Funeral Note

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Indeed?’ he replied. ‘What’s a Beowulf?’

  ‘A specialist, high-quality rifle; American.’

  ‘Is that what you supplied to Smit and Botha?’ the chief asked.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Welsh snarled, and started to rise, but a foot in the centre of his chest slammed him back down.

  ‘No, you stay there. You can answer my questions just as easily from the floor. And those are: number one, did Kenny Bass know what was in the box he brought here hidden among the cache of bootleg fags? My guess is no. Our Kenny might be up for a driving job, but he does not have the bottle for being part of the weapons supply chain in an assassination. Number two, what type of weapon did you supply Cohen? Number three, did he describe his operation to you? Number four, did Varley know anything about the operation you were running from underneath his house, or did he know everything about it? Number five, why the hell did you have to kill him, and your cousin? Number six, who was careless enough to leave Jock’s wallet in his pocket, and dumb enough not to realise that even if you can wedge off the engine number, every vehicle can be traced through a unique chassis identifier that’s hidden way out of sight?’ He paused, smiling down at the man on the ground.

  ‘I’m saying nothing,’ Welsh hissed. ‘I want a lawyer.’

  Mr Skinner shook his head. ‘It isn’t that sort of situation, Freddy. It’s the kind that calls for advanced interrogation techniques, of which officially I do not approve, unless we need information quickly about a potential terrorist assassination, in a venue where my wife and the wife of a friend will be present. Now that I’ve explained that, let’s deal with my questions.’

  Welsh stared up at him. He was afraid by then, but there was still resistance in him.

  The chief held up the bucket. ‘Ever heard of waterboarding?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ our captive grunted.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. We don’t have time for that.’ He put it down and squatted beside him, leaning close. ‘Have you ever seen that Liam Neeson film,’ he murmured, ‘where he plays a CIA man whose daughter’s been kidnapped? There’s a bit in it where old Liam . . . if anyone ever makes a movie of my life,’ he said conversationally, ‘I want that man to play me . . . where he’s on the phone to the bad guy and he says something along the lines of, “I have a particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a long career.” My young colleague here hasn’t had all that long a career, but he has those skills. If you don’t talk to me, I’m going to leave the room and let him practise them.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ Welsh hissed. ‘You’re Skinner, the cop. You wouldn’t fucking dare.’

  The chief stood up again. ‘Oh no?’ He turned to me. ‘The floor is yours.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, sir; but you really must leave the room. I’ll call you when our friend has something to say.’

  ‘Okay.’ He did, and closed the door.

  As he left, Welsh tried to rise, but I kicked his legs out from under him. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s irrelevant. All you need to know is that I’m the man with the gun. Are you going to talk to us?’

  ‘No fucking chance.’

  The truth is, I don’t have any advanced interrogation skills. I was planning on making them up as I went along, as once or twice we had to in Iraq. Holding my gun on the man on the floor, I took the Beowulf from the chest with my free hand. ‘Lovely weapon,’ I said, ‘fifty calibre.’ I checked the magazine; it held seven rounds and it was loaded; I slipped my pistol into my pocket then hefted the rifle. ‘If I shot you in the kneecap with this,’ I asked, ‘do you think you’d ever walk properly again? Personally I’d doubt that.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ he sneered. ‘This is Scotland.’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I countered. ‘This is the cellar of a police officer you’ve just murdered in the course of an act of terrorism. No rules apply here, and I’m an agent of the state. I can make you disappear. It will be the easiest thing in the world for a third cremated body to be recovered from your van.’

  In such situations, there is only one imperative; you must make them believe you. I was getting there with Freddy Welsh, but I could still see scepticism in his eyes. So I shot him.

  The bullet creased the back of his right hand, ricocheted off the floor and buried itself in the plastered wall. He screamed, from pain and fright, and crawled backwards, away from me, as I raised the rifle again and aimed at his knee.

  ‘Enough!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll talk to him.’ He paused. ‘If I do, what’s in it for me?’

