Skinner's Rules (10 page)

The incident report which was telexed to Edinburgh seemed to back that up. Rachel had just lost a high-profile trial. She had been badly frightened by McCann. She had reacted badly, Strang had reported, to his suggestion of police protection and had insisted that her escort allow her to go to the train alone. And thought Skinner, she had just lost her boyfriend in the most gruesome way imaginable. The mental picture of Mortimer’s mutilated remains was still with him when he read the preliminary medical report and saw, to his horror, that Rachel Jameson too had been decapitated.

One thing did seem certain from the report. This had been no accident. The engine driver’s fleeting recollection, and the position of the body made it clear that the woman had not stumbled and fallen. She had travelled outwards from the platform with some momentum, either having been pushed, or, as Skinner finally conceded was likelier, having jumped.

But he hated coincidence. Two people, romantically and professionally linked, die violently within days of each other, murder certain in one case and in the other, a possibility. Yet if they were both murdered, where was the link? And if there was a link between them, what about the other three killings?

Skinner hung on tenaciously to the idea of a connection. A nagging feeling that he had missed something important in the Mortimer enquiry, remained with him. But reluctantly, his mind began to separate Rachel Jameson’s death from the others, expecting soon to see a witness statement confirming that she had jumped in front of the train.

He wrote,
Noted, RS.’
on the Strathclyde telex and tossed it into his filing tray.

Two days and two miserable, barren night watches later, Skinner attended the first of the funerals. Mike Mortimer was cremated at Old Kilpatrick, a bleak post-war funeral factory standing behind Clydebank, where staff struggle with a crowded timetable to allow families to bid a dignified farewell to their departed. Skinner hated crematoria, the speed of the service, the euphemism of the curtains closing over the coffin, the theatricality of it all. Once he had said to Alex that when the time came for him. he was to be planted, like his wife, in the old-fashioned way in Dirleton Cemetery.

Waiting outside the chapel in the cold clear winter sunshine, he cast his eyes around for a familiar face. David Murray stood, almost hidden, in the midst of a group of middle-aged and elderly men in Crombie over coats, some wearing bowler hats. Among them Skinner recognised two judges, one of them Murray’s predecessor as Dean. Peter Cowan stood slightly apart, wearing the black jacket, waistcoat and pin-striped trousers that are the advocate’s trademark. Skinner caught his eye, and the two men ambled slowly towards each other.

‘Morning, Bob. Is this part of the investigation?’

Skinner nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is. Don’t look in his direction, but I’ve got a photographer in that out-building over there, just on the off-chance that we pick up someone in the crowd who shouldn’t be here.’

‘Will you go to the other funerals?’

‘Yes, we will. Even to poor old Joe the Wino’s. Doubt if we’ll see too many judges there!’

The Clerk of Faculty chuckled quietly. Still short of the years at the Bar necessary to take silk — to be appointed Queen’s Counsel — he retained an irreverence not found as a rule in seniors, many of whom were en route for the Bench, and comported themselves with that in mind.

Quite suddenly Cowan’s smile faded. ‘That was an awful business about poor Rachel.’

‘Yes, Peter. Just terrible. And preventable, if those buggers in Strathclyde had followed orders and seen her right on to the train, instead of allowing her to go under it.’

As the mourners from the previous funeral filed out of the chapel, and made their way towards the busy car-park, the Mortimer congregation moved forward to take their places. The cortege had arrived and was parked in the driveway, waiting for the moment to draw up to the door. A light-coloured wooden coffin, topped by a single wreath, lay in the hearse. Through the windows of the first limousine, Skinner saw a silver-haired man, and clutching his arm, a woman in black, her head on the man’s shoulder.

The gathering stood around while the family mourners were shown into the building, and led to the front two rows facing the pulpit. Then quietly, they followed, shuffling into rows of hard wooden benches on either side of the central aisle.

As they sat down, Cowan whispered to Skinner. ‘I gather that the verdict on Rachel will be suicide, not accidental.’

