Skinner's Ghosts (24 page)

Skinner leaned forward, looking up the table towards the Lord Advocate. 'We've got access to this man too, Archie, yes?'

'In principle, you have. I can't order him to see you, of course.'

'Can we make life easier for him, then?'

'What do you have in mind?'

The policeman smiled. 'Wel , since this is an informal enquiry, 158

and since we'll have access to witnesses and interview notes, how about letting one of my team accompany your men to Guernsey to sit in on the interview?'

Cheshire snorted. 'Nice try, Skinner.'

Lord Archibald frowned at first at the investigator's comment, then smiled as he began to think the request through. 'As an observer, you say? Not to conduct the interview in any way?'

Skinner shook his head. 'No, but with the right to ask supplementary questions at the end.'

The Law Officer turned to the investigators. 'Apart from there being no precedent, can you give me a good reason why I shouldn't allow this?'

'Potential intimidation of witnesses, sir,' said Cheshire, aggressively.

'Indeed? I'd expect a witness to be intimidated by two senior police officers, but hardly, if I read Mr Skinner's mind aright, by a legal apprentice just out of university.'

Alex looked round at her father in surprise. He grinned at her and nodded.

'Al right, Bob,' said Archibald. 'I agree. But your representative must not interrupt Mr Cheshire's questioning, mind.' He turned to the men from Manchester. 'You will al ow Miss Skinner to ask supplementaries, though.'

Cheshire sat silent and grim-faced, a flush showing even through the heavy tan. It was Ericson who broke the silence. 'Very good, sir,'

he said, turning to Alex. 'Leave me your office number, Miss Skinner, and I'l advise you of our travel plans, once they're made.'

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48

Even with the aid of a street map, and even although the Chief Superintendent's flat was less than a mile away, Martin and Pye had trouble finding Eddie Sweeney's workshop. It was tucked away out of sight at the end of one of the lanes which ran off Dairy Road, behind a Georgian town house, a forgotten treasure which had been

rescued by an office developer. It was perhaps eight yards across, and twenty deep, a wooden structure with a corrugated iron roof, bounded at the rear and on the right by the high red brick wal s of the adjoining building.

Before setting out from Fettes, Martin had called the force's criminal intelligence unit, and the national criminal records department, to check on their target. The second source had yielded a faxed photograph, taken at the time of a conviction in Aberdeen twelve years earlier, for receiving a stolen motor car, an offence which the Sheriff had taken lightly enough to punish with only a year's probation. That had been completed impeccably, and since then there had been no sign of a subsequent transgression.

The policemen drew up in Martin's Mondeo beside big grey-painted double gates which seemed to cover almost the full width of the workshop. The lane was a dead end, and so narrow that the Chief Superintendent had to position the car careful y, to al ow both Pye and himself to open their doors.

The gates were secured by a heavy chain and padlock, but inset, to the right, there was a smaller doorway, black-painted, standing out from the surrounding grey, and with a brass nameplate on which the

name 'E. Sweeney, Motor Engineer' was etched.

Martin banged on the grey gate. 'Mr Sweeney. Police. Open up, please.' There was no reply, no sound from within. He pushed the smaller door, but itsYale was secure. 'Is there a back entrance to this place, d'you think?' Martin mused.

'Not unless it's through the wal of the whisky bond next door,'

Pye pointed out. 'Maybe he closes early on a Friday.'

The Chief Superintendent sighed. 'Well he bloody shouldn't,' he said. 'This week started with a locked door, now it's ending with another. Fuck this, Sammy, I'm fed up being pissed about. I think I feel an accidental stumble coming on.' Abruptly, he lifted his right 160

foot and slammed the door with his heel. There was a crack as the keeper of the Yale gave under the force of the kick.

'Oh dear,' said the young detective constable, 'that was nearly a nasty fal . Are you al right, sir?'

'I've been worse. Thank God that door was there to stop me.'

There were no windows in the workshop; it was in darkness as they stepped inside. The little light which spilled in from the small doorway lit up a red car, jacked up at the front, but beyond the gloom was too deep to make out anything. The place smelled: of oil, of grease, of old leather . . . and of something else. 'Christ,'

said Pye, 'd'you think Sweeney just pisses in the corner when he's needing?'