  ‘I won’t kill you. That’s all that’s in it.’ I kicked one of the tea chests. ‘As for your arsenal here, what happens about that depends on the man outside. So my advice to you is, hold nothing back.’ I stepped across and opened the door.

  Mr Skinner came back into the room. ‘I can leave again,’ he promised, ‘just as easily.’ Welsh nodded; he believed. ‘So tell me about it.’

  ‘Bass had no idea,’ the arms dealer began; he had pulled himself up to a sitting position, leaning against the wall. ‘As far as he was concerned, he was only going for the cigarettes.’

  ‘Why did you set it up that way?’

  ‘I didn’t. My Spanish suppliers did. It was part of the deal. These people, they’ll fence anything. They can source me specific weapons, usually stolen from the police or military, maybe even bought from them, for all I know. But it’s knock for knock, and sometimes they want me to take other stuff off their hands. Handy in a way; you were right about Kenny; he’d never have gone just for the guns.’

  ‘Guns plural?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This place,’ Mr Skinner said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I built it for Jock, for free. The deal was that I got the use of this room.’

  ‘Did he know what it was for?’

  Welsh stared at him. ‘Of course he bloody knew. Having built the fucking room, I had to rent it off him as well. The money went into a offshore bank account in Ella’s name.’

  ‘Did she know about it?’

  He shrugged. ‘She must have known something went on here. How much Jock told her, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter now they’re both cinders,’ the chief constable said, roughly. ‘Go on, tell us about the operation.’

  ‘I was approached about five weeks ago,’ Welsh replied, ‘by an Israeli bloke called Beram Cohen. I knew him. I’d supplied him before with guaranteed clean handguns. Somebody was paying him to take out radicalised Muslims.’

  I laughed. Welsh glared at me. ‘What’s so fucking funny?’ he snapped.

  ‘You are,’ I told him. ‘You supplied weapons to a guy like him, in his world, and yet until five minutes ago, you didn’t realise that makes you part of it yourself, as disposable as he was. If I was ordered to kill you, you’d go into a crematorium oven at night and nobody would be any the wiser.’

  ‘That’s what they should have done with Beram,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes, what about that?’ the chief asked. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’d arranged for Beram to meet me in Edinburgh last Wednesday,’ he replied, ‘at my yard, not here. He was going to pay me for the weapons.’

  ‘What did they buy from you?’

  ‘One of the carbines that Bass brought from Spain,’ he explained. ‘The other two were handguns from my stock. Anyway, they turned up, the three of them. I wasn’t expecting Smit and Botha, but Beram said he’d brought them to drive because he had this bloody awful headache. He had the money in a backpack. He handed it over, and a minute later, he died. Just like that. He stiffened, then he fell over; he kicked a bit, then he was dead. His mates tried to resuscitate him, but it was no use.’

  He frowned, as if he was seeing it all over again. ‘The three of us, we were all shocked, but those South Africans, they were,’ he struggled for words, ‘they were just beside themselves. Once we were all back in control, I offered them the money back, but they said n
o, that they had a commission and that they would go ahead. Beram wasn’t involved in the actual hit; he did the planning and took care of the escape.

  ‘I told them they’d need to get rid of the body. I suggested putting it in my truck, driving it out past North Berwick and tipping it into the sea. They went crazy at that; I thought they were going to kill me. They said that he was a fallen comrade and all that guff, and that he had to be treated with respect, not just stuck in a hole and forgotten about.

  ‘I said fair enough but I had nowhere to keep him. We could hardly take him to hospital, and they wouldn’t leave him somewhere and call the ambulance service. It was Botha who came up with the idea of doing what they did with him, burying him and then calling your lot. As it happened, I’d bought some bed linen for the house that day. I gave them a sheet to wrap him in; they stripped him and left me his clothes to burn, so they couldn’t be used to trace him. They said they didn’t want him identified for a couple of days. Smit asked me where they should take him. Given that he was dead, Mortonhall sounded like as good a place as any to me, so I suggested that.’

  ‘So it had nothing to do with setting a false trail for the police,’ Mr Skinner asked, ‘given that the operation’s in Glasgow?’

