The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner)

by Quintin Jardine

  Twenty

  ‘Ten more minutes and I would have started without you,’ Sarah Grace said, as Haddock and Singh came into the examination room of the mortuary, wearing gowns, hats and rubber boots.

  ‘Sorry, Prof,’ the DI replied. ‘My last meeting went on for longer than I expected.’

  She nodded. ‘I know who you met. She called me after you left. Was it fruitful?’

  ‘Yes, in that it left me with another question. No, in that I’ve no idea how to answer it.’

  ‘The answers here are pretty obvious,’ she took a breath, ‘but my job has to look at all present factors, and determine what is and what isn’t relevant.’ She turned to the mortuary assistant. ‘Mary, let’s begin with Drawer Six.’

  The detectives waited as the woman left the room; two minutes later she was back, wheeling a height-adjustable trolley bearing a stretcher laden with a white body bag; as she unzipped it, they saw it contained the remains of Griff Montell. Between them, she and the pathologist eased the burden on to the middle of the three steel examination tables.

  Professor Grace switched on an overhead microphone. ‘The subject is an adult white male,’ she began, ‘aged thirty-nine, found dead in Torphichen Place, Edinburgh, in the early hours of the first of January. Rigor has passed, and the scene of crime examiner’s report indicates that death occurred very shortly before the remains were discovered. I am now making the Y incision.’

  As she went to work with a scalpel a smell seemed to explode into the examination room. Tarvil Singh had witnessed more than one examination in his police career, but unknown to Haddock, he had never made it beyond that point. ‘Sorry, Sauce,’ he muttered, as he turned and headed for the door.

  ‘It’s better that he keels over outside than in here,’ the pathologist said. ‘I doubt if the three of us could get that one off the floor.’

  Haddock’s reply was forestalled by the sound of his phone. He looked at the screen. ‘Sorry, Sarah,’ he muttered as he accepted the call, ‘it’s the DCC. Sir?’

  ‘Sauce.’ Even in addressing him, McGuire’s tone was urgent. ‘There’s an incident out at Howgate. Know it? Village near Penicuik. Uniform called it in, and Midlothian CID responded; big McGurk. A body; male, middle-aged, well-dressed and very dead, dumped behind some trees on the edge of a field. The new pathologist, Badger, attended; when she saw two bullet holes in the middle of the forehead she told Jack it reminded her of Terry Coats and he called me straight off. It’s possibly, maybe probably, unrelated to yours but it needs to be assessed by you until we know for sure.’

  ‘Either way, boss, it’s a serious crime. That’s what we do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but at this moment your team is focused completely on Montell and Coats. If you decide they’re not linked, leave it with Jack. Where are you just now?’

  ‘That’s the thing, sir. I’m at the mortuary witnessing the post-mortems. Tarvil’s here, but he’s outside throwing up his last three curries. So I can barely leave him.’

  ‘Not again!’ McGuire laughed. ‘He’s a legend for that; I should have warned you. Leave it with me; I’ll send Mann and Cotter, and tell Lottie to report to you from the scene. One thing you can do for me though. Ask Sarah to make space in her schedule to do another, tomorrow morning. I’ll arrange for the victim to be taken into Edinburgh.’

  Twenty-One

  Few men made Lottie Mann feel small, but Jack McGurk did. She had heard of him from Bob Skinner, who had described him as ‘a very good detective officer, but probably lacking command potential’. He looked commanding enough to her as she and Cotter arrived at the crime scene. There were so many vehicles lined up on the narrow Bonnyrigg road that they had to park on the other side of the roundabout that formed the junction with Penicuik, Auchendinny and the village of Howgate itself. Their way was briefly blocked by an officious uniformed constable but a flash of the DCI’s warrant card, and a glare, prompted him to stand aside.

  ‘DI Haddock might have told us to bring wellies,’ Cotter complained as they surveyed the crime scene.

  ‘You’re from fucking Tyneside, John,’ she laughed. ‘You don’t have any wellies. Me neither, but I do wear sensible shoes, and I do carry these.’ She produced two pairs of disposable overshoes from her bag and handed one to the DS. Donning them, she climbed the fence and approached the tall figure in the field.

