‘That’s right,’ said Bob, with a grin. ‘No more negative thinking in this house. Don’t you give up on that case you were moaning about earlier, daughter. You’re not beaten till all the evidence has been weighed.’
‘Hah! You haven’t seen the judge, Pops. Grimley’s evidence ended this afternoon, two days late. Yet Lord Coalville told us that he isn’t going to extend the time he’s allocated to the hearing. We have to complete by close of play on Wednesday. The dice are loaded, I tell you. Positive thinking for us is that the award might be under three million.’
‘Come on, girl, that’s no attitude to take into battle.’
‘Oh no? Well, you ask your Head of CID just how confident he is about tracing this bank gang. His face has been tripping him all week.’
‘In the circumstances,’ Alex’s father said gently, ‘I think that’s understandable. When did you ever see me smile about armed robbery and murder? It doesn’t mean that we don’t go after the bastards with complete determination, and the certainty that we’re going to get them.’
‘It took you long enough to get Jackie Charles,’ she retorted, unsmiling.
‘Aye, but we got him. What you should remember about Jackie, though, is that no one was ever killed on any of the jobs he was suspected of bank-rolling. I’m not condoning him . . . God, you know how much I detest the little shit . . . but he wasn’t a killer.
‘The people we’re up against now, they are. Ruthless, cold-blooded killers, as they showed yesterday. Whoever’s running the operation . . . and I agree with your thinking, Andy, that there’s someone behind all this who hasn’t been seen on any of the raids . . . he’s the most ruthless of them all.
‘But we know we’ll get them, my friend, don’t we?’
Martin looked at him, solemnly. ‘Sure we do, Bob. No ifs or buts. I just wish to Christ I knew when. Every day they’re at liberty, the public, and our people, are at risk.’
‘Yeah, mate, I know. Still, we’ve got one lead at least. Let’s hope that Miss Hannah Bennett has the guts to point us in the direction of whoever it is has her brother so scared that he’s prepared to spend the next twenty years inside.’
16
‘You know, Chief Superintendent,’ said Skinner lazily, looking along the ordered street, ‘the folk who believe that biggest is always best should be taken round places like Craigmillar and Pilton then brought here.
‘For it seems to me that in housing terms, the opposite is always true. When I was a wee boy, I remember big council housing estates going up in my home town, that were half demolished before I was forty.
‘Even back in the sixties, any copper could have told the planners about the link between monolithic housing, crime and social deprivation, yet they still went on building huge, unmanageable urban concentration camps.
‘Not like this though.’
Behind the wheel of his Mondeo, Martin grunted agreement. ‘Not a bit. These houses must be sixty years old, yet look at them.’ Before them, the rows of semi-detached Snowcem-clad villas of Garston Avenue stretched in a gentle curve, each set in a garden, the size of which would have made a contemporary speculative builder salivate as he pictured the number of houses it could accommodate. They were uniform in design, yet no longer in finish, as the varied designs of replacement doors and windows showed which of the former municipal houses were now in occupier-ownership.
Cars stood in most of the driveways, and more were parked down one side of the narrow street.
‘What’s Hannah Bennett’s number?’ Skinner asked.
‘Seventeen.’
‘Let’s walk up, then.’
They left the Mondeo parked at the entrance to the avenue and strolled casually along the pavement, counting off the numbers as they walked. The morning sun was risen and they felt its warmth on their faces, yet it was still only four minutes past eight a.m., and on a Saturday morning there was no one else to be seen.
‘This is it,’ said Martin, pointing to the next house on their right. ‘Seventeen.’
There were two cars in the driveway, one a Ford Sierra Cosworth, the other a Vauxhall Corsa which, from its registration number, was less than two years old. ‘Decent motors,’ the DCC commented. ‘What do they do, Bennett and his sister?’
‘She works for the council, on the admin. side of the social work department. Before he was nicked, Nathan was a civil servant.’
‘Eh?’
‘No kidding. He was an EO or something, in the new Scottish Office building down in Leith Docks. He was taken on after he left the army.’ He was amused by Skinner’s surprise. ‘I agree; not the usual background for a bank robber. His job drives yet another nail in the coffin of his defence. He was on flexi-time; the silly bugger clocked out two hours before the robbery.’
The detectives stopped at the foot of the sloping driveway of number seventeen. The lawn in front of the house was immaculately groomed, and the flower-beds around it were neatly weeded, with a mixture of bedding plants in flower.
Skinner looked up at the house. ‘No curtains pulled. She must be up, unless her bedroom’s at the back. Let’s go.’
They walked up the path, dressed in casual clothing, Skinner in slacks and open-necked shirt, Martin in his trademark jeans and leather bomber jacket. A single wide concrete step was set before the white, glass-panelled front door. The DCS stepped up and rang the brass-studded bell, hearing it sound clearly inside the house.
They waited on the step, looking for signs of movement behind the glass, listening for sounds. Eventually, impatiently, Skinner reached out and pressed the bell once more; but still they stood, with only birdsong to break the silence.
‘Don’t tell me she’s gone out already,’ the DCC growled.
‘The two cars are still here,’ Martin pointed out. ‘Maybe she’s got a bidey-in we didn’t know about, and they’re upstairs ignoring the bell.’
‘Could be. It’s only daft bastards like us that are up at this time on a Saturday. Come on, let’s go round and give the back door a thump.’
He led the way past the black Sierra, past the garage, and through a tall latched gate, both of them wooden and brown-stained. The gate was warped and the policeman had to push hard to force it open. The garden to the rear was as neat as that to the front. Four green-painted clothes poles stood on the rear lawn, linked by a rope which formed a perfect square. Beyond, a cultivated area was planted with a mixture of vegetables, while behind the garage stood tall rows of raspberry bushes. On all three sides, the boundaries were marked by high fir trees, planted close together, thicker than any hedge, giving the area almost total seclusion.
‘Must be the sister who’s the gardener,’ said the Head of CID, ‘Nathan having been in the slammer for three months.’
‘Looks like she’s asleep on the job, then.’ Skinner’s voice was flat and cold. His companion felt a chill grip his stomach. ‘There.’
Martin followed his pointing finger. In the dark shadows between two of the lines of raspberry canes, he could see something white. For once his contact lenses failed him, and he had to step closer, on to the lawn, before he could see that it was a left foot, encased in a lady’s white slip-on shoe. The right foot beside it was bare, and muddy.
‘Oh no,’ he whispered, as Skinner stepped alongside him.
‘No wonder she didn’t hear the bell, Andy.’
Together they approached, until they were looking down the alley between the rows of bushes.
The woman lay face-down in the earth. She was wearing black slacks, and a white sleeveless cotton top. It was difficult to be sure, but they guessed by her long legs that Hannah Bennett must have been tall, like her brother. Her hair was as vividly red as his, but it was red also with blood.
Martin stepped past the body, forcing the bushes aside as he did, and knelt down by her head. ‘She’s been stabbed,’ he said, in an even voice. ‘With great force; it looks like a broad-bladed kitchen knife. It’s buried in the side of her head, almost up to the hilt.’
