The Bad Fire (Bob Skinner series, Book 31): A shocking murder case brings danger too close to home for ex-cop Bob Skinner in this gripping Scottish crime thriller

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Those are names from my youth,’ Alex said. ‘Dad told me about them, but I’m sure he toned down some of the stories.’

  ‘He’d need to.’

  ‘I did meet Mia back then. Dad brought her to the house, in Gullane; I was star-struck like the rest of them, but even I could see she was making a pitch for him.’

  ‘Did you approve?’

  ‘Not really. He had a very nice girlfriend at the time called Alison Higgins; I liked her. Unlike the rest of Edinburgh, I wasn’t too upset when Mia vanished from the airwaves.’

  ‘I’m told she’s surfing them again.’

  She paused for a forkful of salad. ‘That’s right. When she and Ignacio came back from Spain, and Dad and I learned that he had another son and me another brother, she got a job on a station in Dundee. Mia being Mia, she married the owner and wound up very solidly on her feet. Grandpa McCullough, he’s omnipresent. The place where the Marcia Brown affair kicked off, a low-end supermarket in Kilmarnock called LuxuMarket, he was the majority shareholder until he was bought out.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Dominic murmured, then turned and pointed at an expensively framed landscape positioned on the wall so that no natural light would reach it. ‘See that?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been admiring it. Who painted it?’ she asked.

  ‘I did. It’s Loudon Hill, in Ayrshire, where Robert the Bruce gave the English their first good kicking. For quite a few years that was the view from my window in HMP Kilmarnock. Towards the end of my sentence, when I was doing my masters on day release, I went past the site where LuxuMarket had been, on my way to the station.’

  ‘Does that mean you were there when the Brown incident happened?’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t playing a major role in community matters at the time, you understand, but I do remember it being a one-week wonder in the local paper. The woman’s name was splashed all over the front page. It said “allegedly” in small print, but the story went to town on her. Two weeks later, there was a small piece on page three reporting her sudden death.’

  ‘God,’ she gasped. ‘You were almost a witness to the events.’

  ‘Hardly,’ he laughed, ‘given my circumstances at the time, but I did know a lie when I saw one.’

  ‘You think it was a stitch-up?’ Alex asked eagerly.

  ‘I was sure it wasn’t. I devoured the local paper, and Councillor Marcia Brown was all over it, always on the attack. Her targets were the Labour Party and its leaders, and she never let up. Editorially the paper was always on the side of the West Coast Council, but Councillor Brown was good copy and they reported her, even though they always put her down. Balance was not a concept the editor seemed to grasp.’

  ‘What made you think the shoplifting allegation was correct?’

  ‘First, its timing. Second, the paper printed a photograph of the clothes she was accused of stealing; not the actual items, a store photo of the range. Marcia Brown herself was pictured in that paper almost every week; in most of the shots she was dressed differently from the week before. She’d never have worn clothing like that, Alex. She was a sweatshirt and denim woman. My theory at the time was that she stole that stuff to give herself a defence in a trial.’

  Alex frowned. ‘A couple of sizes too small,’ she murmured. ‘The suit was too small for her; that would have been part of her defence.’

  ‘See? If you want confirmation of the way she dressed, ask her ex-husband. You can call him once we’ve eaten.’

  She nodded. ‘I should anyway. He may well have seen the appeal on the TV news, but he has no way of knowing that Carrie McDaniels was working indirectly for him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She looked at him, noting his furrowed brow. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Tell me about Carrie,’ he said. ‘What sort of a woman is she? What’s her background?’

  ‘Mmm. Strong-willed, forceful, maybe a wee bit reckless; courageous, plain-spoken. She was a claims investigator for an insurance company, and also a weekend warrior. No, that’s an inadequate description; what she did took her away for longer stints than that. She was in the Territorial Army military police and went to some dangerous places. Eventually she chucked the insurance company and the TA and set up on her own as a private investigator. The insurers still use her, and several lawyers.’

