Quintin Jardine - Skinner Skinner 07

by Skinner's Ghosts (pdf)

  'Sure, Anderson's behaving badly. Okay, Maley's using your situation to score points. But they're only doing so because you made it possible. No-one else did. Bob. Only you.

  'I... no, not just me ... Alex and I are begging you to forget al this shit, and get on with your career, before you blow it.'

  Gradually, the fire faded from Bob's eyes as he looked across the desk. Gradually, he seemed to sag, to slump back in his chair.

  'You're right, of course, Andy,' he muttered quietly. 'I can get as angry as I like with those characters, but I'm real y only trying to shift the blame for my problems away from my own doorstep. I'm their architect, beginning to end, not Salmon, Maley, or anyone else.'

  He smiled suddenly. 'You know if one of my divisional commanders was in a pickle like this, I'd send him on a couple of months' sabbatical to sort himself out.

  'I dressed it up as "irreconcilable differences" when Sarah and I separated, but you're right. I just walked out. I exploded, accused her of disloyalty and manipulation, and didn't make the slightest effort to reconcile anything. Now it's too late.'

  He glanced up, suddenly and sharply. 'So what does that make Pam? Are the Maley clique right? Is she a victim?'

  Andy shook his head. 'No, she isn't You're clearly attracted to each other.' He stopped. 'But if you are asking me,' he resumed abruptly, 'I'd say you might be using her as a shield, a barrier to prevent you facing up to how much you've lost in Sarah, and how much you miss her and Jazz.'

  Bob rose from his chair, and went to the window. He stood with 133

  his back to his friend, looking out, oblivious of the people coming and going below. 'D'you think this is my mid-life crisis, boy?' he asked.

  'If it is,' replied Andy. 'I hope it's your first and last, and I hope that it's over soon.

  'I can suggest one cure, though. Some good old-fashioned police work. Arthur Dorward called me, sounding fair pleased with himself.

  He says he's found a potential lead, and he wants to come to see me about it. He's due in my office in ten minutes.

  'Want to sit in?'

  'Sure,' said Skinner, the DCC once more. 'Why not. You head back along. I'll round up Mcl henney and join you directly. 'Oh, and Andy,' he added, as Martin headed for the door. 'Thanks for making me face up to myself, at last.'

  134

  -'aw

  41

  The red-haired Inspector was already in the Head of CID's office when Skinner and his assistant arrived. Both men sat relaxed, as if waiting for him, as they had been.

  'Morning, Arthur. No, don't get up,' said the DCC, as he and Mcl henney took the other seats that Martin had drawn up to his desk.

  'Well,' he said. 'The DCS said you had made a breakthrough. Let's hear about it.'

  'Very good, sir,' said Dorward, sitting more upright in his chair.

  'The first thing I have to report is that the pathologist's staff have completed their examination of Mrs McGrath's body. There was nothing there, nothing at all, that shouldn't have been. The tissue under the fingernails was her own, right enough, and there were no stray hairs lodged anywhere.'

  'Certain?' asked Skinner.

  'One thousand per cent, sir.'

  'So where's your breakthrough?'

  The Inspector fought to suppress a smile of self-satisfaction. 'Wel , sir, it started with a bit of luck, real y. One of my team was talking to the cleaning woman, and she mentioned that Mrs McGrath's en suite bathroom had only been fitted a few months before, with some of the insurance money she received after her husband's death.'

  'Yes, that's right,' said the DCC. 'I remember her mentioning that she'd made some improvements to the house. So where does that take us?'

  Dorward's smile broke through, irresistibly. 'Well, sir, that made me wonder. Like, how many people would have used the shower, or the handbasin since they were installed? And like, did the killer wash away the blood and stuff after the rape and murder?'

  'So I got in a plumber to strip out the piping and examine the traps.' He paused. Skinner and Martin each nodded approval.

  'There were some hairs trapped in the shower,' he continued. 'Al Mrs McGrath's. Some head, some pubic, but al hers, no doubt about it.

  'But in the S-bend of the basin, there we got lucky. We found hair samples from six different people. We've identified three of them.

