God's sake! How could you?'
He shook his head and sighed, almost theatrically. 'Poor Oliver, poor Bravo. Reminds me of the old saying, about there being no greater love than that of the man who'd lay down the lives of his friends to save his own!'
Skinner's ball was indeed awaiting him on the narrow green as he crested the rise, even if it was fifty feet from the hole. He lined it up, thinking only of distance, and rolled it up, stopping it two feet to the right of the hole to secure, to his inner joy, his thirteenth par.
`So there we are, Darren,' he said, walking to the fourteenth, a relatively gentle 414-yard par-four, designed by the course architect to imbue a false sense of security into the unwary before the tigerish finishing holes. Two enemies dead, the tournament in your hands, the police protecting your life and limb, and Mike Morton, your last target, in deep trouble with us.
`But that gives you a problem. We're watching Morton like a hawk, in case Richard Andrews tries to make contact with him. Ironic, isn't it, we're treating Morton as a murder suspect, and by doing so we're protecting him from the real killers.'
He laughed as they stepped out on to the tee. Atkinson looked away from him down the fairway. He took his driver from McGuire and sent the ball an effortless 290 yards. Skinner did his best to copy the ease and smoothness of his swing, and was rewarded by a straight drive which carried around 240 yards but pulled up sharply on the fairway, running on only a further ten yards.
`You know,' said Skinner, suddenly serious, as they headed off once more, 'I'll have Mike Morton on my conscience for as long as I live. If I had kept him under surveillance, he'd still be alive. I couldn't see the whole picture at that time, yet it should have occurred to me that if Morton wasn't behind the two murders, and the attack on you, then he might easily be a target himself. But he shot his mouth off at me yesterday afternoon, and I got annoyed. I still wanted to speak to Andrews, if only to close off that line of enquiry, so I gave Morton twenty-four hours without cover to produce him, and the threat of what would happen if he didn't. But in truth, the poor bugger genuinely didn't know where Andrews was!'
He paused, and looked sideways at Atkinson again. 'You must have thought all your Christmases had come at once, when you saw my people drive away from Bracklands. One day to go, and a clear shot at Morton, if you can get him on his own.'
When they reached it, Skinner's ball was sitting up nicely for his next shot. Once more, the flag was protected by a deep bunker, making a direct approach hazardous, and so he hit his five-iron instead carefully to the wide area of open green to the right. Even Atkinson fought shy of a direct attack on the flag, landing his soft eight-iron twenty feet away.
It turns out to be pretty easy. Rick phones Morton, doesn't he? He tells him he wants to meet him in secret, last night. Maybe he says that he wants to talk to him about his company and yours co-operating now that Masur's out of the way.' Skinner was looking closely at Atkinson as he spoke. Beneath the mask of impassivity, he thought that he detected the faintest twitch of an eyebrow.
`Morton agrees to meet him. He says he'll skip the dinner. Rick says, 'Good, let's meet where no one'll interrupt us. How about on top of Witches' Hill, just after dark?' Morton says OK, and he's a dead man.'
Skinner lined up his putt, lagging it almost perfectly once more, leaving himself an eighteen-inch tap-in. Atkinson stalked his putt like a tiger, in pursuit of his seventh birdie, but once again found only the lip of the hole.
It was only when I stood on the top of that hill this morning, looking at what was left of Morton that the whole thing fell into place,' said Skinner as they walked from the green. 'I thought about his 'doppelganger' remark, I thought about Henry's case of mistaken identity, I thought about the second note, and I knew right then what I should have worked out yesterday. If I had, I'd have saved Morton's life.
It takes a very special sort of person to plan and to do what your brother Rick did to Morton'
The policeman's conversational tone had gone, and his voice was hard and cold. 'I've only ever met one other man who could have done that. I breathed a sigh of genuine relief when he died. But now I've met two more like him.
`To lure him up there; to ambush him; to handcuff him to a tree; to pile the wood around him; to set fire to it; to stuff his handkerchief into his mouth to choke off his screams. And then, I guess, to watch him, as he writhed against the flames, until you were quite sure the job was done.
