14 - Stay of Execution

by Quintin Jardine

  Once he had revelled in the universal dream of youth, of seeing the world, of following a martial life in glamorous, interesting and preferably sunny surroundings. It had been his ambition to go into private security work, not the kind that involved wearing drab uniforms and crash helmets but the upmarket type that would take him to Hollywood riding in the front seat of limos with movie stars in the back. He had made some early enquiries about possibilities, and had even registered with an agency that had promised him the sort of life he was after within a couple of years, once he had acquired the sort of experience they required.

  But somewhere along the line . . . not very far along either . . . it had all gone wrong. It had been nothing of his making. He had simply been the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. A finger had been pointed at him, an order had been given, and he had obeyed. He would not have volunteered, and while he had been unsure of the consequences of refusal he had been smart enough not to invite them.

  That was all it had taken: a couple of minutes out of a hot day long ago, and his life had been changed irrevocably, his dream snuffed out, his imaginary CV of ten years on crumpled metaphorically and thrown in the waste bucket. He had called himself ‘Idiot!’ many times since, but unfairly, he knew. He had been given no choice.

  Since then, his life had known no more dramas. He had been looked after and he had nothing really to complain about. His existence had been comfortable, almost pampered, and the envy of many of his friends. But it had been essentially ordinary, and worse than that, it had been spent in Belgium, a pleasant country, he conceded, but one that he had always found desperately dull.

  True, the band had livened things up for a while. It was not the most orthodox of hobbies, but it was one for which he was trained and it was also one that kept him in touch with old friends. There were the trips too, the annual jaunts to Spain and Germany, with hospitality laid on, as much free booze as they could drink, and the occasional fumbling congress with a friendly lady, although, as the years had passed, those pleasant encounters had become fewer and fewer.

  Nothing had been said, but he sensed that for some of them this would be the last outing. He and his contemporaries were all past sixty, and the colonel himself was closer to seventy. They didn’t have the stamina for these road trips any longer. Let’s face it, he had told himself, too often, they were all fucked. He could count on at least three nocturnal pisses, uncomfortable ones at that. It was a grievous curse for a man of his passions and he suspected that a few of his friends were afflicted in the same way.

  He felt the pressure again as he walked away from the bus, two fresh packs of cigarettes tucked away in his pocket. His first port of call back in the club had better be the lavatory rather than the bar. It had been a good night though. They had been welcomed by their hosts in Hull as comrades in arms, as he supposed they were in a way, ex-servicemen all, linked by a martial bond that was international.

  They had marched and played their way through the town centre that afternoon, and he could say with some pride they hadn’t been too damned bad at all. If it was to be a swansong, then it would be sweet and no mistake. It had taken him a while to summon up enthusiasm for the trip, but now that it was under way he was looking forward to every moment of it.

  Of course, it was the beer that had lifted up his heart, the true love of his bachelor life, and the common passion that united the ordinary Belgian and his English counterpart. It was a symbol of their nationalism, a thread in each country’s flag, even if it was expressed in very different ways.

  The bandsman believed in embracing the culture of others wherever he went, and so he took readily to the strange, warm, hoppy English ale, even though it was as different as one could imagine from the golden Stella or from the strange fruit-based brews of which Belgium was so proud. Beer was the champagne of the common man and much more interesting in its variety and in the range of experiences it offered. For him, England meant the premier cru, the pinnacle of the craft.

  That night he was in heaven. The Humberside Ex-servicemen’s Association had taken the Bastogne Drummers to their club, and there they had seen, bright fonts gleaming along the bar, the legend of legends, the range of champion ales made by Timothy Taylor of Keighley, Yorkshire.

  He smiled as he thought of his evening. He had heard of Taylor’s ales, of course . . . who hadn’t? . . . but they were as rare as hen’s teeth, other than the bottled Landlord which he had found once in Antwerp. He had never seen the full range of draught before, and he had set about them with the relish and enthusiasm of a youth.

