38
It was as if the vulture was peering out at them. Evan Mulgrew sat across the table, shoulders hunched, in the interview room in the administration block of Peterhead Prison. His prison uniform shirt was unbuttoned almost halfway down, giving Rose and Pye a clear view of part of his right shoulder, and of the bizarre bird’s head.
‘Memorable, all right,’ thought the Chief Inspector. The scavenger’s beady eye stared out at her. From its beak a piece of bloody carrion hung loosely, red and horribly realistic.
Mulgrew caught her glance and smiled. ‘Want to see the rest, hen?’ he said, beginning to unbutton his shirt still further. At once, he was grabbed by one of two big prison officers who were flanking him. He was hauled roughly to his feet, and his arms were held pinned to his sides while the other officer buttoned his shirt tight, up to the neck.
As he was slammed back into his seat Rose smiled evenly across at him. ‘Sunshine,’ she murmured, ‘I’ve seen better at home.
‘D’you know,’ she said, still smiling, ‘my husband nicked you, Mulgrew. Three years ago. He said that when it came to it, you were a pure pussy-cat. Pity you don’t have a cat’s luck. It has nine lives; you attack a judge’s daughter and get a twelve stretch.’
Mulgrew looked away from her and stared out of the barred window. Early Saturday afternoon in northerly Peterhead was much less mild than in Edinburgh, and thick globules of sleety snow were splashing against the glass. ‘Aye okay,’ he muttered. ‘So what d’yis want?’
‘When you were walking about on the outside, Mulgrew,’ Rose began, ‘you used to work out at the Commonwealth Pool.’
‘Aye.’
‘Do you remember talking there to a man called Carl?’
The Vulture scratched his chin. ‘Youngish chap, fair hair?’ Sammy Pye nodded.
‘Aye. So what?’
‘Do you recall,’ asked Rose, ‘telling Carl about a man named Douglas Terry, and about people who did odd jobs for him?’
Mulgrew’s slightly bored expression changed suddenly to one of real concern. ‘I might have done. I cannae remember.’
‘Come on, Evan, Carl didn’t make this story up. You were bragging to him, weren’t you?’
The Vulture looked down at the desk and shrugged his shoulders, very slightly.
‘You told Carl that you knew someone who did heavy work for Terry, and you mentioned specifically an attack on a Hearts footballer, Jimmy Lee.’
Mulgrew shook his head.
Sammy Pye took a chance. ‘Come on, Evan. D’you want us to bring Carl up here? Now, why did you tell him that story? Are you just a windbag, is that it?’
The Vulture stared hotly across at him. ‘You and me in a room, son, and we’ll see wha’s a windbag. I was trying tae sort out if Carl was interested in that sort of work. He said thanks, but he wisna.’
‘So who was the man you knew?’ said Pye.
Mulgrew’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Maggie Rose. ‘What’s in it for me?’ he asked.
The Chief Inspector raised her eyebrows and tossed her red hair. ‘You’re in for attempted rape, so it can’t be much. But we can put a note on your file for the Parole Board. Then maybe, just maybe, mind, we can get you transferred out of this Godawful place, to somewhere like Shotts or Saughton.’
The prisoner sat silent for almost two minutes, fidgeting, chewing his right thumb-nail, glancing occasionally out of the window. At last, he looked across at the two detectives. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll tell yis.
‘The man I mentioned tae Carl was Ricky McCartney. He lives out in Craigmillar, and he works for Dougie Terry.’
‘What do you know about Terry?’ asked Rose.
‘He runs a chain of betting shops and minicab companies. ’
‘What does McCartney do for him?’
‘He puts teams together. Heavies. Like when somebody’s out of order and needs sorting out.’
‘Like Jimmy Lee, you mean?’
‘Aye, like Jimmy Lee.’
‘And how was Jimmy Lee out of order?’
The Vulture hesitated again. ‘Saughton, right?’ Rose nodded.
‘The boy was a big gambler,’ he went on. ‘He was intae Terry’s betting shops for thousands. Terry sent Ricky to tell him that he’d let him off, if he fixed a game. The Jambos were playing some second division team in the League Cup, and the other team were great big odds against. It was an international thing, tied intae fixed odds gambling out in the Far East.