`Yes, you're very special guys, you Atkinsons. I'm looking forward to meeting you side by side.'
They had reached the fifteenth tee, 195 yards away from its small green, which sloped away so that only the top of the flag could be seen. Although only a par-three, it had proved the most difficult hole on the course.
`So how about it, Darren?' said Skinner, very quietly, so that only he and Atkinson could hear. 'This has been one-way traffic so far. I've shown you what I can see with my detective's vision. It's all logical, and to me it's all unanswerable truth, and maybe I can even prove it. So what d'you say? Underneath all that calm, have I got to you, you ruthless, murderous bastard?'
The golfer turned to him, with the animal look on his face once more. 'Sure Bob. I'm just scared helpless. Let me show you how scared I am.'
He turned and called to McGuire, the professional smile brought back as quickly as it had been banished. Four-iron, please, Mario.'
He took the club from McGuire, and hit a shot so audacious that even Skinner was amazed.
Rather than playing the hole in the only way which seemed possible, by hitting safely to the back of the green and settling for two safe putts, he fired in a shot on a lower trajectory. The backspin seemed to make the ball sizzle off the club-face. The crowd sucked in its collective breath in suspense as it zoomed towards the target, to pitch, clearly, above the flag. Suddenly the gallery clustered on the viewing platform behind the green, roared its applause. `Bugger,' said Atkinson quietly, after a few seconds. 'It hasn't gone in, they're not jumping high enough!'
Through the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth, Bob Skinner, the rest of the onlookers, and the television audience across Europe, saw a display which was to be ranked by commentators as the finest burst of tournament golf ever played. Atkinson seemed to select shots which looked impossible, then to execute each one perfectly. The ten-inch birdie putt at the fifteenth was followed on the next hole by two six-iron shots, one from the tee, the next to within a yard of the flag. The 527-yard seventeenth was humbled by an impossibly long drive, a five-iron and a six-foot putt for an eagle, taking the imperious champion to ten under par.
In the face of this awesome, intimidating display, Skinner kept his concentration. He felt himself inspired by the unspoken challenge of this chilling man, and played the best golf of his own life, extending his string of successive pars to what was for him an unprecedented seventeen.
At last they stood together on the eighteenth tee. 'Looks like you're in the money, Bob,' said Atkinson, and Skinner alone caught the trace of mockery in his voice. 'A par up the last for a sixty-two, and this finishing hole; I mean it really isn't worthy of me.' He looked down the 472-yard par-four hole. The southern side of the Truth Loch made a jagged bite into the fairway, intimidating to Skinner. From the championship tee, anyone taking a direct line to the flag had to carry his drive 290 yards over water to gain the reward of a mid-iron approach. Nearer the tee to the left there was a second landing area, allowing the professionals a safer option of hitting a two-iron or three- wood. Closer still there was a third section of fairway which required only a 180-yard carry but left a second shot of around 300 yards to the green.
`You went on about me rubbishing the course, Bob, and by and large you're right. All things considered, most of it is pretty good. But this hole really is too easy for me. All I have to do is hit over the water and it's at my mercy.
`Well, not for me. If O'Malley can't design a decent finish for me, I'll create my own challenge.'
I understand,' said Skinner. 'There's the rest of us, and there's you, Darren, or at least you and Rick. That's how you see life, isn't it?'
Atkinson looked at him, and Skinner caught in his eyes, as well as the deadly ruthlessness, something which he had seen only once before in his life, an arrogance, a belief in personal infallibility so strong that it seemed to engulf mere fanaticism and carry on to something beyond. 'Have it as you will,' he said.
He called out to McGuire. 'Four-iron, please, Mario.' The knowledgeable crowd murmured in surprise. Skinner, who had been doing his best all week to ignore the spectators' presence, looked at them over his shoulder, and saw for the first time among them, his daughter. A slight frown creased Alex's forehead.
He turned back to watch Atkinson, feeling on his face the first fat drops of the rain which had been
