The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘That’s what she wanted, okay,’ Bright snapped, banging his fists on the table. ‘Aye, okay,’ he shouted. ‘Clever bastards all of you. Terry fuckin’ Coats got my son killed and Terry fuckin’ Coats paid for it.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Haddock said, ‘so did another man, one who had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘The other fella . . .’ Bright’s eyes narrowed. ‘If Ah’d known he was there, Ah might no’ have gone that night; Ah might’ve put it off for a bit. There was somethin’ about that guy, and Ah’m no just talking about him bein’ a polis. The way he looked at me, I knew that if he’d had the gun I’d have been fuckin’ dead in a second. He made a mistake though. He told me he was a cop. Funny thing, though, he said that if we saw sense and fucked off, there would be no more said about it. Ah told him it was too late for that. He said we wouldn’t fuckin’ dare. Ah dared all right. We turned up the telly in the hoose, took them into the garage, then when the bells started, well, Ah gave the guy nae chance, shot him right through the back o’ the heid. He never knew a thing. Coats did though. Ah let him realise what was coming, although the job was done before the bells wis finished.’

  ‘Why did you leave the bodies outside Inspector Montell’s station?’ Haddock asked.

  Bright’s eyebrows rose. ‘Was it? I knew there was a big polis station in the middle o’ the town, so we went there. That wis the only reason. An’ that’s the whole story.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Skinner said. ‘Who shot Coats? He was killed with a different weapon, and why would you carry two? No, he was shot by your accomplice. If it wasn’t your sister, who was it? Tell us and it might get you a few years off your life-sentence tariff.’

  ‘That Ah’ll never do,’ Bright declared. ‘Ma boy might have been a grass, but Ah’m no’. Go on, charge us an’ let’s get this over wi’.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Mann intervened. ‘We haven’t got to Walter Thomson yet.’

  ‘Thomson?’ Bright snorted. ‘Why should you lot care about fuckin’ Thomson? He wisnae a polis.’

  Seventy-Nine

  ‘He didn’t deny it when I put Thomson’s murder to him,’ Lottie Mann insisted.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Skinner agreed, reaching for the mug that sat on a coaster on Haddock’s table. ‘He laughed at you and said, “No comment”.’

  ‘He knew who Walter Thomson was,’ she argued. ‘He knew he’d been murdered.’

  He countered. ‘Thomson did his time in Shotts Prison; Bright spent part of his sentence there too and they coincided. They met, for sure. Thomson’s death was reported in the Scottish press. You can buy the Daily Record in Tenerife, so you can’t hold his knowledge of the crime against him.’

  ‘Logistically, it’s feasible,’ the DCI persisted. ‘Thomson’s time of death is uncertain because of the time that elapsed before he was found, plus the temperature in the unheated warehouse and the way he was killed. There’s evidence that he was bound, though, before he was nailed up. Bright and his accomplice could have picked him up before they killed Coats and Montell and left him there to be finished off later, when that was done. We’ve got opportunity. If we find his DNA and fingerprints at the scene, haven’t we got him?’ she challenged.

  ‘You’ll have a case, no denying that.’ Skinner smiled. ‘But if I’m the defence counsel, I’m going to ask if you’ve looked at Bright’s background. He’s got a day job. He’s a self-employed builder. So it’s quite natural that his DNA, his fingerprints, and maybe even a sample of his urine on a toilet bowl in the gents should be found at a builder’s merchants. Then if I really want to make you squirm in the witness box, Lottie, I’m going to produce a receipt for goods purchased there a few days before it closed for the holidays.’

  Haddock intervened. ‘Come on, gaffer! He did it, for fuck’s sake. It’s obvious he did it. Find the physical evidence of his presence, and I bet you we do, and the most cautious, arse-covering fiscal in Scotland would go to court with that.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re right, Sauce. He’d probably get a conviction too. It’s just . . .’ He paused as the door behind him opened, turning to look over his shoulder.

  ‘DS Singh said I’d find you here,’ Johanna DaCosta murmured. Her gaze settled on Lottie Mann. ‘My client wants to see you,’ she told her. ‘He’s decided that he wants to make a statement confessing to the murder of Walter Thomson. He knows he’s going to get the maximum tariff for Montell and Coats, so he’s thinking that it’ll be more or less a freebie.’ She smiled, and her cheeks turned pale pink. ‘He’s asked me to represent him in the High Court,’ she added shyly.

