Murmuring the Judges

87

Bob Skinner was a straight arrow, who did not approve of drinking and driving at all. Nevertheless, although his car was parked in the street outside, he nursed a pint glass as he sat in the bar of the TA Club. It was shandy, half beer and half lemonade, pressed upon him by the manager.

He had been waiting for just over twenty minutes when the man entered, immaculate in his uniform. ‘A right fucking bandbox,’ Skinner whispered, to no one. ‘I’ll bet his dad was proud of him.’ The soldier walked up to the bar, past the policeman’s corner table, without noticing him.

‘Pint of lager, please, Barry,’ he called out.

The manager nodded and picked up a glass. ‘There’s someone to see you,’ he said, as he slid it across the wooden top, and took the money which lay there.

Sergeant Henry Riach turned, to see the policeman sitting in the corner, smiling across at him. ‘Mr Skinner,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘What brings you here?’

The DCC stood as he came across, extending his hand to offer a seat. ‘Mr Herr mentioned to a colleague of mine that you were a regular in here on a Friday. I thought I’d drop in to let you know about our investigation into your father’s death.’

‘I gather it’s been successful,’ the sergeant replied, ‘according to what I read in the papers.’

‘Yes. We’re still looking for three of the gang, but I’m satisfied that Curly Collins killed your father, and that Rocky Saunders shot my young police officer.’

A thin smile spread across Riach’s face, and a gleam came into his eyes. ‘And they’re dead. Now that’s what I call natural justice.’

‘Not everyone would agree with that. I know a right few coppers who would call it murder.’

‘You can’t expect me to see it that way.’

‘No, of course I can’t,’ Skinner agreed. ‘I understand exactly how you see it. So would your Uncle John McGrigor, I’m sure. . not that I’d ever ask him to admit it, mind you.’

He grinned at the young soldier. ‘How did you find out that the Paras’ friend Hamburger was Adrian Jones?’ he asked. ‘He never used his real name when he was in here.’

For the first time, the easy smile left Sergeant Riach’s face, and his gaze dropped from the policeman. In the midst of the long silence which hung over the table, Skinner noticed that his hand was trembling slightly as he picked up his glass.

And then he looked up once more, his eyes hard and defiant. ‘Rocky Saunders told me,’ he said, quietly. ‘Just before he died. He told me who he was, what he had done in the Army, what he did now, and where he lived.

‘He’d have told me anything to stop me shooting him. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing he could have said that would have stopped me.’

‘How did you happen to show up at Grimley’s cottage?’ Skinner asked, although, as before, he had guessed the answer.

‘I followed Jones from his home. I watched him for a while, just like I watched Saunders and Collins. I found out that he never went out at night without his wife, so that gave me a problem. Finally, I decided that I’d tail him in the mornings, as he went to his work, and wait for a chance.’ Riach’s eyes narrowed. ‘If I had to, I was even prepared to do him with a pistol through the window of his Toyota. I followed him for three days on the trot, but there were always too many people around. Then I got lucky.

‘He was an early starter, so I was always there well in advance, but on that third morning I was surprised when he left so soon. He didn’t take his normal route to his office. Instead he went past Queensferry, round the bypass, down the A68, then cut off down to Humbie.

‘When I saw the house, I thought that Newton or Clark. . maybe the both of them. . might be hiding there, so I let him go inside, and I set myself up in the woods. Mind you, when I saw him break in through the back door, and saw that he was carrying a sawn-off I said to myself, “Aye aye, something up here”. Then I heard the shot.’

Riach paused. ‘I hadn’t a bloody clue who’d been done, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t give a stuff, but I guessed it wasn’t Jones. So I stayed behind my tree and waited.

‘It was only a minute later when your folk arrived. The black chap threw me at first, but I recognised Martin from the telly. I just kept watching the house, and that side window. All of a sudden Jones stepped into sight. I saw him picking up his shotgun, so I let him have it.’

‘What weapon did you use?’ asked Skinner, quietly.

‘A service carbine. It’s a stumpy wee rifle, dead accurate, and it fits the pannier of my bike.’

Riach drained his glass. ‘Mind if I get another?’

‘Not at all,’ the policeman answered, impressed by his calmness.

‘You want one?’

‘No thanks, Henry, I’m fine.’

He watched as the young soldier walked to the bar and returned, his glass replenished.

‘Can I ask you a question now?’

‘Okay.’

‘How did you know it was me?’

‘I just guessed, sort of.’

‘But didn’t your lot think that Jones killed Saunders and Collins?’

‘Yes we did, at first.’

‘Then after Jones was killed, that statement you put out said that the two of them had been rivals, and that they’d killed each other in a confrontation.’

Skinner shook his head. ‘No. It said that they had died after a confrontation. An approximation of the truth, I’ll grant you, but close enough. We’ll put out a fuller statement later.’

‘Still: how did you know?’

‘Well,’ the policeman began, ‘there were a couple of things. You stabbed them before you shot them, yes?’ Riach nodded. ‘With a bayonet, fixed to your gun, to bring their heads up? Yes, I thought so. That was a soldier’s thing, for a start.

‘Something else came to me the other night. Before he disappeared, Bakey Newton made two phone calls; one was to Clark, to tell him what had happened. We checked: the other was to Jones. Now if he’d thought for one moment that his pal Hamburger was wiping out his team, he’d hardly have called him, would he?’

‘Who killed Bennett, then, and his sister?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Oh, Jones did them all right. There’s no doubt about that. We even found the sniper’s rifle he used, hidden in his garage. It was a souvenir from his army days.

‘That actually helped me to you. Because that’s how you worked out who might have been involved in your father’s murder, through the army connection.

‘You knew Bennett, of course, like you knew all the so-called Paras group, for you saw them all in here, every Friday night. When you heard on the telly, or read that he and his sister had been done, and. . the most important thing of all. . that Big Mac had vanished: I assumed that’s when you began to put the thing together.

‘You knew that these hold-ups were military operations, and here were these six guys, an odd bunch of ex-regulars with this mysterious pal whose real name they never used. After Bennett’s death, and McDonnell’s vanishing act, I don’t imagine that you had any doubt.

‘Did you, Henry?’

‘None at all,’ Riach answered, his eyes fixed steadily on Skinner’s. ‘I knew Rocky and Curly were the really hard guys in the group, so I got their addresses from the Infantry Division records, and I went after them. . Rocky first. He was easiest, living out in the country. He told me the lot.

‘So,’ he asked evenly, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

The DCC gave a soft laugh. ‘You mean how am I going to prove it?’ he countered.

‘Son, with no witnesses and no corroboration I know how difficult that would be, so I’m not even going to try. Anyway, I’d have shot Rocky Saunders myself, given half a chance, for killing Annie Brown. As for Curly Collins; you see the tears I shed for him.’

He finished off his warm shandy. ‘It must surprise you, a copper talking like this. But I guard the public safety and the public interest. I don’t see you threatening either one in the future. As for justice, it seems to me that’s been served well enough.’ He took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out in a great sigh.

‘There’s another thing too. When you shot Adrian Jones, you saved my best friend’s life.’

Bob Skinner stared back at the soldier, until the young man’s eyes fell from his. ‘So, Henry,’ he whispered, ‘this conversation’s just between you and me. . as long as no one else turns up dead.’