Beside him, the Japanese nodded emphatically. He and Wales withdrew to the back of the tee, to explain the change of plan to their caddies, and to pay them for their shortest day's work ever.
For the fourth time, the announcer introduced the members of Team Atkinson. For the fourth time the professional and the policeman drove from the first tee. Skinner hit his best drive of the week, around 280 yards, and as close to Witches' Hill as he dared go. Atkinson's shot was majestic, all power and grace, soaring 320 yards down the fairway, leaving him the ideal approach to the flag.
Skinner and the champion walked together towards their drives, the huge gallery scrambling and scampering along the path to their left. As they passed the foot of Witches' Hill, Atkinson saw the line of coloured tape inside the first circle of trees and bushes which roped off the hill, and the uniformed officers who stood at intervals inside the boundary.
`Why's that?' asked Atkinson, pointing to the hill.
Oh we just want to keep any curious spectators off the hill after play, that's all. It's quite a historic site, after all. Or aren't you into history?'
The golfer laughed. 'No, not me.'
They reached Skinner's ball. He selected a four-iron and struck a safe, straight shot to the front edge of the green. It stopped thirty feet from the flag, making an opening par secure.
Atkinson's feathered eight-iron was perfect. It rose through the still air, biting into the lush green five feet from the hole, backspin stopping it dead. Skinner shook his head. `How you can do that with an eight-iron defeats me. I can hardly get my wedge shots to hold on the green.'
`Practice, partner. Practice for a lifetime, and the impossible will become merely the difficult.'
Atkinson's birdie putt never wavered, and they moved on to the second, a 385-yard dogleg hole which bent right around the hill even more severely than the first, with an area of rough on the left placed strategically to force players, in theory, to hit iron shots from the tee.
Skinner's conservative shot left him further from the green than at the much longer first, but Atkinson took his four-wood from the bag and hit a high shot, with an early hip movement which helped it fade from left to right round the curve of the hill, bending like a well-struck free-kick in soccer.
They set off down the fairway. 'I don't mind telling you, Darren,' said Skinner. 'I'll be bloody glad when this week's over, and this whole circus has left my pleasant wee county.
This whole thing started with a murder, of a man I knew, and it's ending with something just as bad.'
`What, you mean Morton?'
`Who said anything about Morton, man?'
Atkinson paused. 'Well, he ducked out of the dinner last night, then he didn't show for breakfast this morning. I figured that you'd found Mr Nice and that he'd done a runner before you could arrest him.'
`Good guess, that. We've found Andrews all right. He's been a pain in the arse all week, but we've tracked him down.' Skinner stopped as he reached his ball. He looked at the lie and the line. 'Give me a three-iron, please, Neil,' he said to McIlhenney. Taking the club from his makeshift caddy, he hit another careful shot, which carried once more to the front of the green, a few feet closer to the flag than at the first.
`Good shot,' said Darren. 'Play to match par, not beat it. Pros play for birdies, all but the very best amateurs for pars. Remember that, play enough and you could get your handicap down to something near scratch.' His perfect tee shot had left him an approach of no more than 115 yards to the green. `Wedge please, caddy.' He took the club from McGuire and hit an approach to the flag which finished even closer than the shot at the first. For a moment Skinner thought that it would drop into the hole.
As they moved on to the third, a 220-yard par-three with a green almost surrounded by bunkers, Atkinson was already two under par. He smacked his two-iron to the back of the long green, its widest point, leaving himself with a long putt but with his par secure. Skinner's three-iron was short of the green, but his thin chip ran fortuitously close to the hole to secure a third par.
They came to the fourth tee and surveyed the 465-yard hole, its fairway bisected 240 yards away by the stream which flowed from the murky Truth Loch. 'You know, Darren,' said Skinner. 'I can tell you now, I've spent a good part of this week thinking that you might be the ultimate target of whoever's been killing people out there. Anyone as good as you, and as successful as you has to have a host of enemies, and if one hated you enough to want you dead… well. I've known circumstances before when a series of crimes were committed to confuse us, and throw us off balance, while the real target is achieved.'
He shook his head. Not this time, though. Every crime committed this week has had a purpose, and very strong motives behind it. The strongest of the lot, actually: power and money. The only time we've been off balance this week was when Hector Kinture's mother sent that bloody silly note to the Scotsman.'
He fell silent as Atkinson addressed his ball and hit a towering drive, carrying the stream by fifty yards and taking a high forward bounce. He stepped up in turn, concentrating with all his might. His drive cleared the water also, and ran on to finish 300 yards out, his longest of the week.
They strode off the tee together. 'By the way,' said Skinner, `the third note was dropped off in the early hours of this morning, at the Daily Record office in George Street.'
Atkinson looked across at him, with raised eyebrows. Skinner glanced back, with a sad look in his eyes, an expression of huge disappointment.
`You know, Darren,' he said, 'it was the way you treated poor Sue Kinture that started me thinking that maybe your feet had a touch of clay in them.
I reckon you must have women throwing themselves at you all the time. But if you took those opportunities, they'd deflect your concentration from the main mission, to be Number One, and you wouldn't be quite the ruthless bastard that you are.' They reached the narrow stone bridge which crossed the stream. Skinner stood aside to allow Atkinson to cross first.
`Sue's a really nice lady you know. OK, she's married and she shouldn't have made eyes at you, but old Hector is no good to her between the sheets, and out of his frustration with his condition, he gives her a hard time now and again, so there's an excuse. But she didn't deserve what you did to her, screwing her brains out in her own house on the night of the PGA dinner, then cutting her virtually dead the next day.
`No gentleman behaves like that, Darren — yet that's your image, the first gentleman of golf.
I was really disappointed in you, when Sue told Sarah, and Sarah told me.
And then I realised.' He stopped at his ball, and hit an adrenaline-charged six-iron into the heart of the green. He handed the club back to Mcllhenney. 'As I said, I realised what had happened to cause your change of heart.'
They stopped at Atkinson's ball. The champion took an eight-iron and hit a solid shot ten feet from the flag. 'Hope I'm not putting you off talking like this,' said Skinner. 'I've got a few quid riding on you after all. It's just that it's so much easier to tell you my story out here.'
They strode steadily towards the green.
`We were discussing your behaviour towards Susan. It came to me that you changed towards her after I told you about the Keyman arrangement Hector had with Michael White, and that, because of it, he wouldn't need or want any new cash in Witches' Hill.
I remembered that and I thought, "What a pity, Darren's not such a nice guy after all, shagging the poor lady just to get her to support him as the replacement investor in the venture, then dumping her when he finds that's a non-runner." And that's all I thought at first.'
He lined up his putt and sent it a foot or two past the hole, marked his ball and watched as Atkinson's ten-footer lipped the hole, drawing a gasp from the crowd, then swung a few inches past. The champion tapped in, slapping his thigh in frustration. Skinner said nothing, but rolled in his putt for a fourth straight par.