‘No, there isn’t.’ Skinner hesitated. ‘But you know, Andy, there’s just something about this that doesn’t quite square away; something about this situation that raises one wee hair on the back of my neck. It’s niggling away at me, and I’m buggered if I can figure out what it is.’
Martin knew the signs. The Big Man was a stickler for detail. If anything in a situation was out of line with what he considered to be normal, he would gnaw away at it forever. But nothing here seemed out of the ordinary.
‘I’ve got to say, boss, that I can’t see anything odd.’
‘No, and if it’s there, you usually do. Maybe I’m still just a bit sick over this one.
‘All right, let’s get this enquiry properly under way. I want all the taxi drivers covered. Everyone at the Scotsman who was either going off or beginning a shift at that time. All the office cleaning contractors. Railwaymen. Coppers, even. Talk to them all, and I’ll deal with the overtime bills later. We’ve got the Queen here in two weeks, and I don’t want our nutter still on the loose by then!’
5
It is one of the great truths of crime, that in the majority of murders, the victim is known to the killer. But an exhaustive search of Mortimer’s circle of acquaintances, professional and social, produced not a trace of a lead. And without that personal connection, which in many cases is as direct as the husband sat drunk in the kitchen, while his strangled wife grows cold in the bedroom, any murder is enormously difficult to solve … unless the investigating team has an enormous slice of luck. And luck was in short supply that week in Edinburgh.
In forty-eight hours every one of Skinner’s targets had been covered. None of them had produced a lead towards the identity of the ‘Royal Mile Maniac’, as the tabloids had labelled the killer.
During that period, Skinner directed operations from his command centre in the High Street, interrupted only by a three-hour visit to the High Court to give evidence in a drugs trial.
Three men had been kept under observation in Leith, and a consignment of heroin had been tracked from a Panamanian freighter to a ground-floor flat in Muirhouse. The police raid had been well-timed and wholly successful. The three men had been caught ‘dirty’ and their distribution ring had been broken up. Skinner had been irked, but not surprised by the ’not guilty’ plea. The Scottish Bench was commendably severe on dealers, and the three knew that they could be going away for fifteen years.
So it was that Skinner came to be side-tracked from the Michael Mortimer murder enquiry, and cross-examined by Rachel Jameson for the defence. She was a tiny woman, barely more than five feet tall. Her advocate’s horse-hair wig hid most of her blonde hair, which was swept back and tied in a pony tail. Under her black gown she was dressed in the style required by the Supreme Court of lady advocates, a dark straight skirt surmounted by a high-necked white blouse.
As the Advocate Depute finished his direct examination, she rose, bowed to Lord Auchinleck, the judge, and walked slowly towards Skinner.
‘Your information came from an anonymous source, Chief Superintendent?’
‘That is correct, Miss Jameson.’
She looked towards the fifteen men and women who faced the witness box. ‘Might the jury be told his or her name?’
‘Miss Jameson, I will not reveal that unless I am instructed so to do by the Bench.’
She looked towards the judge, who sat impassively in his wig and red robe.
‘Convenient, Mr Skinner. Mr or Mrs Nobody tells you about a stash of heroin. You kick the door in, and lo and behold there it is. Mr Skinner do you trust your officers?’
‘Implicitly.’
‘So what would be your reaction to my clients’ claim that these drugs were, as they say, “planted” by your detectives?’
‘I would say that it was preposterous, and wholly untrue.’
‘So defend your officers, Chief Superintendent. Name your informant.’
Skinner leaned forward in the witness box. He looked deep into Rachel Jameson’s eyes and held her gaze. ‘Counsel may be aware that I have come to this Court from a highly-publicised murder enquiry. Earlier this week I saw a person who had been brutally killed. If I do as you ask, I might well have to look at another. I don’t want that. Do you?’
Rachel Jameson paled. She nodded to the Bench and sat down. Lord Auchinleck thanked Skinner and excused him. He left the Court feeling a twinge of sympathy for the defence advocate, but only a twinge. Each of them had clients to protect.
6
The telephone, held in a cradle screwed to a post at the head of Skinner’s pine bed, rang at 6.00 a.m. He struggled out of sleep, cursing softly. The slim figure beside him rolled over, grumbling. His groping hand found the receiver. The caller was Andy Martin.
‘I’m sorry to wake you, boss, but there’s been another murder. Jackson’s Close this time. Some bastard’s set a wino on fire!’
‘Aw, come on, Andy. Those poor sods are always dropping matches on their meths.’
‘No’ this one. He had a gallon of petrol poured over him and was set alight by a piece of paper thrown on to a trail four feet away. Look, I wouldn’t have called you, but with the other one so close by, and so recent … ’
‘That’s okay; you were right. I’m on my way in.’
Martin hesitated. ‘Eh, boss, you wouldn’t happen to know where the duty police doctor might be. I can’t raise her on the phone at home.’
‘Andy, don’t push your luck.’
With a soft smile, he replaced the telephone in its holder. ‘Come on, gal. It’s you and me for the early shift again.’
Sarah Grace sat up in bed and tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes. ‘Shit. Do you want to go first in the shower?’
‘Who says we have to take turns?’
Sarah stripped off Bob’s Rugby World Cup tee-shirt, which had been her night attire, and together they stepped into the shower cubicle in the en suite bathroom. He chose ‘champagne’ from the range of options, and turned the shower to full power.
Her eyes were squeezed tight shut as he soaped her breasts and belly. ‘Is it a bad one, Bob?’ she asked quietly.
‘Not now, sweetheart. Things like that don’t belong in here. I’ll tell you on the road.’
Sarah stepped first out of the shower. She looked back at Robert
Skinner, Detective Chief Superintendent, as he krieaded shampoo through his hair. Her professional eye told her that he had the body of a man younger than his forty-three years. One hundred and ninety pounds was spread evenly over his lean frame. Good muscular definition, there, she thought, clinically. His hands were slender. This, when he was clothed, tended to mask his strength, which was maintained by regular work-outs in the small, well-equipped gym alongside the shower room. Fresh from sleep, fitness shone from the man. Only those creased eyes offered a hint of the pressures of his job.
Twisting the valve to turn off the shower, Bob took the towel which Sarah held out to him. As she rubbed her auburn hair, he smiled at her slim brown body, its colour accentuated by the white bikini marks. Sarah’s parents lived in retirement in Florida. In October, she had visited them to break the news of the widowed policeman who had come bursting into her life seven months before.
Sarah had met Skinner in her first week as a part-time police surgeon, introductions effected over the body of a middle-aged man, stabbed to death by his only son in a squalid house in Newhaven. At first she had been in awe of the famous DCS Skinner. A hard man, she had heard from colleagues. Perform well and you were okay. Slip up, and you’d never forget it.
She had done well, and she knew it. Skinner had been polite, even complimentary. And, Sarah thought, to her great surprise, a bit tasty for a Detective Chief Superintendent.
When he had telephoned a week later to invite her to dinner, she had been astonished. But she had said yes, pausing only so that she did not sound too eager, yet answering, she thought afterwards, more quickly than she should have. ‘I didn’t even ask if he was single,’ she said to herself, but then she recalled the story. Skinner, widowed at twenty-seven by a road accident, was married to the job.