  ‘All of that means she wouldn’t have been an easy target, wherever she was taken,’ he surmised. ‘And yet she was taken, without fuss, without any reports to the police of a disturbance.’

  ‘By the same people who broke into my place?’

  ‘A fair assumption, but whether it was them or someone else, the people you met acted on information extracted from her. I can only hope for her sake that she didn’t hold out too long. From what you’ve told me, she’s a brave woman, but I didn’t like the reckless part. I hope she had enough common sense to know that everyone has a breaking point, so there’s no sense in taking too much pain.’

  ‘But you doubt it?’ Alex asked softly.

  ‘I don’t know her, but I fear for her. I fear for your client too, just a little. The balaclava boys got everything else out of Carrie, whatever it took; let’s hope they weren’t after his name as well.’

  Thirty-Three

  ‘Mr Brass is okay?’ Haddock asked. ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘As of half an hour ago,’ Noele McClair assured him. ‘I had a Kelso patrol car call on him to check. They told him there were bogus meter readers in the area and said he should call the police if he has any suspicious callers. I’ve asked them to keep an eye on the house at regular intervals.’

  ‘Fair enough. It’s a wise precaution, but no more than that. Even if these guys do have the report he gave Alex, there’s no reason for his name to be on it. He and Marcia Brown had been divorced for a few years when she died.’ The DI glanced at the clock in the CID suite and sighed. ‘I reckon we’re all clear to go home now.’

  His sergeant grinned back at him. ‘Are you not going to report in to Sir Robert first?’

  ‘If I told you to fuck off, would you report me for workplace harassment?’ he growled. Then he returned her smile. ‘Actually, I will. The gaffer likes the old boy. He met him during the investigation into his son’s death.’

  ‘It’s a bit ironic that the mother should turn out to have been murdered as well.’

  ‘These things run in families; look at Mia McCullough – Mia Sparkles as she still calls herself on the radio. Her lot was pretty much wiped out, so I was told by the Big Man. I tell you, his kids must have some bedtime stories.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind next time my Vicky has a sleepover with Seonaid,’ McClair said. ‘Talking of Mia Sparkles, I did some digging into radio stations in Dundee, and apart from a BBC presence, hers is the only one. I had a look at its website and its Facebook page. All the presenters are listed – Mia gets top billing, naturally – but there’s only one other name: the station manager, Hazel Delaney. There’s no biography on either site, but I did a search on LinkedIn and she showed up. There isn’t a lot on her CV, but her last job before she went to the station did jump out at me: general manager, LuxuMarket, Kilmarnock. I think we can assume she’s who Carrie McDaniels was supposed to be meeting tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe Carrie will turn up,’ Haddock suggested. ‘In this job, nothing’s impossible. But if she doesn’t, we will. Dundee can be our second visit tomorrow. First we need to go to Kelso. Alex told us she didn’t read the file that Mr Brass gave her; she passed it straight on to Carrie. But he’ll have read it; he’s had it for nine years, so he probably knows it off by heart. Maybe he kept a copy. At the moment, he’s the key to reconstructing Carrie’s movements since she began her investigation.’

  Thirty-Four

  ‘What’s Sir Robert like?’ Detective Sergeant John Cotter looked up at his boss, who was at least four inches taller than he was. ‘Old school?’ The accent was English, from somewhere north of Teesside.

  ‘There’s a bit of that in him,’ DCI Lottie M
ann admitted, ‘but not much. He’s very much a twenty-first-century cop, rather than a holdover from the last one. Whatever school he is, he’s the headmaster. I will never forget the first time I met him. It was a major crime scene in Glasgow, a shooting; I arrived to find the victim, my chief constable, with her brains on the floor and this big guy apparently in command. I didn’t know him from Adam, so I told him to get his fucking arse out of there along with the rest of the civilians. He was chief constable through in Edinburgh then, but what I didn’t know was that he’d just been put in temporary charge of Strathclyde by the First Minister and the police authority chair. I maybe had more sharp corners then than I do now; it could have been my arse getting out of there, but he was good about the misunderstanding.’

