Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (14 page)

'I
was just seconded there for a short time, Boss, but I thought he was a
magician. He'd allocate jobs and when you reported back to him, it was as if
he'd known what you were telling him all along.'

'Who
were in his inner circle in SB at that time?' asked McGuire.

'He
didn't have one, Mario. He treated everyone in the squad in exactly the same
way; told them what they needed to know and that was it.'

Skinner
picked up a folder on the desk and gave it to the Inspector. 'I thought you'd
want this, so I pulled it from Personnel. It's Alec's service record, from the
day he joined up. I worked with him myself, way back, in a serious crimes
set-up we had then. He was about ten years older than me; I was a DC and he was
a DI so I was a couple of rungs down the ladder from him. But I remember his
nickname; the lads called him 'Mysterious Mr X'. To his face, sometimes; he
just laughed it off.'

McGuire
held the folder up. 'Does this tell us why he chucked it?'

'No,
but I can. He told me that he had got to the stage where his pension was so
healthy that he would be working for half pay from then on, unless he got
promoted, and he knew that wasn't going to happen. Alec's privacy was ideal in
an SB boss, but a bar to higher command. So he took the pension and went to
work for Guardian Security, as its Chief Operating Officer in Scotland - on the
same salary as an ACC, plus a nice company Jag.'

'Yet
he chucked it after less than a year,' the DI mused. 'I wonder why?'

'I
asked the company that very question this morning, Mario,' Mcllhenney answered.
'I called the Group Human Resources Director, a bloke called Rylance. He told
me that a job came up in London and the Managing Director wanted Alec in it.
But he refused, point-blank. The problem was that they had already promised his
job in Scotland to one of the MD's proteges. So they gave him six months' pay
and his car, and that was that.'

'Give
me the guy's number, Neil. We'd better look into the work he did while he was
there.'

'That's
in hand. Mr Rylance is putting together a full report; their courier division
will get it to you by close of play tomorrow, at the latest.'

McGuire
raised an eyebrow and smiled. 'You after my job, Mcllhenney?'

The
big Sergeant gazed at him, poker-faced. 'You're still in it, aren't you?'

The
Special Branch Commander rose, clutching the folder, Steele following his lead.
'In that case you and the kids can come to us for lunch next Sunday.' He looked
back at Skinner. 'I report to you on this, Boss?'

The
DCC shook his head. 'No. This is Maggie's shout; she and Mr Martin will keep me
up to speed, I'm sure. Mind you, if you were to turn up any real nasties
...'

15

'Have
you seen this, Andy?' The Superintendent pushed a folder across his desk, in
the Divisional CID Commander's office in Torphichen Place. 'The floater in the
Water of Leith.'

The
Head of CID looked at the slim file. 'That's it?' he asked, with a faint, but
discernible trace of scorn.

'There's
your statement, your girlfriend's sister
...'

Martin
held up a hand. 'What do you mean my girlfriend?'

'One
of the detective constables who took Margot's statement saw you and the older
lass coming out of Bert's Bar on Friday night.'

'You
better ask him if he likes the seaside,' the DCS growled.

'Aw
Andy, the lad's good, and I've already lost Stevie Steele to the Eastern
Division.'

'I
wasn't thinking about sending him to Dunbar; I was thinking about sticking him
back in a uniform and having him patrol Seafield!'

'No,
really. I've had a word with him about gossip. Christ, you know what he said to
me, the cheeky bastard? "But I thought that gossip was the CID's
stock-in-trade, sir." He's dead right, of course.'

'You
just teach him the meaning of the word "selective", then. Who was it
anyway?'

'Jack
McGurk.'

'You're
right. He is a good lad. How many years has he been with you?' 'Three.'

'And
one of your detective sergeants is just going off on maternity leave?' 'That's
right.'

'Okay,
I'll tell you what. We won't send him to patrol the sewage works, we'll promote
him. You can tell him that the vengeful Head of CID was going to give him the
shit-kicker job, but that you talked me out of it. That should make you a
bloody hero in his eyes, and it should teach him something at the same time.'

He
picked up the floater file. 'Two statements; that's all you've got, is it?'

'Them
and the post-mortem report. Know what the cause of death was?'

'Drowning.'

'How
did you know that?'

'The
girl you say I know, she's a final-year medic. I arranged for her to sit in as
an observer. She told me that the guy drowned in his own blood.'

'That's
right,' said Pringle. 'Every bone in his face was smashed to pieces. His legs
and his ribs were pulverised. The cuts across his chest were bone deep. The
missing fingers and toes were nowhere to be found in the rug, but it looked as
if they had been cut off with scissors or something similar. There were bruise
marks around the wrists and ankles; the poor wee guy - he was about five seven,
Sarah says - was tied up then slashed and beaten to death.'

'What
was the time of death?'

'Sarah
fixed it as early Saturday morning. She said that the
body
had been immersed for about eighteen hours, give one, take one.'

'Give
me that again.'

'Time
of death early Saturday morning, say three o'clock. Immersed for eighteen
hours, give or take. What do we take from that?'

