Skinner's mission

57

Sir James Proud’s great grey head nodded slowly and sagely as he stared at the loudspeaker phone on his desk.

Skinner, Martin and Pamela Masters were seated in armchairs well away from the instrument’s sensitive microphone.

‘I quite understand, Chief Constable Clark, your view of the situation,’ he said. ‘These bodies were found in your area. Where a murder is committed on your patch your duty is to investigate and report to the CPS.’

‘That’s right,’ a tinny voice boomed in reply from the speaker.

‘In that case, Hugh, please try to understand my view. The chain of events in this crime began in Edinburgh, when these men were abducted from a car in which a third man was shot dead. The men you are holding are prime suspects in that and other crimes.

‘My duty is to pursue investigation of these men with all vigour, wherever it leads me. As I understand it, you have found no proof as yet that the two men found dead in the Rover car were actually killed in England. Is that correct?’

The loudspeaker coughed. ‘Yes it is. However we have found a caravan belonging to McCartney on the Haggerston site. I’ve got specialists at work there now.’

‘Indeed?’ said Proud Jimmy, ingenuously. ‘When did you first make that discovery?’

‘At around six last night,’ the Geordie voice replied.

‘Ah. So you’ve been looking for over fifteen hours and you still can’t say that the crime was committed on your territory.’

‘No, but. . Come on, Jimmy, these things take time.’

‘Yes, but not forever. Which brings me back to my duty. The way things stand, I’ve got no choice but to go to our Supreme Criminal Court and ask the Lord Justice General for an order requiring the return to my jurisdiction at once, of McCartney and Kirkbride, plus the bodies of the two victims.’

A spluttering sound came from the speakerphone. ‘This is England, Jimmy, not Scotland. Your court order wouldn’t work here.’

‘I disagree. It would be effective unless you could produce a counter from your highest criminal court. Even then, it’s possible that our Lord Justice General would issue a warrant for your arrest on grounds of contempt, to be effected by any Scottish force when next you set foot in Scotland.’

He shook his silver mane, a dolorous expression on his face. A few feet away Skinner and Martin struggled to keep their laughter in check, while Pam Masters stared open-mouthed, astonished by the goings-on in her new professional circle.

‘Very embarrassing, Hugh, very embarrassing,’ said Proud. ‘I think that before it got to that stage, I’d have to ask my deputy, Bob Skinner, who’s an adviser to our Secretary of State, to contact his opposite number in the Home Office, to get a ruling from the Home Secretary himself.’

He smiled, easily, as if he were addressing someone across the desk, rather than a box upon it. ‘I can do that right now, in fact, without even going to the court.’

The conference telephone sat silent.

‘Tell you what,’ said Sir James at last. ‘Let’s do a deal. You keep the stiffs, for as long as it takes you to establish where they were actually killed. . if you can. I’ve got more than enough bodies to be going on with up here at the moment.

‘In the meantime, though, you hand over McCartney and Kirkbride to me, so that my investigations can proceed. My people need to take statements from them today. Once that’s done, if you want to charge them with murder in Northumberland, you can have them back, and we’ll let the Crown Office and the CPS argue about who tries them first. I don’t care where these chaps serve their life sentences. It’s the people above them in the chain that we’re after.

‘How about it?’ He looked across at Skinner, Martin, and Masters, with a wide smile of victory.

‘All right,’ said Chief Constable Clark, at last, wearily. ‘You send people down to Alnwick for four o’clock and we’ll hand them over. . unless we do find something at Haggerston and have to charge them and hold them for court.’

‘Mmm,’ the Chief Constable muttered. ‘I don’t know about sending people to Alnwick. We’ve done that once already. Best that you hand them over at the border. . for appearances’ sake. Shall we say three o’clock? That’ll give you another four hours to work at Haggerston.’

‘Okay, Jimmy, okay. I’ll have them there.’

‘Good, good,’ beamed Proud. ‘Pleased about that. Now is there anything that you have discovered that might be of help to our investigation?’

