'You didn't go into the Polish Consulate that night to steal the silver, did you? You went in to kil the Consul and his wife. Those were your orders. Our people were going to plant documents to make it look as if the Pole had been working for East Germany, and that the Stasi had killed him.
'The whole idea was to create a big stooshie within the Warsaw Pact, and give Solidarity a big shove forward.'
The red dot wavered on Heuer's white shirt, as a sudden tremor went through him. 'Careful,' cal ed Skinner, and it steadied immediately. 'I told you, not as much as a twitch, boy.'
He paused. 'But you made an arse of it, Peter. You didn't do your homework. You missed the second alarm. Or by your way of it, you weren't told about it.
'For you decided that you'd been set up. You expected your 270 paymasters to have you released on some technicality. But they felt that would be too risky, and that you'd have to do time for your mistake. Natural y, being a psychopathic type, you took it personally.
'But what I want to know is why you took it out on me, you cunt.
I was only a poor innocent copper doing my job when I gave evidence at your trial.'
In the sight, he saw Heuer look out of the window, his eyes searching the bracken. 'No you were not,' he said. 'You were part of the plot. It was your evidence more than any other which had me convicted, and you lied in the witness box, Skinner. There never was a second alarm. There was a last-minute change of plan; someone at the top took cold feet.
'My own people tipped you off. By then, it was the only way they could stop me. So they did, and then they left me to rot.'
Skinner laughed into the phone. 'How long did it take you to work that story out, Peter? Careful now,' he warned as Heuer reacted to his taunt.
'There was no plot to get you. Your mission was meant to succeed, but you fucked it up. Of course there was a second alarm. It was even visible too. A small line-of-sight transmitter on the roof, aimed directly into our communication tower at headquarters. It looked like a radio aerial, and that's what you thought it was.
'You can't accept the idea that you're fallible, can you, Heuer?
You never could. That's why you were kicked out of the Army. They let you off then, when you departed from an operational plan in Argentina in 1982 and had two of your men killed. They let you resign, because the op was secret and they couldn't have a court martial. And because you had a special talent for killing people, they passed you on to the intelligence community.
'How many people did you kil for our side, and for the Americans?
A couple of dozen, was it?'
As Skinner paused, two shots rang out around the Gul y. He smiled.
'Free and clear,' he said. 'Mission accomplished. You've cocked it up again, Peter. You'l probably blame the RAF this time.
'Face it, at last, man,' he went on. 'You got yourself caught in the Polish Consul's house, before you had killed him, fortunately. You were nicked by three carloads of our people. A dozen of them. There was no way, with that number of witnesses, that anyone could get you out of it.
'For fuck's sake, you were even paid when you were inside, even though you'd botched the job. To keep you loyal, they thought.'
His voice hardened. 'You've been planning this for years, haven't you? You did your time, five years with parole, and even took on a couple of jobs when you came out four years ago. Yet al the time 271 you were planning to make your bosses pay big-time for the years you did inside.'
Unexpectedly, Skinner chuckled, startling Heuer, making the red dot jump. 'They are not pleased with you this time, not at all. Do you know, they even asked me to kil you. They don't want any of this coming out in a trial, you see, so they asked me to do you in, very quietly, resisting arrest sort of thing.
'What d'you think of that?' he said, a shocked tone in his voice.
'Asking me, a policeman, to kil you. That's how much they want you dead.' He paused. 'No, Peter, no,' he said sharply. 'Don't move yet. Not til Andy and the kids are well clear. And keep the phone pressed to your ear.'
Through his own earpiece, he could hear Heuer's breathing, no longer even, but heavy and ragged, making the red dot seem to ripple on his shirt as he watched.
'Imagine, thinking that I'd do that,' he went on. 'Even though you terrified two kids out of their wits, and did things that may well scar them emotionally for life. I mean, did you hear Mark's voice when he learned from the radio that his mum was dead? And what about Tanya, after you blew her mum's brains out right in front of her?
'As for Leona, would you have raped and kil ed her, if she hadn't been someone you knew I was fond of? You were watching her house that Friday night, Peter, weren't you?
'Come on, I want an answer. You were watching, and you saw the bedroom light go on, isn't that right?'
'Yes!' cried Heuer.
The detective drew in a deep breath. 'Boy,' he said. 'You must be thinking that al your Christmas days have come at once, right now.
You must be thanking your luckiest star that it's a straight, idealistic, career copper like me holding this gun, and not someone like my mate Adam Arrow, who'd kil you in an instant.
'Nod once if I'm right.'
Slowly, the man in the gun-sight nodded.
Behind the carbine, Bob Skinner's face took on a cold, terrible expression as the memory of Leona McGrath's abused, battered, throttled corpse appeared in his mind's eye. 'Wrong, Peter,' he whispered. 'Sometimes life hands you a luxury you can afford.' The red dot swept upwards to the centre of Heuer's forehead.
'Say hel o to Ross for me.' He squeezed the trigger.
84
Martin and the two children were waiting at the foot of the hil south of the Gully as Skinner reappeared over its crest, after pressing Heuer's pistol into his hand, and squeezing off one shot into the wall beside the window just as Arrow had told him to do.
Mark came running towards him. 'Uncle Bob! Uncle Bob!' he cried out. 'I told Tanya that it'd be al right. I told her that you'd come to get us.'
Skinner swept him up in his arms, and carried him off back down the hil towards Andy and the white-faced, shocked little girl. 'And you were right, weren't you? Just like you always are.'
'Tanya's awful frightened. Uncle Bob.'
' She's had every right to be. So have you, although I don't suppose you were.'
'Well…' Mark began. 'What about the man, Mr Gilbert?' he asked. 'He won't come back, wil he?'
'No, son. Mr Gilbert's dead. I told him not to do anything sil y, but he did and I had to shoot him.'
'You mean he went back into the kitchen for his gun?' Skinner winced inwardly as he was reminded of the child's astonishing memory for detail.
'Yes, that's just the way it was.'
'What'l happen now?'
'Some Army people will come up to take him away.' In fact, he had begun the clean-up process with a phone cal to Adam Arrow, from the cottage.
And then Mark asked the inevitable question, the one which his remarkable young mind had al owed him to block out until then.
'Uncle Bob…' he began. 'What it said on the radio about my mummy. That wasn't true, was it?'
Skinner hugged the boy to him. 'Let's sit down over here, Wee Man,' he said, 'and let's have a chat.'
