Scotland, or have a non-Scottish parent.'
'That's something at least. Now how about the tape itself: any joy from that?'
Caroline Farmer paused once more. 'I'm not sure whether you'l find it joyful, sir.'
'Try me.'
'Okay,' she said, 'but first I have to ask you something? When the cal came in, was there an open door or window in your home.'
Skinner frowned, searching his memory. 'Yes,' he said at last. 'It was a warm night. We had the window open a little.'
'Good. Now think again. Can you remember, as you listened to the man, whether you could hear anything else?'
He closed his eyes, and tried to place himself back in the bedroom.
His anger still burning over Salmon's taunting cal. Undressing in the dark, beginning the process of unwinding, of relaxing, of making love. Then the ringing of the phone, and his fury erupting once more.
He stopped and concentrated on the moments before the interruption.
Pamela, kissing, licking, nibbling her way down his body…
'Geese!' he said suddenly. 'Through the window I could hear geese.
It's no big deal for us, part of the sound furniture, you might say.
There's a wildlife sanctuary near my house. In summer, they go over in flocks at al hours.'
'Okay,' said Caroline Farmer. 'That was on the tape: the sound of geese. You couldn't hear it on the cassette we sent up, but when we built it up, it was there.
'Now to the interesting part. The equipment that we use to tape telephone calls records each half of the conversation on separate tracks. This is the sound we took from the background of your track.
Listen.'
She broke off, and suddenly Skinner heard in the earpiece the familiar squawking sound of a large flight of wild geese, as he had heard it thousands of times, as he had heard it less than forty-eight hours before. There was a click as the player was switched off.
'Now,' the woman resumed. 'Hold on while I switch cassettes.
Okay, ready. This is the background from the caller's track.'
Another pause. Another click. Once more the sound of flying geese filled Skinner's ear. He listened, puzzled, for a few seconds. 'Wrong tape,' he said, at last. 'You're playing my track again.'
No sir,' said Farmer, emphatically. 'I am not. That is the background from the cal er's track.'
'Well, surely the sound from my phone must have fed through to his.'
'It did. There was feedback sound on both tracks. We've stripped that off. You, and this guy, sir, you could both hear the same flight of geese, at the same volume, at the same time. Which means that the cal was made from very near your home.'
Skinner sat at his desk, stunned. 'There's no possibility of the equipment being faulty?'
'No, sir, there is not. You live in a vil age, I understand.'
'Right.'
'That might make it easier for you. We were able to match the sounds on each track exactly. The recording levels on each were almost exactly the same. I would say that you and your cal er were no more than a quarter of a mile apart.
'Can I ask you, sir, in which direction do the geese fly?'
'Westward; by evening and night, they fly westward.'
'Good, that tells me from the sound pattern that the cal er was to the east of your home.'
'Anything else?' asked Skinner, eagerly. 'Was there anything else on his track? Can you tell what type of telephone it was?'
The American chuckled on the other end of the secure line. 'We ain't that good, sir. It was a touchtone telephone, and the cal er disabled your 1471 tracing service, but you knew that already. There were other sounds though, faintly, beneath the geese. An automobile passed close by during the call travelling in a straight line at about forty miles per hour. And there was music playing nearby. Further away, there was the sound of a woman, shouting angrily. Does any of that help?'
Skinner grunted. 'It might. Listen, Agent, or whatever I should cal you, that's great work. I want copies of al these tapes sent up here for my people as soon as possible, like today. Can you isolate that woman's voice?'
'Sure. I'll put that on a separate tape. I'll have everything with you by courier by mid-afternoon. Meantime, we'l keep on working.
We can take resolution up practically to the level of an individual goose. You never know what else we might turn up.'
24
Detective Chief Superintendent Martin was seated at his desk as Skinner rapped on his door and burst into the room. Detective Constable Sammy Pye, with his back to the door, looked over his shoulder and sprang to his feet.
'I'm just getting young Sammy started on that list you ordered, sir,' said the Head of CID.
'Good,' said Skinner, closing the door behind him, and waving Pye back to his seat, 'but put it on hold for now. Our Friends in the South have come up trumps. We know where the caller was when he phoned me, and you're not going to believe it. The cheeky bastard was within a quarter of a mile of my bloody house!'
Martin's eyebrows rose. 'You what?' he gasped, incredulously.
'That's right. The background noise gave him away. From what I've been told, my guess is that he cal ed from the phone box outside the Post Office, across the road from the pub. However we can't be certain of that. Chief Superintendent, I want to know, from British Telecom, the location of every telephone in Gullane that was used at ten fifty last Saturday night, and I want every one of those subscribers checked out.'
He paused. 'I can't believe that the guy would actual y hide Mark in my home vil age, but it's the first lead we've had and it must be fol owed. Unless we turn up something from the telephone check, I want a house-by- house check of the whole place. You can leave mine out, but I want every other door in that village knocked.'
'What are we looking for?'
'We're looking for a lucky break, Andy.'
The Head of CID grunted assent. 'Yes, like the guy stil being around. It beggars belief, though, to think that he actually lives there.'
'Sure, I agree. But he phoned from there. It's not beyond belief that he might be hiding out there. Remember, there are stil weekend cottages and holiday homes in Gul ane… my own among them, til recently at any rate.'
'Do we know which they are?'
'A few, through Neighbourhood Watch, but not al, not by any means. Quite a few are just left from one visit to the next. Some have private caretaking arrangements.'
'How do you want to play it? What line should our officers take with the householders when they knock their doors? These people are your neighbours, after al.'
Skinner pondered the question for a while. 'Simple is best,' he said. 'Let's have them say that we're extending our enquiries out from Edinburgh. Ask each occupier if he's seen anything out of the ordinary in the area, and ask those with substantial outbuildings – and there are some; you've seen them, up the Hill – whether they've checked them lately.
'Where a house is unoccupied, see if the neighbours know anything about the owner.'
Martin nodded. 'Let's think carefully about all this,' he said. 'We've got an advantage, here. Our man can't know that we're on to the fact that he called from Gullane. We want to keep that information secret for as long as we can.'
'Fine. In that case let's keep it literally to ourselves. Other than you, me, and our staffs, the people doing the rounds can simply be told what we've just decided to tell the punters; that the search is being widened. They'l be
