Skinner's Mission bs-6

by Quintin Jardine

‘He didn’t mention anyone else?’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘That’s Chief Inspector, Mulgrew. Were you paid for acting as decoy?’

  ‘Sorry, miss. Aye, Ricky gave me three hundred in cash.’

  ‘And you watched the attack take place?’ Rose asked.

  The Vulture nodded. ‘The three Willies had baseball bats. They broke his legs. Ricky and Barney smashed his knees and ankles wi’ big steel hammers. Ricky had a foot on his chest tae hold him down, and he had shoved something in his gob, tae keep him quiet. The boy passed oot eventually. They kept on for a while after that, then we all legged it tae Ricky’s motor. It was parked round the corner.’

  ‘Did anyone say anything after the attack?’

  Mulgrew nodded. ‘Aye, in the motor Ricky laughed and said that the boy should get his players’ insurance money after that.’

  Rose stared up at him, coldly. ‘You’re not going to renege on what you’ve just told the tape, Evan, are you? Because if you did, we wouldn’t be able to keep you segregated.’

  ‘No, miss . . . sorry, Inspector. Ah’ll swear to that in court, if Ah have to.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Dae Ah get to Saughton now?’ asked the Vulture.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Rose. ‘We’ll keep you here under close guard until we have McCartney and the three Willies in custody, and until they’ve been interviewed. After the trial we’ll move you down, once they’re on their way here.’

  She nodded to the guards. ‘Take him away.’

  As the thick door closed, and they picked up their notes and unplugged the tape recorder, she looked up at Sammy Pye, her laughter bursting out. ‘An attack of the Willies, indeed!’

  51

  Pamela Masters was waiting in the street when Skinner arrived to collect her, in the spot at which he had dropped her off after dinner the night before. She lived in Leith, in one of the many warehouse conversions which had sprung up along the river-front which ran through Edinburgh’s port.

  Over dinner in Vito’s they had talked mostly of work, Skinner telling his new assistant most of the stories behind his more recent high-profile investigations, and she telling him something of her career in marketing, before her life had taken its change of direction.

  He had enjoyed the meal, with its fellowship, more than any since his return from the States; in fact, he mused, as he cruised to a halt beside her on the pavement, as much as any he could recall in a long time.

  She was dressed informally once again, in well-cut fawn trousers and a close-fitting cream sweater top, with a black blazer, and a cavernous bag slung over her shoulder. She smiled as she slid into the BMW’s front passenger seat. ‘Afternoon, sir,’ she said. He glanced at the clock. It read 12.13 and he had told her to be ready for midday.

  ‘Sorry once again, Pam,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to this visiting parent routine yet. You haven’t been stood outside since twelve, have you?’

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she lied, ‘only for a couple of minutes or so.’

  He swung the car around in the cul-de-sac and headed out on to the road which led to Granton and Newhaven, turning left towards Ferry Road, the most direct route to the Forth Road Bridge.

  ‘I called Sergeant Whatnot before I left,’ said Skinner as he swept through a green light and on to the A90. ‘He’s got a christening to photograph at three o’clock, but he’ll be expecting us in the pub from around one.’

  The Bridge traffic was light for a Spring Sunday, and there was no tailback at the tollbooth. With time to spare, Skinner might have taken the route through Aberdour, Burntisland and Kirkcaldy, but instead he headed up to Halbeath and down the new dual carriageway which had cut the time of the journey from Edinburgh to north-east Fife by around a third.

  Without breaking a single speed limit, they rolled down the hill from Lundin Links and into the beachside village of Lower Largo just after 12.55 p.m. The narrow street was full of cars, lined down one side, most with the Glasgow or Edinburgh registration plates of weekend home-owners, and so Skinner had to drive for almost half a mile into the ribbon-like village before he found a parking space.

  As he and Masters strolled back towards the Travellers’ Inn, they passed a house with a statue of a ragged figure over the front door. ‘Who’s he?’ asked Pamela.

  ‘Alexander Selkirk,’ said Skinner. ‘The real-life model for Robinson Crusoe. Born here, but spent years as a castaway on a desert island, with only illiterate tribesmen for company. Bit like being a policeman, really.’

