14 - Stay of Execution bs-14

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Am I sitting here listening to you guys fighting a turf war over my boss?’ he asked.

  Stringfellow looked round; his smile was patronising. ‘That’s rather simplistic, Your Grace. This is a state occasion, and it must be treated with all the ceremony appropriate.’

  ‘Crap.’ Across the table Lena McElhone let out an audible gasp. ‘This is a man,’ he snapped, ‘an old man at that, coming home to his people. We will look after him, thank you very much; we will protect him and we will deliver him back safe to Rome. I’m the Pope’s representative here, and I’m answerable to him for the success of this visit: not to you or anyone else, only to him; the Bishop of Rome. I know Signor Rossi’s qualifications for the task, and I know Bob Skinner’s as well. But I know sod all about you, my son, and that I don’t like. With all due deference to your master, the Foreign Secretary, the reality of the situation is that unless I’m satisfied with the security arrangements, we don’t have a show. That means that Bob and Gio are in charge. If that’s simplistic, fine.’

  The Foreign Office representative drew in a breath and stared frostily at the table-top. Aileen de Marco put her pad and her pen into her briefcase and pushed her chair back from the table. ‘I have to go.’ She looked at the deputy chief constable. ‘Mr Skinner, you’ll copy me into everything?’

  ‘Yes, Minister.’

  She smiled. ‘You make me sound like a TV series; every time someone says that I want to laugh. The name’s Aileen; I’m a New Labour minister, remember. To save time, if you could copy my private office directly, please, rather than through the department.’

  Skinner saw Godfrey Rennie’s involuntary frown as she rose, everyone else standing with her.

  ‘Sure.’ He paused, then nodded towards Stringfellow. ‘Aileen, you do know what all this is about, don’t you?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘No. What?’

  ‘His boss . . . I don’t mean the Foreign Secretary; I mean everybody’s boss, the one with the smile . . . wants to be front and centre, alongside the Pope at all the events. With his wife, of course; especially with his wife. Best seats in the house.’

  ‘It’s news to me.’

  ‘And to Tommy Murtagh, I’ll bet. I don’t hear any outraged denials from along the table, though.’ He looked at Stringfellow again; the man was tight-lipped, angry, but the look in his eyes confirmed the truth of the DCC’s guess.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll sort it out between them,’ said the deputy justice minister, cautiously. ‘But what will that do to your security planning?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m used to working in tandem with the close-protection teams. We protect the area, they protect the individual, just as Giovanni and his logistics team protect the Pope. I’ll let you have a copy of the final programme for the visit, and a summary of the security plan, once Jim’s cleared it.’

  ‘Thanks. Give Lena a call when it’s ready.’ She turned to her private secretary. ‘You got a card?’ The woman nodded, fished in her handbag for a business card, and handed it to Skinner. Then she turned and left the room, escorted by the chief constable, with her assistant in their wake.

  As the DCC went back to his seat, it seemed to him that with her absence the room was just a little more drab, a little more dull. He glanced out of the window and saw that the fog was still thick outside, encircling the Fettes headquarters building like a wall. Daylight seemed to be fighting a battle with the enveloping darkness, one in which it was no more than holding its own.

  The summer had been blazing, unnaturally hot, and autumn balmy until, as if to complete the cycle, October had brought a sudden cold snap, culminating in a fog which the Evening News swore . . . and no one was about to argue . . . was the worst seen in Edinburgh for forty-seven years. It had arrived half-way through the previous afternoon; it had not been unannounced, but its density had taken the weather forecasters by surprise. Since early morning, as soon as it had become clear that it would not lift with the dawn, television and radio stations across central Scotland had been broadcasting emergency messages announcing school closures and bus, rail and flight cancellations, and advising everyone to stay indoors, until they could venture out in relative safety. Skinner had been grateful for Neil McIlhenney’s offer of his spare bedroom rather than driving the twenty miles to Gullane at no more than walking pace, then having to leave home before six to reach the office in time. Sarah had understood when he had phoned her; in truth she had sounded indifferent.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he called out as he sat, bringing the meeting back to order, ‘the chief has to prepare for a board meeting this morning. He won’t be back, so I’ll take over the chair.’ He looked at Stringfellow. ‘Let’s tie up any loose ends. This visit has been arranged from the start in association with the Executive rather than Westminster. If . . . and it wouldn’t be the first time . . . there are tensions between Downing Street and the First Minister’s office because of it, I don’t want to know. All I want is a final guest list. For what it’s worth I think that having two of the world’s highest profile targets side by side on a series of public platforms is a fucking horrible idea.’ He threw a glance at the Archbishop. ‘If I was wearing your mitre, Jim, I’d advise against it. That said, I do remember His Holiness as a man who doesn’t like to say no. So, if it happens, I’ll protect them. But Mr Rossi and I need to know, and damn soon, because until we do, we can’t finalise our plans.’

