Skinner's ghosts bs-7

by Quintin Jardine

  25

  Pamela frowned at him across the kitchen, as she ladled soup into two shal ow white bowls. 'Is this how it's going to be? You nipping home at lunchtime to check up on me?' She handed him a bowl and a plate of thick-cut sandwiches, and gestured him towards the door.

  'Don't be daft,' he protested, carrying his snack though to the big living area other top-floor flat, and sitting on the couch which faced the bigW-shaped window, draped with white muslin now, where once it had offered an uninterrupted view of the Water ofLeith as it coursed towards the sea.

  'I'm here because I want to be. On top of that, I had that news for you about the phone cal.'

  Unsmiling, Pam set about her lunch. 'Look,' she said, final y, 'how much longer do I have to stay here? I feel like a hostage. If I'm supposed to be on leave, can't I at least go out?'

  'Yes,' said Skinner, 'if you take your escorts with you.'

  'Oh really! This man won't come after me.'

  In shirtsleeves, he shrugged his shoulders. 'If there's only one chance in a hundred of that,' he said, 'I'm stil not going to take it.

  Whoever this guy is he certainly identifies with me. Maybe it's purely because I'm a high-profile police figure that he can thumb his nose at, but my publicised connection with wee Mark McGrath makes that unlikely.

  'Against that background, in the light of the Spotlight story, you have to be protected.'

  She looked at him, as he devoured his last sandwich. 'Should I really be scared, then?' she asked, quietly, when he was finished.

  'Not while you're here, with protection outside. Not while I'm here. Women and kids are this man's size.'

  She looked at him again, sulkily. 'But couldn't you protect me in the office? After all, I'm sure this leave I'm taking will come off my annual al owance… don't try and tell me different. I can see the Spotlight headline now: "Skinner's girlfriend gets extra holidays!" '

  'It's because of Spotlight that we… okay, I… thought you'd be better away from the office for a few days.'

  'What!' She sat bolt upright, sulking seriously now. 'I thought this was al about security. But you mean you and Andy decided I'd 91 be better kept out of the way for a while to save embarrassment.

  Whose, in that case? Mine, or yours?'

  His eyebrows came together in a single heavy line. 'I'm still there, remember,' he growled.

  'Oh, so you are embarrassed!'

  'No, I didn't say that. It's you that I'm concerned about.'

  Her expression softened. 'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose you are. But, please, don't make decisions about me without involving me. Even if you are my commanding officer.' She hesitated. 'Let me come back, please. If people point fingers at me it'l be behind my back, and I can take that, I think. Let's do what we've done up to now, travel to and from work separately, and steer clear of each other in the office.'

  She slid across beside him on the couch, and poked him in the ribs. 'Come on, I'l bet you need me, too. Don't tel me that the Head of CID isn't short-handed just now. It isn't right to keep me here, when I could be out helping you catch the man who murdered Mrs McGrath and stole her son.'

  He laid his plate and bowl on the floor, and turned towards her, his hands gripping her upper arms, gently. 'Okay,' he said, smiling.

  'I give up. You can come in tomorrow. But either we go in together or you get a lift from the protection people. Deal?'

  'Deal.' She nodded, slipping free of his grasp, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. 'Now,' she whispered, 'since this is a one-off occasion, what say we take ful advantage of it?'

  He disengaged himself, still grinning. 'One triumph per lunch hour's enough for you,' he said. 'I have to get back to the office.

  There's a hot tape coming up from London. Meantime, you can spend the afternoon deciding whether you intend to sue the Spotlight for defaming your impeccable character.'

  26

  Sammy Pye was waiting in the Command Corridor as Skinner bounded up the stairs from the smal entrance hal way. The DCC knew at once that, whatever news he had brought, he would not be starting his afternoon with a smile.

  'What's the damage?' he asked the glum young detective.

  'It's that phone box, sir,' said Pye, heavily. 'The cash compartment was emptied at half past nine this morning. By the time I spoke to Telecom the money was back at their regional office, mixed up with the takings from about thirty other kiosks.

  'I've told them not to bank it til they hear from us.'

