‘Get a wanted signal around on McCartney too, if Donaldson hasn’t done it already. Description, car registration, the lot. And make it national. I want that man arrested wherever he is.’
Rose nodded and left the room, still grinning.
‘That’s Maggie’s weekend taken care of,’ said Skinner. ‘Mine too, come to think of it. I’m off to Fife. If you’re not doing anything, I’ll take you with me to meet ex-Sergeant Whatnot.’
As she looked at him, puzzled, he glanced at his watch. It showed seven fifty, too late to visit Jazz again. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘if you’re not doing anything tonight, how about dinner?’
47
Andy Martin, crouched in the shrubbery at the foot of the villa’s long sloping garden, whispered into his walkie-talkie. ‘Brian, you can see the house from your position. Is there any sign that Charles knows we’re here?’
‘No, sir, nothing’s changed. The light’s still on in the downstairs hall and in a room to the side. What can you see?’
Martin peered through the night-glasses, looking eastwards along Ravelston Dykes Road, then down the hill where it swept up from Queensferry Road, the north-western approach to the capital. He could just glimpse the top of one police car, hidden in a lay-by. The other was out of his sight. ‘Bugger all,’ he replied at last. ‘Let’s hope these boys are punctual. They should be here any minute now.’
The team had been in position since 10.30 p.m., awaiting the appearance of the reported assassins from the Midlands. Wearing hard-hats and flak-jackets, they had moved in silently, from vehicles tucked away in the car park of Murryfield Golf Club, making sure that no residents, and particularly not Mr John Jackson Charles, were aware of their arrival.
They had sat and they had waited, for an hour and twenty-nine minutes, alerted by the passage of each car along the road, but given no signal by their watchers, hidden out of sight three hundred yards away in either direction.
The flash of headlights from the side street meant nothing to Martin; at first. But suddenly, a distance away, he heard an engine roar into life, and a squeal of rubber as it took off.
He swung up the night-glasses, just in time to see a long car pull directly out into the path of another vehicle heading towards him along Ravelston Dykes Road. Behind that, he was sure that he could make out the shape of a third vehicle, but without lights.
The first, intruding car slammed on its brakes. Through the glasses Martin saw the shapes of two men as they jumped out, and on the evening breeze, he fancied he heard borne towards him, the cry of ‘Armed police!’ He could see little else for the obstructing vehicle, which he now recognised as a Jaguar, long enough to block the entire carriageway, but he fancied that he saw more movement from the car bringing up the rear.
He sat there, momentarily frozen, until the flash in the night and the bang of the gunshot hurled him into action. ‘Move, move, move!’ he yelled into the walkie-talkie. ‘Murrayfield Road vehicle, head east along Ravelston Dykes Road, fast! The other car block this driveway! There’s something going on along there. Come on everyone. ’
He vaulted over the low wall of the Charles villa and sprinted up the slope and round the curve, towards the Jaguar, following his men in the Ford Granada which had been parked out of his sight. As he ran he could hear, above the noise of the braking police car as the blockading Jaguar’s width brought it to a halt, a heavy engine roar, and tyres squeal as it reversed, spun round and raced off into the night.
Martin reached the scene just after the men from the Granada, who had jumped from their vehicle and taken up firing positions behind the Jaguar. He switched on his hand lamp and shone the broad brilliant beam on to the vehicle beyond, drawing his firearm as he did.
As he had thought, the third vehicle was gone. But facing him, he saw the nose of a blue Ford Scorpio, with its rear doors lying open. He directed the beam on the registration plate and read, ‘M22 FQD’.
‘Bugger!’ he said, softly.
He swung the light back up, playing it around the vehicle. He could see no-one outside, but on the roadway, his eyes caught a reflected flash from broken glass. As Mackie, Donaldson, McGuire and McIlhenney arrived at the scene, panting from the sprint, he walked slowly around the Jaguar and shone his torch into the ambushed car.
