Pray for the Dying

Thirteen

‘So what have your people got?’ Skinner’s jacket. . while he disliked any uniform, his hatred for the new tunic style favoured by some of his brother chiefs was absolute. . was slung over the back of the new swivel chair that had been in place by the time he had returned from the press briefing. He had refused all requests for one-on-one interviews, insisting instead that these be done with Lottie Mann, as lead investigator.

His visitor was as smartly dressed as he had been the day before, but the blazer had given way to a close-fitting leather jerkin. No room for a firearm there, the chief thought. Just as well or security would have gone crazy. The garment was a light tan in colour almost matching Clyde Houseman’s skin tone, but not quite, for his face sported a touch of pink. ‘Have you caught the sun?’ he asked.

The younger man smiled. ‘Did you think I’d just get browner?’ he responded. ‘I’m only one quarter Trinidadian, on my father’s side. The rest of me gets as sunburned as you. And the answer’s yes. I went for a run this morning, a long one; not on a treadmill either but around the streets.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Along Sauchiehall Street, then down Hope Street to the Riverside; over the Squinty Bridge, along the other side for a bit then I crossed back further up, past Pacific Quay. Up to Gilmorehill from there, round the university, and then home.’

‘Is that your normal Sunday routine?’

‘Hell no. Normally I go out for breakfast somewhere. There are a few places nearby.’

‘Where is home?’

‘Woodlands Drive.’

Skinner’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘Woodlands Drive, indeed. I had a girlfriend who had a flat share there, in my university days. Louise.’ His eyes drifted towards the unfamiliar ceiling, and then back to his visitor. ‘Are you married, Clyde?’

Houseman shook his head. ‘Half my life in the Marines and special forces, seeing action for most of it, then on to MI5. No,’ he chuckled. ‘I couldn’t find the time to fit that in. Not that I had any incentive, given the happy home I grew up in.’

The two men’s first encounter had been in a squalid housing estate in Edinburgh, when Skinner had just made detective superintendent. Houseman had been a street gang leader, son of a convicted murderer and a thief, until the scare the cop had thrown into him had made him rethink his entire life and join the military.

‘Hey,’ the chief constable said, ‘mine wasn’t that great either. It didn’t put me off marriage, though, not that I’ve been very fucking good at it. I’ve had three goes so far. My first wife died young, car crash, second marriage ended in divorce, and now the third’s going the same way.’

‘You and the politician lady?’

‘Yeah. She had this notion that I should help her fulfil her ambitions, which are substantial. That would have involved me following behind, in the Duke of Edinburgh position. Not my scene, I’m afraid, so we’re calling it a day.’

‘Won’t that be tough on your kids?’

‘No. The three young ones are very close to their mother, and as for my adult daughter, she’ll wave Aileen a cheerful goodbye. Having made a similar mistake herself she reckons I was daft to split up with Sarah in the first place, and I’m coming to agree with her. They say that Alex and I are absolutely alike, but that’s hardly surprising, since I pretty much brought her up on my own.’

He sighed. ‘I know why you went for the run, incidentally. To clear your head after what happened last night. We all have our own way of dealing with the shitty end of the job, the things we see, and sometimes the things we have to do; I’ve been known to go running myself, but usually I get pissed first, to give me something to run off, so it’ll hurt that wee bit more. Sometimes I wish I was a Catholic like my friend Andy, so I could go to church and get absolution. But no, not me; I have to do it the hard way.’

Without warning he swung his chair around and sat upright, his forearms on his desk. ‘But enough of that. I asked you what your people have got, if anything, on the origin of this hit. We’ve discounted the notion that Aileen was the target, so, who wanted Toni Field dead?’

Houseman looked back at him, his expression serious. ‘I’m not sure I have the authority, sir,’ he replied.

Skinner shook his head. ‘No, Clyde, I’m not having that. I know there’s recent history between your team and Strathclyde and that your deputy director told you to keep your distance from our Counter-terrorism and Intelligence Section. But that was then and this is now.

‘Amanda Dennis may have told you she thought it was leaky, but I know damn well that she didn’t like or trust Toni Field, and didn’t want any involvement with her. I’ve known Amanda for years, and I worked with her on an internal investigation I did in Thames House a few years ago. I can lift that phone right now and have your order rescinded, but save me the bother, eh?’

