‘That’s what I want you to tell me, Joe. Whether he was an RTA or whether he was assisted.’
‘Have you any reason to believe that he was?’ the pathologist asked, more quietly.
‘He had a business relationship with Tomas Zaliukas, and we believe that Valdas Gerulaitis was involved in it too.’
‘I see. My day is brightening up. This one sounds like a bit of a challenge. If he was rendered as flexible as you say, it may take me a little while, but I’ll give you a provisional report as soon as I can. Keep your mobile charged and ready.’
‘Will do, Joe.’ He hung up.
‘Is that the one you didn’t want to talk about last night?’ Paula asked. ‘The thing that made us late for the disco?’ Mario nodded and reached for the slice of toast that she had buttered while he was on the phone. ‘Even I’ve heard of Ken Green,’ she said. ‘There wasn’t a week without his picture in the Evening News.’
‘They wouldn’t use the latest one, I promise you, going by what Lisa McDermid told me.’
‘Why would he have been in East Lothian? Is that why you think it might be iffy?’
‘That was a consideration at first, but apparently he did have a cottage there. His secretary told us about it last night.’
‘So he would have been on his way there?’
‘I suppose he must have been.’
‘Maybe it really was an accident.’
‘Honest, love, I really hope it was. My crew are getting stretched.’
She laughed. ‘You might not get too much out of some of them today, if you have to, given the state they were in at the end of the disco. That woman Becky likes a drink; she and Ray Wilding were made for each other. It was good to see Maggie out and about too.’
‘It was,’ Mario agreed, ‘although I nearly fell over when I saw who she was talking to.’
‘The special guest star? Yes, what about that? Jack McGurk told me that when he arrived Alex Skinner walked straight out the door. Then he and her dad went and sat in a corner and had a long chat. I wonder what that was about.’
‘Andy’s new job; it’s being announced on Monday, so Maggie told me, and she got it from him. He’s going to SCDEA, to run it, in effect.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that Andy’s going to be a part of our working lives again. So it’s just as well that he and the boss were talking. They hadn’t spoken for six months.’
Paula shrugged. ‘Well, they seem to have parted friends last night, according to big Jack.’ She refilled his mug from the coffee pot and looked at him across the table. ‘But as for today,’ she continued, ‘what do have you got planned for us?’
‘How about,’ he replied, ‘we get the fuck out of this city and head up to Stirling? Visit the castle, the tourist thing, do a bit of shopping, then book ourselves into Gleneagles Hotel for the night. I’m sure they’d appreciate the business.’
‘I’m for all of that,’ she declared.
‘That’s good. Let’s pack a bag. And on the way there we can call in at the police lab. There’s a banged up Jaguar that should be there by now, and I’d like to take a look at it.’
Sixty-one
By the nature of their profession police officers can be regular prison visitors. During his career Bob Skinner had visited most of the Scottish estate, but HMP Kilmarnock was a new experience for him. It had been in operation for eleven years, since its controversial construction as the country’s first privatised jail, and to the best of his knowledge had been as incident free as any institution of its type could ever be.
It had been easy to find too; he had headed down the M77/A77 from Glasgow, turned on to the A76 and there he had found it, only a minute or so down the road. The car park access was barred, but he announced himself into a microphone contained in a metal box, and his way was cleared. He found a space in the visitor section, then stood for a moment by the side of his car, surveying the site, and contrasting it with other, older places in which a difficult job had been made worse by the demands of an expanding population and a general recognition of prisoners’ human rights. As he walked towards the entrance he noted that the complex was smaller than he had expected, given that it housed over five hundred men, explaining possibly why it lacked the air of menace that hung over the likes of Barlinnie and Peterhead.
The gate opened as he reached it, and a security officer stepped out of a doorway just inside. Skinner showed him his warrant card; the man inspected it, nodded and said, ‘Follow me, please,’ without the merest suggestion of a smile. He led him out into a courtyard. The complex was made up of several buildings, most of them accommodation, but his escort took him into the first. He stopped in a reception area. ‘Chief Constable Skinner, Sadie,’ he told the woman seated at its only desk. ‘The director wanted to know when he arrived.’
‘Thanks, Willie,’ she said, rising. She smiled at the visitor. ‘I’ll let Mr Elgin know you’re here.’
Skinner had not been expecting an official greeting, but he nodded acquiescence and watched as Sadie opened a door behind her and leaned inside it. ‘Come this way,’ she told him as she turned back to face him.
The man who stood waiting for him looked more like a television presenter than a professional custodian of human beings. The first prison governor he had ever met had been a red-faced slab of a man who had worked his way up from hall duty in top security jails, a hard-line veteran who had seemed to take grim pleasure in describing executions that he had witnessed earlier in his career, strengthening in the process Skinner’s own natural aversion to capital punishment. ‘James Elgin,’ he introduced himself, as they shook hands. ‘It’s an honour to meet you, sir.’
‘This is well off my patch,’ the chief constable told him. ‘I’m surprised you’ve heard of me.’
‘We’re colleagues, in a sense,’ Elgin said. ‘The police are my suppliers, with the prosecutors and courts as the middlemen; I make it a point of knowing who’s who in each camp. You have some very interesting hits on Google, you have a fan page on Facebook and your Wikipedia entry is extensive.’
‘You’re kidding me,’ Skinner retorted, taken by surprise. ‘If it wasn’t for Mark, my older son, I wouldn’t know what Wikipedia and Facebook were.’
Elgin chuckled. ‘This place is on Wiki as well, but its entry is only a stub, and out of date. Yours is carefully maintained. Does your press office do it?’
‘I’ve no idea, but if I find that he has been, my press officer will be even happier that he’s just resigned. I confess that I’m uncomfortable with some of the modern media.’
‘Maybe, Mr Skinner, but it’s not going to go away. The man you’re here to visit, he’s on Wikipedia too. It’s the home base for all sorts of fascinations.’
‘So it seems.’
The director looked at him, hesitantly. ‘Actually,’ he continued, ‘I’d like to ask you about him. He’s only been here for three months, and the governor in Shotts, where he came from, told me no more than that he was a model prisoner. So far, I have to agree with that; he has been. But I like to know my people as well as I can, and to anticipate things before they happen. The fact that you, of all people, have asked to see him, and at such short notice, that concerns me. Your encyclopaedia entries are cross-referenced to each other; they say that you were his arresting officer. Is that correct?’
‘Yes. I did Lennie; I charged him with three murders, and he pleaded guilty to them all. There was a fourth killing, out in Spain; he did that too, but there was no evidence to corroborate his confession, so the book’s closed on that one.’
‘Your visit. . can I ask you this. . does it mean that he’s still criminally active?’
Skinner laughed. ‘No, absolutely not. He’s got no family, and no friends to speak of from his old world. I’ve visited him a couple of times a year since he went inside.’
Elgin pursed his lips. ‘My colleague in Shotts didn’t think fit to share that with me either.’