The driver was slumped across the passenger seat, prevented by his belt from falling across it. Where his right eye should have been, there was instead a multi-coloured, glistening mess from which blood was pouring copiously on to the fabric of the upholstery. On the floor, in the foot well on the passenger side, Martin could see a pistol. The man’s right hand was still twitching, the fingers clenching as if trying to pull a trigger.
He stood up and turned away wearily. ‘Call an ambulance, someone,’ he called, as the others came round the Jaguar to meet him. ‘There’s a guy in here, and he’s still alive . . . technically. As for the others, I reckon that, technically, they’re as dead as he’s going to be soon.
‘Jackie’s intelligence network must be as good as ours. His guys have beaten us to it.’
He looked at the watcher who had been nearest to the incident. ‘Did you get a good look at what happened?’
‘Not really, sir. I was trying to verify the number of the Scorpio when the Jag pulled out. I just saw a lot of rushing about, then I heard the shot.’
‘Did you get a look at the third vehicle?’
‘No, sir, my view was obscured. I could see two men being hustled into it, then it did a reverse turn and made off. I never saw the number or the model type, only that it was a big light-coloured vehicle.’
‘That’s something at least. Dave,’ Martin called, ‘radio in and order patrols to look out for a large light-coloured car with at least four, probably five men in it. Tell them to treat them as armed and dangerous, and to do nothing other than keep them in sight.’
On impulse he swung up his night-glasses and trained them on the villa which they had been guarding. He studied the upper windows straining to see if anyone was there watching them. There was no-one there, not as much as a shadow on a curtain, but instinct told him that, if there had been, Jackie Charles would have been smiling.
48
It had been a long day for Alexis Skinner, immersed in her exploration of her mother’s past.
She had devoured the diaries slowly, line by line, trying to think of herself as their author, rather than read them as a stranger, objectively. Each time she had finished a volume, she had put it down and had taken something else from the trunk.
There had been the shoes, black, suede, with three-inch heels. She had tried them on, and found them to be slightly wide, but otherwise a perfect fit. There had been the costume jewellery, most of it plastic or carved wood, but some of it gilt. She had found a heavy imitation gold choker, with matching earrings, and had sat wearing them and the shoes as she made her way through the next diary, doing her best to be her mother.
Then there had been the clothes: the black, high-lift bra she had felt through the wrapping of its parcel; a suspender belt with black nylons, still in their box; a pair of frilled black panties cut high at the hip and narrow at the crotch; a black dress in sheer satin with a neckline which plunged enough to allow the bra to be at its most effective, and a short, square-shouldered matching jacket.
She had carried them all to her bedroom, where she had undressed completely, and had put them on, one by one. The 38C brassiere had felt slightly more comfortable than she guessed it might have to her mother, and the dress had been a little loose at the hips, but otherwise everything had fitted so well that she might have shopped for it herself. The hem of the skirt sat just above her knee, fashionable eighteen years before, fashionable again in Alex’s era.
She had taken off the dress and jacket, and her own engagement ring, and had sat down at her dressing table with an enlarged colour photograph of her mother before her, the last taken before her death. As first she had done years before, as a teenager, she had copied
her make-up; her blusher, her eye-shadow, the way she applied her lipstick. Using styling mousse she had teased her hair as best she could into her mother’s fashion. Then she had put on the dress and jacket once more, and the costume jewellery, had taken the small black patent handbag from the trunk, and had gone out, into the day.
At 4 p.m. on a March Saturday, the image of Myra Skinner had walked again in the city in which she had attended college almost thirty years earlier, and in which her boyfriend had been a student.
She had walked along Woodlands Road, past the same pubs and shops, many of which had been altered only slightly by the years, down to its junction with Sauchiehall Street, at Charing Cross; stepping confidently, hip-swinging in her high heels, eye-to-eye with many of the men she passed, and looking down on more than a few. She had walked down Sauchiehall Street, along the pavement until she had reached the pedestrian precinct.