  He had sampled the best bitter, then the draught Landlord and the dark mild, followed by the Golden Best, an extraordinary creation that looked like Stella but tasted like holy nectar. And there was more to come. He had still to reach the mighty Ram Tam and the Porter, which, he had been promised by the comrade with whom he was billeted for the night, made Guinness taste like French tap-water.

  But first, it was necessary to make room. The lights of the club shone bright on the other side of the silent roadway as he stepped out of the coach park. He looked at the Taylor’s sign above the entrance, trying to imprint it strongly enough on his memory for it to survive the evening, no matter how many more times he went to the well.

  The noise of the vehicle did not register in his brain until it was far too late. When it did, he was in the middle of the road. Finally the roaring of the engine broke through his reverie and drew his eyes to his left. All that he saw was a dark shape, unlit, a big, high, thick-wheeled monster.

  He had no time to run, no time even to freeze; it took him in mid-stride. Bull-bars shattered his legs, and the hard edge of the hood smashed through to his backbone, powdering vertebrae and severing his spinal column.

  The veteran drummer was hurled high in the air and over the vehicle as it sped on. As he crashed head first on to the hard road, his last thoughts were of Timothy Taylor, of Keighley, Yorkshire.

  In his rear-view mirror, the driver saw him hit the ground, and knew that there was no need to look for reverse gear. Two hundred yards further along the road, he turned left, flicked on his lights and drove away quietly, into the night.

  18

  Detective Chief Superintendent Dan Pringle knew that something unspoken was hanging in the air; his problems were that he was not entirely sure what it was, and that he did not know when Bob Skinner would give it voice.

  It was in the DCC’s manner, and in his eyes. He had seen it before in recent weeks when something had been irritating the Big Man, and on each occasion it had been an advance warning of trouble.

  And trouble was something that Pringle did not need; not any more, not at his time of professional life. He had come late to the job of head of CID, towards the end of a career which he thought had culminated in his appointment as a divisional head in Edinburgh, and after he had thought he was being parked in a siding when he was transferred to the Borders post.

  He was honest enough to recognise that when he had been recalled from that out-station and named as Andy Martin’s successor, most of his colleagues had been surprised. In truth he had been astonished himself. But Bob Skinner had told him that what he wanted most in the job was a pair of safe hands, and that his were the most experienced and reliable around.

  In his first months, he had fancied that there had been resentment at his appointment. Ultimately, though, he had put it down to over-sensitivity on his part, and had become more relaxed. He knew that the only person who had really coveted the job had been Greg Jay, whose command took in the Leith area. The rest were either nearer the door than him, or young in post, like Rose and McGuire, and if he was a stop-gap, well, that did not worry him one bit.

  Bob Skinner’s demeanour did, though, as they worked their way through the agenda of targets achieved and investigations in progress. The goals that had been set for the year were stiff. Both men knew that and the head of CID had gone into the meeting pleased with his success rate. The war against illegal drugs
was, in fact, a series of battles being fought across Scotland, under the general oversight of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency but with the local forces as the shock troops. No chief constable wanted to sit at the foot of the enforcement league table, and significant year-on-year increases in detection were always being sought. Pringle had been told to achieve an increase of twenty per cent on the previous year’s enforcement figure, in terms of dealer convictions. With almost half of the operational year left, he was already at sixteen per cent.

  ‘That’s good, Dan; very good,’ Skinner conceded. ‘Bringing Mary Chambers across from Strathclyde was a nice bit of poaching on Willie Haggerty’s part, and it’s paying off.’

  ‘Aye, but now I’m losing her to Division,’ Pringle felt compelled to point out, ‘and you still haven’t agreed to her replacement.’

  The DCC nodded. ‘I’m aware of that, but I’ve been keeping it up my sleeve until I had it confirmed. We’re going back to Strathclyde to fill Mary’s job in the Drugs Squad. I’m bringing in DI David Mackenzie from North Lanarkshire CID, on promotion to chief inspector; “Bandit”, they call him over there. He is too, a cocky bastard, but he’s a bloody good copper.’