  He leaned back, feeling suddenly irritable, and uncomfortable in yesterday’s shirt. ‘In fact,’ he said heavily, ‘it’s pointless going on here.’ He pointed at the Foreign Office man. ‘You,’ he pointed at Rennie, ‘and you. Go away and speak to your respective ministers and get this sorted out. I want a final decision on the VIP list, and I want it by close of play today.’

  He reached across Willie Haggerty and picked a document off the top of a pile that lay in front of McIlhenney. ‘We’ve spent valuable time preparing this,’ he exclaimed, waving it in the air. ‘If any of it’s going to be knocked on the head, I need to know.’ He felt a final burst of exasperation. ‘And I need to know now!’

  6

  The high screens that had been erected were, for that moment, mostly unnecessary. Nobody could have seen the thing they were hiding, unless they were less than twenty yards away, and the police had cordoned off an area one hundred yards in diameter to keep the casually curious public and the professionally curious media at a safe distance.

  Police Constable Harold ‘Sauce’ Haddock was not a happy young man. He had been on patrol duties for no more than a few months and all of them had been purgatory. For all that older officers assured him that everyone had unlucky runs, it seemed to him that whenever the brown stuff . . . Sauce’s grandfather had been a policeman, and a Free Presbyterian, and he had been forcibly discouraged from swearing . . . hit the fan, it always seemed to splatter on him.

  Two days into his time on the panda cars there had been a rail incident, a jumper on to the line from the small footbridge behind the castle: technically it had been one for the transport police, but Sauce and Charlie Johnston, his mate, had picked up the call. Barely a week after that, he had been called to a house in Dalry where a man had been found dead. The unusual difficulty had arisen from the fact that he had been dead for a fortnight. Not long after that there had been a drunk who’d fallen out of a window during a party and impaled himself on railings below. Then there had been those two kids . . . but he didn’t like to think about that.

  When they had taken the call, five minutes into the start of their shift, he had known that whatever it was, it would not be the high point of his day. All that the control room had told them was that there had been a call from an agitated but anonymous member of the public asking for police to come to Meadow Walk. The caller had been asked to wait at the scene, but even Sauce was experienced enough to know that there was little chance of that.

  For a while, they thought that the call might have been a hoax. They had been edging along George IV Bridge when the shout had
come in: it had taken Sauce ten minutes to drive the short distance to George Square, adjacent to Meadow Walk and relatively safe to park in the darkness. They had checked the stretch up to Lauriston Place, but found nothing; they had retraced their steps, going carefully, one on either side of the cycle path and walkway, torches lit as they searched, yard by yard, all the way down to the Meadows.

  ‘A comedian,’ Charlie had exclaimed at the foot of the walk. ‘Just what we did not fucking need on a morning like this.’ PC Johnston’s grandfather had been a miner and a Communist, given to intemperance in all things, including language. He had been on his way back up to the car when Sauce had called him back, his voice hoarse, not from the fog but from fright.

  It had almost been out of his vision, the heavy fruit of the tree: almost but not quite. They approached it inch by inch, almost comically, as if there was a chance of the dark shape leaping down on them. Their torches were useless until they were up against it, or rather him. When he had shone his beam directly into the purple face, with its bulging eyes and its swollen, protruding tongue, he had realised in that same instant that he was adding one more image to his private catalogue of things never to be forgotten as long as he lived.