As she had made her way, she was aware of the heads turning, of the eyes fixing upon her in a way in which they seldom had before. Not only men, but women too, some with approval, some frowning, a few with looks of open hostility.
In Marks and Spencer, a young man in his twenties, shopping alone, had smiled at her. She had been unable to stop herself. She had returned the smile; not in her normal open, friendly Alex way, but with an added curl of the lip, and a slight raising of the eyebrow. He had approached, and she had known that he was completely in her power, that she could have done with him what she would. Excitement had swept over her, a pulse-raising thrill. She had felt a sudden burning pang deep inside.
Had she not been Alexis Skinner, she might have followed the feeling to wherever it would have taken her. Instead she had smiled again at the man, her normal Alex grin this time, and had turned on her heels and left the shop.
The presence of Myra had gone, completely, and her daughter’s earlier excitement had turned to self-consciousness. The languid walking pace at which she had set out had given way to shorter, more rapid strides; she had felt awkward in the shoes and uncomfortable in the clothes. Pulling the jacket tighter across her thrusting breasts, she had turned on impulse into Sauchiehall Street’s multi-screen cinema, and had brought a ticket for a film, any film, just to be out of sight, and to recover herself.
It had been dark when she had emerged, and she had taken a taxi home, throwing off the jacket and unzipping the dress almost before the door had closed behind her. She had showered again, and pulled on her most comfortable jeans, then bra-less in a sweatshirt, had gone across the street to her favourite Indian restaurant, back into her own world as if seeking reassurance.
Now she sat again with curtains drawn and the reading lamp shining over her shoulder. On her lap, she held her mother’s seventh diary, her record of the year in which she had turned twenty-one.
The page was headed December 31. Silently Alex read the final entry of the year.
‘Afterwards, we sat up in bed and ate Spaghetti Bolognese off big white plates. Now that, Robert, is what Myra calls bringing in the New Year with a bang!’
Alex closed the diary, put it back with the rest, put out the light, walked barefoot through to her bedroom, threw off her sweatshirt and her jeans and fell into bed. And there, alone in the darkness with her mother’s ghost, she cried, as if she would never stop.
49
He leaned down to kiss her, smiling. She made to pull away, but he held her head firm between his hands and did it anyway, a big wet one in the middle of her forehead.
She stared up at him puzzled. ‘What’s put the spring into your stride?’ Sarah asked, as she stepped newly-dressed into the garden where Bob had been playing with his son. ‘Got a new woman or something, or maybe an old one?’ For a second a shadow flickered across her face at her poor joke.
‘Sorry,’ she said, quickly. ‘No more cracks about Myra, I promise. It’s just that you seem happy, and I don’t think I like that.’
His smile vanished. ‘You don’t?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Do I?’ he asked. ‘Do you mean that I’m supposed to wander around like a lost sheep, just because you and I have got a problem?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I mean that I hoped you’d still be missing me a bit, rather than coming in here looking like the cat that got the canary.’ She gazed across the back garden at Fairyhouse Avenue, where Jazz stood in a playsuit, supported by a baby walker on wheels. It was a sunny morning, but there was a chill in the air which suggested that winter might be preparing a rearguard action against the change of seasons.
He looked sideways at her. ‘Whatever happens to us, I’ll always miss the way we were. Who knows, maybe we’ll get over this. But if we don’t nothing can take away how it was between us. Or can it?’
Still staring across the garden, she shook her head, very briefly.
‘The reason I’m smiling,’ he said, carrying on, ‘is because I’ve finally got my Mission, or Crusade, whatever you want to call it, under way. Yesterday, I had a look for the people with an interest, eighteen years ago, in killing me or getting me out of the way. I’ve narrowed it down to a very short list.
‘Today, I’m off on the track of hard evidence to support what I believe I saw in the car. If it exists, I know where to find it.