  Tam Whatling, Sergeant Whatnot to his colleagues for many years, looked up as they entered his pub. It was busy, warm and welcoming. Most of the customers were congregated around the windows set into the bright western side of the bar, and a mixture of Glaswegian, Edinburgh and Fife accents struggled for domination in a dozen discussions. The DCC and his assistant moved towards a table in the far corner, away from the throng.

  The grey-haired, rotund Whatling followed them down to the end of the bar. Skinner reached across to shake his hand. ‘Good to see you again, Tom. This is my PA, Sergeant Pamela Masters.’

  ‘Good to see you too, sir. And you, Sergeant. What’ll you have? On the house, of course.’

  ‘I’ll have a pint shandy, and Pamela’ll have . . .’ He looked at her.

  ‘Beck’s, please.’

  ‘. . . and a couple of filled rolls if you have them. But we’ll pay our way. I’ve come to ask you for a favour, not drink away your profits.’

  Ex-Sergeant Whatnot poured the drinks and laid four ham rolls on red-trimmed plates, but firmly rejected the ten pound note which Skinner pushed across the counter. ‘No thank you, Mr Skinner. I’m on quite a good pension, you know. You and the Sergeant take a seat at yon table there, and I’ll join you once my wife comes in to take over the bar.’

  Skinner and Masters had just finished the ham rolls when Tom Whatling sat down beside them, carrying a steaming mug of tea. He turned his left wrist towards the DCC showing the gold watch with which he had been presented on his retirement.

  ‘There you are, sir. Still going strong. The gold hasn’t begun to wear off yet either.

  ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

  Skinner looked at him, straight in the eye. ‘I’m looking for some photographs, Tom. They were taken eighteen years ago, by two officers who attended a fatal road accident in East Lothian. The victim was my wife.’

  Whatling’s jolly face grew solemn as his heavy eyebrows knitted together.

  ‘I’ve spoken to George Shields, and he told me that negatives of that sort of occurrence would normally have been destroyed by now. But he said that you salvaged quite a few of them . . . for your memoirs.’

  Whatling nodded. ‘That was what I said, and that was what I meant at the time. But Christ, with the pub and with my photographic work, I’m busier now than I’ve ever been. I think I’ll be retiring again in two or three years, the way things are going.’

  He looked across the table at Skinner. ‘There was another reason for keeping those negatives. I love photography, but I value it too. I think that fire, the wheel, the printing press, photography and penicillin are the five most important discoveries that mankind has ever made.

  ‘Photographs are a record of history, good or bad, and I think that it’s a crime to destroy even a single one. It’s like drowning kittens because you can’t find homes for them. If you try hard enough, you can always find a home. I worked in the photographic unit for twenty years. Nobody realised it, not even George Shields, because I made light of it, but during that time I rescued as many negatives as I could that were marked for destruction.

  ‘I didn’t get them all. When I was on holiday, or on courses and the like, some would go into the fire. But if the pictures that you’re looking for aren’t on file anywhere, there’s a fair chance that I’ll have them.’

  He paused, the frown returning to his big bluff face. ‘But tell me one thing, Mr Skinner. Suppose you do find what you’re after. What do
you expect to get from it, after all this time?’

  ‘Satisfaction, Tom,’ said the DCC quietly. ‘Evidence that my wife died because the car had been sabotaged in an attempt to get me. Either that or the peace of mind of knowing that I’m completely wrong.’

  Whatling nodded, and drained his mug. ‘Okay. Come on with me.’ He stood up and led the way out of the busy pub, Skinner and Masters following at his heels.

  Next door to the Travellers’ Inn was a small shop, with an array of lavishly framed wedding photographs displayed in its single window. Whatling produced keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, disabled the alarm, and stepped inside. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to three high, grey, roll-down storage cabinets. ‘Everything’s in there.’

  He stepped across to the cabinet on the left, knelt, and rolled up the front. Inside, negatives were suspended row upon row. ‘Eighteen years ago, you said. If I’ve got them, they’ll be somewhere in the lower half of this cabinet.’ He reached in and drew out a metal bar, from which hung a dozen strips of negative, each with twelve frames. ‘That’s how they’re stored,’ he said, holding it up to the light. ‘At the top of each strip you’ll find a number. That’s the file number of each incident, and that’s how you identify the negs without looking at them. Not the most helpful system in the world, but that’s the way they did it.’

