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

  ‘How kind of her,’ Brass whispered as the recording ended.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought,’ Cotter agreed. ‘And then I spoke to Cedric Black, your solicitor friend. You’ve known him for a long time, haven’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I have.’

  ‘He was your patient, wasn’t he, in your practice in Stewarton in Ayrshire?’

  ‘That’s right, he was. We went right back to the early days of my career; his too.’

  ‘It was a substantial practice, am I right?’

  Brass frowned. ‘I wouldn’t say so; how does one measure these things?’

  ‘By turnover, I believe,’ the DS retorted. ‘I’ve checked with NHS Scotland: in the three years before the sale, yours averaged four hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds. That would give it a marketplace valuation of around half a million. A quarter of a million: that’s what a successful claim by your ex-wife would have cost you. I’m relatively new at this job, sir, but I’ve seen people killed for a hell of a lot less than that.’

  ‘I dare say you have, Detective Sergeant Cotter, but I’m not that kind of man. You’re jumping to a ridiculous and frankly offensive conclusion.’

  ‘Mmm,’ the DS murmured. ‘If you say so, sir.’ He paused, shifting in his chair. ‘Going back to Mr Black,’ he continued. ‘When I spoke to him, it was to ask why he’d been at the post-mortem; he said he’d felt a duty as Marcia’s defence lawyer. But he also told me – he volunteered it in fact – that on the day after she died, you’d asked him to be there, on behalf of you and your son, “to see that things were done right”, as he put it to me.’

  ‘That’s right, I did.’

  The DS pursed his lips. ‘See,’ he said, ‘the problem I have wi’ that, sir, is at that point, how did you know that Marcia was dead?’

  Brass gave a tiny but perceptible gasp. ‘I suppose Cedric must have told me. It’s nine years ago, and my memory’s no longer perfect.’

  ‘Mr Black says that he didn’t. I asked him. He swore blind that he didn’t. We’ve just heard Joan say that she didn’t tell you either. And it wasn’t reported in the local media until five days after her death. I confirmed that with the editor of the local paper. He felt very guilty about their coverage of the arrest; he still does, because he thinks it contributed to her killing herself. I haven’t bothered to tell him it wasn’t suicide, by the way. He can live with his bloody guilt for a little longer. So who did tell you, Mr Brass, that your former wife was dead?’

  Brass shifted in his seat, glancing up at the clock. ‘It must have been the police,’ he snapped.

  ‘It wasn’t. I’ve spoken to the man who handled the case. He never called you. Why should he? You weren’t the next of kin. So if none of them told you, and yet you knew, well, there’s only one way, sir, isn’t there? You were there when she died: just you and you alone.’

  Brass’s eyes flashed fear signals as he stared at the man he had thought of as his ally. ‘Bob, help me here.’

  ‘You’re beyond help,’ Skinner told him coldly. ‘Mine or anyone else’s.’

  The old dentist pushed his chair away from the table, turning to Johanna DaCosta. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘My advice to you would be to make no further comment.’ She looked across the table at Mann. ‘I haven’t heard enough, Chief Inspector. You can’t accuse my client on the basis of that alone.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ she replied. ‘But there’s more. Go on, Hitch.’

  ‘Yes, pet, there is,’ Cotter said, lapsing into patronising Geordie as he glanced at the solicitor. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured as her glare hit him. ‘I went on the hunt, you see,’ he continued, recovering himself, ‘into the deepest of the deep, the dust-covered, the long-forgotten, the Crown Office archives. I looked for the year in question, and there, to my surprise, I found the evidence from the case – productions, you lawyers call them, don’t you – hidden away in a crate like the Ark of the Covenant,’ he glanced at Skinner, ‘at the end of my second most favourite movie. There wasn’t a lot: a wine glass still wi’ the dregs in it, more than a dozen empty Oramorph capsules, and their boxes. There were bar codes on those. When I showed them to the manufacturer, they were able to tell me, even from that far back, that they’d been issued to a pharmacy in Stewarton, Ayrshire. When I checked there, I was told that they had been sold on to a local dentist who kept a stock for patients who suffered extreme dental pain. The pharmacist admitted he probably shouldn’t have done it, but he said that Mr Brass was a persuasive bloke, and that an Oramorph capsule wasn’t going to kill anyone.’ Cotter frowned. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but upwards of a dozen of them did the job. We found something else on two of the capsules as well: usable fingerprints that were missed when an attempt was made to wipe them clean. There’s no doubt whose they’ll match, is there, sir?’

