Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘In theory, they’re both on secondment, but you can regard Andy as permanent. Mario’s still on the uniform strength, but if he earns his spurs, he might get to wear them here. What did you get last night, PC McGuire?’

  ‘No sightings in any of the pubs, sir; I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be too bothered. Half the IDs we get from mugshots are wrong anyway; some are people trying to be helpful, others just taking the piss.’

  ‘There was one thing, though.’

  ‘Oh yes? Enlighten, please.’

  McGuire looked untypically diffident. ‘Well, it might be nothing, boss, but the manager of the Irish pub on the South Bridge, he told me that he’d locked up on Tuesday and was walking home past Infirmary Street, a bit after midnight, when he saw something happening down there. He described it as a scuffle, two men grappling with a third.’

  ‘You showed him the image?’

  ‘Sure, but he didn’t recognise it.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He kept on walking. He’s no have-a-go hero, boss.’

  ‘Maybe as well for him. Did he give you any sort of a description?’

  The PC nodded. ‘He said that two of them were wearing suits. He thought at first that they were pub bouncers, but there was nothing still open then. The third guy he thought was dressed in black, shirt and trousers.’

  ‘Good. Well done.’

  ‘He gave me a wee bit more, though,’ he continued. ‘He said they were up against a Transit van, and that one of the back doors was open.’

  I was impressed. ‘We should get the guy in and show him some photos, just in case. Take care of that, please.’

  ‘Can I wait till he’s really busy, sir?’ McGuire asked.

  I smiled, puzzled. ‘Sure, but why?’

  ‘He deserves it. If he’d been a bit braver, even if he’d only made a noise, yelled at the guys, they might have legged it and Watson, if that was him, might still be alive.’

  I nodded. ‘Do it in your own time, Mario. But don’t ever let Marlon’s mother hear that story. I don’t want her paying a call on the guy. Meantime, I want you to get on to the council. Check out all the street cameras in the area and get their tapes for Tuesday evening. Maybe we’ll get a sighting of the van and, better still, the two guys.’

  I was about to send everyone off to work, and take Martin with me to meet Bella Watson at the morgue, when I paused for second thoughts. If I did that, I’d be marching into my new unit with my own small team and sidelining everyone else. ‘Listen, guys,’ I said to Leggat and Adam, ‘there’ll be time later on today for you to brief me on the team’s current workload, but we have an immediate situation. The man who was found dead last night was Tony Manson’s driver, and I don’t need to set out the questions that throws up. Fred, I’d like you and Martin to find out where Manson is. Bella Watson told us that he’s out of town. Is that true? If it is, what’s the reason for the trip? Is it genuine, or could he simply be putting distance between himself and what happened in Infirmary Street Baths? I’d suggest that you talk to his lawyer.’

  ‘That shifty wee bastard Cocozza?’

  ‘That’s the one, Fred.’ I looked at the two DCs. Most probably they were going to be moved on, but they were what I had to work with at that moment. ‘While that’s happening, I want you gentlemen doing the rounds of Manson’s known associates. Talk to them and see if they let anything slip about Tony’s territory being under attack from outside. Fred, have a word with the Scottish Crime Squad and the NCIS. I wouldn’t put it past them to be sitting on something they should have passed on to us.’

  ‘Do you want to involve them?’ Leggat asked

  ‘Not until the investigation moves out of our territory, and even then only as far as I have to. DS Adam, I want you with me.’ I caught Martin’s glance out of the corner of my eye. ‘Nothing personal,’ I whispered, as I walked past him towards the door. ‘Work it out and tell me later.’

  I let Adam drive to the mortuary. We’d crossed over on a few investigations when I’d been working with Alf Stein. He was never going to drop the ball, but he’d used up all the original thoughts he’d ever had in his head. I liked him, though, and his absolute trustworthiness meant that he was going to stay on my team. ‘Do you know the Watson and Spreckley families?’ I asked him, as we crossed Heriot Row.

  ‘I wasn’t around when Gavin and the kid got it,’ he replied, ‘but I saw the colour of Billy’s brains after big Kraus spread them all over Perry Holmes’s office. I never met him, though; he dropped out of sight for a while. I did interview Bella, though, with Tommy Partridge. We were both sure that she put him up to it.’

  ‘She told me as much last night. Ancient history, but still, that’s why I don’t want her hearing the story McGuire was told.’

  ‘That lad,’ Adam murmured. ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Sure. He’s a police constable on my team.’

  ‘Yes but . . .’

