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

  There were no constraints, however, in an empty CID suite. He was halfway through the second verse of ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)’, when the door behind him opened and Sauce Haddock and Jackie Wright stepped silently into the room. They waited until the echoes of the last chorus had faded before applauding. He spun round, feeling the hot flush of embarrassment spread across his face.

  ‘Not bad, Tarvil,’ the DI said, ‘not bad. Me, I prefer “No Regrets”. Mostly, though, I prefer anything other than the Walker Brothers. Have you ever thought about “The Laughing Policeman” as your signature tune? That would go down well at smokers.’

  ‘There are no smokers any more,’ Wright pointed out, ‘since the law changed.’

  Haddock nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘How did it go with Coats?’ Singh asked, desperate to move on before the talk turned to Britain’s Got Talent.

  ‘It was interesting. He didn’t tell us much that we hadn’t figured out about Carrie, but guess what? Two of our friends from the west were there, and Bob Skinner, who’s been running us all like P. T. fucking Barnum. And if you break out into “A Million Dreams”,’ he warned, ‘you’re in uniform at Easter Road for the next Hearts game.’

  ‘Too bad. That’s my encore number.’

  ‘Save it for the next time we’re out. What’s been happening?’

  Singh smiled. ‘Something very interesting,’ he replied. ‘I did a Companies House search like you asked for WZB. Found it no problem. The directors are Wasim Butt and Zaqib Butt, no surprise there. Wasim’s on the board of a few companies, but Zaqib only shows up on the WZB board.’

  ‘Are there any personal details about him?’

  ‘Not on the website, but that’s the thing. I did a social media search for him, starting with Facebook, as you do, and up he popped, with a list of all the places he’s worked.’

  ‘And one of them was LuxuMarket,’ the DI said. ‘Carrie McDaniels was on to that; Terry Coats told us. It’s good that we know, but it’s of no immediate help. Wasim Butt told us that Zaqib’s in Pakistan, organising his wedding.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Singh mused. ‘I thought Scottish Muslims restricted themselves to one wife, to comply with the law.’

  ‘They do,’ Haddock agreed. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because according to his Facebook page, he’s married already, with two kids, and he lives in Carluke. I’ve verified that with the electoral register. His wife’s name’s Krystle, and they live in Station Road.’ He beamed, and broke out into the opening verse of ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’.

  Sixty

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay in that seat?’ Alex asked her outsized passenger. ‘We’ve been on the road for over an hour. When I bought this thing, I didn’t envisage ever carrying someone who was two metres tall.’

  ‘I’ll be fine as long as the weather doesn’t break,’ Dominic Jackson assured her. ‘If it rains and you have to put the roof up, then I’d have a problem.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any chance of that. According to the forecasters, this weather’s going to stay with us for another week at least.’

  ‘Then God help the prison population; those places aren’t designed to adapt to these conditions, not even the modern ones. As for Barlinnie and the rest of the older estate, that doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘What can the Justice Department do?’ she wondered aloud.

  ‘Bring in portable air-con units, I guess, if they can source enough of them.’

  ‘Have you ever thought about writing a book about prison life, Dominic?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘For about five seconds, then I binned the idea. I want to spend the rest of my life in anonymity, Alex. I did bad things for what I hoped were good reasons, knowing that if I was caught, society would exact a price. I’ve paid my tab and I’m happy with that; if I wrote a memoir, one, I’d blow my cover, so to speak, and two, I’d be accused of cashing in on crime.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of an autobiography,’ she countered. ‘The book I have in mind would be a self-help guide for prisoners: how to survive long sentences, and how to find rehabilitation. You told me that you’ve counselled prisoners already. This would take those sessions to a wider audience.’

  ‘And me with it.’

  ‘You could use a pseudonym.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he murmured, ‘like “the Secret Footballer”, you mean? “The Secret Lifer”. Trust me, he wouldn’t stay secret for long. The media would out me inside forty-eight hours. And lest you forget,’ he added, ‘the media includes your father. He’s the supervising director of the Saltire, and of the other InterMedia outlets that they’re opening up in Britain. Nice idea, but I will pass.’

