Quintin Jardine - Skinner Skinner 07

by Skinner's Ghosts (pdf)

  Skinner shook his head. 'No, but with the right to ask supplementary questions at the end.'

  The Law Officer turned to the investigators. 'Apart from there being no precedent, can you give me a good reason why I shouldn't allow this?'

  'Potential intimidation of witnesses, sir,' said Cheshire, aggressively.

  'Indeed? I'd expect a witness to be intimidated by two senior police officers, but hardly, if I read Mr Skinner's mind aright, by a legal apprentice just out of university.'

  Alex looked round at her father in surprise. He grinned at her and nodded.

  'Al right, Bob,' said Archibald. 'I agree. But your representative must not interrupt Mr Cheshire's questioning, mind.' He turned to the men from Manchester. 'You will al ow Miss Skinner to ask supplementaries, though.'

  Cheshire sat silent and grim-faced, a flush showing even through the heavy tan. It was Ericson who broke the silence. 'Very good, sir,'

  he said, turning to Alex. 'Leave me your office number, Miss Skinner, and I'l advise you of our travel plans, once they're made.'

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  48

  Even with the aid of a street map, and even although the Chief Superintendent's flat was less than a mile away, Martin and Pye had trouble finding Eddie Sweeney's workshop. It was tucked away out of sight at the end of one of the lanes which ran off Dairy Road, behind a Georgian town house, a forgotten treasure which had been

  rescued by an office developer. It was perhaps eight yards across, and twenty deep, a wooden structure with a corrugated iron roof, bounded at the rear and on the right by the high red brick wal s of the adjoining building.

  Before setting out from Fettes, Martin had called the force's criminal intelligence unit, and the national criminal records department, to check on their target. The second source had yielded a faxed photograph, taken at the time of a conviction in Aberdeen twelve years earlier, for receiving a stolen motor car, an offence which the Sheriff had taken lightly enough to punish with only a year's probation. That had been completed impeccably, and since then there had been no sign of a subsequent transgression.

  The policemen drew up in Martin's Mondeo beside big grey-painted double gates which seemed to cover almost the full width of the workshop. The lane was a dead end, and so narrow that the Chief Superintendent had to position the car careful y, to al ow both Pye and himself to open their doors.

  The gates were secured by a heavy chain and padlock, but inset, to the right, there was a smaller doorway, black-painted, standing out from the surrounding grey, and with a brass nameplate on which the

  name 'E. Sweeney, Motor Engineer' was etched.

  Martin banged on the grey gate. 'Mr Sweeney. Police. Open up, please.' There was no reply, no sound from within. He pushed the smaller door, but itsYale was secure. 'Is there a back entrance to this place, d'you think?' Martin mused.

  'Not unless it's through the wal of the whisky bond next door,'

  Pye pointed out. 'Maybe he closes early on a Friday.'

  The Chief Superintendent sighed. 'Well he bloody shouldn't,' he said. 'This week started with a locked door, now it's ending with another. Fuck this, Sammy, I'm fed up being pissed about. I think I feel an accidental stumble coming on.' Abruptly, he lifted his right 160

  foot and slammed the door with his heel. There was a crack as the keeper of the Yale gave under the force of the kick.

  'Oh dear,' said the young detective constable, 'that was nearly a nasty fal . Are you al right, sir?'

  'I've been worse. Thank God that door was there to stop me.'

  There were no windows in the workshop; it was in darkness as they stepped inside. The little light which spilled in from the small doorway lit up a red car, jacked up at the front, but beyond the gloom was too deep to make out anything. The place smelled: of oil, of grease, of old leather . . . and of something else. 'Christ,'

  said Pye, 'd'you think Sweeney just pisses in the corner when he's needing?'

  Martin said nothing, but peered around near the entrance until he found a light switch. He threw it, and after a few seconds a sequence of half a dozen neon tubes flickered into life. As they did, Pye had reached the red car, and could see beyond.

  He gave a slight, involuntary shout, and started. For a moment Martin thought that the young man would turn and run, but he held his ground. 'Sweeney's in after all, sir,' he whispered.

