Skinner's Rules (24 page)

Martin handed him the long red directory, opening it at the ‘M’ section as he did so. Skinner looked at it closely. The entries were less detailed than those in the Filofax, and the ‘M’ and ‘Mac’ surnames were in random order. He tound Mortimer’s listing simply under ‘Mike’ and below it a listing for ‘J. Mortimer’, with no address, only the Clydebank telephone number which he had used earlier in the day. There too, was David Murray’s home address and telephone number. It was only when he turned the page that Skinner noticed something odd.

A long straight cut appeared, close to the spine of the book. He pressed it as flat as he could on the coffee table, and ran his finger between the pages. Suddenly he pulled his finger back as he felt the sharp pain of a paper cut. He sucked the blood which welled from the fine slit at the tip of his index finger, then ran his middle finger over the page again, crosswise this time. He bent the book open until the front and back of the red cover were touching.

‘There you are. You can hardly see it, but a page has been cut out. You’ve got to be looking really hard to notice that it’s gone. If he hadn’t nicked the next page with his knife, and if I hadn’t been looking as closely as I did at the “M”s I wouldn’t have found it.

‘So there it is. Our mystery entry has been taken out of each one.’

‘Why didn’t he just take the books?’ Sarah asked.

‘That would have been spotted, especially with all the financial information in Mortimer’s Filofax. No, just take a page from each and no one will notice. That’s what our man reckoned. Anyway, he thinks we’ve bought Yobatu. All he’s doing here is housekeeping, tidying up. He doesn’t really expect that there’ll be a detailed search.’

‘Remember, he did pinch Rachel’s diary,’ said Martin. ‘Maybe there was too much in that for him to cut out. Have you checked the diary sectior of the Filofax?’

‘Not yet. Let’s have a look now.’

He picked up the brown leather book and reopened it. The first five; months of the day-per-page had been discarded. Martin looked startled until Skinner showed him the date on the gift card set inside the front cover.

The entries began on Tuesday 6 June, and continued daily from then on. Typically of Mortimer, they were concise, but full of detail: until Monday 20 June and Tuesday 21 June. Martin stated the obvious. ‘It’ not there.’

A small piece of paper was caught in one of the six steel clips of the ring-binder, snagged as the page had been removed.

Skinner stopped reading the detail of the entries. Instead, he flicke through the pages, searching for more gaps. ‘October the fifteenth and sixteenth; they’re gone.’ He shook his head. ‘A very thorough individ ual. We’ve been lucky to get this tar. Now it looks like we’re stuc again.’

‘Look at the cashbook.’ Sarah spoke softly from her armchair.

‘Clever lady,’ said Skinner. He opened the financial section, flippin over pages until he reached June.

‘Very clever lady! Look at this. June the twentieth, shuttle return Edinburgh - Heathrow. Paid by Mastercard.’ He turned over more pages ‘And again. October the fifteenth. But this time it’s two tickets. Did Rache go with him this time?

‘Andy, first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to use your Specia Branch clout to do two things. Call British Airways and have them check the passenger listings for all flights to Heathrow on October the fifteenth, looking for Mortimer and Jameson. If Rachel doesn’t show; then find out who was sat on either side of Mortimer on each half of the round trip.

‘Then call Telecom. I want a printout of all calls made from Mortimer’s and Rachel’s telephones from the last twelve months, with the subscribers at the other end listed. They’ll moan like buggery, but they can do it.’

Martin nodded. ‘Anyone who’s going to moan, may as well start now.

He picked up Mickey Mouse and looked towards Sarah. ‘May I?’

‘Be our guest.’

Ten minutes and two telephone calls later Martin was finished. ‘Airway is easy. I’ll have that by 9.00 a.m. The Telecom task involves more work but my woman there says she’ll try to have what we need by midday And she didn’t moan at all.’

‘Good fella. Get word to me as soon as you have anything on either one. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to break the good news to the Chief. This business has got to the point where he needs to be told.’

A police car took Skinner to the Abbey National Building Society for his 10.15 appointment with the manager, a small neat man, curious as to the reason for Skinner’s visit.

Skinner accepted black tea in a thick, ugly cup. ‘Thank you for seein me at such short notice, Mr Needham,’ he began.