  ‘Is it?’ Welsh asked. ‘That’s news to me. I never want to know any detail about things like that. Anyway, no, it had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘So they went away,’ he continued, ‘and last night they came back here, to collect the gun. Is that what happened?’

  He nodded. ‘Aye. And when I brought them round here, at one in the morning, who was standing upstairs, looking out the window but bloody Jock.’ He sighed.

  ‘You see, the arrangement was that every time I brought a client here to collect an order, Jock would always take Ella off somewhere for the night. He didn’t last night, though. There he was, as large as life, but not for much longer. He saw both the South Africans, and they saw him. They wanted to know who he was, and I had to tell them. I’d hoped they’d be okay about it, but when I gave them the weapon, the imported one, Botha took it . . . he’s an animal, by the way . . . and said he was going to test-fire it.’

  Welsh looked away. ‘I knew what he was going to do,’ he muttered, ‘but all I could think about was that he was going to kill me as well. I heard three shots from upstairs, inside the house, then just after, three more. I’d brought my van with me, not the car. I guess you know by now what they made me help them do. When it was finished, they dropped me back at my yard. I stayed there all night, thinking, and most of today. Eventually it dawned on me that you’d be bound to identify Jock eventually, and that I had to clear this place out or I’d be in it up to my nuts. Enter you two,’ he took a deep breath, ‘and that’s the whole story.’

  ‘Not quite,’ the chief said. ‘What were the weapons?’

  ‘A Heckler and Koch MP3 carbine and two Glock pistols. There were six H and Ks in the box that Kenny Bass brought back from Valencia.’ He nodded towards the open box. ‘The other five are still there.’

  Mr Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘Cohen ordered them specifically, by name?’

  Welsh nodded.

  ‘Is that significant?’ I asked.

  ‘Too damn right,’ he retorted. ‘They’re police weapons.’ He glared at Welsh. ‘Lucky for you that I sent Maggie through there.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ the man on the floor muttered.

  ‘I’ve sent my deputy to the concert hall with a warrant for the arrest of the target, on a made-up charge that only needs to hold for an hour or so. He’ll be halfway to Edinburgh by now.’

  ‘He?’ Welsh repeated. ‘When Smit picked up the carbine, he said, “This baby will take her out, no question.” I don’t know who you’ve picked up, but believe me . . . the target’s a woman.’

  Bob Skinner

  ‘I don’t know who you’ve picked up, but believe me . . . the target’s a woman.’

  When he said that, shock, panic, horror, maybe all three swept over me in waves; my heart went ice-cold and for a moment my knees buckled.

  Clyde was still holding the Beowulf. I ripped it from his grasp and levelled it at Freddy Welsh’s head.

  ‘Are you telling the truth,’ I shouted, ‘or is that bullshit?’

  ‘It’s true, it’s true,’ Welsh screamed. ‘It’s a woman, honest; on my life, I swear.’

  I jerked the barrel upwards and fired a round into the wall about a foot above his head. Then I turned on Houseman. ‘You people got it wrong!’ I bellowed. ‘You got it fucking wrong.’ I was ready to go for him, but he stayed calm.

  ‘Mr Skinner,’ he said, ‘I promise you, that’s the intelligence we have. We know the Israelis have a kill order on Fabrizzi; he’s the only possible target.’

  A little of his coolness transferred itself to me. ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. I pointed the gun in Welsh’s direction once again. He was cowering away from me, trying to make himself as small as possible. He was terrified; he’d pissed his pants. ‘Go into the garden store,’ I ordered. ‘Find some rope, twine, wire, anything, and hog-tie this bastard.’ I wasn’t thinking clearly, my thoughts were jumbled up, my priorities shot to hell. ‘Wait,’ I snapped. ‘Where will your people be now?’

  ‘A couple of them will be on their way home,’ Clyde replied. ‘The other will be back in the office by now. I told them their job would be over when they delivered Fabrizzi safe and well. The First Minister was going to be at the concert so . . .’ I nodded; standard practice dictated that Strathclyde would have done a security sweep of the hall.