  ‘The story in Aberdeen is that he went off in a huff because he was passed over for the top job in the new force.’

  ‘They know fuck all in Aberdeen,’ she retorted. ‘He never wanted the job. In fact he opposed police service unification as loudly as he could, but it went through in spite of him, because the politicians reckoned it would save money. Maybe it has, but it doesn’t make folk sleep easier in their beds – far from it, in some areas.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ the DS said.

  ‘And where do you live, son?’

  The two detectives turned at the sound of the calm, even voice that came from the open doorway behind them. Mann smiled; Cotter gulped. ‘The Merchant City, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘Right in the middle of Glasgow. Of course you feel safe and sound, with blue lights flashing outside your window all night. As a plus, you can walk a couple of hundred yards to your bank or your post office as well. I live in a rural community; we don’t have a bank any more, the post office operates two hours a week, the butcher’s closed, the baker has become a coffee shop as well, and as for the candlestick maker, he’s absolutely shitting himself. Villages like mine feel like they’re being abandoned, so taking away a sense of ownership of their policing couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Most of your senior officers would agree with that, privately. Hi, Lottie,’ he continued, seamlessly. ‘How are you doing? Congrats on the promotion; I haven’t seen you since it was announced. And how’s your evil twin enjoying retirement?’ He glanced at Cotter. ‘As for you, Sergeant, why are you “sir-ing” me when we haven’t been introduced?’

  ‘Don’t mind John,’ Mann laughed. ‘He’s just naturally polite. I’m good, thanks; getting used to the rank and the extra money. Dan’s fine too. He’s loving it at Jackton, although he doesn’t admit it. Now, Sir Robert, why the hell are you here? Did you just fancy a visit to the Clyde Gateway? Surely not; it’s grand, but not that grand.’

  ‘Agreed. I prefer my police stations old and ugly, like Pitt Street in Glasgow, or Fettes through in Edinburgh. But I’m not sightseeing; I’m here with the approval of the top brass to brief you on a case that didn’t even qualify as cold two days ago but is now very warm indeed.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have anything to do with the missing person appeal I heard on the radio this morning, would it, Sir Robert?’

  Skinner stared at the little DS. ‘Why should you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know really,’ Cotter admitted. ‘Probably only because it’s a hot story. The press haven’t dug into it yet, maybe because yesterday was a Sunday and the appeal was made late in the day, but I did a search for the name, and she showed up as a licensed private investigator. She disappeared on Saturday; you said that your case is only a couple of days old, so . . .’ His voice tailed off under the gaze of his two seniors.

  ‘Do you smoke cigars, DS Cotter?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘No, sir. Why?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t be getting one for that, but you are close. Come on, let’s all sit down and I’ll fill you in.’

  Mann nodded, directing them to her small conference table. ‘Anyone want coffee?’ she enquired. Skinner frowned back at her. She nodded. ‘Of course you do. It’s a machine,’ she warned, ‘and it’s crap.’

  ‘As long as that isn’t literally true, it’ll be okay.’

  She exited, leaving the two men together. ‘Transport cops, eh,’ Skinner murmured. ‘A strange career choice for an honours graduate.’

  ‘So I discovered,’ Cotter confessed. ‘The recruitment people said it would let me see the country. I’m from North Shields, so that appealed to me. As it turned out, I got to see Aberdeen and points north of that, wherever the railways went. I’d been thinking about London, Birmingham, Bristol, maybe, even Edinburgh. With my degree, it let me make sergeant earlier than it might have, but the future was long and boring. I did think of a transfer, but my inspector told me that the national police service looked down on transport cops.’

  ‘He was right, truth be told.’

  ‘So I discovered, but when the talk of a merger happened, I took that as a change of attitude and applied for a move. They took me on, and here I am, posted to Serious Crimes and DCI Mann.’

  ‘A whole string of bad luck,’ she said as she returned with three plastic cups in a cardboard container.

