Skinner's Festival (22 page)

FIFTY-EIGHT

As Skinner was heading for the exit, he was stopped by the Chief Constable’s staff officer, a uniformed superintendent.
'Sorry, sir, but before you leave, could you please call Mr Doherty. He’s in his office. He said you would know who he is.’
'Thanks, Malcolm.’
Skinner sprinted up the stairs to his office, and punched in Joe Doherty’s number on the secure line.
'Joe? What can I do for you?’
'Just listen, that’s all. I have a story to tell you, about Giminez and your friend Macdairmid, the patsy. I’ve found out who was behind it all.’
Skinner sensed that Doherty was spinning out the suspense.
Joe, come on, for fuck’s sake. I’ve got a crisis here.’
The FBI man laughed. 'So have some cousins of mine. OK, I’ll get to the point. It’s the CIA. They’ve been running Giminez.’
'What!’

'Yeah. To be exact it’s one man. A crazy hawk at Langley called Goodman. It seems that at some point during the last administration, the President was being given an interdepartmental
briefing on the drugs problem, and he made some sort of throwaway remark, along the lines of: “If someone would just go away and come up with a miracle cure for all this, what a
goddamned hero he’d be.” A bit like your Henry II wishing to be rid of that turbulent priest of his. So Goodman’s at the meeting, and his crazy little mind starts to work. He figures, “We’ll never kill all the Colombians and the Burmese, or torch all their crops. So what we have to do is discredit their product.”

“The health agencies all over the world have been saying it for years: “If you touch smack or coke you will die, eventually.” to an addict that just ain’t true. We’ve had a boom in the drug
market, and in all the other crime that runs alongside it. Goodman figures that what he’s got to do is make the users believe: “
If you touch heroin or smack you will die . . . now! N
o
second chance.
” Then he does some more thinking and comes up with Giminez. The CIA have been running him for years, doing all sorts of things that we won’t go into. Goodman tells him what he wants, Giminez says: “OK, gimme da money, I do it. But it’ll take time.” Goodman siphons off dough from a big CIA slush fund. Giminez drops out of sight, and stays in deep cover for years. What he’s been doing is
one
, he’s been building up supplies of horse and coke;
two
, putting some of the world’s finest illicit chemists to work in making them lethal; and
three
, and most recently, setting up relationships with dealers around the world,
like your MP friend, all of them greedy and in the market for cheap supplies. Say, Bob. Being an MP, that’s pretty good cover, eh?

“The final stage of the plan, and it’s a beauty, I have to say, is that Giminez, through his network, feeds the marks a little good stuff to whet their appetites, and get the street excited, then drops the bomb with the big shipment. End result is, dead users all around the world, stories leaked to the press, mass panic, and everyone too scared to touch the stuff, like ever again.’
Time was ebbing away, but Skinner was fascinated. 'So how did you get on to Goodman?’
'I passed the name Giminez on to Langley. They found the slush money, traced the payment to Goodman, and used all means necessary to make him talk.’
'So how do they stop it?’
'God knows. Maybe they can’t. Goodman doesn’t know names, or even how many Macdairmid’s there are, and the CIA can’t get to Giminez anyway. He’s operating blind. Broke contact with Goodman long ago. All the CIA can do now is put the word out on the street, and tell the Colombians about Giminez in the hope that they can stop him. But maybe they won’t do that either. Because, goddamn it, crazy Goodman’s crazy idea could actually
work. I did hear that the DBA can’t figure out whether to give you a medal for uncovering this whole operation, or put a contract out on you!

'Meantime, Interpol has started to log reports from Hamburg of dozens of coke users – some of them top people – suddenly winding up dead all over the city. And somehow I doubt if that’ll be the last we hear of Giminez and his special deliveries. Hope your crisis up in Scotland turns out to be a damn sight easier to solve!’

FIFTY-NINE

Skinner’s mind whirled with the consequences of Doherty’s story, as he headed off towards Holyrood Park in his BMW, on the heels of his squad.
The Park is, in a sense, the biggest back garden in Scotland. Within its grounds, behind a high grey wall, stands the Palace of Holyroodhouse, modest in size but rich in history. Four centuries ago, as the machinations of the court of the doomed Mary, Queen of Scots tore her country apart, it was a place of intrigue and murder. Today it stands largely unchanged, as the official residence in Scotland of her heirs and successors, and as a venue for great gatherings of heads of government. Though Holyrood is a Royal Park in status, in practice it is one of
Edinburgh’s favourite and largest public open spaces, covering well over a square mile of greenlands, with three small lochs which provide lodgings for dozens of swans, geese and ducks, with literally thrown in – a constant supply of food from children and tourists. '

Holyrood Park is dominated by Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano from whose vantage point the legendary king is said to have overlooked the first dwellings of what was to become the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Dark Age overtones continue to cling to the ancient hill. As he looked up at it in the fine August morning sunshine. Skinner recalled with a tug at his heart another morning twenty years earlier, when he had walked with his first wife Myra, the baby Alexis cradled in her arms, to the summit, with dozens of other parents, to wash in the midsummer morning dew. He closed his eyes for a moment, and could see again the clear vision of Myra gently dabbing her baby’s face, and saying softly, “There. That’ll guard her beauty for life.’ She had been right in her prediction for Alex. But, sadly, life had not been long for Myra.