  Skinner shook his head. 'Sam, with that number of boxes, even if we had enough technicians to dust all those coins, we'd be cross-matching prints from now til Christmas. You tell Telecom they can bank their cash. Let them concentrate on giving us that list of numbers in use last Saturday night, at eleven.'

  The young man's earnest face brightened. 'I've got that already, sir. There were six phones used in Gullane at that time, as well as the cal box.' He caught Skinner's expression and nodded. 'Yes, sir, BT confirmed that it was used at the time in question.

  'Mr Martin told me to give the list to Superintendent Mackie,' he went on, quickly, 'for him to check it out.'

  'That's good. Thanks, Pye.'

  The young man nodded and made to leave, but hesitated. 'Yes?' said Skinner. 'Something bothering you?'

  The constable took a deep breath. 'Well, sir, couldn't we just check the subscribers and see who they are? I mean most of the folk in Gul ane are…' He stopped, sensing a chasm before him.

  Skinner smiled. 'Are old bufties, you were going to say? Like me, you mean?'

  'Well, eh.,.'

  'You're right, of course. I'l probably know most of them. No, Sam, the main reason for checking every call is to prove beyond doubt that it was the phone box that was used.'

  Pye nodded, and headed off, back to the CID suite to pass his message to BT. Skinner stepped into his secretary's office. 'Any deliveries?' he asked.

  Ruth nodded and picked up a tape cassette box from her desk, waving it in the air. 'Ten minutes ago,' she said.

  'Excellent,' said the DCC. 'Let's hear it. Full blast.'

  On her side table, his secretary kept a radio cassette player, which was used mainly for monitoring radio news bulletins. She took the tape from its box, inserted it in the slot and pressed 'play', twisting the volume control to a high setting.

  At first they heard only hissing, but after thirty seconds or so, the sound changed. There was no background noise at al, only a woman's voice, shouting but slurring, her words insistent, but thick, as if with alcohol. 'Lemme go, lemme go,' she called out.

  Then a man's voice – not so loud, flatter, but sounding just as drunk. 'Fuckn' bitch,' he said.

  'Lemme go, ya bassa.' Another slurred shout. Then a sound, a crack, the noise possibly of palm meeting cheek.

  The hissing resumed once more. Ruth pressed the stop button and rewound the tape. 'There's a note with it,' she said, handing Skinner a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and read.

  ' This is what we were able to do. The man s voice was a bonus. I guess your cal er used a phone box and that he had the door open!

  Skinner smiled, guessing why he would choose to do that at such an hour on a Saturday night. 'The mikes on your public phones are very good. The people you hear on the tape could have been up to twenty-five yards away. Good Luck, Caroline Farmer.'1

  He looked at Ruth. 'Some bonuses from my Saturday cal,' he said. 'It was made from the phone box near my cottage.'

  'Mmm,' she said. 'You do have the nicest neighbours, don't you?'

  Skinner grinned at the waspish dryness of her humour. 'Aye,' he nodded, 'and I'm going to find out who they are too. Have a copy made, and give it to me. I'll send Mcllhenney out to Gullane to play it, discreetly, to the pub owners and bar staff in the vil age.

  'He should get a laugh from them, at least, and maybe, a couple of names.'

  27

  Detective Superintendent Brian Mackie's expression was usually deadpan, and so, as the McGrath investigation team
filed into the conference room at the St Leonards Divisional Police Office at exactly 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Andy Martin was surprised to note that he looked a shade nervous.

  He strolled up to the head of the table, where Mackie stood. 'Chin up, Thin Man,' he whispered. 'You should be pleased that the Boss asked me to have you run the morning briefing, and on your turf too.'

  'Sure,' said the newly promoted divisional CID commander, 'but it'd be easier if he wasn't here himself. This is the first time I've done something like this, outside Special Branch, and that wasn't the same at all. You know what the boss is like. He can't stop himself from jumping in, even when he isn't in the chair.'

  The Head of CID grinned. 'Don't I bloody know it. But don't worry. I've asked him to be on his best behaviour.'

  Mackie, his shiny bald head adding to his cadaverous look, looked unconvinced. 'Aye, but even at that. I really feel in the spotlight here, considering who I've taken over from.'

