Skinner's Round (2 page)

`That's your thinking?'

`What else fits? The shelf's just inside the door, behind the tub. Maybe the guy hoped to sneak in and get out without White hearing him, only it didn't work out that way.'

`Mmm,' said Sarah, thoughtfully. 'I've met this man, you know. The Whites were at the Prouds' party last Christmas. And Bob knew him reasonably well through the New Club.'

She walked over to the Jacuzzi and looked down at the late Michael White. She shook her head sadly for a second or two, but then her expression changed, becoming completely professional and dispassionate. She put down her bag, opened it and took out a pair of disposable latex gloves, which she snapped on. 'Just for the record.' She reached into the bath and held the right wrist for a few seconds. 'What's the time, Neil?'

Two-twenty-seven, Doctor.'

ÒK, better note that down as the moment when life was declared extinct.'

She grasped the jaw and raised the head for a closer look at the wound. 'Big knife did that. No weapon found?' She looked up at Mcllhenney, who shook his head.

Wisps of brown hair floated up as she let White's head sink back down to his shoulder. Idly she stirred the water, from which the crimson blood had begun to separate. 'He must have died very quickly, otherwise there'd be even more blood than that. A single cut, almost to the bone, yet hardly anything splashed outside the bath. What d'you think guys?'

Martin stepped over beside her. 'He's lying with his back to the door. He hears the thief, but before he can pull himself up the guy takes two steps across and does him.'

`Yeah, but even at that . . . Come here, Neil. Down on your knees with your back to me.'

Mcllhenney, puzzled, did as he was told.

`Now look, to do that, our killer, having stepped across that tiled floor, would have had to grab his man by the chin with his left hand, and pull him round . . .' she took hold of Mcllhenney and pulled his head up and to the left `. . . to expose the neck so that he could make the cut.' The sweeping movement of her right hand left nothing to the imagination. In her grasp Mcllhenney paled.

She released the big detective. 'What's wrong with that?' she asked him as he stood up.

He shrugged his shoulders. `Dunno.'

`What's wrong with it, colleagues, is that if it had happened like that, even if it was so quick that White had no chance even to struggle, when he hit the artery, the blood would have gone halfway up the wall on the right there. Yet there isn't any, apart from that smear over the edge of the tub. There's no knife, so no attempt to make it look like suicide. And there's been a theft. So if it happened the way you say, why would our killer wipe the wall, so carefully as not to leave a trace? And if he did that, why would he leave that one smear?'

Martin smiled. He knew Sarah Skinner, née Grace, from many crime scenes. He was in awe of her eye for detail. 'So tell us, why?'

`He didn't. That's not what happened.' She knelt beside the tub and reached into the water once more, with both hands this time. She took hold of White's head firmly, moving her fingers around the skull. The two policemen watched in fascination. Eventually, she nodded and hissed, 'Yes!! Got it!' She looked up at them, still holding the victim's head.

`There's another injury! Above the hairline, on the right temple. He has a depressed skull fracture.' She let the body go and stood up. 'No one followed him in here. Someone was waiting for him. Behind the door, I'd say. White opens the door right-handed and comes in.

Even as it's closing, he's putting his gear on the shelf, standing naked and with his back to the man who's waiting.

`Whack! The attacker beans him with something, on the side of the head. He goes down, and from that blow he's out, believe me. Our guy could have taken the money and run. But he doesn't do that. Instead he hauls White, a dead weight, across and heaves him into the Jacuzzi. Then he outs with a long-bladed knife and cuts his throat, in the tub. When the artery shoots, only the first spurt breaks the surface.'

`Why should he do that?' asked Martin, but it was more a prompt than a question.

`So that he wouldn't get blood on him. This guy didn't come in here to steal from White. If he took his watch and wallet it was only to make you dumb coppers assume that was the motive.

This man, our perpetrator, came in here to kill White, and to walk away quietly afterwards.'

`Hi Pops.'