  ‘Why are they letting him go, then?’

  Skinner looked at him severely. ‘Because I asked for him, Daniel.’ Then a half-smile crossed his face. ‘I did a bit of trading though. You know Ian Pitkeathley, the DI from Mary’s team? He’s marrying a girl who’s in a promoted teaching position in Glasgow. It’s easier for him to move job than her, so that’s what’ll happen. He goes to Cumbernauld as a straight replacement. I want you to keep an eye on the Bandit when he gets here. Take him round the divisions, make sure that everyone knows who he is, and that they know whose appointment he is too. His job’s too important for him to be hampered by any petty jealousy.’

  Pringle nodded, then picked up the last biscuit from the plate on Skinner’s coffee table. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, just before he crunched it.

  ‘That’s about it then,’ said the DCC, ‘now that they’re finished.’ He pushed himself up from the low leather couch.

  A small wave of relief swept through the head of CID; his suspicions must have been wrong after all. Someone else must be for the high jump.

  He was almost at the door when a big hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘By the way,’ Skinner drawled casually, ‘Sarah was telling me last night that she’s got one of ours on the slab this morning: a guy found topped in the Meadows yesterday morning. Imagine my surprise and delight, Dan, when the wife tells me across the fucking supper table that we’ve got a potential homicide investigation on our hands, and I haven’t heard about it from anyone else.’

  An ice-ball dropped in Pringle’s stomach. ‘Ah, well,’ he began slowly, ‘the division felt that it would be a bit premature to go calling it a murder inquiry before the SOCOs and the autopsy confirmed it. There were some anomalies at the scene that made suicide look unlikely, but I heard from Maggie Rose last night that they’ve all been sorted out and that suicide’s now seen as a possibility.’

  ‘I see.’ The big man scratched his chin. ‘It’ll be an unusual one if it is, him stringing himself up from a tree in the middle of the city. Usually they go into the garage, lock the door and turn on the car, or they swallow a bottle of single malt and a bottle of Valium, or they get out the twelve bore and blow their fucking heads off.’

  Pringle sighed. ‘Sorry, boss, I should have got word to you. But I didn’t hear about it myself until Maggie called me at half four, once the ID was complete.’

  He looked up at Skinner and saw that he was smiling. ‘It’s all right, Dan. If I hadn’t heard about it from Sarah, there was always this morning’s Scotsman. No harm done, and anyway, I had other things on my mind yesterday.’

  He reached out and opened the door for his colleague. ‘I made some resolutions on the way in in the car this morning. One of them is to stop giving the people around me such a hard time. If I made you run and tell me right away about every serious incident that goes down on our patch, then neither of us would be doing his job properly. But in this case, I gather that the victim’s a corporate banker. Just to be on the safe side, I want you to keep a close eye on the investigation, and keep me in the loop as well.’

  The chief superintendent nodded. ‘I’ll do that, don’t worry. I won’t lean too hard on Maggie Rose, though. Stevie Steele gets upset when I try it, and there’s worse than that. She doesn’t like it herself, and sometimes her eyebrows can be as bloody heavy as yours!’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Skinner. ‘Mags can be frosty from time to time, I’ll grant you, but you won’t have to handle her for much longer. Put your kid gloves on for now, but keep me in touch.’ He patted Pringle on the shoulder. ‘I’ll talk to you later. As you leave, ask young Jack to come and see me. There’s some air I have to clear with him too.’

  19

  ‘Is this new place an improvement, or what?’ asked Stevie Steele, his blue tunic rustling as he looked around. ‘There was something about the old Royal Infirmary that always gave me the creeps. Every time I went to an autopsy there I found myself thinking about Dr Knox, and Burke and Hare.’

  ‘The resurrectionists, you mean? The body-snatchers?’

  ‘They’re the boys. Every time I saw one in the old Royal I imagined the ghost of Knox the anatomist standing there instead of you or Prof Hutchinson.’

