4
‘If the fire was that strong, then for once I don’t blame Banks for reserving his opinion.’
Sarah Grace Skinner was not the greatest fan of her professional colleague, but she nodded in grudging approval as Bob described the scene of the blaze and the discovery of the body.
‘Once the pathologist has a look inside, though, he’ll be able to tell the gender right away. Add to that the fact that Mrs Charles has been with the same dentist for twenty years, then if it’s her you should know as soon as he sees her records.’
Bob nodded. ‘I expect so. On top of that there are the wedding rings. Jackie gave us his. Our lab people will look at the hallmarks under a microscope. If they match, that’ll back up the identification.’
He gave a small involuntary shiver. ‘What a subject to be discussing when I’m holding my only son, for almost the first time in a month.’
He thrust James Andrew Skinner, known by one and all as Jazz, high above his head. The child squealed with delight. ‘Boy,’ said his father, ‘but you’ve grown since I’ve been away.’ He looked sideways at his wife. ‘That’s what annoyed me most of all about Jimmy booking me for that American trip; the fact that I would miss a whole month of this fella’s first year.’
‘He missed you too,’ said Sarah with a smile, looking in her full-length bedroom mirror and adjusting her grey business skirt. ‘I had nothing but “Da-da-da” out of him every time the phone rang. I think he’s held back his first steps so that you would see them.’
‘He’s ready to walk, you think?’ he said, surprised. ‘I mean, he’s not a year old yet. Alex didn’t stir off her arse till she was about sixteen months.’
‘Asse,’ Jazz shouted, gleefully, relishing the sibilance of the sound.
‘Bob! I’ve told you to watch what you say around him. He’s like a parrot!’
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Bottom, Jazz, okay? Bottom, bottom, bottom!’
‘Bmm! Bmm! Bum!’ the child mimicked, his strong voice rising in a triumphant crescendo.
‘Oh no! Look pal, let’s just concentrate on the toddling bit, okay?’ Bob lowered the baby on to his feet beside the bedroom chair, watching him as he took a grip of its arm with his chubby little fingers, then releasing him to stand upright, with only the chair’s support.
‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘Any day now.’
He stood up and turned his wife to face him, his hands on her shoulders. ‘And how’s his mother getting on? I haven’t had a chance to ask you since I got back. Still enjoying the University job?’
She looked up at him seriously. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when you wouldn’t have had to ask me that question. You’d just have known. We used to be closer than Siamese twins, Bob. What’s happened to us?’
He dropped his hands from her shoulders and his face screwed up in exasperation. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said softly, ‘I’ve been accused of a few things in my time, but being knocked for not being telepathic any more, that’s a first.
‘I’ve been away for a month, remember. In your homeland.’ His voice rose, and Jazz frowned up at him, with a child’s keen awareness of changes in tone or expression.
Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, I realise that, but before you went away . . .’
‘Before I went away, during the day you went to give your lectures, and I went to the gym, building myself back into something like I was before I was knifed, so I could go back to work as if nothing had ever happened to me. But at night you never talked about your work. Christ, you never talked about anything.’
She shot him a hot look. ‘No, because I knew there was only one thing you really wanted to talk about: my predecessor, Myra, and your newly-discovered obsession with her death, or rather, with your guilt.’
She saw his jawline tense. ‘What do you mean, my--’
‘Don’t . . .’ She held up a hand to stop him ‘. . . let’s get into this now. Or ever again, even!
‘Okay. You ask me about my job. Fine, I’ll tell you. I hate it. I don’t know why I ever took it on. Ego probably, the idea of having a chair, and being a Professor at my age. The reality is that it chills me to the bone. All those young faces, either thirsting for knowledge, or more likely putting in their specialist lecture time and waiting for the boring cow to finish. I stand up there every day and I feel unreal. I’m a doctor, and a damn good one, yet I’ve allowed myself to be turned into a dictating machine.’
‘What do you mean “turned into”?’ he snapped.
‘Don’t mess with me. I know what happened. The Principal asked Jimmy Proud if he could suggest anyone for the course, and you and he put your heads together and came up with me, because you thought it would give me more holiday time to look after the baby.
