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

  His mind was dwelling on the state of the housing market when a young male constable called out to him. ‘I might have something here, Sarge.’

  Singh rose from his reinforced chair and lumbered ponderously across the room. ‘Show me,’ he said.

  ‘Okay.’ Constable Henry Devine, known as Sydney to both peers and seniors, faced an array of images on what seemed to be a split-screen monitor but was actually a series of screens mounted close together. He pointed to the one on the top left. ‘There’s nothing covered other than the entrance of Saltire House, and it goes without saying our subjects didn’t break in the front door.’

  ‘Why?’ Singh demanded. ‘Why does it?’

  The constable sighed. ‘Because I’ve checked, Sergeant. They didn’t.’

  ‘Fine. “Goes without saying” doesn’t go down well in the witness box, Sid.’

  ‘Noted, Sarge.’ Devine continued, pointing to the image he had selected and frozen. ‘The closest camera does give me those two individuals, back view, heading through Fountainbridge in the direction of Saltire House just after midnight. But they never get there, and that drew my attention.’

  ‘Understood. Move on.’

  ‘I will. About an hour and a half later,’ Devine pointed to the bottom left of the four screens, ‘in this camera, looking down St Mary’s Street, we find another two men, same size, same general appearance as the Fountainbridge pair, but this time they’re walking towards us. There’s no facial identification, though, because they’re wearing hoodies – think about that, Sarge, the hottest spell of weather in my lifetime and they’re wearing hoodies. One of them appears to have something over his shoulder. When they pass this camera, and turn into the Royal Mile, bottom right image, we can see that it’s a rucksack, and it looks empty.’

  ‘Where do they go from there?’ Singh asked.

  ‘Immediately? Nowhere. The camera that covers the area where the entrance to the McDaniels flat is was out of action that evening. However,’ he continued, ‘later on, we pick them up again, top right, approaching and turning into the road that leads down to the Tun building, and on to Alex Skinner’s block. See?’ He pointed to the screen. ‘The rucksack is gone, and this time one of the guys’ hoods has slipped enough for us to have a look at him.’

  The DS leaned forward and peered at the screen. The subject was taller than his companion, and wider in the shoulders. ‘He’s Asian,’ Singh declared. ‘Indian, Pakistani.’

  ‘Sikh?’

  ‘If he is, he’s lapsed like me, for he isn’t wearing a turban. This is a long shot from a single image, but if you asked me to guess, I’d say he’s Pathan, Pashtun. He could be from the Punjab, Pakistan, Afghanistan – originally. Let’s just assume operationally that he’s Scottish. Can you do enough with that image to run it through facial recognition software?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Then do so, once we’re finished here. Or are we finished here?’

  ‘Not by a way, Sarge, and hold off on the photo enhancement. We don’t see them again for a while, but when we do, they’re legging it up Holyrood Road. The smaller guy’s struggling to keep up, see, but he manages, as they go out of that shot.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Sydney smiled. ‘Oh no. They do disappear off the street cameras, and I did think I’d lost them, but then I thought, they stashed the rucksack somewhere. Where? A car, surely. Now they wouldn’t want to be doing that on the street, so . . . The nearest covered car park is at the top of Holyrood Road, close to the lights. I got on to the operator. They have cameras on each floor. I asked them to start half an hour after the last street sighting, and they came up with the goods.’

  He pushed a button and the screen array changed. ‘Top left, they arrive, park and get out, carrying the empty rucksack; we can’t see the car clearly, but we can make them out easily enough. Bottom left, they’re back, the rucksack’s full and they dump it. Top right, they’re back for a second time, in a hurry; and bottom right, they’re leaving, stopping at the ticket machine and raising the barrier. And this time, Sarge, we have an even better image of your Pashtun man as he inserts the ticket. We won’t need to bother enhancing that first photograph. This one’s much better; the computer can run facial recognition from it as it is.’

  The huge DS beamed. ‘Sid, that I would describe as a result; there are a few tiny bubbles coming your way. We might not know who he is yet, but we sure as hell know what he looks like. If our system doesn’t recognise him, can you ask the Indian and Pakistani High Commissions if they can help us ID him?’

