Skinner's Ordeal (11 page)

`Where was this fellow sitting?' Legge asked.

Row 1 seat B.'

Tells us something then. D'you know who was in seat C?'

À bodyguard. I think that's him down there in the burn, minus his top half.'

`Munn. And the politicians were across the aisle?'

`Yes.'

Ìn that case, from the way the blast seems to have radiated, I'd say the bomb went off more or less in the lap of our late; Secretary of State!' He lifted up the remains of McGrath, then placed them gently back on the ground. 'I doubt if we'll find even this much of him, or the souls on either side of him.'

He stood up. 'So how did the bloody thing get there? Interesting question, isn't it? How did the Secretary of State for Defence come to be sitting right on top of an explosive device powerful enough to tear an aircraft apart?'

Skinner looked at him, almost stunned by the idea. 'Any answers?'

Legge smiled, wickedly. 'Right at this moment, the only thing I can suggest is that you find out where he dined last night . . . and never ever eat their curry!'

The policeman winced. 'Bloody hell. Is that how you Bomb Squad guys manage to stay sane?'

Àbsolutely,' said Legge. He was still grinning, but Skinner looked at him and acknowledged the effort behind his control and objectivity. 'You have to laugh your way through these things. Soon as my guys start to dwell on the effects and consequences of an explosion, then they're no good to me.

`Sure, man, you think that down there is something.' He pointed quickly at the remains on the ground, but without looking at them. 'I remember once in Ireland we were called out to a scene where this lad had his back to a steel chain-link fence when the bomb he was planting went off early. When we got there he was stretched out on the other side like a hundred long tubes of dog food.'

They were interrupted by a piercing whistle. They looked round and saw Arrow, fifty yards away, his fingers still tugging the corners of his mouth.

'Always wished I could do that,' said Legge. 'Let's see what the klittle bugger wants.'

They scrambled across the hillside towards him. Once, Skinner's foot settled on something soft and spongy. He froze in midstride, and discovered that he was quite unable to look down. With an effort he pushed himself off and hurried on.

`What's up, Adam?' he said as he reached him.

`This is. Remember you said those boxes were bombproof?'

He held up, very carefully by two of its corners, a buckled, angled sheet of metal. Skinner took it from him, and saw that originally, it had been two hinged pieces of metal, but that they had been melted and fused together into a wide L-shape. On the inside, the metal was bright and shining, almost mirror-like, as if all traces of dirt and contamination had been seared off. As he looked at it a distorted reflection of himself stared back.

He turned the strange object over so that the L pointed towards him. On this side the metal was lustreless. Instead it was covered in a black substance, which felt rubbery, yet crumbled away under his touch. Superimposed upon the black, there were other, strange marks. On the upper of the two pieces of fused metal, he saw, embossed upon it, two sets of four short parallel lines running from the edge on either side. They were black also, and pointed towards each other. On the lower part of the object there were two more black parallel abrasions, wider than the others and running from the bottom towards the centre.

As he looked at the marks, a cold certainty crept through him.

But still he held the thing up for Legge to see. 'What d'you think, Gammy?’

‘You don't really need me to tell you, do you? I'd say that this is, or was, a Red Box.'

If it is, since we've found McGrath's, this must have been Davey's. It must have been open when the bomb went off.' The DCC paused. 'And what would you say that these marks are?'

Legge took the object from him and held it out. would say . . .' he began. Looking at him, Skinner was certain that for all of his training and experience, Legge gave a small shudder.

would say that these top abrasions, these two sets of four, are the fingers of whoever opened the box, fused into its surface. The others? Well, I would suppose that he had the box on his lap, and that those two wider marks are the tops of the poor fellow's thighs.' He gazed at Skinner and Arrow, this time without the faintest hint of a smile.

`But Bob, if I may correct your assumption, ever so slightly. You said that the box was open when the bomb went off. I'd put it another way. I'd say that because it was open, the bomb went off.

Ì'd say that the bomb was in the bloody Red Box!'

TWENTY-TWO

‘You are MOD Security, and you are sitting there telling me that there was a bomb in your Secretary for Defence's personal document case?'

