Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (30 page)

'Skinner.'

'Morning,
Bob,' said a gruff voice, in a bluff Derbyshire accent. This is Adam. I'm about
to get on to a plane at Farnborough and fly up to Scotland. I want you and
McGuire to meet me at the General Aviation Terminal at Edinburgh.

'There's
something I've got to show you
...
something fooking messy'

41

'What's
the number?' Dan Pringle asked, gazing along Coltbridge Terrace.

'It
doesn't have one, sir,' Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk replied as they walked
along, between linked bungalows on one side of the road and a small tenement on
the other. 'Only a name; River Cottage. I think it might be along there, on the
right. I can see a couple of houses on their own.'

They
strode on, their car parked at the entrance to the narrow
cul-de-sac,
past
a modern building on their right to the first of the detached dwellings. McGurk
read the name-plate. 'No, that's not it.' They moved on to the next. 'Not that
either.'

And
then, a slight curve in the road, and a single-storey house which until then
had not been in their line of vision; it was set back from the street, unlike
the others, and had a small rose garden, with a path leading to the front door.
It seemed to stand out into the flowing water behind, and as they approached
they could see the structure below, built into the river bank.

McGurk's
keen eyes read the name-plate from yards away. 'This is it,' he announced.
'River Cottage.'

'Aye,'
said Pringle. 'Like Shearer's secretary said, it backs right on to the water.
Come on then.' He led the way up the path.

The
house looked, even felt, deserted. There were drawn
blinds
on the two front windows; the frosted glass panels set into the green-painted
front door gave no hint of light or life inside. There was no bell, only a big,
black knocker. McGurk grabbed it and rapped it hard; once, twice, a third time.

They
waited for no more than thirty seconds, before Pringle said, 'Right that's
enough. Let's get in there. Let's see what the back's like.' He disappeared
round the side of the house, the big Sergeant on his heels, but saw at once
that there was no back door. The building stood, quite literally, at the water's
edge.

They
returned to the front door; it appeared to be secured only by a cylinder lock.
McGurk glanced around until he saw a brick in a corner of the garden. He picked
it up and, with a single quick blow, smashed a hole in one of the glass panels,
reached in and opened it with a single twist.

'Smells
in here, sir,' he said, as he stepped into the house. They stood in a dusty
hallway, not large, but wide enough to allow a narrow stairway, on the right,
to run up into the attic.

Pringle
opened a door at the foot of the steps. 'Kitchen.' McGurk opened the door
opposite. 'Living room. Looks tidy and undisturbed.' They moved through the
hall and past the stairway to the back of the house, where they found a small
neat bedroom, and a bathroom.

'Look
at this,' the Sergeant called out as he looked inside. 'There are towels lying
all over the floor.' He stepped across to the bath; a shower curtain on a rail,
hanging inside the tub had been pulled most of the way across. He yanked it
back, and took a quick look around.

A
pink face-cloth had been thrown over the shower's mixer tap; the sergeant
picked it up and saw quickly that it had not always been that colour. He handed
it to Pringle. 'No prizes for guessing what that is.' He leaned over and picked
up a cake of Dove cream soap; it bore faint red streaks.

'Someone's
been cleaning up in here,' he muttered, 'in a hurry, from the way those towels
were chucked about.'

'Upstairs,'
Pringle barked. He led the way back to the hall, and up the narrow stairs to
the attic, to a small landing from which three doors opened. He made for the
nearest, the one in the middle: a cupboard. 'Bugger.'

McGurk
threw open the door to the left: and recoiled as the sudden stink wafted out.
'Jeez.' He switched on the light, and looked at a slaughterhouse.

There
was a bed; a big metal-framed bed, against the far wall. A duvet lay in a
corner of the wide spacious room, made larger by the curtained dormer window
which the detectives knew must overlook the river. A white sheet and pillows in
the far corner. In another, a man's jacket, underpants and trousers, over a
chair, socks and shoes on the floor.

But
the bed itself
...
The remaining
sheet told a horror story; it was soaked with blood, apart from a patch in the
middle, which corresponded roughly to the shape of a man's body, and was
stained a different, yellowish colour. Four lengths of white rope,
blood-streaked again, were secured to the four corner posts of the frame; at
some point the man they had restrained had been cut loose. A number of small
objects lay near each of the strands; McGurk bent over them, peering. 'Don't
touch,' Pringle whispered, unnecessarily. Severed thumb, severed little fingers
at the far end, severed big toe, severed little toe at each of the nearer
corners; discoloured but not yet black. Discarded, between where the feet had
been secured, lay a heavy pair of garden secateurs.

And
laid against the frame, caked with thick, dark, dried blood, a full-sized,
metal baseball bat. 'The murder weapon, d'you think?' asked Pringle heavily.

He
looked around the room, feeling queasy and regretting his last four whiskies of
the evening before. There were blood spatters on the walls around the bed, on
the curtains and even on the ceiling. A red trail led across the carpet from
the frame to the door.

'I
noticed two bolts in the hallway floor,' said McGurk. 'I bet they're for
securing a trap door, covering steps down to a boat-landing on the river.
There's no rug in the hall, but I'll bet that there used to be, until it was
used as this guy's shroud, before he was rolled down those steps and dumped in
the river.'

