06 - Skinner's Mission

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Ah well,’ sighed the Head of CID, ‘another chased hare goes to ground. I must admit I didn’t think that Jackie would leave himself as exposed as that again, not after those two earlier tip-offs that we had.’

  ‘That’s one point that did emerge from our search,’ said Rose. ‘The records showed that each of the flats we raided had been untenanted for a considerable period leading up to each raid, but that both were let immediately afterwards. That does sort of hint that the theory could have been right, up to that point; at least so far as to indicate that Charles did keep flats for his private use.’

  ‘Mmm. Could be. That is the only property company that Charles owns now, right?’

  ‘Yes. He used to have three, but he rolled them into a single company a year or so back. For tax reasons, I think.’

  ‘Okay, Maggie, thanks for letting me know. I’ll think it through to see if there’s anything else we can do to keep that line of enquiry alive. Meantime, you concentrate on Douglas Terry. Have you found the other two Willies yet?’

  ‘Macintosh is in London, we believe, sir, but we’ve arrested Easson. I haven’t interviewed him yet. He knows why he’s been picked up, but I’ve left him to sweat on it, until we get McCartney and Kirkbride back up here.’

  ‘Could he have been part of the team that snatched the Brummies, d’you think?’

  There were a few moments of silence on the line. ‘I don’t know, sir, but the people who lifted him said he seemed scared shitless. Maybe that was why.’

  Martin smiled grimly to himself. ‘Time will tell, Mags. Time and maybe Willie Easson himself.’

  He paused. ‘Listen, are you using young Pye for anything just now?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Send him up here, then. I’m going to see a man, and I need company. You’ve heard the story we were told by Quinn, the taxi driver, about picking up a hire in Seafield Road, a bloke who said that his car had broken down.’

  ‘I heard that, yes.’

  ‘Well, McIlhenney’s come up with a name through the AA. Dominic Ahern, 32 Mountcastle Gardens. I’ve decided to see him myself, so have Sammy here inside half an hour, as my back-up.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Martin replaced the telephone and stared out of the window. The skies were even more ominous than before, heavy and with the purple tinge of snow clouds as they moved steadily eastwards. Outside a few flakes fluttered to the ground.

  Suddenly Martin sat bolt upright and picked up the telephone, dialling an internal number. ‘Pamela?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The Boss isn’t back yet, is he?’

  ‘No. I don’t expect him for a while yet.’

  ‘Good, because I’d like to commandeer you for a while. There’s a search I want made, in a fair old hurry. I know that Mr Skinner will approve, so if you come along here, I’ll brief you. When he gets back I’ll let him in on the secret.’

  61

  ‘This is Mountcastle Gardens, all right, Sammy, but I’m damned if I can see number 32.’ Pye, at the wheel of his white Peugeot 205 peered out of the window, as he cruised slowly along.

  ‘Well look, sir, that’s 26, then there’s the church, then there’s . . . number 34.’ His voice tailed off in puzzlement.

  ‘Hold on,’ said the Chief Superintendent. ‘Got it. That must be it, set back from the road. You can hardly see it for the trees.’

  Pye swung the car in a U-turn and parked in front of the long, tree-lined path which led up to 32 Mountcastle Gardens. As he climbed out of the car, a strange feeling of unease came over Martin, deepening quickly into frustration. His brow furrowed as he and Pye walked up the long pathway, up to the big red stone villa at the end, with its brown-painted door and guttering, and its austere brown velvet curtains.

  When Pye’s ring of the doorbell was answered by a severe woman in a wrap-round overall, with her grey hair tied back in a bun, the Chief Superintendent’s gathering suspicions were confirmed. ‘We’re from the police,’ he said. ‘We’d like to see Father Ahern; Dominic Ahern.’

  The woman glared up at them for a second, then beckoned them inside. Pye looked bewildered as she ushered them, without a word, into a dull room off the hall, with heavy old-fashioned furniture that had seen better days. ‘How did you know, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘The church next door. It’s called St Magdalena’s. And this is the Chapter House, where the priests live. It takes one to know one, Sammy. Why d’you think I joined the Edinburgh force, rather than Glasgow?’