  She drove on; the evening traffic had lessened by the time she took the exit signposted for East Kilbride. ‘This is the route Carrie took, poor girl.’ She shuddered and gnawed at her lip. ‘It’s dreadful, Dominic, what happened to her. I can’t get my head round it. Pops says I’m experiencing PTSD. Does psychology offer a cure for that?’

  ‘I’d prefer to say that you’re experiencing survivor guilt,’ he told her. ‘You’re thinking that if you’d done your own investigative work, Carrie would still be alive and you’d have wound up in that crematory. But you didn’t, she’s dead, and there’s a voice in your head that you can’t still that’s thanking God it wasn’t you, and that it’s Peter McDaniels mourning his daughter and not Bob Skinner. You don’t want to hear that voice or to acknowledge its existence, but you have to, and you have to accept what it’s telling you without taking the burden of blame on yourself. What you did for Carrie was provide her with employment, no more. You didn’t ask her to take a risk, you had no way of knowing that a low-grade historic investigation would have such consequences . . . if it even did, for nobody has yet proved a link between the Marcia Brown case and Carrie’s murder.’

  ‘You’re telling me to get over it?’

  ‘I’m telling you to accept it, and to realise that it wasn’t your fault. As for the feeling of relief, every soldier who has ever lost a comrade in action has felt it. “Wow, that was a close one!” You know what I’m feeling?’ he asked her, sharply. ‘I didn’t know Carrie and I’ve never met her father. But I do know yours, and I’m feeling relief that it’s not him figuring out how you give a proper funeral to a pile of charred bone fragments. That’s life, and that’s death.’

  ‘Shit happens?’

  ‘No, that’s callous; own the grief, disown the guilt, that’s what I’m saying.’

  She looked at the road ahead as she approached a junction, then glanced at him. ‘You’re a wise man, Dr Jackson, I’m glad you’re my friend.’

  They carried on to and through East Kilbride, then found the motorway that headed south-west to Ayrshire. ‘Have you decided what you’re going to say to Stephens?’ Dominic asked her as they reached the exit that led to their destination.

  ‘You probably know the lawyer’s maxim: never ask a witness a question unless you know the answer already. I don’t know any of the answers, so I’m going to have to busk it. I don’t intend to ask her anything unless I can’t avoid it.’

  Galston community centre was easy to find; it was a squat white-painted building that had never won any architectural awards, but there was a bustle of activity about it indicating that it served its purpose. As they stepped inside, they were faced by a noticeboard; at its centre was the same smiling image of Gloria Stephens that had featured on the council website, with an arrow pointing to a stairway and advice that the surgery was being held in rooms 10 and 11. Constituents only: no press.

  Dominic shrugged. ‘I used to be a constituent, of sorts,’ he said.

  They climbed the stairs. Room 10 was the first on their left and its door was open, revealing a burly, surly man in jeans and a black T-shirt, but nobody else. He stared at them as they entered; Alex could see puzzlement in his eyes as he studied her companion. ‘Surgery?’ he grunted.

  ‘We’d l
ike to see the councillor, yes.’

  ‘Ye’ll need tae fill in a form,’ he snapped.

  ‘No, Ronnie, we won’t,’ Jackson replied. ‘We’ll just be going straight in.’

  The connection was made. Ronnie switched from aggressive to subservient in an instant. ‘Very good, Lennie. How’re ye doing, like? Is this your bird?’

  ‘Lennie’s no more; now I’m Dr Dominic Jackson. No, this is not my bird, this is my colleague. Before we see Mrs Stephens, were you at the surgery in Newmilns on Saturday?’

  ‘Aye.’

  From the pocket of his pale-blue cotton jacket, which was marked by the corpses of a few doomed insects that it had picked up on the drive from Edinburgh, he produced a folded copy of the Saltire, the edition that had confirmed the death of Carrie McDaniels. He held it up, showing her image. ‘This woman was there, yes? My colleague’s investigator? The one who was abducted and murdered shortly after leaving?’

  ‘Aye, but . . . The councillor . . .’