  Skinner sighed. ‘Oh bugger! I’ve left the report at home, and I’ve no idea what the number was. We’ll need to look at the lot.’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Whatling. ‘It’s not quite that bad. Each reference includes a series of letters telling you what sort of incident it was, like HB means house-breaking, ASS means assault and FA means fatal accident.’

  He opened a door beside the filing cabinets and, beckoning them to follow, stepped through to another room. It was bigger than the shop, and full of equipment. ‘This is my processing room. What you should do is sort out all the FA negatives, then feed them through this viewer. Look.’ He took one of the strips from the rack which he held and fed it into a slot at the side of the machine. He threw a switch and an image of a negative frame appeared on a small flat screen above, magnified around twelve times.

  ‘It’s difficult to make out detail in negative,’ said Whatling, ‘but with luck you should be able to tell when you’ve found what you’re after . . . if it’s there.’

  He withdrew the negative strip, leaving the screen shining silver, stepped through to the shop and replaced the metal bar in the cabinet.

  From behind the shop counter, he picked up a huge canvas bag. ‘I’ve got to get to the old Kirk in Upper Largo to set up for my christening, so I’ll leave you here to get on with it.

  ‘I’ll be back at five. If you’ve found what you’re after by then, I’ll do you some prints. There’s the key, in case you need to step out for some air.’ He stopped in the doorway. ‘Tell you one thing,’ he said, with a grim smile. ‘I’d rather have my afternoon than yours, any day.’

  As the door closed behind Whatling, Masters looked up at her boss. ‘What did he mean by that?’

  Skinner’s eyebrows rose. ‘He meant, Sergeant,’ he said, unsmiling, with nerves clutching at the pit of his stomach, ‘that looking through photographs of fatal accident scenes, even in negative form, is no-one’s idea of a fun time.’

  He looked down at her. ‘I should have thought of that, Pamela. Look, you don’t have to do this. It’s above and beyond the call. If you like, you can go for a walk; or wait in the car, or in the pub.’

  She smiled up at him, dropped her bag to the floor, slipped off her blazer and threw it across the counter of ex-Sergeant Whatnot’s shop. She shook her head, the neon tubes above picking out highlights in her hair.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to it.’

  52

  ‘I have to tell you, lads,’ said Andy Martin, ‘that I’m not finding all this very funny.’

  The Head of CID was renowned as the least flappable man on the force. His qualities complemented those of Bob Skinner and made them into what contemporaries in their constabulary and in others regarded as the perfect team. Where Skinner was mercurial, and volatile, Martin was even-tempered and invariably cool-headed. No-one with whom he worked could recall ever hearing him raise his voice.

  With that in mind, Brian Mackie and Mario McGuire, sat at the conference table in the DCS’s office, each read his remark as a savage reproof.

  ‘Your tip about the Birmingham team was reliable, all right,’ he said, quietly. ‘Too bad it wasn’t exclusive.’ He looked at McGuire. ‘I take it that you’ve been raising hell with your oppo in Birmingham, Mario.’

  The swarthy Inspector nodded. ‘All kinds of hell and damnation, sir.’

  ‘Have they given you any excuses, or theories?’

  McGuire shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘They think that there must be a second informant in the team, working either for Charles or for one of his criminal pals in London.’

  ‘That’s pretty bloody obvious.’ Martin shook his head and laughed softly. ‘Christ, can you imagine if we’d all turned up in the same place at the same time, all of us armed! It would have been like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.’

  ‘Little chance of that,’ said Brian Mackie. ‘Jackie wouldn’t have wanted them taken out right in his driveway.’

  ‘I don’t know, we were within sight of the buggers. Still, I suppose that was as far away as they could risk.’ Martin sighed. ‘I wish I’d thought to charge straight up to Jackie’s door last night. I’ll bet he had a back-up team in the house, just in case the roadblock didn’t work.’

  He glanced at Mackie. ‘No word, I take it, on the missing men?’

