Skinner's ordeal bs-5

by Quintin Jardine

  'So. From now on, can we act as if we're playing on the same side?'

  It was Agent Gower's turn to look flustered. She nodded. 'Yes, sir. I'm sorry.' She glanced across at Arrow, and saw his eyes twinkling back at her.

  Okay,' said Skinner. 'That's sorted out. Look, Agent, I sympathise. You've been in post for only a few weeks, yet here you are with the murder of a member of your Government on your hands. What you should remember is that he's just another dead guy now, one among many, and that we're not working here for countries or flags or anything like that.

  We're here to make sure that all the families of the victims see justice done at the end of the day.'

  I know that, sir,' she said. 'I'll keep it in mind. So, how can I help?'

  Skinner reached across the table and pushed the two automatic pistols towards her. 'First off, take a look at these guns.'

  She picked one up. 'These are Colt pistols. Secret Service standard issue. What's the other one?'

  `That's the type of revolver our protection people usually carry.' `Where did they come from?'

  `From the occupants of Row 2 — seats D to F.'

  Merle Gower sighed and put the Colt back on the table, quickly. 'I saw two of those guys just last night. They arrived at the Embassy with Secretary Massey.'

  `Well, you wouldn't want to see them now,' said the DCC savagely. He went on quickly:

  'Ms Gower, the first thing I'd like you to do to help is to contact Joe Doherty at NSC. I want a full dossier on recent threats made against your country in general and against members of your Government in particular. Adam, you do the same at this end'

  `That'll be under way already,' said Arrow.

  `Good. Now, there's one more thing I want you to do, Captain. I want every member of Colin Davey's Private Office staff, and everyone else who even clapped eyes on that Red Box lined up for questioning by my officers. I'll send a couple of them down to London tomorrow.'

  He stood up from the table. He had changed back out of the Army flight gear, but his woollen suit was creased, and muddy in places. 'Unless we get very lucky we are not going to solve this thing in an instant.

  `What do we know so far? We know there was a bomb, and we're pretty certain we know how it was taken on board the plane. Once all the wreckage is pieced together, and once Major Legge has told us more about the device, we'll be able to prove all that to a jury.

  But that's the easy part.

  The hard questions are the who's, the why's and the how's. Who wanted to kill Davey, or Massey, or both of them? Why did they want to do it? And how, how in Christ's name, did they get access to the Secretary of State's Ministerial hand-luggage?'

  He glanced at his watch, under the neon strip-lighting of the van. It showed 6.13 p.m. 'You two have your tasks for tonight. Tomorrow morning, I want a team meeting in my office at Fettes, at nine a.m. sharp, but for now, with Jim Elder taking over the recovery and identification job, my priority is to find my wife and get her out of this hellish place, whether she wants to go or not!'

  TWENTY-THREE

  They sat in silence over supper.

  They had driven down from the Lammermuirs, into and through Edinburgh in a two-vehicle convoy, with Sarah leading the way and Bob close behind. When he had ordered her finally from the dismal tent, lit in the evening by a few bare bulbs powered by a generator, she had looked more tired than he had ever seen her.

  Even the birth of Master James Andrew Skinner six months before had taken less out of her than their dreadful day.

  His first inclination had been to detail a Constable to take her car back to Edinburgh, but she had been adamant to the point of fury that she would drive herself. He had given in, but he had followed her watching all the way. Where normally she was a swift, assertive driver, instead she had been slow and deliberate and the thirty-five-mile journey to Fairyhouse Avenue had taken over an hour, even in minimal traffic.

  Late in the afternoon, Bob had called his daughter in Glasgow, and had asked her to drive through to Edinburgh to relieve Tracey, the Nanny. He knew that he could have phoned the girl, and that she would have cancelled her night out, but his sensitivity to his wife's mood made him realise that it should be Alex who was there for them when they made it home, and not a relative stranger, however bright she was and eager to please.

