Skinner's Ordeal (43 page)

He paused. 'The two lovebirds didn't seem too friendly today, either. She had formed the impression, justifiably, that he was trying to wash his hands of all responsibility, at her expense.'

Ìs there a Lady Morelli?' Skinner asked. 'And is she aware of any of this?'

`There is, and she is now,' said the Chief. 'He's an evil little bastard, that Arrow, you know. Before we left London, he went to see her, explained the whole situation, and suggested that she should brief the family solicitor!'

‘Huh’ said Skinner, cutting short his sudden exclamation as his wound gave him a twinge.

'That's Adam behaving reasonably. Believe me, Jimmy, you really wouldn't want to know what happens when his evil side shows itself.'

EIGHTY-NINE

‘It’s nice to see so many friends coming to visit me, all at the same time.' Skinner smiled as he looked at the faces gathered around the big table. Ì'm still amazed that my wife allowed it.

Ì must thank the NHS Trust Chairman for letting us use his Boardroom.' He turned to Detective Constable Pye. 'Sammy, ask Ruth, my secretary, to type a letter for my signature, please. She'll know what to say.'

He looked from one to the other: at Andy Martin, and on to Brian Mackie, Mario McGuire, Dave Donaldson, Adam Arrow, John Swift, Neil Mcllhenney, Sammy Pye and finally to Joe Doherty, who had flown up both to attend the update briefing and to visit Skinner as an old friend.

`Well . .' he went on, with a smile. His face looked drawn, still, but he was regaining his colour, and all the old vitality shone from his eyes. In fact, Martin thought, it was as if there was something extra there: a new certainty, a new assurance, something, perhaps, that came from having lain at the doorway to eternity, and taken a look inside.

Did you have any out-of-body experiences
, Bob? he had joked, when he had visited his friend on the previous evening.
Not quite
, Skinner had replied, entirely seriously,
but I did
have an out-of-mind experience. When I'm ready, and it'll be fairly soon,tell you about it.

‘• • • you lot seem to have been pretty busy, while I've been having my mid-life crisis. The Chief Constable and Chief Superintendent Martin . . .' the references were formal, as if to emphasise that the DCC was back in business . . have brought me up to date with every aspect of the investigation.

The first thing I have to do is to congratulate you all on some terrific work. Quite honestly, I thought we'd be grinding away at this one for months, years even. Okay, I know we still don't have a conclusion, but as I keep on thumping home, especially for our military pals at the end of the table, that isn't our job.

`My dad used to say that there are two sorts of people in the world, the thinkers and the labourers. We're labourers, to a great extent. We go out there gathering in the bits and pieces of evidence and dragging them all together into a bloody great pile. Once that's done, we hand it all over to the Crown Office, to let them do the thinking and take the final decisions on prosecution. I can't recall an operation in my career where the labouring, the gathering-in of evidence, has been done more effectively.'

He paused, and looked round the table once more. 'In fact, you've been so efficient that I don't begrudge the Fiscal his job. Up to now, all the pressure, all the international attention including the heavy breathing from friend Joe here, has been focused on you lot. Now it's on poor old Davie Pettigrew, and I don't envy him one small piece.

`By now, he should have held the press conference at which he was going to announce his decision on action, after interviewing the various suspects. That's where the Chief is just now.' He pointed between Donaldson and Arrow, to the corner of the room. 'We'll switch the telly on in a few minutes, and catch what he's said. I don't know any more about that than the rest of you.'

`Yes, Bob,' said Arrow, 'but what do you think he'll do?'

Skinner shrugged his shoulders, but carefully. 'It's all about options. I gather that the international possibilities we identified at the start have all been ruled out.'

'That's right,' said Doherty. Yahic is dead, and the Iraqi network seems to be in full retreat.'

Ànd Agent Robin?'

Àgent Robin has been traced and deactivated, Bob,' said Adam Arrow carefully. Skinner nodded without comment, but made an unspoken assumption.

Ìn that case,' he went on, 'Pettigrew and the Crown Office have got five suspects on their hands.' Around the table, one or two faces looked at him curiously.