‘I believe that Mr Michael Mortimer, an advocate, was, until his recent death, one of your depositors.’

Needham nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. And a mortgage holder.’

‘I’m looking into his financial affairs. I have some of his personal records and I want to cross-check these with his account information here. I know that you have no obligation to assist me, but the matter is urgent, and the man is dead, so I hope that it won’t be necessary to go through formal procedures. I’d rather keep this completely off-the-record.’

Needham held up his hand in an affirmatory gesture. ‘That doesn’t caus me a problem, Mr Skinner. I take it that you want the details of both investment accounts.’

‘Both?’

‘Yes. He had two. One was used for regular monthly transfers from the Royal Bank, as a sort of business account, I think. From memory, the balance stands at almost thirty thousand pounds at the moment. The other is joint, in the names of Mr Mortimer and Miss, or is it Ms, Rachel Jameson It was opened in June, with a cash deposit of five thousand pounds.’

Successfully, Skinner concealed his excitement. ‘Any payment since then?’

‘Yes, in October a further fifteen thousand pounds was deposited again in cash.’

‘Can you give me the exact dates of these transactions?’

‘Of course.’ Needham rose from his chair and crossed to a four-drawe filing cabinet. He opened the second drawer from the top, looked inside and withdrew a folder. ‘Here we are. The account was opened by Mr Mortimer and Miss Jameson on June the twenty-first. The second deposit was made by Mr Mortimer on October the sixteenth.

‘I shouldn’t, but I’ll give you photocopies of these, and of the other account transactions for the last twelve months. Back in a few moments.’

When the door closed behind the little man, Skinner whistled to himself. Twenty grand! A tasty fee; but for what?

Needham reappeared a few moments later, and handed him a large brown envelope, sealed.

‘Thank you, Mr Needham. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘My pleasure.’ He escorted Skinner to the door.

In the back of the police car, Skinner looked at the photocopied pages. Twenty thousand, deposited in joint names, in two tranches, after the London visits. Cash deposits, not cheques. Money laundering? A drugs pay-off? Any lawyers with criminal practices made some dubious contacts. But surely these two couldn’t have been bent. Not the
Scots Law Times
Couple of the Month.

Yet there it was, and it had to be viewed with suspicion. Skinner knew that all advocates’ fees were collected by Faculty Services, which took a levy off the top for administrative expenses. Could Mike and Rachel have been cheating their own company?

The searchers into files and effects were still only at the start of their painstaking tasks when Skinner called at the New Town apartments. Mackie had the tougher job, since Mortimer had been a stickler for detail. He was picking through the Amstrad disks when Skinner arrived.

‘How does it look, Brian?’

‘Green, boss. This bloody screen goes for your eyes. Apart from that it’s bleak. There was one personal file on this thing, full of letters to relatives, thank-you notes to hostesses, and a Christmas-card list ready for printing out on labels. None of the names look promising. The others were all business records. There are actually fewer files than there might have been. Some of the disks are almost empty. If he had a filing system, I haven’t figured it out.’

‘Okay. Get stuck into the paperwork with Mcllhenney when you’re finished with that. And keep a lookout for references to a joint project with Rachel, and a cash fee.’

‘Will do, sir.’

Back in his office just before midday, Skinner called Kenny Duff. ‘I need some financial info on our friends, Kenny. Did either one have a private source of income? Gambling, for example.’

There was a pause at the Charlotte Square end of the line. ‘I guess you’ve come across the joint account, and the nature of the payments. That came as a surprise to me too, when I found the account book. You understand that as executor I couldn’t volunteer that information to you?’

‘Sure, that’s all right. You’ve no clue as to the source of the money?’

‘None at all. It’s a problem for me, I don’t mind telling you. I’ve no way of telling whether it’s earned income, a gift or, as you suggest, a win on the pools. I just don’t know what to tell the Revenue, or even whether to tell them. As far as their general finances were concerned, both Mike and Rachel had good practices, and were comfortably off. Had they chosen a specialist area of civil law, rather than criminal, they’d have done even better, but neither one was short of a few bob. They were planning to sell Mike’s flat to help pay for the new house, and they’d have done well out of that deal too. All that makes twenty thousand in grubby fivers even more difficult to understand.’

Skinner grunted. ‘Thanks Kenny. You’ve been no bloody help at all but thanks anyway.’

