Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (32 page)

'How
is he?' he asked the young Army Medical Officer by his side. 'Was he hurt in
any way?'

'Physically,
very little. He has a split lip, some bruising to his face and his shoulder,
but otherwise he's fine. Psychologically, I couldn't say. He was in shock when
he was brought in here, rambling and delirious. I gave him a strong sedative,
enough to knock him out for a few hours.

'I
can't predict what he'll be like when he comes round. What happened to him? How
did he get like this? I haven't been told, but he was in a hell of a mess. He
reminded me of a soldier I saw once who was too close to a colleague when he
stepped on a mine. But this man
...
God, his teeth
...
the time it took
to clean them alone.'

'Don't
ask, Doctor,' said the DCC quietly. 'I want to be here when he comes round,
okay?'

'Of
course. If you're a friend, seeing you should be good for him.'

The
MO left the room. Skinner pulled a chair up to the bedside and sat, looking at
his friend's sleeping face, and wondering what his dreams were like, hoping
that he had none. He tried to imagine the scene in the Pentlands, and Andy's
fight for his life. Jesus, what must Scotland have felt like having this mad,
desperate, bull of a man coming at him. What a way to kill someone. He imagined
being in the same situation himself, then remembered that he had been; that man
was in an unmarked grave too. There are no rules in a fight for survival.

He
sat for over an hour, waiting, not thinking of McGuire and Arrow in the
corridor outside, thinking only of Andy, and of what he would say when he
awoke.

At
last he began to stir on the bed. He whispered something. One word, very
softly, but Skinner caught it; 'Karen.'

His
right shoulder twitched; his head made a butting movement, then began to roll
from side to side. His jaws clamped tight working, working. His eyes flickered,
closed again, flickered, then suddenly, opened wide. He sat bolt upright in
bed with an expression on his face unlike any that Skinner had ever seen - a
mixture of terror and sheer animal ferocity.

The
big DCC jumped to his feet and held him, using all his own great strength to
counter Andy's and press him back down on to the bed. 'Okay, son, it's okay.'

Martin's
face cleared at last. 'Bob?' he said, in a dazed croak. 'Where am I? Have I
been in an accident? Or shot, or something?

'Bloody
hell, that was some nightmare I was having.' He looked at Skinner, read his
face, and fell silent again. That unnatural look came back, but this time it
was pure terror, and that alone, as everything came flooding back.

"That
was no nightmare, was it?' he asked, at last. 'No, Andy boy. No, it wasn't.'
'Scotland. How's he?'

'How
do you think? He's dead; you ripped his throat open.'

'Good!'
For a second, the DCC was shocked by the intensity of the malice in his best
friend's eyes, but then he remembered his own emotions at a similar time.

'I
told the rat-fucker I would kill him. He should have believed me.'

'It's
just as well he didn't. He wouldn't have played his bloody game if he had; he'd
have shot you straight off.' 'You worked it all out then?'

'Mario
did. So it was Scotland after all, Scotland who did Alec?' -

'I
suppose so. Even though it took him years to pluck up the courage; but he had
to play his game too. He had to get someone up there.'

'Why
in Christ's name did you go for him on your own, Andy?' Skinner asked. 'A man
with a history like that.'

'I
guess I have to call it an error of judgement. Between you and me, I've got a
few distractions in my private life right now. I've done smarter things in my
time, right enough.'

He
paused. 'On the other hand, if I had taken Sammy Pye with me, one of us would
have been dead now. Probably both of us.'

'Aye,
well. You can hold an inquiry into yourself, later. You're alive, so fuck the
recriminations.'

'What
happens now?' Martin asked. 'Report to the Fiscal?'

'Hell
no. Nothing happens. It's all taken care of; you're in Army hands at the
moment. Adam Arrow's involved and he's made everything go away, including
what's left of Scotland.'

The
younger man looked up at him. 'You've done that?'

'Too
fucking right. Not just for you, for the force. I don't want any of the Alec
Smith story to come out.'

'I
told Scotland that too. But the guy was only into talking, not listening.' He
pulled himself up into a sitting position.

'When
can I get out of here?' he asked. 'There's someone I have to see/

'You
can get out of here now, but you're coming home with me. No arguments; you're
either under Sarah's care, or I'll leave you here with the Army doctor. We'll
see how you're feeling tomorrow. Meantime, I've told everyone who needs to know
that you're all right.'

Bob
stood, and moved towards the door. 'I don't think you're going to want to see
your clothes again, but I'll have the Army fix you up with some uniform stuff.
Then you and I are going for a nice helicopter ride out to Gullane.'

46

The
nine Legends sat around the table in the Golf Hotel bar, stunned and subdued.
As a group they were rarely lost for a word but, after the bombshell which
Skinner had dropped, not one of them had anything to say.

It
was David McPhail who broke the seance-like silence with a blunt question. 'How
come it took so long to identify him, Bob? I mean, a whole week
...'

The
DCC was stung by the implied criticism of Dan Pringle's team. 'Look,, nobody
reported him missing. Edith and the family were away, and his colleagues didn't
want to make their client base nervous.'

