Skinner's Mission bs-6

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘We need a full report as soon as possible. Consult Andy Martin as you require, but let me know at once of anything you turn up. I’ll be at my Gullane number over the weekend, or available on my mobile.’ He stood up, almost jumping to his feet.

  ‘That’s it, go to it.’

  He was buzzing Ruth as the door closed behind the two detectives. Within two minutes, she called him back. ‘Mr Pettigrew on the line, sir.’

  ‘Davie,’ said Skinner, heartily, as she put the call through. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’ll be doing better when you give me someone for that fire in Seafield.’

  The DCC smiled as he pictured the mournful, black-bearded face at the other end of the line. ‘We will, Davie, don’t you worry. With a bit of luck, and a bit of time, we might give you more than that.

  ‘But this is about something else. How long does your office keep police reports on accidental deaths? What’s the Crown Office rule on retention?’

  ‘There’s a certain amount of discretion on that,’ said Pettigrew. ‘In this office we keep them for at least twenty years.’

  Skinner smiled in huge satisfaction. ‘Excellent. In that case, I want you to do me a favour, by having some weekend reading couriered to me at Fettes Avenue by close of play today, under Eyes Only cover.

  ‘I want to see the report on the death of my first wife, in a car accident in East Lothian, eighteen years ago.’

  ‘I’ll still have it,’ said Pettigrew, hesitant, and clearly curious.

  ‘I’ll tell you why in due course, Davie. Meantime, it’s just possible that you might have a call from my Chief Constable asking you not to let me see that file.

  ‘If that happens, my friend, you’re going to have to decide which of the two of us you’d like least to upset!’

  20

  ‘Big guy, with a Zapata moustache. I remember him all right. “The Vulture” was what we called him, in fact; on account of that bloody great tattoo.’

  Calum Berwick smiled as he stood among the shining apparatus in the weight-training room at Meadowbank Stadium. It was less busy than the Royal Commonwealth Pool facility had been. Only four people were at work, but all were pressing heavy weights, concentrating so hard that none of them appeared to notice the group of three near the door.

  Rose glanced down the room and saw, through the glass wall at the far end, a number of athletes pounding round the synthetic track upon which two Commonwealth Games had been celebrated.

  ‘You get the serious people in places like this, the hard trainers, and you get the posers,’ said Berwick. ‘The Vulture was a bit of both. He could do his stuff on the apparatus okay, but he liked to strut around too, flashing the pecs at the girls, and running off at the mouth.

  ‘I remember hearing him say once that he had the tattoo done when he was in the French Foreign Legion. He was a hard man, by his way of it, but I had him marked down as a bit of a wanker.’

  ‘What age was he?’ asked Maggie Rose.

  ‘In his thirties, for sure, but whether early or late, I wouldn’t like to say.’

  ‘Can you recall his real name?’

  Berwick made a face. ‘I was afraid you were going to ask that. I’ve been trying to remember, but I don’t think I ever knew it. There was no membership requirement up there. You just paid and lifted, paid and lifted, every time.’

  ‘Have you ever seen him here?’

  The manager shook his head. ‘No. Not once. And I’d have remembered that bloody tattoo for sure, if I’d seen it.’

  ‘Up at the Commonwealth,’ asked Pye, ‘did you ever hear him speak of anywhere else he might have trained?’

  Berwick considered the question for a few moments. ‘No, I can’t say that I did. But the guy worked out a lot. Big circuits at least three times a week, daily at some times. I doubt if he’d be training anywhere else at that time.’

  ‘Yet he just stopped turning up,’ said Rose.

  ‘So it seems, if Simon doesn’t know him. He must have joined a club. A lot of the serious guys do. It can work out cheaper than here in the long run.’

  ‘That’s just great,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘We’ll have to start working our way round them.’

  Berwick began to head for the door. ‘One thing more,’ Rose called out. ‘Do you remember a guy named Carl Medina from your days at the Commonwealth?’

  ‘Carl? Sure, he was one of my regulars up there. He comes here too on occasion, on the special unemployed concessionary rate. Nice guy, quiet. He’s not a body-builder; just trains to keep fit.’

