Skinner's mission

22

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Sonia Cunningham. ‘You’re looking for someone and all you know about him is that he may have a moustache and he still has a tattoo.’

‘That just about sums it up,’ said Maggie Rose, cheerfully.

Behind her desk in the airy office, which looked across towards the Gyle Shopping Centre, its car parks teeming with Friday evening shoppers, the Grade Four officer in the Scottish Prison Service Agency shook her neatly-coiffured head. She was in her early fifties, but her complexion was younger, her age hinted at only by the deep laugh lines around her eyes. They creased as she spoke. ‘You’ve just described more or less the entire male prison population. . and a few of the women as well!’

‘But this is a very distinctive tattoo, we’re told, on his right shoulder. We’re hoping that you have a description of it among your records.’

‘That’s possible,’ said Miss Cunningham, ‘but it’s a long shot. We list distinguishing marks, but we don’t necessarily describe them. And we don’t draw diagrams of their positions on prisoners’ bodies.

‘Still, you’re welcome to look through our files. How urgent is this? Can it keep till Monday?’

The Chief Inspector shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. This relates to a murder investigation.’

‘In that case,’ said the woman, ‘I’ll give you each a desk and a terminal, and I’ll have someone show you how to access the files.

‘But be warned. You could be in for a long, boring and maybe, at the end of it, a fruitless weekend. Scotland’s prisons have never been more full!’