  There was a cough from the doorway behind them. They turned to see a tall fair man, in his early thirties, in a black shirt and narrow clerical collar. ‘Yes, gentlemen?’ he said, in a light Irish brogue.

  ‘DCS Martin, DC Pye. We’re sorry to call unannounced, Father, but this has come up at rather short notice.’

  Father Ahern frowned, but said nothing.

  ‘Last Wednesday,’ Martin continued, ‘you called the AA to report that your car had broken down in Seafield Road, just after eight thirty. You also called a minicab company and were picked up ten minutes later by a taxi driver, a Mr Quinn.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the priest slowly, and, the detective sensed, faintly apprehensively.

  ‘You may not have been aware of it then, but at that time a car showroom in Seafield Road was set ablaze. In that fire a woman died.’

  ‘I learned of it later,’ said Father Ahern.

  ‘Did you pass close by that showroom?’ asked the detective.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And did you see anything?’

  ‘I saw a man leaving in a car.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Something in the priest’s tone seized Martin with expectation, and seemed to prompt his questions. ‘Did you recognise that man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘You mean you can’t recall it?’

  ‘I mean I cannot say.’

  ‘What sort of car was he driving?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Is it because you don’t know?’

  ‘Chief Superintendent, I cannot say. Do you understand me? I cannot say.’

  Martin nodded. ‘I understand.’ His mind whirled as he searched for his next question.

  ‘Did this man recognise you, Father?’

  The priest gave a tiny gasp, hesitated for a second then nodded his head. ‘Yes, he did.’

  Martin looked at him, fixing him directly with his piercing green eyes. ‘Is this man one of your own parishioners, Father?’

  Dominic Ahern gazed back, weighing the consequences of his answer to the simple question. ‘No, he is not,’ he said at last.

  The detective grunted. ‘Thank you, Father,’ he said, ‘for your help, insofar as you were able to give it. We’ll see ourselves out.’

  As the heavy brown door closed behind them with a thud, Sammy Pye could contain himself no longer. ‘Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what the f . . . was all that about?

  ‘What help did he give us in there?’

  ‘A hell of a lot, Sammy,’ said the Chief Superintendent, ‘as much as he could without breaking sanctity. He told us that he saw and recognised the murderer as he left the scene of the crime, and that the murderer saw and recognised him.

  ‘He told us that, before Father Ahern knew of the fire or of Carole Charles’ death, the murderer, although he attends another church, sought him out and made confession to him, securing his silence for ever.’

  ‘But what does that do for us, sir?’

  Martin stopped, his hand on the roof of the Peugeot. ‘For a start, Sammy, it eliminates about seventy-five per cent of the male population of Edinburgh from our enquiries!’

  62

  ‘Holy Mother of God - if I may say so - Andy! So all we’ve got to do is trawl through all the Catholic males in Edinburgh one by one, till we find our killer.’

  ‘Not quite. You can
forget McGuire and me for a start, and you can rule out any parishioner of St Magdalena’s.’

  ‘Can the PNC help, I wonder?’ Skinner mused. ‘Why not ask it to give you all Roman Catholic males with criminal form in the Edinburgh area, aged, say, between twenty-five and forty?’

  ‘Priorities, boss,’ said Martin. ‘Where am I going to find the manpower to follow it up?’

  ‘Okay, fine it down a bit more. Add in the old lady’s description of the Slateford killer. See what that gives you.’

  ‘But there’s no evidence, not even circumstantial, that Carole Charles and Medina were killed by the same person.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ said Skinner. ‘It’s only computer time, Andy. Get the data and follow it up when you have people available.’

  He fell silent. ‘A thought strikes me about Father Ahern,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe he was trying to tell you something else.’

  ‘Such as.’

