Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel

by Quintin Jardine

  I ran through my mental diary. Brief Alison; media conference; my priority visit. ‘How much time do you have?’ I asked. ‘I couldn’t make it till one, at the earliest; even then it would depend on where you live.’

  ‘One would be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m renting a cottage in Davidson’s Mains.’ She gave me the address; it was on the right side of town for where I’d be going.

  ‘Okay,’ I told her. ‘If anything gets in the way, I’ll call you. By the way, I’ll be talking to the press soon, about Marlon. I’ll be careful what I tell them, but we do have a lead.’

  I heard her sigh. ‘Bob, to be honest, I don’t care. Now that you’ve got me extricated from my mother’s clutches, I don’t want any more to do with my family, alive or dead.’

  Ten minutes later, the door opened and Alison, all crisp efficiency in spite of her one-thirty start, came into the outer office; she looked around and spotted me almost at once, behind my desk, beckoning her to join me.

  She closed the door behind her, and took the seat facing me. ‘You never said you were going to ask for me,’ she said, frowning. ‘First you move me out of drugs, then you second me here.’

  ‘You’re not seconded,’ I corrected her. ‘You’re working on one specific investigation . . . the Gay Blade, I’ve decided to call him within this office . . . and that’s all. You won’t even have a desk here. I’m not messing you around here, Alison. If anything, I’m giving you a real opportunity. Officially, I’m the lead officer, but in practice, you are.’

  She frowned. ‘It could be an opportunity to strengthen that glass ceiling if I make a bollocks of it.’

  ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I’m not going to expose you to any flak. Officially, I’m out front. If the investigation gets bogged down in quicksand, I’ll take any blame that’s attributed. But when you make an arrest, I’ll be nowhere to be seen, and you’ll be the one on telly. That’s a promise.’

  She looked at her hands. ‘I appreciate that, Bob,’ she murmured. ‘But even if it does go well . . . I’m a bit afraid that I might wind up being accused of fucking my way to the top. Even if nobody says it outright, you know how sexist this place can still be.’

  ‘Who’s going to think that? There are only two people in the force who know about you and me. As of a few hours ago, Alastair Grant and, before him, Alf Stein. Neither of them will say a word. If anyone else is silly enough to even drop a hint, I will find out about it, and that sad person will find out just how ruthless I can be. Now, let me bring in your new team.’

  I went to the door, and called to Mackie and Steele. They joined us, and I filled them in on their new assignment. ‘You’ll be working where DI Higgins determines, and operating under her orders. She’s in complete charge of this unified investigation. Alison, would you like to give us an update.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ she replied. She related the stories that I had heard already: first the attack on Weir and Wyllie, next, the provocation and ambush of that morning’s victim, and then she told us something I hadn’t known. ‘We’ve got a possible ID on the latest victim. Half an hour ago, the mother of a man named Albert McCann, aged twenty-seven, called Torphichen Place to report her son missing. She said that he went out for a drink with a pal last night. He didn’t come home, but she assumed that he was staying at the mate’s place. That was until she had a call from his foreman in the Lothian bus garage, where he works as a mechanic, asking where the hell he was. The description she gave matches him exactly, right down to the clothes.’

  ‘What’s been done about it?’ I asked her.

  ‘Nothing yet. Superintendent Grant called me to tell me about it just before I got here. He’d asked to be told about all missing person reports as soon as they came in.’

  ‘Then you know what to do.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at Mackie. ‘Brian, you call Torphichen and get Mrs McCann’s address. If there’s a husband, find out, locate him and get the poor sod to make a formal identification. I saw the body; I wouldn’t want the mother to have to do it if we can avoid it. DC Steele, Brian will get the name of the victim’s pal from his mother. You take a statement from him, and ask him to do a photofit, if he’s any use. Given the time of night that all this happened, his memory might not be too reliable. Once you’re both done, report to me at Torphichen Place. That’s where we’ll be based.’

  ‘Why not here?’ Mackie asked.

  ‘I don’t want to be distracted by the rest of this unit’s work,’ she replied, smoothly. ‘We’ll focus better if we’re somewhere else.’ She looked at me. ‘If that’s all, boss . . .’ I smiled as I nodded; I was relieved that she was beyond calling me ‘Sir’.

  When the three of them were gone I closed my office door again and thought about my approach to the media. I was left with only fifteen minutes to prepare, but I knew, pretty much, what I was going to say. I knew also that it wouldn’t involve Newcastle, not until I had the man Milburn in my custody. That didn’t matter, though, for as soon as I announced that the Grove Street and Jamaica Street stabbings were linked, I would be giving them their headlines for the day.

  That’s the way it worked out. I didn’t mention McCann by name, not without a formal ID, nor did I touch on the gay overtone, but John Hunter, the city’s top freelance, was shrewd enough to make the connection as soon as I said that the second victim had been in the Giggling Goose just before his death. He went down the wrong track, though, and I had to point out that there was no suggestion that either Weir, or the dead man, was a homosexual.

  ‘But we can call this guy a serial attacker?’ he persisted.

