06 - Skinner's Mission

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Keys,’ said Skinner absentmindedly. He took out his mobile and dialled a number. ‘Inspector Dorward, please,’ McIlhenney heard him say. ‘Arthur, amongst the mess last Thursday morning, did you find any keys close to the body, or anything that could have been a key?

  ‘You did? Good. Have them sent round to my office at once.’

  He put the phone away. ‘Carole had three flats, Neil. One as an illicit nookie nest, old habits dying hard and all, one as an office, and the third, I’ll bet, just as a bolthole, in case this one was compromised.’

  He tugged at the top drawer of the filing cabinet. To his surprise it slid open.

  ‘My God, she must have been confident, to leave this unlocked.’ He looked in the drawer, and saw, nothing. He frowned and slammed it shut. When he found the second drawer was empty also, a scowl began to gather on his face, but it vanished as he opened the third. It was lined with green sliding folders, each packed with documents. He took out a handful at random and flicked through them. They were carbon copies of typewritten letters, none of them carrying a destination address, but all of them dated.

  He held one up and read it aloud:

  November 11, 1993

  This is to confirm the substance of our conversation by telephone this morning. The business which we discussed will be completed as scheduled next Saturday afternoon. I am assured that the agent involved knows his position, and that he will co-operate in securing the desired outcome. Therefore it is safe to make your investment.

  Skinner frowned, and flicked through the papers in his hand, until one in particular caught his eye. He read it to McIlhenney:

  November 17, 1993

  I understand your concern at yesterday’s unexpected turn of events. Since the mishap occurred at this end, I will of course make full restitution of your lost investment, plus one hundred per cent as a sign of good faith. Be assured also that the agent involved will suffer the consequences of his failure to carry out his commission.

  However I think you will agree that our experience this weekend has taught us all that this is not the most suitable country in which to attempt to arrange such transactions.

  ‘No salutations and no signatures,’ said the DCC, ‘but if you look at the dates, these could relate to the business that earned Jimmy Lee his broken knees. When we match these letters to Carole’s typewriter, we’ve got the start of a chain of circumstantial evidence. If Telecom can tell us whether Jackie Charles made any international calls on November 16 or 17, 1993, it’ll get that bit stronger.

  ‘We’re on to something, Neil. This lot’s going to Special Branch. Sure it’s all circumspect and circumstantial, but if they can compare references and dates with crimes around the country, you never know what picture we might be able to paint for a jury. Remember that serial killer whose conviction hung on the fact that he bought petrol with a credit card eight years before his arrest?

  ‘With hard work, nothing’s beyond us.’

  He replaced the documents, then tried the fourth drawer. At first he thought it was empty, like the first two. The book was black-bound, and obscured by shadow. He was on the point of rising to kick the drawer shut when it caught his eye.

  He picked it up, feeling it thick and heavy in his grasp, and opened it. It was a cash ledger, a record of payments received, and payments made, each one dated, kept meticulously in ink, each entry in the same firm hand. He flicked through it. On each page there was a third column showing a positive cash balance, running into tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds. He stopped at one point and traced the columns backwards, pausing then continuing.

  ‘Jesus, Neil,’ Skinner whispered. ‘This is it. The Charleses’ criminal treasury. A cash pile building up, then being reduced by regular transfers, out of the country I’ll bet. There’s millions in this book.’

  He looked at the first page, and saw that entries began in 1984. Sitting down at the desk, he began to pore through it, describing it to McIlhenney as he went. ‘No names, Neil. Just initials. Most of the incoming payments are marked ‘DT’. That’ll be loanshark money, protection money from minicab drivers, all channelled through Dougie Terry.’

  He paused and pointed. ‘That’s interesting. Here’s an outgoing payment, made on June 29, 1989, fifty grand to TH. I wonder if that was stake money advanced to Tommy Heenan. My, but this book’s going to make a lot of people very uncomfortable.’

  He flicked through the pages until he found November 1993, then scanned its columns. ‘See here. An outgoing payment on November 18, of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, made to a destination shown as KL. Kuala Lumpur, I’ll bet.’ He whistled. ‘No wonder Jimmy Lee’s on crutches.’