‘If ye check the records of Terry’s bettin’ shops, ye’ll find that he didnae take bets on that game.’
‘We will,’ said Maggie Rose, quietly. ‘So what did Jimmy Lee say?’
‘Nothing. Ricky wasnae giving him a choice.’
‘What did he do?’
Mulgrew smiled, almost respectfully. ‘The Jambos were a goal down wi’ half an hour tae go. Jimmy Lee scored a hat-trick and they won three - one.’
‘And that was why he was done?’
The Vulture nodded. ‘That’s right. A couple of weeks later, after a Saturday game.’
‘Who was on McCartney’s team?’
‘Apart from Ricky himself, I dinna ken. I wis supposed tae be on it, but I twisted ma knee lifting a couple of days before.’
There was a pause and silence hung over the room. It was broken by Sammy Pye. ‘Jimmy Lee always said that Hibs fans attacked him. Why would he do that?’
Mulgrew threw back his head and laughed. ‘The boy’s a true Jambo, son. A true Jambo would accuse the Hibees of bein’ behind the Kennedy assassination.
‘And onywey, he knew that if he’d said anything different, it would have been more than his knees that got broken. A true Jambo would rather die than fix a football match, but not if he had another option.’
‘Tell me,’ asked Rose, casually. ‘In all this was the name Jackie Charles ever mentioned?’
The Vulture smiled again, with a trace of scorn. ‘Miss, the name Jackie Charles is never mentioned. Nobody would be that daft.’
‘Mmm,’ murmured the Chief Inspector, staring at the ceiling. ‘We’ll see. We’ll see.’
She looked back across the table. ‘Where’s Jimmy Lee now?’
‘I can tell you that, ma’am,’ said Sammy Pye, beside her. ‘He’ll be at Tynecastle. The club gave him a job on the commercial staff, selling sponsorship and shaking hands with the guests in the hospitality suites on match days.
‘There’s a home game this afternoon, against Rangers.’
Rose looked up at the wall clock. It showed five minutes past one. ‘In that case,’ she said, pushing her chair back from the table, ‘if we put our foot down, we might just catch the second half.’
Mulgrew looked at the two detectives as they stood up, and as his guards pulled him to his feet. ‘Saughton,’ he said. ‘Remember.’
Maggie Rose nodded. ‘Okay, Evan. We’ll get you back to Edinburgh. And who knows, maybe Dougie Terry and Ricky McCartney can share your old room here.’
39
Pamela Masters looked around the room, and pondered upon fate. It was Saturday afternoon and she was in the Royal Botanic Garden. After an hour of poring through dusty files, Skinner had called a lunch-break. Since the Senior Officers’ Dining Room was closed for the weekend, and since the pubs would be crammed with football and rugby supporters, he had suggested the Garden Cafeteria.
Now he and his new assistant sat at a white wood table. He was demolishing his second chargrilled chicken and salad roll; she was hoping that her ‘Dear John’ message had reached her date, and that he would not arrive ahead of schedule.
‘What school did you go to in Motherwell, sir?’ she asked, as he finished eating.
He laughed. ‘When I was a lad in Motherwell, that question meant, “Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?” That’s if they couldn’t tell from the handshake.
‘The answer is that I didn’t. I went to Glasgow High. Myra was at Dalziel, though.’
‘Me too,’ said Pamela. ‘When did yo
u leave Motherwell?’
‘When I was twenty-one, as soon as I graduated. I did an ordinary Arts degree at Glasgow, to please my dad, then I applied to several police forces. I could have joined Lanarkshire or Glasgow, as they still were in those days, but Myra and I both fancied the idea of Edinburgh. So here I am.
‘Maybe I’ve been here long enough.’
She frowned, and looked at him quizzically. ‘Ach,’ he said, ‘don’t listen to me. I love it here still. It’s just that sometimes, everyone has to make a choice.
‘How about you? What if you had stayed married? Would you still have joined the police?’
‘I’d like to think so,’ she said, her smile restored. ‘But I’d probably have had the regulation two point four weans, and that might have made it difficult.’
‘Do you want to have a family some day?’