  Sarah Grace Skinner, who was dressed identically, smiled at him. ‘You’re a romantic at heart, Stevie, aren’t you? It would have had to be Knox’s ghost. I doubt that he ever set foot in any part of the old Royal. He pre-dated that; his school was somewhere up near Surgeons’ Hall, I believe. Mind you, Burke’s still around.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Well, his skeleton is, at least. After they’d hanged him, his body was given to the medical school for dissection; I guess it seemed appropriate at the time. His bones are still there. Plus there’s a pocket book made from his skin on show at the police museum.’

  Steele shuddered. ‘We’re a ghoulish lot, us Scots, aren’t we?’

  ‘Not just you. I believe that Ned Kelly’s skull became a desk ornament in an Australian jail.’

  The inspector looked round the autopsy room once more. ‘This is a different era, though. This place is purpose-built, everything’s stainless, there’s proper drainage, a high-pressure water supply and most of all,’ he pointed at the big fans set in the ceiling, ‘there’s a proper air-extraction system.’

  Sarah gave a grim laugh. ‘They’re still looking for the ultimate air-freshening system,’ she said, ‘as you will discover when I open up the late Mr Whetstone.’ Steele winced, and moved a few feet away from the table.

  She switched on the microphone above the examination table. ‘Let’s get started. The subject is a white male, mid-fifties, found hanging by the neck from a tree.’ She lifted the body’s right arm. ‘Rigor mortis appears to have worn off, this is consistent with the initial medical examiner’s estimate of time of death as approximately . . .’ she checked her watch ‘. . . thirty-six hours ago.’

  She turned the head to one side. ‘The imprint of the belt is clearly visible.’ She felt the neck carefully, for over a minute. ‘However,’ she continued, ‘there is no apparent dislocation of the cervical vertebrae. Subject to more detailed examination, this would indicate that death was due to strangulation.’ She took a pace back, and looked at the corpse carefully, from head to toe then back again, walking around the table as she did so. ‘There are no visible marks on the torso or limbs,’ she paused, ‘except . . .’

  She moved forward again, close to the body, and took the right shoulder in both of her white-gloved hands, probing with her fingers, manoeuvring it slightly. ‘Inspector,’ she said, ‘can you confirm for the record that when the body was taken down rigor mortis was complete?’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ Steele replied, speaking loudly to make certain that the microphone picked him up. ‘Mr Whetstone was absolutely stiff when my officers took h
im down.’

  ‘And they handled him carefully?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘In that case, this shoulder dislocation could only have happened pre mortem. It would have been very painful, and the shoulder would have been immobilised. Therefore it would have been very difficult for the victim to have made all the necessary preparations before hanging himself. That suggests he may have had help, or may have been attacked. Either way, since there’s no such thing as assisted suicide in Scots criminal law, it looks to me as if you could possibly have a murder investigation on your hands after all.’

  ‘Can I make a call to let Maggie know?’ Steele asked.

  ‘I’d rather you waited till I’m finished; unless you’d like to go outside to make it, then change into fresh blues.’

  ‘No, I’ll wait.’

  ‘In that case . . .’ she said, picking up a scalpel.

  The inspector watched in a kind of haze, doing his best to keep his heaving stomach under control. The only policeman he knew who did not mind witnessing a post mortem was George Regan, but his grandfather had been a village joiner, one of the last to combine funeral undertaking with the carpentry business. George liked to regale young coppers with a story from his childhood, which he swore was true, of watching Grandpa Regan lay out a late customer. In life the man had worn a wig, without mishap. In death as he lay in his coffin, it kept slipping sideways. After several attempts to fix it in place, the old tradesman had turned to his grandson. ‘Lad, wid ye pass me ma claw hammer, and a big nail.’

  He was no George Regan and he knew it, but he managed to master his revulsion. Sarah worked methodically, in the knowledge that she might well be cross-examined in the High Court, and thus taking care to leave no questions that she might not be able to answer, to the detriment of the prosecution case. Fortunately, she was assisted by a pathology student, and that saved considerable time.