Fallen Gods

Fifteen

The car park in front of the Perth divisional office was busier than might have been expected, even on a Saturday night. A row of lights blazed in an office suite on the first floor.

"CID," Martin explained. "We didn't see any point in setting up a mobile enquiry headquarters, just round the corner, especially since it's no more than a suspicious death, and highly unlikely that it happened where the body was found, so Rod Greatorix is running the thing from here."

"I'm impressed," said Bob Skinner. "You've got an unidentified victim, a bum for all they know, yet you're still pulling out all the stops.

You're making your presence felt already, Andy."

"No, I'm not. This is not the homicide capital of Scotland, but Rod knows how to go about setting up an investigation as well as if not better than I do."

The older man grunted. "I suppose he does. Sorry, Andy, that was pure bloody arrogance on my part. I know about Greatorix; he was head of

CID here when I had the job in Edinburgh. He's sound, all right. I'll make all the right noises when I meet him, don't worry. How much did you tell him, by the way?"

"Only that I had a positive ID on the victim, and that he should meet me here at ten. I didn't see the point in saying anything about you till we got there."

He saw Skinner's grim smile in the dashboard light. "That'll be a nice surprise for him, then," his friend murmured. "Let's go and see him."

Martin gripped the door handle, then hesitated. "Okay, but before that, will you do something for me, as my closest friend?"

"Maybe. What?"

"Will you phone Sarah?"

"Pass."

"Bob, please. You've got a hold of yourself now, but I've never seen you like you were before. I'm worried about you."

"You think I'm going to keel over again? Don't worry, I won't."

"I know that, but it just seems to me that you've got stress coming at you from all angles just now. If you talk to Sarah and get everything on an even keel with her, it's got to help."

Skinner gave a small growl in the darkness. "Martin, sometimes you are just full of the naivety of youth. But if it'll keep you happy.. "

"It will. Here, you can use my phone."

"Don't be daft, I've got my own. Now step outside, will you. So far tonight you've seen me cry like a baby. I don't want you to see me crawl as well."

Andy laughed as he stepped out of the Mondeo and closed the door behind him. Inside the car, Skinner took out his cellphone and scrolled through the phonebook until he found the number of the Buffalo house.

He pressed the green button and waited; the call was answered on the third ring, by a Scots voice, that of Trish the nanny.

"I'm sorry, Bob," she said. "Sarah isn't back from her trip yet; she called me to say not to expect her until later on."

"Do you know where she is?"

"No. She said it was to do with the estate, that's all."

"Okay, thanks."

He closed the line and was about to put the phone back in his pocket when he saw Andy standing expectantly in the car park. "Shit," he muttered and scrolled through the stored numbers once more until he found Sarah's cellphone, and dialled it.

Three thousand miles away Sarah swung her legs out of Ron Neidholm's bed and picked up her Nokia. She looked at the incoming number, and for a second her thumb hovered over the red off-switch until, with a sigh, she took the call.

"Yes, Bob," she said, loud enough for Ron to hear her and firmly enough for him to know to keep quiet.

"Where are you?" her husband asked. "What's this trip Trish told me about?"

"I've been to the cabin."

"What! You told me you never wanted to see it."

"I know, but I changed my mind. I felt that I had to visit it."

"Are you still there?"

"No," she said, truthfully. "I'm on my way back," she lied.

"How did you get there?"

She thought, quickly; at the same time picking her shirt from the floor with her free hand and covering her lap with it, in an automatic gesture, as if he had found them and was standing in the doorway. "One of the lawyers took me," she said, 'in a private plane, then in a hire car. Now why the interrogation?"

"I'm sorry," Bob replied, at once. "You took me by surprise, that's all."

"So we're both good at that. Now what is it?"

"Need it be anything? Can't I just be calling you?"

"If you're calling to say you're catching the first flight over, yes you can. If not, then what I said yesterday still counts."

"Sarah, I can't do that."

"Okay, have your damn medical next week. Once you're cleared for duty, take some family time and come across."

"I can't do that either, love. Something's come up, apart from the job."

"What? Have you had another incident?" For the first time she sounded anxious.

"No, I'm fine."