  Quickly, Martin stepped up beside him and together they advanced, into the furthest corner of the workshop.

  Clearly, Eddie Sweeney had not been a big man in life. His feet only just touched the ground as he sat in the green, straight-backed wooden chair, his wrists and ankles lashed securely to its legs with heavy black insulating tape. But in death his eyes were huge. They stood out in their sockets, seemingly only a very short step from popping out altogether.

  Martin leaned over and stared into the grotesque, purple, dead face. 'Oh, Sammy,' he whispered, 'we're dealing with a very special mind here. This man's an expert. He believes in death as an art form.

  'I've only ever encountered one other like him.'

  Pye crouched down beside his boss, looking up at the dead, head-lol ing Sweeney. And as he did he saw that the man's nose was swollen, with white wisps of cotton wool protruding from the nostrils.

  His cheeks were distorted too, and something showed between the protruding teeth; something dirty, yellow and furred.

  'That's not his tongue, is it, sir?'

  Martin chuckled, blackly. 'Not even the most liverish tongue ever looked like that.' He stood up and leaned over the body. '"Yes, there's a grazed lump on his head. Our Mr Sweeney was cracked on the head from behind, then taped into his chair.'

  He shook his head. 'What an imagination, and what a way to go.

  The kil er packed his nose with cotton wool, rammed a tennis ball into his mouth, and stood back to watch while the poor sod suffocated.'

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  Pye shuddered. 'A tennis bal ?' He looked closer. 'In the name of

  ... So it is.'

  'Game, set and match to our man,' said the Chief Superintendent,

  'or so he thinks. We'd better take a look around, for the sake of form.

  But this is a very thorough person. I don't think for a moment that we'l find anything to help us.'

  He stepped across to the far side of the workshop, where a grey filing cabinet stood against the wal , with its second drawer slid open.

  On the floor beside it there was a big brown steel waste bin. Martin looked inside. 'Sammy, forget it,' he cal ed to his young col eague.

  'He got what he was after. There's ash in here, and you can bet that once it was the paperwork related to a set of plates, supplied to customer unknown, no questions asked.'

  'Are you sure that this was the man we're after, sir? Maybe Sweeney was in bother with someone else.'

  The chunky Martin shook his head. 'Forget it, Sam. This was our guy al right. As soon as he saw the photofit which we issued yesterday, he knew that we'd linked him to the caravan. So he went back and covered his tracks. End of story, for Mr Sweeney.'

  He looked at the body once more. 'It could be that he's even sending us a message in the way he chose to kil him. Al significant openings closed off. Fine, let him be that cocky, for that's how we'll catch him.'

  'What do you mean, sir?'

  'I mean that when you're dealing with a criminal as arrogant and sure of himself as this one is, all you have to do is wait while his ego and his feelings of infallibility get bigger and bigger, until, sure as eggs is eggs, he makes the mistake which lets you nab him.'

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  49

  Pam woke at seven forty-five on Saturday morning, alone in the bedroom of the Gul ane cottage. She was startled at first, until she remembered that she and Bob had decided to leave Edinburgh for the weekend, although not for Peebles Hydro.

  They had spent a long, silent Friday evening in the cottage. Skinner was morose, and largely silent, with the telephone set on auto answer, catching cal s from
a few sympathetic friends. The only calls which he had returned had been from Neil Mcl henney, offering his sympathy, and his total support, and from Andy Martin, telling him of Sweeney's murder.

  'Won't that put that farmer in danger?' Pam had asked, as he had explained what had happened. 'Mr Carr, I mean, the man who did the photofit.'

  'I shouldn't think so. He'l assume, rightly, that Andy will put a guard on him. So it'd be too dangerous to go back to the farm to take him out. Anyway, what would be the point? The composite picture would be evidence in itself. No, his meeting with Carr was very brief.

  He must have spent much more time with Sweeney, or maybe Sweeney even knew who he was.'

  He had shuddered quite violently, startling her. 'I hate people like him, you know, people who kil with flair, not just with purpose.

  Murder's murder, I know, always terrible; but usual y it's in hot blood.

  Occasionally it's a commercial transaction, a falling-out among criminals who live by different rules from the rest of us.