  Skinner would have closed the book then, and taken it back to his office, but the next entry caught his eye. An outgoing payment of five thousand pounds, made to someone with a single initial. Hazarding a guess, he turned to February 1994. Three months on, to the day, a further five thousand. He went back six months. Five thousand.

  At last he closed the ledger. ‘Jackie himself didn’t know about this place, Neil. If he had, these things would not be here still. No-one knew about Westmoreland Cliff. Not even Donna.’

  75

  Pam was waiting at the door of Skinner’s office as he turned into the Command corridor. She had seen the BMW as he had parked it beside the Chief Constable’s modest Vauxhall Vectra.

  ‘Come in,’ he said grimly, holding tight to the ledger until he laid it on his desk.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as he poured them coffee from the filter machine. ‘Any news from the labs?’

  She nodded, as she took her mug. ‘The samples match, boss. All of them.’

  ‘Ahh!’ he sighed, throwing his head back as if he had been hit, and slamming his palm down on the ledger on the desk in a sudden violent movement, which made her jump. ‘That tears it, then.

  ‘Pam, I want you to ask Mr Martin to call a meeting of the whole Charles investigation team, in half an hour, in his office. I want to brief them all, every one of them, on the arrest of Jackie Charles.

  ‘But first, I have to talk to Proud Jimmy.’

  Pamela looked at him as he headed for the door, at the mixture of emotions written on his expressive face. ‘Who is it?’ she asked, quietly.

  Because she was who she was, and because he knew already that he could rely absolutely on her loyalty and discretion, he told her.

  76

  ‘So there it is, ladies and gentlemen. Jackie and Carole Charles’ entire illegal business, since 1984 at least, all wrapped up in there. I’m sure that there are other records going back before that period. I’d guess that, wherever the money is, that’s where we’ll find them.’

  As Skinner spoke, Andy Martin closed the ledger and passed it to Dave Donaldson, seated beside him.

  ‘But there’s nothing solid, boss,’ said the Chief Superintendent. ‘It’s all initials; there isn’t a name in it. We’ll never convict anyone with that, because it doesn’t incriminate anyone.’

  Skinner grinned. ‘Oh yes it does. It incriminates Jackie Charles, right up to his nuts. We’ll prove that every entry in that book is in Carole’s handwriting. We’ll show that there are gaps in the entries which match dates when she and Jackie took their holidays, taking with them, as the variations in the balance indicate, great chunks of cash.

  ‘Then we’ll do him for tax evasion. A couple of million, at a rough calculation.’

  As he looked around the table, from face to face, they all looked up at him as he stood by the window. Andy Martin, Dave Donaldson, Maggie Rose, Sammy Pye, Neil McIlhenney, Brian Mackie, Mario McGuire, Pamela Masters: his team, Skinner’s people.

  His smile embraced them all. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I ask you. When Jackie gets up in the witness box and says “I never knew. My late wife obtained and disbursed all that money illegally and salted the balance away overseas, and I never knew,” which one of you is going to believe a word he says? Who could believe that a man could b
e so ignorant of what his own wife is doing?’

  As the words left his lips, his voice tailed off, and he turned to look out of the window, so that no-one, not even Andy or Pamela, could see his face. For he knew that he was the one person in the room who could give credence to the only defence open to Jackie Charles.

  He mastered himself and turned back to face them. ‘Right now, Jackie’s sat up there, in his unprotected villa in Ravelston Dykes thinking that he’s as safe as houses. Terry’s dead, and so there’s no chain to link him to McCartney, the Birmingham murders or the Jimmy Lee attack.’

  He pointed to the ledger. ‘But he doesn’t know we’ve got that. He didn’t even know where it was himself, because that’s one thing Carole didn’t tell him. She didn’t tell him about the three properties she bought as Jackie Huish, maybe for added security, or maybe just because she didn’t want him to know where she and her so-called pal got up to whatever it was they got up to when Carole was supposed to be at Yoga.

