I knew Jackie well; it took me years to put him away. For a short while he and I were near neighbours in Gullane. Myra and I were in our twenties; we socialised with them, because Myra was somewhat smitten by their car dealer lifestyle, and because I didn’t know any better at the time. She was killed not long after that, the Charleses left the village and before I knew where I was I was investigating his other businesses, which involved bankrolling armed robberies and the like.
Jackie had a lot to say about me, and my wife, including the claim that he had shagged her at a party. That would have shocked me too, if I hadn’t known that it was true, from Myra’s secret and comprehensive diary, which I only got round to reading years after her death.
Making a mental note to visit him when he got out of jail, I moved on to a transcript subtitled ‘AD’. At first sight, I’d wondered who that might be, but when I saw the name Alafair Drysalter, I wasn’t surprised. I checked the date; the interview had taken place three days after Carrie had followed Mia to the house beside Blackford Hill, where Alafair lived with her ex-footballer husband Derek.
In stark contrast to Jackie Charles, she had said very little about me . . . probably because she didn’t know much. She’d been guarded about Mia too, but she had revealed that her father . . . ‘His name was Perry Holmes; he was a businessman’ . . . had brought her into the family when she was fifteen, to rescue her from a background in which she was being exploited and sexually abused.
The transcript showed her being unable to link Mia with me, beyond saying that I had investigated the murder of her brother, when Mia had been working as a radio presenter on an Edinburgh station. She did say that Mia had told her that she fancied me, but she had left Edinburgh abruptly, and nothing had come of it, as far as she knew.
I glanced through the other transcripts. One was from a name I didn’t recognise, even when I’d got past the initials, ‘WM’. It was only when I got into the substance of the interview that I remembered: William Macken had been a detective constable in the Serious Crimes Unit that I’d taken over on promotion to detective superintendent.
He was a lazy, insolent boozer, and I’d got rid of him so fast that I’d never even got to know his first name. He’d volunteered the information that I was ‘screwing yon lassie Higgins, at the time’ and that I’d kept the interview with Mia Sparkles – her radio name – for myself and ‘his gopher, yon Martin that’s the chief constable now’.
All the time I was looking for the initials ‘PM’, but since not even I know where Pamela Masters is – and believe me, I check for her every so often – no amateur snooper was likely to find her.
But one set of initials did catch my eye: ‘CM’ set me wondering, and I could only come up with one name to match. I confirmed it by opening the transcript. Cameron McCullough is a Dundee businessman known universally as Grandpa, on account of having become a grandfather at the age of thirty-six. As I told you earlier, that granddaughter, who bears his name, is now Sauce Haddock’s partner.
Since he operated off my patch, he and I don’t know each other very well, and so I wondered what had made him an interview subject. I was none the wiser after I’d read the transcript. Neither could Linton Baillie have been, for McCullough had no information about me to offer, and he told the truth when he said that we’d only ever met once.
I set that folder aside and moved on to the main course, ‘Manuscript’. It contained only one file, a document in Word format, entitled ‘The Secret Policeman’. I opened it and began to read the preface.
Throughout a thirty-year career, Chief Constable Robert Morgan Skinner has forged a reputation as Scotland’s toughest cop, and as one of its most successful detectives. This book will show that these two qualities are linked as it looks behind the scenes at Chief Constable Skinner’s career and life, and will highlight a third, a ruthlessness that has made him feared by colleagues, friends and foes alike, and saw him banish his only brother to a life of hopeless alcoholism in a hostel for the homeless.
‘Will it indeed?’ I growled as I read. ‘If all that’s true . . . how fucking stupid have you been to do this?’
The narrative began in my childhood. The author had done his research well, to have found Charles Donnachie, a month before he died last summer, aged ninety-six. Mr Donnachie was a lawyer in Motherwell, senior partner in what was the largest practice in town until my father’s firm challenged its supremacy and eventually supplanted it. The old man had never forgotten that, it seemed, or forgiven it.
