Skinner's Festival (27 page)

EIGHTY-ONE

'Andy, son, they’ll kill her, whatever. You know that. This Mr Black won’t leave her alive to identify him. He’ll realise that if he does, it’ll be too easy for me to find him. And when I do find him, I’ll find his paymaster – his bloody client. Oh, believe me, Andy, I’ll find him anyway, but unless we do it by tomorrow night, we’ll be too late to help Alex.’
Sarah had joined them in Skinner’s office. She sat beside Bob, on one of the low, cushioned seats, shocked and red-eyed, sipping coffee.
Martin looked back at Skinner. He had no answer, for he knew the inescapable truth of what Skinner had said.
Bob pushed himself up from the seat, pounding fist into palm in a gesture of pure frustration. 'We don’t know where she is, boys, and we haven’t a clue how to find her. Oh, my lass. My poor, poor lass. Where in God’s name are you?’ As he cried out, he linked his fingers together, and covered his eyes with his hands, Martin and Arrow gazed, helpless and silent, at his back and rounded shoulders. But Sarah rose quietly from her chair and crossed to him, taking him in her arms, cradling his bowed head against hers. They stood like that for a time, motionless. Then, slowly, steadily, Skinner’s shoulders straightened, and his hands left his face. He now stood erect again, and it was almost as if Martin and Arrow were looking at a stranger. The man they saw – Skinner but not Skinner – touched them both, tough as they
were, with sudden alarm. Distress and despair had been put aside and replaced by hope, the light of which gleamed cold and savage in his eyes.

'There’s someone who does know, boys, or who’d better know.
And he’s lying in the Simpson!’ The voice was little more than a whisper.
He eased himself out of Sarah’s arms and started for the door, but Adam Arrow stopped him, and, using all his strength, held him back.
'Bob. Bob. Listen to me. Bob.’
Skinner looked down at him, still with that awful cold look.
“Man,’ said Arrow quietly, making an effort at a reassuring smile, 'if you went near that man just now, the first time he said “No’'’ to you, you’d rip 'is fookin’ head off and piss down his
fookin’ neck. He’s got to be handled gentle if he’s to tell us anything that’ll help Alex. So you stay here with Sarah. Leave him to me I’ll talk to him, reasonable like. You know what I mean. If he does know anything, I’ll get it out of him better than you could.’
His smile would have calmed the wildest beast – which, for a moment, Skinner had seemed to be.

EIGHTY-TWO

Sir Hamish wasn’t out of the room for long. But he was gone long enough for Alan Ballantyne to scrawl out the briefest of letters of resignation, 'for reasons of health, and in the interests of my family’, on Scottish Office crested notepaper. He handed it to the Prime Minister and, without even the briefest glance at Sir James Proud, stalked out of the room.
Scarcely more than five minutes had elapsed, by the carriage clock on the Adam mantelpiece, before the Queen’s Private Secretary returned from his telephone consultation. To his huge
relief, the Chief Constable noticed that he was smiling in satisfaction.

'Prime Minister,’ the tall grey man said formally. 'Her Majesty has given me some very strict instructions, which should make your course of action quite clear. The demands contained in the letter to Mr Skinner are to be complied with in every detail. Her Majesty has said that, when seen in this context, no treasure is of greater value than a human life.’
He looked at Sir James. 'She has said also. Chief Constable, that knowing Mr Skinner from her many visits to Edinburgh, he and his daughter have her heartfelt sympathy in their predicament. She will pray for Alex’s safe return. Her Majesty said also that she expects Mr Skinner to ensure that, once he has been reunited with his daughter, her kidnappers will not remain for long in possession of the Honours, or indeed of their own liberty.’

Warmly and spontaneously, the Prime Minister shook Sir Hamish by the hand. He turned to Proud, who was standing just behind him.
'There you have it, Chief Constable. Now go and get the girl back – and bag these people while you’re at it.’

EIGHTY-THREE

Babies made Adam Arrow feel uncomfortable. He would never actually admit that he disliked them. It was only that, having been involved all too often, through his chosen profession, with the other end of the life cycle, they pricked his conscience with the
thought that every one of the villains he had been forced to deal with had been some mother’s son – or occasionally, some mother’s daughter. A conscience was something which Arrow
could not afford, and so it was to maintain his own efficiency what others might call his ruthlessness — that Adam tended to steer clear of any close contact with babies. Thus it was that to him, the everyday sounds in the private wing of the Simpson Memorial Pavilion, in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, were a little disturbing.