  Skinner grinned at her. ‘It’ll be good experience for you, Johanna, but I’ll tell you: the clouds could part, a dove could fly down from heaven and land on your client’s shoulder, but he still won’t be getting out before he’s eighty-five.’

  Eighty

  ‘Gaffer, Bob, what the fuck do you want that for?’ Haddock hissed. Mann, Cotter and DaCosta had gone, leaving them alone in the DI’s office.

  ‘You don’t need to know. You just need to trust me; both of you.’

  ‘What authority have you got?’

  ‘Which one would you like? My Special Constable warrant or my Thames House card. Just ask her for me. I’m not asking you to do anything furtive; I need her consent. I doubt that anything will come of it. Even if I’m wrong about that, it won’t affect her personally. It will either eliminate a possibility or it will . . . Look, if she insists I will explain why I want it, but I’d rather she didn’t. It’ll help me answer a question that’s bugging me; you know what I’m like with them.’

  ‘Bob, she’s pregnant. Will that have any effect on whatever you’re up to?’

  ‘None. Congratulations though, you’re a dark horse. Sauce,’ he sighed. ‘If she won’t, I’ll understand. If she will . . .’

  Eighty-One

  ‘So it’s happy endings all round,’ Sarah said. ‘Sauce has cracked his first big solo case, Noele McClair has a nice promotion, Maggie Steele has decided that there is happiness in the world, and best of all Alex seems to have found herself again.’

  ‘Happy isn’t the word I’d choose,’ Bob replied. ‘Satisfactory on those four counts, yes, but Terry Coats and Griff Montell are still dead and so are seven other people. Then there’s the collateral damage.’

  ‘Seven? How do you work that out?’

  He counted them off, a finger at a time. ‘Anatoly Rogozin, the co-conspirator in the robbery, Fannie DeWalt, the cop Griff shot, the two security guards who died there, Aisha Karman, the unlucky flight hostess, Alan Mason, the boy that was hung out to dry by Brass Rubbings, and Walter Thomson, who almost certainly killed him.’

  ‘And the collateral?’

  ‘Spring Montell, who is probably as sociopathic as her twin, and Mary Chambers, who’s back in Scotland looking at the wreckage of what she thought was a happy retirement.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she conceded. ‘The Montell twins must have had huge strength of will. To pull off such a big robbery, to dispose of the proceeds in the way they did, and then to live normal lives. I wonder what their end game was?’

  ‘Spring told the South African prosecutor that they intended to disappear when they were forty-five; to sell the airline at a huge profit, buy new identities, go off to a bolt hole, and never be seen again.’

  ‘That sounds . . .’

  ‘Almost incestuous? Yeah, don’t fucking go there. Enough’s enough.’ He winced. ‘The final irony,’ he sighed, ‘was that it all went wrong for them through Griff being an innocent bystander . . . No! Definitely not innocent, but he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘And now it’s all over?’

  ‘They think it is. Some people are on the pitch,’ he chuckled, quoting an iconic piece of football commentary.

  ‘So why do I suspect that it might not be?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘It isn’t. There are people still at liberty with blood on their hands. Raymond Bright confessed to the murder
s of Coats and Montell, and of Walter Thomson, but he didn’t act alone. He had a partner in crime, the person who drove him away, in a Renault with false plates, after he dumped the bodies outside the police station. The plates were found in a rubbish bin in Polwarth, but the car never did turn up. The team’s first thought was that it might have been his sister out to avenge her nephew, but she’s half blind. She can’t see well enough to ride a bike, let alone drive a getaway car, and she certainly couldn’t put a bullet through the middle of someone’s forehead from far enough away not to leave any scorch marks around the wound.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘That was a very neat job.’ She touched her forehead just above her nose. ‘Very professional, special forces style. Do you think that it might have been Bright, with another gun?’

  ‘No chance. Why would he need another? He’d just spread Griff’s brains all over the garage. No, there was somebody else, and my gut tells me that it wasn’t just an underworld pal who owed Bright a favour. This was a personal crime, retribution. It was natural to suspect Phoebe Bright, the principle was correct. Okay, it wasn’t her, but you know, she wasn’t poor wee Alan’s only family member.’