Ìn custody, or at least co-operating with them, they have Morelli, Ariadne Tucker, Lieutenant Richards and the guy Sawyer. They're all heavily implicated by their own actions, and they all qualify in different ways, so let's look at them, one by one. Okay?'

Nine faces looked back at him, expectantly. Several heads nodded.

`Let's take Morelli first. Frankly, gentlemen, there's as much chance of him winding up in the dock, for this crime at least, as there is of me winning the next Miss World. The fact that he was having an affair with Noble's wife was if anything an incentive to keep the man alive.' Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Sammy Pye's puzzled expression.

He elaborated. 'Morelli and Ariadne were both enjoying a substantial bit on the side, neither asking any more of the other than sex. That was fine as long as they both had partners to deceive, but if one was single, especially if it was a demanding, selfish person like I'm told Ariadne is, the balance of power would change.

`Morelli cleared the way for their out-of-hours nookie by putting Noble into the Private Office job. If Davey had fired him, as he intended, he could have dealt with that by posting him somewhere far away, like the Falklands, or Hong Kong, as part of the hand-over team. Even if he was a serial killer, rather than just a serial shagger, doing away with Noble would be the furthest thing from his mind.'

Dave Donaldson raised a hand. 'What about the thought that Morelli might have been under threat from Davey?'

Àgain,' said Skinner, 'why kill him? Davey was under pressure himself after the Reaper decision, and there's going to be a General Election before too long. The odds were all against him being in office in six months' time. Even if he was after Morelli's scalp, there was no chance of him lifting it. So let's set Morelli aside for now. Quite frankly, if I'd been interviewing him, I'd have taken a statement, handed him over to the CPS for prosecution for extortion, and left it at that. But he pissed off the Chief, and that is always a mistake.'

Èxtortion?' queried Mackie.

`Something along those lines, Brian. He used his position to force young Richards to let him use his house in the Cotswolds for the purposes of screwing his half-brother's wife.

What sort of verdict d'you think a jury of
Sun
readers, or
Telegraph
readers ... or even
Guardian
readers . . . would bring in on that one?'

`Will that case be brought?'

Skinner looked at Arrow. The soldier laughed softly, and answered for him. 'No danger.

Too messy. The deal's already done. Morelli retires early and collects his full pension in the process. His punishment is having to spend the rest of his days with Lady Morelli, who struck me as a woman with a long memory and a bloody good recipe for humble pie.'

`Let's look at Ariadne now,' said the DCC. 'She's in the same boat as Morelli. Why should she want Maurice dead? She earns three or four times the money he did, so she's not tied to him financially. He was obsessive about her, but if it bothered her all that much she'd have walked out on him long ago. Her punishment for his suspicion was to let Morelli into her knickers, and that seems to have suited her fine. As for her wanting to kill Davey, she hardly knew the man. There were loads of people in the queue before her.'

He paused, as if to gather more air into his recuperating lung.

`But let's say she, or she and Morelli together, did want Maurice dead. How would they do it? There's only one realistic way. They forced young Richards to make them a device, then either Ariadne planted it in the Red Box during the night, or she let the boy in and he rigged it for her.'

Ì checked,' said Arrow, interrupting. 'Richards was on an exercise that night.'

Òkay, delete that option. It would have to be Ariadne who planted the bomb. Now Adam, you say that you can be certain that the box stayed intact for at least part of the night. Can you put a time on that?' The little soldier glanced to his right, at his colleague.

Ìt had to be clear still at three-thirty,' said Lieutenant Swift. 'I followed Miss Mirzana . . .'

His face fell, as Arrow glared at him, enraged.

Ì'm sorry, Adam,' he said desperately. 'It just slipped out. But we're all friends here, aren't we?'

`So Robin was the girl who was found dead,' drawled Joe Doherty, 'not the guy who killed her. You had Agent Robin tagged from the start, and you were running her. You fed her phoney information and they swallowed it, until finally, you scared the Iraqis into folding their tents. Hey, I'll bet even the detailed CIA information on our Agent Eagle came from your source, not from their investigation.'