  ‘Bugger!’ I hissed. ‘That means the Home Secretary can go fuck herself. I’m doing what I should have done from the off, informing Strathclyde. But first . . .’

  As the MI5 man went in search of bonds for our prisoner I took out my phone and scrolled through incoming calls till I found the one from Amanda. I pressed redial.

  She answered almost instantly. ‘Bob, what’s happening? Do you have any news for me? The Home Secretary’s calling me every ten minutes or so, demanding results. What can I tell her?’

  ‘You can tell her that if this goes wrong, Amanda, then I’m going to kill her. Listen, earlier on you told me about a current threat against a British political figure.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘It’s serious. It came out of Afghanistan; a source said that the Taliban have commissioned political hits in Britain, the US and Canada, the three major players in the action. They’re using specialist contractors, not their own amateurs. You may not have noticed, it didn’t get much press over here, but a week ago, there were three arrests in Ottawa. They related to a plot to blow up the Canadian Defence Minister’s car. Ever since, we’ve been on full alert at Westminster.’

  ‘Did it ever occur to anybody,’ I asked her, ‘that there are two other parliaments on this island, and that there are politicians outside London who might make much softer targets? For example, there’s my wife, who was heckled at the last Scottish Labour Party conference for her vociferous support for the Afghan campaign. Didn’t that ever dawn on anyone down there?’

  ‘Bob,’ Amanda said, as Houseman came back into the room with cut lengths of blue nylon rope, ‘please don’t shout at me, there’s a love.’ I hadn’t realised that I was. ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘I’m telling you that I’ve just had reliable information, from the man who sold the team their weapons, that the target is a woman. It isn’t fucking Fabrizzi, who is at this moment in my force’s custody. But the strong possibility, no, probability, remains that the concert hall is the venue for the hit. This is July; this is Glasgow. The bloody city is closed for the holidays, there’s nothing else on, nothing else for professional assassins to be aiming at.’

  ‘And your . . .’

  ‘My wife, my high-profile British politician wife is there right now, in the front row, and sat beside her is the wife of a colleague and very good friend.’

  ‘Wha
t can I do?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘Three things. You can pass my message on to the Home Secretary, word for word. Then you can tell her that I’m about to call Toni Field and explain exactly why I haven’t done so earlier. Once you’ve done that, I’d appreciate prayer.’

  As I ended the call, Clyde was completing a very professional job of tying up Freddy Welsh; he wasn’t moving an inch without assistance. I nodded approval, then called Aileen’s mobile. It rang four times and went to voicemail.

  ‘This is me,’ I said. ‘If you get this, and you’re in the concert hall, find the most senior police officer there and have him put you and Paula under guard. Instruct him also to disarm any officers there who might be carrying weapons. Then call me.’

  I was scared to make the next call. If I’d been in Mario McGuire’s shoes I’d have been wanting to knock my head off, for being reckless enough not to warn him as soon as I saw the way the story was heading.

  He answered instantly. ‘No sign of Welsh,’ he volunteered at once.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘There wouldn’t be. He’s lying at my feet under Jock Varley’s extension, trussed up like a chicken.’

  Then I told him the rest of it. ‘Mario, I’m sorry,’ I said at the end. ‘I broke my own rule; I listened to a politician. You can beat me up later, I won’t resist, but for now, try to get Paula on her phone and, if you can, tell her to take Aileen and lock the pair of them in the toilets till I get there.’

  ‘Till we get there, you mean,’ he said, grimly. ‘But you’ve got at least twenty minutes’ start on me, so go on man, don’t waste any more time talking to me. Get on the move and alert Strathclyde from the road.’

  We took the keys to both storerooms from Welsh, and left him locked in his own, for collection later, with his arsenal. We ran for the car and burned rubber getting out of the Pines. Clyde set the satnav on fastest route to Glasgow, and thank the Lord we didn’t have to retrace our steps: three turns and two minutes and we were on the motorway, travelling like Lewis Hamilton was ahead of us and we had a mind to catch him.