  His income depended on his ability to sell news stories to his media customers, so he was always after a hook to reel them in, but I wasn’t playing. ‘I’ll stick to suspect, John, if you don’t mind, and leave it to your subeditors to add the creative touches.’

  Afterwards BBC, STV and Sky wanted interviews for the telly news. It was part of the job, for all that I didn’t like it. Our professional trainers had told me that I look intimidating on camera, and that I should try to be more ‘viewer-friendly’. I told him in return that fearsome was all right with me, and that I wasn’t after Jon Snow’s lot. Still, I gave the people what they wanted, although I did try particularly hard to intimidate the bloke from Sky.

  Their faffing about used up twenty minutes of my precious morning, and so it was gone eleven fifteen when I made it back to the office. Fred Leggat looked up as I entered, and I could tell that he was not about to make my day. ‘It’s official, boss,’ he told me. ‘DI Higgins has just called. We now have a double murder inquiry: Archie Weir died this morning, just before eleven.’

  ‘Poor sod,’ I grunted. ‘No surprise, though. Family informed?’

  ‘The parents were there when he died, Alison said. They approved switch-off of the life support.’

  ‘Okay, give it to the press office and tell them to put it out.’ I looked at Martin. ‘Andy, you’re with me. It’s time to broaden your education. Have you got wheels?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, boss. My car’s in the park round the back.’

  ‘So’s mine. Follow me; I’ve got a private call to make after our visit, so it’s best if you travel under you own steam.’

  ‘Fine, but where are we going?’ he asked. It was a reasonable question, put with no undue deference. From the beginning, his quiet self-confidence was one of the things I liked about Andy Martin. I’ve never met anyone less likely to be accused of being a teacher’s pet.

  Nonetheless, that didn’t stop me from stringing him along. ‘You’ll see when we get there.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and slipped them into his leather jacket. ‘Okay, a mystery tour,’ he said, cheerfully. I thought of Thornton and turned away, heading for the door.

  His car was two bays away from mine; a red Mazda MX5 convertible with ‘boy’s toy’ written all over it. I had to smile. ‘Is that for go or show?’ I asked.

  ‘A bit of both,’ he admitted. ‘Nice lines, and it’
s got the larger engine option, but it’s still not a Ferrari.’ He looked at my Land Rover with something that might have been either pity or contempt. ‘It’ll out-pull that, though.’

  ‘That would depend on the sense in which you’re using the word “pull”. The Discovery was built with comfort in mind, and in my albeit limited experience, some ladies don’t like to flash their minge climbing in and out of one of those things.’ I tapped the Mazda’s ragtop. ‘Plus, I prefer a car that you can’t unlock with a Stanley knife.’

  I led the way out of the car park, and headed west, towards Queensferry Road, driving slowly to wind Martin up. I continued our stately progress all the way out to the Maybury junction, where I took a right turn, past the doomed Barnton Hotel. Eventually I turned into a cul-de-sac off Essex Road, and pulled up.

  I stayed in my car as the young DC left his, and reached across to open the passenger door. ‘Game over,’ I said. ‘Do you see that big house up there?’ He couldn’t have missed it, a big stone pile with a grey slate roof, set in an acre of ground. ‘It’s called “Trinity” and it’s the home of Tony Manson, of whom you’ve heard much said over the last few days. Tony would call himself a businessman. We would, and do, call him a criminal. The thing we like least about him is his dealing in Class A drugs. I can’t think of anything that would put a bigger smile on my face, professionally, than locking him up for twenty years or so, but I’ve never been able to do that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Martin asked, a little too directly, but I let him off with it.

  ‘Mainly because of the requirements of our criminal justice system,’ I told him, ‘and that long and meaningful word, corroboration. A lone witness isn’t enough to convict. If you and I took a sledgehammer to his door and found half a ton of smack in his cellar, we’d be most of the way there. But if I did it on my own, it would be my word against his that I didn’t plant it; any case that was taken to court on that basis would be chucked out by the judge at the first time of asking.’

  ‘Have you ever done that?’ He gulped and added hastily, ‘Searched his place, that is.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s “no” to the other, by the way. Searched Tony’s place? Of course we have; twice in my time, but purely for show, with no expectation of success. He’s much too clever and too careful ever to go near any of his merchandise, or to let it be brought anywhere near him. He also follows the basic rule of large-scale criminality, and that is . . .’ I made it a question.

  ‘Never give an order to one person,’ he answered, ‘that a second person can hear. Corroboration again.’

  ‘Exactly, Andy; or even overhear. That’s what keeps him out of our hands. Remember the man I told you about, Perry Holmes?’

  ‘The guy who was shot?’

  ‘That’s him. Perry was the master of discretion. In much of his life he was legit. He was a big property developer, and he still has a large portfolio. He conducted that business in the normal way, but for one thing, something he brought from the other side. He would rarely be in the same room with more than one person, unless they were architects showing him plans, or lawyers and the like, who were safe because they were covered by client privilege. Latterly he never even went to restaurants, other than with his brother, Al.’