  There she had been, their daughter, hard at work in the kitchen, with a pasta sauce bubbling on the hob, and a bottle of Rioja ready to uncork. Alex was famous for her verbosity, but lately she h had learned that there were times when nothing at all was the best thing to say. She had taken one look at her father's tired, drawn face when it appeared round the kitchen door, then, without a word, she had opened the fridge, taken out a bottle of Datum Estrella beer, uncapped it, and handed it to him. Next, she had mixed an outrageously large Bacardi and tonic, dropped in two ice cubes and a slice of lemon, and had taken it through to her step-mother in the sitting room, where she had collapsed on the sofa.

  `Thanks, kid,' Sarah had said. 'Tough day at the University of Life, I'm afraid.' The tears had come then, floods of them, and great, wracking sobs which had shaken her body from top to toe. All the while, as her exhaustion worked itself out, Bob had stood in the doorway, watching Alex cradling her in her arms, woman to woman, knowing that there was nothing he could do to help her and feeling all the more desperate because of it.

  Eventually, when Sarah had cried herself dry, they had settled down to supper. But still barely a word had been said. Bob had done his best, asking Alex the same question twice over about the difference between her final degree years and her diploma studies, but eventually he had abandoned the fruitless effort. The cork had stayed in the Rioja as he concentrated on his third, and then his fourth bottle of Estrella.

  They sat in silence over supper.

  Eventually Alex, having cleared away the last of the dishes, said: 'Look, you two, it's ten o'clock and baby brother Jazz looks settled for the night. I'm going to stay at Andy's. It's Friday night, so there's no need for me to rush back to Glasgow. Unless you'd rather I stayed here, of course, but somehow..

  `No, love,' said Bob. 'You've been magic, as ever, but I guess we're better left on our own from now on. So you just head on down to Haymarket. Andy should be home by now, I guess.'

  She looked at him in surprise. 'But I didn't expect him back until tomorrow afternoon.'

  `Change of plan. I'll leave it to him to tell you about it. It isn't something I want to go into now. You can save me a phone call, though. Tell Andy I want him in my office at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, for a briefing. And tell him to bring the bacon rolls!' His face cracked in a half-smile.

  Okay. I'll even grill the rashers myself! Now, good night, Pops. Good night, Sarah.' She leaned over and kissed her stepmother on the cheek. Sarah looked up, wanly, and waved her fingers in a weak farewell.

  Bob escorted Alex out to her car and waved her off on the short journey to Andy Martin's flat in Haymarket.

  When he returned to their sitting room, he found Sarah sitting once more in tears, quietly, but it seemed to him, remorselessly. He went back into the kitchen and mixed her another drink, and took one more for himself, checking that there were still two or three bottles left in the drinks section of the fridge. The Estrella was as strong as it was golden, and normally three or four would have brought on a warm buzz, but on this dark night he could feel not the slightest effect.

  He pressed the tall glass into Sarah's hands, sat down beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders.

  `Hey,' he whispered in her ear, 'I should have said this before. You were magnificent. I'm sorry I behaved so stupidly when you showed up. I don't know what got into me.

  Whatever it was, it wasn't rational. I've never been prouder of you than I was today.'

  She shot him a sideways look, a strange furtive glance, from sharp mascara-smudged eyes that it seemed to him he had never seen before. 'Why?' she said, and took a long swallow from her Bacardi. 'What did I do? I just rac
ked up the body-bags in a row, ready for collection.'

  She picked up the TV remote-control unit and pressed the button. The big screen lit up, and suddenly Skinner saw himself, filmed from an illegally intruding helicopter, as he, Legge and Arrow and the rest had moved among the carnage in the gully. It occurred to him that the craft must have been close, yet he could not recall hearing it.

  Then the scene switched to the main crash-site, showing soldiers carrying laden, covered stretchers toward the mortuary tent, in the late afternoon. As they watched, Sarah appeared in the doorway, waiting for the bearers with a clipboard in her hand.

  `There I go,' she said grimly. 'I counted them in… and I laid them out!' She rested her head on his shoulder. 'Just bags, Bob. That's all. Lots and lots of bags, with things inside. I can't let myself think of them as people. I mustn't.'