  ‘Is he the sort of guy who’d have associated with the Vulture.’

  Berwick shook his head, emphatically. ‘No. He’s the sort of guy the Vulture would have tried to impress.’

  He escorted the two detectives to the stadium’s foyer, waving them goodbye, as he trotted back down the stairs to his office. Rose and Pye stood alone in the big entrance hallway.

  ‘Got that list of clubs, then, Sammy?’ asked Rose, slightly wearily.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Pye. ‘But before we start, there’s something I wondered if we might try.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well . . .’ The Detective Constable hesitated. ‘This guy was a regular at the Commonwealth Pool until three years ago, then all of a sudden he just dropped out of sight.’

  ‘So,’ said the DCI, ‘d’you think he might have re-enlisted in the Foreign Legion?’

  Sammy Pye smiled. ‘Maybe he did, ma’am. Or maybe he got lifted. Maybe he’s in the nick.’

  Rose looked up at the young man. ‘That’s good thinking, Sammy. I’m seriously impressed. Let’s try the Prison Service. If we get lucky, we’ll have saved ourselves a lot of legwork.’

  21

  ‘I wish we could put a tap on Jackie Charles’ phone,’ said Neil McIlhenney. ‘We threw a few scares into Dougie Terry this morning. I’ll bet the first thing he did after we left was get on the blower to his gaffer.’

  ‘I hope it was,’ replied Andy Martin. ‘The two of them would have been expecting us to ask for clearance to look at his books for evidence of embezzlement and the like, but asking to see the records of his property company, that’s different. That will have taken them by surprise, and that’s why - you’re right Neil, I’m sure that’s what he did - Terry would have been on the phone to Jackie.

  ‘We don’t need a tap to work that out. Charles certainly didn’t bat an eyelid when the Boss and I asked for access. He didn’t think it over for a second: just said yes.’

  Skinner rose from the uncomfortable seat in Dave Donaldson’s office in the St Leonard’s Police Office. The building was new but much of the furniture had come from the old High Street station. Months after his stabbing and the major surgery which had saved his life, the DCC still found it painful to sit on hard chairs for too long. ‘Anyway, Neil,’ he said, ‘it should never be made too easy for us to listen in on someone’s telephone. We’ve never established reasonable cause or evidence sufficient for us to ask for wire-tap authorisation on Charles.

  ‘If you could plug into his line, just like that, how would you know that I couldn’t plug into yours?’

  The big Sergeant grinned back at him. ‘I wouldn’t know that, sir. I don’t know that you can’t. But if you did, your ears would be sore in no time from listening to my Olive blethering on to her mates.’

  None of the three others in the room had actually met Mrs McIlhenney, but the awe in which her husband professed to hold her had made her a figure of formidable legend among his colleagues.

  ‘Seriously, though, sir,’ said McIlhenney. ‘It’d be worth hearing what the Comedian was saying to anyone right now. He didn’t see the funny side when Mr Donaldson suggested that he might be a consolation prize for whoever failed to kill Jackie.’

  Skinner’s eyebrows rose and he looked across at Donaldson. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘To see if he runs, sir,’ said the Superintendent.

  ‘So far he’s stayed put.
’

  ‘Then suppose that’s because he’s our fire-raiser?’

  Skinner shook his head. ‘He isn’t. I don’t believe that for one second.’

  ‘What makes you so sure, boss?’ asked Donaldson. ‘Does Charles have some sort of hold over him that the rest of us don’t know about?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the DCC, with the faintest trace of impatience. ‘I’ve known this pair for twenty years, and I think he does. Three holds, in fact. They’re called loyalty, friendship and gratitude. Terry’s done a good job for Jackie over the years and he’s been well rewarded for it. Look at the Jag, the big house in Torphichen, the expensive suits. He actually likes Charles, and Charles likes him. The guy’s too loyal to have been bought.’

  The Superintendent looked at him. ‘Maybe that loyalty will go if we can find something solid to nail Terry with. Maybe he’ll give Jackie up then.’

  ‘Maybe he will. So let’s hope that Maggie can find this guy with the vulture on his shoulder, or that we get something from these notes the man Medina is bringing in.