  The DCC shook his head. ‘It’s only a thought, and you’ve got enough on your plate. Anyway, it’s an area where we might need to call the Chief back into action, with the tact and diplomacy of which he’s so proud. Leave that to me.’

  Martin nodded, turned to leave the office, then stopped. ‘I almost forgot. How did you get on at Shotts?’

  Skinner sighed, and sat back in his chair. ‘Well. Too well. I can’t go into detail, because I swore that our conversation would be as privileged as Ahern’s confessional, but if you believe Lennie - as I do, implicitly - then far from being out to kill me, Tony Manson was my guardian angel.’

  ‘Which leaves you with . . . ?’

  ‘As far as I can see, with only Jackie Charles. Yet Jackie never did a stupid or reckless thing in his life, and for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why he would want to do anything as daft as that.

  ‘There has to be someone else, Andy: someone else who cut that pipe. Only I can’t see who it was.’

  ‘So why not leave it at that, Bob?’ said Martin, softly.

  Skinner looked up at him. ‘Believe me, Andrew, with all my heart and soul, I wish that I could. But I have to go on until I find all the answers, even though I have this scary feeling that I’m never going to find the one that will let me live in peace.’

  He pushed himself up in his chair and grabbed a file from his in-tray. ‘Still, this life goes on. Ask Pam to look in on me as you leave, will you.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said the Head of CID. ‘Something else I have to tell you. I’ve borrowed her.’

  Skinner’s eyebrows rose in an unspoken query.

  ‘I’ve had a car take her up to Companies House, up in Saltire Court. The search of the Charles property company drew a blank. Only it did seem to confirm that, at one time, he did use his properties for private purposes.

  ‘So I thought to myself, suppose, after those two raids, Jackie decided that was too risky. A little while back he rolled three property-holding limited companies into one. But suppose there’s a fourth company, one that we don’t know about, in which neither Jackie nor Carole Charles is listed as a director. That’s what I’ve sent Masters to investigate.’

  The DCC nodded. ‘I follow your thinking. But couldn’t he simply have bought another property for cash, without forming a company to do it?’

  ‘He could have, but that’s not the way he works. He always takes the corporate route, winding everything back to a holding company offshore.’

  ‘Just like Tony Manson did,’ said Skinner. ‘So that even if he had been caught and imprisoned, we’d never have been able to seize his funds.’

  ‘That’s right. Anyway, I’ve checked the register of properties. Neither Jackie nor Carole Charles are listed under their own names as the owner of any residence or office. Even the Ravelston Dykes house belongs to the property company. In theory, Jackie’s his own landlord, and his own tenant.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘You could be right, then. If you are, Pam’ll find them out. One thing I know about her already: she doesn’t stop until the job’s done.’

  ‘She could answer another outstanding question for us, too,’ said Martin. ‘Where did Carole Charles go when she wasn’t at her Yoga class?’

  63

  ‘Ricky, Ricky, Ricky. What’s come over you?’ the Chief Superintendent laughed. ‘Yesterday you were so keen to get away from Alnwick that you were singing like a bird.

  ‘Today we can’t get a fucking note out of you.’ The bull-like McCartney sat there, glowering at the wall. ‘Of course, the song sheet keeps changing. Yesterday it was Jimmy Lee - Know that one? Aretha Franklin does it brilliantly - today, there’s a blues number as well. Three murders and you’re bang to rights for them all.

  ‘Do you know how long you’re going to get? What age are you, again? Let’s see.’ Martin picked up a criminal record sheet from the interview-room table.

  ‘Forty-five. Jesus, Ricky, do you know what that means?’ He walked across to the interview-room door, opened it for a few seconds, then closed it again with a bang. ‘You never think of an unlocked door as a luxury, do you? At least I don’t. But you . . .

  ‘Three murders, abduction, a vicious, brutal, crippling attack on a successful young footballer: the most liberal judge on the bench would give you at least a twenty-year minimum sentence for that lot, and God knows what some of the hard ones would do.’ He sat down on the corner of the table and looked down at McCartney. Then he picked up a photograph which had been lying face-down, turned it over and thrust it under McCartney’s nose.