  Devine shook his head. ‘Not me, Sarge; it’s above my pay grade. That one’s down to you.’

  ‘Fair enough. Now, the million-dollar question: did the car park camera pick up the registration?’

  ‘It didn’t need to. I’ve checked with the car park manager. She told me the numbers are photographed on entry and printed on the tickets, which disappear into the machine on exit. There’s very little activity through the night in that car park, even on Saturday night/ Sunday morning, so it was easy for her to find the right one from the time on the camera. That’s the good news; the bad news is that it was Carrie McDaniels’ number on the ticket.’

  ‘It’s not all bad. It’s obvious they swapped the plates from one car to another; we now know they were driving the stolen Ford Mondeo.’

  Fifty-One

  ‘So this is Motherwell,’ DC Jackie Wright murmured as they peeled off the roundabout. ‘It’s a place I only know from the football results,’ she grinned, ‘usually followed by the word “nil”.’

  ‘That’s an old one,’ Haddock snorted. ‘They say that about all the teams in Fife; not without justification, I concede.’

  ‘It’s not the place I expected; I was still looking for big steel mills.’

  ‘Those days are dead and gone. Gone to the Far East mostly, even though there are still a few relics in Britain. Nowadays Motherwell’s best known, among a few of us, as the birthplace of Bob Skinner.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really . . . and don’t try the football joke on him, by the way. The frustration of being a Motherwell supporter is the only thing he didn’t leave behind him. He doesn’t talk about it much, but he was brought up here. His dad was a solicitor; the gaffer could have taken over his firm, but he didn’t want to.’

  ‘Why not?’ Wright asked.

  ‘You think I’m his confidant?’

  ‘You’re his blue-eyed boy; everybody knows that.’

  ‘The gaffer has a few of those . . . and girls. One of them wears the chief constable’s uniform.’

  ‘And her predecessor was one too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t go there with the Big Man,’ Haddock warned her. ‘Andy Martin’s off limits as a subject these days.’

  ‘Why? I know he was duff as chief constable, but . . .’

  ‘He let Alex down, twice. The first time they got over it, but not the second. He’s off the Skinner Christmas card list for good.’

  ‘So why did Sir Robert leave Motherwell?’

  ‘He wanted his kids to be brought up in a different atmosphere; that’s all he ever said to me.’

  Wright looked around. ‘Seems reasonable; wanting your children to grow up at the seaside.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what he meant,’ the DI said cryptically, as he turned into the car park of WZB Steel Stockholders.

  ‘Nice car,’ Wright observed as he parked alongside a Mercedes S Class with a WZB registration plate. ‘Advertising on wheels.’

  Haddock led her into a single-storey black building that fronted a big industrial warehouse. The interior confounded its nondescript appearance, with an expensive monogrammed carpet leading up to a modern reception desk that the DI surmised was of Scandinavian design but from somewhere more exclusive than IKEA. A girl sat behind it; she looked expensive also, until she spoke. ‘Can I help yis?’ Her accent reminded him of Bob Skinner, without the erosion of thirty years in the east of Scotland.<
br />
  ‘We’d like to see whoever’s in charge,’ he told her.

  ‘That would be Mr Butt, I suppose. Sorry, but I’m new here. I’m a temp,’ she explained, ‘but I’m hoping he’ll keep me on. Sandi, by the way, with an “i”. Who will I tell him youse is?’

  ‘Tell him we is the polis. I’m Detective Inspector Haddock, this is Detective Constable Wright.’

  ‘One moment,’ Sandi said. She rose from her chair, turned and knocked on a door behind her. She opened it after a muffled response and leaned inside for a few seconds before turning back to them. ‘He wants to know what youse want, and why youse didn’t make an appointment.’

  ‘Tell him it’s a murder investigation, Sandi. In these circumstances, we tend not to make appointments.’

  He waited as she conveyed his response to the unseen man behind her. Eventually she turned back, opening the door wide and announcing, ‘Youse may go in.’

  ‘Thank you, Sandi,’ Haddock said as he moved towards her. ‘By the way, how long have you been working here?’