  135

  The lady herself. Mark, his nanny, and the cleaner. The other two, we don't know about, other than that they're from different people. With your permission,' he looked from Martin to Skinner then back again,

  'I'd like to start DNA testing.'

  'Fair enough,' said Skinner, 'but before you get too excited, remember that Leona had been a widow for quite a few months. There may have been other people in her bedroom, apart from the kil er.'

  Martin shook his head. 'Not since the new plumbing was instal ed.

  We've spoken to the close family members and to her friends. None of them can remember having used that basin.

  'As for man friends, we don't believe that we're in the plural there.

  We spoke to a close woman friend of the victim. She said that the two of them had a drink together on the Sunday evening before the murder, at Leona's place. Once they'd had a few, it got down to girl talk, and Leona confessed to her that since her husband's death she'd had sex just once.'

  'Did she mention a name?' asked the DCC.

  'No, sir,' Dorward answered: 'only that it had happened at her place, in her bedroom, and just on the one occasion.' He smiled.

  'According to the pal, she did say that the guy had a bigger cock than her husband, but that's al she told her about him.'

  'I don't think that's admissible in evidence,' said Martin. 'Okay, Arthur. Run your DNA tests. The budget wil stand them. It's a long shot, but you never know your luck.'

  136

  42

  'The cashier remembers him, sir,' Maggie Rose told DCS Martin.

  'Youngish men shopping alone early in the morning tend to stand out in supermarkets, so it seems. The girl's name is Lesley, and I'd say she's a reliable witness.

  'Her description matches the one Mr Carr, the farmer, gave us.'

  'What about accent?'

  'Lesley said she doesn't remember him saying anything other than

  "Thank you" when she gave him his change.'

  'Anything strike her as odd about him?'

  Martin heard Rose laugh at the other end of the line. 'I asked her that. She said that she noticed that he didn't buy any cat food, or any Beck's. Apparently guys his age shopping for themselves nearly always buy cat food and Beck's.'

  The DCS grunted. 'That's the sort of sweeping generalisation that forms gender stereotypes.'

  'High rank's teaching you diplomacy, all right,' said Rose. 'A couple of years ago you'd have said, "That's bloody women for you!".'

  'That's funny,' said Martin with a smile. 'I thought that's what I just said. Thanks, Mags, see you.' He hung up and turned to Skinner.

  'The man bought enough food for two days,' he said. 'Quick-cook, easy-dispose stuff. Corned beef, meatbal s, yoghurt, the stuff he'd expect a kid to go for.'

  'Two days,' said the DCC. 'So if he brought Mark back to the caravan on Friday, and cal ed me on Saturday, unless he went shopping again, it's a fair bet that he moved him again on Sunday.'

  Martin nodded.

  'One thing more,' Skinner added. 'He bought enough tinned food for two days, but he bought it on Wednesday morning. Which tells us . . .'

  '. . . suggests to us,' broke in the Head ofCID, 'that he didn't live in the caravan between Wednesday and Friday, otherwise he'd have bought more food.'

  'Aye. So let's add to our file on this guy the possibility that he has an address in the Edinburgh area. Let's try and read him, this clever bastard who thinks he's thumbing his nose at me. Let's try and picture him planning this crime.

  137

  'Forget about motive, for now. He'll tell us what that is, when he's good and ready. Let's
try to read his mind. He's very meticulous, is our man. I think he must have watched Leona for a long time. He must have known her routine: when she'd be at home from Parliament, and so on. He must have known that Mark's au pair .. .' Skinner paused and smiled. 'The wee chap gets very offended if you call her a nanny. He was thirty when he was born, that one.'

  He continued. 'He must have watched for long enough to know that the girl always had Friday afternoon off. Mark might have cal ed her his aupair but she's from Perth. She went home to her parents as soon as Leona got back from London on a Friday, and came back on Sunday night.

  'He planned everything in the almost certain knowledge that the two of them, mother and child, would be together, and unprotected.

  He stole the caravan - no big deal, he'd just cut the chain on the gate to the dealership yard and help himself- then set it up on this man Carr's land in the middle of fucking nowhere, provisioned and ready for a two-day stop-over. Once it was ready, he went home and waited for his moment.'

  He paused, his eyes distant. 'So where's home?' he asked himself, aloud.