  ‘Speaking of whom . . .’ He glanced at his watch: it was twenty-three minutes past four. ‘He should be here by now.’

  ‘Can’t be, boss,’ said Donaldson. ‘I gave specific instructions that I was to be advised the second he arrived.’

  Andy Martin looked at him, then across to McIlhenney. ‘In that case, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘why are you sitting here? Let’s not await Mr Medina’s pleasure. Go and bring him in.’

  22

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ said Sonia Cunningham. ‘You’re looking for someone and all you know about him is that he may have a moustache and he still has a tattoo.’

  ‘That just about sums it up,’ said Maggie Rose, cheerfully.

  Behind her desk in the airy office, which looked across towards the Gyle Shopping Centre, its car parks teeming with Friday evening shoppers, the Grade Four officer in the Scottish Prison Service Agency shook her neatly-coiffured head. She was in her early fifties, but her complexion was younger, her age hinted at only by the deep laugh lines around her eyes. They creased as she spoke. ‘You’ve just described more or less the entire male prison population . . . and a few of the women as well!’

  ‘But this is a very distinctive tattoo, we’re told, on his right shoulder. We’re hoping that you have a description of it among your records.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ said Miss Cunningham, ‘but it’s a long shot. We list distinguishing marks, but we don’t necessarily describe them. And we don’t draw diagrams of their positions on prisoners’ bodies.

  ‘Still, you’re welcome to look through our files. How urgent is this? Can it keep till Monday?’

  The Chief Inspector shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. This relates to a murder investigation.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the woman, ‘I’ll give you each a desk and a terminal, and I’ll have someone show you how to access the files.

  ‘But be warned. You could be in for a long, boring and maybe, at the end of it, a fruitless weekend. Scotland’s prisons have never been more full!’

  23

  McIlhenney pressed the Muirhead/Medina button and waited. After a minute, he pressed again. The speaker remained silent.

  ‘Maybe he’s turned up at St Leonard’s,’ said the Sergeant at last, more in hope than expectation.

  ‘No,’ said Donaldson. ‘We’d have had a call on the mobile if he had arrived.’

  ‘Then let’s get in and have a look.’ Simultaneously, McIlhenney pressed three other buzzers. A few seconds later an elderly lady’s voice quavered from the tinny speaker.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Gas Board emergency,’ said the Sergeant, quickly. ‘Let us in, please.’

  ‘Oh! Oh. Yes.’

  There was a hum from the lock and he pushed the entrance door open. ‘Where is it?’ he asked Donaldson.

  ‘Two floors up. Level three, flat C. This way.’ He led the bulky McIlhenney towards the stairway, up the steps at a trot, two at a time.

  When they reached flat 3c, the door was closed. The Sergeant, slightly out of breath, rapped the letterbox knocker, hard, shouting as he did. ‘Mr Medina, are you in?’

  The door swung open with the force of the knock. To his astonishment McIlhenney saw that its frame was splintered and that the keeper of the Yale lock was hanging awkwardly and loosely. He stepped into the gloomy hallway.

  Carl Medina was in.

  He lay on his back, a few feet from the doorway, slack-jawed, his dull glazed eyes staring at the ceiling with an expression of pure astonishment. At first McIlhenney thought that the man was wearing a particularly garish red tee-shirt, until Donaldson, behind him, switched on the hall light and he saw that the once-grey garment was saturated with blood, and until the stink of violent death attacked his nostrils.

  ‘Ahhh, you bastard!’ the Sergeant hissed. ‘What’s this about, then?’

  Hardened to such scenes, he took a deep breath, leaned over the body and looked, professionally and dispassionately. He counted four large stab wounds in Medina’s chest and abdomen. One of them had ripped open his belly, and several feet of twisted intestine had spilled out from the gash, like glistening, gory intertwined snakes.

  He stood up and, as he did, he felt the bloody carpet squelch under his feet. ‘Want to take a quick look round, sir?’ he asked.