  He took the remote from her and switched off the TV. 'You can't avoid it,' he said.

  'Because that's what they were, and you have to grant them that dignity. You're trained to deal with death, and you've seen things as bad as that and worse. Those killings in the Royal Mile, for example. The bomb at the Festival.'

  Her head bowed. 'But so many, Bob. So many. That's what I can't get over. All those black bags!' Her shoulders shook again.

  `The numbers don't matter. They're irrelevant. Within every mass killing, every death is a private truth for the individual. Everyone on that plane died the same solitary death. It is the most personal moment that any being will know, and the most lonely. There can be no other human experience like it. Birth is a team effort, or a partnership at least. Then the newly hatched person becomes a part of humanity, from that point on, and as such is never truly alone… until the very end. Living is a sharing experience, but dying can't be. We all go alone into that good night. Some of us go gentle, some raging.

  `Sooner or later, you or some other doctor would have performed your final service for all of the people who went today, declaring them dead so that their passing can be recorded.

  You have to see this as having been a busy day at the office, because that is what it was. It may take strength of will to do that, but you have that strength. What you need now is sleep, so come on, my girl. Let's finish these nightcaps and head for bed.'

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Poor Mr Old! He was such a nice man, too.'

  Alex shook her head sadly. 'I've known him for years. Long ago, when I was a kid, Dad would take me into the office sometimes, when Roy Old was his boss. He always made a fuss of me, and he always gave me things to do. Tidying up the paper clips, making tea and coffee, clearing up the dirty cups; things like that. He used to call me his wee policewoman.' She smiled at the memory. Ahh; she sighed. 'It's such a shame.'

  `Lightning strikes, love,' said Andy Martin, and knew, even before the shadow of a recent horror crossed her face, that he had said the wrong thing. 'Oh dammit,' he moaned. 'I'm sorry!'

  She took him in her arms, touched by the anxiety in his vivid green eyes. 'It's all right, I'm used to your subtlety and tact by now.' She gathered a handful of his curly blond hair and tugged it, gently.

  Oh!' she said, as a sudden recollection stirred. `Pops wants you in his office at eighty-thirty tomorrow morning. He said something about bacon rolls.'

  `Hah! Last time Bob and I discussed bacon rolls, he told me what to do with them… pretty graphically, too!'

  ‘Take him black pudding instead, then.'

  He smiled, but only for a moment. `How is Bob? You said that Sarah's in a state, but how about him? I'd have hated to be at that placee today. Is he okay?'

  A candid look of concern crossed Alex's face as she looked at her fiance. 'You know my Dad. He's such a rugged old sod, and well, we both know first-hand just how tough he can be. But tonight… I was worried for him. He was doing his best to shore up Sarah, and yet…

  ‘I've always thought of him as carved out of rock, but this evening for the first time in my life, I thought I could see the cracks.'

  TWENTY-FIVE

  They had called it a field, but in reality it was a mud-flat. The glue-like muck was ankle-deep. With each step it sucked at his heavy black shoes, and caught the hem of his blue uniform trousers.

  Not long before, on television, he had seen a report on the aftermath of a hurricane. It had struck a Caribbean town on market day, cutting a swathe through the stalls and tents of the traders, smashing them to matchwood, tearing them to shreds, overturning vehicles, unwinding bolts of colourful fabric and tangling them together like a great patchwork quilt.

  The picture came back to him as he looked around the muddy acres in which he stood. It was strewn with suitcases and rucksacks, all burst open, their contents spread around.

  Here and there his attention was caught by a sombrero, or a big black fan, bought for wall-mounting, but now broken on the ground, or a stuffed toy donkey with big, sad eyes, looking frighteningly realistic as if it were wondering what had happened to its owner.

  When he saw the first victim, he thought at first that it was some more odd detritus from the baggage hold. He stared at it, and another picture came into his mind. The day before, driving to work, he had approached a road-kill lying in the kerbside. In spite of himself, he had looked at the bloody bundle of fur, trying in vain to determine what form of animal life it had been. Looking at the shapeless tangle on the ground, he felt the same sensation, hoping irrationally that the thing, with white bones protruding at odd angles from its blackened flesh, might be some large creature caught on the ground by the flaming aircraft, or another, outsize, stuffed memento, but knowing too that it was neither.