  'The kidnapper decided to take Mark out of town - somewhere near enough so that he wouldn't have to spend too long on the road getting there, but far enough off the beaten track to be safe. The moors are perfect, and they were even close enough to my place to allow him to pull his telephone stunt with me.

  'But why did he go to al that bother? Answer, because he wanted to keep the child, to use him for some purpose, yet to be revealed.

  Next question. Why not just take him home? Possible answer: because he has a family, or lives with a parent. Yet all my instincts are crying out to me that this man is a loner. Better answer: because he knew that in the period immediately after the murder we would make Edinburgh very hot indeed, far too risky a place to hide the boy. I think this guy lives in our city, Andy. Do you agree?'

  'Yes,' said the Head ofCID, 'I do. I think that's more than likely.

  'But Bob, there's one thing that's stil eating at me. Clearly this guy knows you, and knows of your bond with Mark. He's targeting you, somehow, through this crime. But to come to Gul ane to make that cal . Why would he do that?'

  'Because he's crazy, Andy, that's why, and he's a gamester. This guy is as mad as a rucking hatter, and he thinks that he can play with the stupid policeman.'

  Skinner went on. 'Let's consider something else. He only planned to stay in the van for a couple of days. Why?'

  138

  'He wouldn't want to outstay his welcome with Carr, I guess,'

  Martin offered.

  'Right. So where did he go, when he left on Sunday, after he and Mark had finished their food supply?'

  'If I knew that,' said the younger man, 'I'd go and get him.'

  'If I knew where he lived,' said Skinner, 'so would I. If he guessed that we only have the manpower to keep the real pressure on for a short period, what was to keep him from just going home?'

  The Chief Superintendent looked at the Deputy Chief, and simply nodded his silent agreement.

  'Are you seeing the press today?' Skinner asked.

  'Whenever Carr finishes the photofit.'

  'Right, why don't you tell them that we've found the caravan on the moors, that it's empty, and that we believe that the kidnapper, and Mark, may be back in the city? Let's heat the place up again, with a vengeance. If he is here, maybe we'l panic him into making a break for it.'

  Martin looked suddenly doubtful. 'Isn't there a danger that if he panics he'll kill the child?'

  The DCC looked him in the eye. 'Yes, there's bound to be: yet this man wants Mark, Andy. He needs him for something. That risk has existed since the kidnap, but he hasn't done it yet, or I'm pretty sure you'd have found the kid dead in the caravan.

  'Look, our man has been setting the agenda all along. Let's make some moves of our own, and show him that we've got some brains after all.'

  'Okay,' said the Head ofCID. 'I'l play it that way. Now, since you seem to have recovered your powers of deduction and are back in the detecting game, is there anything else that we could be doing that we're not?'

  Skinner smiled. 'Since you ask . . .' he said. 'That caravan. It had a phoney number plate, didn't it?'

  'Yes. I wonder why the guy didn't take it off. He's blown his cover in a way by leaving it there.'

  'Sure but if he'd removed it he'd have drawn early attention to the van, which he did not want to do. Anyway it doesn't matter. Since we don't know who he is, our man will be using his legal number again.' The DCC paused.

  'But stil , the phoneys are a potential lead: how about taking the city apart to see if you can find out who made them?'

  139

  43

  'This is getting to be a habit,' said Skinner, hanging up the phone and turning to choose a tie from the half-dozen or so that he kept in Pamela's wardrobe. 'Telephone calls from David Hewlett two mornings on the trot.'

  She stopped in the act of fastening her skirt, and looked across at him. 'That was the Secretary of State's office? D'you think he's changed his mind about . . .' She paused.

  'About giving me the bul et, you were going to say? No chance of that. He's already made the announcement, although he may have to find another replacement for me, even after my chat with Jock Govan.'

  'He wouldn't offer it to the Chief would he?' asked Pam.

  Bob laughed. 'Do not be daft, my dear. Jimmy's a career administrator; never served in CID in his life. He's a better politician than Anderson, but he knows bugger all about security. Anyway, not even our Secretary of State would be crude enough to offer my Chief a job that I'd been fired from. A refusal often offends, as they say: he wouldn't invite it.