  'I don't tolerate any of it, but nothing turns my stomach like a man who can kill the way this fellow does. He's so premeditated: the way he just disposed of Sweeney, the way he killed Leona.'

  'Leona? Was that necessarily premeditated? Couldn't that have been sexual in origin, with him catching her naked?'

  Bob had given her a long cool look, shaking his head. 'Not the way I read it. He didn't have to go upstairs. He could have taken the boy and gone. But he chose to go upstairs to find the mother, to rape and kil her. There was a message there too, I think.'

  She had stared at him then, astonished. 'A message? For whom?'

  But he had shaken his head and fal en silent once more.

  Now, with the soft sunlight of early morning making patterns of 163

  the windowframes on the bedroom curtains, she rose and, putting on her robe as she went, made her way through the living room to the kitchen. There she found him, sitting at the table, in running shorts and teeshirt, sweating heavily, his shoulders hunched, his head down, caught off guard in an attitude which touched her heart.

  She moved silently behind him and ran her fingers through his matted hair. 'Come on, Big Boy,' she whispered, soothingly. 'It's supposed to be darkest just before the dawn, not after it.'

  He looked up at her, over his shoulder. 'I'm still waiting for dawn,'

  he muttered. 'I feel like I'm at war on two fronts. Can you imagine how it feels, to know that my name will be all over this morning's press? I've been a police officer for almost a quarter of a century, more than half my life. In that time, I like to think that I've never done a dishonourable thing.

  'Yet here I am, accused of abusing my position through my relationship with you, sacked by Anderson as unsuitable for my security post, under investigation for corruption, stigmatised, suspended, and effectively banned from acting personal y in my defence.

  'At the same time there's a madman at large with a kidnapped child, with whom I have a strong personal link, and for whom, somehow, I feel a responsibility. Not just that, he's targeting me in some way I don't yet understand. I want to be out there chasing the guy, I ought to be; yet I can't, by order ofDr Bruce Anderson. I tell you girl, there are a few ghosts in my life, and it's as if they're all coming back to haunt me, al of them at once.'

  He took the hand which she laid upon his shoulder, and pressed it gently.

  'Can't I help, love?' she asked. 'Can I help ease the pain?'

  He stood up from the table and turned, looking down at her. 'No, honey. No you can't. I suppose you're a third front, another area of conflict in my life.'

  'Is that how you see me?' she asked, quietly.

  He shrugged his wide shoulders. 'Oh God, I don't know. Maybe I should have chosen my words more carefully. But our future is something else to be resolved, and right now, I just can't handle any of it.'

  He cried out in sudden exasperation. 'When I was out there just now, running along the top of the beach, I remember thinking to myself, "Why stop? Why turn back?" There's part of me that wants to chuck it all in, and I've never felt like that before. It's scary, Pam.

  It's as if since the stabbing, since my split with Sarah, since my discoveries about Myra, and now with all of this, that I'm just not me any more. There's a bloke inside me, but he's a stranger. Know what else I'm finding out? I don't even like him.'

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  She pul ed him to her, and hugged him, pressing her face against his chest, running her fingers through his hair. But he stood, stil and upright in her arms, until final y his right hand came up, and he stroked her cheek with his fingers.

  'I'm a real mess, am I not?' he whispered, as she looked up and saw his sad smile. 'Who'd want a future with a crock like me?'

  As he spoke, as he asked his despondent question, a face came into his mind's eye, quite unexpectedly: Sarah, looking at him and frowning, with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. He tried to wil her away, but her mental image remained. And he knew. At that moment, he knew.

  A thump from the hal broke the moment. 'Post lady,' he said, matter-of-fact once more. 'She's always early on a Saturday.' He released himself from her hug, and walked through to the hal way.

  There were three items of mail lying on the doormat, between the glass and outer doors. Picking them up, he glanced at each in turn as he stepped back into the living room.

  He recognised the handwriting on the first, and tore it open as fast as he could. It was a 'cheer up' card from Alex, with a note inside which read, 'Don't worry, Pops, I'l keep an eye on that awful man Cheshire. Anyway, with me on your side, how can you lose?'