‘There’s no way that it was accidental, Peter. Since no one’s come forward to say that she was shoved, that’s the way it’ll go down. That McCann sighting... You heard about that?’ Cowan nodded. ‘That was a load of cobblers. McCann was sighted for real last night, robbing a filling station in Luton. He pinched a car, and the Met. found it abandoned three hours later at Brent Cross. So he’s in London. I believe they’re releasing the story about now.

‘All the indications are that the girl was a bag of nerves after Mortimer’s death and after that threat. It probably wasn’t planned, just a spur of the moment suicide.’

‘Mm, sounds like it.’

The congregation rose slowly and solemnly to its feet as the coffin was borne to the altar on the shoulders of the undertaker’s assistants.

As they resumed their seats, Cowan whispered again to Skinner. ‘I was speaking to George Harcourt yesterday. He was the Advocate Depute in the McCann trial. He said that Rachel was very shaky before the jury came in with its verdict. Oh yes, and he told me a funny thing, too. He said that she was upset by a Japanese bloke who sat all the way through the trial.’

Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘You what... !’

‘Brothers and sisters in Christ...’ The Faculty chaplain cut the conversation short as he began the funeral service.

Fifteen minutes later as the family party filed out to a background of solemn organ music, Skinner was able to speak again. ‘You said a Japanese bloke?’

Cowan nodded.

‘Peter, have you got a car here?’

‘No, I came with David.’

‘Right, if you don’t mind, you’re coming back with me. I want to have another look at that so-called Chinese trial. I smell something here.’

Skinner rarely used a police driver. He believed that he thought better at the wheel. And so, on the way back to Edinburgh, cruising along the M8 at just under eighty miles per hour, he and Cowan exchanged few words.

Once the advocate broke a long silence. ‘Look, Bob, you don’t jump in front of a train just because you don’t like someone’s face in the public gallery.’

‘Granted, Peter. But one of the few visible links between any of the people in this whole series of deaths is the Japanese involvement. Now you’ve brought it up again, I’ve got an itch, and I want to get back to Edinburgh to scratch it.’

 

The Library was busy when Skinner and Cowan returned to the capital city. More than a dozen advocates, some in casual clothes, sat working at the rows of desks set beneath the magnificent gold-painted, panelled ceiling. They went into the Clerk’s office, alongside that of the Dean, and closed the door behind them.

Cowan dialled an internal number, and issued instructions to his secretary. Soon afterwards she appeared carrying two folders. Each contained a set of the papers in the Chinese trial.

They read through the notes and transcript in silence. Then Skinner went back to the beginning and listed the facts, point by point.

‘The victim. Shirai Yobatu. She’s twenty, and she’s at Strathclyde University. She’s found strangled in Kelvingrove Park. There are signs of sexual activity which could be rape. Forensic establishes that three men had intercourse with the girl immediately before her death.

‘She was seen earlier from across the street in Park Circus, by another girl student. She was in the company of three oriental men. The girl recognises two of them as waiters in the Kwei Linn Chinese Restaurant off Sauchiehall Street. A lot of the students have eaten there and know the two lads. The witness doesn’t know the other one. No one does. He’s never been found and the. other two wouldn’t name him. It didn’t occur to the witness that Shirai might not have been going willingly with them. She didn’t look under duress.

‘Christ, Peter, the Crown Office made a balls of this, and no mistake. If they’d left out the rape and just gone for a murder conviction they’d have got it no bother. As it was Mortimer and Jameson were able to take the rape charge apart, and to lull the jury into acquitting on both counts.’

Skinner went back to the notes. ‘The accused: John Ho, defended by Mortimer; and Shun Lee, defended by Jameson. They deny the rape charge and it falls apart. They say they didn’t know the third man. They claim that he had just started that day as a dishwasher at the Kwei Linn, and they didn’t know his name. The owner says he only gave the guy a few hours’ work, and he didn’t know it either. He says that the boy was a deaf mute.

‘The lads claim that they had a date for a threesome in the park with Shirai, who, they allege, is a student nymphomaniac likely to graduate with honours - there’s absolutely no evidence of that; her flatmate said she was a quiet girl - and the third guy came along as a spectator. They say that Shirai fancied mystery man too, and that they went off in a huff, leaving her to get on with it.