  ‘Jackie doesn’t know that we’ve got his records, and he doesn’t know what that book can do to him.’ He paused and resumed his seat at the table, beside Martin.

  ‘So tonight, he can stay where he is, while Pam, Sammy and I do some more work on that ledger, and while Brian and Mario check the dates and hints in that correspondence against robberies, murders and other assorted events around Britain.

  ‘He can stay there until ten o’clock tomorrow morning, when you, Mr Martin, and you Mr Donaldson, with Sergeant McIlhenney’s strong arm beside you, will call at Ravelston Dykes and pick him up.’

  He took the ledger from Donaldson. ‘Once we’ve got him, and he sees this, then just like Ricky McCartney, to earn himself a few years less in the pokey, I’ll bet he puts a name to every initial in this book.’

  He stood up. ‘Pamela, Sammy, you come with me. The rest of you, I’ll see you all here, 9 a.m. tomorrow.’

  77

  They stepped to the left of the monoblock driveway, crossed the foot of the lawn and made their way up through the trees, until they were almost at the villa.

  Since the line of their approach kept them out of sight of its sensor, the security lamp over the garage stayed dark. There were no lights showing in the house itself, only the cream globe over the door, and the strong blue metal glow from the big television set in Jackie Charles’ private cinema.

  Silently, they took the last few steps up to the front door. A black-gloved finger pressed the bell, which rang out loudly inside. They stood and waited. Eventually, a light shone in the big hallway. Eventually, the door swung open, silently.

  Jackie Charles stepped back in surprise at the sight of Sir James Proud, in full uniform, standing on his doorstep, the light shining on the silver braid on his epaulettes and his cap. Quickly, he slipped something into the right hand pocket of his red, velvet-trimmed smoking jacket, and ran his hand over his neatly cropped hair.

  ‘John Jackson Charles,’ the Chief Constable boomed. ‘We are here to arrest you on charges of tax evasion.’ Then he glowered, fiercely. ‘But first, my deputy, Mr Skinner, would like a word in private about another matter.’

  He stepped aside, and Skinner swept into the hall like a Mediterranean thunderstorm, dark and crackling with unleashed fury. In a flash he seized Charles by the lapels, bunching them in his right fist. The other hand went to the right-hand pocket of the smoking jacket and took out a slim automatic pistol.

  ‘Not completely certain, Jackie, were you?’ he said, showing the gun to the Chief behind him without looking backwards, then slipping it into the pocket of his own jacket. ‘That’s something else we can do you for. There’s no way that gun’s licensed.’

  He propelled the struggling man before him, towards the television room, and thrust him inside, closing the door behind them and moving quickly to pull the heavy curtains.

  ‘What’s all this . . . ?’

  Crack! Skinner’s backhanded slap took Charles off his feet, in mid-protest, and sent him sprawling across one of the red chairs, and down to the floor. As he lay there shaking his head, as if to clear it, the policeman hauled him upright, lifted him to eye level, and butted him hard between the eyes, before hurling him into one of the two chairs, like a discarded garment.

  Bleeding heavily from the nose, his eyes wide with shock and terror, Charles stared up at his assailant, helpless. His mouth opened, revealing a twisted dental bridge. Before he could speak, Skinner’s right index finger shot out, warning, threatening.

  ‘Not a word, Jackie. Not a single fucking word. Just think back to eighteen years ago, you little shit. That’s what this is about. You were afraid of me then, were you? Oh, by Christ, but what I’m going to do to you now!’

  Bloody words started to bubble from Charles’ lips, until they were silenced by a single ferocious look.

  ‘Myra kept a diary, Jackie,’ Skinner snarled. ‘Every day of her adult life. I never read it while she was alive, because she told me that it was the one thing she wanted for herself alone. After she died, it stayed unread. Until last night, that is, when finally, I started looking for answers.’

  He reached into his inside pocket and took out two folded sheets of paper. ‘It’s some read, Jackie, I’ll tell you. Hot stuff. Listen to this.’

  January 17. Gullane.

