06 - Skinner's Mission

by Quintin Jardine

  She took out the biggest parcel of all. It was heavy and her touch told her that it contained a number of rectangular objects, tightly bound together. Eagerly she tore it open, and found inside a series of A4 hard-covered volumes, bound with yellow twine into two bundles. They were ordinary page-per-day, stationer’s desk diaries, some blue, some black, some red, some green, each with the year in gold lettering on the front.

  She looked at the bundles and counted seven in each; fourteen diaries in all, bound together in chronological order. Her mother had been almost twenty-eight when she died; she had begun to keep her diaries in her fifteenth year.

  Alex took a deep breath and refilled her glass with Fleurie. Picking up the first bundle, she slid the first volume out without untying the twine.

  She settled into her comfortable armchair, opened the diary and began to read.

  29

  ‘Some day this job might pay us back all the lost weekends it owes us,’ said Detective Chief Superintendent Martin.

  ‘Some day,’ said Dave Donaldson.

  ‘Some hope,’ said Neil McIlhenney. ‘Anyway, what if it did. Can you imagine a hundred and forty-two consecutive weekends, all strung together, of being dragged round the Gyle Centre by the wife, with the kids yapping at your feet?

  ‘That’s one thing about really bloody high-profile murders; they’re great for getting you out of the way of drudgery.’

  Donaldson laughed. ‘How many kids do you have, Neil?’

  ‘Two. Lauren’s nine, and Spencer’s seven.

  ‘The things we do to kids, eh. Olive named the first one after a model, and she turned out to be wee and fat. The second one she named after a shop, believe it or not. We were rolling along Princes Street one day, with Lauren in the pram and Herself about ten months pregnant, when all of a sudden she stops. I thought she was starting there and then, like, but no, she was staring up at the Marks and Spencer sign with her mouth hanging open. “Look,” she says, “isn’t that a lovely name when you read it? That’s what we’ll call him.” “Mark?” says I. “Okay.” She looked at me as if I was daft.’ He paused with a slow smile.

  ‘I often think to myself how lucky it was that we’d made it that far along Princes Street. I’d have hated the poor wee bugger to go through life called Littlewood McIlhenney!

  ‘How about you, sir? How many kids have you got?’

  ‘Jane and I have four,’ said Donaldson. ‘Tony’s seven, like your lad, then there’s Janet, she’s five, Stephanie, just turned four, and Ryan, eighteen months.’

  ‘You should be on schedule for another quite soon,’ said Martin, grinning.

  ‘Don’t joke,’ muttered the Superintendent, sleek-haired and well-groomed even though it was just after eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. ‘Jane’s expecting in three months. Another boy, we’ve been told.’

  ‘Maybe you should call this one Luke,’ said McIlhenney. His companions stared at him, puzzled. ‘As in “Luke, enough’s enough, okay!”’

  ‘So it is,’ said Martin, laughing and shaking his head. ‘Now down to business.’ He glanced around the mobile incident room in which they sat. It had been set up in the car park alongside the block of flats in which Carl Medina had died. The Chief Superintendent looked across the table at the fourth man in the room. ‘Arthur, would you give us a summary of what you found at the scene, please.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Inspector Dorward. ‘First of all, as you supposed, Medina was overwhelmed at once by an unexpected, violent attack. The post mortem is being held this morning, but that’s just a formality.

  ‘We’ve established that just before midday an old lady on the top floor answered a buzzer call from someone saying he had come to read the electricity meters. She let him in, but he never arrived.’

  ‘Did anything strike you about the style of the attack?’ asked Martin. ‘Was there any trademark, any sort of signature?’

  ‘No, sir. There was no frenzy about this attack. It was cold, calculated and very efficient. The perpetrator went there specifically to kill Carl Medina. After the killing the flat was searched. There were traces of the victim’s blood all around, transferred by the plastic bags which the killer wore on his hands and feet.

  ‘The search was concentrated in a specific area, among papers and notes kept by the victim. They had been ransacked. Of course, we have no way of telling whether or not the killer found what he was looking for.’

