Fallen Gods

Thirty-Six

Although he lived by the sea, and owned a villa in Spain where people cast lines into any stretch of running water, Bob Skinner had never been a fisherman. Standing thigh-deep in water, waiting for hours for a shortsighted salmon to make a fatal mistake, may have been fine for the Queen Mother, but it had never held any attraction for him. His sporting tastes were all much more physical.

Nevertheless, he knew how serious a business salmon fishing was in Scotland, and, with the royal connections, how powerful a lobby its enthusiasts could be.

Skipper Williamson was doing well out of them, that was for sure. His fishing hotel, called Fir Park Lodge… a nod, Skinner knew, to the football club that had started him on the road… was situated not far north of Perth, near the town of Birnam.

Skinner had found it without difficulty on several of the many websites that attract anglers from around the world to Perthshire throughout the salmon season. He had driven north in Sarah's Freelander rather that his own BMW, in case there was a need for four-wheel-drive capability, but the hotel was easily accessible.

He had found it without difficulty; now, sat in a lay-by on the A9, he could see it clearly as he looked down through a gap in the trees. He trained his binoculars on its main entrance, then used their zoom to pan out. Fir Park Lodge stood in several acres of ground. It was a nineteenth-century, grey stone country house, with a turret on each of its four corners. There was a wide lawn in front, and to the left a car park, in which stood two big Toyota off-roaders and a minibus.

Beyond them Skinner saw a Rolls Royce and a small white Mercedes A-class. He zoomed in again, and saw the house in miniature, on a corporate crest on the Merc's front door panel.

From the vehicles he guessed that Skipper Williamson had guests, and that they were probably at lunch, before heading back to the river.

Behind the Lodge, he could see it sparkle; his web research had told him that Williamson owned rights on that stretch of the Tay, but that his visitors, placed with him by a variety of tour companies, were ferried around to other beats and other rivers.

He sat in the Freelander and waited. The call from Mitch Laidlaw had come through on his cellphone an hour earlier, but he had forgotten it already. Now that his job was secure, it was no longer his top priority.

Skinner had done some research on Cecil "Skipper' Williamson. Through a contact in the General Register Office, introduced to him by his friend Jim Glossop, before his retirement, he had learned that he was fifty-nine years old, and that he had been married briefly in his late thirties and early forties. That marriage had ended on grounds of irretrievable breakdown. The big detective found himself wondering why.

He sat in Sarah's car with only a very rough plan of action. He had thought of simply walking into the hotel and introducing himself to Williamson, to see if that would trigger a panic in the man, but had discarded that. If the man had been responsible for his brother's death, or even if he had simply disposed of his body for some bizarre reason, it was likely that he would be expecting a visit from someone, sooner or later.

He had thought also of interviewing a member of the hotel staff. He had run a check that morning through a private contact in the Department of Social Security, and knew that Fir Park Lodge had five full-time employees, a resident housekeeper, two kitchen-maids, a waitress and a handyman. His name was Angus dAbo, and a few years before he had done time in Perth Prison for housebreaking. He wondered whether Skipper would know that.

Before he braced dAbo, though, if he did, there was something he wanted to do first. He had visited the Mother well Times, where the helpful editor had found a photograph of Skipper Williamson from his archives, the only one the paper held. It was thirty-three years old, and it had been on newsprint, one of a sea of faces in a pre-season team picture.

The journalist had photocopied it, extracted Williamson, and blown up his image as far as possible, but it was still grey and barely recognisable even to someone who had known him in those days.

He had visited Mother well Football Club itself, but had found a modern business whose records did not stretch to reserve sides from the sixties. Other than in the passport office… and it would raise too many questions if he asked there… as far as Skinner could ascertain there was no up-to-date photograph of the man anywhere on the public record. Before he did anything else, he planned to take one, and to show it to Brother Aidan. If the old cleric identified him as Michael's visitor, then he would pick up dAbo and put the thumbscrews on him.

He started the Freelander and pulled out on to the A9. A hundred yards along he made a left turn on to a minor road winding downhill, away from Birnam. A small, plain signpost marked the entrance to the Lodge grounds. He pulled up on the verge and leaned over to recover his camera bag from the back seat. He was fairly certain that Williamson was at home. The Rolls was his; he had been driving it when he had picked up a fixed penalty six months earlier.

Skinner fitted a telephoto lens to his Nikon; his plan was to hide in the woods that surrounded the hotel and its lawn, and to snatch photographs of every man who showed his face outside. Hopefully, Williamson would wave his guests off after lunch, and would be easy to spot… unless of course, he was fishing with them himself, which would be, the big detective conceded, a bit of a bugger.

He locked the car and slipped into the grounds of Fir Park Lodge, past the plain wooden sign. He left the drive at once and made his way through the thick, untended woodland towards the big house.

He was almost there when his cellphone rang in his trouser pocket.

"Shit," he whispered, thankful that its sound was muffled. Because of his pacemaker, he no longer carried it in the breast pocket of his shirt, where it would have been all too audible.

