Pray for the Dying

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Won’t that be tough on your kids?’

  ‘No. The three young ones are very close to their mother, and as for my adult daughter, she’ll wave Aileen a cheerful goodbye. Having made a similar mistake herself she reckons I was daft to split up with Sarah in the first place, and I’m coming to agree with her. They say that Alex and I are absolutely alike, but that’s hardly surprising, since I pretty much brought her up on my own.’

  He sighed. ‘I know why you went for the run, incidentally. To clear your head after what happened last night. We all have our own way of dealing with the shitty end of the job, the things we see, and sometimes the things we have to do; I’ve been known to go running myself, but usually I get pissed first, to give me something to run off, so it’ll hurt that wee bit more. Sometimes I wish I was a Catholic like my friend Andy, so I could go to church and get absolution. But no, not me; I have to do it the hard way.’

  Without warning he swung his chair around and sat upright, his forearms on his desk. ‘But enough of that. I asked you what your people have got, if anything, on the origin of this hit. We’ve discounted the notion that Aileen was the target, so, who wanted Toni Field dead?’

  Houseman looked back at him, his expression serious. ‘I’m not sure I have the authority, sir,’ he replied.

  Skinner shook his head. ‘No, Clyde, I’m not having that. I know there’s recent history between your team and Strathclyde and that your deputy director told you to keep your distance from our Counter-terrorism and Intelligence Section. But that was then and this is now.

  ‘Amanda Dennis may have told you she thought it was leaky, but I know damn well that she didn’t like or trust Toni Field, and didn’t want any involvement with her. I’ve known Amanda for years, and I worked with her on an internal investigation I did in Thames House a few years ago. I can lift that phone right now and have your order rescinded, but save me the bother, eh?’

  The spook gazed at him for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said, ‘and I don’t fancy breaking into Amanda’s Sunday, so okay. The truth is we’ve got nothing yet. But that’s no disgrace, since we’ve concentrated our efforts since last night on the source of the intelligence that London had, that there was going to be a political hit somewhere in Britain.

  ‘Twenty-four hours ago, that was my colleagues’ firm conviction. Today, they’re saying they were conned. The threat was bogus; somebody in Pakistan was trying to buy entry into Britain for his family. In short, back to square one.’ He smiled. ‘Now, since we’re sharing, how about you?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Skinner conceded. ‘We’ve been working on the basics. We have one potential witness to interview. You met him yesterday evening: Freddy Welsh. He may have dealt only with Beram Cohen, but it’s possible that the order for the weapons was placed by somebody else.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to him again?’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Mario McGuire’s going to see him.’

  ‘McGuire? Your colleague? The man whose wife was sitting next to Toni Field?’

  He nodded. ‘The same. Freddy isn’t going to enjoy that; not at all.’

  ‘Did you tell him to go hard?’

  ‘No, but I couldn’t stop him even if I tried. You and I might have scared Freddy last night, but that was a gentle chat compared to what the big fella’s capable of.’

  ‘He won’t go too far, will he?’

  ‘He won’t have to. I expect to hear from him fairly soon. In the meantime, there is one thing that I will “share” with you, to use your term. Remember, our assumption yesterday was that Smit and Botha were going to get into the hall disguised as police officers?’

  ‘Only too well,’ Houseman said, with a bitter frown. ‘If the police communications centre hadn’t been on Saturday mode, we might have got the message through in time to stop them.’

  ‘That’s something I will be addressing now I’m in this chair,’ Skinner promised, ‘but don’t dwell on it. My fear was that those uniforms would have been taken from two cops and that we’d find them afterwards, probably dead.’

  ‘Yes. You’re not going to tell me you have, are you?’

  ‘No; the opposite in fact. We’ve found the uniforms, along with the discarded police-type carbine that Welsh supplied, in the projection room where they took the shot from, but I don’t have any officers missing, and the tunics were undamaged . . . no bullet holes, stab wounds or anything else.

