Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (40 page)

Young
Andrew John had flourished briefly in that sixties season, until visiting sides
realised that he was at his most effective when Hibs were playing down their
notorious slope, yet strangely anonymous and one-paced for the other half of
the game. Word spread and he was marked accordingly.

The
bubble had burst one winter day with the Hibees three-nil down to Falkirk
before a sparse and unenthusiastic crowd, slogging uphill into cold sleety
rain. Pringle had been there when it happened, when the wag had stood up in the
front row of the season-ticket area and shouted, as the struggling midfielder
allowed a blue-shirted opponent to evade him, 'See you, son, you're deceptively
slow!'

Breaking
all the unwritten rules, and a couple that were written, the young player had
stopped and glared up into the murky stand. His hopes of lasting stardom in
senior football, of great days at Hampden Park and around the world, all ended
in that moment.

A
month later he had been sent back to the reserves and, eighteen months after
that, he had quit the game to concentrate on his career in banking, where there
were, in those days at least, no hecklers.

'I
saw you play, you know,' Detective Superintendent Pringle told him across the
desk in his St Andres Square office. 'See if you'd had two good feet—'

'I'd
have finished playing at thirty-five,' the banker retorted, 'and have come to
see a guy like me to beg him to lend me the money to buy a wee pub somewhere.
Now if I was a young player today, I'd work at it until I had two feet - and
I'd do hill running as part of my training.

'Everybody
used to laugh at the teams that trained on sand dunes, you know.' He paused.
'Don't start me reminiscing, or we'll be here all day. What can I do for you?
You said when you phoned that it was something to do with the Diddler.'

Pringle
nodded. 'That's right; the Shearer investigation. It's come to my attention
that there was an incident at a bank function for business customers last
Christmas. The Deputy Chief Constable suggested that I should get in touch with
you. He hoped you might be able to tell us something about it, or you might
remember a colleague who saw it.'

Andrew
John gave a short, gruff laugh. 'Hah, that's come out, has it? I should have
known it would.

'I
saw it myself, Superintendent. Very unpleasant it was, at the time. Afterwards,
the Diddler asked me to say no more

about
it, so I've never discussed it with anyone, until now.

'The
man Heard must have had a drink before he got there, or he must have been going
at the champagne flat out, for the party hadn't been going for very long before
he started niggling away at the Diddler. In company too, it was; completely
out of order.' The banker looked down and shook his head. 'Very unpleasant.'

'What
happened exactly? We were told that the man took a punch at Mr Shearer.'

'Eventually,
but there were a lot of verbals before that. Heard went on and on, just
chipping away. The wee man tried to ignore him; I even took him away to another
group, but the guy followed us. Finally, the Diddler said something back to
him, something mild by comparison
...
I think he joked that Paris Simons couldn't invest in a book of stamps without
losing on the deal.

'That
was all the excuse that Luke Heard needed; he dropped his glass and took a
swing at the Diddler with his good arm.'

'Did
he hit him?'

'No,
no, he was well gone by then; he missed by a mile. The wee man saw it coming
and ducked out of the way. I stepped in at that point, got hold of Heard and
huckled him out the door. I told him that he wouldn't be welcome at another
bank function until he apologised for his behaviour, both to the Diddler and to
the Governor of the bank.

'All
the top brass were all there, you know. They all saw it.'

'What
did Heard say to Mr Shearer?'

John
looked the policeman in the eye. 'He said, "I'll fucking kill you, you
little bastard." His very words.'

Pringle
remained deadpan. 'But before that?' he asked.

'Before
it got to that stage. What sort of things did he say?'

'Ach,
it was just unpleasant stuff. Bitterness, jealousy, nothing really; it wasn't
just the Diddler he was niggling at. His partner, Johnston-White, he was there
too.'

'Okay,
but can you be more specific about what was actually said?'

'The
gist of it was that Daybelge would do anything to get business. You could have
taken the inference that they would lay on sexual favours of any sort for
clients. At one point, he said that they were a bunch of faggots.'

'Do
you know what was behind it? Where this hatred of Heard's came from?'

'It
goes back to time immemorial, so the Diddler told me afterwards. He and Luke
Heard were at university together; they were the two brightest people in their
year, but the Diddler was brighter. Heard hates to lose at anything, so the
problems started back then. There was quite a bit of animosity and, according
to the Diddler, it got worse when he met Edith, because Heard had gone out with
her first.

'It
calmed down after they graduated, for they went their separate ways for a
while. The Diddler went off to work with an investment house in London and
Heard went straight into Paris Simons.

'Seven
or eight years after that, Paris Simons decided to appoint a strategist,
someone at partnership level responsible for long-term investment decisions.
Heard assumed that he would get the job, but instead, the senior partner of the
day went out and head-hunted the Diddler. Animosity turned to hatred then. The
Diddler told me that he could have had Heard blown out the door, but he didn't.
It turned out to be a big mistake, for the guy formed a sort of rival cabal
within the partnership; there were disputes and arguments over every major
decision, even although the senior partner always came down on the Diddler's
side.

'Then
one day, said senior partner - his name was Rawlinson - dropped dead in the car
park. The Diddler had enough votes on the board to get the job, but he knew
that if he did, Heard and his clique would leave and set up their own firm. So
he beat them to the punch. He left Paris Simons to them and founded Daybelge, taking
a couple of partners and a few big clients with him.