Skinner had seen Adam Arrow under fire. He had seen him in a cold, killing rage. He had seen him in situations that would have thrown a scare into a rock. And he had never seen him rattled, not in the slightest . . . until now.

Special Agent Merle Gower stared at him across the table in the Command vehicle, fixing him with an unblinking gaze, letting her question hang in the air. Arrow stared down at his plastic coffee beaker, spinning it slowly in his fingers. Skinner could see the back of his neck turning pink.

Eventually he looked up at her. 'That's the way it looks at the moment.'

She whistled. 'Jesus! They told me that you guys were good. I recommended to my Ambassador that we should fly Secretary Massey up to Scotland on our own transport, but he laughed at me. Know what he said? He said, "Don't worry, Merle, it'll be fine. The Brits have those shuttle flights stitched up tighter than a fish's asshole."

`Now I'm going to have to tell him that Massey is dead because you let Secretary Davey board the plane with an exploding lunch-box. And I'm going to have to do it without the faintest hint of "I told you so". Incidentally, do any of you know who Shaun Massey was?

Only the Ambassador's brother-in-law that's all!'

Joe Doherty's successor in the FBI London Bureau was a short, fleshy, severely suited black woman in her late twenties, with gold-rimmed spectacles and close-cut curly hair.

Looking at her, Skinner felt that he understood properly for the first time what a firecracker was.

She had arrived a few minutes earlier, driving a Vauxhall Vectra with the Hertz tag still hanging from the driving mirror, just as Skinner and Arrow had returned in the helicopter, with the two Red Boxes, and with three firearms recovered from shattered, dismembered bodies pinned in a row of three seats at the second crash point. One was a Smith and Wesson revolver, while the others were Colt Automatics. Now they lay on the centre of the table around which the trio were seated.

`Look . . .' Arrow began, but Agent Gower had a few shots left in her locker.

`Christ,' she said. 'If only he had listened to me. I mean, Scotland — Edinburgh. This is where you managed to let the President of Syria get shot a couple of years ago, isn't it?'

Involuntarily, Arrow gasped and flashed a quick glance at Skinner. Two deep frown-lines had appeared between the DCC's eyes.

`Come on, lass,' said the little soldier. 'These things happen, and your lot ain't perfect either. Reagan, the Kennedys, King, Waco, Oklahoma . . . That balls-up in Iran when your so-called Special Forces 'ad a go at rescuing those hostages. I could go on.'

Now it was the woman who was frowning. 'Don't "lass" me, Captain Arrow,' she said grimly.

Seated between them, Skinner threw up his hands. Beyond the table, at the far end of the cabin he could see Sir Jim Proud, who was standing beside Maggie Rose, glowering his disapproval of the exchange.

'Enough!' Skinner called, not a shout, but not far short of one. He gazed at the woman; then he smiled, and his frown disappeared. Gower, startled at first, then charmed, looked back at him in silence.

'We're in danger of getting off on the wrong foot here,' he said. 'Ms Gower, I think I'd better spell out the ground rules. I'm in charge of criminal investigation in this part of Scotland; and that's what we are dealing with . . . a crime, in Scotland. The bomb exploded over my territory: the aircraft came down on my territory: two hundred and four people died on my territory. This is where the crime was committed, and so it's my job to catch whoever did it. Understand?' She nodded.

The fact is that you've got no status. You're sat here now because of your special interest, just as Adam is, but you are both simply observers. Any role you have to play, any opportunity to say your piece, is at my discretion. Now let me tell you, as gently as I can, that I don't tolerate hecklers in my team. If that's all you've come to do, then you'll be getting in my way, and with just one phone call I'll have you back in Grosvenor Square.'

He paused and put his hands flat on the table. 'That said, when Joe Doherty told me last month that he was leaving to become Deputy Chair of your National Security Council, he said that he'd found a first-class operator to fill his shoes. If that's what Joe thinks of you, that'll do for me, and so I would value any positive input you can give me.

'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.

Òkay,' 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.'

Ì 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.