  ‘The councillor can tell us herself, Ronnie. You wait here, and don’t think about doing an Elvis. We have the police on speed-dial, and if you leave the building, they’ll be called.’

  The man nodded. ‘Aye, Lennie. Ah mean, aye, Doctor. Ah’ll go naewhere. Will I announce yis?’

  Jackson displayed the faintest smile. ‘I don’t think so.’

  He closed the door of Room 10 behind them. ‘Ronnie was one of the local constituents that Councillor Gloria visited in prison. I think he’s her cousin.’

  ‘He certainly respects you,’ Alex observed.

  ‘No he doesn’t. He fears me; he doesn’t know why, only that he does. In prison, fear is always a safer bet than respect.’

  Alex knocked lightly on the door of Room 11, then, without waiting for a response, opened it and stepped inside. Taken by surprise, Gloria Stephens stared up at her from her seat at a small table, slightly open-mouthed. ‘Who the hell are—’ She stopped abruptly as Jackson’s bulk blocked the light from the hall outside. ‘Ronnie!’ she shouted.

  ‘He won’t be joining us,’ Alex informed her.

  ‘In that case, I hope he’s calling the police.’

  ‘That’s the last thing he’ll be doing. At the moment, he’s working out how he can avoid going back inside.’

  Stephens focused on Jackson. ‘That’s where I’ve seen you before,’ she murmured. ‘Kilmarnock Prison; you were always in the bloody library when I visited there. What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m supporting Ms Skinner, Councillor, that’s all. The person who came to visit you on Saturday on her behalf never made it back home. I might be harder to get rid of than Carrie McDaniels.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Let’s have no cowshit, Mrs Stephens,’ Alex snapped. She took the Saltire from Jackson and slammed it on the table. ‘I know that she visited your Newmilns surgery on Saturday. I know that was the last place she was seen alive. I know that after she left you, she was rattled, for she dropped a message on my voicemail asking me for an urgent meeting, one she never made. None of that’s speculation, nor is the fact that you and cousin Ronnie knew she was dead before we showed you that page. Her name is on every billboard and her face has been on every front page since she went missing. People like you read the papers every day, so no way did you not know she was dead. What you need to persuade me now, and after that the police, is that you didn’t kill her yourself, or order her death.’

  ‘Why the fuck would I do that?’ Stephens barked, her voice loud, rough and rasping. ‘She was just a nosy snooper for a nosy fucking lawyer, looking into something that’s been dead and buried for nine years and was never fucking important anyway.’

  ‘Then tell me about it,’ Alex counter-challenged. ‘When you do, be aware that I’m an officer of the court, and as such I have a duty to report anything that may be criminal behaviour to the Crown. Withholding evidence from a murder investigation is a serious offence; you’ve done that, so tell me why I shouldn’t report it.’

  ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’

  Alex nodded. ‘Yes, I’m talking to a small-time local politician who’s head of a minority Labour administration on her council, one that relies for its survival on the support of her natural enemies, the Conservative group. But I’m done talking to you, Mrs Stephens. Now I’m going to listen to you tell me what happened when my investigator came to your Newmilns surgery on Saturday. If you don’t, I will call Deputy Chief Constable McGuire and advise him of an obstruction of the course of justice. Then I’ll make sure that your arrest gets front-page coverage, just as my friend Carrie’s murder did. If you don’t believe that, fucking google me: Alexis Skinner, LLB, solicitor advocate; you’ll find that I have a profile.’

  Stephens took her phone from the table; she tapped in an entry, then studied it, scrolling occasionally. Finally she nodded. ‘You have, haven’t you. And I know who your father is.’ She stared up at Jackson. ‘Funny company you’re keeping, I must say.’

  ‘Both my father and I are comfortable with Dominic.’

  ‘I know who he really is, though.’

  ‘He gained his doctorate as Dominic Jackson. Most people have forgotten who he was, and those who haven’t don’t care. Are you going to talk to us?’