Martin said nothing, but peered around near the entrance until he found a light switch. He threw it, and after a few seconds a sequence of half a dozen neon tubes flickered into life. As they did, Pye had reached the red car, and could see beyond.

He gave a slight, involuntary shout, and started. For a moment Martin thought that the young man would turn and run, but he held his ground. 'Sweeney's in after all, sir,' he whispered.

Quickly, Martin stepped up beside him and together they advanced, into the furthest corner of the workshop.

Clearly, Eddie Sweeney had not been a big man in life. His feet only just touched the ground as he sat in the green, straight-backed wooden chair, his wrists and ankles lashed securely to its legs with heavy black insulating tape. But in death his eyes were huge. They stood out in their sockets, seemingly only a very short step from popping out altogether.

Martin leaned over and stared into the grotesque, purple, dead face. 'Oh, Sammy,' he whispered, 'we're dealing with a very special mind here. This man's an expert. He believes in death as an art form.

'I've only ever encountered one other like him.'

Pye crouched down beside his boss, looking up at the dead, head-lol ing Sweeney. And as he did he saw that the man's nose was swollen, with white wisps of cotton wool protruding from the nostrils.

His cheeks were distorted too, and something showed between the protruding teeth; something dirty, yellow and furred.

'That's not his tongue, is it, sir?'

Martin chuckled, blackly. 'Not even the most liverish tongue ever looked like that.' He stood up and leaned over the body. '"Yes, there's a grazed lump on his head. Our Mr Sweeney was cracked on the head from behind, then taped into his chair.'

He shook his head. 'What an imagination, and what a way to go.

The kil er packed his nose with cotton wool, rammed a tennis ball into his mouth, and stood back to watch while the poor sod suffocated.'

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Pye shuddered. 'A tennis bal ?' He looked closer. 'In the name of

... So it is.'

'Game, set and match to our man,' said the Chief Superintendent,

'or so he thinks. We'd better take a look around, for the sake of form.

But this is a very thorough person. I don't think for a moment that we'l find anything to help us.'

He stepped across to the far side of the workshop, where a grey filing cabinet stood against the wal , with its second drawer slid open.

On the floor beside it there was a big brown steel waste bin. Martin looked inside. 'Sammy, forget it,' he cal ed to his young col eague.

'He got what he was after. There's ash in here, and you can bet that once it was the paperwork related to a set of plates, supplied to customer unknown, no questions asked.'

'Are you sure that this was the man we're after, sir? Maybe Sweeney was in bother with someone else.'

The chunky Martin shook his head. 'Forget it, Sam. This was our guy al right. As soon as he saw the photofit which we issued yesterday, he knew that we'd linked him to the caravan. So he went back and covered his tracks. End of story, for Mr Sweeney.'

He looked at the body once more. 'It could be that he's even sending us a message in the way he chose to kil him. Al significant openings closed off. Fine, let him be that cocky, for that's how we'll catch him.'

'What do you mean, sir?'

'I mean that when you're dealing with a criminal as arrogant and sure of himself as this one is, all you have to do is wait while his ego and his feelings of infallibility get bigger and bigger, until, sure as eggs is eggs, he makes the mistake which lets you nab him.'

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49

Pam woke at seven forty-five on Saturday morning, alone in the bedroom of the Gul ane cottage. She was startled at first, until she remembered that she and Bob had decided to leave Edinburgh for the weekend, although not for Peebles Hydro.

They had spent a long, silent Friday evening in the cottage. Skinner was morose, and largely silent, with the telephone set on auto answer, catching cal s from a few sympathetic friends. The only calls which he had returned had been from Neil Mcl henney, offering his sympathy, and his total support, and from Andy Martin, telling him of Sweeney's murder.

'Won't that put that farmer in danger?' Pam had asked, as he had explained what had happened. 'Mr Carr, I mean, the man who did the photofit.'

'I shouldn't think so. He'l assume, rightly, that Andy will put a guard on him. So it'd be too dangerous to go back to the farm to take him out. Anyway, what would be the point? The composite picture would be evidence in itself. No, his meeting with Carr was very brief.