'I'm
not taking either of those bets,' said Pringle. He stepped carefully across to
a dressing table, in the window space. A black leather wallet lay on it. He
picked it up, by a corner and held it up. It held no money, but there were six
plastic cards in slots. He slid one out with a finger until he could read the
holder's name; 'H. Shearer.'

He
set it back down on the dressing table, took out his mobile and dialled
Skinner's number. Mcllhenney answered. 'The Boss there, Neil?'

'No.
He's had to go out.'

'You
got an ID on your pal from that blood yet?'

'No,
not yet.'

'We
have, at his son's cottage. Sorry, lad, but he was here all right. Some of him still
is, in fact; all over the fucking place.

'You'd
better tell the Boss when he comes in that it's all right for him to call Mrs
Shearer now'

42

'Karen,
this is for you,' Jack McGurk shouted across the CID room at Torphichen Place.
She frowned; who knew she was there? She picked up the call on another
extension. 'Neville.'

'Karen.
Good, you're still there.' The voice of Sammy Pye.

'Just.
I've been stood down: I'm just tidying my desk, then I'll be on my way back to
you, my dear. We seem to have put a name to the man at the centre of this
investigation.'

'Yes,
I know.'

'Who
is it then? No-one's saying around here.'

'Can't
tell you; not over the phone. Neil Mcllhenney passed on an order from the Big
Boss that if there's another leak to the press on this one before he's ready to
make an announcement, then the leaker will be out of a job.'

The
Sergeant whistled. 'Heavy stuff. So what did you want me for?'

'I
was wondering if you knew where our boss is; the DCS. He hasn't turned up so
far this morning; he hasn't called in and he isn't answering his home phone or
his mobile.'

'Why
ask me?' she said, coldly.

'Come
on, Karen. Don't be naive; if Mr Martin's missing you're one of the first
people anyone would talk to.'

'Well,
I don't know, okay? All that's over with.' She was
angry
now, but hurting as well; on top of all that she felt a twinge of fear. 'What
about the DCC? Have you asked him?'

'He's
out of the office. DI Mcllhenney doesn't know anything; he asked me to have the
DCS call Mr Skinner when he got in.'

She
thought of the red car in the driveway. 'Ahh, don't worry. He'll be across some
new woman or other. Is Ruth McConnell in yet?'

'Of
course. There's nothing going on between them. They had a date for tomorrow
night, but the DCS called it off.'

'How
do you know that?' she asked, surprised.

'I
know because I'm going out with her now; she told me what happened.'

'Don't
bother taking her to dinner; it would just be an appetiser. Ruth will eat you,
Sam. Now, who else have you asked about Andy?'

'SB.
And that's what's worrying me. When he left last night, the DCS was doing
something related to them. He was going to lift a guy that the Special Branch
trawl turned up in connection with the Alec Smith investigation.'

'On
his own?'

'Yes.
He told me to stay here and finish what I was doing, that he'd have no bother.
I called DI McGuire; he was out too, and that new girl in there Alice Cowan,
she wouldn't say a thing. It hasn't taken her long to go native. A couple of
days ago she was in uniform, now she's a bloody SB zealot.'

Karen
thought once more of the red MGF. 'Did he take his own car?'

'No.
He walked to Fettes yesterday. He was in a pool Mondeo, and it's missing too.'

Her
fear was more than a twinge now; it was chilling her, sending her pulse rate
soaring. This is what you do, then. Don't make a fuss, but order every panda
car, every patrol car and every biker we have to find that car. Tell operations
that it's an order from the Head of CID.

'I'm
on my way back now.'

43

They
beat the plane to the General Aviation terminal by ten minutes. They stood side
by side outside the building which had once served all of Edinburgh's air
traffic, looking at its impressive and ever-expanding replacement across the
old north-south runway.

Skinner
had no idea what type of aircraft to expect, but even he was impressed when an
RAF Tornado streaked in to land.

'Every
time Adam Arrow shows up,' he shouted to Mario McGuire over the noise of the
engine roar as the pilot eased the plane back to taxiing speed, 'it means
trouble. For him to arrive like this, it means BIG trouble.'

'What
is he, exactly?' the Inspector asked.

'The
fact that you're a Special Branch officer and yet are asking me that says a lot
in itself.' Skinner could speak quietly again, as the plane approached.

'Adam
is everything. He was SAS, but now he's in charge of all MoD security and
intelligence gathering, with the power to do things you would never want to
tell your grandchildren about.'

'Who's
his boss?'

'God,
I think, but maybe he's under surveillance too.' 'What rank is he?'

'At
this moment? I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter. That little man climbing out
of that aeroplane could, if necessary,

make
a Field Marshal, Air Marshal or an Admiral of the bloody Fleet disappear off
the face the earth.' As he spoke, Arrow jumped down from the navigator's seat
and came bustling across the runway towards them. He was small, but built like
a spinning top; massive shoulders tapering down through a stocky waist to short
legs with little feet. His hair was cropped close and he was wearing civilian
clothes - dark trousers, white shirt, an MCC tie and a check jacket.

'Morning,
Bob,' he said, with a cheeriness which made McGuire wonder how he could
possibly be the figure Skinner had described.

'Morning,
Captain, Major, or whatever it is now
...'