Skinner's Rules (2 page)

Skinner returned her smile. ‘Sorry, Doc, I stand chastised. Now, can you give me an estimate on time?’

‘He’s still fairly fresh. He was found at 5.30, and I’d guess from the indicators that he’d been dead around ninety minutes by then. It’s a wonder that no one found him earlier. I mean he’s just yards from the sidewalk.’

Skinner shuddered slightly. ‘Just as well. One of my lads is in shock. Imagine some poor wee cleaner on her way to work tripping over a bit of Mr Mortimer!’

He led her away from the body. ‘Can I have a formal report as soon as you can manage, please, Doctor?’ Skinner smiled again at Sarah Grace. The creases around his eyes turned to laugh-lines, and for an instant the steely hair seemed to sparkle.

She returned his request with a grin and a drawl. ‘Double quick, Skinner.’ She stripped off her latex gloves, stuffed them into a disposal bag and thrust that deep into a pocket of her parka.

Skinner looked back towards the mouth of the Close. At the entrance, one or two early morning passers-by had stopped to stare. ‘Andy,’ he called across to Martin, ‘get a screen up there, will you, and move those gawpers on. And let’s have a cover over the body. It’ll be light soon; some clever bastard with a camera would get a fortune for that picture!’

Two constables, without a direct order, stripped off their long overcoats and spread them over the separate parts of Mr Mortimer, pulling the garments together so that they formed a single cover. Two more, the tallest of the officers at the scene, stood shoulder to shoulder at the mouth of the Close. The two who were stationed at the foot of the alley-way moved round the corner and took up position at the head of the steps which led down to Cockburn Street.

‘Right, that’s better. Now you technicians get finished and let’s gather up this poor mother’s son for the mortuary.’ He turned back to Martin. ‘Andy. No weapon at the scene?’ Again, Martin shook his blond head. ‘No, I thought not. Ask Doctor Sarah for an opinion. Whatever it was, it was bloody sharp and handled by someone strong, and an expert at that. A mug would have put a foot in all that blood, but this boy - there’s not a sign he was ever here apart from that thing over there.’

As Skinner nodded over his shoulder towards the body, his eye caught a dark figure running up the alley towards him. He was waving something, something which shone, even in the poor artificial light.

‘Sir, sir, excuse me, sir.’ It was one of the two constables from the foot of the close. His voice was of the Islands, light and lilting, contrasting with the harder Central Scotland tones of Skinner and Martin.

The boy, for he was no more, rushed up to them. He brandished something which looked like a short sword.

‘This was stuck in a door at the foot of the Close, sir. It’s one of those big bayonets from the First World War. I know because my great-grand-father brought one back with him. It’s a sort of a family treasure now.’

Skinner looked at the constable, who stood panting, like a dog awaiting a reward for the return of a stick. Martin shook his head and sighed, waiting for the thunder which he knew was about to crash around the young man.

But the Chief Superintendent spoke quietly. ‘Son, how long have you been on the force?’

‘Nine months, sir!’ The face was still expectant.

‘Nine months, eh. And in all that time, has no one told you that if you’re at a murder scene, and you find something that might be - however slight the chance - a weapon, that you leave that thing exactly where it is and summon a senior officer? Has no one told you that?

‘Don’t you even watch bloody
Taggart?’

The young man’s face fell. He looked down at his big feet. ‘Och, sir, I’m very sorry.’

Skinner smiled for the third time that morning. ‘Okay, son. Let’s just say that this is your first really dirty murder enquiry, and you got excited. You’ve just learned lesson one: Keep the head.’ Christ, thought Skinner, as the words left his mouth; what a thing to say. For a second, laughter, as it sometimes can in terrible moments, almost burst out. But he checked himself in time.

‘That’s lesson one. Here’s lesson two. If you ever again come rushing up to me waving a bloody great bayonet, I will take it off you and stick it right up your bottom-hole, sharp end first. Is that understood also?’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Right, now that it is, show Mr Martin and me exactly where you found the thing. What’s your name, by the way?’

‘PC lain Mac Vicar, sir.’

PC lain led them round the corner and across to a small doorway. ‘It was sticking in here, sir, as if someone had thrown it away.’