  ‘Did our man leave any forensic traces?’ asked Donaldson.

  Dorward smiled. ‘We went over that house all night, and didn’t find a thing. Not a scrap.’ He paused, as if for effect. ‘Then we looked at the inside of the binliner. Nothing.

  ‘Finally we looked at the four Safeway bags. Inside one of them, we found a fifth bag. It had eye-holes cut in it, making it clear that the killer wore this bag as a hood. Attached to it, on the inside, we found a single strand of hair.

  ‘We’ve established already that the strand didn’t come from the victim, or from his girlfriend. We’ve no way of establishing where it did come from, short of possibly testing every Safeway checkout person in Edinburgh.

  ‘Right now, we can’t tell whether the hair came from our killer. But when we find him, if it’s his, it’ll help put him away for life.’

  Martin smiled. ‘Wonderful, Arthur. We’ve actually got some evidence; good old-fashioned evidence for your new DNA technology to work on.

  ‘Arthur, you and I will go together to obtain hair samples from Jackie Charles and Dougie Terry. We’ll promise them if we have to that if the tests prove negative the samples will be destroyed afterwards and that no DNA information will be retained.

  ‘There isn’t a cat’s chance that we’ll get a match from either, but let’s do it just to keep the pressure on them.’

  He leaned back in his hard chair. ‘The Boss gave Jackie a good going over last night, but he still couldn’t get near him.’ He paused. ‘In fact, the wee bugger almost had me believing that he didn’t know a thing about Medina’s death. That reminded me that we mustn’t put all our eggs in one basket in this investigation.

  ‘Where’s the girl Muirhead?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Pamela Masters took her to a friend’s place in Learmonth Terrace,’ said Donaldson.

  ‘Okay, you and Neil go along and interview her,’ said Martin. ‘As gently as you can, but keep it formal. You don’t need to pull her in to St Leonard’s, but make it clear that it’s more than just a sympathetic chat. Ask her to tell you everything she knows about Medina. Then lean on her just a wee bit.

  ‘You never know, Medina might have had a rival, someone who fancied Ms Muirhead, with or without her encouragement. And maybe, that rival . . .’

  ‘Cut up rough, sir?’ said Neil McIlhenney.

  30

  Alex awoke with a start. The room was hot and clammy from the Cannon Gasmiser, although it was burning only at medium output. The heavy curtains were drawn, and the reading lamp shone over her shoulder, its beam focused on the volume in her lap.

  She shook her head, completely disorientated and still slightly woozy, and blinked hard. She looked up at the clock on the wooden mantelpiece, and saw that it showed five minutes before nine.

  She stared at the curtained window, her confusion turning into slight alarm. Quickly she put the book to one side, rushed to the window, and threw the curtains wide. She cried out with relief as the light of the Glasgow morning flooded in. ‘Thank the Lord for that. I thought I’d lost a day.’

  And then the memories of the night before came flooding back. Supper with her father, the shock of the cine film, his presentation of the trunk . . . and her mother’s diaries.

  She jumped as the phone rang. For a moment she thought of letting it go unanswered, but finally she picked it up.

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Andy! Morning, love. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at work. I thought you’d have stayed at Bob’s last night. I just called his number, but there was no answer.’
<
br />   ‘No, I decided to come through here.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve got some studying to do, some intensive reading. I thought I’d tackle it in a one-er over the weekend. You don’t mind, do you? If it’s any consolation, I’ve got my period.’

  He laughed. ‘After the conversation I’ve just had with McIlhenney and Donaldson that’s a big consolation, believe me. Look the fact is, I’m going to be tied up for longer than I thought. Maybe I could come through there when I’m finished. You’re alone, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ she hesitated. ‘I really have a lot of studying to do. I think I’m better left on my own. You go out with the lads, or whatever you used to do before you had me hanging around. Er, no. On second thoughts don’t do that!’

  She heard him laugh. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll get by, don’t worry. I’ll see you when you’re finished.’

  ‘Okay. Bye. Love you.’