'Six
months later, the Stock Market crashed. Today, just about every fund manager
under the sun will claim to have seen it coming and to have gone liquid in
anticipation, but the Diddler was one of very, very few who actually did. When
it happened, the investment trusts which he had set up were holding nothing but
gilts and cash.

'With
the market on the floor, he reinvested in blue-chip companies and sunrise
industries. When the smoke cleared, Daybelge was far and away the biggest
independent fund manager in Scotland, and probably the most respected in
Britain.

'The
Diddler may have been a rotten footballer, a real wee gossip and a fornicating
little bugger, but as a fund manager he was a bloody genius. That was why he
would have landed the Golden Crescent deal, no question.'

Pringle
tugged at an end of his moustache. 'Aye,' he said, 'the Golden Crescent deal.
I've heard about that.'

'I
think that was what prompted the hostilities at the Christmas party,' Andrew
John suggested. 'It was only a rumour back then, but already the talk was that
Daybelge was the top target.'

'Did
Heard make any reference to it?'

The
banker frowned. 'Come to think of it,' he began. 'I do remember him saying, at
one point, "You look like the cat that's got all the fucking cream: but
just you wait. It'll go sour on you before long." '

62

Karen
laughed. 'I don't know why I'm leaving the force,' she said. 'I might as well
still be drawing the money, if you're going to bring the whole bloody office
home with you every night.' She settled herself down beside Andy on the big
living-room sofa, her legs tucked up under her. Before them, the coffee table
was strewn with files, photographs and statements.

'Don't
worry,' he promised her, with a grin. 'This is a one-off. The Big Man heard me
say something pompous on radio yesterday and he's called my bluff.'

'I
didn't think you were pompous!' she protested. 'I thought you sounded very
sensible and completely committed. But what exactly have you been doing for the
last hour or so, while I've been busying myself in the kitchen?'

'I've
been reading the papers in the Alec Smith investigation, going back to the
very start. Bob can't shake off the notion that there's a link between it and
the Shearer murder, and the hit-and-run on him as well. He's asked me to
confirm it or kill it off.'

'But
I thought that Smith was a closed book, more or less.'

'As
far as I'm concerned, it is. I'm just rereading it.'

'And
what have you learned?'

'I've
learned that Alec Smith liked his nuts
...'

'Before
they were burned off.' Karen murmured.

'Cashews,
actually. I've learned that of all the people interviewed in North Berwick,
not one had ever been inside Smith's
house. I've
learned that he was seen around walking his dog, but that at other times he let
the animal run loose. I've learned that on the night he was killed, North
Berwick was a ghost town; hardly anyone seems to have been out on the street.
The pubs were full, though.'

'No
suspicious sightings? No furtive bloke spotted carrying a Safeway bag with a
wrench, a knife and a blowtorch in it?'

'No.
One guy saw a figure in an anorak carrying a big parcel, but that was all.'

'An
anorak? It was a warm night.'

Andy
grinned. 'Makes no difference in North Berwick. Even on a mild night it can
turn windy all of a sudden, and the haar can come in off the sea without
warning.'

'So,
to sum up, you've been wasting your time for the last hour?'

'Yeah,'
he sighed. 'There's only one thing that struck me as slightly peculiar.' 'What
was that?'

'Something
from the post-mortem report, actually.' He leaned forward and picked it up from
the coffee table. 'Sarah remarks that Smith was very fit and that judging by
the musculature of his legs he must have taken a lot of physical exercise;
walking, running or cycling, she suggests. Yet
...'
He paused.

'Yes?'
Karen asked, eagerly.

'Yet
Bob told me that Alec Smith gave up playing football with his Thursday night
crowd because his right knee had packed up on him. Either he made a miracle
recovery afterwards, or he was lying.

'If
he was, it makes me wonder. Why did he really chuck it?'

'Maybe
it occurred to him that a collection of middle-aged men kicking a ball around
might look faintly silly.'

Andy
laughed out loud. 'Don't you ever say that to Bob Skinner, or to Neil. It's
their religion.' He tossed the report back on the table and stood up.

'You
know what?' he began. 'I think I'll go to bed.'

She
gave him a long, enticing look. 'Can I come too?'

He
grinned down at her, on the sofa. 'That was the general idea,' he murmured.

63

'Don't
be crazy, Bob. No way will I cut that plaster off for you; I have to work in
the Royal Infirmary. Granted, your leg is not broken, granted, you probably
will be kicking footballs around in two to three weeks; but it's still possible
that you could have damaged ligaments which could cause long-term problems if
you take liberties with them. The orthopaedic guys said you must wear that for
a week, and a week it is.'

'Sarah,
come on. It's itching like
...'

'No!'
She looked at the plaster. 'I'll tell you what; it's loosened off a bit; I'll
pour just a little baby oil into it. That might ease it.'

'Anything;
I'll try anything.'

She
took a bottle of Johnson's oil from her dressing table and soaked a piece of
cotton wool, then rubbed it around his leg, above the plaster, as he sat on the
edge of the bed. 'Ahh!!' he sighed as the balm made its way down. 'That's my
girl.'