She stood in the doorway. The peach-coloured towel trailed on the hallway floor, hanging
loosely from her right hand. Her long dark hair, its natural waves dampened down by the
shower, was ruffled from vigorous rubbing. The blue satin bathrobe, tied firmly at the waist,
clung tightly to her, its 'AM' monogram featured by the swell of her left breast.

Bob Skinner stared down at his daughter, in his best friend's hallway, in his best friend's
robe. His eyes were wide with astonishment. His mouth began to form words, but no sound
came out. He shook his head, as if to clear it.

Alex frowned suddenly as she noticed the lump on his forehead, and the cut, with its two
stitches.

Òh pops. Your head! Andy told me, but...'

The sudden narrowing of his eyes cut her off short. 'Never mind my head.' His voice,
recovered, was hard and grim. 'Is this what it seems?'

`What do you mean?'

`Don't give me that!' he snapped, with a coldness that shocked her. 'You know bloody well
what I mean! How long has this been going on? You and Andy. Shacking up!' He slammed
the flat of his right hand against the blue-painted front door, sending it flying back on its
hinges.

For the merest instant alarm showed in her face, and then it was gone as she flared back at
him. lust what has that got to do with you? What the hell happened to belief in me and trust in
my judgement . . . or in Andy's for that matter?'

`Trust in your judgement! Don't make me laugh. I did that once before. Remember him? And
as for Andy, he's a walking disaster when it comes to relationships. I have a fair idea of the
number of women that have stood in that doorway — and probably worn that dressing-gown
too — and none of them stayed around longer than a couple of months.

Ìs that what you want to be? Another notch on the headboard?'

The girl's eyes flared and her jaw thrust out aggressively — in a way, although neither
realised it, which mirrored his own. `God damn you, Pops!' she spat. 'You think I'm some sort
of bimbo? Some easy lay? Maybe you've got your notches the wrong way round. Maybe Andy
was my pushover.

`You're insulting me as a person if you suggest that I'm a victim here. I chose Andy just as
much as he chose me. We . . She stopped short.

`Fuck it, I am twenty-one years old. I will NOT explain myself to you!' She stepped back and
slammed the door in his face.

Hot rage erupted and engulfed him. He pounded the blue paintwork with his fist. 'Open up,
girl!'

Her shout was muffled by the door. 'Don't "girl" me! I'll talk to you when you're ready to
listen. Now piss off to your new family. You've just blown this one.'

He raised his fist to pound the door again, but a firm hand caught his elbow. 'Bob, easy!' said
a soft voice behind him. He shook his arm free and spun round, ignoring the pain in his
damaged right foot. Andy Martin stood there on the landing, unshaven, in jeans and teeshirt.

He held a newspaper and a white paper bag in his left hand.

Skinner seized him by the shirt front and slammed him back against the half-tiled wall.

Martin let himself ride backwards on the force of his shove, only tensing his powerful
shoulder muscles to protect the back of his head. The vivid green eyes looked back at Skinner,
calm and unblinking. let me go, Bob, and cool down. We were going to tell you, but the time
wasn't . .

Skinner's hiss of anger cut him off 'You treacherous bastard, Andy. You didn't tell me because
you couldn't summon up the bottle. You were ashamed of yourself She didn't tell me because
she knew exactly how I'd feel. I trusted you all these years, treated you like a brother, and all
that time you've been . . .' He paused as if to steady himself

`Christ you've known her since she was a wee girl! Did you fancy her then, in her school
uniform? Are you that bloody sick?'

Martin shook his head. 'No, Bob. I'm not. And neither is Alex. And neither are you. But you
have had a bang on the head, and you have been up all night. So why don't you cool it and go
back to Sarah; get some sleep and do some thinking.'

Skinner snarled. 'Thinking! If I really start . .

Martin put the flat of his free hand on his chest. 'Look, man. If you were going to take a pop
at me you'd have done it by now. But you're too much of a straight arrow polisman for that.

So do what I say. Head off home and rest up. Unless you want to come in and talk this
through over breakfast.

Ìt's the last chance you'll have for a fortnight, for we're off to Florida in about three hours.

What's it to be?'