  'You put that right out of your mind. With hindsight, you should have been in this job before him anyway. If you hadn't been so valuable in SB, you probably would have been.'

  For the first time, the slim detective looked reassured. 'Kind of you to say that, Andy, true or not.' He paused, and looked around the room as if searching for a face. Skinner, making his way along the far side of the room, caught his eye and nodded.

  'The boss is here, but is your sergeant coming?' the Superintendent murmured.

  'No way,' replied Martin, quietly. 'He's let her come back to work this morning, but I'm going to make sure that they're never in the same room, not with other officers around anyway.'

  Mackie nodded. 'Good. Especially not with Maggie Rose. She's good at studied disapproval, is my second-in-command.'

  He looked up to see Skinner reach Detective Chief Inspector Rose, his Executive Assistant before Pamela Masters' brief tenure in the post. 'Mornin' Mags,' said the DCC. 'How's the new boss?'

  Rose looked over her shoulder towards Mackie. 'Strict but fair just about covers it, sir,' she said with a faint smile. If Skinner noticed that it was less warm than usual, he gave no sign.

  'Bit like me, you mean?' He reached out to shake the Superintendent's hand. 'Mornin' Brian. Christ,' he said suddenly. 'Look at the three of you. Al graduates from my private office. A certain route to the top, indeed.' Skinner rarely said anything simply to make conversation, but the words were out before he could stop them. Had he not known Maggie Rose so well he would never have noticed the slight change in her expression.

  'Anyway,' he said, quickly. 'Let's get on with it.' He nodded towards a chair at the side of the table. 'Brian, I'll sit over there, and I'll try to keep my mouth shut, honest. Arrange the rest as you like.'

  Mackie nodded and rapped the table. 'Okay, ladies and gentlemen,' he called out, 'if you'll all take seats, please.' He looked around the room. In addition to Skinner, Martin and Rose, by his side, Sammy Pye and Neil Mcllhenney faced him across the table, together with three other officers, two men and a woman.

  Quickly, the room came to order.

  'Very good,' said the Superintendent, flanked in his seat by his deputy and by the Head of CID. 'This briefing has been cal ed to review progress yesterday in our enquiries in Gullane, where a lead has developed in the McGrath Murder investigation.' He glanced round at Martin. 'Of the officers involved in the investigation, sir, only the people in this room know the ful story, that Mr Skinner's cal on Saturday was made from Gullane.'

  Briefly, but comprehensively, Mackie related the developments since Skinner's unexpected telephone call, and since the discovery of its point of origin.

  'First of all,' he said, once everyone was up to date, 'let's deal with the follow-up visits to the six telephone subscribers on that BT list.

  Sergeant Reid, you handled that…'

  The second female officer in the room nodded, and sat straighter in her chair. 'Yes, sir. They've al been checked out, as far as possible.'

  'How did you go about it?' asked Martin.

  'Discreetly, sir, as ordered. Mr Mackie said that what we really wanted was to get a look at these people. So I told every person I visited that I was investigating reports of nuisance phone cal s in the area, and was checking to see whether they'd had any. Just to make it convincing, sir, I cal ed on al the homes around each of the names on my list.'

  'Have you excluded everyone?' asked Skinner from the side.

  Mackie glanced at Martin and raised an eyebrow, slightly.

  'No, sir. One subscriber wasn't in. However the folk next door told me that he was a seventy-year-old widower, who'd gone off in a 96 w' a hurry on Sunday to visit his sick grandson. Other than that, though, I've seen them all. Of the other five, four were middle-aged couples, and the fifth was an old lady in a retirement community.'

  'Very good, Janice,' said Mackie, hurriedly taking back control of the meeting. 'Sergeant Spring, wil you please report on the house-by-house check.'

  Spring, the older Sergeant, nodded. 'We're going as fast as we can, sir. Some of the houses we know are a dead loss, but like Janice, we have to be seen to be calling on everyone, so it's taking a while.

  There's been nothing suspicious so far.'

  'How about empty houses?' asked Martin. 'Have you encountered any?'