‘Try to put it back.’

Like a uniformed King Arthur, the young man slid the brutal knife back into a deep groove in the dirty, weathered doorframe. It stayed in place.

‘Okay, lain,’ said Skinner, ‘that’s fine. Now guard it with your life until the photographer has taken his picture and until the technicians come to take it away.’

As they walked back up the steep slope, Martin spoke. It was the first time since the arrival of his Chief that he had offered an opinion. The care which he took in weighing up a situation was a trait that Skinner admired in his young assistant. It was one of the secrets of efficient detection.

‘You know, boss, that’s a big brutal knife, all right, and it could have done the job, but anyone who did all that damage with just three swipes wasn’t just lashing out. We’re not just dealing with another nutter with a knife here, but with someone with real weapons skills.’

‘Aye, but that doesn’t stop him being a nutter as well!’

An hour later, after easing an account of the discovery of the body from WPC Ross, who had begun to react at last to the horror, Skinner led Martin out of the Close on to the High Street. It was 8.10 a.m., the sun had risen behind grey watery clouds, and the morning traffic was building up. Buses boomed past, their wheels roaring on the ancient cobbles.

Weatherproofed office workers bustled grimly through the drizzle. Some were heading for the Lothian Regional Council headquarters, a building so out of synchronicity with the rest of the historic street that most Edinburgh citizens try to forget that it is there. Others walked purposely towards the magnificently domed Head Office of the Bank of Scotland which overlooks Princes Street from its perch on the Mound, and is dominated in its turn by the mighty Castle, secure on its great rock.

‘Come on, Andy. Let’s go across and see if Roy Thornton’s in yet.’

The Advocates’ Library is situated in Parliament House, on the far side of the Great Hall, the finest public room in Scotland. It is barely 200 yards from the mouth of Advocates’ Close.

Skinner and Martin walked the short distance, entering the Supreme Court buildings through the unmarked, anonymous, swing doors. They had almost passed the brightly-uniformed security men — known colloquially as the High Street Blues — when Martin stopped. ‘Hold on a minute, boss.’

He stepped over to the reception desk where a registration book lay open. Names, locations in the building, times of arrival and times of departure ran in four parallel columns. He scanned backwards through the list of signatures.

‘Here we are. Mortimer signed in at 9.11 p.m. and out at 4.02 a.m. Signed off for good about a minute later, I should think. I wonder what kept him working all night.’

‘It’s not all that unusual, Andy. The Library’s open twenty-four hours a day for advocates’ use, and these are busy people as a rule. The younger ones often live in small flats, and like to use this as an office as well as just a reading room.’

They walked across the Great Hall, beneath the magnificent hammer-beam roof, and past the stained glass window which reminds visitors that the Hall was, in centuries gone by, the home of Scotland’s Parliament.

The clock stood at only 8.22 a.m., but Roy Thornton, the Faculty of Advocates’ Officer and front-of-house manager, stood in his box at the Library entrance, resplendent in the formal uniform which was his working dress. It suited him. He had been, in an earlier career, Regimental Sergeant Major of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

He was a dark, trim man, with a neatly clipped moustache, and a face which gave a hint of his fondness for malt whisky. He and Skinner knew each other well, and the big detective respected the ex-soldier as the fountainhead of all knowledge about the head office of Scotland’s law business.

Thornton smiled in greeting. ‘Hello, Bob. Bit early for you, is it no’. Or have you not slept since that football team of yours was stuffed on Saturday!’ Thornton laughed. Football rivalry was another link between them. Roy Thornton was a Heart of Midlothian fanatic, while Skinner retained a boyhood loyalty to Motherwell. Both were Premier Division sides, and on the previous Saturday, Hearts had beaten Motherwell in a close and controversial match in Edinburgh.

Skinner grunted. ‘Had the ref locked up. He’s up in the Sheriff Court at ten o’clock. Charges are daylight robbery, high treason, buggery and anything else that I can think of between now and then.’

Thornton rocked back on his heels as he laughed. ‘So what brings you here, big fella. Looking to nobble an Advocate Depute?’

Skinner dropped the bantering tone. ‘No, Roy, what brings me here is bloody murder, most foul. Know a boy called Mortimer, one of yours?’

