The off-side of the car slammed into the base of the solid iron lamp-standard, wrapping itself around it like a sleeping lover in the night. Maggie Rose, in the back seat, was held in place by her retaining strap. Mcllhenney was pulled up short by his belt, as it cut into his chest and side. But Andy Martin, taken unawares, slammed sideways into the arch of the driver's door, his head hitting the tightly padded metal with a definitive thud. He rebounded back against Mcllhenney, unconscious, and with blood beginning to trickle from a cut above his right
eye.
The engine stalled. Rose and Mcllhenney sat in the shocked silence, until Martin's weight against him triggered the sergeant into action. Gently he straightened the other man on his seat, with his head against its restraint.
`Sir,' he said urgently. 'Andy?'
Martin gave a faint groan, but that was all.
`He's spark out,' said Mcllhenney to Rose, over his shoulder. 'See if the phone's still working.'
The inspector obeyed her subordinate's order and took the instrument from its cradle between the front seats. Its dial showed that it was still operational. She keyed in the Fettes number. 'This is DI Rose. I'm at the foot of Ferry Road at the Leith end, in DS Martin's car. There's been an accident. One injured: unconscious. Get an ambulance here fast.' She ended the call and searched her diary for Skinner's car-phone number. She dialled it in and waited.
`I don't believe it,' she said to Mcllhenney. The boss's car-phone is engaged!'
She dialled another number: her own. A sleepy-voiced Mario McGuire answered. Thirty seconds later he was wide awake and calling Brian Mackie.
Ninety-nine
‘Come on, people, you should have been here first!'
Skinner voiced his exasperation in the darkness of his car as he sat at the end of the short roadway off Inverleith Row, which led to the smaller of the two gates into the Royal Botanic Garden. He glanced at the computer-set time display on the LCD panel of his cassette player. It showed seven minutes past eleven.
He shook his head. 'Can't wait any longer,' he muttered to himself. He stepped out of the car, and clambered over the gate with surprising agility for a man in his mid-forties.
The Botanics, as the people of Edinburgh know it, is one of the world's great gardens, set in seventy acres in the heart of Scotland's capital. Every day, save Christmas and New Year, it offers free access to thousands of visitors who walk its leafy paths among the trees, plants and shrubs, admiring and sometimes feeding the pigeons, ducks and impertinent squirrels who animate the scene.
The centrepiece of the Botanics is its great glasshouse. As Skinner emerged into the wide open space of the garden, he saw it three hundred yards away, silhouetted massively against the northern skyline. To prevent any chance of his being spotted in the moonlight, he hugged the trees to his right as he ran towards the building, taking extra cover from their darkness, but occasionally leaving the grass and cutting through the planted beds. Soon, he had reached the steps which led up towards the scientific study centre. He looked along the length of the Glasshouse, but saw no figures, no shapes, no movement. Pressing himself against the glass wall, he crept silently along towards the main entrance.
The flash of moonlight from the slivers of glass on the ground caught his eye before he reached the doorway. He froze for a second, listening, but heard nothing. Very slowly he advanced towards the entrance, moving lightly on his feet. When he had almost reached it, he broke away from the wall in a wide sweep and flattened himself against a tree opposite the doorway. One of the double doors was wide open, allowing him a clear view into the reception area. It was empty. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself off from his tree and reached the door in a few strides, taking care not to step on the broken glass lest he make a sound. Inside the small hallway, a corridor led off to the right towards offices and to the scientific centre. To the left, another door led to the glasshouse itself. He stepped past the reception desk and tried its handle. It opened silently, and Skinner slipped into the first gallery of the great glass structure.
The door closed automatically behind him and, as it did, he looked around. Moonbeams shone through the higher branches of the trees and bushes, casting weird shadows on the paved walkways which led visitors through each section of the exhibition. He listened again, but still the silence was total. Then, through the foliage, he caught a flash of artificial light. He moved towards the source, almost on tiptoe, until he came to a second door. Through its glass, he could make out, to his left, a series of illuminated panels in which floated an assortment of aquatic plants, their fronds moving in the tanks' continuous aeration. He opened the door and stepped into the expected darkness beyond.
At once, he knew that he had arrived too late for Paul Ainscow.
The thick glass panel on his right was around ten feet wide and five feet high. It was back-lit and offered a view of the lily-pond which was the centrepiece of the upper area of the glasshouse. Ainscow's body was still settling on to the round stones and pebbles which made up the bed of the lily-pond — settling down to an eternal sleep. The corpse lay close to the glass, facing Skinner as he looked on in resigned horror. The eyes stared, wide and round. The normally sleek hair drifted, Afro-style, in the water. The head lay at an odd angle, strange enough to tell Skinner at once that drowning would not feature on the death certificate. The body lay on its side, the right arm thrown up and over the head, palm and wrist pressed against the glass. Skinner stepped forward and looked at the wrist. There, at the base of the thumb, vivid against the whiteness of death, he saw three small, pink semicircular scars.
`Knew it,' he whispered, softly, to himself.
Suddenly, his eye was caught by movement above and beyond the body, above the moonlit surface of the pond. There was a figure framed there, bent over as if peering into the pond to make sure that Ainscow was not about to resurface.
Moving as if his life depended on his silence, and imagining that it might, Skinner slipped back out of the aquarium room and looked up. The pathway to the lily-pond gallery was ten feet above his head. The steps leading up to it were at the far end of the area in which he stood. He paused for a moment and looked around, until his eye lit upon a strange, long tree-trunk, similar to a palm, but with deciduous leaves. It reached up to and over the path above his head. He grasped it and began to climb, monkey-style, hands and feet digging for purchase into the rough, thick bark, sweeping small twiglet branches aside, scrambling up and up until the trunk began to curve and he was straddling it, perched above the walkway.
He sat and stared at the door to the lily-pond gallery, trying to decide his next move. But it was decided for him.
The glass door opened, framing a figure, silhouetted black in the moonlight — a huge figure.
Skinner jumped down from the tree. The man froze, then moved back into the pool gallery. Skinner followed, watching him through the glass panel as he backed away. He opened the door and stepped through. The gallery was lit by the moon, and by its reflection from the surface of the pool.
The man had stopped his retreat. He stood there waiting, a great dark slab, towering and vast. Skinner was six-two himself, but this giant stood almost a full head taller, straight-backed, wide-shouldered, and built like a bulldozer.
Oh shit, Skinner thought, of all the times for the cavalry to go missing!
`Hello, Lennie.
He had forgotten just how big Lennie Plenderleith was. He felt eyes boring into him, even in the dark. Eventually the mountain spoke.
`It's Mr Skinner, isn't it?'