He
looked across at McPhail and added tersely, 'The fact that he didn't have a
fucking face wasn't a big help to us either. My wife did the post-mortem; she
knew the Diddler well - he lived just up the road from us, remember - and she
didn't know who it was.'

'What
happened to him?' Grant Rock looked a wholly different man when he was being
serious; this occurred so infrequently that the policeman felt almost as if he
was facing a stranger.

'I
don't like to talk about it, and I only tell you guys on the basis that it
doesn't leave this room. He was tied to the bed at his son's place, then beaten
to death with a baseball bat. We only made a positive identification from blood
samples.'

'Tied
to the bed,' Stewart Rees mused. 'Was the Diddler diddling again?'

'Let's
not speculate about that.' 'Has Edith been told?'

Skinner
held up his empty glass and nodded to the Friday barmaid, prompting a rush of
refills.

'I
called France this afternoon,' he said, when everyone was settled again. 'They
have a friend down there, a Scots guy; I met him once. I called him and had him
go along to break the news to Edith. Always better face to face; it's harder to
believe a voice on the telephone.

'She
called me just before we came along here. Poor woman. She's flying home
tomorrow morning with Victoria, Air France from Nice through Charles de Gaulle;
I've said I'll meet them at the airport.'

'What
are you going to do about your car?' Mcllhenney asked, casually. 'It's still up
at Fettes, remember.'

'I'll
pull rank. I'll have a patrol car pick me up in the morning and take me to
collect it. Andy too, if Sarah says he can go home.'

The
Inspector leaned back against the window and whispered, so that no-one else
could hear. 'You going to tell me what happened today?'

Skinner
shook his head.

'Never?'

Skinner
nodded his head.

'Fair
enough then,' Mcllhenney murmured. 'I won't ask again.'

'Bob,'
said Mitch Laidlaw from across the table, 'it can't have escaped anyone's
attention that two of our number have met violent deaths very close to each
other.' He seemed to send a shiver round the table.

'It
hasn't escaped mine, Mitch, that's for bloody sure. That's the other reason I
called us all together
...
I mean,
apart from believing it appropriate to give you all the bad news in person. You
can forget the idea that there is any sort of a vendetta against our honoured
group. There's no-one out there who wants our Thursday time at the Sports
Centre so badly that he's prepared to bump us off one by one to get it.

'To
put the thing in perspective, two guys who played together among us, for a
fairly short time, set against the years we've been at it, met violent deaths
within hours of each other. But they were very different deaths.'

'How
was Alec killed, then?' asked McPhail.

'You
do not want to know, David,' Skinner frowned at the interruption. 'The point I
was about to make was that I am assured by an eminent and highly skilled
forensic pathologist - with whom I am currently sleeping - that Alec Smith and
the Diddler were killed by two different people.

'I
can tell you also, in police speak, although I cannot go into detail, that I
have reason to believe that the Alec Smith investigation will be closed pretty
soon.

'So
relax, lads. We don't have a stalker.'

'Yeah,'
said Grant Rock, returning rapidly to normal. 'But what if there's a whole
crowd of them after our time?'

Mcllhenney
looked at him from beneath his heavy eyebrows. 'If there was, the smart thing
to do would be to give it to them.'

'I'll
never be hung for being smart,' said Rock.

47

'Are
you going to tell me what happened today?' Maggie Rose asked her husband.

Mario
McGuire shook his head.

'Never?'

Mario
McGuire nodded his head.

'Don't
you think this is taking Special Branch secrecy a little too far?' his wife
asked.

'Mags
love, what happened today goes way beyond Special Branch secrecy. But that's
not why I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm keeping it to myself because it
was so fucking horrible that I cannot bear the thought of you knowing about it.
I will never tell anyone about what I saw today, nor will anyone else who was
there.'

'What
was Andy Martin's involvement in it?'

'Who
says he was involved?'

'No-one,
but
...
I heard there was some sort of
a panic this morning, involving him; that Karen Neville had the whole Ops Room
stirred up trying to find a car he was driving.'

'If
that happened, then that's all it was
...
a panic. Karen got her knickers in a knot unnecessarily, until she was told by
Neil to go away and untie them. Andy Martin is okay. I know this; I've seen
him.'

'What
do you mean you've seen him? Where?'

'Never
mind. The DCS is okay, and you can bet that he will be back in the office on
Monday, gung-ho as ever was.'

'What
about this man Lawrence Scotland? You haven't said anything about him for a
while. You told me about Morrison, and what Alec Smith did to him. That was
heavy enough, but now you're clamming up altogether about the other suspect.'

'Mags,'
he said, testily, 'stop trying to interrogate me, will you? Lawrence Scotland
is missing.'

'In
that case, I have to find him. He's a potential suspect in my investigation.'

'For
fuck's sake,' he shouted, suddenly. 'Leave it!'

She
sat straight up on the sofa and stared at him, startled and hurt. His anger
vanished in an instant; he took her hand and drew her to him. 'I'm sorry, Mags,
I'm sorry.'

'That's
the first time you've ever raised your voice to me.'

'And
it'll be the last, I promise. Love, I keep having to countermand you these days
and I don't like it; not just because of our respective ranks, but because
you're my wife and I love you and not least because you're a brilliant
detective and I admire you for that reason too.