She pulled a face. ‘With the right man, probably I would. But I’m not obsessed by the idea. Just as well, because time’s a-passing, and there’s no sign of the right man. For a while I thought Alan might have been, but we just didn’t gel.’ She paused, and leaned back in her seat.
‘You’ve got a child, sir. Do you recommend parenthood? ’
He held up his right hand, palm outward and extended the first two fingers. ‘Two. I have a daughter as well, Alexis. She’s only about ten years younger than my second wife, and she’s a law graduate. If you didn’t know, she’s engaged to Andy Martin.’
Pamela’s big eyes widened expressively. ‘Making it a family business, eh.’
He chuckled. ‘Yes, and to cap it my wife’s a police surgeon. That’s how we met.’ As he said the words, a pang of sadness ran through him, as he recalled the ecstatic early days of his relationship with Sarah, and the laughter left his face.
‘To answer your question, as far as parenthood’s concerned, I can recommend it. As for marriage, right now I’m not so sure.’
‘Do you think the two necessarily go together?’ she asked, matching his change of mood.
‘I brought Alex up as a single parent,’ he replied. ‘I did my best, but she missed out on a lot. Right now, in fact, she’s finding out just how much.’
She frowned again, but before she could ask him what he had meant, his mobile phone rang. He took it from the pocket of his soft, brown leather jacket, and pressed the receive button.
Brian Mackie’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘Can we see you, sir? Urgently. We’ve got something to report.’
‘Sure,’ said Skinner. ‘It’s half one now. My office at two fifteen. Okay.’
He picked up a hint of disappointment in the Chief Inspector’s, ‘Very good, sir.’
The DCC grinned. ‘I know you, Thin Man,’ he said into the phone. ‘You were hoping to be at Tynecastle by then, weren’t you?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Okay, then. Look, Pamela and I are up in the Botanics coffee shop, and it’s quiet as a church. It’s only two minutes away, so get yourselves up here now.’ He ended the call and laid the phone on the table.
‘More local knowledge, Pamela,’ he said. ‘DCI Mackie is an incurable Hearts fan. But then he can’t help it. He’s from Edinburgh.’
They sat and waited, admiring the garden outside, which was edging gradually into its spring colours. After less than five minutes, they saw the slim figure of Mackie and the heavier frame of Detective Inspector Mario McGuire as they strode up the slope towards them. They moved outside to meet them, towards one of the patio tables, well out of earshot of the few other diners.
As Skinner introduced his new assistant, they arranged themselves around the table. ‘Right, Brian,’ said the DCC. ‘What’s so urgent?’
Impending football matches or not, Mackie was always brisk and businesslike. ‘We did the check you asked for, boss. It isn’t complete yet, but a plum fell out of the tree that we thought you ought to know about. I’ll let Mario explain.’
McGuire nodded. ‘I had just started the check, boss, when I was called by my oppo in Birmingham. They’ve been keeping a very close watch on a gang of Brummies with interests in protection, prostitution and gambling. In fact, they’ve got a man planted on the inside. These people aren’t part of the Magic Circle that Jackie’s in, but they’re pretty heavy, nonetheless.
‘Three months ago, the team’s accountant vanished, and a hell of a lot of money went with him. By the simple means of torturing his wife, they managed to trace the guy, to a place in Spain called Palafrugell. They placed a contract on him, through Dougie Terry, and two guys were sent out to take care of the matter.
‘They duly did. The accountant was found stabbed to death in the apartment he was renting. Terry’s guys brought back the cash, but they brought it up to Edinburgh. Then the Comedian called Birmingham and told them that his boss had said that the fee on offer for the job, forty grand, was too low, since the guy had pinched four hundred thousand, not the two hundred the Brummies had claimed.’
Skinner shook his head, gravely. ‘You can’t trust these Midlanders, can you. Go on.’
‘He said,’ continued McGuire, ‘that since they had been pikers, they could have back the two hundred thou. He told them that Jackie was going to keep half, that their dough was in the left luggage at Waverley Station, and that the key was in the post.’
The big DI grinned. ‘It turns out, sir, that these people aren’t just cheats. They don’t have a sense of humour, either. This morning two guys with shooters, and a driver, left Birmingham in a blue Ford Scorpio, registration M 22 FQD, with instructions to visit Jackie Charles at home at midnight tonight and ensure that he and his missus have a double funeral.’