  As David Brass sank back into his chair, gazing at the wall, tight-lipped and stone-faced, Skinner straightened himself and stepped out of his corner. ‘And all you had to do,’ he sighed, ‘was take the capsules with you and just leave the syringe hanging out of her arm with her thumbprint on it. You’re no fucking mastermind, David, are you?’

  . . . And now

  There’s rarely a night when I don’t feel endangered. Not now. Not since Carrie.

  Dominic stayed with me for a full week; he watched me, talked to me, tried to convince me that I was the safest person in the city, living seven storeys high, in an apartment with a door so thick that it would take Mario McGuire, armed with a battering ram the size of Tarvil Singh, to break it down.

  At the end of that week, I told him that I was persuaded, that I was good, and that it was okay for him to go back to his deck, on which the first rain in a month had just fallen, in great golf-ball-sized lumps.

  I didn’t sleep a wink that night, or the next. On the third, I took one of the zopiclone pills that my online GP had prescribed for me; it worked, but left me feeling hung-over next morning, unable to concentrate or function properly until around midday. That made me change my medication: red wine did the business after a while, and didn’t have such damaging after-effects. I ate very little; I had hardly any appetite, plus I couldn’t be arsed to cook for myself. After a couple of weeks, I realised as I stepped out of the shower and caught a glimpse of my naked self in the mirror that I could see my ribs, for the first time in several years.

  I longed for the weekends, when I could escape down to Gullane to chill out with my young siblings, especially James Andrew. I know now that I’ll never have a kid, and that might be just as well, because if I did, I would spend all of its childhood watching it and comparing it with its exceptional young uncle. One weekend I went to Dundee to catch up with Ignacio, but he was so completely taken up with being the gofer at the radio station, and doing the sports headlines, that I went home earlier than I had intended.

  Dominic called me every day; he didn’t ask me how I was because he knew damn well I would say I was good. He talked to me, that was all, and I talked to him, feeling relaxed for the first time since I had awakened that morning, usually dry-mouthed and bleary-eyed. I could have phoned Griff; he was mobile by then and he’d have come if I’d asked, but it would have involved casual sex, and to my surprise, I’d lost my taste for that too.

  It was Tuesday and I had opened my first bottle of the evening when the buzzer sounded from the street below. I went to my locked and bolted door, looked at the video display and saw Dominic, crouching down so that the camera could see his face. ‘Let’s go eat,’ he called out. ‘Don’t dress up, nothing fancy; come as you are.’

  I threw on a light jacket and went downstairs; his car was outside, his big high-roofed SUV, the only type of vehicle that could make him close to comfortable. As I climbed in, I saw two pizza boxes in the back, two plastic-encased salads, and a six-pack of Irn-Bru. Rather than driving into town, he took us into Holyrood Park, past the playing fields and up the narrow road until we came to Dunsapie Loch.

  The heatwave was g
one, and the inevitable storm that had followed it; the weather was back to normal for August: mild, not too hot, nothing approaching cold. He parked, found a place beside the water, threw a travel rug on the ground and unpacked our meal.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said as we were approaching the end, ‘how are you?’

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘You’re not, and we both know it. You sit up in that tower of yours, locked in, probably with a Taser that your father gave you when nobody was looking; you drink too much and you’re anxious, because what happened there and its association with what was done to your friend has made the place untenable for you.’