  ‘They were also brand new, and were a one hundred per cent match for the kit my people wear. Trousers, short-sleeved undershirt, stab vest with pockets, and caps with the usual Sillitoe Tartan around them. Same for the equipment belt and the gear on it, Hiatt speedcuffs, twenty-one-inch autolock baton, and a CS spray.

  ‘Okay, all British police forces wear similar clothing these days, but all these things were identical,’ he stressed the word, ‘to ours. The Strathclyde insignia is sewn on the armoured vest, and the manufacturer was the same . . . that’s telling, for the force changed its stab vest supplier not so long ago. In addition to that, we found two bogus cards on lanyards. Well, they were bogus in that the names were made up, they’d been created from blanks that my people believe were genuine.’

  ‘Could Welsh have supplied the stuff?’

  ‘You saw his store yesterday. There was nothing there other than firearms, boxed.’

  ‘In other words,’ the MI5 operative murmured, ‘what you’re saying is that . . .’

  ‘We’re doing a thorough stock check now, but it looks as if the clothing and body equipment came from our own warehouse. I’ve also asked for checks to be done in every other force that uses Hawk body armour. In other words, Clyde, the hit team had inside help. Somebody in this force supplied them.’

  ‘Then you’ve got a problem, sir.’

  Skinner leaned back in his chair, making a mental note to adjust it to deal with his weight. ‘Actually, Clyde,’ he murmured, ‘I’ve got two.’

  Houseman frowned. ‘Oh? What’s the other?’

  ‘It’s why I asked you to come here,’ the chief replied. ‘It takes us back to sharing. I need to know what you took from Smit’s body yesterday, when I was busy shooting Gerry Botha, and where it led you. I’ve seen the CCTV, remember. You were very slick, and very quick, but it’s there.’ He took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. ‘Fifteen years ago, son,’ he said, ‘I gave you a serious warning; don’t make me have to repeat it, far less follow through on it.’

  Fourteen

  ‘You don’t need to see the tape, Danny,’ Lottie Mann said, in a tone that would have blocked off all future discussion with anyone but Detective Sergeant Provan; he had known her for too long.

  He persisted. ‘Are you going to show it to the fiscal?’

  ‘She’s got it already. The chief had it sent over to her office after he’d shown it to me.’

  ‘So what’s on it?’ The stocky little detective puffed himself up, his nicotine-stained white moustache bristling, a familiar sign of irritation that she had seen a few hundred times before, mostly when she had been a detective constable on the way up the ladder, before she had passed him by. ‘This is a police inquiry and I’m second in seniority on the team. I’m entitled to bloody know.’

  ‘News for you, Dan. You’re third in the pecking order. The new chief constable might have told the press that I’m SIO on this one, but make no mistake, he is. This man Skinner is miles different from Toni Field in most ways, but in one they’re very much alike. She was on the way to creating a force in her own image, flashy, high-tech.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Provan grumbled. ‘Fuckin’ hand-held devices in all the patrol cars. She’d have had us all wearing GPS ankle bracelets before she was done, so she could tell where every one of us was all the time.’

  Lottie smiled; she had a soft spot for her sergeant that she never showed to anyone else. While it was a little short of the truth to say that he was her only mentor . . . Max Allan had been th
at also, if anyone ever was . . . he had always been her strongest supporter, even though he had known from their earliest days as colleagues that he had plateaued, while she was on the rise.

  ‘I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ she said, ‘but aye, that’s along the lines I meant. Skinner, if he sticks around, he’ll change us too, but it’ll be far different from the Field model. And I’ll tell you something else, when it comes to CID, it will always go back to him. So, Danny my man, don’t you be under any illusions about who’s really heading this investigation, ’cos I’m not.’

  ‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘That’s ma card marked. So if Ah want to know what’s on that video Ah go an’ ask Skinner. That’s what ye’re saying, is it?’

  ‘Jesus!’ the DI exploded. ‘You’re as persistent as my wee Jakey. I never said I wouldn’t tell you. The recording shows four people being shot. Three of them are dead, and Barry Auger could be left in a wheelchair.’ She described it in detail, as she had done to her husband a few hours earlier. ‘Don’t feel left out because you haven’t seen it, Danny. I wish I hadn’t. Poor Barry and Sandy, they never had a chance.’