  ‘DCI Mann,’ he called out, ‘I’m . . .’

  ‘I know who you are, Inspector, the DCC briefed me. This is my DS, John Cotter.’

  McGurk nodded a greeting, downwards; Cotter was a foot shorter than he was. ‘This is my sergeant, Lance Anderson,’ he said, introducing the bearded man by his side. ‘That over there is the pathologist, Dr Badger. She’s the reason I called in Special Forces. She thinks it might be related to the Griff Montell murder.’ He winced. ‘That’s a bastard. I knew Griff well. We went out on a couple of double dates, him and Alex, me and my wife, before Martin binned his wife and kids and weaselled his way back into Alex’s life. How’s she taking it? She’s a good act, Alex. She and Griff were never altar-bound, but I always thought that was a shame, for they made a nice couple. I’ve rarely seen two people more comfortable together.’

  ‘In that case you’ll know how she’s taking it better than I will,’ Mann told him. ‘I haven’t seen her since I’ve been through here. Sauce has been handling that; he’s the SIO in DCI Pye’s absence on sick leave. I do know Alex though. She did me a favour once in a domestic matter.’

  ‘Domestic?’ McGurk repeated. ‘That’s not her line, is it?’

  ‘Her old man asked her to help me, and she did. She rammed it so far up my ex and his bully of a father that they’ve been speaking in high-pitched voices ever since. Down to business though, what have we got here?’ She glanced at Badger. ‘A young pathologist with a vivid imagination, or should I take this seriously?’

  ‘No and yes, I would say. She came from Torphichen Place to here in successive days. Maybe that scene was too fresh in her mind, but my gut says it’s a stone that needs turning.’

  ‘Let’s talk to her. Dr Badger!’ she called out.

  The pathologist looked towards her, then turned as the four detectives approached. ‘Who’s next?’ she asked cheerfully. ‘The chief constable with his shiny hat?’

  ‘The chief constable’s a woman, and she’s not given to wearing the official headgear. DCI Mann and DS Cotter, Serious Crimes. What can you tell us?’

  Badger winked. ‘I can tell you that he’s dead; that’s for sure.’

  ‘If he wasn’t, you might be,’ Mann growled. ‘I had an early start this morning, plus I’m never at my best when standing a few feet away from a cadaver. I’m told you’re new to field work; don’t assume it’s like what you see on telly. There’s no room for comedians in situations like this.’

  The young pathologist flushed, glanced away and bit her lip.

  The man beside her intervened. ‘Leave her alone, Lottie. You’re right, she’s new, and she’s had a pretty rough baptism, three gunshot victims in two days. We can all get a bit flippant when we’re nervous. Don’t worry, I’ll break her in. She’s learning all the time; for a start she knows now that a crime scene technician isn’t a pathologist’s assistant. Isn’t that right, Emily?’

  Dr Badger sniffed, but smiled weakly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, Denzil,’ the DCI continued. ‘You’re the wise old head around here. What have you got from the scene so far?’

  ‘I can tell you one thing. The Torphichen Place drop-off was a day and a half ago, right? The post-mortem examination will confirm it, but this man’s been here for longer than that, a day more, maybe two. I’m going by the animal and insect depredation that’s evident on the body. It’s been cold, not sub-zero but enough to keep maggot infestation to a minimum, but plenty of other species will have been tucking in. It’s evident to me that he wasn’t just dumped here, chucked over the fence. The position of the body makes it obvious that he was placed here carefully. You’
re the detectives, but you’ll be supposing that it was done so that he wouldn’t be seen from a passing car.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Jack McGurk said. ‘Nor by farm workers either; this field’s used for potatoes just now. It hasn’t been touched since the last ploughing in the autumn and it won’t be until the next crop gets planted. You were going through his pockets, Denzil, just before our colleagues got here. Did you find anything to identify him?’

  The technician shook his head. ‘No, and I wasn’t meant to either. There’s nothing in his pockets, no wallet, no phone, no coins. He’s well dressed, though. That camel coat he’s wearing, it could be a Crombie, but the label’s been ripped off. It’s the same with the suit, but that’s expensive too. The shoes? Patent leather, thick leather sole, steel-reinforced heels. He’s had a manicure too, fairly recently.’

