself that it had worked, thanks to the intensity of the fellow players and, of course, to Alex's exceptional performance.
The final curtain was received with thunderous applause and a standing ovation, a rarity on the Fringe. Eventually, after three encores, the applause quietened and the audience began to file out. Bob and Sarah made their way down to the front. Less than a minute later, Alex appeared through a side door. She was followed, a few paces behind, by a muscular blond man, an inch or so under six feet in height, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. •Well, what did you think?' she bubbled, still on a high from the warmth of the applause. 'Was it ok?'
'Ok?' said Bob. 'It was brilliant. You could take that anywhere.
Well done, baby. Always knew you were a star.'
'Yes, terrific, kid.' Sarah hugged her.
Alex kissed them both. 'Thanks, Pops. Thanks, Sarah. You really mean it?'
They smiled their replies, as Alex turned and beckoned to the man waiting behind her.
'There's someone I'd like you to meet. This is Ingemar Svart, known as Ingo – our lighting genius. We imported him from Sweden specially for the show.
'Ingo, meet Bob and Sarah Skinner, my Dad and Mum.'
Inwardly Sarah was enormously pleased by Alex's introduction, but she held up a hand. 'Please, Alex! That's step-mum. I'm only nine years older than you, remember. Hi, Ingo, it's nice to meet you. I thought your lighting was great.'
'Thank you. I am also pleased to meet both of you.'
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