Andy Martin had arranged with the general manager, with whom he had frequent professional contact, that the wounded prisoner from the Castle should be housed in a private room in the maternity wing. The reason given was that the Simpson was the last place where any prying journalist would be likely to look. However, Martin’s overriding consideration had been that not even Mr Black or his associates – should they feel the need to tie
off a loose end – would have the idea of searching there, either. None of the hospital staff knew of the wounded man’s presence, other than members of the theatre team who had
operated on him, or were now overseeing his recovery, and these people had been sworn to secrecy. The surgeon was an RAMC major, with a career dedicated to repairing gunshot
wounds. He and his chief nurse had been flown up specially from England.

Near the door of the private room, two men sat on opposite sides of the corridor, casually dressed in jeans and bulky jackets. They were reading magazines, and did not look particularly interested in each other, or in what was going on around them, but when Arrow turned into the corridor he saw to his satisfaction that each man glanced quickly up before – at his brief nod delving back into his magazine.
Arrow rapped the door three times, the agreed signal, and entered. Another two SAS soldiers, also in plain clothes, were on guard inside. One watched the window, the other the door.
Hello, lads. All secure?’
Yes, sir,’ said the man facing the door, in a thick Cornish accent. 'Quiet as a church, it’s been.’
'How’s our pal?’
'He’s doing all right, the doc said.’

They turned to look at the bed. Its frame had been arranged to support the prisoner at an angle, presumably to guard against congestion. He wore no gown, and heavy bandages were wrapped round his chest, and extended down from his shoulder, covering the wounds where Skinner’s two shots had torn through his right lung. The man seemed to be dozing, and Arrow noted the rough edge to his breathing. A tube ran into his nose, and another led
out from beneath the sheets, into an opaque, flexible container which was hung below the level of the mattress. A long needle was taped down in place on the man’s left forearm. It was connected by a third tube to a jar of glucose solution hanging high on a stand beside the bed. :

'Has he had much to say for himself yet?’ asked Arrow, “Nah,’ said the Cornishman. 'We tried talking to him, but he told us to fuck off.’ '
Arrow smiled pleasantly towards the bed. 'Maybe he’ll talk to me. Let’s see, shall we? You lads take a tea break. You can take them two outside, as well. I’ll lock myself in. This must be a fookin’ boring detail. Take 'alf-an-hour, at least. I’ll look after him.’
The two soldiers left the room without protest.
Arrow said nothing for a while. He stood quietly at the side of the bed, looking down at the nameless prisoner. Mid-thirties, he guessed. As he studied the torso more closely, where it showed above the sheets, he noted several marks and disfigurements, including a ragged scar on the left shoulder, crudely treated at some time, from the size of the stitch marks. He guessed that it might be the relic of another bout of gun-play. Both upper arms were garishly tattooed. There was a lavishly endowed naked lady on the right, with the word 'Mother’ scrolled below, and on the left a snake entwined around a dagger, with four characters alongside.

Well-travelled feller, ain’t you?’ Arrow said suddenly. Mercenary, I’d guess. That could be a problem. I hate fookin’ mercenaries. Showing up in other people’s countries and killing 'em, for no reasons other than they like it and 'cos they get paid. Hate 'em, I do. Still I shouldn’t hold that against you. You’re a wounded man, after all. So come on, my friend. Tell me: who are you?’
The pattern of the man’s breathing changed. The closed eyes opened lazily. The laboured voice croaked. 'Go fuck your mother.’
Arrow laughed, out loud. 'She’s dead, pal. And anyway, I’d rather fook yours.’
He sat on the edge of the bed. Idly, he touched the tube which led to the needle in the man’s forearm. He was still smiling. 'OK, that’s the pleasantries over. Now let’s have a nice little
chat. I’ll go first. All you have to do is to listen – for now at least.
“I belong – as my friends who’ve been looking after you belong – to what you might call a closed organisation. No one’s allowed to see us, and when we leave a place, it’s as if we’d never fookin’ been there at all. Only it’s different. That place, I mean. It’s been changed in some way or another. Sometimes a building or two won’t quite be where it was before. Other times, there’s some fooker doesn’t live there anymore, or anywhere else for that matter. Sometimes both. For a closed organisation, we’re quite famous really. You’ll have heard of us, I’m sure.’