  ‘Aye, okay,’ Stephens sighed. ‘Sit down.’ She waited as Alex seated herself; Jackson remained standing, his back against the wall. ‘She came here, just like you,’ she began, ‘but she tried to be smart. She filled in a constituent form with a phoney name that I saw through in half a second. Daniella fucking Carrington,’ she snorted. ‘Who was she trying tae kid? When I challenged her, she owned up. She told me who she was, and she gave me this.’ She delved into her handbag and produced a business card, sliding it across the table towards Alex, who left it untouched. ‘She told me she was working for you and that she was digging up the old Marcia Brown LuxuMarket shoplifting case. She did more than that; she accused our Vera, my daughter, of setting the whole thing up, her and her boyfriend, a polis called Parker, spotty bastard. She based all this on a story she’d been fed about me and Marcia having a blazing row in the council offices. Then she threatened me.’

  ‘Threatened you with what?’ Alex asked.

  ‘With you,’ Stephens retorted. ‘The same guff about you being an officer of the court and reporting me to the polis. Nonsense, all fucking nonsense. That was when I really lost my rag.’

  ‘And assaulted her? Is that how she died?’ Alex challenged. As she did so, she was aware of the first law of cross-examination. She knew that her investigator had left Stephens’ office alive, because of the timing of her voicemail, but she wanted to provoke the woman, wanted to see the Stephens who had confronted Carrie and inspired the alarm that had been in her voice.

  ‘No!’ she yelled. ‘For fuck’s sake! I told her it was all crap. Marcia Brown and I had blazing fucking rows all the time, because that was the sort of woman she was. She was a fucking shit-stirrer by nature, just like that son of hers, Austin, and he came to a bad end too. And you know what? None of it meant a fucking thing to me. To me, Marcia Brown was a gnat . . . and I don’t mean a fucking Nationalist; a wee insect like the big man’s got splattered on his lapel. She was nothing, she had no power on the council, for I had an absolute majority at the time; all she was was a nuisance, and no’ a very big one either. She had a down on me, sure; I got the same old guff every council leader gets about being in property developers’ back pockets, brown envelopes, all that shite. So when your woman Carrie came in and started throwing it at me as well, and quoting it at me, yes, I went ballistic. I told her to get the fuck out of my office, before I had big Ronnie do it the hard way.’ She paused, realising what she had said. ‘Not that I would have,’ she added. ‘I was just so bloody angry. Get Ronnie in here if you want, he’ll confirm it.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Alex agreed. ‘Before I do that, did you have one of your frequent blazing rows with Marcia just bef
ore the shoplifting allegation?’

  ‘We did,’ Stephens admitted, ‘in my room; it was just the two of us in there, but you could have heard us out in the street. She was really worked up.’

  ‘What was her complaint?’

  ‘She was on about a planning application for a change of use; her argument was that it was going to cost dozens of people their jobs. Maybe she had a point, as it turned out, but we were nowhere near that stage. The application was only in principle, not for full consent; we were a long way short of that, but she never made a distinction between types of application; I don’t think she actually understood the difference. It was from a third-party developer as well, not from the owner of the premises, so it was completely speculative. Marcia had no time for that argument; she had no time for anybody’s case other than her own. As far as she was concerned, it was cut and dried, and as usual the Labour group were in cahoots with the developer. I couldnae shout her down – I never could, truth be told; she’d lungs like a blast furnace; fucking unpleasant woman – so I just let her blow herself out. Eventually she stormed out, yelling “Criminal!” as she went.’

  ‘That was the end of the matter as far as you were concerned?’

  ‘And as far as she was; we had the numbers and there were no grounds for refusal. That’s something else Marcia never understood. The planning laws and regulations aren’t about job creation, or even preservation. The area in question was zoned for commercial use, and that was the end of the matter.’

  ‘Who was the applicant?’

  ‘I can’t remember, honestly.’

  ‘What were the premises?’

  ‘LuxuMarket; it was for alterations to the building rather than a change of use. It happened, eventually; the supermarket closed and became something else.’

  ‘Who owns it now?’

  ‘There was a company name on the planning applications, but the guy behind it’s called Butt, Wasim Butt. Household Supplies and Services, it’s called. Nothing controversial there, so really what’s the fucking fuss about? Are you seriously trying to suggest that somebody would get killed over that?’