Skinner tore himself back to the present and surveyed the Royal Park. It was still well short of midday, but thousands of people were there already, congregating on the flatter grassland around the palace and beyond towards the park wall, and the grey tenements of Royal Park Terrace. At intervals, flat-backed lorries and other temporary staging had been set up to provide venues for impromptu performances by Fringe players. He noted with approval the numbers of police caps which could be seen in the crowd. Occasionally, he saw casually dressed figures, looking around observantly through their sunglasses, and caught the glint
of gold on their chests.

The first performers arrived just after midday: a student revue from Oxford University. They set out their props on one of the lorry stages and soon gathered a crowd as they began to perform snatches of their show, involving the audience whenever they could. Gradually, more and more spectators and more and more players filled the Park, until by 2:00 pm it was thronged with happy folk, singing, playing and laughing in the sunshine. The only people there who could not relax were Skinner’s plainclothes team, the SAS soldiers, and the ninety-five policemen and policewomen in uniform, who continued to mingle with the crowd.

He was standing with Sarah, some way off, when it happened. A few minutes earlier, a wide circle had opened amid the crowd, perhaps one hundred and fifty yards across. A motorcycle had roared into life, then another, then a third, and a fourth.
'It’s Le Cirque Mobile,’ Sarah cried. 'Let’s have a look.’
But he had held her back, seeing no easy way through the thick crowd. So Sarah had stretched on tip-toe, catching only glimpses of the riders’ lightweight helmets, and occasionally the clown make-up on their faces, as they bucked and twisted their bikes in
wheelies, or left the ground in acrobatic leaps. Skinner was looking away when he heard the first screams, and Sarah grasped his arm tightly. He looked round, to see the wide circle of spectators burst apart as one of the riders revved his bike and roared through them, steering with his left hand alone. The bike carved a swathe amid the diving people as it ploughed
through the panicking crowd. It headed straight towards a wide platform stage, on which a group of dancers were performing, dressed in a colourful folk costume. One by one, they stopped and stared as the cyclist roared towards them. They could only look on, frozen with shock, as he threw the object which he held aloft in his free right hand.

The grenade exploded in mid-air, among the dancers. Bodies flew everywhere, and a fine red mist seemed to hang in the air for a second or two.
As the screaming erupted and escalated, Skinner, running now towards the scene, saw the motorcyclist veer away from the makeshift stage, pulling a squat, ugly gun from his jacket. There was something about his movement, about the way he handled his bike, which made Bob certain that this was the same man who had shot at him in Charlotte Square. But this time he was carrying an automatic machine-pistol. As he roared through the scattering crowd towards the Meadowbank gateway, he sprayed fire from right to left and back again. To his horror. Skinner saw young Barry Macgregor go tumbling backwards, gun in hand, blood spraying from his throat.
And then the man had broken through the last of the crowd. The bike accelerated towards the exit, the rider steering now with both hands. He had thrown the gun, spent, on the grass behind him.

It was a hell of a shot, they all agreed later. Brian Mackie fired only once. Technically, Skinner might have rebuked him for failing first to call out, identifying himself as an armed police officer, but in the circumstances he decided to let this pass. The rider’s back arched and his arms flew wide, as the bullet cut through his spine. He seemed to rise out of the saddle, and to hang, cruciform, in mid-air for a second, before falling, almost gracefully, on to his back. At the same time, the front wheel of the motorcycle reared up, and the whole machine spun in a grotesque somersault, crashing, handle-bars first, to the ground with its
engine still roaring, a few feet away from its spread-eagled rider.

Skinner ignored the biker, and ran instead towards Barry Macgregor. As soon as he reached him, he realised that there was no hope. The young man was convulsing. Blood pumped from an awful wound in his throat, squirting through his fingers as he struggled in vain to stem its flow, and running down his neck and shoulders to stain his braided hair.
Sarah arrived only seconds later, but even in that time the last of the life had ebbed from the boy’s body. For a time. Skinner knelt beside him, blood on his hands and tears in his eyes, though his jaw was set firm. When eventually Sarah took him by the shoulders and drew him gently to his feet she found, on his face, an expression which she had never seen before; not his, not Bob’s, but that of someone she did not know at all.

