14 - Stay of Execution

by Quintin Jardine

  Skinner glared at Special Agent Gower. ‘That’s a step too far, lady. I will have none of your fucking gunslingers on my turf, and you can pass that on to whoever needs to hear it.’

  ‘I will. But what else do I tell them?’

  The DCC winked at her. ‘Tell them I’ll do as I’ve been asked.’

  84

  Sarah Grace Skinner had always taken pride in her self-control. She had known some difficult moments in her otherwise sunny and privileged life, but she had come through them all with a toughness she was sure she had inherited from her father.

  So, as she had felt it ebb away over days, weeks and then months, she had grown more and more frightened. Her loss of her sense of place and her self-confidence was starting to show in her work. That stupid rush to an unsupportable conclusion in the autopsy of the banker suicide was something that she would never have done before.

  And now she was doing something else that in the past would have been alien to her. She was running away. She had risen from a sleepless night, not for the first time spent alone, had dressed quickly and had seen to her children. She had said nothing to them other than the usual, ‘Be good today,’ and then she had left them to Trish, with a lame excuse about an early appointment, and had carried on with her own preparations.

  She had slung her case into the back of her car when the nanny was occupied in the nursery, and had driven off without a backward glance, her view of the road slightly blurred by the tears in her eyes.

  She was unsure how she would be welcomed, or even whether she would be welcomed, but it was a chance she was prepared to take. Before, she had always weighed the consequences of her actions; at that moment she found, for the first time in her life, that she did not care.

  The traffic was building up as she drove towards Edinburgh. She was no fan of rush-hours and had managed to avoid them for most of her working life. She was no fan of city living either but, in the right circumstances, she reckoned she could grow used to it.

  As she approached the turn-off to Fort Kinnaird and Craigmillar beyond, she switched on the radio. By one of those random chances that always come up when least wanted, the Beatles were singing ‘All You Need Is Love’, on Forth Two. She switched it off again, at once.

  The traffic slowed through Craigmillar. Edinburgh’s traffic planners did not like motorists and went out of their way to make life difficult for them, laying down bus lanes and narrowing roads at every opportunity. By the time she reached Peffermill, she feared that she would arrive too late, but at the Cameron Toll roundabouts, it speeded up. When she turned into Gordon Terrace, it was ten past eight.

  She parked across the street from the house and took her case from the car. Slowly she walked up the driveway to his door, as if she was considering every irrevocable step. Just once, she hesitated, thought about turning back; but she kept on, until she stood on his front step. She rang the bell and waited.

  She waited for a while; remembering the lay-out of the house, she thought that he might be upstairs, in the shower, so she rang again, keeping her finger on the button for a few seconds.

  She had barely taken it away before the door opened. ‘Can I . . .’ she began, before the question died in her mouth.

  A woman stood there, staring at her. She wore a long t-shirt that came almost to her knees, her red hair was tousled and she wore no makeup. The look in her eyes was one of pure, undiluted hostility.

  ‘Maggie,’ Sarah gasped.

  ‘Right,’ she hissed. ‘Now get the fuck off my man’s step, and out of his life.’

  The big green door was slammed in her face.

  85

  Bob Skinner was beginning to hate his office. He felt trapped in it, a prisoner behind a desk, when all his instincts told him he should be out there doing something, joining his officers in combing the city for any trace of the two people who posed such a threat to its most famous son.

  Every one of them, and every officer in the neighbouring Strathclyde force, had been given the Aurelia Middlemass photograph and a copy of the photofit of her partner’s most recent image, drawn up by his lab assistant at the university. It was something that had to be done, but the DCC knew within himself that it would be useless. Experienced, resourceful people like these would have changed their appearance for their return to Edinburgh. They would have a plan for gaining admission to Murrayfield, one that did not involve the stupid risk of climbing fences. For all that was being done, for all his desire to help in its doing, he knew within himself that they would have to be taken in or at the stadium.

