'Doesn't matter, real y. We can't force him to tel us anything, the way we're set up. Do you?'
Martin smiled and shook his head. 'I never believe Salmon, not unless I know he's terrified.'
'Then I suggest you scare him, Mr Martin,' said Cheshire quietly.
He led the way into Skinner's office. Chief Superintendent Ericson was waiting inside, grim-faced.
'We wanted you to see this right away,' said the investigator. 'Even though you're Skinner's mate, you're the senior man available.
'As you know we searched his premises yesterday, and Miss Masters' flat. Clean as a whistle, as we'd expected, and frankly as we'd hoped.
'But we were sitting here half an hour ago when Ronnie said to me, 'Al, where do you feel most secure?', and I said to him, 'In my office, don't I?' So we searched, in here, and I'm afraid we found this.' He walked behind Skinner's desk and pul ed out the top right-hand drawer, raising it slightly to free it from its track and lifting it clean out.
He upturned it and held it out to Martin. The Chief Superintendent's heart sank, and his face fel. Taped to the underside of the drawer was a receipt. He looked closer: it bore a signature, a number, 200 the crest of the JZG Bank, Guernsey, and a second number, UK 73461.
'I'm sorry, Mr Martin, I really am, but we're going to have to see the Lord Advocate at this point, with a recommendation. Can you call in a forensic team for us, please. I want this item removed by them, with the greatest care, then dusted independently for fingerprints.
'I think you should cal your Chief Constable as wel, as a courtesy.
Not Miss Skinner, however. We've reached a stage in this investigation when co-operation with the defence team should be suspended, in everyone's interests.
'I hardly think I need to tell you. Chief Superintendent, but we real y are talking about criminal charges now.'
60
It is the variety of landscapes confined within such a smal country that makes Scotland a remarkable place.
There is the flat industrial spread of the central belt, ever-changing in character as the blackest of the Black Country disappears to be replaced by new clean sunrise industry. There are the rolling uplands of the Borders regions, with their sheep and cattle grazing on their moors and pastures. There are the fertile coastal plains of the Lothians and Fife, their fields yellow in spring with rape flowers, and golden in summer with wheat, and with barley to fill the makings.
And to the north, beyond the foothil s of the Campsies and the Ochils, there stand the Highlands, the mountain country where some say the real Scotland lies, the land which gave its men to rally behind the banner of the Young Pretender.
Bob Skinner was a cynic when it came to the myths and legends of his own country. As he drove through Glencoe, he recal ed that its notorious massacre had been perpetrated by Scot upon Scot, clan upon clan, a family feud reaching a bloody conclusion. He knew that for all of those who had backed Prince Charlie, the Jacobite, there were many others who had maintained their loyalty to the Crown, distant and Germanic though it may have been.
It was the grandeur of the mountains which touched the patriot in him. The suddenness of their approach seemed to give them stature above their measured height. There was no rolling approach to distant heights across a hundred-mile plain, as with the Pyrenees or the Alps.
He had seen both, he had walked in both, yet neither impressed him as did the mountains of his home.
There was something great and looming and threatening about Ben Nevis, approached from the south, and about al the other Munros, the Scottish peaks of greater than three thousand feet. It was small wonder, he thought as he drove on, that someone like Everard Balliol, to all intents as American as the Stars and Stripes itself, should be drawn back to roots which had been physically severed hundreds of years before.
He thought of the American as he drove, and their last meeting, under a gathering storm around the eighteenth green of Witches Hil Golf and Country Club: sallow-skinned, mid-fifties, gunmetal, crew202 y' cut hair, tall and lean. Those intense, ruthless, deadly serious eyes.
The grudging, resentful admission of defeat. The challenge to another encounter.
'Any time,' Skinner had said. 'Your place or mine.'
Balliol's place, Erran Mhor, was such a significant estate that, unlike most private dwellings, it merited its own entry on the map of Scotland. The policeman stayed on the main road towards Wester Ross for almost thirty miles after passing through Fort William, at the base of the great Ben.
Eventual y he came upon a single signpost, pointing westward like a finger and bearing the names Erran Mhor and Loch Mhor. He drove on for miles along the single-track road, with the mountains behind him, and without seeing another car. There were few trees on the peaty plain, and grey boulders and sheep, indistinguishable from a distance, were the only features of the landscape.
He had no clue of whether or not he had passed on to Bal iol's estate, but gradually, the road rose once more towards a horizon above which he could see wheeling gulls. As he crested the rise the landscape changed, before him the land stretched, cultivated and tended, with neat forest plantations, reaching towards the head of a loch. He pul ed his car to a stop in a passing place, and climbed out, picking up a small pair of binoculars, to survey the scene.
On the northern shore of Loch Mhor, Skinner could see the turrets of a castle, an impressive structure even from a distance. This was no historic monument built by feudal lords over the centuries, the policeman could tell, but the folly of a Victorian grandee, indulging himself upon money flowing from the sweat of poor people in Britain and around the Empire.
Beyond Balliol's castle, and beyond a helicopter on its landing pad, there was a green area, with a few trees, and familiar golden patches. Skinner smiled, and sharpened the focus of his glasses. Men were working like ants on a determined mission. There were tractors and mowers, and pick-ups loaded with sand: the billionaire's golf course was nearing completion.
He climbed back into the BMW and drove on towards the mock castle. When he was stil a mile away, he passed through a large gate, a symbolic gesture really, for the place was too large to be wal ed in. Beyond the entrance the road widened out, into newly laid, white-lined tarmac. The detective drove on to the very end, which came as a curve opened into a wide area beside a lawn which stretched from the Castle of Erran Mhor down to the lochside.
Skinner, dressed in crisp blue trousers and a matching polo shirt, drew his car to a halt beside a green Range Rover, climbed out and walked across the parking area and towards the house, climbing a 203 wide flight of stairs set into the lawn, and stepping on to a terrace which stretched for the ful width of the four-storey building, around eighty yards. He crossed it, passing under a portico which arched over the main doorway.
One half of the great double door swung open before he reached it, and a man stepped out. Korean, Skinner guessed, dressed in a black teeshirt and slacks, balanced lightly on his feet, with brown muscles oiled and rippling. The bodyguard stared at him, impassively, without offering a word.
'I'm here to see Mr Balliol,' said the policeman. 'I reckon he owes me a game of golf.'
The Korean stared back. 'Mr Balliol, please,' Skinner repeated.
Stil the man did not move or speak.
'Okay,' sighed the detective, at last. 'I'l play the game.'
He took a step towards the doorkeeper. As the man leapt forward to grasp him in what would have been a judo hold, the policeman pivoted with exceptional speed and hit him on the temple. It was a short, hooking, right- handed punch, hard but wel short of ful force.
The Korean's eyes glazed. As he slumped to his knees, Skinner seized his right arm and twisted it round behind him, jerking him back to his feet.
'Did I get the password right?' he asked, looking towards the open door.
'Not bad,' said Everard Balliol, stepping into view. 'Not bad at all for a guy your age.' The policeman had met