He took it out quickly, and was about to switch it off when he remembered that he was back on the active list. There was just the possibility that it might be the chief. He hid behind the thickest tree he could see, and answered.

The voice in his ear sounded not a bit like Sir James Proud. It was American; East Coast, perhaps a trace of Massachusetts. "Is that Bob Skinner?" it asked.

"Yes," he answered, quietly, although there was no one to hear him.

Everyone was still inside the hotel.

"This is Clyde Oakdale, Bob."

Skinner frowned. Oakdale was the acting senior partner of Sarah's late father's law firm. He was handling, personally, the winding up of Leo and Susannah's joint estate, of which Skinner himself was co-executor.

But there was something in the lawyer's voice that told him this call was not about an estate matter. At once, he saw the future stretching out before him. Legal separation, a property split, a custody battle unless he agreed to his children becoming in effect Americans, and if he did, years of shuttling across the Atlantic to visit them, until it all became too much trouble. "Yes, Clyde," he said wearily.

"Bob," the lawyer continued heavily, "I have some very disturbing news for you."

"Let me guess. It's about Sarah."

"Yes it is. How did you guess?"

"Call it intuition. I think maybe you should talk to my solicitor, rather than me."

"Bob," Oakdale exclaimed, testily, "I don't know what you mean by that, but whatever it is, it seems we're not connecting up here. Now just shut up, will you. By making this call I am breaking a direct client instruction, but what the hell, you need to know, regardless. So please listen to me.

"Sarah has been arrested."

"You what?" Skinner exploded, forgetting for the moment where he was.

"You heard me. She is being held by the detective division of the Eri County Sheriff's Department for questioning about the murder of Mr. Ron Neidholm."

"Ron Neidholm? That name rings a bell." Bob frowned as he searched his memory. "Yes, Babs Walker told me about him. Pro foot baller he and Sarah had a thing at college."

"That's the man. Big Ron is quite a local hero, hence there's a real shit-storm about his killing. I've tried to speak to Brad Dekker, the sheriff, but he won't take my calls."

"What happened?"

"At about nine yesterday evening, the police were called by neighbours to a disturbance in Mr. Neidholm's house. They found him dead in the kitchen, with a knife in his chest, and Sarah standing over the body.

When she calmed down she told them that she had found him like that, but they arrested her straight away and took her in."

"And she's still there?"

"Yes. They're talking about charging her."

"Where are you? You're with her, aren't you?"

"I'm a civil lawyer, Bob. I have John Vranic, our firm's top courtroom attorney, there with her."

"Can't he get her released on bail? I mean… Oh, this is fucking nonsense!"

"The District Attorney's office is not being compliant on this one," said Oakdale. "The DA is a friend of mine, so he went a little further with me than they have with John. Her prints are on the knife, Bob, as clear as day."

"You're kidding me."

"I wish I was." As the lawyer paused, Skinner heard the sound of a door opening across the lawn. He ignored it, instead he started marching back towards the road. "Bob," Oakdale went on, "Sarah didn't want me to call you. I can't think why, but she said she didn't want you involved. But I had to call you, for the children's sake if nothing else. If necessary I can justify it ethically through your position as co-executor of her parents' will'

"Fuck ethics," the policeman snarled. "If you hadn't I'd have killed you. Tell your man Vranic from me to get her out of there. Put the whole estate up as a bail bond if you have to, but get her released."

He came to the public road, and broke into a run towards the car. "I'll be out there just as soon as I can, by tomorrow morning your time at the latest.

"You call Dekker, or Eddie Brady, his chief of detectives. You tell whichever of them you get that I am coming and that when I get there, I want to see every scrap of their case against my wife."

"I'll do that," said Oakdale, 'and I'll do everything I can to get her bail today, even if I have to put her before a judge to do it. You just try to stay calm."

"Calm? Fuck calm, that's long gone. I'll work on staying merely angry, and you can tell Brad Dekker that too. See you."

He unlocked the car and slid behind the wheel, just as the two Toyota

Landcruisers pulled out of the Fir Park Lodge driveway. Skinner cast not a glance in their direction; he was fully occupied calling up a number on his phone.

A few seconds later, his call was answered. "Neil," he said urgently,

'this is Bob. I should call McGurk with this, but I don't know him well enough. Besides, it's more personal than business. Shit, it's all personal. I'm in Perthshire; I have to call in on Andy, then I'm back down the road, pronto. I want you to get on to the travel agent and book me on the first possible flight to New York, with onward connection to Buffalo; economy, business class, first, I don't care, just get me on it. If you can, get my keys from Alex… she's in her

Edinburgh office… and go out to Gullane, pick up my passport, and pack me some clothes."

Not even when his anger over the threat to his job was at its hottest, had Neil Mcllhenney ever heard his friend so agitated. "Okay, Bob,

I'll do all that. But what is it? What's up?"

"I'll tell you when I see you, man. Right now, I don't have the time …" his voice shook with rage '… or the self-control. Better you don't know anyway; that way Alex can't bully it out of you. This is something I'll have to tell her in person too."