'It
puts a limit on where he could have been killed. If he died at three, and was
in the water for a minimum of seventeen hours until we took him out at ten,
then wherever he was killed is less that two hours travel time from where the
body was dumped. If Sarah's spot on with her eighteen, that's one hour.
Allowing time to tie the poor bugger up in that carpet, on that basis, he was
killed pretty close to here. If the eighteen stretches towards nineteen, then
he was killed very close to where he was found.'

'That's
true; unfortunately, all of it's true. It still means that the guy could have been
killed in Glasgow and dumped here, if it was nearer seventeen.'

'Come
on, Dan. Get real on that; who would bring a stiff through here and drop it in
something that's not much more than a stream in places when he's got the Clyde
on his doorstep?'

'All
right,' said the Superintendent. 'I'll have Jack McGurk and a team begin
interviews with people living in the vicinity of the Water of Leith, from
Roseburn down to Dean Village. Mind you there's a lot more of them now, since
all those flats were built.'

'Nonetheless.
It'll keep the investigation moving, and you know how important that is.'

Pringle
nodded and leaned back in his chair. 'You know, boy,' he whispered, under his
breath, 'you're getting more like Bob Skinner every day.'

Martin
gazed at the wall, oblivious to the Divisional Commander's scrutiny. 'Why was
he wearing a shirt?' he asked, suddenly.

The
burly veteran looked at him, puzzled. He tugged, unconsciously, at one end of
his heavy moustache. 'Eh?'

'Why
was he wearing a shirt and nothing else? They stripped off his trousers, socks
and underwear, but they left him wearing a shirt.'

'Maybe
they were going to make him eat his willie, but he died on them.'

'He
died on them as an indirect result of having his teeth smashed into powder,
Dan.'

'True.
Tell you what, I'll have McGurk instigate a search for a missing pair of
strides, thirty-six waist, twenty-nine inside leg. Maybe they'll give us a
vital clue!'

The
Head of CID grinned. 'Listen, it was just a thought. It strikes me as odd,
that's all. Was there any sign of sexual interference?'

'You
mean did they make him dance the Turkish two-step before they killed him? No,
the report says that there were no genital or anal injuries. He did have sex at
some point though. Sarah found a single pubic hair, not his, trapped under his
foreskin.'

'That's
something, at least,' Martin conceded. 'Maybe he was only wearing a shirt
because he'd just been getting his end away
...
or maybe the rest of his clothes were traceable. What make was the shirt?'

'Marks
and Spencer, collar size sixteen. It could have been bought any-bloody-where in
Britain.'

'Could
it, though?'

'Aye,
I've checked. There is a tab on the inside of M&S shirts, near the foot,
that has a garment number on it. But this one had been ripped off - although I
suppose it could have come away in the wash.'

'Nothing
new on the missing persons lists?'

'Aye,
plenty as always. But no medium-sized males in their early to mid-forties.'

'How
about the e-fit? Did Sarah give us any ideas on that?'

'She's
dealing with that today. She gave priority to the post-mortem report, but she's
going to take another look at the body and try to fit the facial bones back
together. She said that if she could she'd give us something to release to the
Evening News
tomorrow.'

'Has
there been much press interest?'

'Not
in comparison to the Alec Smith case. Radio Forth picked it up first, at
midnight on Saturday, too late for most of the Sundays.'

'That
doesn't surprise me. Spike Thomson was at the party.' 'The disc jockey?'

'That's
the boy. He's friendly with Juliet Lewis, Rhian and Margot's mother.'

'Lucky
him. She looked quite tasty, from what I saw of her on Saturday while McGurk
and Ray Wilding were interviewing the daughter.'

He
beamed across the desk at the Head of CID. 'Tell me something, Andy. When you
bought that house, did you check out the neighbours first?'

16

'I
know, Stevie, this is a bloody dismal place to work. But face it, man; we all
have to work our way up to the likes of Bob Skinner's office. It's in rooms
like this that we do it. I've been asking for a spot of refurbishment for over
a year now, but that Chris Whitlow, the force's civilian bean-counter, he's a
real tight-fisted bastard.

'The
Boss doesn't like to lean on him himself, but he's promised me that if I get no
action within the next three months he'll bring the Chief down for a visit, to
let him see the place, then wind him up to do some kicking himself.'

'Doesn't
the Chief come down here normally, then?'

'Proud
Jimmy? About once every three years, and then only when Bob invites him. I
report to the Big Man direct, you see, and nobody interferes with his
operations
...
nobody at all.'

'I
can imagine. I've seen him in action. He saved my arse a while back
...'

McGuire
nodded. 'The Russians. I remember.'

'Fucking
awesome, he was. You should have seen what he did to that big guy.'

'I'd
rather not. We've all done things in our time that we wouldn't have wanted
witnessed.' He laughed. 'I remember one night, when Mcllhenney and I were in
uniform, these gang lads thought they had him cornered in an alley; but they
didn't know that I'd been checking out a shop down the street.

I
came in behind them and it was them that were cornered. What a fucking mess we
left them in. But it was just as well no law-abiding member of the public
wandered past. It'd have been "Police brutality" and no mistake -
there were only four of them.'

He
walked over towards the far wall of his office which was lined with cupboards,
three of them, steel doors stretching to ceiling height, each with a
combination lock.