‘The thing is, now that I’m finally under way, I feel more focused than I have in months. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to prove anything, or bring a prosecution. Yet knowing will be enough; it’ll have to be if, as might be the case, the man behind it is dead.’ His face grew suddenly very dark. ‘Maybe that’s why I look happy. Maybe I’d rather have a dead culprit than have to live with the knowledge that whoever did it is still walking around. Maybe I couldn’t take that.’
He looked at the ground. ‘I’ve read the post mortem report. Myra was pregnant when she died. A boy.’
There was a long silence. Sarah walked across the garden and lifted Jazz out of the baby-walker. ‘Bob, I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this. It’s not just part of your past, but of your life today that I can’t be involved in. Call it jealousy if you like, but I can’t take that. I feel just as I would if you were having an affair. So if we have to talk, let’s make it about something else.
‘I heard noise last night up in Ravelston Dykes Road. What was it? Do you know?’
He nodded. ‘Andy called me at Gullane. We had a tip that some people were coming up from the south to kill Jackie Charles. We had the place staked out, but someone beat us to it. One of the visiting team was shot, and died on the way to hospital. The other two were abducted.’
She gasped with alarm. ‘None of our people was hurt, were they?’
‘No. They were too far away to be involved.’
‘What about the two men who were kidnapped?’
‘I don’t think they were going to a dinner party in the Caley Hotel. My guess is that sometime soon we’ll find two stiffs in Birmingham, gift-wrapped as a warning.’
‘That’s horrible! How did someone manage to beat you to them?’
He smiled, grimly. ‘That’s a good question. The God of the criminal works in devious and mysterious ways.
‘But there’s good news too. While we’re no nearer tracing the fire-raiser from last Wednesday, we have learned a few interesting things about the victim. And the net’s closing in on Jackie Charles too. Maggie and young Pye are going up to Peterhead today to put the frighteners on a witness who might help us nail his gopher, Dougie Terry.
‘If we get something on him that could earn him fifteen years, I’m hoping that Terry will give up Charles.’
She walked towards him, carrying their wriggling son. ‘That’s your real world, Bob, isn’t it. That’s where your heart lies.’
He reached out and ruffled James Andrew’s hair. ‘No Sarah,’ he said, sincerely, ‘but right now it’s all I feel that I have.’
‘What about him?’
‘He used to be ours. Now he’s yours and mine . . . big difference. Soon, like Alex, he’ll be his. That’s th
e way it is.’
50
‘Do you know what my Boss said, Evan?’
Maggie Rose smiled calmly across the table at the Vulture. They were in another room, on their second visit. This time there were no windows. This time Mulgrew had no chair. Instead he stood shackled, a menacing officer on either side of him and another in the doorway.
‘He said, “If that bastard doesn’t make a formal statement about the Jimmy Lee assault, and if he doesn’t give us the names of the other three men in McCartney’s team, I’ll make sure he does the rest of his time on Devil’s Island, or as near to it as I can get.”
‘He also said that if you do help us, he’ll try to find you a bedroom in Saughton with a sea view.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Your choice, hard man. What’s it to be?’
Mulgrew stood stock still for a second. Finally, he nodded very briefly.
‘Very sensible. Now, you admit that you were the decoy who stopped Jimmy Lee, although you took no part in the assault.’
‘Aye.’
‘But you saw it and you can say who was there?’
‘Aye.’
‘Okay. Name all five men in the team.’
The Vulture took a deep breath as if he was about to dive into a very deep pool. ‘There wis Ricky McCartney, Barney Cogan - though he’s deid now - Willie Easson, Willie Macintosh and Willie Kirkbride.’
‘An attack of the Willies, you might say,’ muttered Sammy Pye. Rose shot him a look.
‘When McCartney asked you to act as a decoy, what did he tell you? I mean Jimmy Lee was a local hero.’
‘He told me that Dougie Terry wanted him sorted. That he owed him money, and that he’d double-crossed him in that game he was supposed to fix. He said that Terry had had to shell out a lot of money to the Malaysian folk that wanted the game sorted, and that Lee was to get the message. Hero or not.’
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