  The body was still hanging from the thick bough as Chief Superintendent Manny English and Detective Inspector Stevie Steele looked up at it, but two constables on ladders were supporting it, one on either side, while a third used a screwdriver as a lever to untie the thick belt that suspended it. The senior officers were close enough to see what was happening, but not directly under the tree, keeping disturbance of the immediate area to a minimum.

  They watched as the PCs took the weight, and carefully lowered the burden to the ground, beside the pathway. As soon as they were finished, the on-call medical examiner stepped forward, and knelt beside the stiff, still form. He shone a light into each eyeball, loosened the leather noose and drew it over the head, then tested each of the limbs. Within a minute he jumped to his feet, nodding emphatically to himself.

  ‘He’s been up there since last night,’ he announced. ‘Rigor mortis is fully established; that indicates that he’s been dead for around twelve hours . . . or more, of course.’

  ‘It’s feasible,’ said Steele. ‘In the darkness of last night you could have walked past within a couple of yards of him and never have known he was there.’

  ‘Aye,’ muttered English, ‘but who was he, and why didn’t anyone come looking for him?’

  ‘Maybe they did, sir. Have you checked missing persons information?’

  The divisional commander bristled in his uniform, and Steele knew that he had made a mistake. Manny English was a notorious book operator: his question was one that could, and should, have gone without the asking.

  ‘There haven’t been any,’ he replied tersely. ‘Not in the past week at any rate, and you’ve just heard what the MO has to say. Do you want him photographed again?’ he asked.

  ‘No sir. There’s no point.’

  ‘Very well. Let’s get him into a plastic coffin and off to the mortuary where they can thaw the poor bugger out.’ He waved through the slightly thinned fog to two uniformed men, who were waiting beside a blue van with a ventilator on top.

  ‘One thing first,’ said Steele. He bent over the body and felt around the chest area, then opened the dark grey suit, and from an inside pocket produced a wallet. He opened it and, from a compartment within, drew out a business card. ‘Ivor Whetstone, MCIBS,’ he read. ‘Director of Business . . .’ He glanced up at English. ‘He’s a banker, sir.’

  The chief superintendent nodded sagely. ‘I could tell by his suit that he was some sort of a business type; banker, lawyer, accountant, something like that.’

  Steele could tell in his turn why his senior officer had not prospered in CID. ‘I once arrested a bank robber who wore the same brand of suit as this,’ he said.

  ‘I wonder what drove him to do it?’ English murmured.

  ‘Drove whom to do what?’

  The uniformed commander looked at the detective in exasperation. ‘Him.’ He pointed at Whetstone’s body. ‘That.’ He pointed at the tree.

  Steele sighed. ‘At the very best, sir,’ he said, ‘this has to be a suspicious death; maybe even a homicide.’

  ‘Ohh, really?’ English exclaimed. ‘Honest to God, that’s CID all over, rushing to judgement.’

  ‘I’m judging bugger all, sir.’

  ‘You’re ruling out suicide, though.’

  ‘I’m not ruling out anything, but I don’t see this as suicide.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Where’s his support?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whatever it was he climbed to top himself: the guy’s feet were about a metre off the ground.’

  The chief superintendent frowned, and thought for a few moments. ‘He could have climbed the tree, then out along the branch and jumped off.’

  Steele could not restrain himself: he laughed. ‘I’ll tell you what, sir. You’re about the same age, size and build as that bloke, and your shoes are much like his. You show me how he did it. You climb up that wet, slippery, thick tree-trunk, with not a single foothold, and then you climb out along that limb.’

  ‘Maybe he did,’ English persisted.

  ‘Listen, sir. If we’d found him lying under the tree with his fucking neck broken, then I might just have agreed with you. The way things are, I’m calling a full scene-of-crime team here, and I’m calling Detective Superintendent Rose.’

  ‘If you must, you must.’ The divisional commander stalked off.