  'Seven, so far,' said Spring. 'Five of them have no known local key-holder, two have a key-holder known to us, and the other is believed to have a local caretaker, but the neighbours don't know who that is. They keep themselves to themselves in Gullane, right enough, sir.' All at once the Sergeant gulped, visibly, and glanced across at Skinner.

  The DCC himself broke the ensuing silence. 'What have you done about the empties, John?' he asked.

  'Had a good look round, sir, as far as we could. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, anywhere.'

  Skinner nodded and leaned back in his seat.

  Mackie looked at the officer beside Spring. 'Sergeant Carney, you've been doing the pubs. Any feedback?'

  'Some, sir. It's a pity it was a Saturday. During the week the firemen from the Training School would have been around, and they'd have been going home around that time, sober mostly, and potential y good witnesses.

  'As it was we found a couple of guys who admitted they were passing the phone box, just before eleven. They were a bit shifty like, so we pressed them. One of them finally admitted that he had a piss in it on the way past.'

  'And presumably, Phil, there was no-one else in it at the time,' said Maggie Rose, with a grim, disapproving smile.

  'Not that he mentioned, ma'am.'

  Mackie clasped his hands together and leaned forward. 'So that's it then, is it? Phone subscribers clear; nothing from the house-to-house; nothing from the pubs. Blanks all round.'

  He looked round the table, from face to face. 'In that case, we'd al best go back and get on with the house-to-house, as quickly as possible.'

  He was almost in the act of rising, when Skinner leaned forward.

  'There is just one other thing, Superintendent,' he said. Martin, Mackie and Rose looked at him, their surprise undisguised.

  'Mcl henney has something to report. Go on, Neil.'

  The bulky Sergeant shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He looked along the table at Mackie. 'We had a tip, sir,' he began, 'that two people, man and woman, were near the phone box when the call was made.' The Superintendent looked back, stone-faced. His Special Branch experience stil fresh in his mind, he knew better than to ask where the information had come from if Skinner's aide had not volunteered the fact.

  'On the boss's instruction, I did some asking around. I'm assured that they're a couple called Grayson, Michael and Rose, of 12

  Carnoustie Terrace, in the village.'

  The DCC leaned forward again. 'I know you're hard pressed with the house-to-house, so I thought Neil and I would check them out.

  Just to keep our hands in, so to speak. That al right with you, Brian?'

  'Of course, boss,' said Mackie, managin
g to suppress his sigh.

  28

  'Watch this bend, Neil.'

  Sergeant Mcllhenney believed that, if you were any good at the business of life, you would learn something new every day. For him, Tuesday's unexpected lesson was that Bob Skinner was a nervous passenger in a motor car.

  Al the way along the coast road, the DCC had shifted uneasily in the passenger seat of the unmarked car which his personal assistant had drawn from the pool, the DCC having reasoned that his own car was too well known in Gul ane not to be noticed if it was parked outside a strange house. It was the first time that the Sergeant had ever driven his commander.

  Now, as Mcllhenney took the Lufihess corner at scarcely more than fifty miles an hour, he pointed at the curve of the road, and barked his warning.

  'No problem, boss. I've driven this road before you know.'

  'Of course you have, Neil. Sorry. I just have this dislike of being driven, that's all. Especially there. It's where my first wife was killed.'

  'Ah,' said Mcllhenney, understanding at once. 'You should have said. I just assumed that I'd be driving.'

  'Quite right,' grunted Skinner. 'It's what personal assistants are for. Anyway, you have to confront your dislikes every so often, or they can become phobias.'

  As the police car swung round the right-hand bend into Gullane, he began to give the Sergeant a series of directions. Finally, they turned a corner, into Carnoustie Terrace, Mcllhenney crawling along the kerbside until he spotted Number 12. 'There we are, boss,' he said cheerily. 'Ordeal over.'

  The two policeman stepped from the car, into the warm sunshine of the summer day. There were no more than two dozen hoses in Carnoustie Terrace, linked, as its name suggested, in groups of six.

  From the roughcast exterior Skinner's assistant guessed that they were Council-built, although he guessed by the variety of window and door styles that most were now in private ownership.