Skinner stood there for a second, staring at him: then he released his grasp and pushed
himself backwards, away from Martin, but without blinking or breaking eye contact. 'Breakfast, Andy? You can stick your bacon rolls up your arse, boy.

`No, I'll head off and do my thinking. And while you two are off in your holiday paradise, you
can do some too, about your career path. For that's what I'll be mulling over.

`You've betrayed my trust, Detective Superintendent. And if you think you can do that and
stay on my team, then . . . No, no one could be that naive!'

Two

Detective Superintendent Alison Higgins looked around the impressive area. 'As plush as any five-star hotel,' she murmured to herself. The hexagonal foyer of the Witches' Hill Golf and Country Club was carpeted throughout in a dark brown wilton, matched by the light flock pattern of the wallpaper. Portraits hung on two of the walls. One depicted a middle-aged man in Highland dress, sitting ramrod straight in a high-backed red leather chair. The face was strong, with a piercing gaze above a prominent, sharp nose, and iron-grey hair which seemed to rise from the temples like wings on a Viking helmet. The other showed an altogether more conventional figure, standing beside a desk. He was dark-haired, and wore a double-breasted business suit. Higgins had difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that this assured, smiling figure was the man she had just seen, waxy-hued and grotesque, in the Jacuzzi tub, newly emptied on Sarah's instruction.

A tartan-blazered receptionist was seated behind a mahogany counter, near the smoked-glass entrance. The young man wore a slightly stunned expression. Every so often he would glance fearfully across at the three police officers, his eyes lingering on Alison Higgins, blonde and trim in her dark jacket and skirt, with authority in her bearing.

She was one of the highest-ranking woman police officers in Scotland, in day-to-day charge of criminal investigation in a sector which took in East Edinburgh, and a rural area which stretched through East Lothian and down to the border at Berwick.

She looked up at the two men. 'Sailing's my sport, lads, not golf, so humour me by explaining exactly what this place is, and what the rich man in the bathtub had to do with it?'

Martin glanced at his watch. 'No point in asking Neil. He wouldn't know a golf club from a walking stick. Briefly, you are standing in the clubhouse of the newest, swankiest golf course in Scotland; no, scratch that, in Europe. Witches' Hill is a championship-standard eighteen-hole course, built to attract the highest of the high rollers. Golf is an international game now, with huge money involved — dollars, yen, Deutschmarks, you name it — and Scotland is still recognised universally as its ancestral home.

`The land on which the course is built belongs, like much of the rest of this area, to the Marquis of Kinture. That's him on the wall over there.' He nodded towards the portrait of the man in the chair. 'By the way, the reason he's sitting is because he's wheelchair-bound. A few years back he landed a light aircraft rather harder than he had intended, and broke his back.

Before his accident the Marquis was a scratch golfer — that means he was very good, Alison.

Since then he's been involved in golf administration, as a member of the R. and A.

Committee.'

Èh?' said Alison Higgins.

`The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, the ruling body of world golf.'

He paused, glancing at his watch again. 'Anyway, in his wheelchair the Marquis began to take a closer interest in his estates than before. One of the first things he found was that, in common with many other landed interests, his liquidity wasn't what it used to be. To succeed in farming today it takes foresight, good crop selection, and substantial investment, plus a good slice of luck.

`So he looked at all of his assets and tried to figure out how to make them work harder for him. Eventually, he focused on the triangle of land where we are now. It's never been much use for agriculture apparently. It's all bumps, hollows and ponds. But looking at it on the map one day, inspiration hit him. The biggest of the bumps has a name — Witches' Hill —and one of the ponds has too. It's called the Truth Loch.

The Marquis knew that in medieval times East Lothian was a notorious centre for witchcraft and the black arts. Not only that but Witches' Hill was right at its heart. In the sixteenth century, it was said that the biggest of the covens met there, a gathering of crones from all around — from Longniddry, North Berwick, Dirleton, all around here — and that they held their ceremonies on its top, casting spells, calling down curses, and sacrificing livestock to the Devil.'