He must have spent much more time with Sweeney, or maybe Sweeney even knew who he was.'

He had shuddered quite violently, startling her. 'I hate people like him, you know, people who kil with flair, not just with purpose.

Murder's murder, I know, always terrible; but usual y it's in hot blood.

Occasionally it's a commercial transaction, a falling-out among criminals who live by different rules from the rest of us.

'I don't tolerate any of it, but nothing turns my stomach like a man who can kill the way this fellow does. He's so premeditated: the way he just disposed of Sweeney, the way he killed Leona.'

'Leona? Was that necessarily premeditated? Couldn't that have been sexual in origin, with him catching her naked?'

Bob had given her a long cool look, shaking his head. 'Not the way I read it. He didn't have to go upstairs. He could have taken the boy and gone. But he chose to go upstairs to find the mother, to rape and kil her. There was a message there too, I think.'

She had stared at him then, astonished. 'A message? For whom?'

But he had shaken his head and fal en silent once more.

Now, with the soft sunlight of early morning making patterns of 163

the windowframes on the bedroom curtains, she rose and, putting on her robe as she went, made her way through the living room to the kitchen. There she found him, sitting at the table, in running shorts and teeshirt, sweating heavily, his shoulders hunched, his head down, caught off guard in an attitude which touched her heart.

She moved silently behind him and ran her fingers through his matted hair. 'Come on, Big Boy,' she whispered, soothingly. 'It's supposed to be darkest just before the dawn, not after it.'

He looked up at her, over his shoulder. 'I'm still waiting for dawn,'

he muttered. 'I feel like I'm at war on two fronts. Can you imagine how it feels, to know that my name will be all over this morning's press? I've been a police officer for almost a quarter of a century, more than half my life. In that time, I like to think that I've never done a dishonourable thing.

'Yet here I am, accused of abusing my position through my relationship with you, sacked by Anderson as unsuitable for my security post, under investigation for corruption, stigmatised, suspended, and effectively banned from acting personal y in my defence.

'At the same time there's a madman at large with a kidnapped child, with whom I have a strong personal link, and for whom, somehow, I feel a responsibility. Not just that, he's targeting me in some way I don't yet understand. I want to be out there chasing the guy, I ought to be; yet I can't, by order ofDr Bruce Anderson. I tell you girl, there are a few ghosts in my life, and it's as if they're all coming back to haunt me, al of them at once.'

He took the hand which she laid upon his shoulder, and pressed it gently.

'Can't I help, love?' she asked. 'Can I help ease the pain?'

He stood up from the table and turned, looking down at her. 'No, honey. No you can't. I suppose you're a third front, another area of conflict in my life.'

'Is that how you see me?' she asked, quietly.

He shrugged his wide shoulders. 'Oh God, I don't know. Maybe I should have chosen my words more carefully. But our future is something else to be resolved, and right now, I just can't handle any of it.'

He cried out in sudden exasperation. 'When I was out there just now, running along the top of the beach, I remember thinking to myself, "Why stop? Why turn back?" There's part of me that wants to chuck it all in, and I've never felt like that before. It's scary, Pam.

It's as if since the stabbing, since my split with Sarah, since my discoveries about Myra, and now with all of this, that I'm just not me any more. There's a bloke inside me, but he's a stranger. Know what else I'm finding out? I don't even like him.'

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She pul ed him to her, and hugged him, pressing her face against his chest, running her fingers through his hair. But he stood, stil and upright in her arms, until final y his right hand came up, and he stroked her cheek with his fingers.

'I'm a real mess, am I not?' he whispered, as she looked up and saw his sad smile. 'Who'd want a future with a crock like me?'

As he spoke, as he asked his despondent question, a face came into his mind's eye, quite unexpectedly: Sarah, looking at him and frowning, with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. He tried to wil her away, but her mental image remained. And he knew. At that moment, he knew.

A thump from the hal broke the moment. 'Post lady,' he said, matter-of-fact once more. 'She's always early on a Saturday.' He released himself from her hug, and walked through to the hal way.

There were three items of mail lying on the doormat, between the glass and outer doors. Picking them up, he glanced at each in turn as he stepped back into the living room.