‘Kevin took me back to the scene and, under hypnosis, I saw everything I’d seen before - including, I believed, that cut brake pipe.
‘Yet there was always a chance that I was wrong. Kevin admitted later that while the experience was real, he couldn’t be one hundred per cent certain that I didn’t add in that detail because of my own guilt . . . guilt because, as I told you, Myra was driving
‘Now I know I wasn’t wrong, that I didn’t imagine any of the details.’ He looked, gloomily, down at his soup, stirring in the creme fraiche.
She looked up at him. ‘Then why are you so down?’ she asked quietly.
He sighed, long and deep, and tapped his chest. ‘I suppose it’s because, in here, I hoped that I was mistaken. What we got there wasn’t the answer I wanted, not in my heart of hearts. Until now, it’s been a theoretical exercise. Most of me wanted it to stay that way, for it to be stopped at the first hurdle, so that I could get on with my life, duty done.
‘Now I have my evidence and I have to carry on. The trouble is, the process is having side effects.’
‘Such as?’
‘My marriage, for starters. This thing has changed Sarah, just as it’s changed me. It’s made us different people. I can’t explain it any better than that. It has driven us apart.
‘It’s affecting Alex too. She’s now finding out things that I’ve held back from her since she was a child. That part’s a bonus, though. It’s time she found out for herself what a terrific woman her mother was.’
‘So what do you, we, do next?’ asked Pam.
‘I go to Shotts Prison tomorrow, to see that man I told you about. A remarkable man: a multiple murderer, but a remarkable man nonetheless. Our paths have crossed before. In fact he tried to kill me, once. His name’s . . .’
In the pocket of his jacket, slung over the back of his chair, Skinner’s mobile phone rang. He took it out and switched it on. ‘Yes?’
‘Boss, it’s Andy. I’ve been trying to get you for hours.’
‘Sorry, I was busy. The phone was off. What’s the panic?’
‘I’m in Alnwick,’ said Martin. ‘The police here pulled in Ricky McCartney for failing to stop and for speeding on the A1. Big Neil and I came down with a team to collect him. When we got here we found we had a bonus: our two kidnapped tourists from Birmingham, dead in the boot of McCartney’s car.
‘Now I find myself in a tug-of-war over him and his partner, Willie Kirkbride. The Northumbrian police are being difficult. They’ve found a caravan up on the Haggerston Castle site, and they’re assuming that the Brummies were killed there.
‘I’ve done my best to persuade them to let me have McCartney and the other fellow, but they’re digging their heels in. I’ve been right up to the Chief Constable himself, but he’s playing it by the book.’
‘Whose book?’
‘His own,’ said Martin, wearily. ‘Yet I have to get these two back home. As soon as I can take statements from them I can arrest Dougie Terry on a lifetime’s worth of charges, including, I’m sure, setting up these three murders.’
‘Bugger that,’ said Skinner. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll ask Proud Jimmy to speak to their Chief Constable first thing tomorrow morning. These guys are ours and we’re having them, even if I have to come down to collect them myself. For now, you and McIlhenney get yourselves home.
‘Meantime, Andy, keep a veil over this. I don’t want anyone outside the team to know what’s happening, until the moment that our hands feel Dougie Terry’s collar. After that, it’ll be next stop Jackie Charles!’
57
Sir James Proud’s great grey head nodded slowly and sagely as he stared at the loudspeaker phone on his desk.
Skinner, Martin and Pamela Masters were seated in armchairs well away from the instrument’s sensitive microphone.
‘I quite understand, Chief Constable Clark, your view of the situation,’ he said. ‘These bodies were found in your area. Where a murder is committed on your patch your duty is to investigate and report to the CPS.’
‘That’s right,’ a tinny voice boomed in reply from the speaker.
‘In that case, Hugh, please try to understand my view. The chain of events in this crime began in Edinburgh, when these men were abducted from a car in which a third man was shot dead. The men you are holding are prime suspects in that and other crimes.
‘My duty is to pursue investigation of these men with all vigour, wherever it leads me. As I understand it, you have found no proof as yet that the two men found dead in the Rover car were actually killed in England. Is that correct?’
The loudspeaker coughed. ‘Yes it is. However we have found a caravan belonging to McCartney on the Haggerston site. I’ve got specialists at work there now.’
‘Indeed?’ said Proud Jimmy, ingenuously. ‘When did you first make that discovery?’
‘At around six last night,’ the Geordie voice replied.
‘Ah. So you’ve been looking for over fifteen hours and you still can’t say that the crime was committed on your territory.’
‘No, but . . . Come on, Jimmy, these things take time.’
‘Yes, but not forever. Which brings me back to my duty. The way things stand, I’ve got no choice but to go to our Supreme Criminal Court and ask the Lord Justice General for an order requiring the return to my jurisdiction at once, of McCartney and Kirkbride, plus the bodies of the two victims.’
A spluttering sound came from the speakerphone. ‘This is England, Jimmy, not Scotland. Your court order wouldn’t work here.’
‘I disagree. It would be effective unless you could produce a counter from your highest criminal court. Even then, it’s possible that our Lord Justice General would issue a warrant for your arrest on grounds of contempt, to be effected by any Scottish force when next you set foot in Scotland.’
He shook his silver mane, a dolorous expression on his face. A few feet away Skinner and Martin struggled to keep their laughter in check, while Pam Masters stared open-mouthed, astonished by the goings-on in her new professional circle.
‘Very embarrassing, Hugh, very embarrassing,’ said Proud. ‘I think that before it got to that stage, I’d have to ask my deputy, Bob Skinner, who’s an adviser to our Secretary of State, to contact his opposite number in the Home Office, to get a ruling from the Home Secretary himself.’
He smiled, easily, as if he were addressing someone across the desk, rather than a box upon it. ‘I can do that right now, in fact, without even going to the court.’
The conference telephone sat silent.
‘Tell you what,’ said Sir James at last. ‘Let’s do a deal. You keep the stiffs, for as long as it takes you to establish where they were actually killed . . . if you can. I’ve got more than enough bodies to be going on with up here at the moment.
‘In the meantime, though, you hand over McCartney and Kirkbride to me, so that my investigations can proceed. My people need to take statements from them today. Once that’s done, if you want to charge them with murder in Northumberland, you can have them back, and we’ll let the Crown Office and the CPS argue about who tries them first. I don’t care where these chaps serve their life sentences. It’s the people above them in the chain that we’re after.
‘How about it?’ He looked across at Skinner, Martin, and Masters, with a wide smile of victory.
‘All right,’ said Chief Constable Clark, at last, wearily. ‘You send people down to Alnwick for four o’clock and we’ll hand them over . . . unless we do find something at Haggerston and have to charge them and hold them for court.’
‘Mmm,’ the Chief Constable muttered. ‘I don’t know about sending people to Alnwick. We’ve done that once already. Best that you hand them over at the border . . . for appearances’ sake. Shall we say three o’clock? That’ll give you another four hours to work at Haggerston.’