  And then he saw the doll, lying in the mud, disjointed and unclothed. He saw it, he bent down towards the mud, and he picked it up…

  Skinner sat bolt upright in bed. Cold sweat lashed his face. He thought, although he could not be certain, that he might have screamed. If he had, then the sound had not awakened Sarah; she lay beside him, tossing restlessly in her sleep. He wondered what dark dreams she was having.

  He was breathing slightly heavily, and his chest was damp with sweat. He swung his legs out of bed and stood up in an effort to compose himself. Suddenly a snuffling cry sounded from the loudspeaker of the baby-minder. It was only Jazz, staging one of his occasional nocturnal interventions, but suddenly Bob was back in the depths of his nightmare. He sat back down on the bed, hard, and wondered if he had indeed screamed, and roused his son.

  As he sat there, Sarah stirred and woke. Jazz cried again, approaching full volume this time.

  `This is a first,' she murmured, seeing him. 'You normally sleep through that, or pretend to, till I've got up to see to him'

  He turned to look at her. Her earlier emotional exhaustion seemed to have been slept away; she appeared calm and settled.

  He forced a smile. 'Build up for thyself treasures in Heaven",' he said. 'He probably wants changing. I'll see to it.'

  `Good boy. Don't be long.'

  `You go back to sleep. I'm awake for keeps, I think. It's five-thirty, and I've got an early start this morning.'

  When the alarm woke Sarah at 7.20, Bob and Jazz were lying by her side, forehead to forehead, the father lost in thought, holding the sleeping child in his arms as if to shield him from anything the world could throw at him. She looked at them, and wondered.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘The Yanks worry me just a bit, Andy. They'll want a finger in this pie, and no mistake.

  That new girl from the Embassy, she's okay, once she stops talking and starts listening, but they'll want a heavy hitter on this one. The Gower woman was impressed by the fact that Massey was her Ambassador's brother-in-law: I'm more struck by the fact that he was the best pal of the man in the White House.

  I'm also struck by the fact that there's a Presidential election in three weeks, and that the incumbent will want to show a firm hand to the voters. It's a pound to a pinch of pigshit that he'll have sent over a top gun before this day is out, to show us Brits how to do it.' />
  Andy Martin picked up the last of the bacon rolls, which was still piping hot after having been revived in the Command Suite microwave. 'So how can I help you, boss?'

  `You're helping just by being here, my friend,' Skinner said sincerely. Martin looked at him, and saw the dark marks of exhaustion under his eyes, and worry lines where none had been before. He sensed a tension in the man that he had never seen in all the years of their acquaintanceship, professional and personal.

  `More practically, I would like you to handle the organisation of Roy Old's funeral. With Lottie's permission, I'd like to give him the full official send-off, like we did for the young lads who were killed in the last couple of years. Roy died on duty, just like them, hurrying to get back for a meeting. We'll call in on her later on today after the briefing, to pay our respects and talk things over.

  Another thing you can do, if it proves necessary, is keep the American out of my hair.

  Merle Gower has a part to play, but I won't have any spare wheels in the Command structure. So if they do send in a Shitehawk from Washington, I want you to nursemaid him. I've got you a new boy for your personal staff. He can drive him around.'

  ' I w a n t M cl l h e n n e y' s a i d t h e n e w H e a d of C ID emphatically.

  `Fair enough, you can have him, but you're having this lad too. It's young Pye from Haddington.'

  Martin's eyebrows rose. 'Young Sammy. Sure, I'll take him any time.'

  I thought you would. Right, here's the third thing you can do to help me. You can run CID like clockwork. You've got carte blanche to review the present structure and operating practice and make any changes you think fit. Your brief is to raise detection rates to a uniform level across the whole Force area, and then to keep the graph moving upwards.