us up
… just you and me, that is. I'll be there sharp, but I've something to do between now and then.'
'Understood. Is there any equipment that you want me to draw?'
'No,' Skinner replied. 'The army's providing suitable clothing and boots. Your size and mine. Other items too. Everything we'l need wil be on the chopper.'
81
He was in the bathroom when he heard the key in the lock. The door opened and closed quickly, then light footsteps crossed the living room.
He dried his hands, listening with a soft smile as he heard drawers and doors sliding, and general sounds of rushing around.
Silently, he stepped out of the bathroom, grinning as he stood in the doorway of Pamela's bedroom. 'Christ,' he chuckled, 'haven't you got enough clothes out at my place already? Did Andy let you go early? It's just gone four o'clock.'
With her back to the door, she jumped at the sound of his voice.
'Bob,' she cried. 'I almost died.' She turned to face him, looking flushed. 'What are you doing here? I thought you said you'd see me at Gullane.'
He shrugged. 'Cal of nature, madam, like we used to say when I was in uniform. I was nearby, so I answered it here.'
'I didn't notice your car,' she said, recovering her composure.
'As you guessed, I just looked in to pick up one or two more things.'
He laughed. 'In a suitcase?' He shook his head. 'Love, why don't you just admit it?'
Her eyes narrowed slightly, and her face flushed again as she looked at him, quizzically. 'Admit what?'
'That you're moving in with me, piece by piece, dress by dress, shoe by shoe, tight by tight, knicker by knicker.'
Her face lit up as she grinned, gauchely, like any young girl in love. 'Well,' she said, 'now that I'm transferring to another force, now that, hopeful y, I don't have to feel threatened by this madman, isn't it time that you…'
Bob chuckled again. 'Ah, you mean – like I said to Andy – that I made an honest woman of you…'
'Well?' she asked, with an expectant tone in her voice.
His grin widened into a broad smile. Then she looked into his eyes, and was hit like a hammer by the truth of something that she had been told, once before: that he was the most dangerous man she had ever seen.
'Pamela,' he said, quietly, still smiling, but deadly and cold. 'Quite 258 literally, I couldn't make an honest woman of you to save your life.
It's way beyond that.
'You're my implacable enemy, my so-called love. I was more baffled and bewildered than I've ever been, trying to find the person who wanted to finish me, and yet all the time, I was sleeping with her.
'Even though in the end he was desperate to tell me al about it, I didn't actual y need Noel Salmon to admit to me that it was you who tipped him off about our being together, or gave him the bribe information.' He caught her gasp. 'Never underestimate anyone, even a weasel like him. Not even he is going to take an anonymous tip without at least trying to check the source.'
He pushed himself upright, off the doorframe. 'Remember, when you cal ed him and dropped that note for him in the dustbin near the Norwegian Memorial in Princes Street Gardens? He went there early, and watched you drop it. He didn't know who you were, not then, until he saw the two of us together after he started watching us. When you dropped him the information about the bank account in the same way, he didn't need to follow you again.'
Skinner paused. 'At first, I wondered why anyone would pick a useless pissed-up wee twat like Salmon as a means of shafting me.
But as soon as I knew it was you I worked that one out for myself.
You were having it off with Alan Royston when I barred wee Noel from Fettes. You found out from him, on the pil ow, which journalist hated me the most.'
His smile was al gone now. 'Come, on Pam, don't disappoint me.
Protest your innocence.'
She looked at him, her once-soft eyes blazing. 'I can't. Because I can't believe what I'm hearing. I didn't realise you were so desperate that you could do something like this.'
'If you can't believe it,' he answered her, 'then why did you call Air UK this afternoon and book a flight for Amsterdam at five forty-five this evening?' He eyed her evenly. 'Mario called me just afterwards, on my mobile, while I was in the garden at Fairyhouse.'
He smiled cruelly at her surprise. 'Ever since I knew it was you, Special Branch have been bugging your phone.
'That's what the suitcase is about, Pam.' She started to speak, but he silenced her with a single look.
'No. Don't interrupt me. You are in very great danger. Just listen.
'I knew it was you, my pet, because of two stupid mistakes you made. The first was when you slipped me a blank sheet of paper to sign when you were my executive assistant. For a second or two, I actual y believed my own story, that I had given someone my autograph. Then I remembered that when I do that I always sign myself 'Bob Skinner'. The ful Monty signature, 'Robert M.
Skinner', that's reserved for official letters and for cheques.'
He shook his head. 'I should have known from the first moment that I heard of the bribe al egation that it was an inside job. But there are some things that not even I'l face wil ingly. And I didn't, not until Alex brought me back my own signature from Guernsey.'
Skinner sighed, then went on, in a cold, even voice. 'The clincher came when you used Carole Charles's typewriter to type that note.
You never believed for an instant, did you, that anyone would match the note to that machine?
'It was handy, a standard electric typewriter unconnected with the Force, so you used it. After it was recovered from the flat in Westmoreland Cliff that Carole kept as a secret office, Neil and I brought it back to Fettes, and I put it in your room. It was there for a day or so until it went off to the production store. You had that time to use it.
'In the same way, as my assistant, you had every chance to hide that receipt in my desk later.
'If Cheshire hadn't found it, I suppose that eventual y you'd have dropped a hint that he should look there. It would have been a clumsy, accidental hint of course,' he said sarcastically, 'and you'd have been appal ed by the way it turned out.'
He paused. 'The typewriter was a huge mistake, really – far bigger than the signature, because who else could have used it? I knew I didn't. Not Neil Mcl henney, in a million years. Not Ruth McConnel, in the same million. Not Carole Charles, because she was dead when most of this happened. Not Jackie, because he didn't even know about the Westmoreland Cliff office, let alone about the bloody typewriter.
In fact when Jackie did claim to have typed the note, the whole thing screamed out at me, and the last of my disbelief vanished.'
Skinner grinned again, cruelly. 'Think about it, Pam. When was the last time that you and I made love? Before that note was tied to that typewriter. Ever since then, I've managed to have a headache.
'No, lady, only you could have used that machine to type the note.
I didn't want to believe it. At first I wouldn't let myself. Not because I'm deep in love with you, because I'm not. No, because I didn't want to admit to myself that you could con me, and maybe because I didn't want to find out why.'
He began to move slowly, menacingly, towards her. 'Then something happened,' he said, slowly, 'that made everything else insignificant.
'When Cheshire and Alex came back from Guernsey with the suggestion that the man who made the cash