"Is it Alex? Is something wrong with her? Or Andy, or his baby?"

"No, none of that. I'm in Perth now; wee Danielle's magic, really, and

Karen's doing great. No, it's something else, a personal thing, a long, involved story that I should have told you a long time ago. I can't now, though, not over the phone. Sarah, I really would like it if you'd come home. Just for a week or so, even. I need your support."

"Hah!" Her laugh was harsh and brittle. "Those words sound familiar.

Last time they were used between us, I was saying them to you. I needed you, Bob, to help me cope with my parents' death, to be there when I went through my mother's belongings, to help me with questions about the estate and to advise me about things in which you've got much more experience than I have. I needed your support then, and I begged you for it. And what did you do? You caught the first fucking plane out of here, that's what you did. Well that is exactly what I'm not going to do.

Something's come up for me too, and I'm staying right here."

She could almost hear him struggle to keep his voice even. "Sarah, I need you with me."

"So? You'll just have to do what I did, and tough it out. Maybe then you'll find out what I did, all of a sudden. I don't fucking need you … for anything!"

She jumped up, ripped the battery from her cellphone, and threw the separate pieces, tangled in her shirt, across Ron Neidholm's bedroom.

When she turned back towards him he was there, by her side, to wrap her in his arms, as she exploded into tears.

Back in Perth, Bob Skinner stared at his dead phone, his face twisted with anger. He realised that he was breathing hard, and forced himself to bring it back to normal. When he was back in control, he closed his eyes. "What do you want, man?" he asked himself aloud. "Maybe she's right, maybe you did let her down. Maybe we're both right. What the fuck, someone's got to give. So let's just do what she says. Have the medical, see Maley's lot off, then go over there like she wants."

He found Sarah's number again and called it, but it came up unobtainable. "Playing that game, eh," he muttered, his anger flaring once again. "You can bloody well stay in the States, then, but not with my kids."

He shoved the phone roughly back into his pocket and stepped out of the car. Andy Martin looked at him, hopefully. "Bad idea, Andy," Skinner snapped.

"Do you want me to talk to her?"

"Like I said earlier, don't you fucking dare. Now let's see your colleagues."

He strode off, ahead of his friend, towards the police building. DCS Rod Greatorix was standing in the entrance hallway, beside the public reception desk. A bewildered look spread across his great gruff face as Skinner burst through the entrance door. He looked at the newcomer, and then at Martin, behind him.

"Andy?" he began.

"Let's go somewhere private, Rod," his deputy chief replied.

"By all means. Through here." He led them up a flight of stairs, then along a corridor to a small office, glass-panelled like the rest of the suite. Several detectives were working in other rooms; one or two glanced at them, briefly, as they passed.

"Would anybody like coffee, or tea… or something stronger?" the head of CID asked, as the others took seats, facing the small desk that was the room's only furniture.

"I'm fine, thanks," said Skinner curtly.

Martin shook his head. "I didn't want to get into this over the phone,

Rod," he began, 'and neither did Bob… whom you know, of course."

"Of course I do." Greatorix nodded and smiled. "It's been a year or two, sir; that course at Tulliallan, wasn't it. That was the last time we met."

"Yup. We were both lecturing, as I recall. A distinguished class; one of our students is a chief constable now, and another's in the police inspectorate. I'm not here to lecture now, though."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm here to help you with your enquiries."

Greatorix gave him a look of pure incredulity, then he leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Is that right? Are you going to tell me that it was you who banged that bloke on the head and chucked him in the Tay?"

Skinner looked him in the eye, unsmiling. "There was a time, Rod, when

I wanted to do just that, but it's long gone. No, I'm just going to tell you who he is. You'd better tape it, for the record."

The Tay side detective had switched into serious mode. "Just a minute then," he said. "I'll find a recorder from somewhere. Will we need a second officer present?"

"Andy's the second officer."

"Of course." Greatorix left the room.

Skinner turned to Martin. "I've never told you much about my father, have I?"

His friend shook his head. "No, but I don't suppose I've ever told you much about mine."