Arrow nodded, glowering again at his colleague. ‘Yes, you're right. Agent Robin was a double all along, only she didn't know it. Neither did the Iraqis. The prosecution case against the man Rafiq will be that he read the final message and killed her when he saw that the network had been rumbled, rather than leave her to face possible arrest.' Along the table, Skinner, struck by his choice of words, shot him a quick, but impassive glance.

Dave Donaldson leaned forward. 'Could she have planted the bomb, then?'

`No way,' said Arrow. 'She wasn't trained as a saboteur or an assassin, only as a spy. She didn't have the knowledge, or the materials. She broke into Noble's house to photograph a document in the Red Box that she couldn't copy during the day, and she passed on her film at an evening meeting in the safe house two days before she was killed. The box was clean when it left the office, and Mirzana didn't carry anything into the Noble place other than her camera. We know that because Swifty was watching her every step of the way. He sat six rows behind her at a Van Morrison Concert, then watched a late night showing of Reservoir Dogs, before trailing her out to Putney. No, Dave, Agent Robin was not our bomber.'

He turned back to Doherty. 'Your last guess was right, though. Our people did pass on the identity of your sleeper. I'm surprised it took you so long to pick him up.'

`Thank you,' said Doherty grimly. 'Those bastards at Langley have been shielding their budget on the strength of that arrest. Wait till I tell the President.'

`But no names, Joe, eh?' interposed Skinner, seriously.

`You have my word as a Southern gentleman on that, sir.'

`Good. Now to go on,' said Skinner, 'we know for certain that if a bomb was planted in that box, it was done after three-thirty’

j

Now, I ask you all. Noble had an early start, and Ariadne knew it. Wasn't that cutting it fine?'

He pressed on. 'But let's say she did. From what we've learned, the device could only have come from Lieutenant Richards, although he couldn't have planted it. Adam, you've interviewed this guy. Vigorously, from what I hear. Whatever the motive, could he have helped to kill his brother?'

Arrow looked up the table at him, from under hooded eyebrows. The lad's besotted by Ariadne,' he said. 'He'd do almost anything she asked. But he didn't do that. No fookin'

way.'

`Which leads us on to Mr Bryn Sawyer. Andy, you said that he didn't seem surprised to see you.'

`He wouldn't, after that letter to Davey.'

Ìn that case,' he said, emphasising his points with a stabbing forefinger, 'if he's our man, if he made a dummy Red Box, filled with explosive, and managed, somehow, to arm it and swap it for the one with which Maurice Noble left his home in Putney, before he got on the plane, if he's that bloody clever . . . how does he suddenly manage to become so bloody stupid that he lets you find all the gear in his workshop and in his house?'

`Because he is an artist blacksmith, boss,' said Martin, 'so he would have the steel. And his wife is a dressmaker, and did buy that red leather. He knew that if we started asking about him those details would come to light, and we would trace those purchases, so he left them there for us to find, and relied on his cover story.

`Plus, he had access to the military high explosives that we know were used and there is a stock discrepancy. Possession of all those items, and his skills, offer strong circumstantial evidence that he made the box and the bomb. He was in London at the time the switch would have to be made. He was even in Heathrow at the same time as Davey and Noble.

And he had made a physical threat to Davey.'

Skinner shook his head. 'No, Andy. He wrote a letter which can be interpreted as a physical threat.'

Òkay, but it is still a very positive case. What more can Pettigrew ask for?'

`He can ask us to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Sawyer was in a position to make the switch. With everything else, that would do it for sure. But without that piece of evidence, and with the existence of the Tucker-Richards theory, which no one can actively disprove, and which could open up a defence of impeachment to confuse the jury, it would still be a dodgy prosecution; especially when the Crown Office has a far safer scapegoat at its disposal.'

`You're right there, I suppose.' Martin nodded resignedly. `Who's that, sir?' asked Dave Donaldson.

`Maurice Noble,' said Skinner. 'He's the fifth suspect. The Crown Office could simply lead evidence before a Fatal Accident Inquiry in the Sheriff Court to show that Noble was in a disturbed state of mind, and that he suspected Davey of having an affair with his wife.

Pettigrew could even put Ariadne in the witness box and force her to admit that he was right, in everything but the name of her partner. Then he could introduce Richards's evidence that Maurice asked him how you made a bomb, and that he gave him the basic information.