  She put the phone down and wandered through to her small bathroom, peeling off her stale clothes as she walked. She brushed her teeth, and gargled with a blue mint mouthwash, before stepping into a lukewarm shower. Under the strong spray, she hunched her shoulders to send the water cascading down her back, then leaning back she pressed her arms together to channel it to where she felt most sticky.

  Fifteen minutes later, in a clean white tee-shirt and panties, and munching a micro-heated croissant, she felt more or less refreshed. She settled back into her chair, and picked up the diary which she had been reading when she fell asleep.

  It was the second of the fourteen volumes. The entries were meticulous, in a young but clear hand, with not a single day, or, it seemed, detail missed. Alex looked at the page, and remembered at once why she had put the diary down at that point.

  April 21.

  Sixteen at last, and what a day it’s been. Mum and Dad were good enough - daft enough - to let me have my party on my own. Campbell came round early and gave me my birthday present. I gave him his, on the carpet in front of the fire. (Well, I’m sixteen now!) I timed him with the second hand on the mantelpiece clock while he was doing it. Seventeen seconds. That is not what it says in the books I’ve read.

  Campbell is quite nice, but he’s just like a dog panting around me, and frankly he’s hung like one as well. A Chihuahua though, not a Great Dane. The boy Skinner, though, he’s different! Quiet and broody, doesn’t talk much, but those eyes of his say it all for him. He’s supposed to be a bit straight-laced - according to Alice anyway - but I sense hidden depths there.

  I sense more than that too. Bob and I had a dance tonight, me in my tight dress and him in his baggy trousers. That wasn’t a gun he had in his pocket. It was a cannon!

  Campbell didn’t like me dancing with him, but what happened to him was his own fault. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so exciting!! Then Bob stopped Big Zed in his tracks, with just that look. What a pity! I’d have liked to see more. I think Bob was disappointed too, the way Zed chickened out. I only just managed to clean up the carpet before Mum and Dad got in. Imagine, sweet sixteen and they’re fighting over me already!!

  Alice says she thinks Bob’s a virgin. She should know. He won’t be for much longer, though, if Myra Graham has anything to do with it!

  Alex closed the diary, flushed and flustered, feeling slightly embarrassed, slightly guilty. She fought it by thinking back to her own mid-teens. There had been no sex on the carpet on her sixteenth birthday, but with her father’s looming and ominous presence, despite the fact that he had gone down to the Mallard for most of the evening, that would have been unthinkable; even if there had been a candidate around.

  But there had been her dreams, her lusting and a certain amount of fumbling in the cinema. She thought back also to some of her conversations with her school intimates, and wondered how different these had been from her mother’s discussions with herself in her diary.

  Calm again, she opened the diary and read on. As she discovered, Myra’s campaign to deflower Bob Skinner reached a successful climax after only seven days.

  31

  The morning air was fresh and not too cold as he ran past Fenton Barns, down the curving dip in the road, then, his stride shortening, up the climb towards Dirleton Toll.

  He glanced quickly through the iron gate as he passed the cemetery, catching a quick glimpse of his wife’s gravestone, but as always he ran on without stopping. The wind was strong from the west and the hardest part of the run lay before him as he began to pound out the two miles westward, back to Gullane. Cars rushed past him on the main road in both directions, some heading for North Berwick, most at that hour of the morning bound for Edinburgh.

  He ran even harder as he took the curve at Archerfield and the village came into sight, punishing himself, forcing himself back towards the sort of pace he had been able to achieve before his stabbing, taking pleasure from the realisation that he was almost there.

  Sweat was pouring from him as at last he turned off the Main Street, past the bakery, and ran up and across Goose Green, to finish his run as always by vaulting his garden gate.

  He cooled down in the back garden for a few minutes, then unlocked the back door and stepped straight into the small shower. He had installed it when Alex was a child, for use when she returned from the beach. A full ten minutes later, naked and towelling himself off vigorously, he stepped out, and into the kitchen. Eventually he wrapped the towel around his middle, poured himself a large glass of orange juice from a container in the fridge, and walked through to the dining room.