  ‘Wow!’ I exclaimed. ‘Now I know why you prefer real tea to tea bags; it’s so you can read the fucking leaves.’

  He laughed, more freely than I’d ever heard him. ‘If that’s so, I’ve got a fucking doctorate in it.’

  ‘And how are both of you?’ I asked. ‘You and your doctorate.’

  The smile faded; he looked at me and then away. For a moment I thought he was nervous, but I banished the thought.

  ‘The doctorate is doing very well. The police are giving me serious consultancy work. Imagine that: not just our lot, but a couple of agencies in England as well. Me? I’m lonely.’

  I stared at him, my breath truly taken away.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t; flattered more like.’

  ‘Don’t be that either. I’m not going down on one knee, I’m just telling it like it is.’ He looked sideways and up, and pointed towards Arthur’s Seat. ‘If the old king ever existed and really did sit up there, he must have been fucking lonely. I know this because I’ve been lonely too, without realising it, for all my life. When I was in prison, it was a virtue; it helped me isolate myself, focus on my studies and become who I am now. When I began my new life, my new career, I thought it would always be like that, and I was content. Then you came to stay with me, and everything changed. I’d never before appreciated what company really is, never had anyone to share my space with. I’d been married, sure, but there was no companionship there; she came to me having been one of Tony Manson’s hookers, and that’s what she went back to when I went away. Sex is overrated, Alex, and it complicates your life. I have no interest in it any more.’

  ‘I can’t quite go that far,’ I admitted, made to feel awkward by his frankness, ‘but I’m with you on the overrated.’

  ‘Thing is,’ he continued, as awkwardly as I, ‘when you left, when you went away, I discovered in that moment what loneliness really is. And I have to tell you, I don’t like it. Alex,’ he gulped, ‘would you consider flat-sharing with an oversized doctor of psychology with a terrible past but a promising future, who wants nothing more than somebody to keep him company?’

  I couldn’t turn him down. No, it didn’t occur to me for one second to turn him down. I rented my place to an independent financial adviser and moved back in with Dominic. Now I am more content than I have ever been; with my celibate friend, I have found true peace.

  But even there, in my dreams, every night, that fearful sense of endangerment visits me and haunts me, as I remember Carrie, and that bad, bad fire.

  We hope you enjoyed reading THE BAD FIRE. Discover another gripping mystery in the Bob Skinner series . . .

  When a murder investigation that’s been closed for thirty years is suddenly re-opened, former Chief Constable Bob Skinner is quickly drawn into the action . . .

  Turn the page to read the opening chapters . . .

  One

  ‘Bob, I’m wondering if you have some time free tonight. The thing is . . . I’ve got a problem.’

  I have one thing in common with Maggie Thatcher: history showed her to be a long way short of being St Francis of Assisi, and so am I. I’ve never been much good at sowing love to replace hatred, and when it comes to bringing joy to drive away sadness, my record is patchy to say the least. However, since I walked away from the police service and Chief Constable Robert Morgan Skinner became plain Bob to all and sundry, I have noticed that when my friends have a problem, they may choose to come to me for help and counsel.

  I’ve had to deal with a few difficult situations, for my friends tend to be the sort of people who draw problems like tourists draw midgies on a damp and wind-free lochside morning. But if there was one I never expected to make such a request, it was my predecessor in the Edinburgh chief’s job, and my principal supporter for much of my career, Sir James Proud.

  The thousands who served under his command used to call him Proud Jimmy, a silly nickname I will use only once in this account, to emphasise how inappropriate it was. If anyone ever belied his name it was Sir James. I have never met a man in a command situation who exuded such humility, and who showed less self-importance or pride. The phrase ‘public servant’ is bandied around at will, but I’ve never known anyone who grasped its true meaning, and put it into practice, as well as he did.