‘Wait till you hear this!’ Quickly Skinner told Martin of the building society account, and the cash deposits which had followed the London visits.

Martin’s breath hissed between his teeth. ‘Let’s see if we can tie it into this.’ He waved an A4 document. ‘It’s just this minute arrived from Telecom. I haven’t looked through it yet.’

He laid the sheets on Skinner’s desk and walked round to look over his shoulder. The document was in two sections, one listing Mortimer’s calls, the other, those made by Rachel. Skinner handed one back to Martin.

‘You check that one. Look for London numbers, private listings and ex-directories. Let’s concentrate on the four weeks before Mortimer’s first trip to London. See if we get the same name on each list.’

They studied the columns of numbers in silence for some minutes. When Martin spoke there was an edge of controlled excitement in his voice.

‘Try this, boss. On June the fourteenth, six days before Mortimer’s solo trip to London, Rachel made a twenty-three-minute call to an ex-directory number in London. The subscriber is named here as Fazal Mahmoud, address, Forty-nine, St David’s Avenue, Pimlico.’

‘Okay!’ Skinner’s tone echoed that of the younger man. ‘On June the seventeenth, Mortimer made a seventeen-minute call to the same man. Let’s take it forward.’

Each searched his list in silence for several minutes more. When Skinner was finished he looked across at Martin, a question in his eyes.

‘Nothing else sir. No more calls to that number. How about you?’

‘Consistently. One a month, each lasting no more than five minutes. Then in October, three days before the second trip, a call lasting nineteen minutes and thirty-five seconds.’

‘So. Rachel is the original contact, then Mortimer makes the running, and collects the first slab of fivers. But on the second trip, Rachel goes too, so it couldn’t have been anything risky, or at least Mike couldn’t have thought so.’

‘Yes. I wonder what Fazal’s nationality is, or if his ... ’

‘Wait a minute!’ Martin cut in.

‘Fazal. Fuzzy. Rachel’s university pal told me that story about a serious boyfriend when she was a student. Some sort of Arab, she said. She never knew his real name, Rachel and the others just called him Fuzzy!’

‘A pound to a pinch of pig-shit that’s the man!’ Skinner’s voice rose.

‘Let’s see how good your predecessors were. Any Arab student in Edinburgh is quite likely to have wound up on Special Branch files. Come on. Let’s get along to your place and see if we can find your friend Fazal Mahmoud.’

Special Branch duties include the maintenance of a discreet watch over those who might be regarded by the State as malign influences, or subver sives. Sometimes, this category extends to include all citizens of certain foreign countries.

‘What years should we cover, Andy?’ Skinner asked as Martin unlocked the room in which the back files were stored, then answered his own quesion. ‘Let’s try ‘79 to ’82 for openers, since Jameson was thirty-two, going on thirty-three.’

Martin nodded agreement. He scanned the labelled drawers of a bank of grey steel filing cabinets lined against the wall facing the door. Choosing one, he opened it with a small brass key.

‘Let’s be precise, boss. I think Rachel would be nineteen or twenty when she was involved with this guy, so let’s look first at eighty and eighty-one.’

The files were labeled neatly and listed first alphabetically, then in date order. Martin found the 1980 ‘M’ listings and scanned through them. He found no ‘Mahmoud’ file. He unlocked the next cabinet and found the 1981 ‘M’ series in the bottom drawer. He flicked through the names. ‘Could be, boss, could be!’ he called.

He produced two creased yellow folders. ‘Mahmouds, both of these.’ He opened one, and read the top sheet of the papers inside. ‘Mahmoud, Achmed. Iranian; Exile, believed to be in some physical danger from the agents of the fundamentalists. No that’s not him.’ He opened the next folder.

‘You beauty!’

He scanned the pages for a few seconds, then read aloud. “‘Mahmoud, Fazal, Syrian passport holder. Born Damascus 1956. Student of politics and economics Edinburgh University. Matriculated October 1980. Member of Middle-East Students Anti-Zionist League. Member of University Squash Club. Residence, Pollock Halls. Known Associates Ali Tarfaz, Iraqi (see separate file), Andrew Harvey, Scottish (See separate file), Marjorie Porteous, Scottish (Nothing known), Rachel Jameson, Scottish (See separate file).”