  ‘So much for body armour,’ the sergeant muttered.

  ‘It’s no’ going to stop a bullet at close range,’ Mann replied. ‘Anyway, Sandy was shot in the head, twice. He was a goner before he hit the ground. The guy Smit was getting ready to finish Barry when Skinner and the other bloke arrived.’

  ‘Aye, the other bloke. What about him?’

  ‘Not one of ours. Youngish bloke, maybe mixed race, looked military.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ the DS exclaimed. ‘When I was coming in, there was a bloke just like that at reception, and I heard him ask for the chief constable’s office. Light brown skin, dark hair, creases in his trousers, shiny shoes; a fuckin’ soldier for sure. Who is he? What is he?’

  ‘Skinner hasn’t said outright, but you can bet he’s MI5. I know they’ve got a regional presence in Glasgow but I’ve never heard of them being involved with us before.’

  ‘So how come they were this time?’

  ‘The chief had an investigation going in Edinburgh, and this man got pulled in.’

  ‘Linked to this one?’ Provan asked.

  ‘Aye. They’ve got a man in custody, the arms supplier.’ She held up a hand. ‘Before you get excited, he knows nothing that’s going to help us. I just had a call from an ACC in Edinburgh. He told me he just finished interrogating him and he’s satisfied he’s not holding anything back.’

  ‘So the only possible line of investigation we’ve got are the uniforms they wore.’

  ‘Right enough; and the fact that they were ours, not fakes,’ she confirmed. ‘But that’s not going to be general knowledge either, Danny. If Smit and Botha did indeed have an inside contact, we know one thing, he’ll be on his guard. We have to be careful.’

  ‘Agreed, but can Ah ask, how certain are we they’re frae inside?’

  ‘Every single item that we found was what an officer would wear or carry, yet they came from a range of suppliers. If they got them anywhere else they’d have had to know who every one of those is, and some of that stuff isn’t public knowledge, not even under Freedom of Information rules. But it’s the CS spray that’s the clincher; that stuff’s military, and each canister has a serial number. We know that the two we found came from our store, because the numbers are in sequence and they were missing from the stock.’

  ‘Right. How do we handle it?’

  ‘Quietly,’ Mann declared. ‘All police equipment’s held in a secure store in Paisley. Operationally, ACC Thomas has oversight of all supplies. He checked on the numbers for me personally . . . he let me know it was a big favour, mind . . . and he’s agreed that we can interview the civilian manager, as long as we’re discreet. We’re off to Paisley, first up tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Just the two of us?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the DI replied. ‘Discreet is the word.’

  Provan nodded. ‘Fair enough. Now, there’s one other thing that Ah’ve been wondering, a question I haven’t heard anyone raise since last night.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘How did these two fellas get there, and how were they plannin’ tae get away? This was a well-planned operation, so I doubt they were going down tae the Central Station to catch the London train.’

  Lottie Mann’s eyes widened. ‘You know, Dan, life’s really not fair. You should be the DI, not me. Smit and Botha had nothing on them, nothing at all. No ID of any sort, no wallets, no car keys, nothing.’

  ‘In that case, Lottie,’ the DS chuckled, ‘maybe Ah should be chief constable, for if the new guy really is runnin’ this investigation like you say, then he’s missed it as well.’

  Fifteen

  Clyde Houseman’s face grew even more pink, but with embarrassment.

  ‘Come on,’ Skinner snapped. ‘Out with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the man replied, ‘but it’s like this. I’m a Security Service officer, and what we were involved in yesterday . . . well, I felt at the time it was one of our operations, and not police, and when I was sent to see you yesterday, by my boss, it was on the basis of bringing you inside, not deferring to you.’

  ‘And you kept thinking that way even though three of our people had been shot?’ the chief constable countered.

