‘So Dave, right there in Terry’s office, I palmed a hair off your jacket. Remember, when I patted you on the shoulder? That was when I did it. I had it tested, without anyone knowing whose it was. Believe me, I really was gutted when it matched the one found at the scene of Medina’s murder, in the binliner. Sometimes I really hate being a clever bastard.’ He took a deep breath, shaking his head.
‘That wasn’t proof enough for me, though, or for any court; how could it be? Your obvious defence would have been that a hair from your head had simply fallen into one of the bags at the scene. If that had been the only evidence, then I, as well as the jury, would have given you the benefit of the doubt.’
He smiled, without humour. ‘It was your old parish priest that made me absolutely certain. He saw you leaving the scene of Carole Charles’ murder, and he recognised you. So you did a very smart thing. To be sure, you sought him out at his new church, St Magdalena’s, and you made confession to him. You went into one box to keep him out of another one.
‘It was just an extreme precaution, of course. You didn’t think for a moment that we would actually trace him. But you didn’t know that his car had broken down and that he would take a taxi, or that we would find him through his motoring organisation. When we did, he kept your faith. He told us nothing, but Andy Martin did trick enough information out of him for us to check the roll of his last parish. It’s a small charge, Dave, and your name leapt right off the page at me.
‘With that I knew beyond doubt, but it still wasn’t proof enough. We didn’t have that until Pam and I found out about Rankeillor Street. You did a thorough job cleaning up there. Thorough indeed, but not perfect. The place was as clean as a whistle . . . apart, that is, from all the body hair still stuck to the inside of that nylon quilt cover.
‘I’ll tell you something funny. It didn’t come to me until then about you and Carole. Donna, Donaldson: so bloody obvious, too. Jackie never twigged either, not that he could have done anything about it anyway. But once we matched one of the hairs from the bed with the other two, we had completed a nice circle . . . although even then, not one that would have meant anything in court.
‘You must have thought you were in the clear when you couldn’t find the ledger at Rankeillor Street. You must have thought that it was buried deep, or that Jackie had burned it. But Carole never told you about Westmoreland Cliff, did she? You thought she only had one secret hiding place. But we found the other one, and we found the book.’
He stood in front of Donaldson, sat in his chair. ‘When I briefed you about the ledger with the rest of the team, when I let you see it, I knew that I was telling you to go and kill Jackie. Because without his evidence, that book would have meant nothing.
‘Well, we’ve got it now. We’ve got him now. And we’ve got you. By the balls, for life, and then some.’
He shook his head again. ‘But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why the fuck did you kill Carole in the first place, to set this whole thing in motion?’
Donaldson shook himself free of the plastic bags on his arms, and, in an odd gesture, rubbed his face in his hands. Then as Skinner and Proud stared at him, with bitter, undisguised contempt on their faces, he began to tear off the rest of his black body covering. At last he looked up at them.
‘It was Carole all along,’ he said, with an expression, and in a voice, that neither knew. ‘She got me into it. I met her and Jackie at a Charity do a few years back. She made a pass at me and like a mug I followed it up. She was a good looker for her age, you know. Most men would have been tempted.’ He gazed at Skinner, as if expecting some understanding, but finding not a sign.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I saw her once, and again. Before I knew it we were having an affair. Then she asked me. She said that Jackie had a feeling that someone was talking to us. She told me to find out who it was, and to pass back everything that he fed us.
‘I told her she was crazy. She told me that if I didn’t, she’d send a video to my wife, and to the Chief.’
‘A video?’ said Skinner, incredulous.
He nodded. ‘We filmed ourselves once. We were drunk, acting daft. Carole set the thing up. I’d forgotten about it, but she’d kept the tape.
‘So I gave her what she wanted, and as a sweetener she gave me five grand every three months. I thought, “If I’m hooked, I might as well get something out of it.” So I took it and banked it. In a building society, using my wife’s maiden surname. It’s all there still. I’d been meaning to transfer it to a foreign account.’
‘Did Jackie know where the information was coming from?’
‘Oh yes, for sure,’ said the turncoat, bitterly. ‘He knew because Carole told him. She even brought me a handwritten note from him once, saying thanks.’
‘So why did you kill her, Donaldson?’ barked Sir James. ‘After all that.’
The cornered man looked across at his Chief. ‘Because I wanted out. I told her I didn’t want any more danger, or any more being afraid of being found out. She showed me my way out. She told me that I was to kill Jackie, and that afterwards she and I would disappear. She mentioned the Cayman Islands. I think their money might be there.
‘Like before, she didn’t give me any choice. She threatened me with the video again, and she gave me two weeks to make it happen, to get rid of Jackie. Implicitly, what she was saying was that I would be her captive for the rest of my days.’ He smiled, wickedly. ‘She’d have dragged me away from my wife and kids, whether I wanted to go or not. But I didn’t, I didn’t.’ His eyes flashed.
‘So, instead of Jackie,’ he whispered, ‘I killed her, the evil cow. We had a date last Wednesday. She told me that she was going down to Seafield to look over the books, and that she’d meet me at Rankeillor Street at nine thirty. I went to the showroom instead. It was unlocked and she was in the office. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she said. “You,” I said. And then I hit her. Bang. Right on the chin. Laid her out for a while.
‘By the time she came to, I had tied her hands and feet with rope that I had soaked in petrol, so that it would burn off in the fire. Then I filled the cans from the pump at the back, placed them all around, and laid the rope fuses. When everything was set up right, I lit them.
‘All the time I was setting the thing up Carole was screaming at me, lying there in the office, cursing me, calling me for all the bastards in creation. I could hear her as I drove away. I could hear her for hours afterwards.
‘This morning, at breakfast, with my wife and kids, I could still hear her.’
He looked up, with blazing eyes, and for the first time, Skinner could see the depth of his rage. ‘That should have been it. And it would have been, but for Medina, and McCartney, and Terry. And most of all, but for you, you bastard.’
Sir James Proud shook his silver head. ‘How could you, man?’ he said, sadly. ‘You were a fine officer, in the prime of an outstanding career. You’ve got a lovely wife, lovely children. How could you do all that wickedness?’
‘Easily, Jimmy,’ Skinner murmured softly, dreamily, distantly. ‘We’ve all got wickedness in us. Most of us can keep it in check, but there are some in whom it will always surface. That’s all there is to it.’
79
She lay along the sofa with her head on a cushion, replete from the dinner he had cooked for her, and relaxed by the wines he had poured. She was barefoot, and her white blouse was open at the neck. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire, in a polo shirt and chinos. The dinner dishes lay piled in the kitchen ready for the dishwasher, and his chef’s apron hung behind the door. His Caithness tumbler, with the smoky Lagavulin, was warming in his big hand, while hers was balanced on the crest of her belly.