‘We found two handguns in the Rover’s glove-box,’ Clark replied. ‘One had been fired recently, so we ran tests on McCartney and Kirkbride. We found residue on McCartney’s clothing which indicates that he had discharged a firearm within the last forty-eight hours.

‘I’ll give you the guns, when we hand over the men. They’re not linked to anything in England. We’ve run a ballistics check though the PNC.’

‘Indeed,’ said Proud. ‘We’ll run our own ballistics tests, but I’ll bet we can establish a link with our murder on Saturday night. We’ve identified the victim as Eddie Chang; half Chinese, half Brummie.’

‘Interesting,’ said Clark. ‘The other two were Irish gentlemen, named Maloney and O’Flynn, both with Birmingham addresses. The PNC gave us their details from fingerprints this morning. Maloney did twelve years for attempted murder in Belfast.’

‘He didn’t succeed this time either,’ said Proud, with an irony that was unusual for him. ‘The sentence was a lot tougher, though.’

‘Yes,’ the Englishman chuckled grimly. ‘I don’t think he’ll attempt any more. See you, Jimmy. An ordeal doing business with you, as usual.’ A loud buzz filled the room as the line went dead. Sir James pressed a button to switch off the speaker box.

‘There you are, lady and gentlemen.’ He beamed, hugely pleased with himself. ‘Tact and diplomacy. Amazing what it can secure.’

‘That’s right,’ laughed Skinner. ‘But it’s nothing compared to what you can secure through naked threat. Christ, did you hear the intake of breath when you mentioned arrest.

‘Thanks, Chief, objective achieved.’ He stood up and led Martin and Masters from the room by the side door.

‘Wonderful,’ said Martin, outside in the corridor. ‘I’ll send McIlhenney down there with a team to take possession. Two transport vehicles, though: I want those guys kept apart from now on.’

As she looked at the Head of CID, Pamela Masters could sense that he was buzzing with excitement. ‘Do you want to be in on the examination of McCartney and Kirkbride?’ he asked Skinner.

The DCC shook his head. ‘No, I’ve got other fish in the fryer. You do it, with Donaldson and with Maggie Rose. Let Sammy Pye sit in on it too. He and Mags have done some bloody good work, so he deserves to be in at the kill.

‘But listen, the way the weather’s looking, that won’t be until six tonight, at the earliest. We’re still no further along in the Carole Charles investigation, with which, after all, we started out. McCartney and Kirkbride won’t be ready for interview until six at the earliest. While you’re waiting for them, give that another push. We don’t want it to stall.’

Martin grunted as he followed Skinner and Masters into the DCC’s office. ‘Yes, boss. I’ll do that. I did hear before I came up that there’s a taxi driver who wants to see us about a pick-up he made last Wednesday. Mind you, we’ve had a few of those so far, all of them a waste of time.’

He paused. ‘These other fish of yours. Anything to do with. .?’

Tom Whatling’s envelope lay on Skinner’s desk. The DCC took out the print and handed it to Martin. The Chief Superintendent’s green eyes widened. ‘This is it?’

‘Yeah. That’s my Mini Cooper, or at least part of the wreckage. You can see for yourself. .’

‘It’s been cut. By a hacksaw, I’d say, or maybe a Stanley knife.’ He looked up with a smile, green eyes shining. ‘You’ve done it, Bob. You’ve proved that you were right.’

‘Bully for me,’ said Skinner, glumly. ‘So the story goes on.’

Martin shrugged. ‘It must. That’s evidence for a culpable homicide prosecution at the very least, and the Crown Office would probably go for murder. On the basis of that, stretched resources or not, I’ll open a full, formal investigation.’

‘No. Don’t do that. Leave it to me. I’ve already done some checking. My likeliest candidate seems to be Tony Manson, and we’d have a hell of a job bringing him to trial, on account of his being dead.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Well,’ said Skinner, ‘while Pamela is taking that negative out to the photo unit, to have the technicians give us the cleanest print they can, I’m going to take a drive out to Shotts nick, to see my old sparring partner, Big Lennie Plenderleith.’