William Skinner was a cold man [he was quoted as saying]. He had no friends, only clients, rivals and acquaintances. The commercial side of the law and his own enrichment were his only interests, and he crushed anyone who stood in his path with the cold power of a steamroller.
I remember both of his sons. Michael was a colourful character, a popular boy about the town, and a natural leader, as he showed when he joined the army straight from school and won a commission. Robert, on the other hand, was a withdrawn, sullen child, with a coldness about him that was the equal of his father.
I met him a few times, when I had occasion to visit William Skinner’s office. It was his eyes that I recall most clearly. Even as a child they made me a little afraid. As a teenager he showed me why, when he drove Michael away from the family, and the town. One day the poor lad was there, the next he was gone.
‘And I remember you, old Charles,’ I whispered. ‘You were one of the few men my father ever spoke badly of. “A drunk, a danger to your clients’ funds and a waste of a law degree,” was what he called you. For all the disparity in your ages, you and Michael drank together in the Ex-servicemen’s Club . . . drank a lot.’
I steeled myself and read on. As I read, it seemed to me that the book was looking at my police career through a window of distorted glass that bent it out of shape. The implication was that I intimidated colleagues, witnesses and criminals in equal measure. It quoted men like Macken, and others, among them Greg Jay, the sleaziest man I ever worked with, who took payment in kind from prostitutes for allowing them to work with only token interference from his officers.
Jay alleged that I’d forced him out of a key investigation, that I’d shopped him to Alf Stein, our boss, and that I’d covered up an improper relationship (I hadn’t, and it wasn’t) with a fellow officer, Alison Higgins. It was vicious stuff, yet it was close enough to the truth to make it hard to challenge legally. Yes, we did clash over a case, and Alf did give him a rocket. As it happened, I’d been in the right but in fact I had made no complaint; Alf hadn’t needed one, not after he discovered that Jay had spied on Alison and me, at my home.
The Jackie Charles view came through loud and clear too. My interest in him was personal, the book claimed. I’d discovered his affair with Myra, and I hadn’t stopped in my persecution of him until he was in prison. He’d lain in fear of me for years, he said, and when his car showroom was torched and his wife was killed in the blaze, he’d suspected that I was behind it.
I’d caught Charles and was being blamed for it in the book. I’d failed to catch Tony Manson and that was held against me too. The text suggested that I was a regular visitor to Manson’s house in Cramond . . . I was, but always with a fellow officer, and my visits were always related to some blag I knew, but couldn’t prove, that Tony was behind.
And then there was Pamela Masters.
I’d been steeling myself for her appearance in my life story, but when it came, the narrative missed the mark completely; it wrote her off as a piece of heartless philandering on my part, exposed, to my embarrassment, by a journalist called Noel Salmon, described, inaccurately, as ‘fearless’. I noticed that particular piece of shit hadn’t contributed to the research for the book; he was as long gone as Pamela, and if he knew what was good for him, as far away.
There was other stuff, lots of it; the book was comprehensive, and I have to admit that it asked some pretty good questions.
For example, it focused on a political assassination in E
dinburgh, just after I’d become an ACC. It had ended in gunfire, I’d shot a gunman, two other people had died and Mario McGuire had taken a chest wound that might have killed anyone but him.
Despite all that, no one ever came to court and there was never any form of public inquiry into the massacre. The Baillie text asked, Why not?
More than that, it asked another good question. The official account, released to the press, said that I’d been shot in the leg in the incident. In that case, the book wondered, why had I been pictured walking away from the scene in a newspaper photograph?
Then there was the murder of the wife of the Secretary of State for Scotland and the kidnap of their child. Andy Martin and I had recovered the wee girl, but again, no one had ever come to court charged with the crimes. That was true, and it was another box that nobody wanted to see reopened.