  ‘I started yesterday. Why?’

  ‘It means we don’t need to talk to you as well, that’s all.’

  They stepped into a large office; its furniture looked to be from the same supplier as the reception desk, and the carpet was a continuation of the special order they had seen outside. However, the dominant feature of the room was none of that; it was a large picture window that displayed the activity in the warehouse, showing its machinery in action and keeping the workforce under constant management supervision. Haddock wondered how they felt about that, but it had nothing to do with his visit and so he determined to leave the question unspoken.

  The man in charge of it all rose to greet them from a tan leather swivel chair. He was small, with grey hair and brown skin, and was dressed in a mix of European and Asian styles, a dark suit over a white collarless shirt, without a tie.

  ‘Inspector, Constable,’ he greeted them. His accent was peculiar, a mix of subcontinental and Scottish. ‘I am Wasim Butt.’ He paused, smiling. ‘I can tell by the look on your faces that I’m not what you were expecting. You think of Pakistani businessmen, you think of corner shops and cash-and-carries, not the steel industry. We are everywhere, Officers, everywhere. How can I help you? My fairly useless new receptionist said there’s been a murder. Can you tell me a little more?’ The remnants of his smile vanished and were replaced by a frown. ‘Is the victim someone I know? I hope not.’

  ‘We’re hoping you could tell us that, Mr Butt,’ Haddock replied. ‘The victim’s name is Carrie McDaniels, and we believe she visited you last week, late on Friday afternoon to be specific.’

  Butt leaned backwards, gazing at them, surprise in his eyes. ‘She was here, you say? Who was she visiting?’

  ‘Again, we don’t know; we don’t even know why.’

  ‘Who was she, this unfortunate woman?’

  ‘She was an investigator, looking into an old allegation of shoplifting.’

  ‘You know that much, you must know why she came here,’ Butt observed. ‘If she came here,’ he added. ‘Do you know that for certain?’

  ‘No,’ Haddock admitted, ‘we don’t. All we have is a reconstruction of her diary; the original was stolen. Were you here yourself on Friday, Mr Butt?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t; I was back in Pakistan for a while. I only returned on Sunday. I can show you my passport if you like. It was stamped at the airport.’

  ‘Then who was here?’

  ‘Only the people on the shop floor; if you like, you can speak to Steve O’Donnell, the foreman. He would know if a strange woman had been in the shed. Steve has an eye for the ladies.’

  ‘Is there anyone else at management level?’ Wright asked.

  ‘No, only me. I have a son, Zaqib, who likes to preen and strut about the place . . . that’s when he’s here, which is not very often. But he’s no use for anything serious; he has no business brain.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Zaqib is in Pakistan; he has a wedding to arrange.’

  ‘Whose?’

  Butt gazed at the DC, his smile back in place. ‘His own, my dear. Who else’s?’

  Fifty-Two

  ‘I tried to raise Sauce, sir – er, DI Haddock,’ Tarvil Singh said, ‘but his phone was off. That being the case, I thought I’d better report to you direct.’

  ‘You thought right, Sergeant. It doesn’t tell us a lot we didn’t already know, or couldn’t have guessed, but it’s confirmation. I’ll put out a nationwide alert for the car. I’ve no doubt it’ll turn up very soon.’

  ‘You reckon, sir?’ the DS exclaimed.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a near cert; we’ll find it, maybe without the plates, but we’ll find it . . . and when we do, it’ll be burned to a fucking cinder. The footage you’ve been looking at was shot early on Sunday morning. I don’t believe they broke into the pet crematorium on Saturday before they went to Edinburgh. That means – unless they had her stashed somewhere, and that just doesn’t work – they had Carrie’s body in that car, in the boot, all the time they were in that car park. Only an idiot would leave the forensic evidence for us to find, and whatever else these boys are, idiots they are not. It was good work by your lad Sydney, and he will get an acknowledgement for it, I promise, but you should prepare him for it all being in vain. I think the best we can hope for is that one of the tyres has survived, so that we can match the tracks we found at the crem and prove they were there. Thanks again, Wimpey; I’ll brief Sauce myself when he contacts me at close of play today, as he’s under orders to do.’