  I know I shouldn’t have, with Bob away on his course. If he had been home we wouldn’t have been there. But my old devil grabbed me, so I asked Lindsey to babysit, I put on the glad rags and I went to Bill and Gerrie’s party.

  He was there as usual, that little slimeball Jackie, with his tart of a wife. I remember the way she tried to come on to Bob last year at Linda’s, and how he froze her. So that’s what happened tonight but the roles were reversed. Jackie, half-pissed, comes on to me, grabs me up for a dance, cheek to cheek, chest to chest, crotch to crotch, or it would have been if he wasn’t so short. Then he starts whispering rubbish in my ear. Well, the red mist came down. I danced him into the hall, with no-one looking, and into the big cloakroom. He started playing with my tits, until I said to him, ‘Look Jackie, just fuck me, okay.’ I heard him gasp in the dark. I’m sure he wanted to get out of there but I stepped out of my shoes, unzipped him, took the puny thing out, and grabbed him by the unmentionables until he performed as best he could.

  Skinner paused, then read on silently, actually finishing the page for the first time. The night before he had stopped halfway, numbed with shock.

  All of a sudden, while he was doing it, a strange thing happened. It was as if there, in the dark, I was up in a corner of the cloakroom, looking down at myself and at the sweaty little pervert. Out of my body, I thought of Bob and I thought of my wee Alexis, and I realised what I’ve always known, that they are what I love more than anything in life. Yet here I was again, doing my level, wicked best to lose them both. For sure, I value them more than me. I detest the woman I can become, with her urges and her need to dominate men. I think I understand now, that all of that has been a reaction to the power which Bob, without even trying, holds over me. But why should he not, because I, the real me, love him more than life itself?

  And so I pushed the gasping, shrivelling, little wretch aside, stepped back into my high heels, and walked out of the cloakroom, out of the party and back home, to my lovely little daughter, and to pine for my man while he’s away. The glad rags are in the wardrobe now, and that’s where they’ll stay.

  His stomach came up into his throat as he read Myra’s confession, knowing that it was what Alex had wanted him to see most of all. Then he saw Jackie Charles staring up at him, terrified, and his grief fuelled his anger.

  ‘You screwed my wife, you little bastard,’ he snarled. ‘Or rather she screwed you, for you wouldn’t have been up to it on your own. A real party animal, aren’t you. But it backfired on you, didn’t it.’

  He held up the second sheet of paper.

  March 23. Gullane.

  Jackie phoned me at school today, in the interval. How could he do something so st
upid! I told him that he’d better accept it, that there’s no doubt that I’m pregnant. I told him that I’d been to the clinic and that they can’t do anything for me. To get a termination I have to see my own doctor first, and that just is not an option.

  I can tell that the wretch is shitting himself stiff about what Bob will do when he finds out that I’m expecting and figures out eventually, as he must, that he was away at the time. I have to say, diary, that I’m more than a little nervous myself on that score. But Jackie, dear Jackie, he keeps saying, not to worry, not to worry, that he knows what to do to sort the problem out, and that everything will be all right.

  Why should I believe a word he says? What am I going to do?

  On a happier note, Alexis won a prize for singing at playgroup today. I called Mum and told her, she was dead chuffed. Bob came home late, and said he wants the Triumph tomorrow. George the mechanic is going to service it for him in his lunch-hour. That means I get to drive the flying machine. I wish I could drive it straight at Jackie Bloody Charles.

  Skinner shoved the pages into his pocket. ‘Jackie will sort the problem out,’ he said, in a cold, hard, razor-edged voice.

  ‘You bastard! You broke into the garage that I rented then, behind Hopetoun Terrace, didn’t you. You took a hacksaw, and you cut the brake pipe of my Mini Cooper. You were in the motor trade. You must have known what happened to those things in an accident. That was your solution, wasn’t it? Only I didn’t drive the Mini next day, did I?

  ‘You didn’t care about Myra’s problem, not at all. But you were terrified of me, so you decided to kill me. You murdered my wife instead, but that didn’t really matter did it? Either way, your problem was solved.’