  The big brown envelope lay on the table, untouched since the night before. Suddenly, as he looked at it, steeling himself to open it, a memory burst unbidden into his mind.

  Myra’s sixteenth birthday party, in her parents’ big house in Orchard Street.

  His own sixteenth, a few days earlier, had been marked quietly and within the family, like any other. The Graham girl had treated hers as a milestone, and had summoned around twenty of her friends to its celebration, making the point in her telephone invitations that her parents would be absent on the night. He had known Myra since the early years of primary school. They had played together as small children but had become mere nodding acquaintances as the boys and the girls had been diverted into their separate pursuits. Now as adulthood beckoned the groups were being drawn back to shared pastimes.

  He had gone to the party with Alice McCready, a neighbour, with whom, once a week, he shared the back row of the Rex Cinema. Myra’s date for the night, he remembered, had been one Campbell Weston, a self-styled Romeo with a cultivated hard-man image but a soft centre. Campbell had been grinning and preening himself like a peacock as Bob and Alice had arrived, but as the evening went on, Myra had paid less and less attention to the spotty boy and more and more to Alice, and thus to him.

  She had played her hand beautifully, he remembered with a smile, chatting to them both in the big breakfasting kitchen, frowning in disapproval as cigarettes were smoked, and beer was drunk. Gradually, the Beatles and Herman’s Hermits had given way on the Dansette to Tony Bennett, and Nat King Cole. Gradually, the lights in the lounge had gone out. At last Myra had made her move.

  ‘Alice, can I have a dance with Bob? For my birthday.’

  Refusal had not been an option. Even before the hapless Alice had nodded he had been whisked through to the lounge, where the sofa and chairs had been pushed back to the wall to clear a space for dancing. He closed his eyes, and it all came back. The glow of the coal fire, the musky smell as youngsters groped and fumbled in the dark: and Myra, as they stepped out to dance, to become adults, to fall in love.

  Nat Cole was singing ‘There’s a Lull in My Life’ - in Bob’s head, he was singing still - but the tempo of the music was unimportant. She had simply pressed herself against him and moved. He was tall, almost full-grown, and so was she. He remembered her fingers running though his hair, the lushness of her kiss, her tongue in his mouth, the firmness of her breasts, their warmth through his shirt, her right hand roaming, his
sudden erection, her murmur.

  And then the realisation as the music stopped that everyone in the room was staring at them. All at once Campbell Weston was there, his face contorted, tugging at Myra’s shoulder, pulling them apart. He had pushed him away, but Campbell had lunged back towards him, swinging a wild, vicious punch.

  Until that moment Bob Skinner had never hit anyone in his life, or even thought of it. All the way through school, there had always been something about him which had made him immune to bullying or victimisation. But his attacker had lost face before his crowd, and was in a corner.

  He remembered how naturally it had come to him; swaying sideways to avoid the blow, countering in the same movement by slamming his right fist wrist-deep into the youth’s midriff, driving the air from his lungs and the beer from his belly. He remembered his calmness in the heat of the brief encounter. He remembered the surge of unexpected, surprising pleasure as his attacker had collapsed, puking, to the floor. One of Campbell’s cronies, a bruiser known for no obvious reason as Big Zed, had taken a threatening step towards him. He had simply smiled at him, nodding invitingly, only to see, to his secret disappointment, the thug back off.

  Naturally, that had been the end of the party. The fallen Campbell, unable to walk unaided, had been carried off by his crew. Bob had offered to help clean up the carpet, but Myra had told him that she could manage. ‘You take Alice home,’ she had said, both of them knowing that she was telling him to tie off a loose end, so that matters between them could be put on an official and proper footing.

  On that April evening thirty years before, the course of Bob Skinner’s adult life had been set. Now he looked at the parcel on the table, whose contents told how, twelve years later, it had been shattered.

  He picked up the envelope, tore it open and drew out the report inside. It was enclosed in a stiff green folder, bearing the two-line heading ‘Procurator Fiscal’s Office. Fatal Accident Report’. Written on it in heavy blue, he saw a number, a date, and the words ‘Mrs Myra Skinner’.