And in any event, even if he had seen Rachel earlier, falling in front of his train, he could have done nothing but try not to listen to the thump as the body went under the wheels.
18
Detective Sergeant Brian Mackie, Andy Martin’s provisional replacement as Skinner’s personal assistant, his arm still in a sling after his mishap two nights before, received the request from Inspector Strang of Strathclyde CID, that officers be assigned to protect Rachel Jameson.
Skinner grumbled, but ordered Mackie to arrange for two plainclothes officers, one of them a woman, to meet Miss Jameson from the 5.30 Glasgow train on its arrival at Waverley, and to take her home. He instructed also that a uniformed officer should be stationed at her front door until further notice.
‘And make sure that she’s advised to take a taxi whenever she goes out.’
Forty-five minutes later Mackie was back to tell him of Rachel’s death.
Skinner had a perfectionist’s hatred of shoddy work. ‘They’ve had a great day in Glasgow, Brian, have they not. First they let a newly convicted man do a runner from the High Court itself. Then they ask us to protect a threatened woman and allow her to go under a train before they can hand her over!
‘What the hell happened?’
Mackie looked at his note of Strang’s second telephone call.
‘Nobody seems to have seen very much, sir, not even the engine driver. There were a lot of people milling about at the time. But,’ he paused, ‘the Transport Police have a report of someone answering McCann’s description running from the station just after the incident. And, according to Inspector Strang, McCann could have seen the rail ticket in her wallet when he stole that cash from her.
‘Mind you, sir, Strang said they think it was probably suicide. With this threat coming on top of Mortimer’s death, they think she probably jumped.’
Skinner shook his head. ‘Brian, this is Strathclyde we’re talking about. Strathclyde CID could find a man nailed to a cross in the middle of Glasgow Green, with a crown of thorns on his head, and they’d still not rule out suicide. As for the Transport Polis, show them a picture of a dog and they’ll start barking themselves. They heard that McCann was on the run; they’ll have seen a dozen McCanns in that station before the day’s out.
‘Think about it; there’s McCann, sent down for fourteen long years, then, thanks to the biggest stroke of luck he’s ever had in his life, he finds himself on the street half an hour later, still in his civvy clothes, with sixty quid in his hand. The last place he’s going to head for is a bloody railway tation. He’s stowed away on a cargo boat by now, or hidden himself in a container lorry heading south, probably one with Continental plates, trusting his luck to hold out so that they don’t find him at sea and chuck him over the side, or that he isn’t picked up by the customs at Hull or the Channel.’
But even while he scoffed at Strathclyde’s suicide theory for Mackie’s benefit, he admitted grudgingly to himself that there might be something in it.
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.
19
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.