I read into the night, until I reached the end of the manuscript . . . but not the finished work, I reckoned. The book ended abruptly, with Ignacio’s arrest in Spain, his extradition, and his court appearance. As I’d expected, there was the suggestion, based on circumstances and facial resemblance, that he might be my son.
‘One more question for Bob Skinner to answer,’ it ended.
I closed the file, and leaned back in my chair, considering everything that I’d learned that evening, and putting all the events in order. It was well after midnight and I was much in need of sleep. However, I knew what I was going to do, first thing in the morning.
Thirty-One
‘First thing’ turned out to be ten thirty, by reason of me having to go out for breakfast, since I was starving and had no food in the house.
Instead of going to the old town I drove down to the suburb of Riells. It was much busier than I’d anticipated, having forgotten that it was Sunday and that the street market would be in full swing, but I was lucky, and found a pavement table in the sun. The weather had changed and it was warm enough to sit outside.
A tortilla baguette and a coffee later, I dug out my mobile from my trouser pocket and called Xavi. I’d picked up a copy of GironaDia on the way there; it lay on the table in front of me.
‘Hello, Bob.’ He sounded just a little anxious. ‘Is everything okay?’ Meaning I guessed, Have there been any awkward questions from Andorra?
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Everything’s put to bed. That’s a cracking front page in your paper today,’ I added. ‘I wish I could read all of it.’ The Valentina story had blown everything else away.
‘Isn’t it just,’ he agreed. ‘It’ll run for days, too. There are police all over Europe looking for Ana Kuzmina. Good luck to them.’
An unfortunate waste of resources, I thought, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
‘Yes indeed. Where do you go from here?’
‘Upward,’ he replied. ‘I’ve just had a long talk with Joe.’ He chuckled. ‘Actually it was more of a lecture, from him to me. As a result we’re going to make a move to acquire the BeBe group; he says it’s been in a state of chaos since Battaglia’s death, and its backers are open to any offer that’ll secure the future of the business.’
‘With you as CEO?’
‘I’ll have to be initially, but I’ve promised Sheila that it’ll be short-term, until Hector’s ready to take over the reins. He’s right; digital’s the future, Bob, and that’s his world. I’m an inky-fingered guy.’
‘Maybe I can be your crime correspondent,’ I said.
‘Are you serious? I’d have you in a heartbeat.’
I laughed. ‘Language would be a problem.’
‘Bugger that, I’ll give you assistants who can handle that.’
‘Thanks, Xavi, but a million times no, it’s not what I do.’
‘So what will you do? Become part of Police Scotland?’
‘Never!’ I retorted, vehemently. ‘I’ll campaign against its existence until the politicians realise they’ve made a mistake, and put it right.’
‘In that case, I’ll give you a platform. Come on the board of InterMedia.’
‘What?’ I gasped. ‘What the hell could I possibly contribute to a media group?’
‘Independent oversight of all our investigative activity, right across the group. We’re a news business, Bob. Investigation’s our heartbeat. You’re a natural fit.’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘I’m serious; I’ve talked this over with Joe and he’s all for it. I was going to call you tomorrow to float the idea. Please, think about it. We’re not talking full-time or anything like it; one day a week, maximum. We’ll pay you three grand a day, sterling, net of tax, and we’ll give you an office in the Saltire building; one in Girona as well if you need it.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Xavi!’
‘Think about it.’
‘Okay, I’ll consider it,’ I conceded, knowing even then that I’d accept, if Sarah agreed to it.
‘Now,’ I continued, ‘to the reason for my call. Is Ben with you?’
‘Ben?’
‘Yes, I’d like to talk to him about something. It’s book-related,’ I added. ‘That was his trade, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was, but no, Bob, he’s not here. He hasn’t been for a few days, in fact. He’s still off with that woman. We don’t know who she is, either. I was wrong about the girl in the office, by the way. I checked, quietly. It’s not her.’
‘The secret world of Ben McNeish,’ I murmured.