‘You manipulated me, Bob.’
He looked at her with pure scorn. ‘Rubbish! Jimmy came to me and asked if I approved of his putting your name forward, and we both came to you and asked you. And you said “Yes”. That’s how it was.’
She shook her head. ‘I did that because the way you looked at me made it quite clear that was what you wanted me to say. Not because it was what I wanted to do.
‘Still,’ she acknowledged, ‘I said “Yes”. As a consequence, during all that time you were recovering, I’d come home every night quivering with frustration. But you never even noticed, because your mind was on something - no, someone - else.’
They were both dimly aware of the staccato, staggering movement at their feet, yet they were staring at each other so fiercely that neither reacted to it, until each felt strong little fingers grip their clothing at the knee.
Only then did they look down, to see Jazz, beaming up at them in his delight at his first steps, which they, in their anger, had missed.
5
The mountain was still there, waiting to be conquered: the pile of essential papers, reports, proposals, personnel files, correspondence and other assorted documentation, piled high in the in-tray on his big rosewood desk, waiting for his scrutiny and his note of approval or rejection.
On the previous morning, his first full day back at the police headquarters building in Fettes Avenue since his stabbing four months earlier, and since the unwanted American trip for which Chief Constable Sir James Proud, his well-meaning commander and friend, had volunteered him, Skinner had wilfully ignored the heap. Instead he had chosen to pay a surprise visit to Superintendent Dave Donaldson, and his deputy Chief Inspector Maggie Rose, to congratulate each on their promotions.
During the DCC’s absence, but on the basis of his advice to Andy Martin, the two had taken over command of CID in the force’s Eastern Area, a great sprawling land-mass taking in a part of the city of Edinburgh, and all of rural East Lothian and Berwickshire.
He had filled in the day being taken by Rose, his personal assistant until her step up in rank, on a tour of the many CID offices for which Donaldson and she were responsible. In one, at Haddington, he had seen a face from the past, and had made a private note.
There was a gentle knock on the frame of the open door behind him. ‘Good morning, sir.’ He turned with a smile. Ruth McConnell, his secretary, stood there, with the morning’s additions to the paper pile clutched in a folder in her hand. She was devastatingly attractive, with a slight pout to her lips which seemed to add value to an almost permanent smile. Her glossy brown hair hung past her shoulders, and her legs did the job for which they had been designed as well as any Skinner had ever seen. Ruth was one of those women who would never put on a long skirt if there was a shorter one, fresh and pressed, in her wardrobe.
‘Welcome back,’ she said. ‘You are going to stay here today? The Chief’s back from his ACPO meetings, and he was hoping to see you.’
‘He could have been seeing me for the last bloody month,’ Skinner grumbled, but with a half-smile.
He moved behind his desk and pointed towards the coffee filter on a table by the far wall. ‘If that stuff’s hot, pour us a couple of mugs and pull up a seat.’
Ruth nodded. A minute later she was seated before him, rearranging the mountain of work into a series of categorised hills.
‘This is all essential stuff, Ruthie?’
‘Yes sir, I’m afraid so. I filtered out as much as I felt able, the Chief took on a hell of a lot, and Mr Martin helped where he could, but all of this is stuff we all thought you’d want to see.’
‘Fair enough. I wish I’d been able to keep Maggie here till I got back, but that would probably have cost her her promotion. I couldn’t have left Donaldson without a deputy for that long. And of course, I couldn’t break in a new PA in my absence.’
He paused, reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and produced a slip of paper, which he handed across the desk. ‘Now I’m back, the gap will be filled without further delay. I want you to pull that officer’s file for me right away, and to arrange an appointment in this office, for four this afternoon.’ He paused.
‘Now, let me spend half an hour on this lot, and then I’ll go and see the boss. I expect I’ll have to go out with Andy Martin later on this morning, but other than that you can tie me to the desk for the rest of the day.’
She raised her right eyebrow, only for an instant, and very slightly, but it was enough. ‘Get away with you, woman,’ he shouted, with a grin, ‘and let me be about my work!’