  ‘How about his underwear?’ Cotter asked.

  ‘I’ll leave that to you. He shat himself when he was killed.’

  Twenty-Two

  ‘How was your day?’ Sarah asked, as she came into the kitchen where her husband was in the midst of preparing evening meals for the four children. ‘Quiet, I guess.’

  ‘In the context of my normal days, yes,’ Bob replied. ‘I had one call from Jack Darke, the crime reporter on the Saltire trying to complain about Mario McGuire stitching him up at the media briefing last night. Other than that and one Happy New Year call from Xavi Aislado in Girona, all I’ve had to cope with is Seonaid having a screaming fight with her younger brother, Dawn having a dose of the squitters, and having to send Mark down to the Co-op because the milk was off. Sure; quiet.’

  She laughed. ‘Nothing you haven’t handled before, though.’

  ‘No, but concentrated into a short time-frame. It’s fucking Pimm’s o’clock, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘What did you say to the man Darke?’

  ‘I told him that I know what happened at the briefing, and that he was lucky Mario took it easy with him. His beef was that he thought he had an exclusive angle on Terry Coats, and that Mario spilled it to the entire room. I told him cheerfully that in my day I’d have nailed his balls to the wall for shooting his mouth off like that. Then I pointed out to him that in a way it’s still my day, in that the position I hold with InterMedia makes me his two-up boss, and that it’s my signature on his contract of employment, not June Crampsey’s. I reminded him that his value to the Saltire is linked entirely to the quality of the stories he produces, and that in turn is tied to his maintaining good relationships with the police service at all levels. Then I suggested that the fact he’s generally regarded as being an arse-wipe kind of works against that. Finally, I told him that if hear of him being anything other than courteous while representing the paper I’d terminate the aforementioned contract. Then I hung up.’

  ‘Will he take that?’ Sarah asked. ‘Can he complain to his trade union?’

  ‘Till he’s blue in the face, but it won’t do him any good. He has no friends there either from what I hear. I emailed June afterwards and told her to give him a written warning, to make it official.’

  ‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you,’ she challenged him. ‘You took the InterMedia job on partly as a favour for a friend, but you’ve grown into it and it’s grown with you. You like the authority it gives you, it’s part of you, you can’t help it.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Bob conceded, then he smiled. ‘Maybe I will take that job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘One I was offered ten days ago. You know I have friends in Westminster after that thing McIlhenney and I sorted out a wee while back?’

  She nodded. ‘Friends who just won the election.’

  ‘That’s right. I had a call from one of them, offering me a job. Home Office minister, with a seat in the House of Lords.’

  ‘What!’ Sarah exploded. ‘And this is the first time you tell me?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, contritely. ‘I promised I’d take time to consider it; discussing it with you is the next part of that process.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. If it’s what you want . . .’

  ‘I don’t,’ he told her. ‘Leaving aside the fact that it would cost us at least three hundred grand a year, because I couldn’t combine it with the InterMedia job, leaving aside the fact that I voted Yes at the Indy referendum and will do so again given the chance, it would mean reporting to the current Home Secretary, and if that isn’t my worst fucking nightmare, it’s definitely high in the charts. I won’t put it that way when I turn it down but turn it down I will. Happy with that?’

  ‘Utterly.’ She stepped up to him and hugged him. As she did so she noticed a large corner of the kitchen work surface. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a new year present from Xavi. All the directors get one. Take a look.’

  She had to stand on tiptoe to open the lid and peer inside. She gasped, then jumped back. ‘Jesus! What is it?’

  Bob reached past her and lifted the gift from its container. ‘Jamon Iberico,’ he announced. ‘Spanish ham, complete with stand and knife. A hundred and fifty quid’s worth there. You can carve, Professor Grace.’

  ‘No chance,’ she snorted. ‘I don’t do delicate. I’m a butcher not a surgeon.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ he said, ‘how was your day? Pretty grim, I guess.’

  ‘Very. And I have another booked in for tomorrow, another gunshot victim found in Midlothian somewhere: I forget the name of the place. They don’t know whether it’s connected or not, and I won’t be able to tell them unless the bullets I recover match the one I took from Terry Coats.’

