‘Now there are God knows how many millions turned over on this strip every week in the year. And you could argue that Jackie Charles started it all.’
He broke off and turned to Pye. ‘Right, Sammy,’ he said. ‘It’s oral examination time. What can you tell us about Jackie Charles?’
Alarm at the snapped question showed in the young Detective Constable’s eyes, but for no more than a second. Then he nodded, and it vanished to be replaced by cool confidence.
‘John Jackson Charles, sir,’ he began, as if reading from a page in his mind. ‘Known to all his friends and associates as Jackie. Aged forty-eight, and born in Edinburgh. He was an only child and his parents were thoroughly respectable middle-class people. His father, Martin Charles, was sales manager with the main Ford dealer in the city until he retired twelve years ago. Mr Charles senior is seventy-seven years old. He and Mrs Charles senior, who is seventy-five and who has always been a full-time housewife, now live in a cottage in St Andrews owned by their son.
‘The Charles family lived in a small bungalow in Corstorphine, and Jackie was educated at the Royal High School. He left school at eighteen with a clutch of Higher passes, but didn’t choose to go to university. While he was at school his father had given him holiday work at the Ford dealership, and when he left, he insisted on starting there full-time.
‘He was there for three years, until there was a row. The directors of the business discovered that he’d been dealing privately in used cars, often selling to customers who had come into the Ford showroom. Jackie was sacked, and his father might have been too, only his bosses were persuaded by Jackie that his dad had known nothing about his illicit sales.
‘Not unnaturally, Charles moved out of the family home after that incident. He bought a semi-detached house out in Penicuik, and began to deal from there, selling to private customers, or locating and supplying specific cars to the trade.
‘He did that, apparently successfully, for three more years. Then all of a sudden he went up in the world. He opened up, in this very showroom, the first car dealership in Seafield, and at the same time he and his new wife moved from Penicuik to a villa on a new development, Muirfield Park, in Gullane.’
Detective Constable Pye paused, and looked at Skinner. ‘I’m sorry, sir. That’s as far as I’ve got with the file so far.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ said the DCC. ‘I didn’t expect you to have memorised Jackie Charles’ complete life story, but you’ve done pretty well. Let me fill in the rest for you.’
He paused, as Pye looked at him, in relief. ‘In those days,’ he began, ‘before computer storage and analysis, the business of criminal intelligence wasn’t anywhere near as sophisticated or as high-tech as it is now, but it existed nonetheless. Fair or unfair, secondhand car dealers were among its priority subjects, and so when Jackie Charles made his big move it stood out like a sore thumb. My team became even more interested when our routine investigation showed that Jackie wasn’t renting his new showroom. He had bought it for a hundred and twenty grand from a dealer in domestic heating oil, who had anticipated the collapse of his market.
‘The showroom had plenty of stock too, much of it bought for cash at auction in the month before the opening. My people did their sums. The showroom and the new house were mortgaged to an extent, but we worked out that Jackie must have laid out over a hundred thousand in cash.
‘We had a guess at the profit that he might have made in six years of trading, but it fell well short of that, and the Inland Revenue were happy with his tax returns. So we looked around, and we came up with a theory.
‘Around a year before Jackie Charles made his big move upmarket, there was a major robbery in Edinburgh. One of the biggest industrial employers, a company called Indico, had its payroll snatched in broad daylight from an armoured van on a back road out in Sighthill. Five men in two cars stopped it and blocked it in. They were dressed SAS-style and were armed with shotguns, handguns and sledgehammers.
‘They smashed their way into the cabin of the truck, hauled out the driver, put a gun to his head and forced him to unlock the back door. The security guard inside had a go as soon as it was open. One of the gang shot him in the legs with a sawn-off. Afterwards the man had to have a leg amputated.’
Skinner paused, to make sure that Pye was following his narrative. ‘Indico had a big payroll,’ he went on, eventually. ‘The gang escaped with almost half a million pounds. None of it was ever recovered, and they were never caught. Six months after the event, an informant gave us the name of someone he said had driven one of the cars. The man named was Douglas Terry, the manager of one of Tony Manson’s saunas. He was picked up, but he denied any involvement and of course, a couple of girls from the sauna came forward and gave him an alibi.
‘My squad made the reasonable assumption that Tony Manson was behind the robbery, and that he had done his usual efficient cover-up. But then a few months later, Jackie Charles spent all that money, and the case was reopened. Us guys in the Serious Crimes squad took another look at the staff of Indico, the company which had been robbed. We had already investigated everyone in the accounts department who might have known about the movement of cash, but couldn’t find a thing.
‘This time we looked at former staff as well. We found that a young book-keeper had packed in her job three months before the hold-up, and we read her resignation letter. It explained that she was leaving to work in her boyfriend’s business. When she worked at Indico, her name was Carole Huish. By the time we read the letter, she had become Carole Charles.’
Young Pye’s eyes widened, but Skinner held up a hand, seeing Inspector Dorward approach. ‘You can read the rest for yourself, Sammy.’ He turned towards the newcomer. ‘Yes, Arthur. Are you ready to draw that picture for us?’
The man nodded. Like the others he had pulled up the hood of his tunic against the rain. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be, sir.
‘Like I said earlier, this was a low-tech job. The arsonist used petrol as his fuel, good old four-star. Some of it was in cans near the office door, some of it was in the tanks of the cars in the showroom.’
‘How was it triggered?’ asked Andy Martin.
‘The old-fashioned way, with petrol-soaked rope as fuses. We’ve found traces of what we think is hemp residue leading from the showroom doorway right up to the tanks of the Maserati, the Ferrari and the two biggest BMWs, and to a pile of what we reckon are melted oilcans, beside the empty office doorframe.
‘Whoever did this set up the fuses, stood in the showroom doorway, lit them all, closed the door behind him and buggered off.’
‘But wait a minute,’ said Martin. ‘All that couldn’t have been done silently. Surely the victim in the office must have heard?’
‘Not necessarily, sir. We found a melted radio in the office with the volume control turned up pretty high.
‘But even so, take a look at this.’ Dorward held up a bright brass object, with a darker piece of twisted metal protruding from it.
‘It’s the lock from the office door, as we found it among the ashes. It’s been turned, and the key is on the outside.’
Martin stared hard at him. ‘So your evidence in the witness box would be that the victim was locked in, before or after the fire was set, yet could have been unaware of it until it was too late.’
Dorward thought for a few seconds. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what I’d say under oath.’
‘Yet the arsonist knew that the poor sod was in there,’ said the Head of CID, ‘because he turned the bloody key!’
‘Which makes this,’ muttered Skinner slowly, ‘not an insurance job, or a fire-raising by someone with a grudge against Jackie Charles, but cold-blooded premeditated murder, possibly with the man himself as the victim.’
He looked at Martin. ‘I think, Chief Superintendent,’ he said heavily and grimly, ‘that it’s time that you and I paid a call on Mr Charles. Unless, that is, we’ve seen him already this morning!’
2
Skinner had been brought to the scene by a patrol car, and so they set off for the Charles home in Martin’s Mondeo, with the Head of CID at the wheel.
