Skinner's festival

34

George Street was closed off along its entire length, from Charlotte Square to St Andrew Square. A uniformed officer, stationed at the junction of Queen Street and Frederick Street, recognised Skinner and Sarah instantly, and waved them through.

They parked in front of the double-windows of Phillips, the fine art auctioneers. Clad in the jeans and sweatshirts which they had pulled on after tumbling out of bed, they raced across the street, past the police cars lined along the central reservation, and past the rank of ambulances which stood like blue-beaconed taxis at the arched and pillared entrance to the Assembly Rooms.

At once. Skinner spotted Deputy Chief Constable McGuinness standing in the doorway, looking out into the street. The portly policeman was in evening dress, as if he had been summoned from the opera. His normally ruddy face had a yellowish tinge, and his eyes gave a clear hint of what lay inside.

Skinner greeted him sympathetically. 'Hello, Eddie. What's happened?' Even as he spoke two paramedics hurried past, bearing a keening victim on a stretcher towards one of the ambulances. He looked down at their burden, and in spite of himself, he felt his stomach knot, and his testicles tighten. It was a girl, young and blonde. Her left ear and part of the left side of her face had been sliced off. Through the mess, Skinner could see white bone. A long shard of wood protruded from her belly. Her hands, all bloody, were grasping it as if she were holding on to her pain and, through that, to life itself.

McGuinness's lips moved as if he was speaking, but no sound came out. Instead his eyes filled with tears as he followed the girl on her stretcher. For the first time in his life, Skinner found that he felt sorry for the Deputy. He knew that most of McGuinness's career had been spent in administration, and yet here he was visiting his second charnel-house in only four days.

'Go and sit in one of the cars, Eddie. You don't have to look at this. You can't help these people.'

But the Deputy Chief Constable shook his head, blinking the glaze from his eyes. Then, as Skinner looked at him, he straightened his back and clenched his jaw. 'No, Bob. I realise that things like this come with the job.'

Skinner patted him on the shoulder with a new-found sense of camaraderie. 'Good man, Eddie,' he murmured softly. 'Jimmy would be pleased with you.'

As he led Sarah into the foyer of the Assembly Rooms, they were met by a babel of sound. The shouts of the emergency teams mingled with cries of paid from victims. Somewhere not too far away a man was screaming.

Carrying her bulky First-aid bag, Sarah looked around until she saw a nurse in uniform. 'I'm a doctor,' she called out to the man.

'Where's the medical centre?'

'Up those stairs, in the big room to the left.'

She turned to Skinner. 'Bob, I'm…'

'Yes, of course. I'll send for you if I need you.

'Maggie Rose said it was in the Music Hall,' he said to no one in particular. Then he caught sight of Andy Martin standing at the foot of the wide staircase to the right, waving to him.

'Boss,' he called. "This way.'

Skinner followed Martin up the staircase. At the top he made to step into the big Music Hall which he knew so well, but Martin caught his arm.

'No, boss. Come up to the gallery. You'll get a better idea there.

And listen, prepare yourself. It's not a pretty sight.'

Martin led him through the access door to the balcony, and up a second flight of stairs, much narrower than the first. As he stepped into the auditorium. Skinner's eyes screwed up involuntarily, taking in the horror. Glass was strewn across the full width of the upper seating area. White stuffing, much of it stained crimson with blood, protruded from torn tip-up seats. A line of pockmarks ran irregularly along the painted back wall of the gallery. The whole upper area of the hall looked as if it had been strafed with machine-gun fire.

As soon as Skinner looked down into the body of the hall, he realised why. The framework of the huge, ornate chandelier, which had been the main feature of the room, now hung twisted and tangled, suspended from the ceiling by only a few wires. Its heavy crystal fittings were virtually all gone. Skinner saw at once that the blast had torn them off and sent them whistling like heavy-calibre bullets into the balcony seats.

He walked down the few steps from the doorway, and looked into the body of the theatre. From the way the wreckage was spread out, he could see that the explosion had taken place midstage. The lower part of the auditorium was filled with temporary tiered-stall seating. The rows of seats nearest the front, and thus closest to the explosion, were below stage level, and seemed to have been shielded from the worst of the blast. He could see that those in the middle and towards the rear had been riddled with a savage assortment of wooden, glass and metal shrapnel. Skinner remembered the girl on the stretcher, and guessed that it was the debris of the stage furniture.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the horror of it all. 'Jesus Christ, Andy. What a mess.'

Martin had been working at the scene for some time, but he too was still ashen-faced. 'Hellish. We've got at least twelve dead, and who knows how many injured. A few of them won't make it.

There was a girl there…'

'I know. I saw her, I think. Sarah came with me. She's gone next door to do what she can.'

'That's good, boss. Maggie Rose is there too. She was in the building – down in the foyer, and thank Christ not in the Hall when it happened.'

'She holding up OK?'

'Maggie? Are you kidding?'

'That's good. Now tell me what you've worked out so far.'

'Well, as you can see, the bomb seems to have exploded right on the stage itself. The show was an Australian musical called Waltzing Matilda or some such. The cast was bang – oh Christ!

He paused, aghast at his choice of words – in the middle of one of their big production numbers when it happened. We can account for three bodies on stage, but there's another one missing.

We reckon she's probably just been blown all over the fucking place. You can see what the blast did to the big chandelier. The folk upstairs caught the worst of it. One or two of the poor sods were just cut to pieces. The audience downstairs didn't do too well either. The people at the front and at the back got off lightest; mostly shock, some deafened, a few scrapes. The folk in the middle caught the stage debris. They were lucky the frame of that big chandelier didn't come down on them as well.'

Martin paused, to bring his rising voice under control. Skinner looked over into the mid-section of the big hall, which was flooded by the temporary lights which had been set up. Many of the seats were torn and, as in the upper area, some were stained scarlet. More blood trails led up the aisle towards the exit door.