As his secretary swept rhythmically out of the room, closing the door behind her, Skinner leaned back in his leather chair and looked around him. As much as he hated paperwork, he enjoyed the room in which he did it. It looked out on to the main driveway up to the headquarters building. He had always liked to be able to see what was happening in the world around him, and to feel a part of the comings and goings of the day. As he looked down at the Chief Officers’ parking area below him, he saw the Chief Constable’s black Vauxhall Omega roll into the space beside his own white BMW. Sir James Proud climbed out laboriously, in uniform as always, his silver braid, and silver hair gleaming against the dull March morning.
Having not seen Proud Jimmy for over a month, it struck Skinner suddenly that his commander, friend and patron was looking older and more tired than he had ever seen him. ‘He was without a deputy for a bloody long time,’ he mused in a whisper to the empty room. ‘Must have been quite a strain.
‘Even dafter then, that he should extend it for an extra month by sending me to something that Willie Haggerty in Strathclyde was bursting to attend.’ He thought back and remembered Sir James’ uncharacteristic insistence that his force should put one over on the much larger West of Scotland constabulary.
Thrusting the thought from his mind, he took a last look around his office before settling down to work. It was comfortably furnished, and well decorated, in slightly old-fashioned hessian. The paintings on the walls, all originals, were his own. His favourites faced his desk. One was a big, blue, arrogant cockerel, painted in oil by Rhoda Hird, an East Lothian painter who lived close by his cottage in Gullane. The other was a colourful, slightly bewildered torero with a lazy right eye, and the expression of someone who carries the certainty that one day, something very bad is going to happen. It was the work of Miguel Morales, a Catalan artist with a burgeoning reputation. Skinner had bought it on a whim, and on a credit card, one night in a bar-cum-gallery in Spain.
He smiled again, nodded ‘Good morning’ to his two old friends and settled down to work.
He was almost through his allotted half-hour when Ruth buzzed him through. ‘It’s Sir James. If you’re clear, can he come in?’
‘Sure,’ said Skinner. ‘I’m a captive here.’
He had hardly spoken before the door, rosewood to match his desk, swung open. He stood up in automatic deference to a senior officer, and to greet a friend. ‘Bob,’ said Proud Jimmy, ‘you don’t know how good it is to see you back behind that desk.’
Such was the sincerity in his voice that Skinner spluttered in his surprise. ‘Christ, man, that you can say that! After you sentenced me to a month on the most useless jolly I’d ever seen!’
‘Och, Bob,’ said the Chief, suddenly mournful, ‘you’re not still angry about that?’
‘I never was angry, Jimmy, just astonished. It was a waste of time, and we both know it. Not blowing my own trumpet, but if I had to go there it should have been to teach, not to sit on my arse and be lectured at for a month. The FBI are sincere guys, but they’ve got no real coppers left. Joe Doherty was the last of the breed, and now he’s out of it.’
He shook his head. ‘But look, that’s history, let’s not discuss it any more. We’ve got more than that to worry us.’
‘I agree, Bob,’ said Sir James. ‘But my decision was wrong, and in hindsight I have to admit that much to you. It’s just that we thought . . .’
Skinner’s eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. ‘What do you mean “We”?’ he demanded. ‘Was Andy Martin in on it, or Jim Elder?’
Alarm showed clearly in the Chief Constable’s eyes, but the moment was broken by a diplomatic cough from the doorway. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Skinner,’ said Ruth McConnell, ‘but Chief Superintendent Martin asks if you could join him right away. He said that it’s time to pay your second call on Jackie Charles. We have a positive identification of his wife as the body in the showroom.’
‘Okay,’ said Skinner. ‘I’m on my way.’ He moved out from behind his desk. The Chief Constable stepped aside, almost eagerly, to make way for him, with a sigh which sounded to his deputy like one of relief.
6
Martin Charles was with his son when the two policemen arrived. Skinner had asked Ruth to telephone the Ravelston villa to warn of their arrival, and the old man had opened the front door before they had even made it far enough up the brick driveway to trigger the security light.