  He smiled, and positioned the cheery Beryl Cook card, with its voluminous, yet voluptuous ladies, on the shelf above the gas fire, then laid the second envelope, a bill from Scottish Power, unopened beside it.

  As soon as he looked at the third item, he felt an old familiar tremor in the pit of his stomach. Policemen, more than any others, have an instinct for danger which is triggered even in the most normal of surroundings.

  'Deputy Chief Constable Robert Skinner.' He read his name aloud as he stared at the padded A5 Jiffy bag, the container of choice for many a small letter bomb. He never received official mail at home, but always in the office, where it was X-rayed as a matter of routine.

  At that moment, Pam appeared in the doorway. He beckoned her into the room. 'Wait here,' he ordered. 'I need to check this out.'

  He stepped past her, back into the kitchen, reaching for the cutlery drawer, from which he took a short, but razor sharp, fruit knife. He sat down once more at the table and felt the package with both hands from al angles, pressing gently, and very carefully, lest he should activate a trigger mechanism inside. The only object which he could sense within the bag seemed to be solid and rectangular, a small, firm box.

  Relaxing only slightly, Skinner picked up the fruit knife.

  Slowly, centimetre by centimetre, he began to cut his way into the bag, not along the top, or along the bottom, since letter bombs 165

  Were often wired at both ends, but along the side, through the outer skin, and into the fibre padding which he pul ed out to expose the inner layer. When it was laid bare from end to end of the bag, he carried the parcel over to the sink, which he filled with water, so that he could drop it should it be, after all, an incendiary device.

  Final y, when he was completely prepared, with the bag laid on the work surface, he crouched beside it at eye level, and began to make the final incision with the sharp little knife. He worked slowly, ready to stop should he meet any resistance, easing the blade through the paper, until the bag was open.

  Leaving it where it was, he reached into the cupboard under the sink, and found a smal torch. He rumbled at first with the unreasonably small button, wondering if the batteries were flat until at last its bulb lit up. Pressing the ends of the bag very gently with his broad left hand to widen the opening which he had cut, he shone the beam, undetectable in the daylight, into the gap.

&n
bsp; He was looking for wires, but he saw none: only a black cassette box.

  He released his breath, which he had been holding, in a loud gasp, and picked up the bag, al owing its contents to drop on to the work-surface. Only then did he look closely again at the Jiffy. It was stamped, with what he took to be the regulation amount, but the postmark was smudged and faint. He shone the torch beam directly on to it from close range, but both the time and postal district were indecipherable.

  He swore gently, and tossed the container on to the table, picking up the cassette box as he did so. The lid was clear and showed a shiny new tape inside.

  Only then did he look up, to see Pam standing in the doorway, looking anxious. He glowered at her. 'I thought I told you to stay next door!'

  'I couldn't. I was worried for you. It's okay?'

  He nodded, waving the box as he shooed her back into the living room. 'If this is some direct marketing gimmick, I wil personally eat the sender's liver. But somehow, I doubt it.'

  She looked at him. 'You think ...'

  'Let's find out.' He stepped across to his hi-fi stack, took out the cassette and slipped it into the play-only deck, which was incapable of erasing tapes, even by accident. Using the remote hand-set, he switched on the amplifier, adjusted the volume upwards and pressed the tape button.

  Beside him Pam jumped, as the shouts and background music of a rapper burst from the speakers. Skinner waited, guessing what would come next. 'It's Radio One,' boomed the disc jockey, as the music 166

  track faded, 'the Nation's Number One. It's Thursday, it's eleven thirty, and it's time for the news.'

  There was a short jingle, and a second voice cut in. 'This is Newsbeat, with Mary Slavin. Edinburgh police today released a

  photofit picture of the man they want to question about the murder of MP Leona McGrath, and the kidnap of her son Mark. It shows a clean-shaven fair-haired white man in his mid to late thirties . . .'

  The news announcer was cut off abruptly. 'Uncle Bob! Uncle Bob!'

  The child's cry which replaced it was unmistakably that of Mark McGrath, but not the self-possessed slightly precocious child whom Skinner knew. It was frightened, shocked and tearful.