  'No, if he'd asked my advice, I'd have told him to recruit my pal Haggerty from Strathclyde. Wil ie's a bit of a hairyback, but he's a bloody good copper, and he knows everything that's going on through in the West, where you'll find most of the organised crime and terrorism in Scotland.'

  'What did Hewlett want, then?'

  'Anderson wants to see me again, apparently. Ten o'clock this morning, St Andrew's House.'

  He looked in the mirror, to straighten his tie, then picked up his jacket from the bedroom chair, over which he had draped it the night before. He was frowning as he fol owed Pam through to the kitchen. 'Wonder what the hell it could be about?' he asked himself aloud.

  'Didn't Hewlett say?'

  'He said that he didn't know.'

  'And you believed him, after what happened yesterday?'

  Skinner nodded, as he poured cornflakes into two bowls, and reached into the fridge for milk. 'David's one of the good guys. He wouldn't tell me an outright lie. He said "I don't know what it's 140

  about", not "I can't tel you", and I take him at his word. Anyway,' he said, 'I can usually tell when someone's telling me porkies.'

  'So what do you think it might be about?'

  'Could be one or two things. A terrorist whisper from down South, although I'd probably have heard about that too. An attack of nerves over arrangements for his Party's conference in Glasgow this autumn, although Haggerty's well in control there.'

  Skinner shook his head. 'I could guess al morning and stil get it wrong.

  'Anyway, enough about me.' He spooned up some cornflakes. 'I've got some news for you. I spoke to Scott Rol and yesterday afternoon, the chief in Central. He has a pregnant detective sergeant in his drugs squad, based in Falkirk. She goes off on maternity leave in eight weeks, and her job's yours if you want it.

  'It'd be a secondment at first, but the woman's told him that if everything's al right with the baby, then she'l be resigning. What d'you think?'

  She stared at him. 'Why didn't you tell me this last night?' she asked.

  'I was too steamed up over Anderson. Also, I thought you looked tired. Didn't want to put you off your sleep.'

  She smiled. 'I suppose I was. Probably something to do with the way the'day began.' She hesitated. 'It sounds good. But do you think I'm right for drugs work?'
/>
  'You want to make a difference, don't you?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then, you're right for it. Look, this job isn't about going after Colombian cartels. They don't stretch as far as Falkirk. There wil be sharp-end stuff, but it is educational too: police-community liaison, schools visits, that sort of activity.'

  She pushed her cornflakes to one side, stepped up to him and slipped her arms round his waist. 'What do you think I should do?'

  'Not what I think,' he said firmly, 'what you want.'

  'But it'd make life easier, long-term, for us both?'

  'Yes, but stil , the only factor is whether you'd be happy in the job.'

  'When do you have to tell Mr Rolland?'

  'Today, if possible, but I can stretch it to next week.'

  Pam shook her head. 'No. Tell him, "Yes please, thank you very much". And thank you very much too.'

  He smiled. 'De nada," he said.

  'No,' she contradicted him. 'It's not nothing. It's a lot.' She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly very serious. 'Bob, I want to be legit, as far as you're concerned ... as far as we're concerned. The companionship principle only holds good for a while. Like the girl whose 141

  job I'l be taking in Falkirk, I want to have a baby too, before it's too late. And I want to have it with you.

  'I know this might be breaking an unwritten rule between us, but I have to say it. Anyway, you're a smart guy, you must have figured it out: I love you.'

  He stared down at her.

  'Taken your breath away, copper, have I?' she whispered.

  He nodded. 'Just a bit. I'l tell you what. Tonight, let's ditch our minders, and let's go somewhere different, a hotel, maybe; somewhere down in the Borders. Peebles Hydro, if we can get in. Let's do that, and let's talk about long-term, and what it means.'

  'Agreed. I've never been to Peebles Hydro.'

  'Okay. Be ready to leave at six. By then, I'l have found out what the bloody hell my ex-boss wants.'

  142

  44

  Skinner walked into the entrance hall of St Andrew's House at five minutes to ten. It faced north and, even in the height of summer, always extended a cold welcome to visitors to the building. He showed his official pass to the black-uniformed guard who gave him a brisk salute and a 'Good morning'.