Suddenly, in the stillness and silence which surrounded their little tableau, she felt very frightened; fear for her husband, and – for a flash – fear of him and yet not him, of someone cold, vengeful and absolutely deadly who dwelt within him.

SIXTY

'Bob, isn’t that our clown? Remember, on Saturday. The one on the unicycle at the Mound, with the leaflets.’
'It could be love, could be. But I do know I saw him somewhere else that same day.’
Skinner had banished his grief and rage, and looked his normal self again, controlled, hardened against the horror, and deferring his time of mourning until the job was done. They were standing with Andy Martin and Brian Mackie in the area which had been cordoned off around the motorcycle assassin. A hundred yards away. Sir James Proud stood at the head of an honour guard over the body of young Barry Macgregor, as his officers cleared the park slowly of public and performers.

In contrast to the stillness of the two groups, the ambulance crews were working feverishly to tend the casualties. There were some who were as far beyond help as Barry Macgregor. Four of the six members of the Belorussian Folk Ensemble, the onstage targets of the grenade attack, lay sprawled in death. The lucky survivors were already in an ambulance which was screaming its way out of the Park, towards the Royal Infirmary, its blue lights whirling. Three members of the crowd had been killed, including a baby still clutched in the arms of her stunned mother, and fourteen others wounded either by the explosion’s deadly shrapnel or by gunfire.

The motorcyclist, in his turn, was very dead.
One or two colleagues had bestowed on Brian Mackie the nickname 'Dirty Harry’ because of his legendary prowess with various firearms on the rifle range at St Leonard’s Police Station.
But Brian never acknowledged the title, nor played up to it in anyway. Not for him the Clint Eastwood stride, or throwaway lines about days made. Brian took his role as an expert marksman very seriously indeed. It was an important part of his job as a policeman, and not the subject for humour. On the one occasion in his career when he had been called on to fire at a human target, his disciplined approach ensured that his reaction had been instant, emotionless, and absolutely effective. Afterwards, his conscience had been untroubled. He had not, as he said once in answer to Andy Martin’s question, lost a single night’s sleep.

So it would be again now, he knew. As he looked down at the body of the motorcyclist, he banished from his mind any feeling of elation that he had felled the man who had killed Barry
Macgregor. This was just another job done well, and on that basis alone he was pleased. As an expert, Mackie believed in arming himself to suit the occasion and the possible circumstances. His choice of weapon that morning had been a Colt .45 magnum revolver. The gun, he noted as he looked at the body, had lived up to its awesome reputation. There was a fist-sized exit wound right through the biker’s breast-hone. Mackie saw chips and slivers of white bone mixed in there. He surmised that the bullet had spread when it struck the spine, shattering it and sending fragments of bone and lead tearing through the heart.

Sarah had removed the man’s helmet, but through the clown make-up it was difficult to tell anything about the man’s appearance, other than that he was blond.
McGuire, Rose and Mcllhenney were standing a little way off, with the three other riders from the troupe, and one other, a muscular, short-haired girl who wore a vest with 'Le Cirque Tour’ emblazoned on its front. Skinner waved them over.
The three riders cringed when they saw their dead colleague, but the girl merely whistled and shook her head. 'You guys don’t miss, eh,’ she said in a chirpy East London accent.

“This is Alison, sir,’ said Maggie Rose.’the three lads are all French. All the English they speak between them couldn’t buy you a bag of chips, but Alison’s one of the troupe too. She’s a mechanic, and she knew this fellow.’
'Hey, steady on. I know he called himself Ricky, but that’s about it.’
Skinner looked at the pass which he had taken from the back pocket of the dead man’s jeans. It was made out in the name of Richard Smith.

'How long had he been with you?’ he asked the girl.
'He joined us in France a month ago. Said he was a Scottie and wanted to work his way home. Didn’t want much in wages – only his fare paying. The manager said he had a reference from a man in Marseilles. He was a mechanic, too, and good with the bikes.
Mind you, he wasn’t a regular in the troupe. Shouldn’t have been riding today, only . . .’
'Only what?’ said Skinner impatiently, as the girl’s story tailed off momentarily – as if she was working something out in her mind.
'Only Paul, the fourth of our regular bikers, got mugged in Leith last night. Three geezers jumped him, apparently. He’s in hospital now. They banged him up and broke his arm. 'Ere, you don’t think . . . ?’

'Fine Alison. Just you leave the thinking to us. Any ideas you have, you keep them to yourself. Is that understood?’
'Sure, boss. Anything you say.’
'OK, now will you please give a statement to DS Rose here, give her also your address, and then take your pals home. From the look of them there’s no show tonight.’