bloody obvious, too. Jackie never twigged either, not that he could have done anything about it anyway. But once we matched one of the hairs from the bed with the other two, we had completed a nice circle . . . although even then, not one that would have meant anything in court.
‘You must have thought you were in the clear when you couldn’t find the ledger at Rankeillor Street. You must have thought that it was buried deep, or that Jackie had burned it. But Carole never told you about Westmoreland Cliff, did she? You thought she only had one secret hiding place. But we found the other one, and we found the book.’
He stood in front of Donaldson, sat in his chair. ‘When I briefed you about the ledger with the rest of the team, when I let you see it, I knew that I was telling you to go and kill Jackie. Because without his evidence, that book would have meant nothing.
‘Well, we’ve got it now. We’ve got him now. And we’ve got you. By the balls, for life, and then some.’
He shook his head again. ‘But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why the fuck did you kill Carole in the first place, to set this whole thing in motion?’
Donaldson shook himself free of the plastic bags on his arms, and, in an odd gesture, rubbed his face in his hands. Then as Skinner and Proud stared at him, with bitter, undisguised contempt on their faces, he began to tear off the rest of his black body covering. At last he looked up at them.
‘It was Carole all along,’ he said, with an expression, and in a voice, that neither knew. ‘She got me into it. I met her and Jackie at a Charity do a few years back. She made a pass at me and like a mug I followed it up. She was a good looker for her age, you know. Most men would have been tempted.’ He gazed at Skinner, as if expecting some understanding, but finding not a sign.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I saw her once, and again. Before I knew it we were having an affair. Then she asked me. She said that Jackie had a feeling that someone was talking to us. She told me to find out who it was, and to pass back everything that he fed us.
‘I told her she was crazy. She told me that if I didn’t, she’d send a video to my wife, and to the Chief.’
‘A video?’ said Skinner, incredulous.
He nodded. ‘We filmed ourselves once. We were drunk, acting daft. Carole set the thing up. I’d forgotten about it, but she’d kept the tape.
‘So I gave her what she wanted, and as a sweetener she gave me five grand every three months. I thought, “If I’m hooked, I might as well get something out of it.” So I took it and banked it. In a building society, using my wife’s maiden surname. It’s all there still. I’d been meaning to transfer it to a foreign account.’
‘Did Jackie know where the information was coming from?’
‘Oh yes, for sure,’ said the turncoat, bitterly. ‘He knew because Carole told him. She even brought me a handwritten note from him once, saying thanks.’
‘So why did you kill her, Donaldson?’ barked Sir James. ‘After all that.’
The cornered man looked across at his Chief. ‘Because I wanted out. I told her I didn’t want any more danger, or any more being afraid of being found out. She showed me my way out. She told me that I was to kill Jackie, and that afterwards she and I would disappear. She mentioned the Cayman Islands. I think their money might be there.
‘Like before, she didn’t give me any choice. She threatened me with the video again, and she gave me two weeks to make it happen, to get rid of Jackie. Implicitly, what she was saying was that I would be her captive for the rest of my days.’ He smiled, wickedly. ‘She’d have dragged me away from my wife and kids, whether I wanted to go or not. But I didn’t, I didn’t.’ His eyes flashed.
‘So, instead of Jackie,’ he whispered, ‘I killed her, the evil cow. We had a date last Wednesday. She told me that she was going down to Seafield to look over the books, and that she’d meet me at Rankeillor Street at nine thirty. I went to the showroom instead. It was unlocked and she was in the office. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she said. “You,” I said. And then I hit her. Bang. Right on the chin. Laid her out for a while.
‘By the time she came to, I had tied her hands and feet with rope that I had soaked in petrol, so that it would burn off in the fire. Then I filled the cans from the pump at the back, placed them all around, and laid the rope fuses. When everything was set up right, I lit them.
‘All the time I was setting the thing up Carole was screaming at me, lying there in the office, cursing me, calling me for all the bastards in creation. I could hear her as I drove away. I could hear her for hours afterwards.
‘This morning, at breakfast, with my wife and kids, I could still hear her.’
He looked up, with blazing eyes, and for the first time, Skinner could see the depth of his rage. ‘That should have been it. And it would have been, but for Medina, and McCartney, and Terry. And most of all, but for you, you bastard.’
Sir James Proud shook his silver head. ‘How could you, man?’ he said, sadly. ‘You were a fine officer, in the prime of an outstanding career. You’ve got a lovely wife, lovely children. How could you do all that wickedness?’
‘Easily, Jimmy,’ Skinner murmured softly, dreamily, distantly. ‘We’ve all got wickedness in us. Most of us can keep it in check, but there are some in whom it will always surface. That’s all there is to it.’
79
She lay along the sofa with her head on a cushion, replete from the dinner he had cooked for her, and relaxed by the wines he had poured. She was barefoot, and her white blouse was open at the neck. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire, in a polo shirt and chinos. The dinner dishes lay piled in the kitchen ready for the dishwasher, and his chef’s apron hung behind the door. His Caithness tumbler, with the smoky Lagavulin, was warming in his big hand, while hers was balanced on the crest of her belly.
The desperately sad voice of Maria Callas filled the room around them, matching his mood, and hers, after the story which he had set out for her over dinner.
‘What’ll happen to him?’ she asked at last.
‘He’ll plead guilty to the murders of Carole, Medina and the Comedian.
‘As for the others, we’ll keep our promise to McCartney and Kirkbride. The pair of them will do their twelve years each and think they’re the luckiest men alive.
‘Jackie Charles will plead guilty to tax evasion, up to an agreed amount, and will pay his dues, plus fine and interest, out of his Cayman Islands money. He’ll do about two years, and then he’ll disappear, off to the Caribbean, never to return.
‘There will be no trials, no evidence led in detail, no cross-examination, no verdicts for juries to deliver, no stinking linen washed in public. There will be no public chronicling of all the betrayals of trust and loyalty that my team has managed to uncover over the last few days.’
‘But Donaldson,’ she repeated. ‘What about him?’
‘He’ll be sentenced to a minimum term, not less than twenty-five years. He’ll expect to serve it mostly in solitary, for his own protection. But somewhere along the line, a man with a blade and a grudge will get close enough to him. Or maybe, he’ll tear off a strip of bedsheet and do the job himself. I don’t think he’ll ever breathe free air again.
‘I saw him this afternoon. I interviewed him formally, with Andy and the Chief, for more than four hours. Davie Pettigrew, the Procurator Fiscal, sat in on it as well, and Hamish Lessor, the best solicitor we could find to act for him. He confessed to everything, in detail.
‘Lessor will have him examined by psychiatrists. So will Pettigrew. I guess that there’s a possibility that he’ll be found insane and unfit to plead. But I doubt it. He knew exactly what he was doing, all the way along the line, from the moment he fell into Carole Charles’ honey-trap until the end, when he squared up to me with that blade.’
His head dropped down and he hissed, aloud. ‘Ahh, what a traitor. Everything we stand for in this job. Everything I’ve ever believed and tried to teach, he betrayed. I’ve encountered some cold and ruthless people in my time. Indeed, if I was to be honest, I’d apply that description to myself. But Donaldson’s the worst I’ve ever met. His only motive was self-preservation. He had no guiding principles, no cause: only himself. For his own interests alone, he killed, or had killed, half a dozen human beings.