"I've met your father, for Christ's sake. But no, it's true, I haven't. I'm not a demonstrative guy, Andy. Quick-tempered, yes, but on a personal level I'm not good at discussing my feelings. That's why, in my past, I've been able to bury things so deep. Maybe that's why Sarah and I are in trouble now. I'm not the sort of person who can just laugh and kiss it off, and she isn't either. There were all sorts of things I never knew about Leo and Susannah Grace, until after I'd seen them stretched out on mortuary tables. And when I think about it, there are all sorts of things I don't know about Sarah herself. When I went to Buffalo for the first time without her and met her friends, it was like they were talking about someone I hadn't met. And now she's back over there, with her own agenda, it's as if the part of her I don't know has come to the surface and taken over. She went on about needing me, but I can't see for what.

"None of us ever think of ourselves as bad communicators, until we realise how little we know ourselves." He caught Martin's eye. "How about you and Karen? Do you talk to each other, about each other?"

Andy laughed, softly. "Bob, before Karen and I got together, each of us lived our private lives so openly that there was hardly anything about either of us that was news to the other. But yes, we do; we share things. I hardly go to church any more, but Karen's my confessional, and I'm hers. I wouldn't like to think that I'd any secrets from her."

"That's good. Sarah and I should learn from you… but then again, she may have secrets that I wouldn't want to know about, and I don't know if I could bring myself to tell her all of mine."

"That's for you both to judge; but at the very least, talking about the problem has to help. Anyway, you started to talk about your father.

What was he like?"

"William Reid Skinner? He was a hell of a man. All of my life I've tried to live up to him, and all of my life I've fallen short."

"Most of us think of our fathers that way, Bob."

"Maybe, but that's how mine was. He was a lawyer, like Sarah's dad, and as successful in his own way, by Scottish standards. He was a quiet man, very dignified and very controlled. You couldn't make him lose his temper even if you tried. He never raised a hand to me in my childhood; indeed I don't remember him ever raising his voice.

"I asked him once how he could be like that. He told me that he left that part of himself in the war. When I asked him what he did, he looked away from me, and he said, "I killed people, Robert". When I asked him where he fought, he wouldn't tell me at first, but I pressed him. Eventually he said that he'd been in France in 1942, and later in

Yugoslavia and Greece. You know what that meant."

He frowned. "When I got involved with MI5 and such, I asked our friend Adam Arrow in the Ministry of Defence to find out if there was a file on him anywhere. There is; it's among a batch that are still sealed, but Adam told me roughly what was in it. D'you know, he won the George fucking Cross, Andy, but he never told me. He must have thrown it away, because there was no sign of it among his effects after he died, nor any reference to it.

"You know what Adam's like, and some of the things he's done. Well, when he told me about my father… Man, there was respect in his voice, bordering on…"

The door opened, interrupting him. "Sorry to have taken so long," said

Rod Greatorix. "Come Monday morning, the buggers in this office are going to get a message about keeping a stock of tapes at all times." He laid a big black twin-deck tape recorder on the desk and stretched its lead across to a plug in the wall. Finally, he stripped the clear wrapping from two tapes and inserted them into the waiting slots.

"Okay," he announced, 'we're ready to go ahead. I am Detective Chief

Superintendent Roderick Greatorix, Tayside Police; also present is

Deputy Chief Constable Andrew Martin of this force, and Deputy Chief

Constable Robert Skinner, from Edinburgh. Mr. Skinner is here to volunteer evidence of…" He stopped in mid-sentence and glanced at Martin.

"Identification."

"Thanks… of identification, in respect of the current murder enquiry. Mr. Skinner?"

"Thank you, chief superintendent. I have to tell you that I have seen the body that was found today in Myrtle Terrace, Perth, and can identify it as that of Michael Niven Skinner, aged fifty-six years."

Greatorix stared at him in surprise. "What was your relationship to the dead man?" he asked, at last, remembering that he was taking a formal statement.

"He was my older brother."

"What do you know of his whereabouts in the period leading up to his death?"

"Nothing."

"When did you last see him?"

"Approximately thirty years ago."

"But you are certain of your identification?"

"Absolutely."

"Do you know of any associates he may have had in the period prior to his death?"