  Eighty-Two

  ‘He wants what?’ Cheeky Davis exclaimed.

  ‘A sample of your DNA,’ her partner repeated.

  ‘Why the hell would he want that? Does he think I’m a fucking criminal just because I’m Goldie McCullough’s niece?’

  ‘Not for a second, love. I can promise you that. He said he needs it to help him answer a question. He wouldn’t tell me what it is, but he said that he would tell you, if you really want to know. Look, my darling, the only thing I can tell you for sure is that if he wants this it must be to help him uncover a truth, because that’s what he’s all about. Look at how easily he’s slipped into his media work. It’s an extension of what he did in his other career. He’s a truth seeker.’

  ‘Sometimes we might not like the truth, Sauce,’ she whispered.

  ‘But that doesn’t make it go away.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it for you, because you’re one of those people too, and that’s part of why I love you. On one condition though; whatever it is my DNA helps him discover, I don’t want to know. Ever.’

  Eighty-Three

  ‘So how was the Ice Hotel really?’ Skinner asked.

  Cameron McCullough smiled. ‘Truth? It really was fucking freezing, like I said. But we were all so full of schnapps that we barely knew it.’

  His two guests laughed.

  ‘I’m glad you guys decided to come tonight,’ he continued. ‘You know you’ve always had an open invitation, Bob, both you and Harold. No better night to take me up on it than a midweek postponement against the champions. Too bad about the result, but at least my team put up a decent show.’ He swivelled his chair until it faced the window that overlooked the football pitch. ‘This room’s the chairman’s hideaway,’ he said. ‘It’s just like one of your interview rooms, mirrored glass that nobody can see through. I could watch the whole game from here, but I need to let the customers see me, wearing the scarf and all. Usually I’d be putting myself about in the boardroom as well, at the post-match reception. What is it about football and meat pies?’ he asked. ‘I’ve had God knows who in that room next door, the Chairman of Barcelona, three international team managers, the President of UEFA and they’ve all wolfed down the pies.’

  Haddock held up the remnants of his. ‘They are pretty damn good, though.’

  McCullough winked at him. ‘Even without the sauce?’

  ‘You know, Cameron, I really hate that stuff,’ he confessed. ‘I can think of nothing more disgusting than a fish supper smothered in HP.’

  ‘You’ll get on well with your future stepmother-in-law. She’s very much a vinegar person. It was a nice suggestion that I should ask her along tonight. Mia’s teeth were a bit clenched when I told her, but having Ignacio here as your driver mollified her. They can’t stand each other, Mia and Inez. I shouldn’t say this to you, Harold, but my daughter Inez is an irredeemable twat. She was a breech birth and from that time on she never stopped being awkward. Cheeky’s gran and I brought her up, you know; she barely saw her mother until she was eight. I’m not surprised Cheeky didn’t come tonight. They’ve barely spoken since that time Inez got her into trouble.’

  ‘It wasn’t that,’ Haddock told him. ‘I didn’t tell Cheeky that Inez was coming. Her problem is she’s off her food at the moment; the very sight of those pies would have been too much for her.’ He smiled, diffidently. ‘I might as well tell you now; the secret won’t keep much longer. You’re going to be a great-grandpa.’

  His host stared at him, wide-eyed, then exploded in a huge guffaw. ‘That’s amazing! Harold, Sauce, that is terrific, I couldn’t be happier for both of you, and aye and sure, for me. I don’t know how Mia’s going to handle being the youngest great-granny in Scotland.’ He reached across and placed a hand on Haddock’s sleeve. ‘Anything you need, son, anything you want. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for that girl.’

  ‘Other than telling her she had a brother for twenty-two years of her life?’

  ‘What the fuck do you mean, man?’ McCullough stared at Skinner, stunned by his words.

  ‘Yes, gaffer, what are you saying?’

  The other two men ignored him, as their eyes locked together, unblinking. As Haddock looked at them, McCullough seemed to shed one persona, letting another emerge.

