Aftershock

One Hundred and Two

‘You have to be kidding me,’ said Martin.

‘No, I’m not, but I am ringing to apologise for keeping you in the dark about certain things, even after you were given oversight of the inquiry. If I’d been able to tell you face to face, Andy, I would have. I wasn’t keeping you out of the loop.’

‘So what was it that I missed out on?’

‘On Monday,’ Skinner told him, ‘I set up a black operation.’

‘Under cover?’

‘Anything but: it was so far out there I’m still amazed that we got away with it, but we did, all the way. Have you seen anything in the papers lately about an artist called Caitlin Summers, big name in the US, come home in triumph to Scotland?’

‘Yes, I have. Isn’t Aileen opening her exhibition next week?’

‘That’s what they said, but she won’t be. Caitlin’s a figment of my imagination, brought to life by Alice Cowan.’

‘Alice? Special Branch Alice?’

‘Yes. We gave her a butch punk haircut, dyed it peroxide, and stuck a pair of John Lennon glasses on her nose. Her own mother wouldn’t have recognised her. In about half a day she became an internationally known painter, with a body of work that we borrowed from a graduate student in the art college, and presented as Caitlin’s on a website our IT department put together for her. Then we set her up as living in a decommissioned lighthouse in East Lothian, and had her out walking the coast every morning. Our friends in BBC Scotland even ran an interview with her on the evening bulletin on Wednesday.’

‘You set her up as bait?’

Skinner laughed. ‘She used that term herself in the BBC interview. Neil nearly burst a blood vessel when he saw it, but it worked. She volunteered for the job. There was no question of coercion or of her being punished for her leak to her uncle. There was also very little risk. She had a weapon, and she had two bodyguards every hour of the day and every step of the way, Ray Wilding and Griff Montell, both armed too. They camped out in the lighthouse, and they kept her under observation from the dunes when she did her walks. We hoped that if he turned up, he would try to take her where he did. It offered the best cover for him, but happily, it did for us as well.’

‘And he surrendered when you had him trapped?’

‘Thank God. Alice was under orders to take no chances, and the other two wouldn’t have either. I had to take him alive, Andy, otherwise there might have been people afterwards who still thought it was me.’