  ‘It didn’t do him much good, though.’

  ‘No,’ I conceded. ‘It didn’t make him bullet-proof. And neither’s Tony; so he’ll be taking Marlon’s murder very seriously. Let’s go and talk to him.’

  I started the Discovery, and drove up to the double wrought-iron gate that secured the entrance to Manson’s property. There was a closed-circuit camera set on a stone pillar to the right. I opened my window, leaned out, and waved up at it. A few seconds later, the gates swung open, seemingly of their own accord. I cruised through, up the approach road, and pulled up alongside a black Bentley.

  The front door opened as we approached. Two men stood just inside; they were dressed in black, and there was a crisp look to them that suggested a military background. One of them stepped forward, raising his hands as if to frisk me. I raised a hand and glared at him. ‘Don’t make the mistake,’ I warned.

  He paused, but didn’t back off. ‘Easy way or hard way?’ he asked.

  I don’t react well to threats. I feinted with my left shoulder; and the minder reacted by moving to his own left, a wrong move, as it added to the force of the fist that I whipped up from my side and into his gut. ‘Told you,’ I murmured, as he dropped to his knees, and as Martin stepped forward to intercept his mate.

  ‘Hey!’ The shout came from a doorway to the left of a wide central staircase. ‘Leave it off, you guys. These are the polis. I wouldn’t have let them in otherwise.’

  Tony Manson stepped into the hallway and came towards us; he was wearing a shell suit, and his broad, lived-in, pushing fifty face sported a Mediterranean tan. He wasn’t tall, but squat and powerful; nobody had ever got the better of him in his younger days. There are hard men, and then there are those who really know how to fight. He was one of the latter. ‘Sorry, Skinner,’ he said. ‘My new help. They’re not trained to be subtle.’

  ‘You hired them in?’ I asked, as one helped the other to his feet.

  He nodded. ‘From a security consultancy,’ he said as he led us towards the room from which he had appeared. ‘They came highly recommended.’

  ‘I’d send them back for retraining, if I were you. They’d better not be armed, incidentally.’ Barely two months had passed since the Dunblane massacre, and every cop in Scotland was paranoid about firearms.

  ‘They weren’t supposed to need shooters,’ Manson growled. He had that air about him, that rare aura of power and potential for the extraordinary that marks some men out from the rest. He and I had met a few times before, and had sized each other up. I didn’t respect him, not in any way, any more than he did me; but I couldn’t say, not honestly, that I disliked him either. It’s hard to define, even now, but I probably regarded him in the same way that someone else might see a business rival. Make it personal, and your objectivity’s at risk. That’s a maxim I’ve always preached to my people, but sometimes it’s been difficult to hold to it myself. One thing I will say for him. When he controlled the drugs trade in Edinburgh, there was no lethal shit on the street; Tony was hot on quality control, if only because he recognised that killing his customers wasn’t profitable.

  He led us into his study. I’d been there before, with warrants; he’d let my team search with no attempt at hindrance, in the certain knowledge that we’d find bugger all. It was a nice, spacious room, oakpanelled, although Manson’s taste in art was too modern to hang there comfortably. The Vettriano . . . original . . . was okay, but the Howson looked out of place.

  I told him as much. ‘I like it,’ he replied, simply. ‘What do you want me to do? Loan it to the National Gallery? Go on, take a seat. I’ve been expecting you, after Lennie told me you’d paid him a visit.’ He looked at my companion, studying him. ‘New boy?’ he asked.

  ‘This is DC Martin, Tony. Remember the face, for you’ll be seeing a lot of it from now on.’

  ‘Oh aye? I thought you were in a different outfit now.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, but I’ve still got an interest in you, don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ve never worried about you, Skinner, and I’m not going to start now.’

  ‘You’re watching your back, though. The military two-step out there’s evidence of that. Marlon’s murder’s got you rattled.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘For a start,’ I told him, ‘your gates are closed. That’s unusual. Also, those two out there are minders. You’ve never needed their sort before. Marlon, poor lad, couldn’t mind his fucking manners, but you were happy with him. They’re signs of a lack of confidence, I’d say. What are you worried about? What could Marlon have told our friends from Tyneside to make them stop bouncing him off the swimming pool floor? Not that it did him any good, even if he did spill the beans.’

/>   Manson growled, deep down in his chest. ‘Marlon didnae have any beans to spill, the poor little bastard. I don’t know what gave anybody the idea that he had.’

  ‘Somebody seems to have thought so,’ Martin said.

  He glared at the DC. ‘It speaks!’ He turned back to me. ‘Why did you mention Tyneside, Skinner?’

  ‘Because that’s where Newcastle is, and that’s where we’re in the process of lifting a suspect, and possibly two if we’re lucky. Does the name Glenn Milburn register with you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, looking me dead in the eye. I believed him. ‘Should it?’

  ‘You might want to remember it.’

  ‘Newcastle?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes. We traced the van that was used to snatch and transport Marlon. It’s now a pile of burned-out and tangled metal. Milburn bought it at auction about ten days ago; for that job, it looks like.’