  I held up a hand to stop him. ‘Jeff, of course I know McGuire’s back story. He’s the nephew of Beppe Viareggio, and the grandson of old Papa Viareggio, who snuffed it about ten years ago, after he’d built up a very successful deli, importing, and property business. His mother married an Irish building contractor and founded one of the most successful secretarial employment agencies in the city. I know also that over the years there have been stories about the Viareggio clan having links to the Mafia. There isn’t a prominent Italian family in Scotland that hasn’t had that whispered about them at one time or another. It’s a load of bollocks in most cases, and most certainly in theirs. Yes, the old man and his wife, who’s still full of beans, incidentally, were first-generation immigrants from an Italy where secret societies were rife, but they came here to get away from that, not to import it. You would never, ever, have fucked with Papa, but he was absolutely straight. Same with Beppe, only he’s a wimp who would crap himself if he was ever in the same room with the faintest scent of organised crime. This was all established years ago, when I was here last, and if I should find that the Serious Crimes Unit has been wasting resources monitoring McGuire’s family . . .’ I took a deep breath. ‘If it has been, the files will be useless, so if they exist, shred them before I come across them, or before McGuire does. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ He smiled. ‘Not that there are any such files, you understand.’

  They were ready for us when we arrived at the mortuary. Marlon Watson’s body was in the viewing room, laid out on a trolley under a sheet, face uncovered, with the right, less damaged, side of his face in profile. The pathologist was there too, with a young assistant, one of his PhD students, I suspected.

  Joe Hutchinson was every cop’s carver of choice, occupant of the Chair of Forensic Pathology at Edinburgh University, and top man in his field. The force booked him whenever it could, even for jobs that didn’t appear at first sight to need his special skills, just in case there was more to it than we thought and we wound up facing him as an expert defence witness.

  ‘Didn’t you get the message, Joe?’ I asked. ‘I said ten o’clock start.’

  ‘Busy day, Bob,’ the diminutive professor replied. ‘We’ll get under way as soon as you’ve got the formal identification over with. While you’re doing that I’ll take a look at the photographs, and at the report of my colleague who attended the scene.’

  He’d barely gone when Bella Watson arrived. We met her in the anteroom. She was wearing a different outfit, a dark trouser suit over a white blouse; not her working clothes, of that I was sure. ‘Have you got them yet?’ she snapped, even before the door had closed behind her.

  ‘Them?’ I repeated.

  ‘Ma boy could take care of himself. It would have taken more than one.’

  ‘Not if he was shot,’ Adam pointed out.

  She glowered at him. ‘Another blast frae the fuckin’ past,’ she growled. ‘Where’s the other yin, the fair-haired lad?’ she asked me.

  ‘Doing other things.’

&
nbsp; ‘Pity. He had a bit o’ sympathy about him.’

  I let that pass me by. ‘If you’re ready,’ I said. She nodded and I led her into the viewing room, Jeff Adam behind her. ‘Is this the body of your son, Marlon Watson?’ I asked her, for the record.

  She didn’t flinch when she looked at the trolley; there wasn’t a sign of a tremor, but in truth, I hadn’t expected her to collapse at my feet. After all, this was a woman who’d once identified her brother by the tattoos on the knuckles of the severed right hand that was all they had to show her. ‘Yes,’ she replied, then turned on her heel and walked out.

  ‘Thanks, Bella,’ I said, outside. ‘I know, from personal experience, that couldn’t have been easy for you.’

  I was trying to be sympathetic, but she looked at me with disdain. ‘You know fuck all,’ she sneered.

  I gave up trying. ‘But you know a fucking sight more than you’ve told us,’ I barked. ‘You can’t expect me to believe that Marlon didn’t tell you anything about his job with Manson. What was going on there? For that matter, you’re hocking your mutton to punters in the saunas. No prizes for guessing which ones or who owns them, so, how did a woman your age get taken on there? You’re not doing it to pay off drug debts. I can tell a serious user just by looking at her, and you’re not one. But you’re not a kid either; you’re about fifteen years older than the norm, even if you don’t look it. Come on, did you get the gig through Marlon, or did Manson take you on himself?’ I thought I saw the faintest twitch in the corner of one eye. ‘Hey!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’ve been shagging Tony, haven’t you?’

  ‘Fuck off!’ she shouted and stormed out of the building.

  ‘Well, well, well, Jeff,’ I murmured. ‘How about that for a connection!’

  ‘For sure,’ he chuckled. ‘How did you stumble on that?’

  ‘It wasn’t that difficult. Manson’s a famous sexual athlete. He owns those saunas, all fronts for brothels, and the girls that work in them are on call. He wants laid, he phones. My guess? Marlon asked him if his mother could work there, Tony had a look, and gave her the okay; almost certainly test-drove her himself. It fits, all of it. She catches Manson’s eye, and before you know it she has nice new furniture, she’s clothes shopping in Jenner’s, and her son goes from being one of the boss’s several message boys to being his personal driver. Tell me a part that doesn’t fit.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he admitted. ‘But what does it tell us, boss?’

  ‘Nothing for sure, but it makes me wonder. If Marlon’s death is down to a potential rival of Tony’s, does that make Bella a target too?’ I mused. ‘It might.’

  ‘What can we do about it if she is?’

  ‘We could pity the guys that go for her. If she’s not carrying a shooter in her handbag I’d be surprised. Of course we could find it and lift her for that, but it wouldn’t get us anywhere. No, I’m going to put her under surveillance.’