  ‘Nothing at all from Griff?’

  ‘Not as much as a fragment. The one thing I do know is that they weren’t shot with the same gun. The bullet I took from Drawer Five . . . it helps me to think of them by mortuary numbers rather than by name . . . was a standard nine millimetre. Whatever killed Drawer Six was much bigger than that; something the size of Dirty Harry’s weapon. Remember?’

  He nodded. ‘A forty-four Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world.’

  ‘Don’t quote me the rest of that, please. It’s almost true. You saw the mess it made; it took a big chunk of his brain with it. I didn’t spend too much time on either of them, just enough to establish that Drawer Six was exceptionally fit for a man of his age, whereas Drawer Five had the beginnings of an oesophageal tumour that might well have finished him in a couple of years.’

  ‘Do you think he knew?’

  ‘At that stage, maybe not. He might have experienced general discomfort, but not enough for him to seek urgent treatment. Enough of that, though. You know I don’t like bringing the likes of that home with me.’ She eased him to one side, along the work surface. ‘Here; let me take over or these kids are never gonna eat. What about Ignacio and Pilar?’

  ‘They’re going to eat with us; I asked them. I thought it would be nice for us to get to know the girl a bit better, given that she’s Spanish and everything.’

  ‘Everything including shacking up with your son.’

  ‘Out here maybe, but . . .’

  ‘No,’ she insisted, ‘up town as well. In theory there are three of them sharing the flat, but in practice the third party, a girl, lives with her boyfriend. Her parents don’t know, of course. They’re from Horsham, in Sussex.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Alex told me. Ignacio talks to her a lot. Go on, Bob, get out of here, get yourself a beer.’

  He was in the process of obeying that instruction when his phone sounded. He accepted the call while uncapping his Corona and headed for the garden room. ‘Mia,’ he said, a little wearily. ‘How goes? Is your old man home smelling of cheap Chanel Five, with his tail between his legs and a brilliant cover story? Myra, Alex’s mother, used to come home smelling of Aramis or Paco Rabanne, and I, the great detective, never worked it out.’

  ‘No, he’s not!’ she shouted in his ear. ‘Skinner, wil
l you take this seriously! My husband has disappeared. He’s missing. I’d hoped you’d help me, but you’re just like all those other cops, you couldn’t care less.’

  Contrition was not one of his more common reactions, but the anxiety in her voice got to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, at once. ‘We’ve been dealing with something serious here too. If you’ve seen the papers today you might guess what it is.’

  ‘I’ve seen nothing today, no news at all. I haven’t even listened to my own radio station. What is it?’

  ‘Two guys have been murdered in Edinburgh. One’s a police officer, the other used to be; I knew them both. One of them was friendly with Alex.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice softened. ‘I’m sorry about that. How friendly?’

  ‘Friendly enough for her to be pretty distraught. Did Ignacio ever tell you about the attack in her apartment?’

  ‘Yes, he did. Was this the guy who protected her?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘In that case I can understand Cameron not being at the top of your list. But I really am worried about him, Bob. If you think about the life I led and the family I grew up in, that should tell you something.’

  ‘It does,’ he conceded. ‘You’ve got my full attention, and concern. Has anything happened, since yesterday?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘We have this guy. His name is Vito Tremacoldi; officially he’s on the security staff of the hotel, unofficially he’s Cameron’s minder. He’s been with him for a few weeks. He’s never obvious but when Cameron wants him to be around, he is. If Cameron ever needs a driver, like if we’re ever going to a party, or even out for dinner, he’s the man who takes us.’

  ‘Did you vet him? Is he clean, or does he have a history?’

  ‘He has a security background, Bob. That’s all Cameron told me. He’s a real Italian, not one of the Scots kind like your friend McGuire.’

  ‘Only half of him,’ Skinner reminded her. ‘I thought Cameron only employed local heavies.’

  ‘Vito isn’t a heavy, he’s a professional,’ Mia assured him. ‘You’re doing what everyone always does, you’re tarring him with his dead sister’s awful past. You know as well as I do that she was the real criminal in the McCullough family, not him. She had some mental people around her, and she was a pure-bred psychopath.’