He led them not into the main reception room, but to a smaller apartment to the left off the hall. It was small, and furnished only with two expensive leather recliner chairs, a cocktail cabinet, a nest of occasional tables and a huge television set with cinema-style speakers set around it.
As they entered, Jackie Charles was seated with his back to the door, watching a repeat showing on a satellite channel of the previous evening’s football match at Ibrox, the one which he had been watching in person as his showroom had exploded into flames. Martin had already confirmed with his hosts that Charles had been in their party, and that he had been collected from and delivered to his home by a hired limousine.
Mr Charles tapped his son on the shoulder. ‘John. The police are here.’
Charles used a remote control to snap off the television picture, in the same movement which brought him to his feet. He was freshly shaved, and neatly dressed in pale grey slacks, a blazer with gold-crested buttons, a white shirt, and a silk tie that was almost luminous in its blueness.
‘That’s it, is it?’ he said in a calm, measured tone. ‘You’ve identified her.’ Not a question: a statement.
Skinner nodded. ‘I’m afraid so, Jackie.’ Beside him, the old man buried his face in his hands. ‘We didn’t really expect anything else, did we?’
The man’s square shoulders slumped for the merest instant, then straightened once again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘When she didn’t show up at home by nine I knew for sure. When she did stay at her pal’s, Carole was always back by then, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, without a hint that she’d been rat-arsed just a few hours before. Yes, she had great recuperative powers, did my wife.’ He smiled, grimly.
‘This morning I sat through in the kitchen, waiting for her. I made coffee for two. I got the cereal bowls out and fetched the milk off the step. I put the eggs on to boil at twenty to nine, and defrosted some rolls from the freezer. I sat there hanging on to whatever doubts I had left, counting down the minutes, and finally the seconds to nine o’clock.’
Jackie Charles patted his father on the shoulder. ‘As soon as nine struck, I knew that there was no possibility that it could have been anyone else in the showroom last night. I phoned my father and told him what had happened.’
He looked up at the two policemen. ‘Would you like some coffee? Don’t worry, it hasn’t been stewing since half past eight. I made some fresh stuff.’
Skinner and Martin nodded.
‘Okay, let’s go through to the kitchen.’ Martin Charles made to lead the way. ‘No, Dad,’ said his son. ‘I need to talk to the officers alone. Once I’ve done that, I’ll have to pay a call on Carole’s mother. You can come with me then.’
Skinner and Martin followed Charles out of the television room, across the hallway and into a spacious Smallbone-fitted kitchen, with a lime-washed table and four chairs in an alcove at the far end. The policemen sat down, side by side, as the bereaved husband poured coffee into white Wedgwood cups.
Skinner looked around. ‘Real Edinburgh upper-class,’ he whispered to Martin with irony in his tone. ‘You’d never guess he’s a bloody gangster.’
The man laid cups before them, and took a seat opposite. He was pale, and grim-faced, but undoubtedly he was in control of himself - the cold, hard Jackie Charles they both knew. Clearly he had come quickly to terms with his loss.
‘Right, gentlemen,’ he said, briskly. ‘What do you want to ask me?’
‘There’s something we have to tell you first of all,’ said Martin, quietly, ‘though maybe, just maybe, you’ve worked it out for yourself given the circles in which we all know you move. We believe that your wife’s death may have been more than a tragic accident in consequence of a wilful fire-raising.
‘We believe that the fire may have been, in fact, an attempt to kill you.’
Jackie Charles looked at the policeman, his face dark with sudden rage. The smooth, civilised shell within which he normally lived had vanished in an instant. ‘What makes you say that?’ The sound was a hiss.
‘The door to the office, where your wife died, was locked. From the outside. Your car, with its very distinctive and very well-known registration number was parked right at the entrance to the showroom. Someone walked into the premises, set the fire, quietly, though maybe not so quietly since the radio in the office was on quite loud, but very efficiently. Then he turned the key in the office door and lit the fuses, leaving you, as he thought, to burn to a crisp among your rare and exotic motors.’
06 - Skinner's Mission Page 4