He stopped and looked at the bed. Slowly the man nodded.
'In that case you’ll know this, too. When we go into action, we go all the fookin’ way.’
He paused again.
'People never quite believe us. So let me tell you a little story that’ll help. Few years back, there were some trouble in a jail up here in Jockland. Some lads held a warder hostage, and the prison governor, he gets fed up. Decides to teach 'em a lesson, and so he gets authority to send for us. So half a dozen of our lot goes up there in a truck, with plans of the jail – Peterhead, it were called – that they studies on the way.
'It’s after dark when the truck arrives. The plan is for us to go into action straight away. So the truck gets backed right up to the hall where the trouble is, and the first of our lads jumps out, hood on, fookin’ submachine-gun in his hands. And there’s the governor, and he sees our lad. tooled up like. And he all but its himself. “How far are you chaps going to go?” 'e asks,

And you know what our lad says? That’s right, he says, “All the fooking’ way, mate!” And he were right. They would have. Just gone in and wasted all the bad lads. 'Cos no one had told em different. Course they didn’t that time, in t’ end. The governor made 'em leave their guns behind. Gave them pick-axe handles instead. They didn’t half cream the shit out of those bad lads, though.’
Arrow stood up again.
'So that’s my little story. And the moral is, pal, I’m not here to piss about. You’re going to tell me everything you know that I want to hear, or I’m going to go all the fookin’ way wi’ you. You’d better be ready to die, 'cos if you don’t talk to me, you’ll be dead within an hour.’
He looked at the glucose bottle on the stand, just about at his eye level, then continued.

'You see, mate, after your stunt last night didn’t work, the guy who paid you did a really stupid thing. He decides he’s not going to give up, so he snatches the daughter of a friend of mine – and I really hate it when my friends get upset – and he says he’ll kill her unless we give him the swag and a plane out of the country. And that’s really dropped you in it, mate. 'Cos you’re the only bugger we’ve got that’s alive to tell us anything about this fooker – what’s his name. Black? – and where he might be hiding our lass. So this is the deal, mate.’
As he spoke his hands began to fiddle with the connection of the tube to the bottle.
'There’s a way of killin’ someone that works every time. As effective as a firework up the arse, it is, but a lot less messy.
Untraceable, in fact. All you do is take a tube, like this, of stuff that’s goin’ into someone’s bloodstream, and you pinch it tight, like this, to stop the flow. Then you disconnect it – like this, see.’
The prisoner watched, bug-eyed, as he spoke.
'Then you squeeze out some of the stuff at the top – like this, see. Then you lets a little air in instead. Are you watching?’
He needed no reply.
“Then you reconnect the fluid, like this. See? Then you turn on the drip, like this. Then you let the tube go. And the little magic bubble works its way down the tube and up the needle and into the bloodstream, and round, and round, until . . . Embolism, I think they call it. Whatever they call it, it’s fookin’ fatal And that’s all that’s to it.’
The man stared at Arrow’s hand as it held the tube. He had gone rigid on the bed.
Arrow smiled at him. 'No, no. It’s all right. I’m not going to let go – yet. I won’t let go until you make me believe that you really want to die, and that you’re not going to tell me what I need to know to help me find my friend’s lass. But the second I do believe that, I let this tube go, and not long after that, my friend, you will experience very painful and quite inevitable death. Now. Let’s start wi’ your name.’

EIGHTY-FOUR

Skinner was touched by the Queen’s good wishes. Most of all he was relieved by Proud’s news of her insistence that all steps necessary should be taken to ensure Alex’s safe return.
'I’ll take personal charge of this operation,’ said Proud Jimmy. 'I promise you that no risks will be taken, I’ll put marksmen in hiding around the aeroplane. If I’m completely satisfied that it’s safe for Alex, I’ll open fire. Otherwise I’ll let them take off. We’ll send word to every country within the plane’s operating range to watch out for its landing, and that way we’ll get Alex back as soon as possible.’

Skinner smiled: a tired, drained sort of smile.
Two things. Chief. First, you will need to tie me down to keep me away from this operation. Remember, I’m still head of the anti-terrorist unit Ballantyne set up, until his successor tells me otherwise. Next, if you have men waiting at the airport, they’ll be there all bloody night. Mr Black knows there’s no way I’ll let him get on board that plane with Alex. As soon as they were clear of our air-space, she’d be dead. They’re not going to show up at Edinburgh Airport. That plane’s just another feint. That’s the way our Mr Black works. He sells you a dummy, every time. He’s got something else planned. Well, so have I.’

His jaw tightened, and some of the tiredness left his face.
'Anyway, it might not come to that. Let’s wait to see what our guest in the Simpson has to tell Adam.’
'What makes you think he’ll tell him anything?’
Skinner laughed, quietly. 'You don’t know Adam!’