  The DCI shook his shiny head.

  ‘Maybe they’ll just give them a good talking to and send them home on the bus,’ said Martin, his voice even, but heavy with irony.

  Dave Donaldson’s chuckle was silenced by a glance from the Chief Superintendent. ‘Don’t think that I’m amused by you two either.’ Neil McIlhenny shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘It’s been four days since Carole Charles went up in flames, our only lead’s been butchered under our noses, our prime suspect for that murder is alibi-ed by two of our own patrolmen - and incidentally, Dave, if you do press assault charges against Heenan, you’re going to look a right fucking Charlie if he pleads Not Guilty and the case goes to trial - and it takes the Boss’s new PA to find out that Carole might have had a bit on the side.’

  He paused. ‘Could do better, gentlemen, or am I being . . .’ the telephone on his desk rang, ‘. . . unkind?’ He stepped across the room and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Martin. Yes? Excellent.’ The four detectives saw a smile spread across his face. ‘Yes, hold them there, please. I’ll be down to pick them up myself.’ He put the phone down.

  ‘Game on, lads, at last. Ricky McCartney’s been arrested in Northumberland. He’s being held at Alnwick police station. His car was spotted by a patrol coming out of Haggerston Castle Caravan Park. He did a runner when he saw the blue light, but the chasers radioed in and there was a roadblock waiting a few miles down the road. They ran right into it. We got a bonus prize too. McCartney had a pal with him, one Willie Kirkbride, one of the three that Maggie told me about when she called from Peterhead.

  ‘At least one line of investigation is going well. With any luck, we’ll be able to arrest Dougie Terry within the next couple of days.’ He waved his four colleagues to their feet.

  ‘Let’s get moving. Neil, you come with me down to Alnwick, to pick up McCartney. Dave, you work on picking up the other two Willies. Brian, Mario, you concentrate on plugging the hole in your network.’

  Donaldson, Mackie and McGuire each nodded and left the room, without a word.

  ‘Give me a second, Neil,’ said the Chief Superintendent, as they went. ‘I’d better give Alex a call. D’you want to phone Olive, and tell her you’ll be late again?’

  McIlhenney smiled, grimly. ‘I think not, sir. You can, if you lik
e.’

  ‘Hah!’ Martin picked up the phone again and dialled Alex’s number. He waited for a dozen rings, before hanging up.

  ‘Not in,’ he said, as he slipped on his jacket. ‘Let’s get going. I’m looking forward to a chat with Mr McCartney.’

  53

  Alex laid the ninth diary face down on the floor beside her chair, and leaned back wide-eyed. She took a deep breath, blinked hard, then nodded, a decision made.

  She jumped from her chair and ran through to her bedroom. Ten minutes later, the reincarnation of Myra Graham emerged once more, smoothing the dress against her thighs, flexing and thrusting out her breasts in the brassière, which was fastened at its tightest notch, and giving the suspender belt a final adjustment.

  She stepped out into Woodlands Road and looked around. The pubs in the area were peaceful and friendly, fine for Alex, but not for Myra, and not for the dress. She walked towards the City Centre for a few minutes, until a taxi came towards her, its orange sign lit up, and she hailed it. ‘Maitland Hotel, please.’

  Barely three minutes later, the black cab pulled up outside the high-rise, five-star hotel. She paid the driver and strode confidently through the automatic doors. Inside, the foyer was plush and inviting. She looked around, selected an available table and sat down. As she lowered herself into the leather chair, the black dress rode up, revealing thigh almost up to the top of her nylons.

  She glanced across at a waiter, summoning him with a faint smile and a flick of an eyelash. As he strode briskly across the room, almost at a trot, she felt a surge of exultation. ‘Yes, miss?’ he asked, a little too eagerly.

  ‘Gin and tonic, please.’

  He returned, within a minute, with her drink and a bowl of potato crisps, setting them before her with a flourish, which turned into a bow as she told him to keep the change from the five pound note.

  She sat there, sipping her drink and looking coolly around. The foyer bar was far from being at its busiest, but even late on a Sunday afternoon, it was alive with guests. A few of them were women, all accompanied, but mostly they were single men.