"No. I have had no contact with my brother throughout my adult life."

"Was he married?"

"Not that I know of. A GRO check will tell you, for sure."

"What happened to alienate you for so long?"

"I tried to kill him."

Andy Martin reached across and switched off the recorder. "For Christ's sake, Bob," he exclaimed.

"It's true," Skinner retorted. "I've lived with it ever since. Now switch that thing back on."

Martin restarted the recorder. "Interview temporarily interrupted," he said, 'but now restarted; same three people present."

"Thank you. As I was saying, the last time I saw Michael there was a violent dispute between us. I was sixteen years old, and at home. I heard my brother shouting, at the top of his voice, screaming obscenities. I found him in the kitchen, and I also found my mother.

Her nose was bleeding. Michael had demanded money from her, and when shie had refused him, he had punched her and tried to take it from her purse.

"I wasn't full-grown, but I was a big lad nonetheless. I went straight for him. As I've said, there was about ten years between us in age, and my brother had been taught how to look after himself in the army, but he wasn't in the best of shape, not any more. I remember he threw a couple of punches at me, but I just walked straight through them and nut ted him. He didn't shift off his feet, though, so I hit him. I remember it clear as day, straight fingers in the gut, and a punch to the left temple that almost broke one of my knuckles. He went down then, all right. He was spark out, and I wanted him to stay that way.

My brother had thumped, abused and threatened me for much of my young life, but he had run out of time. I had outgrown him. Still, I knew what he was capable of if I gave him half a chance. So I grabbed him by the tie as he lay there, and I hit him again, and again, and again.

"I reckon I'd have finished him, if it hadn't been for my father. He was a very strong man, and big as I was, he got behind me, put a full nelson on me, and lifted me clean off Michael. I struggled for a while, but I couldn't move; he could have broken my neck with that hold if he'd liked.

"Eventually, when he thought I'd calmed down, he let me go. But the thing was, I'd never lost it. I'd known what I was doing all the time.

The bastard had hit my mother and I was going to kill him. At the time

I was angry with my father because he didn't react just like I had, but later I came to realise that he couldn't let himself feel that way. I thought I was a hard boy then, but I found out later that I was nothing compared to what he had been.

"I was still ready to do for Michael, though, and my father knew it. So he called the police, as well as a doctor. Michael was taken to Law

Hospital; he was still unconscious when he left the house, but I heard that he came round in the ambulance. They kept him in for a couple of days, and then he was charged with assaulting my mother.

"My father got one of his partners to represent him. It was carved up between him and the fiscal that Michael would plead guilty and be remanded for psychiatric reports. They showed that he was legally sane, but had a serious personality disorder. He was also a chronic alcoholic. The sheriff read the reports and put him on probation, on condition that he enter a psychiatric hospital as a voluntary patient.

"He was in there for six months. I don't know what they did to him, but I'm told that it calmed him. They couldn't keep him off the drink, though. I don't think they even tried, since that kept him on an even keel too. My father found him somewhere to stay, a hostel in Gourock, well away from the family home, and well away from me. The only order he ever gave me in my life was never to see my brother again. He told me that he was afraid, for both of us, of what might happen if I did.

Michael was looked after, financially, to a modest extent. He was unemployable, so my father set up a trust fund for him, to keep a roof over his head, to feed and clothe him, and to keep him in a certain amount of drink… enough, but not enough to let him drink himself to death.

"And that is how my brother lived out his life for the last thirty years; until he fell in the Tay and drowned, or just maybe, until someone hit him over the head and chucked him in the river to die. It's ironic, isn't it, that the last two times I saw my brother he was laid out on a stretcher."

Bob Skinner looked at Martin and Greatorix, then nodded at the tape recorder. "You can switch that fucking thing off now," he said.

Neither of the other men moved, so he reached across himself and pressed the twin 'stop' buttons. The head of CID took the tapes from their slots. "I'll go and brief the team," he murmured, and left the room.

The silence he left behind was unbroken for around half a minute. "Why did he turn out that way, Bob?" Martin asked, eventually.