'By the time I got here,' Martin continued, 'they'd taken eight people out dead from the audience. Five more are touch-and-go.

One woman had her hand sliced off. Her boyfriend had to put a tourniquet on her.' He paused, gulping in breath. 'The worst casualties are on their way to hospital. Most of them are being treated here.'

Skinner caught sight of 'Gammy' Legge kneeling in the centre of the scorched blackened stage. 'Do we know anything about the type of bomb yet? Was it the same as Saturday?'

'There's an old guy reckons he can describe it for us. He's a weird old boy; he's either tremendously excited or a bit hysterical or both. He can't stop talking. I've sent him downstairs with a PC. Do you want to talk to him?'

'Too right. Let's get to him before he starts to embroider it.'

Martin led the way out of the Music Hall and down the wide carpeted staircase, back to the foyer. The Fringe cafe-bar in the rear ground-level hall had been turned into an emergency canteen.

A number of survivors, more shocked than injured, were sitting around on stacking chairs, drinking mugs of hot sweet tea.

Skinner could hear the old man's shrill, hoarse voice rising above the hubbub even before Martin pointed him out. He was standing on his tip toe, clutching a white mug, with his chin stuck out, bellowing and gesticulating with his free hand to the young officer detailed to look after him. His small stature was accentuated by the wizening and shrinkage which the advancing years had brought with them.

Skinner could see at once why Martin had thought him weird.

More than anything else, he looked like a large monkey in fancy dress. He had a broad flat face, and a high forehead, from which his long, thinning hair swept back. Skinner noted with surprise a sprinkling of black still showing among the grey. A small gold ring looked garish in his left ear, but somehow it was in accord with his crew-necked blue-and-white hooped sweater, and comfort-cut black jeans. He wore open-toed sandals, without socks. He might have been. Skinner estimated, anywhere between sixty-five and eighty.

Martin introduced them. 'Boss, this is Mr Charles Forsyth. Mr Forsyth, ACC Skinner.'

The little man turned and looked slowly up at the figure towering above him. 'So you're the great Bob Skinner! I've met you once before. Must be nearly twenty years ago. You were just a raw-arsed sergeant then!'

The man's voice was still raised and hoarse, and Skinner guessed this was his normal tone. He looked at Forsyth afresh, trying to place him in his memory, but failed.

'Well I'm pleased to meet you again, Mr Forsyth, although I'd rather it hadn't been here, and in these circumstances. So you were in the Music Hall when the explosion happened. Tell me, were you there alone?'

'Call me Charlie. Aye I was alone, thank Christ. Mary – that's my girlfriend – she was feeling a bit off-colour, and anyway, she didnae really fancy the idea of Aussies pretending taste be song-anddance men. Don't know what brought me, truth be told. It's out of my usual line, all that prancin' poofter stuff. I'm a writer, y'know,' he added inconsequentially.

Skinner was not surprised by the revelation, but decided instinctively not to pursue that line of conversation.

'Where were you sat, Charlie?'

'Downstairs, three rows from the back. If I'd been three rows further down… The guy in the sixth row, straight in front of me, caught a big lump of flying timber or something, right in the throat. It took the poor bastard's head half off. And that could have been me. Mind you, I've always been lucky. I remember once in Burma…' His voice trailed off, as if he had suddenly discovered that this detail of his war-time memories was no longer there.

'Andy says you can describe the explosion, Charlie,' Skinner prodded, gently.

The little man's eyes lit up at once, and he seemed almost to straighten from his stoop. 'Aye, too fuckin' right I can! It was the radiogram.'

What?'

'Well this nonsense – I won't dignify it with the name of a play – was set in the early Sixties and the stage was dressed with props from that time. Gate-leg table, chintzy chairs, that sort of stuff and one of those huge standard electric radiograms they had back in those days. You'll be too young to remember them, maybe.

Great big bastards they were. They weighed a ton. That's what blew up! I was lookin' straight at it at the time. It just seemed to

disintegrate, and puff outwards in smoke, and everything else on stage along with it. Funny, looking back it's as if it happened in slow motion.'

'Are you certain?'

'Certain? Of course I'm fucking certain. I was there, wasn't I?

There was a lassie standing right alongside it. Lamentable Christ, what a sight! I remember once I saw this big Nigerian soldier take a direct hit from Japanese artillery. The only thing left was his boots. Great big boots they were, with his great big fucking feet still in them. I'd ordered him taste stay under cover. Christ, ye couldnae tell those boys anything at all. Hearts of lions, brains of fieldmice.' His voice tailed off, the awful memory of the evening reviving another horror of the past, taking him back to the jungles of fifty years before.

Skinner calmed the old man's excitement. "Thanks, Charlie.

Thanks very much. You're a good man. You've given us the first eye-witness account we've had since all this business started.' He turned to the young PC. 'Constable, organise a car. Have Mr Forsyth taken home.' The man set off obediently.

Ta,' said Forsyth. 'Ye know, Skinner. All this, it makes me glad I'm not long away from the wooden waistcoat. I grieve for Scotland when this can happen. Good luck to you, son. Catch these fuckers.'

As he left the little man in the canteen, Skinner wondered about his reaction. What kind of man could witness such appalling carnage and still describe it so matter-of-factly? Then he realised quite simply that, perhaps an eighty-year-old could do so: someone knowing that his lease on the planet was running out, taking every day as a bonus, caring only about that day and the next, and hopefully the day beyond. The horror of that evening might be blocked out easily by a man like that, and a strange satisfaction drawn from the privileged position of being an important witness, from the unexpected burst of warmth at being the centre of attention once again, rather than being just another lonely old man shouting his bizarre reminiscences to gather himself an audience.