Skinner smiled, cruelly. ‘Wrong, Jackie. We’ve dug up the ledger, and the other records. They’ll put you away, for sure. From the killer’s viewpoint, that means that you have to die after all, before you can talk.
‘The murderer is coming tonight, for you. Be sure of that. It’s just as well, then, that you’ll be somewhere else.’
He stepped across and opened the door. ‘Pam, Sammy,’ he said quietly. Masters and Pye, who had been following Skinner and the Chief through the garden in the darkness, stepped into the room. ‘Mr Charles is in custody. Caution him formally, then take him to Fettes, and lock him up. Go in the back way, and don’t let anyone see you, other than the duty officers.
‘Oh, and tomorrow you might call in Mr Lockie to look at his teeth. He seems to need some bridge work done.’
78
Jackie Charles’ giant television set glowed against the darkness of the room, shining out into the night through the uncurtained window. The stereo sound of a crowd filled the room as highlights of that evening’s football were played out on screen.
The grey-templed man in the chair sat, watching the action. He watched for an hour, then for another, as the clock display in the top right corner of the picture counted out the minutes. Twice he changed channels, from sport, to news, to a late-night movie.
He sat, focused, seemingly, on nothing but the huge screen, as at last the handle of the heavy door turned, and as it opened without a sound. He did not react to the odd, faint rustling noise, as the shadowy figure advanced towards him, or catch the television’s light reflecting on the long blade in its hand. The figure stopped and tensed . . .
Then, suddenly the room was ablaze with light. The intruder spun round to see Bob Skinner stood in the corner, his hand still on the switch. In the armchair, Sir James Proud looked round at last.
The figure tensed again. It was grotesque, with its body encased in a black binliner, plastic bags on feet and hands like great galoshes and gloves, and another, smaller and with a wide eye-slit, over its head as a makeshift hood.
There was nothing grotesque, though, about the blade as it was held towards the DCC, waving, jabbing, threatening.
Skinner dropped his hand from the light switch, and took Jackie Charles’ pistol from his pocket. ‘If you come at me with that knife,’ he said, his voice flat and emotionless. ‘I will kill you. Stone. Fucking. Dead.’
The assassin hesitated, and stopped edging forward.
‘I mean it,’ said Skinner, ‘and you believe it, don’t you.’
He raised the small pistol, pointing it at the centre of the intruder’s chest. ‘Drop it. Now. Or do you really want to die?’
There was a moment of deadly silence. Then the threatening hand was lowered, and the knife fell to the ground.
Pocketing the gun, the detective stepped quickly towards the figure; grasping by the left arm, twisting upwards, violently, stretching shoulder tendons, swinging round, slamming hard, brutally, face-first, against the wall. His lips curled up in a grin of savage pleasure as he heard the cry of pain, and felt the body sag in his grasp.
He swung his captive round, and, still holding the plastic-clad figure pinned to the wall, ripped off the makeshift hood.
Detective Superintendent Dave Donaldson screwed up his eyes involuntarily as they were caught directly by one of the five bright spotlights in the ceiling above.
‘Why, Dave?’ Skinner hissed. ‘Why?’
He jerked him round and sent him flying, crashing, into the second of the red leather chairs, facing the Chief Constable.
‘Why man?’ said Proud Jimmy, his face ashen.
Donaldson sat between them like a great plastic scare-crow, looking from one to the other. ‘How?’ he snarled. ‘How come you were waiting?’
Breathing slightly heavily from his brief exertion and with his face twisted in disgust, Skinner looked down at the man, with a glare so full of hatred and contempt that Donaldson sank back into the chair, and lowered his eyes.
‘How come we were waiting?’ the DCC repeated, savagely. ‘Give us some credit for being good coppers, Dave. And give the Chief and me a bit of credit too for being able to face the unbelievable: the fact that one of our senior officers might have been selling us out.’
He paused, allowing his breathing to return to normal. ‘I’ve had a niggle for a couple of years that the Charleses were being fed information by someone close to us. Those raids on the flats, the ones that went wrong. You know what they say. “Once is bad luck, twice is enemy action.”
‘Then, when the guy who gave us the tip-offs about the two flats had a fatal accident at work with a forklift truck, that smelled more than a bit off.
‘Like I say, I thought it, but I never dreamed that the leak could be that close to me. I thought it might have been a civilian staff member, talking too much to a pal off duty. I never thought for a second that it could have been one of my team, one of Skinner’s anointed.’ There was pain in his voice as he spoke.
‘It began to come home to me when Medina was killed. I just couldn’t buy the idea of Jackie putting us on to him, and then knocking him off. There had to be another reason. It was then that I twigged about the ledger, and about Medina’s notes. If that book existed, and if there was someone on the inside, then perhaps he might be afraid that it would incriminate him. In that case he couldn’t take the risk of Medina producing those notes.
‘The fact is that Jackie never knew that Medina had seen the book. As far as I could determine, the only people who did know about that were those involved in the investigation.
‘So it was smart thinking on your part to look for another motive for Medina’s killing,’ said Skinner. ‘You must have thought all your birthdays had come when you nearly nailed Tommy Heenan for a murder that you did yourself. If it hadn’t been for those two Constables he might have gone down for it at that.’
He paused. ‘The binliner and bags made me think, you know. They made me think that maybe this wasn’t just someone who didn’t want to get all bloody. I mean, the killer could have cleaned himself off in the flat before he left. No, I thought, maybe, just maybe, it was someone who didn’t have time to get all bloody, because he had to be back at work . . . or on duty.’ Idly, he stepped across to the television set and switched it off.
‘The next thing,’ he went on, ‘was the Birmingham team. Sure, Jackie could have had his own source of information down there.
‘But alternatively, someone could have set those men up to be killed just to keep Jackie alive, to keep the secret intact. Because still there was the ledger that Medina had mentioned, and Jackie’s inside man didn’t know where it was, or what was in it. But he must have been scared that if Jackie had been bumped off, all of his secrets would come to light.’
He looked down at Donaldson. ‘It was when you burned the second set of binliners in Dougie Terry’s office that I began to narrow the list down. As I said, I was sure by then that it was an insider. It was clear to me that Terry was killed because McCartney had put him in the frame, and because he could incriminate the informant, if not directly, then by shopping Jackie and spilling the beans on the whole thing.
‘I suppose you just called him and said you wanted to see him at his office. Waiting behind the door, were you?’ he asked. Donaldson stared up at him, mute.
‘When I saw that second set of bags and binliners, all burned up,’ Skinner went on, ‘I realised that the killer had got wise to the danger of leaving a DNA trace. I guessed that he was one of the very few people - just two, in fact; you and McIlhenney - who knew that we had found a hair in the first set of plastic bags, and had been sure not to make the same mistake twice.’ He leaned down and looked the man close up, dead in the eye.