  ‘Even though. I’d just taken someone down myself, and in those circumstances it was my duty to protect the interests of my service: standard practice. So I did what I did. I meant to report to my deputy director straight away, but I was caught up in the situation and couldn’t. I tried to call her this morning, but so far I haven’t been able to raise her, and I don’t want to go anywhere else. She’s my immediate boss.’

  ‘Even Amanda Dennis has to turn her phone off some time,’ Skinner said. ‘Clyde,’ he continued, ‘I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not buying it. Like it or not, this was a very public crime and the investigation has to be seen to be thorough. I can’t have you withholding evidence. So come on, man, and remember this: I’ve already protected the interests of your service. Only one police officer has seen that tape of you and me taking care of the South Africans, and that’s how it’s going to stay. She’s assuming that I’ve given it to the procurator fiscal, the prosecutor’s office, because I let her believe that, but in fact it’s still in my desk. The deputy fiscal in charge of the investigation knows about it, because I’ve told him; he understands the sensitivity and he’s prepared to forget that it ever existed.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Locked in my desk, for now, till somebody comes up with the combination of the bloody safe that Toni Field left behind.’

  ‘Thank you for that,’ Houseman murmured. ‘But do you trust your people? Leaks can happen, and the last thing that either of us wants is for that video to wind up on YouTube.’

  ‘At the moment, I trust them more than I trust you,’ Skinner pointed out, ‘and I will until you cough up what you took from Smit’s body. Look, I don’t want to, but I will bypass Amanda and go to your director if I have to, even though he is a buffoon.’

  ‘Sir Hubert would probably back me up.’

  ‘No he wouldn’t,’ the chief chuckled. ‘Do you have any idea of what would happen if I even hinted to the media that MI5 was getting in the way of my investigation? You’re forgetting who’s been killed here. Toni Field was a big name in the Met, plus the Mayor of London was said to be her biggest fan. All of their weight would come down on Thames House if I dropped the word. Plus,’ he added, ‘I’ve got the tape. You’re worried about YouTube, son? If I chose I could edit it, destroy the footage of me shooting Botha, and leak the rest myself. If I chose,’ he repeated. ‘Not that I would, but I won’t have to, because you’re going to . . .’ he smiled, ‘. . . share with me again. Aren’t you?’

  Houseman sighed, then reached inside his leather jerkin. For an instant Skinner tensed, but what he produced was nothing more menacing than an envelope.

&nb
sp; ‘I had a hunch our meeting might go this way,’ he said, ‘so I brought the things along.’

  He handed it across to the chief, who took it, ripped it open and shook its contents out on to the desk: a car key, with a Drivall rental tag bearing a vehicle registration number, and a parking ticket.

  Skinner picked up the rectangle of card and peered at it with the intense concentration of a man who had reached the age of fifty and yet was still in denial of his need for reading spectacles.

  ‘Have you done anything with this yet?’

  His visitor shook his head. ‘I decided to wait for instructions.’

  ‘On whether to hand it over to me or not?’

  ‘Yes, more or less.’

  ‘Now you’ve done it, story’s over as far as I’m concerned. If Amanda gives you a hard time, although I don’t believe she will, you can tell her I coerced you into it. So,’ he held up the ticket, between two fingers, ‘you know where this is for?’

  ‘It doesn’t say on it.’

  ‘Maybe not, but given the exit they chose, the likeliest is the multi-storey on the other side of Killermont Street, beside the bus station. One way to find out.’ Skinner pushed himself to his feet. ‘Gimme a minute.’

  He picked up his uniform jacket from the back of his chair, and stepped into the private room behind it. When he emerged, three minutes later, he had changed into the same slacks and cotton jacket that Houseman had seen the day before.

  ‘We’re going ourselves?’ the younger man asked.

  ‘Of course. I seize every chance that comes up to get out of my office; there may not be too many more, now I’m here.’

  He led the way out of his room, but instead of heading straight for the exit, he turned left, stopping at the second door. He opened it and called to the occupant. ‘Lowell, I have an outside visit; I could use your help.’