  ‘Cheers, Lottie,’ Skinner said as he accepted his. ‘Could have been worse. At least Provan was gone by the time he arrived. Nobody to lead him into bad ways. I am joking, John,’ he added. ‘Dan Provan was, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucking legend in Glasgow. Not a dark corner unexplored, not a rule unbent, but an absolute cop’s cop. He’d have made the Carrie McDaniels connection, and he’ll be impressed that you did when DCI Mann tells him over the petits fours. Carrie,’ he continued, his face darkening, ‘is known to me; I like her, but I fear for her.’

  ‘She hasn’t simply run away from a personal problem?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Lottie, I’m afraid not. Carrie doesn’t run. She’s been taken, and I’m not optimistic about her turning up. But,’ he added firmly, ‘she is not why I’m here; not directly at any rate. She was working on an investigation, under instruction from a solicitor advocate, in turn on behalf of a client. Her brief was to investigate the circumstances of a shoplifting allegation made nine years ago against an Ayrshire councillor, Ms Marcia Brown. The case never came to court, because Ms Brown was found dead the night before she was due at a pleading diet. On the basis of a very firm report by the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem, the procurator fiscal determined, without the need for an inquiry before a jury, that she had taken her own life. He was perfectly entitled to do that, but what he didn’t know was that the autopsy was flawed to say the least.’

  ‘How did this come to light?’ Mann asked.

  ‘I got curious.’

  ‘That tells me who the solicitor advocate is,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure it does, but that isn’t relevant. I know her client; in fact I sent him to her, as the case had been festering with him for years. It was toxic; indirectly, it cost him his son. When I looked at it, and considered the reported facts, I didn’t buy that a person who had declared forcefully an intention to plead not guilty would take her own life the night before she had an opportunity to do that. At my request, Professor Graham Scott – whom you know, DCI Mann – dug the PM report out of the archives and examined it, word for word, line by line, photograph by photograph. He realised very quickly that its conclusion was one hundred per cent wrong, and that there’s no way Marcia Brown killed herself.’

  ‘The original pathologist, sir,’ Cotter exclaimed. ‘Was he plain incompetent, or could he have been corrupt?’

  ‘A Provan-esque question, young man,’ Skinner laughed. ‘It’s one that’s going to be hard to answer, for the man in question went to Jesus a while back, but you can try. If you succeed, that’s the point at which this investigation may overlap with the other, which is now tied into the disappearance of Carrie McDaniels, and which is being conducted by a separate team based in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ Mann asked,

  ‘Sauce.’

  She nodded. ‘Good.’

  ‘You don
’t talk to him, though, not until you’re told to. This investigation will be free-standing, and discreet.’

  ‘Where do you suggest we begin?’

  ‘The first thing you do, Lottie, is take a detailed statement from Professor Scott. The second is to find out everything you can about the victim. All I know is what I’ve been told by her ex-husband. You need more information, and if you can get it, a different perspective. Then you look at the officers who attended the initial suspicious death report. You’re going to want to give them a hard time; you’ll want to know why the fuck they didn’t call in a forensic team, rather than jumping to their own conclusions and packing the victim straight off to the morgue.’

  ‘Are they still on the force, sir?’

  ‘I can only tell you about one, John, and he isn’t. The only police name on the report is Detective Sergeant, later Detective Inspector, Terry Coats. He left the service under a small cloud two or three years ago, and he’s now in security at Edinburgh Airport. You should be aware that his estranged, soon to be ex-wife, is a DS on Sauce Haddock’s team. She doesn’t know about Coats’ involvement in this thing, and doesn’t need to know, for now. That’s it,’ he declared. ‘Questions?’

  ‘Just one,’ the DCI replied. ‘What’s your role?’

  He smiled. ‘The buzz word at headquarters is “mentor”. I have a warrant card, that of a special constable, which means that I can do anything the chief constable or her deputy tells me to do, at any level. But this is your inquiry, Lottie. You don’t report to me, formally; you simply tell me what’s happening, and seek my advice, but not my instructions, when necessary. I’ll decide when it’s time to go to the DCC, and when to share information with, or seek it from, Sauce Haddock’s investigation.’