Pye nodded, and headed off, back to the CID suite to pass his message to BT. Skinner stepped into his secretary's office. 'Any deliveries?' he asked.
Ruth nodded and picked up a tape cassette box from her desk, waving it in the air. 'Ten minutes ago,' she said.
'Excellent,' said the DCC. 'Let's hear it. Full blast.'
On her side table, his secretary kept a radio cassette player, which was used mainly for monitoring radio news bulletins. She took the tape from its box, inserted it in the slot and pressed 'play', twisting the volume control to a high setting.
At first they heard only hissing, but after thirty seconds or so, the sound changed. There was no background noise at al, only a woman's voice, shouting but slurring, her words insistent, but thick, as if with alcohol. 'Lemme go, lemme go,' she called out.
Then a man's voice – not so loud, flatter, but sounding just as drunk. 'Fuckn' bitch,' he said.
'Lemme go, ya bassa.' Another slurred shout. Then a sound, a crack, the noise possibly of palm meeting cheek.
The hissing resumed once more. Ruth pressed the stop button and rewound the tape. 'There's a note with it,' she said, handing Skinner a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and read.
' This is what we were able to do. The man s voice was a bonus. I guess your cal er used a phone box and that he had the door open!
Skinner smiled, guessing why he would choose to do that at such an hour on a Saturday night. 'The mikes on your public phones are very good. The people you hear on the tape could have been up to twenty-five yards away. Good Luck, Caroline Farmer.'1
He looked at Ruth. 'Some bonuses from my Saturday cal,' he said. 'It was made from the phone box near my cottage.'
'Mmm,' she said. 'You do have the nicest neighbours, don't you?'
Skinner grinned at the waspish dryness of her humour. 'Aye,' he nodded, 'and I'm going to find out who they are too. Have a copy made, and give it to me. I'll send Mcllhenney out to Gullane to play it, discreetly, to the pub owners and bar staff in the vil age.
'He should get a laugh from them, at least, and maybe, a couple of names.'
27
Detective Superintendent Brian Mackie's expression was usually deadpan, and so, as the McGrath investigation team filed into the conference room at the St Leonards Divisional Police Office at exactly 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Andy Martin was surprised to note that he looked a shade nervous.
He strolled up to the head of the table, where Mackie stood. 'Chin up, Thin Man,' he whispered. 'You should be pleased that the Boss asked me to have you run the morning briefing, and on your turf too.'
'Sure,' said the newly promoted divisional CID commander, 'but it'd be easier if he wasn't here himself. This is the first time I've done something like this, outside Special Branch, and that wasn't the same at all. You know what the boss is like. He can't stop himself from jumping in, even when he isn't in the chair.'
The Head of CID grinned. 'Don't I bloody know it. But don't worry. I've asked him to be on his best behaviour.'
Mackie, his shiny bald head adding to his cadaverous look, looked unconvinced. 'Aye, but even at that. I really feel in the spotlight here, considering who I've taken over from.'
'You put that right out of your mind. With hindsight, you should have been in this job before him anyway. If you hadn't been so valuable in SB, you probably would have been.'
For the first time, the slim detective looked reassured. 'Kind of you to say that, Andy, true or not.' He paused, and looked around the room as if searching for a face. Skinner, making his way along the far side of the room, caught his eye and nodded.
'The boss is here, but is your sergeant coming?' the Superintendent murmured.
'No way,' replied Martin, quietly. 'He's let her come back to work this morning, but I'm going to make sure that they're never in the same room, not with other officers around anyway.'
Mackie nodded. 'Good. Especially not with Maggie Rose. She's good at studied disapproval, is my second- in-command.'
He looked up to see Skinner reach Detective Chief Inspector Rose, his Executive Assistant before Pamela Masters' brief tenure in the post. 'Mornin' Mags,' said the DCC. 'How's the new boss?'
Rose looked over her shoulder towards Mackie. 'Strict but fair just about covers it, sir,' she said with a faint smile. If Skinner noticed that it was less warm than usual, he gave no sign.
'Bit like me, you mean?' He reached out to shake the Superintendent's hand. 'Mornin' Brian. Christ,' he said suddenly. 'Look at the three of you. Al graduates from my private office. A certain route to the top, indeed.' Skinner rarely said anything simply to make conversation, but the words were out before he could stop them. Had he not known Maggie Rose so well he would never have noticed the slight change in her expression.
'Anyway,' he said, quickly. 'Let's get on with it.' He nodded towards a chair at the side of the table. 'Brian, I'll sit over there, and I'll try to keep my mouth shut, honest. Arrange the rest as you like.'
Mackie nodded and rapped the table. 'Okay, ladies and gentlemen,' he called out, 'if you'll all take seats, please.' He looked around the room. In addition to Skinner, Martin and Rose, by his side, Sammy Pye and Neil Mcllhenney faced him across the table, together with three other officers, two men and a woman.
Quickly, the room came to order.
'Very good,' said the Superintendent, flanked in his seat by his deputy and by the Head of CID. 'This briefing has been cal ed to review progress yesterday in our enquiries in Gullane, where a lead has developed in the McGrath Murder investigation.' He glanced round at Martin. 'Of the officers involved in the investigation, sir, only the people in this room know the ful story, that Mr Skinner's cal on Saturday was made from Gullane.'
Briefly, but comprehensively, Mackie related the developments since Skinner's unexpected telephone call, and since the discovery of its point of origin.
'First of all,' he said, once everyone was up to date, 'let's deal with the follow-up visits to the six telephone subscribers on that BT list.
Sergeant Reid, you handled that…'
The second female officer in the room nodded, and sat straighter in her chair. 'Yes, sir. They've al been checked out, as far as possible.'
'How did you go about it?' asked Martin.
'Discreetly, sir, as ordered. Mr Mackie said that what we really wanted was to get a look at these people. So I told every person I visited that I was investigating reports of nuisance phone cal s in the area, and was checking to see whether they'd had any. Just to make it convincing, sir, I cal ed on al the homes around each of the names on my list.'
'Have you excluded everyone?' asked Skinner from the side.
Mackie glanced at Martin and raised an eyebrow, slightly.
'No, sir. One subscriber wasn't in. However the folk next door told me that he was a seventy-year-old widower, who'd gone off in a 96 w' a hurry on Sunday to visit his sick grandson. Other than that, though, I've seen them all. Of the other five, four were middle-aged couples, and the fifth was an old lady in a retirement community.'
'Very good, Janice,' said Mackie, hurriedly taking back control of the meeting. 'Sergeant Spring, wil you please report on the house-by-house check.'
Spring, the older Sergeant, nodded. 'We're going as fast as we can, sir. Some of the houses we know are a dead loss, but like Janice, we have to be seen to be calling on everyone, so it's taking a while.
There's been nothing suspicious so far.'
'How about empty houses?' asked Martin. 'Have you encountered any?'
'Seven, so far,' said Spring. 'Five of them have no known local key-holder, two have a key-holder known to us, and the other is believed to have a local caretaker, but the neighbours don't know who that is. They keep