  ‘Who will you use?’

  I looked at him. ‘I’ll need to think about that. She knows us, she’s seen Martin, and McGuire would stand out like a lighthouse. Macken and Reid? What do you think?’

  Adam hesitated. ‘To be honest . . .’ he began.

  I let him get no further. ‘Don’t ever be anything else. We’ll use new talent, then. I’ll take care of it. Come on, we’d better get suited up for Joe’s performance.’

  By the time we took our places at the back of the autopsy suite, Marlon had been moved to the dissection table. ‘All present?’ the professor asked. ‘Then let’s begin.’ He beckoned towards him. ‘Before we begin, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I want you to take a look at these X-rays.’ Several images, covering the full length of the body, were set out on a long viewing screen. He didn’t have to tell me what he wanted us to see. There were obvious fractures of every limb, of several ribs, of the right collarbone, and of the skull.

  ‘Christ, Joe,’ I murmured, ‘he looks as if he’s been hit by a bus.’

  ‘Travelling at quite a speed. I’ve had the length of the drop from the diving platform measured: thirty feet and seven inches. That means that he would have hit the deck at just over twenty miles per hour. An anomaly, certainly.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Let me do a full examination,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll give you a wholly informed opinion. You go back over there and give me some breathing space.’

  By that stage of my career I was a post-mortem veteran. They’d been a regular part of my time on the drugs squad. That doesn’t mean to say I was permanently inured to the gore, the exposed bone and organs, and the smell. I had a sell-by date, as I found out more than a decade later; I believe that every police officer has . . . or should have. Today, I cannot continue reading a novel in which the author goes into a detailed autopsy description that has no real bearing on the narrative, but seems to be there only to shock or to show off. Back then, though, in my mid-thirties, I was able to stay detached. That’s not to say what I saw had no effect. Years later, Alex told me that she always knew by my mood in the evening when I’d been to a post-mortem during the day. It was the only part of my job that I ever brought home even though I didn’t know it at the time.

  Joe Hutchinson was famously meticulous. He had never been caught out in the witness box and he never would be. But even by his standards his examination of Marlon Watson took a long time. I’d hoped to meet Alison for a quick lunch, but by mid-morning I could see where it was headed, so I called her to cancel. As it happened she was busy too, unexpectedly. I wondered if Jay was giving her a hard time.

  The professor broke for coffee after two hours, but wouldn’t give us a progress report. By the time it ended, the subject looked like a turkey on Boxing Day.

  I was so relieved when we were able to peel off our suits and get out of there that I didn’t mind waiting another twenty minutes for Joe to get himself scrubbed and dressed. He rejoined us in the reception area, looking tired, but satisfied, having left his assistant to reassemble the jigsaw.

  ‘I would say, gentlemen, under oath of course, that whoever killed this man, they were very sadistic and very determined. I am not able to tell you how many times he was tossed from that platform, but it was, beyond doubt, more than once. You saw the X-rays for yourselves, but what they didn’t indicate was that there are fractures to both the front and the back of the skull; conclusive proof. They simply kept chucking him off until he was dead. Hell of a way to kill someone,’ he murmured, in a tone that almost sounded respectful. ‘After the first couple of falls, he would have had to be carried or dragged back up to the platform, and that of itself would have been excruciating. The body is massively damaged, but there is bruising to the wrists and ankles that’s consistent with him being gripped hard, lifted and tossed over the edge. In my view he was already dead, or dying, the last time this was done. He hit the floor of the pool skull and face first and there is no sign of any resistance to the impact on that occasion, but several of the fractures, to the wrists and arms for example, indicate that there was earlier. If it’s important for you to know how often he was dropped, you might have your crime scene team examine the pool for damage to the tiles. It’ll be there, it’ll be considerable, and it might give you an answer.’

  ‘It won’t tell us why, though, Joe,’ I pointed out. ‘Could they have been trying to get information from him?’

  ‘That’s not a hypothesis I could advance in evidence. You’ll have to catch the perpetrators and ask them.’

  ‘And we will,’ I said, ‘but can you say as a pathologist whether you’d expect someone to survive a thirty-foot drop on to a hard surface?’

  He pondered my question for a few seconds; eventually he nodded. ‘A young, fit man, hands and feet unrestrained: yes, I would, but I’d expect fractures, even if he managed to land feet first.’

  ‘So what we’re dealing with here is a form of torture, not just an attempted murder that took a while to succeed?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, yes. To be frank, the only
thing I can rule out is suicide.’

  Five

  Leggat, Martin and McGuire were all in the office when we got back. The two DCs were still on a late lunch break; not a great way to impress a new boss, and even less so on the first day of an investigation.

  I let Jeff Adam give them the blow-by-blow of the autopsy. ‘They bounced the poor bastard off the swimming pool floor until he was dead,’ he summarised, as neat a description as I could have offered.

  ‘Somebody must have been seriously upset with him to do that,’ the DI said.