Skinner's Mission

‘Mind your feet, sir,’ he barked. ‘Those marks on the floor look like bloodstains. And what’s that?’

As Donaldson froze and stood stock-still, the Sergeant, wary himself of leaving fresh marks, tiptoed around the stains on the carpet and, carefully, picked up the black plastic sheet. At once he realised that it was a binliner. As he lifted it a number of smaller bags fell out, crumpled up together and streaked with drying blood.

‘What the hell!’ he exclaimed, holding the binliner at arm’s length and turning it inside out. Holes had been cut in the top and in the sides. ‘The clever bastard. He’s worn this thing like an overall and the supermarket bags over his forearms and his feet, to keep the blood off his clothes and his shoes, and to avoid leaving any trace of himself.

‘Once he was done, the bugger just stripped them off and walked away.’

‘Maybe the plastic bags will give us a lead,’ said Donaldson.

‘Maybe,’ muttered the Sergeant, with an edge of irreverent sarcasm in his tone, ‘if we start by lifting everyone that’s shopped in Safeway over the last few months.’

The Superintendent shot him a look which was intended to be reproving but failed, then produced his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled DCS Martin’s direct line number.

McIlhenney listened as he described their discovery. ‘No, sir,’ he heard him say. ‘It doesn’t look as if the man had a chance. Somehow the killer got into the building and knocked on Medina’s door. As soon as he started to open it he smashed his way in and attacked him.

‘From the looks of it, any one of these wounds would have been fatal.’

He paused. ‘No, sir, we haven’t gone in any further than the front door. Yes, we’ll wait for Arthur Dorward’s team, and for you to get here.’

24

A chill ran through Bob Skinner as he looked at Medina’s corpse. In another place, a few months before, with only a slightly different outcome he could have been lying like Medina, staring up into eternity with dispassionate, white-clad detectives working quietly around his body.

He gave a small shudder and the moment passed.

‘Like you said, Dave,’ he said. ‘The boy didn’t have a chance. Any guesses about how the killer got into the building?’

‘All the entrances are secure, boss, but he could have done it like we did: pressed any bell and said he was the postman. Or, he could have been someone Medina was expecting.’

Skinner frowned. ‘Don’t fancy that. In that case the victim would probably have been at the door waiting for him by the time he climbed the stairs, and he wouldn’t have been taken by surprise. He looks to have been quite a fit lad, too.’

He turned to Dr Banks, who was standing on the other side of the body. ‘Got any idea of the time of death, doctor?’

Banks looked hesitant, as usual. ‘Well, as you know it’s hard to be precise.’

‘Well don’t be precise, man,’ the Deputy Chief Constable snapped. ‘For once, just fucking guess!’

The doctor flushed. ‘Very well. Late morning, I’d say . . . but I won’t be bound by that.’

‘No,’ thought Skinner, ‘you won’t. Yet my wife could give me the time down to the half-hour and probably tell me what the killer had for breakfast.’ Inside him, a river of loss threatened to burst its banks, but with an effort of will he contained it and turned back to his men.

‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got one suspect as the orchestrator of this murder, yet he was the guy who put us on to Medina in the first place. Why would Jackie offer him up as a candidate, and then have him knocked off?

‘Is the little shit so arrogant that he’s trying to tell us he’s more powerful than we are?’

He slammed his right fist into his left palm, the speed of the gesture startling Donaldson. ‘If he is, then he’s in for a nasty shock. Once and for all, I’m going to get this villain.

‘Dave, you, Neil and Dorward’s team comb through this place for those notes of Medina’s. Don’t worry about looking after his girlfriend. I’ve called Pamela Masters into action earlier than she expected. She’s picking her up from her office, breaking the news to her and finding her somewhere else to stay tonight.

‘Meantime . . .’ he looked at DCS Martin, ‘. . . Andy, let’s you and I pay that little bastard Charles a visit!’

25

‘Chief Superintendent, Bob; if I’m all of the things which you have been on a mission over the years to prove that I am, then surely the fact that I’m still walking about shows that I have just a wee bit of intelligence.’

Jackie Charles looked at the two detectives coldly, with the self-assured expression of a successful general.

‘If that is accepted,’ he said, ‘you can’t think, surely, I would be so stupid as to mention my connection with this man Medina to you and then do something like this?’

Skinner stared back at him. ‘Jackie, where you’re concerned, I wouldn’t discount anything. You’re one of the most villainous bastards I’ve ever met in my life. You stand here in your fine house, waving your old school tie, and maintaining your honest business front.

‘In reality you’ve been behind just about every crime in the book. If something had happened since yesterday to make you think that Medina was a danger, I wouldn’t, for one second, put it past you to have had him killed. So far, that’s our principal theory.’ He walked over to the window of Charles’ study, on the villa’s upper floor, and looked out, westwards, over Murrayfield Golf Course.

‘The question is, what could have happened to make you pop the boy. Try this for size. After our people saw Dougie Terry this morning, he was straight on to the phone to you. That much I know. Telecom have confirmed that a call was made from his number to your mobile, around the time our guys left Stafford Street.

‘I reckon that something could have been said during that interview which made you think that Medina was a risk after all. Something they asked for upset you, made you think that it might lead us to something which your former book-keeper might have seen in your wife’s possession, and might have been able to identify in court, for all that the entries were in coded language, as being connected to you.’

He glanced at Andy Martin, then gazed back again at Charles, harder than ever, but the man stood his ground. ‘Maybe Carole told you once that she thought Medina might have seen this thing. Maybe then you thought little of it. Maybe today you changed your mind.’

Jackie Charles leaned against his handmade desk and picked a piece of dark fluff from his coral pink Pringle sweater. Then he looked up at Skinner and said, quietly and with the same assurance as before, ‘If that’s your principal theory, Bob, then you’d better get another. Because I had absolutely nothing to do with this man’s death.’

The DCC shook his head. ‘No, no, Jackie, we’re not letting you off the hook.’ He looked out of the window once more. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, over his shoulder, ‘although you may have worked it out already.

‘I’ve got a reputation for being a bit volatile: short-fused, you know. But Andy here knows me better than anyone, and he’ll tell you that I’m the most patient man in the world. When it comes to crime, I think long-term. I see criminals as my mortal enemies, and in pursuing them I never get discouraged, and I never give up.’

He turned and he smiled: a hangman’s smile. He raised a hand, palm upward, fingers curling. ‘I have this guiding principle, you see. I believe that if I’m patient, and if I wait long enough, then one day, God will deliver the balls of my enemy into my strong right hand.

‘Be in no doubt: when that happens, I don’t even try to resist the temptation to squeeze as hard as I can!’ As he closed his powerful fist, tight, Jackie Charles, in spite of himself, winced.

He walked towards the door, Martin beside him. ‘Your turn’s coming, Jackie. It’s coming soon. And when it does, I’ll be using both hands.’

The two policemen hurried down the stairs and out of the house, to Skinner’s car which was parked at the head of the driveway.