  He had grabbed some badly needed sleep in McIlhenney’s spare bedroom, six hours of it before Neil had wakened him at eight, an hour later than he had asked. Once he was dressed he had called home. Sarah had gone, Trish had told him, off to an early job in Edinburgh, but he had spoken to Mark and James Andrew, promising both boys that his whole weekend would be theirs, doubting that their mother would want any of it.

  He looked out of his window. The weather forecasters had been correct: the day was mild and sunny, out of place for November, but welcome for the events it would see.

  The telephone rang to interrupt his brooding; his direct line, Sarah perhaps, calling to roast him. He picked it up with that expectation. ‘Hello, Bob.’ Aileen de Marco’s sunny voice shone some welcome light into his morning.

  ‘Hi, Minister,’ he replied. ‘Ready for the big event?’

  ‘My brother is. Forty-two years old and he’s like a kid. He phoned me ten minutes ago; I’ve never heard him so excited. Is everything okay?’

  ‘Work-wise or home-wise?’

  ‘Both, although the second’s none of my business.’

  ‘As it happens, things have been better on both fronts. The investigation of the New York policeman’s murder has taken a nasty turn that I can’t discuss over the phone. As for the other, Sarah and I are barely speaking now. Somehow we seem to have lost contact with each other.’

  ‘Can’t you just sit down and talk about it?’ asked Aileen, sympathetically.

  His sigh was almost a moan. ‘That would involve both of us listening as well. I don’t know if either of us is capable of that any more. We may have hurt each other too much in the past year or so. We’ve both had crises in our lives, but hers was worse than mine, and I have to admit to getting my priorities wrong when it came to supporting her.’

  ‘How about just saying “sorry”? I don’t believe you’d ever deliberately hurt someone you love. Your wife must know that too, in her heart.’

  She heard him hesitate. ‘It may go a little deeper than that,’ he told her.

  ‘You mean you . . .’

  ‘No.’>

  ‘Ahh, you mean she . . .’

  ‘We’ve neither of us been paragons, Aileen.’

  ‘Did she say anything when you got home on Wednesday night . . . or yesterday morning, rather?’

  ‘I slept in the spare room. It seems that’s what I do these days.’

  ‘You could have slept with me.’

  ‘To tell you the God’s truth I wish I had.’

  ‘The bad part of me agrees with you. The good part reckons you did the right thing.’

  ‘No, we did,’ he chuckled, ‘or didn’t, as the case may be. Tabloids be damned, I couldn’t have a casual thing with you, Aileen.’

  ‘You couldn’t with anyone; you’re too serious a guy.’

  ‘A bit like you?’

  ‘I suppose. There’s something there, though, isn’t there? Between you and me?’

  ‘Don’t doubt it.’ He paused, then his tone turned brisk. ‘But I have to put it all aside for now. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, love, and maybe a lot of decisions to make, but before any of that I have to focus on the present. My personal problems are irrelevant beside the task of getting our VIPs through today in one piece.’

  ‘Does that include me?’ she asked.

  Suddenly he felt himself shudder. ‘I find it odd to think of you in that context, but you’re righ
t; it does.’

  ‘Make sure you do, then. Will I see you at Murrayfield?’

  ‘I’ll be there. You concentrate on enjoying the day, and I’ll concentrate on making sure that you can. ’Bye.’

  He put down the direct phone and buzzed McGurk on his intercom. ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Give me ten minutes, son, then come on in. I want to do some brainstorming.’

  He spun his chair down and turned to his computer. There had been no personal e-mails that morning, but he had left it switched on. He hit the search button on his keyboard and entered one word on the bar: ‘Congo’. He found himself offered a series of options, but they were all fairly recent history; even the CIA World Factbook, one of his favourite source websites, told him nothing about the events of forty years before. Finally he turned to Encarta, an encyclopedia that he had bought and installed but rarely used. The entry was comprehensive: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly the Republic of Zaïre, and before that, a Belgian colony. The names were from his boyhood, Tshombe, Lumumba and Kasavubu, although Mobutu had a more familiar ring. There had been independence, there had been chaos, there had been civil war, there had been assassinations; but there was little or no information about Belgian involvement.