  ‘That’s just part of what you’re going down for. His name’s Eddie Chang, and on Saturday night you blew his right eye and a chunk of his brain out through the back of his head. We’ve recovered the bullet, and you know we’ll match it to the gun found in your car, a gun which those tests carried out in England can prove you fired.

  ‘Ricky,’ said Martin, heavily, ‘you will never be alone again in an unlocked room from this day on, until you’re at least sixty-five years old. Maybe you never will be. As a free human being, you’re history. You’re just as dead as Chang, Maloney and O’Flynn are . . . only it’ll be a few years before they bury you.

  ‘That’s the consequence of playing the silent hero. Whatever you think that Dougie Terry might pay you, it won’t be enough. My guess is that he won’t pay you anything. It’d be cheaper to have you killed in jail than put your family on a pension.

  ‘It’d be relatively easy too. How can we arrange for special protection if you just sit there and carry the can yourself?’

  McCartney looked up at him, doubt invading his defiance.

  ‘You can’t see any other way, Ricky, can you?’ He paused, letting his words do their work.

  ‘Well I can,’ he said at last. ‘Yesterday you were ready to tell us all about Jimmy Lee, just to get away from that Rover. Its contents have caught up with you, but the remedy is still the same. Talk to us, tell us the whole story, and we’ll do what we can to help you.

  ‘But don’t keep us waiting. Even as we speak, DS Donaldson is leaning on your friend Kirkbride. Once we’ve got his statement we might not want yours. Sergeant McIlhenney here, he doesn’t want to offer you any deal at all. I tell you, it’s just as well for you I outrank him.’ McIlhenney smiled across the table at McCartney, and nodded his head, slowly.

  The thug stared from one detective to the other. Finally his eyes settled on Martin. ‘Okay then. What sort of a deal are yis talking about?’

  The Chief Superintendent nodded and sat back in his chair. ‘Common sense at last! Here it is then.

  ‘You plead guilty to the culpable homicide of Eddie Chang, the driver of the Scorpio. You’ll claim that the gun discharged accidentally and we’ll accept that. You’ll also plead to being involved in the assault on Jimmy Lee. We’ll close the book in Scotland on Maloney and O’Flynn, and we won’t single you out as the leader of the team that did Lee. You’ll get time, about twelve years I should think, and you’ll probably do the lot, but that’s better than the alternative.


  ‘This is a once-only offer. To qualify, you have to give us, locked up tight, the man behind the Lee attack and behind Saturday night’s job. Of course, for a conviction it’ll take more than your evidence alone. We’ll need a duet, not just a solo.’

  Martin paused. ‘Now. Who gave you your order to have Lee crippled?’

  ‘Dougie Terry,’ said McCartney, quietly. ‘After the boy crossed him over fixing a Hearts game.’

  ‘And who ordered the killings on Saturday?’

  ‘Dougie Terry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said that he had information that a team was coming up tae do a friend of his. He told us where they would be and when, and that he wanted it done as far away from his pal’s house as possible.’

  ‘Did he mention the source of his information?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he ever mention by name the person who gave him his orders?’

  ‘No, but we all know.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, Ricky, unless you can prove it. Again, did he ever mention his boss by name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, now the question that could decide whether you draw your old age pension as a free man. Was anyone else present on each occasion when Terry gave you your orders?’

  McCartney nodded vigorously, as if with relief. ‘Willie Kirkbride,’ he said. ‘Both times.’

  ‘This gets better. All you need to do now is hope that Kirkbride tells the same story as you.’

  Martin stood up once more and walked to the window. ‘While you’re in this frame of mind, Ricky, is there anything else you can clear up for us? You know who we’re really after. Can you tell us anything that might help us nail him?’

  Suddenly and surprisingly, McCartney’s big brutish face broke into a smile. ‘Them, you mean, not him.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Same deal right? Ah plead to those two charges and that’s it?’

  The detective nodded.