  The pair had met face to face on perhaps a dozen occasions, but never before had Skinner been offered even a glimpse of the man who had worn such a fearsome reputation in his home city. ‘You know, Cameron,’ he replied. ‘You know exactly what I mean. Sauce doesn’t, though. He’s still a relative innocent, not quite the finished article. To use an old cliché, I may have taught him everything he knows, but I hadn’t taught him everything I know, not until now. His last lesson is this: never stop asking questions until you are absolutely one thousand per cent certain that there are no more left unanswered. You have to chase evil, you have to chase the truth of it, right down to the roots.’

  ‘Bob?’ Haddock whispered.

  ‘Alan Mason,’ Skinner said, his gaze never leaving McCullough. ‘The boy that Terry Coats died for was Cheeky’s half-brother.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. His mother wouldn’t let him have his father’s name . . . that doesn’t even appear on Alan’s birth certificate . . . but she wouldn’t let him have hers either. The reason? She was so afraid of her own father, of what he might do if he found out, that she didn’t even put her own name on his birth certificate. What has Cheeky told you about her father, Sauce?’

  ‘She said that he ran off as soon as her mother found out she was pregnant,’ Haddock replied. ‘She never knew who he was. Inez wouldn’t even tell her his name; she never has.’

  ‘Okay,’ Skinner said, ‘this is what I know. There was a missing person reported in Dundee twenty-eight years ago, seven months before Cheeky was born. He was a seventeen-year-old boy; his name was Samuel Trott and the report was filed by his aunt. It’s very unusual for boys that age to vanish without trace, but the Tayside cops don’t seem to have looked too hard for him. Indeed, he’s still missing. You can ask Inez about him if you want. He was a year ahead of her at Morgan Academy. I have a notion that Inez remembered him when she registered her son’s birth. When she did that, she called herself Abigail Richardson.’ He looked at McCullough. ‘Tell him who Abigail was, Cameron.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to,’ Haddock said. ‘I know. Granny Abby, that’s what Cheeky calls her, whenever she talks about her.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘The DNA sample you got from Cheeky last week, Sauce, that’s the proof. There’s a close match between hers and Alan Mason’s profile; that was kept on file after his cremation.’ He paused, turning to his young friend. ‘Get out of here now and leave us to talk. That’s all you have to know, and Cheeky never needs to. Go and find Inez and don’t let her out of y
our sight.’

  Without argument, Haddock left the room.

  ‘You’re a bastard of the first order, Bob Skinner,’ McCullough growled as the door closed. His eyes were still volcanic.

  ‘That’s been said before, Cameron. You might need to come up with a better description in a few minutes, after I’ve finished.’

  ‘Have you not done enough, man?’

  ‘Fuck no, I’ve barely started. First off, how did you get here tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Mia drove us.’

  ‘Not Vito Tremacoldi? I was looking forward to meeting him.’

  McCullough reached out to the table at his side and poured himself another two fingers of Lagavulin. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I let him go back to Italy. I was giving him a few months’ trial in the job, but he never settled here. The language was a problem too.’

  ‘Really?’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘I thought mercenaries needed a decent command of English.’ He smiled, took a photograph from his jacket and tossed it on to the table. It showed the upper body of a man in camouflage colours, with a shaved head and very blue, very cold, eyes. ‘Don’t bullshit me, Cameron. I had Tremacoldi checked out by people with resources way beyond yours. I know everything about the man, including the details of certain deniable jobs that he’s done for intelligence services, Britain’s included. So I’m finding it just a wee bit strange that you hired him around the time Raymond Bright got out of jail, and that you let him go a few days after Terry Coats and Walter Thomson were both taken care of.’

  ‘Go on then,’ McCullough snapped, ‘spell it out.’

  ‘When did Inez run off?’

  ‘Two years after young Cameron was born,’ he replied. ‘Sammy Trott’s in Australia, by the way,’ he added. ‘He’s a flooring contractor in Melbourne, well off too. His parents were dead, and he lived with an aunt he couldn’t stand, so I flew him out there and got him a job with one of my suppliers. He doesn’t know he has a child; he was told that Inez was having an abortion. I did the lad a favour, Bob, I really did. I liked him and my daughter was trouble from the day she was born. I mean that literally, too.’ His eyes narrowed; Skinner read pain in their depths. ‘Her birth wrecked Abby downstairs. She could never have any more kids. She died when Cameron was fifteen. She had surgery on her waterworks and developed sepsis; that was another gift from Inez.’