  He buzzed McGurk again. ‘Jack, before you come in, I want you to get someone on the blower for me: Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Winters of Belgian military security. Ask him to call me on my secure line.’

  He went back to his computer and began keying names into the search engine. Moise Tshombe, the leader of the breakaway province of Katanga immediately after independence and later prime minister of the reunited country, had eventually fled, and had died, or been murdered, in jail in Algiers after being taken from a hijacked aircraft. Joseph Kasavubu had been a puppet president for the first five years of the country’s existence until Mobutu had decided to oust him. Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the new Congo, Marxist hero of the independence movement, had been betrayed, overthrown and eventually handed over to Tshombe and his enemies in Katanga, where he had been assassinated. Skinner was reading an account of his death with growing interest when his secure telephone rang.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Skinner?’ asked Pierre Winters, with an air of weary tolerance.

  ‘Auguste Malou was a young officer in the Congo in the early 1960s,’ he said.

  Instantly, the Belgian was rattled. ‘Who told you that? Not Malou, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Why so sure? Is he still under active orders not to talk about it?’

  ‘You are still wasting your time and mine, sir. These are internal Belgian matters, and I will not discuss them. If you persist . . .’

  The DCC’s temper was triggered. ‘If I persist, pal, you’ll wish I hadn’t.’ Sheer instinct made him fire a name at Winters. ‘Patrice Lumumba,’ he barked.

  The phone in Brussels was slammed down so fast that it was as if it had become red-hot in the lieutenant colonel’s hand. Skinner smiled in satisfaction. ‘Gotcha,’ he muttered. ‘But,’ he added aloud, ‘what the fuck does it have to do with this situation?’

  He called McGurk into his office and poured them both coffee. ‘Brainstorming, boss?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Like you’ve never known it.’ He waved McGurk into the seat on the other side of his desk and checked his watch: it was nineteen minutes before ten. ‘The Pope arrives in Murrayfield in just under two hours,’ he said. ‘We’ve got two al Qaeda terrorists out there trying to crash the party. Willie Haggerty, Brian, Neil, and a small army are there trying to keep them out; their chances of getting through are about one in ten, but these are bright, resourceful and determined people. Let’s assume the worst, that they manage it. What are they going to do?’

  ‘Shoot the Pope? Or the Prime Minister? Or both?’

  Skinner raised an eyebrow. ‘Funny that nobody ever talks about shooting Tommy Murtagh. Our First Minister would probably be very indignant if he realised that. No, Jack, if they were going to shoot anyone they’d have to use arrows. They won’t get a firearm in there, and they won’t get explosives in either.’

  ‘Could they have planted them at Sunday’s international?’

  ‘The place has been swept five times since then; if they’d planted a toothpick it would have been found.’

  Skinner pulled Pringle’s folder across to him. ‘We’ve got two unsolved mysteries on our hands, Sergeant: that one,’ he slapped it, ‘and this one. There is no sign that they’re connected, but a quarter of a century as a copper tells me that they are. If I’m right, the answer’s in here; we’re so fucking stretched at the moment just doing the protection job, that you and I are the only guys left to try and find it.’ He split the pile of papers into two and handed half across the desk. ‘Let’s get to it.’

  ‘What are we looking for, boss?’

  ‘If I knew that I’d point you at it. We’re looking for something that’s wrong. We’re looking for something that’s out of place. We’re looking for something that proves that Hanno wasn’t just killed by a drunk driver, and that Lebeau wasn’t an unlucky victim of a random lunatic who gets it off by spiking toothpaste tubes with poison. We’re looking for a lie.’

  He picked up the first paper from his half of the folder’s contents. It was an interview with the bus driver, Maurice Roger, conducted in Haddington, after the police team had become aware of Hanno’s death. He reckoned that he had probably been the only sober man in the club when Hanno was killed. He remembered that the veteran bandsman had been on top of his form, entranced by the range of ales on offer and determined to try every one . . . at least once . . . but he had not seen him leave.