  Jimmy at work was one of those rare people who didn’t have problems. He had challenges, and it’s a tribute to him, and a reason for his longevity in a job that wore me out in a few years, that he rose to all of them. I’ve known officers who went into his office to be disciplined and were heard to thank him as they left for the wisdom he had shown them. Latterly, of course, he didn’t do too much of that; he delegated it to me. No one who wound up on my carpet ever left feeling better for the experience.

  That was why, when I took his call that day, as I was ending a meeting in the Balmoral Hotel, my instant reaction was apprehension. A few months before, he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer, but the last medical bulletin he had passed on to me had been positive. His therapy had been effective and he was officially in remission. It’s back, was my first thought, even though he had just told me he was clear.

  ‘Jimmy . . .’ I murmured.

  ‘No, no, no!’ he insisted. He always could read my mind. ‘It’s not that. That’s fine; I meant it when I said I’m in recovery. I saw my oncologist yesterday and she said I’m in better shape than she is. She’s right, too. Poor bugger’s a stick-thin midget; I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s her own patient pretty soon. No, son, this is something else entirely, something completely out of the blue.’

  ‘Something that’s worrying you,’ I observed, ‘from your tone of voice.’

  ‘I confess that it is, son,’ he sighed. ‘Maybe there’s nothing to be done about it. If so, I hope the judge takes pity on me. But if there is anyone that can help,’ he added, ‘I’m talking to him right now.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jimmy!’ I had visions of my old boss being caught slipping out of the grocer’s with a filched tin of corned beef in his pocket. He had never shown the slightest sign of dementia, but he was in the age bracket where it’s most likely to occur; indeed, the variability of Lady Proud’s memory had been worrying Sarah and me of late.

  ‘He’s involved, in a way,’ he said. ‘I might need a miracle. This is serious, Bob: the last thing I need at my time of life.’

  ‘Okay,’ I told him, ‘we can meet tonight. Do you want to come to me or me to you?’

  ‘Neither. I don’t want either of us to have to explain anything to our wives. I’ll meet you in Yellowcraigs car park, eight o’clock, if that’s all right. I’ll be taking Bowser for a walk.’

  ‘It’s all right, but why don’t we meet on Gullane Bents? Why Yellowcraigs?’

  ‘Because nobody can see it from your house.’

  Two

  I thought about Jimmy all the way home on the bus.

  Me? Bob Skinner? Bus?

  That’s right. It had been the simplest way to get to the Balmoral given the institutionally baffling and constantly changing traffic management in the heart of the city of Edinburgh. Yes, I could have driven by a simpler route to my office in Fountainbridge and taken a taxi, but I had nothing else to do that day, so I let East Coast Buses take me straight to the door.

  I was slightly vexed by my new engagement, because I had bee
n looking forward to spending some time with my younger kids in the evening, once the homework burden had been disposed of – don’t get me started on that: I don’t believe in it – and then a quiet dinner with Sarah, my wife, in celebration of the successful conclusion of an investigation in which I’d become involved.

  When I left the police service, or when it left me, as I prefer to put it, I had no clear idea, not even the vaguest notion, of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I’m still not certain, beyond my determination to see all of my children through to happy adulthood. I have six of those: the eldest by far is Alexis, my daughter with my late first wife Myra. She has turned thirty and is building a reputation as the Killer Queen of Scottish criminal defence lawyers, after turning her back on the lucrative but unfulfilling corporate sector. Mark, he’s in his teens; we adopted him after he was orphaned by separate tragedies. James Andrew, the first of my three with Sarah, is a hulking lad who is easing his way through primary school, just as his sister Seonaid is starting to make her presence felt there. The youngest, Dawn, was a complete and total surprise, and is still only a few months old.

  And then there’s Ignacio, the son I didn’t know I had, the product of a one-night stand twenty years ago with a dangerous lady named Mia Watson, who left town a couple of days after he was conceived and didn’t reappear until very recently, still in trouble and still dangerous.