The spook gazed at him for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said, ‘and I don’t fancy breaking into Amanda’s Sunday, so okay. The truth is we’ve got nothing yet. But that’s no disgrace, since we’ve concentrated our efforts since last night on the source of the intelligence that London had, that there was going to be a political hit somewhere in Britain.

‘Twenty-four hours ago, that was my colleagues’ firm conviction. Today, they’re saying they were conned. The threat was bogus; somebody in Pakistan was trying to buy entry into Britain for his family. In short, back to square one.’ He smiled. ‘Now, since we’re sharing, how about you?’

‘Fair enough,’ Skinner conceded. ‘We’ve been working on the basics. We have one potential witness to interview. You met him yesterday evening: Freddy Welsh. He may have dealt only with Beram Cohen, but it’s possible that the order for the weapons was placed by somebody else.’

‘Do you want me to talk to him again?’

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Mario McGuire’s going to see him.’

‘McGuire? Your colleague? The man whose wife was sitting next to Toni Field?’

He nodded. ‘The same. Freddy isn’t going to enjoy that; not at all.’

‘Did you tell him to go hard?’

‘No, but I couldn’t stop him even if I tried. You and I might have scared Freddy last night, but that was a gentle chat compared to what the big fella’s capable of.’

‘He won’t go too far, will he?’

‘He won’t have to. I expect to hear from him fairly soon. In the meantime, there is one thing that I will “share” with you, to use your term. Remember, our assumption yesterday was that Smit and Botha were going to get into the hall disguised as police officers?’

‘Only too well,’ Houseman said, with a bitter frown. ‘If the police communications centre hadn’t been on Saturday mode, we might have got the message through in time to stop them.’

‘That’s something I will be addressing now I’m in this chair,’ Skinner promised, ‘but don’t dwell on it. My fear was that those uniforms would have been taken from two cops and that we’d find them afterwards, probably dead.’

‘Yes. You’re not going to tell me you have, are you?’

‘No; the opposite in fact. We’ve found the uniforms, along with the discarded police-type carbine that Welsh supplied, in the projection room where they took the shot from, but I don’t have any officers missing, and the tunics were undamaged. . no bullet holes, stab wounds or anything else.

‘They were also brand new, and were a one hundred per cent match for the kit my people wear. Trousers, short-sleeved undershirt, stab vest with pockets, and caps with the usual Sillitoe Tartan around them. Same for the equipment belt and the gear on it, Hiatt speedcuffs, twenty-one-inch autolock baton, and a CS spray.

‘Okay, all British police forces wear similar clothing these days, but all these things were identical,’ he stressed the word, ‘to ours. The Strathclyde insignia is sewn on the armoured vest, and the manufacturer was the same. . that’s telling, for the force changed its stab vest supplier not so long ago. In addition to that, we found two bogus cards on lanyards. Well, they were bogus in that the names were made up, they’d been created from blanks that my people believe were genuine.’

‘Could Welsh have supplied the stuff?’

‘You saw his store yesterday. There was nothing there other than firearms, boxed.’

‘In other words,’ the MI5 operative murmured, ‘what you’re saying is that. .’

‘We’re doing a thorough stock check now, but it looks as if the clothing and body equipment came from our own warehouse. I’ve also asked for checks to be done in every other force that uses Hawk body armour. In other words, Clyde, the hit team had inside help. Somebody in this force supplied them.’

‘Then you’ve got a problem, sir.’

Skinner leaned back in his chair, making a mental note to adjust it to deal with his weight. ‘Actually, Clyde,’ he murmured, ‘I’ve got two.’

Houseman frowned. ‘Oh? What’s the other?’

‘It’s why I asked you to come here,’ the chief replied. ‘It takes us back to sharing. I need to know what you took from Smit’s body yesterday, when I was busy shooting Gerry Botha, and where it led you. I’ve seen the CCTV, remember. You were very slick, and very quick, but it’s there.’ He took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. ‘Fifteen years ago, son,’ he said, ‘I gave you a serious warning; don’t make me have to repeat it, far less follow through on it.’