  McGuire hung up, smiling at the knowledge that he was one of very few people who could use Singh’s nickname without worrying about repercussions. The truth was, in fact, that nobody need worry. The DS was huge, but so big that the only way he could overcome anyone was by falling on them; he was given desk work because his line managers realised that he would fail any fitness test for operational duty that he was asked to take, and valued him too much to take that risk.

  His smile widened as he dwelled on the nickname culture in the police service. They were a badge of distinction, and almost every officer acquired one at some stage. Maggie Rose was Red, because of her hair, and in her younger days, her politics. He himself was Cornetto, a nod to his Italian side, although he and his bosom pal Neil ‘Nails’ McIlhenney had gloried in their shared soubriquet, the Glimmer Twins. The old chief, Sir James, had always been Proud Jimmy. To McGuire, that had lacked imagination; privately he had called him PC Murdoch, after the beloved cartoon character. ACC Brian Mackie was known as Dick, after Deadeye, because he was reckoned to be the best shot on the force. In his early years, Skinner had been known in CID as Paton, because of his eulogising of the man he declared to be the greatest Motherwell player ever, even though he was too young to have seen him play. Later he had been simply the Big Man, not because of his size or the way he carried himself, but because he was the one to whom everybody deferred, whether he sought it or not. Andy Martin, on the other hand, had never acquired a nickname; to McGuire, that said it all.

  ‘There’s nothing more irritating than a guy who sits there smiling at a joke that nobody else has heard. You remind me of Phil Mickelson.’

  The DCC turned to his newly arrived visitor.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ginger,’ he chuckled. ‘I was miles away there.’

  McGuire disliked the national force’s command rank base in central Scotland – the Bunker, he and Maggie Rose called it – but its one advantage was that it lay within easy reach of the Crime Campus at Gartcosh.

  ‘A personal visit?’ he said to Arthur Dorward, who sat facing him, russet hair uncovered for once, and wearing a suit rather than a crime-scene onesie.

  ‘It’s always my choice in the biggest investigations, Mario,’ the scientist replied. ‘Sure, I could have phoned, and a written report will follow this, but I’m old-fashioned. I like to look the other person in the eye when I tell them something, just to make sure that it’s all pe
netrated. Besides, you don’t get a mug of tea over the phone.’

  ‘The hint is taken.’ The DCC rose, went to the door and issued a request to an unseen assistant.

  ‘Do you never feel shame at not making it yourself?’ Dorward asked him amiably.

  ‘No more than you’ll feel when you drink it,’ McGuire retorted. ‘I made my fair share, for Bob Skinner among many others. It’s the custom.’

  ‘A bit public-schoolish.’

  ‘We don’t cane them when they forget the sugar. Besides, it comes around. That young woman’s out there for a reason. She beat off competition to get to make our tea; one day she’ll be back here, in this chair,’ he lowered himself into it, ‘and someone else, maybe my wee lad, who knows, will be making it for her and her visitors.’

  They waited until the tea arrived: a pot, a small milk jug and two mugs, carried on a tray by the DCC’s assistant. McGuire thanked her and poured himself.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Dorward whispered as the door closed on her. ‘The tips in this place are miserable.’ He sipped from his mug, then put it down on a coaster on McGuire’s desk. ‘Gerry Heaney,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gerry Heaney, full name Gerard Francis Heaney, born in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, thirty-three years ago, proud possessor of a string of convictions for extortion, assault and possession of a firearm, and three times a guest of the Mountbatten-Windsor Hotel Group.’

  ‘He’s one of the guys who killed Carrie McDaniels?’

  ‘I’m not saying that, Mario . . . See, that’s why I like to do this in person, even with you. All I’m saying is that his DNA was found inside her vehicle, and his fingerprints on the outside. I can’t tell you when they were left there. It could have been on Saturday, it could have been a week ago. It was one of dozens of samples we found, but the only one that came up with a match when they were run through the national database. We’ve eliminated as many as we can – the victim herself, her father, the traffic warden who ticketed the car then called it in, a boyfriend the father told us about – but we’re still left with a few we don’t know.’