  ‘I must, sir,’ the inspector called after him. ‘There’s one other thing too.’ English stopped. ‘Where’s his coat?’ The chief superintendent frowned but said nothing.

  ‘If this guy came out here last night to end his life, he wouldn’t have needed to string himself up if he wasn’t wearing a coat. All he’d have had to do was lie down and go to sleep. Nobody would have found him and he’d have been dead of hypothermia by morning.’

  7

  Skinner was in his office in the early afternoon, working his way through the day’s paperwork, when Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk, his executive assistant, came in to tell him that Archbishop Gainer and Signor Rossi had returned unexpectedly. He frowned. ‘Don’t keep them waiting outside, man,’ he snapped. ‘Show them in at once.’

  The DCC and McGurk were still new to each other. When Neil McIlhenney had left the exec post for Special Branch, he had been given the job, in Skinner’s absence, of choosing his own successor. That absence had been longer than anticipated, and the young sergeant had spent the time cooling his heels and reporting to the rough-hewn Willie Haggerty. It was not an ideal situation: McGurk could have exercised the option of going back to divisional duties, but he had been assured that a stint in Bob Skinner’s office would be a career springboard, as it had been for the likes of Brian Mackie, Maggie Rose and especially for Andy Martin, who had made it in his mid-thirties to an ACC’s uniform in the Tayside force. So he had stayed, and he had waited for the return of the Big Man.

  When, finally, it had happened, McGurk found himself wondering about the wisdom of that decision. He did not know Bob Skinner well but, like everyone else in the force, he knew of his legend as a crime-fighter, and as a leader who earned respect and loyalty rather than demanding it. The reality turned out to be a short-tempered, menacing figure, intolerant of the slightest error, delay or omission.

  He had taken the job in the belief that if the DCC liked you, you were made, and with the assurance of Neil McIlhenney that there was no better man in the force for whom an officer could work. With every day that passed, the less secure the sergeant felt in his job, the more he wondered how he had displeased Skinner, and the more he missed his former boss, the dour, quirky, but likeable head of CID, Chief Superintendent Dan Pringle.

  After a few weeks of rockets and reprimands he had gone to Pringle and had asked what he could be doing wrong. ‘I can’t help you there, son,’ th
e veteran had told him. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone. I got a right bollocking the other day because Greg Jay’s clear-up rate had gone down. I even heard him shouting at McIlhenney one day, and he’s his best pal in this place now that Andy Martin’s gone.’

  ‘He yelled at Neil? How did he take that?’

  ‘Oh, he yelled back, because he was right. But don’t you try it, son: you’re not McIlhenney, not yet at any rate. The best thing to do is make allowances for him. He’s been ill, although he tries to pretend it never happened, and on top of that his brother died. Big Bob’s human just like the rest of us; if he’s no’ himself, maybe it’s not that surprising.’

  McGurk had taken his advice, but he had come close to forgetting it on a couple of occasions. With the Archbishop and his colleague at the door, and within earshot, he swallowed the latest rebuke impassively, stood aside and ushered them in. He made to leave, as the guests sat on the soft leather couch, opposite the window, but the DCC called after him: ‘No, Sergeant, you stay here. I may need a note of this meeting.’

  Grateful of the recognition, McGurk took a pad from the desk and a pen from his pocket, and pulled across an upright chair. He was almost six and a half feet tall, and he had found that he could not fit comfortably into the DCC’s reception seating.

  ‘Anyone want coffee?’ Skinner asked. The Archbishop shook his head; Rossi, the Italian, looked across at the filter machine on a table in the corner and made a face.

  ‘Would you like some, sir?’ McGurk volunteered.

  His boss frowned at him. ‘I’m not bloody helpless, son. If I did I’d get it.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Suddenly Skinner stopped; his frown deepened. ‘No, Sergeant, I’m the guy who should apologise. That was plain rudeness. I’ll tell you what, maybe you could fetch some bottles of water from the fridge beside my desk, and some glasses from the table.’ He looked back at his visitors. ‘Or would you guys like a beer?’