The DCC looked at McGuire, then across at Mackie. ‘Did you say a plum, Brian? This is a bloody pineapple. If we can manage to nab these guys and get them to talk, we’ll have something to lay at Jackie’s door at last. You can go to Tynecastle, Thin Man, you too, Mario, if you want . . .’ McGuire, a Hibs fan, made an expression of distaste. ‘. . . But report to Andy Martin at Fettes at eight o’clock.
‘Before you go though, arrange for armed people in plain clothes to watch Jackie’s house from now on, in case these Brummies can’t tell the time.
‘But tell them to be discreet. I don’t want Charles to have the faintest idea that something’s up, until the visiting team appears, and we have them in the bag.’
40
‘I want these people taken completely by surprise, gentlemen. ’ Andy Martin tapped the street map of Edinburgh spread out on the conference table in the Head of CID’s office.
Dave Donaldson leaned across to follow his pointing finger. Alongside him stood Skinner, with Pamela Masters, who was doing her best not to be overawed.
‘The entrance to Jackie’s house is here,’ said Martin. ‘The visitors are coming from the south, so it’s odds that they’ll approach from the east, from the city end of Ravelston Dykes Road.
‘I want a car here, waiting in this gateway just beyond Jackie’s place, and another in position in Murrayfield Road. You, Dave, plus Mackie, McGuire and McIlhenney, will be across the road, out of sight in the bushes. I will be hidden in Jackie’s garden, with night-glasses, at a point from which I can see the approach of the car, whichever direction it comes from.
‘We’ll have spotters parked here,’ he tapped the map twice, ‘and here too, just in case we’re wrong about the direction of the approach. Their job will be to give the alert as soon as the Birmingham car appears.’
He leaned back. ‘The road narrows at the entrance to Jackie’s place. As soon as the target vehicle gets into that area, our two cars will move out, on my command, and block it in, front and rear. They’ll have high-powered wide-beam floodlights, two mounted on each vehicle. As soon as the Brummies are blocked in, we’ll hit their car with light, blinding them but letting us see what we’re doing.
‘We will all be carrying, and wearing protective gear, and there will be armed officers in the two police cars. I want a very heavy show of force, to discourage any thought by thes
e guys of shooting their way out.
‘It’s very important that we take these men alive. However, if anyone inside that car points a gun at any officer, then he goes down, no question. If the others are hit in the process, that’ll be just too bad.’ He looked across the table.
‘You clear about all that, Dave?’
Donaldson nodded. ‘It’s understood. Do you want me to brief Mackie and McGuire?’
‘No, I’ll do that when they report at eight. Meanwhile you ensure that the people in the support cars are our very best shots. I don’t want any Wild West stuff.’
‘Okay, I’ll get on with that now. I’ll see you back here at eight.’
‘Fine.’
Donaldson nodded to Skinner, with an informal salute, and left the room.
‘Ever seen him under fire?’ the DCC asked, after the door had closed.
‘No,’ said Martin, ‘but he’s well qualified. When he was a DS he took on two armed bank robbers in bad light, and bluffed them into dropping their weapons by aiming a truncheon at them.’
‘Mmm. Yes, I recall that. Still, when you have your team meeting tonight, you’d be well-advised to order that if it comes to shooting, everyone follows Mackie’s lead, or yours. You two are the best shots we’ve got and you don’t hesitate, either of you. Make sure that you and he are on either side of the vehicle so that between you you can see everything that’s going on inside.
‘These people will not be Kamikaze pilots, but like you said, if any one of them offers a threat with a weapon, shoot him. Fill the fucking car with bullets if you have to.’
He looked down at his personal assistant and saw her face go pale. ‘Shocked, Pamela?’ he asked, his tone suddenly gentle. ‘Of course you are, listening to us talking about shooting people. But it’s part of the job. I’ve had to do it, Mr Martin’s had to do it, so has DCI Mackie . . . yes, Sergeant, big quiet Brian could shoot your eyes out at four hundred yards.
‘None of us wants to, but it’s important that the people on the other side know that if they as much as present firearms at us, then we will, without a second’s hesitation, shoot them dead. That way, they won’t take the chance.
06 - Skinner's Mission Page 16