  It was the first of ten almost identical statements that he read in succession. A common theme ran through them; until his death, Philippe Hanno had been having the time of his life. He had been seen in conversation with Lebeau, with young Roelants, with Willi Schmidt, and, animatedly, with the barmaid . . . Philippe still travelled in hope, his colleagues agreed, even if his days of expectation were behind him.

  He turned to a series of statements sent up from Hull by the investigating officers there. The second was by the barmaid in question, Mrs Doreen Silk, aged fifty-three, of nineteen Clarindel Drive, Kingston upon Hull. ‘He was a nice man,’ she had recalled. ‘He had that look in his eye, too, as if he fancied himself a bit. I’ve seen worse, I have to admit.’ Who knows? thought Skinner. If Philippe had lived . . . The last time she had spoken to him that evening, he had asked her for cigarettes. ‘Gauloises,’ he had specified. ‘You know, the blue packet.’ She had told him that they only sold British fags; he had shrugged his shoulders and turned away. She remembered that he had gone over to the bus driver, spoken to him briefly and headed for the door.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Skinner, aloud.

  ‘You got something, boss?’ asked McGurk.

  ‘The bus driver. He said he never saw Hanno leave . . .’

  ‘That’s right. I interviewed him.’

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘Thirty-something, dark-skinned; could have been North African origin, or Asian.’

  ‘Did you see the bus?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Have you ever seen the Belgians’ bus?’

  McGurk frowned for a moment, then his eyes brightened. ‘Yes, I have; I’m sure of it. When we went to Haddington to interview them there was a bus there. A big brown thing with “Autotours Duvalier de Bruxelles” written up the side.’

  ‘Shit. Who’ve we got available?’ The DCC thought for a moment, then dialled Ruth Pye. ‘You busy?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like it,’ his secretary replied. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I want you to trace a company for me.’ He repeated the name on the bus, checking the spelling with the sergeant. ‘How’s your French, Ruthie, if you have to use it?’

  ‘Parfait.’

  ‘C’est bon. Call them and tell them you want the details of the driver who’s with the Bastogne Drummers. Spin them a story; tell the
m that he’s been reported for speeding by a punter and we need to check him out.’

  He left her to her task and went back into the interviews. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘He’s out of fags, he can’t get his brand in the bar, so he gets the keys off the driver and goes across to get some. That’s what Malou told Dan Pringle. So why’s the driver coy about it?’

  ‘He’s out of what?’ exclaimed McGurk. He took a slim folder from his pile and thrust it at Skinner. ‘Read this.’

  The DCC took it from him: it was labelled ‘Post-mortem Report; M. Philippe Hanno’, and dated. He looked at the opening paragraphs.

  The subject is a male in his early sixties, reportedly struck and killed by a speeding vehicle. The body showed multiple signs of trauma, notably to the legs, the cervical vertebrae and the skull, all of which were fractured.

  At the time of his death, the subject was in generally fair physical condition. He was overweight, although not obese, and the liver was slightly enlarged. However, the heart was healthy and normal and the lungs were in exceptionally good condition for a man of this age, with no sign whatsoever of damage. Clearly, as was confirmed by an examination of his fingers, the subject was a non-smoker.

  Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘He was a non-smoker? Yet Malou said he went across to the bus for fags! Fuck!’ he shouted. ‘Jack, have you got the Hull police report there?’

  McGurk flicked though his documents. ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Is his property listed? Contents of his pockets?’

  He scanned his eyes down the single sheet. ‘Forty Gauloises; crushed but recognisable.’

  ‘Malou smokes bloody Gauloises! I see it now; he sent him for them. He set him up to be killed, and I’ll bet you the driver was in on it. And if he set up Hanno, he did the same to Lebeau. Someone gave him the poisoned toothpaste, and he put it in with his kit. Or . . .’

  His eyes fixed on McGurk. ‘Who else was billeted at the farmhouse besides Malou and Lebeau? It was a big place. There were more than two people there, I know.’