Stay of Execution
QUINTIN JARDINE
Copyright © 2004 Quintin Jardine
Praise for the Bob Skinner series:
‘Jardine’s narrative has many an ingenious twist and turn and the novel has psychological depth as Skinner deals with the crisis in his marriage and the delving into his family background’
‘Deplorably readable’
‘If Ian Rankin is the Robert Carlyle of Scottish crime writers, then Jardine is surely its Sean Connery’
‘It moves at a cracking pace, and with a crisp dialogue that is vastly superior to that of many of his jargon- loving rivals . . . It encompasses a wonderfully neat structural twist, a few taut, well-weighted action sequences and emotionally charged exchanges that steer well clear of melodrama’
‘Remarkably assured . . . a
‘Engrossing, believable characters . . . captures Edinburgh beautifully . . . It all adds up to a very good read’
‘Robustly entertaining’
Finally, too long delayed, this book is dedicated to the ladies and gentlemen of Lothian and Borders Police, for their inspiration, their public service, and for tolerating the existence of a wholly fictional force in their midst without complaining too much. (Or even at all.)
Acknowledgements
The author’s thanks go to . . .
The Central Intelligence Agency, for publishing its
World Factbook on the internet.
Les Marcheurs Belges, who have to be seen to be
believed . . .
and even then, it’s difficult.
Carme Rivera Caballero, for lending me her dog.
Eddie Bell and Pat Lomax, for helping me carry this
off . . . and on.
Martin Fletcher, for his unfailing support.
Kim Hardie, for hers.
Mira and Nurmi, for giving me such stiff competition.
And . . .
Eileen, for putting up with all the writing months when
she finds herself living with a grizzly.
1
The big Scots detective stood in silence, because there was nothing to say. He was a mature man, over the crest of the hill that leads into middle age, and he had known his share of life’s inevitable sadness; indeed, if truth be told, more than his share. Yet the place in which he stood affected him in a way that he had not experienced before. He had seen it on television, and he had read of it, from the awful beginning and through the grim weeks and months that had followed, but nothing had prepared him for the actuality of it. It was vast, yet no greater than he had expected. There was no sepulchral silence about it: even on a Saturday the traffic rushed past nearby. And yet there was a sense of something all around, something that with very little imagination could have been the echoes of the screams of three thousand souls.
A voice broke into his meditation. ‘By sheer evil chance, I was on my way here when it began to go down,’ his companion said, quietly. ‘After the first plane had hit, I saw people standing, staring at it, like they didn’t believe it. Some of them even had camcorders. They stood there filming, like it was some movie special effect or whatever, and they’d got lucky. They were the tourists, though. Our guys, the New Yorkers, most of them were running for their very lives.’
Mario McGuire looked to his right, towards his host rather than at him, for the man seemed to be staring at a point in the distance, an imaginary screen on which the scene was being re-run. He wondered how often he had seen that movie, in the light of day and in the dark of night, and how many more times he would see it in the rest of his life to come.
‘Not you though,’ he said, respectfully. ‘Not your people; they ran into it.’
‘And twenty-three of them didn’t walk out. I knew every one of them, from John d’Allara to Walter Weaver: four sergeants, two detectives and seventeen patrol officers. But, aah, the fire-fighters . . .’ He looked down, then up, then away, as if he was composing himself. ‘New York Fire Department lost three hundred and forty-seven
