Skinner's mission

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.

‘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.’