‘That evening they hear on Radio Clyde that a girl has been found strangled in the park. Mystery man doesn’t show up to wash dishes, and John Ho and Shun Lee decide to do a runner. They separate and go home, but each one is lifted by Strathclyde CID in the act of packing his bags.

‘Mike and Rachel plead panic. The guys are good witnesses; the jury believes them and they walk. So once again, we’ve got two very satis fied clients. Agree?’

Cowan nodded emphatically.

‘But not everybody’s going to be happy with that, are they? What more do we know about Shirai?’ Skinner flicked through the papers before him and found a two-page document, the A4 sheets stapled together. ‘This is the Strathclyde Police report on her background. Let’s see what it says.’

Cowan found the same document in his sheaf of papers; each read quickly.

Skinner summarised aloud as he went along. ‘Interesting. Comes from an above-average family background, even by Japanese standards. And interesting too, she’s not an overseas student, as such.’

The shadow of a smile crept across his face.

‘Her father and mother live in Balerno, of all places. He’s forty-four, managing director of a Japanese pharmaceuticals company in Livingston.’

Cowan looked at him. ‘So he could be a man with a grudge? Not a. dissatisfied client, but the father of a victim. Is that what you think?’

Skinner shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s the only lead I’ve got, so I’ll have to follow it up. Tell you one thing, I’ll be interested to learn what John Ho and Shun Lee are doing right now. And I can’t wait to show a photograph of Yobatu
san
to your Advocate Depute pal Harcourt.’

Cowan held up a hand. ‘Hold on Bob; you can link this man to Mike and Rachel through that trial, fair enough. But how can you connect him with the other three murders?’

‘I’ll worry about that later. This is the only bone I’ve got to gnaw on at the moment, and I’m going to give it a bloody good chew.’

Skinner closed his folder. ‘Come with me when I pay a call on Harcourt, once I lay hands on that photo.’

Detective Sergeant Mackie had just returned from hospital, where his injured elbow had been pronounced sound, when Skinner buzzed from his office.

Mackie went through to the inner sanctum. ‘Hello, sir. I didn’t know you were back. Did our man put in an appearance at the funeral?’

‘I won’t know for sure till I’ve seen the photographs. That’s the first thing I want you to chase up for me. These are the others.’ He issued a series of clear concise orders. ‘And I want them now!’

 

The funeral photographs arrived two hours later.

Skinner sifted carefully through the blown-up prints. Some of the people, he recognised, but most, he did not. However the most telling thing was that no one seemed to be out of place, or standing in isolation, other than, in one photograph, himself.

‘Christ,’ he muttered aloud. ‘No one would ever know I was a copper from that! Not bloody much!’

Skinner scanned the prints again, to confirm his first impression. There were no oddfellows there. And no one in the gathering looked in the slightest oriental.

The photograph of Toshio Yobatu, Managing Director of Fu-Joki Blood Products plc, arrived half an hour later. Mackie brought it, having been handed the print in a brown envelope, in a pub behind the Scotsman office, by a photographer with whom he maintained a mutually beneficial acquaintance. Mackie had agreed that his friend’s lack of curiosity about the reason for the request would earn an extra favour at some time in the future.

Skinner tore open the envelope and withdrew the photograph. He looked at it and caught his breath. Alongside him, Mackie gave a soft whistle.

The picture had been ‘snatched’ as Yobatu left the High Court in Glasgow, following the acquittal of the two Chinese youths. It had been blown up until most of the features were fuzzy, but nothing could dim the ferocity of the eyes which blazed out at the two detectives.

Nothing could have been further from the image of the smiling Japanese businessman. Even in a bad photograph, Yobatu’s ferocious gaze had an almost hypnotic effect. Not a hint of humour or compassion lay there, only a burning anger, accentuated by a tight mouth, which seemed to have been slashed across the man’s face.

‘Jesus, boss,’ Mackie whispered, ‘if this character had sat staring at me for three-and-a-half days in a High Court trial, I think I’d have jumped under a bloody train as well!’

Like many advocates, George Harcourt lived in the network of streets which stretches downhill and northward from Heriot Row, in grey and ordered simplicity.