The term ‘boy’ is used widely in Scotland to denote any male person who is above the age of consent, but younger than the speaker.

Thornton nodded, his smile vanishing. ‘Young Mike? Aye, he’s a good lad. Why, what’s up?’

‘About four and a half hours ago, someone separated young Mike from his head — and I mean that — across the road in Advocates’ Close.’

The colour drained in an instant from Thornton’s face. ‘Sweet suffering Christ!’

Skinner gave him a few moments to absorb the news. ‘Listen, Roy, say no to this if you have any sense, but if you could make a formal identification now it could save the next of kin a load of grief.’

‘Sure, I’ll do that.’

Ten minutes later, they re-entered the building. As they crossed the Great Hall, Thornton said to Skinner: ‘In the army once, in Ireland, I had to clean up after an explosion, so I’ve seen things like that before. But it’s part of the scene there.

‘This is Edinburgh. This is a safe, kind place. What sort of a bastard is there in this city that would do a thing like that. A loony, surely.’

Skinner looked sideways at him. ‘I hope so, Roy. Because if whoever chopped up your boy Mike is sane, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Tell me what you know about Mortimer.’

There was little to tell. Mike Mortimer had been thirty-four years old, and had been at the Bar for four years, after five years in the Procurator Fiscal service in Glasgow and Stranraer. He had grown a successful criminal practice quickly, from scratch. He was unmarried, but was widely believed to be sleeping with Rachel Jameson, an advocate a year or two his junior, both in age and in service at the Bar.

In common with most advocates, his family background was non-legal. His father, Thornton recalled, worked in a factory in Clydebank.

‘Nice people, his Mum and Dad. I remember them at Mike’s Calling ceremony. They were so proud of him.’ He shook his head slowly and sadly.

‘Look, Bob, you’d better see the Dean.’

‘Of course, Roy. But give me a second.’ He turned to Martin. ‘Andy, will you talk to the security guards. The night shift will be away by now. Find out who they are, get their addresses and have someone take statements.’

Martin nodded and recrossed the Hall.

Thornton left Skinner for a few moments. On his return, he motioned to the detective to follow him, and led the way through the long Library, past rows of desks under an up-lit, gold-painted ceiling, to a door halfway down on the left.

David Murray, QC, recently elected as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates following his predecessor’s elevation to high judicial office, was a small, neat man, with a reserved but pleasant manner, and enormously shrewd eyes, set behind round spectacles. He was a member of one of the legal dynasties who once formed the major proportion of the Scots Bar. He was held in the utmost respect throughout the Faculty and beyond, and his election, although contested, had been welcomed universally. He was a man of stature in every respect other than the physical.

While Murray’s practice was exclusively civil, he had enjoyed a spell in criminal prosecution as an Advocate Depute. During that time Skinner’s evidence in a number of spectacular trials had helped him to maintain an undefeated record as Crown counsel. He greeted the detective warmly.

‘Hello, Bob, how are things. Thornton tells me you want to see me. None of my troops been up to mischief, I hope.’

‘David, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but one of your people has been murdered. It happened just a few hours ago. He seems to have been on his way home from the Library when he was attacked in Advocates’ Close.’

Murray stood bolt upright. ‘Good God! Who?’

‘A man named Michael Mortimer. Roy Thornton just confirmed our identification.’

‘Oh no, surely not.’ Murray ran a small hand through what was left of his hair. ‘You said murder. Is that what it was, strictly speaking, or do you think it was a mugging gone wrong?’

‘David, not even you would have accepted a culpable homicide plea on this one, believe me.’ Skinner shuddered at the memory, still vivid in his thoughts. He realised, with a flash of certainty, that it would never leave him completely.

‘Listen, I know it’s early, but do you have a spot of something? I feel the need all of a sudden.’

The Dean’s room was lined with books from floor to ceiling. Murray walked over to a shelf and removed a leather-bound volume with the title
Session Cases 1924
printed in gold on the spine. He reached into the darkness of the gap that it had left and produced a bottle of Glenmorangie. He removed a glass bearing the Faculty crest from a drawer in his octagonal desk, and uncorking the bottle, poured a stiff measure.