‘Seems like it.’
‘Maybe I’ll investigate.’
‘You do that, and if you find the little bastard, let me know. Cheers, my friend, and think very seriously about our proposition. The money’s negotiable, by the way; that was just an opening offer.’
I ordered a sparkling water and a Magdalena, then picked up my newspaper, looking at it with a renewed interest that was almost proprietorial. Xavi’s proposal had taken me by surprise. It wasn’t the first offer of a directorship that had come my way in the previous few weeks, but it was the most attractive, and not just financially. It was a job that I could do, and give value for money, rather than being simply a name on the letterhead.
Eventually I pushed it to the back of my mind to get on with what I’d intended to do. Carrie McDaniels had never given me a business card, but she hadn’t been hard to find. Before leaving the house I’d tracked her down on the Internet, finding her on a list of registered private investigators, with mobile number supplied. I keyed it in and called her.
‘This is Carrie,’ she answered, sounding assured and professional even on a Sunday morning.
‘And this is Bob,’ I replied, ‘as in Skinner.’
‘Uh?’ A crack appeared in the façade. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to see you. We’ve got unfinished business, Carrie, and I know you’re not in Scotland. This can’t wait; it has to be today. Tell me where you are. Don’t piss me about, please; I’m not in the mood for it.’
‘Why should I do that?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve given me a hard time ever since we met. I’m not tailing you any more. Even if Baillie asks me, I’m going to tell him I’ve had enough.’
‘It isn’t only you I want to see. It’s Ben as well, but I don’t want him to know I’m coming.’
‘Ben? How did you . . .’
‘I’m a fucking detective,’ I laughed. ‘Now, where are you?’
She sighed, and gave in. ‘We’re in the Parador de Aiguablava. Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I can be there inside an hour. Don’t think about running for it. The Mossos owe me all sorts of favours; they’d trace you for me, if I asked them.’
‘We won’t; we’ll wait for you. But what’s this about, Mr Skinner?’
‘I’ll tell you when I get there,’ I replied. ‘This isn’t really about you; it’s about Ben. Remember, say nothing to him, but his life could be in danger.’
I left her wondering, paid my bill and headed for my car.
In the summer the road to Aiguablava would have been busy, but in December it’s quiet,
even on Sunday. I’d said that I’d be there in an hour, but I wanted to make it faster than that, against the outside possibility that they’d do a runner, so I ignored the twisty coastal trail, heading instead for Palafrugell. I turned off north of there, at a place called Regencos, joining a road that skirted Begur and hit the coast north of my destination.
The Parador hotels are a Spanish institution that goes back over eighty years. They were founded in the pre-Franco days and have survived all the upheavals since, still state-owned and still providing luxury accommodation and dining in landmark buildings. I’ve thought for a while that if our royal family did a similar thing with all its property, there would be no need for the Civil List.
The Aiguablava Parador stands on a headland looking down on to the bay below. It isn’t an historic building, as many are, but a squat three-storey structure, functional rather than pretty.
The sun was still casting light on to the terrace, but only just, as I strode towards the couple seated in the furthest corner. It was still short of noon but the cocktail hour seemed to have begun, if the tall glasses on their table were any indicator. Beside them I saw a silver laptop, closed.
Carrie saw me first; Ben’s eyes followed hers. They were interesting, as they caught sight of me; they widened in the instant, then narrowed with suspicion, all in the space of a second, before a forced smile appeared.
‘Mr Skinner,’ he exclaimed. ‘This is quite a surprise. Did my stepfather hire you to find me?’
I shook my head. ‘No, Ben,’ I replied. ‘The truth is, I didn’t find you. My daughter did.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he murmured, but I could see reality beginning to dawn.
I smiled. ‘Sure you do. She was looking for a man called Linton Baillie, who’s been taking an unhealthy interest in me for the last few months. She didn’t find him because he doesn’t really exist; instead she found you.’
Last Resort Page 32