Skinner's Rules

he picked up a sheet of note-paper with his left and drew it edge-first downwards over the blade. Like two leaves, the paper, split, fell to the floor.

‘Has it always been kept so sharp?’

‘To do otherwise would be to do it dishonour.’

Carefully, Skinner resheathed the sword and returned weapon and case to their place in the armour display. He turned again and looked at the desk. A single, framed photograph was positioned on the right of a brass inkstand. It showed Yobatu, his wife, and three children, the eldest a girl in her mid-teens. An ordinary, happy family photograph. Madame Yobatu looked beautiful, carefree and radiant. Her husband’s eyes were crinkled with laughter.

Skinner returned to his seat.

‘Before the terrible thing that happened to your daughter, Yobatu san, were you happy in this country?’

Even seated as he was, the man’s shoulders seemed to droop. His voice fell. ‘I came here by choice. I saw Great Britain as a good place to bring my family, so that they could learn of the wider world and escape the insularity from which our culture has always suffered. I came here, I embraced your ways, I tried to become as you. And then my daughter was taken from me in, as you say, a terrible way.

‘But I believed what I was told about your justice. I believed the policemen who said to me that the men who did this thing would be punished. I was betrayed. The jury, all-white, saw a Japanese victim and two Chinese, our traditional enemies, in the dock. They were guilty, but the jury was indifferent. Because my daughter was Japanese.

‘They believed the lies that were told about her. They listened to the tricks and deceits of the two lawyers. They chose to accept the fairy story of those two men. They seemed to overlook the fact that she had been murdered. If it had been a white girl who had been slaughtered by those Chinese pigs, do you believe that they would have been found innocent? Do you believe that for a single moment?’

Skinner accepted the challenge. He returned Yobatu’s stare. ‘In all honesty, sir, having studied the evidence I think it unlikely.’

The frankness of the admission seemed to take Yobatu by surprise. For the first time, his anger softened slightly.

‘But are you saying, Yobatu san, that the advocates who defended John Ho and Shun Lee used your daughter’s racial origins to secure their clients’ acquittal?’

The anger in the eyes flared again. ‘I am saying that they invented stories about my daughter. If they had suggested that a white girl of good family would go off with three Chinese boys, the jury would not have believed them for an instant. I am saying that the lawyers of my daughter’s murderers conspired to deny me justice, and revenge for her death.’

‘Yobatu san, where were you last Thursday?’

Skinner caught what could have been a flicker of comprehension in the eyes.

‘I was in the Court in Glasgow, watching one of the people who cheated me trying to free another guilty beast.’

‘How did the case end?’

‘This time the victim was white. This time the jury did not believe the lies.’

‘How did you return to Edinburgh?’

‘By railway.’

With an effort, Skinner managed to conceal his surprise.

‘By which train?’

‘The 5.30, but it was delayed by an accident in the station.’

Now Skinner’s eyes grew hard.

‘Not an accident, Yobatu san. Not an accident. A woman was pushed in front of the train.’

‘I did not hear that said.’

‘Do you know who that woman was?’

Yobatu sat motionless and impassive for several seconds.

Eventually Skinner filled the silence in a hard-edged voice. ‘I believe that you do. I believe that you know that she was the woman whom you had watched that day, and throughout the trial.

‘And where were you on the night of November the seventh, and on the next night, and two nights after that?’

Yobatu sat silent as a statue.

‘Where were you on the night that the other advocate in your daughter’s trial was butchered-with a sword- and on those other nights when three other people were done savagely to death?’

Still the man sat, and silent, but the anger in his eyes seemed to be joined by something which, Skinner thought, resembled frustration.

‘I will tell you how it looks to me, Yobatu san. It looks as if you were so thirsty for justice that you decided to administer your own. That you killed Shun Lee and made it look like a Chinese quarrel. That you killed Michael Mortimer, and then, in the same part of the city, you slaughtered three other people, at random, to make it all look like the work of a maniac. And, finally, that you killed Rachel Jameson, quickly, in a moment of opportunity, and made it appear like suicide.

‘That is how it looks to me, Yobatu san. Perhaps to you it looked, and still looks like an honourable thing to do. Perhaps those three random victims, being Westerners, and one a policeman, you saw as sharing the guilt.

‘I have sympathy for someone who has lost as you have. I have a daughter myself. If you killed Shun Lee, I will lock you away, but I will understand. But if you killed those five other people- three, simply to help you avoid detection - then I will lock you away as I would a dangerous animal, one with nothing in its heart but death. What do you say, Yobatu san? Are you such an animal?’

Yobatu sprang out of his chair. Skinner, who had been leaning forward, his right forearm on his knee, fixing the man with his glare, was on his feet in a flash. He stared into the eyes and saw something beyond comprehension, something that seemed to transcend fury. Martin was on his feet too, watching, waiting, as lightning seemed to flash between the two men.

Now the challenge was in Skinner’s eyes, facing down the flame in Yobatu’s.

And then the silence was broken.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ It was Brian Mackie, stiff and formal, but insistent. ‘Would you come with me, please.’

The tension did not evaporate; it was too high for that. It simply eased a little, and Martin found to his relief that, after all, he was still able to breathe.

Skinner nodded. ‘You too, please, Yobatu san,’ he said, curtly this time. ‘Andy.’ He signalled Martin to bring up the rear.

Mackie led the way into the hall and out through the front door. They walked in single file towards the double garage, with its door still raised.

Even with two cars inside, there was still room for a wide workbench, with four drawers running along its length. The third of these was lying open.

‘Nothing has been touched, sir,’ said Mackie. Wearing a pair of cotton gloves, he slid the drawer from its runners and placed it carefully on the workbench.

To the front of what was now a wide shallow box, Skinner saw a jumble of twine and two tins without lids, each full of nails. To the rear, he saw two short-handled axes and a heavy hunting knife. Mackie withdrew each object in turn for inspection, held it up before Skinner, Yobatu and Martin, and replaced it carefully in its original position.

Along the back of the drawer was a black bundle, tied with string. Mackie withdrew it and released the slip knot. The bundle unrolled into a lightweight one-piece tunic, topped off by a balaclava-style hood. As it did so, a pair of black woollen gloves fell to the floor.

Again, Mackie held the objects up in turn for inspection. Again he replaced them, bundled and tied, in their original position.

And last, pushed into a corner of the drawer, they saw a small cardboard box, the kind used to gift-wrap