wasn’t involved in the actual hit; he did the planning and took care of the escape.
‘I told them they’d need to get rid of the body. I suggested putting it in my truck, driving it out past North Berwick and tipping it into the sea. They went crazy at that; I thought they were going to kill me. They said that he was a fallen comrade and all that guff, and that he had to be treated with respect, not just stuck in a hole and forgotten about.
‘I said fair enough but I had nowhere to keep him. We could hardly take him to hospital, and they wouldn’t leave him somewhere and call the ambulance service. It was Botha who came up with the idea of doing what they did with him, burying him and then calling your lot. As it happened, I’d bought some bed linen for the house that day. I gave them a sheet to wrap him in; they stripped him and left me his clothes to burn, so they couldn’t be used to trace him. They said they didn’t want him identified for a couple of days. Smit asked me where they should take him. Given that he was dead, Mortonhall sounded like as good a place as any to me, so I suggested that.’
‘So it had nothing to do with setting a false trail for the police,’ Mr Skinner asked, ‘given that the operation’s in Glasgow?’
‘Is it?’ Welsh asked. ‘That’s news to me. I never want to know any detail about things like that. Anyway, no, it had nothing to do with that.’
‘So they went away,’ he continued, ‘and last night they came back here, to collect the gun. Is that what happened?’
He nodded. ‘Aye. And when I brought them round here, at one in the morning, who was standing upstairs, looking out the window but bloody Jock.’ He sighed.
‘You see, the arrangement was that every time I brought a client here to collect an order, Jock would always take Ella off somewhere for the night. He didn’t last night, though. There he was, as large as life, but not for much longer. He saw both the South Africans, and they saw him. They wanted to know who he was, and I had to tell them. I’d hoped they’d be okay about it, but when I gave them the weapon, the imported one, Botha took it. . he’s an animal, by the way. . and said he was going to test-fire it.’
Welsh looked away. ‘I knew what he was going to do,’ he muttered, ‘but all I could think about was that he was going to kill me as well. I heard three shots from upstairs, inside the house, then just after, three more. I’d brought my van with me, not the car. I guess you know by now what they made me help them do. When it was finished, they dropped me back at my yard. I stayed there all night, thinking, and most of today. Eventually it dawned on me that you’d be bound to identify Jock eventually, and that I had to clear this place out or I’d be in it up to my nuts. Enter you two,’ he took a deep breath, ‘and that’s the whole story.’
‘Not quite,’ the chief said. ‘What were the weapons?’
‘A Heckler and Koch MP3 carbine and two Glock pistols. There were six H and Ks in the box that Kenny Bass brought back from Valencia.’ He nodded towards the open box. ‘The other five are still there.’
Mr Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘Cohen ordered them specifically, by name?’
Welsh nodded.
‘Is that significant?’ I asked.
‘Too damn right,’ he retorted. ‘They’re police weapons.’ He glared at Welsh. ‘Lucky for you that I sent Maggie through there.’
‘What are you talking about?’ the man on the floor muttered.
‘I’ve sent my deputy to the concert hall with a warrant for the arrest of the target, on a made-up charge that only needs to hold for an hour or so. He’ll be halfway to Edinburgh by now.’
‘He?’ Welsh repeated. ‘When Smit picked up the carbine, he said, “This baby will take her out, no question.” I don’t know who you’ve picked up, but believe me. . the target’s a woman.’
Bob Skinner
‘I don’t know who you’ve picked up, but believe me. . the target’s a woman.’
When he said that, shock, panic, horror, maybe all three swept over me in waves; my heart went ice-cold and for a moment my knees buckled.
Clyde was still holding the Beowulf. I ripped it from his grasp and levelled it at Freddy Welsh’s head.
‘Are you telling the truth,’ I shouted, ‘or is that bullshit?’
‘It’s true, it’s true,’ Welsh screamed. ‘It’s a woman, honest; on my life, I swear.’
I jerked the barrel upwards and fired a round into the wall about a foot above his head. Then I turned on Houseman. ‘You people got it wrong!’ I bellowed. ‘You got it fucking wrong.’ I was ready to go for him, but he stayed calm.
‘Mr Skinner,’ he said, ‘I promise you, that’s the intelligence we have. We know the Israelis have a kill order on Fabrizzi; he’s the only possible target.’
A little of his coolness transferred itself to me. ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. I pointed the gun in Welsh’s direction once again. He was cowering away from me, trying to make himself as small as possible. He was terrified; he’d pissed his pants. ‘Go into the garden store,’ I ordered. ‘Find some rope, twine, wire, anything, and hog-tie this bastard.’ I wasn’t thinking clearly, my thoughts were jumbled up, my priorities shot to hell. ‘Wait,’ I snapped. ‘Where will your people be now?’
‘A couple of them will be on their way home,’ Clyde replied. ‘The other will be back in the office by now. I told them their job would be over when they delivered Fabrizzi safe and well. The First Minister was going to be at the concert so. .’ I nodded; standard practice dictated that Strathclyde would have done a security sweep of the hall.
‘Bugger!’ I hissed. ‘That means the Home Secretary can go fuck herself. I’m doing what I should have done from the off, informing Strathclyde. But first. .’
As the MI5 man went in search of bonds for our prisoner I took out my phone and scrolled through incoming calls till I found the one from Amanda. I pressed redial.
She answered almost instantly. ‘Bob, what’s happening? Do you have any news for me? The Home Secretary’s calling me every ten minutes or so, demanding results. What can I tell her?’
‘You can tell her that if this goes wrong, Amanda, then I’m going to kill her. Listen, earlier on you told me about a current threat against a British political figure.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘It’s serious. It came out of Afghanistan; a source said that the Taliban have commissioned political hits in Britain, the US and Canada, the three major players in the action. They’re using specialist contractors, not their own amateurs. You may not have noticed, it didn’t get much press over here, but a week ago, there were three arrests in Ottawa. They related to a plot to blow up the Canadian Defence Minister’s car. Ever since, we’ve been on full alert at Westminster.’
‘Did it ever occur to anybody,’ I asked her, ‘that there are two other parliaments on this island, and that there are politicians outside London who might make much softer targets? For example, there’s my wife, who was heckled at the last Scottish Labour Party conference for her vociferous support for the Afghan campaign. Didn’t that ever dawn on anyone down there?’
‘Bob,’ Amanda said, as Houseman came back into the room with cut lengths of blue nylon rope, ‘please don’t shout at me, there’s a love.’ I hadn’t realised that I was. ‘What are you telling me?’
‘I’m telling you that I’ve just had reliable information, from the man who sold the team their weapons, that the target is a woman. It isn’t fucking Fabrizzi, who is at this moment in my force’s custody. But the strong possibility, no, probability, remains that the concert hall is the venue for the hit. This is July; this is Glasgow. The bloody city is closed for the holidays, there’s nothing else on, nothing else for professional assassins to be aiming at.’
‘And your. .’
‘My wife, my high-profile British politician wife is there right now, in the front row, and sat beside her is the wife of a colleague and very good friend.’
‘What can I do?’ Amanda asked.
‘Three things. You can pass my message on to the Home Secretary, word for word. Then you can tell her that