  Donaldson shook his head. ‘No. Let’s play it by the book. I’ll call the DCS, then the scene of crime team and the ME. We don’t want to contaminate the site. Let’s just wait outside until everyone else gets here.’ He backed out through the front door.

  As McIlhenney turned to follow, his eye was caught by a number of rusty brown marks on the beige carpet of the entrance hallway, and by a black plastic object lying in a corner.

  ‘Mind your feet, sir,’ he barked. ‘Those marks on the floor look like bloodstains. And what’s that?’

  As Donaldson froze and stood stock-still, the Sergeant, wary himself of leaving fresh marks, tiptoed around the stains on the carpet and, carefully, picked up the black plastic sheet. At once he realised that it was a binliner. As he lifted it a number of smaller bags fell out, crumpled up together and streaked with drying blood.

  ‘What the hell!’ he exclaimed, holding the binliner at arm’s length and turning it inside out. Holes had been cut in the top and in the sides. ‘The clever bastard. He’s worn this thing like an overall and the supermarket bags over his forearms and his feet, to keep the blood off his clothes and his shoes, and to avoid leaving any trace of himself.

  ‘Once he was done, the bugger just stripped them off and walked away.’

  ‘Maybe the plastic bags will give us a lead,’ said Donaldson.

  ‘Maybe,’ muttered the Sergeant, with an edge of irreverent sarcasm in his tone, ‘if we start by lifting everyone that’s shopped in Safeway over the last few months.’

  The Superintendent shot him a look which was intended to be reproving but failed, then produced his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled DCS Martin’s direct line number.

  McIlhenney listened as he described their discovery. ‘No, sir,’ he heard him say. ‘It doesn’t look as if the man had a chance. Somehow the killer got into the building and knocked on Medina’s door. As soon as he started to open it he smashed his way in and attacked him.

  ‘From the looks of it, any one of these wounds would have been fatal.’

  He paused. ‘No, sir, we haven’t gone in any further than the front door. Yes, we’ll wait for Arthur Dorward’s team, and for you to get here.’

  24

  A chill ran through Bob Skinner as he looked at Medina’s corpse. In another place, a few months before, with only a slightly different outcome he could have been lying like Medina, staring up into eternity with dispassionate, white-clad detectives working quietly around his body.

  He gave a small shudder and the moment passed.

  ‘Like you said, Dave,’ he said. ‘The boy didn’t have a chance. Any guesses a
bout how the killer got into the building?’

  ‘All the entrances are secure, boss, but he could have done it like we did: pressed any bell and said he was the postman. Or, he could have been someone Medina was expecting.’

  Skinner frowned. ‘Don’t fancy that. In that case the victim would probably have been at the door waiting for him by the time he climbed the stairs, and he wouldn’t have been taken by surprise. He looks to have been quite a fit lad, too.’

  He turned to Dr Banks, who was standing on the other side of the body. ‘Got any idea of the time of death, doctor?’

  Banks looked hesitant, as usual. ‘Well, as you know it’s hard to be precise.’

  ‘Well don’t be precise, man,’ the Deputy Chief Constable snapped. ‘For once, just fucking guess!’

  The doctor flushed. ‘Very well. Late morning, I’d say . . . but I won’t be bound by that.’

  ‘No,’ thought Skinner, ‘you won’t. Yet my wife could give me the time down to the half-hour and probably tell me what the killer had for breakfast.’ Inside him, a river of loss threatened to burst its banks, but with an effort of will he contained it and turned back to his men.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got one suspect as the orchestrator of this murder, yet he was the guy who put us on to Medina in the first place. Why would Jackie offer him up as a candidate, and then have him knocked off?

  ‘Is the little shit so arrogant that he’s trying to tell us he’s more powerful than we are?’

  He slammed his right fist into his left palm, the speed of the gesture startling Donaldson. ‘If he is, then he’s in for a nasty shock. Once and for all, I’m going to get this villain.

  ‘Dave, you, Neil and Dorward’s team comb through this place for those notes of Medina’s. Don’t worry about looking after his girlfriend. I’ve called Pamela Masters into action earlier than she expected. She’s picking her up from her office, breaking the news to her and finding her somewhere else to stay tonight.