"As I said earlier, son, he was a flawed personality; he was weak and he was jealous. I've only ever tried to live up to my father, but I think that Michael had to out-do him. Mum and Dad wanted him to go to university… he was bright, he'd have made it no problem… but he insisted on joining the army, straight from school. I don't know if any strings were pulled, but he got into Sandhurst.

"He got his commission in the Royal Engineers when he was twenty. He served in Germany at first without incident, but then he was posted to Honduras, in support of some counter-terrorist operation out there, and the trouble began. He was drinking pretty heavily by then; he had done since he was about sixteen in fact. He used to keep a stash of booze in a cupboard in his bedroom. I found it one day and he walloped me. I was seven at the time, but he slapped me cross-eyed and broke one of my fingers."

"He did what?" Martin exclaimed.

"You heard. He took it and snapped it just like that, and he told me that if I didn't keep my mouth shut about it and about his bevvy, he'd break the fucking lot. I believed him. I told my mum I'd slammed it in a door."

"Bloody hell!"

"It was the first of many. He used to beat me up regularly; I'd just take it and keep it all to myself, waiting for the day. When Michael went to the army I started karate classes, and I did a bit of boxing too, until I gave that up."

"What made you chuck it?"

"I hurt a kid one day. I was fifteen; for a minute I imagined the boy was Michael, and I just hit him too hard. I detached the retina of his right eye. That was enough for me; I was a boxer, not a man-hunter. I wanted to be Ali, not Marciano. There was only one guy I really wanted to damage. The fact is, if the thing with my mother hadn't happened, I'd have done him anyway, probably with no one around to stop me."

Skinner paused. "Anyway, back to the army thing; like I said, he was in Honduras, a section commander or something. His CO carpeted him for being unfit for duty once; he was given a reprimand, a stiff warning with a threat of demotion, but from what I gather that just made him sneakier. Finally, there was an incident on a jungle patrol. The platoon Michael was with was attacked by insurgents; there was a fire-fight, and the guerrillas got wasted, but two of our guys were killed. The trouble was that when they dug the bullets out of them, they were found to have come from Michael's gun."

"Jesus. Was he charged?"

"No, no, no; that would have caused a scandal and it wouldn't have done. No, they gave the dead boys medals and buried them with full military honours, and they gave Lieutenant Skinner an immediate discharge."

"Did your father know?" asked Andy.

"It was my father who told me about it, years afterwards. One of his old service buddies was in the Advocate General's office; he called him and tipped him off on the quiet. When Michael turned up back in Mother well, he spun everyone a tale about being invalided out, but it didn't wash. He had no pension for a start, no discharge money, and what little he had saved went on drink, damn quick. He was twenty-four when he came home. Within six months he was the town drunk. He broke my mother's heart long before he broke her nose. At first my father tried to keep him in check by refusing him money, but he just stole stuff from the house. The bastard even stole from me.

"So, against that history, will you tell me, Andy, now that he's dead, after thirty years of being cut out of my life, at my father's behest at first, but eventually of my own choosing, why do I feel so fucking guilty about him? And why do I want so badly to avenge his death, if it wasn't accidental, when back then I wanted to kill him myself?"

"Because he's your brother, I guess. It's only natural."

"But I never thought of him as a brother, only as a thug about the house. No, I feel guilty because I'm grateful. We did have the same mother, same father, and we both swam out of the same gene pool. Yet it was Michael Niven Skinner got the bad seed, and Robert Morgan

Skinner who grew into the straight arrow. And it was a pure fucking accident; it could as easily have been the other way round.

"My father never stopped loving him, you know. I think what he had to do hastened his death. But I found no forgiveness. I let him rot away in Gourock, when I could have reached out to him. And I did worse than that; I kept his existence a secret from his niece, and later from his sister-in-law."

"Your first wife must have known about him, though. She was around then, wasn't she?"

"Sure, Myra did, but she was warned never to mention his name in our house. Anyway, she died before Alex was old enough to understand, even if she had let anything slip to her about him."

Skinner knitted his forehead until his eyebrows came together. "I may not have killed him physically, Andy, but I did in every other way.

Whatever there had been between us, he was my only brother, yet I let him live like a dog and die like one. Ah, man, the secrets that we keep."