Skinner's ghosts

3

The house was so familiar to him. He walked past the uniformed officers who stood guard at the head of the driveway, his sandals crunching their way up the narrow gravel path which led from the gate.

The front door was open. He stepped into the hal, pul ing on a white scene-of-crime tunic and overshoes before venturing further.

Properly clad now and knowing exactly where he was going, he strode into the drawing room, then through to the wooden conservatory.

Around him, specialist technicians were bent over their work, dusting down doors, windows and furniture for fingerprints, in the hope that one – even a fragment of one – would have been left by the intruder rather than by Leona or her son. Skinner nodded approval of the team's tenacity, even though experience told him that the chances of their work being rewarded were around one in five.

As he stepped back into the hall he col ided with another white-suited figure, three or four inches shorter in height than his own six foot two, but distinctive, with his shock of red hair.

'Hello Inspector,' he said grimly. 'How's it going?'

'All the mess is upstairs, sir. It looks clean as a whistle down here,' said Arthur Dorward, confirming Skinner's pessimism. 'The back door's been jemmied, but other than that, nothing's disturbed. Mrs McGrath's in the front bedroom, top of the stairs.

'That's where you'l find Mr Martin.'

The DCC nodded. 'Come with me then. I'l welcome your insight.

ME still here, is he?'

Inspector Dorward nodded. 'Aye, sir. Dr Banks as usual.' He paused. 'He's not a patch on his predecessor, if you don't mind my saying so.'

He did mind, very much, but he let it pass. There was no point in taking his bitterness out on an honest soldier like the scene-of-crime Inspector, especial y when he knew that he was speaking no more than the truth. Dr Sarah Grace Skinner was the best murder-scene examiner he had ever encountered, gifted with an uncanny ability to paint compelling pictures of events from the very slightest of clues. As he and Dorward climbed the stair a huge pang of regret shot through him.

Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Martin, Head of CID, was standing in the doorway of the bedroom as they reached the upper landing, leaning against its upright, his broad back to them in its white suit.

Skinner stepped up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing him out into the hal. 'Hi, son,' he said quietly. 'Is Banks nearly finished?'

Martin nodded. 'You know him. He's taken forever, but he's just about done now.'

'Mmm,' said the DCC. 'I suppose I'd better take a look then.' He made a conscious effort to brace himself as he stepped into the room.

Skinner believed deeply that every good police officer had a tolerance limit when it came to viewing the bodies of murder victims.

He knew that he had passed his own a long time before. One of the benefits of Chief Officer rank was the ability to delegate, to opt out personal y from the messy end, where once he would have attended automatical y.

Yet some circumstances, like the murder of a public figure, and this, the murder of a woman who had come to be a very close friend, stil demanded his presence. And of course, once there, on view himself, he could show no weakness.

He thought that he had prepared himself mentally for what he would see, but a moan still escaped his lips as he looked at the body of Leona McGrath.

'Oh, no,' said Bob Skinner, out loud for al to hear. 'You poor wee lass. What bastard did that to you?'

And then the rage – cold, blind, savage rage – took over. 'When I lay hands on you, whoever you may be…' he hissed.

'I think we all feel like that, sir,' said Martin, his green eyes narrowed slightly and his shoulders bunched.

Skinner knelt beside the body. The little woman… she had been not much over five feet tall… lay on her back. Her arms were twisted under her and the policeman knew without looking that the wrists were bound together. She was naked, save for a brassiere, still fastened, but forced up above her breasts. She was covered in blood.

From her vagina, it was matted in her thick growth of pubic hair, and smeared across her thighs and belly. From her nose and mouth, it was spread across her face, shoulders and chest, staining the white bra. From her left ear ran a single crimson line. Before her heart had stopped pumping, it had flowed into a puddle, congealed now on the fawn-coloured carpet.

Great vivid bruises and welts showed all over her pallid, yellowish skin. The most vivid were on her face, and on her side, just below her left breast, as if a fist had pounded on her, time and time again.

Her face was swol en grotesquely, from the beating and from the white garments – panties, he guessed, possibly more than one pair 10 which had been stuffed into her mouth. A single black nylon stocking had been wound around her neck, more than once, as a strangling ligature, then tied off, ferociously tight. The flesh around it was blue and puffed.

Finally, when he could avoid them no longer, Skinner looked at her eyes. They were bulging, staring up at him, and so ful of anger and remonstration that he winced and looked away for a second, before closing them, almost reverently, with his right hand.

Gently, he turned her on to her side. Her wrists were indeed bound, with the electric cord of a black hair-dryer. Just above the blood which was caked on her buttocks, there were vivid red marks where its plug had been crushed into her flesh. He leaned closer, to look at her hands.

Her fingernails were long, and appeared to be painted with a hard clear varnish. On the tips of three, on her right hand, he could see what appeared to be blood.

He glanced up at Martin. 'Andy,' he said. 'Untie her hands, while I hold her, would you.' Without a word, the grim-faced Head ofCID did as he was asked.

'Plastic bags on the hands, please Doctor,' said Skinner to the Medical Examiner, who stood a few feet away. 'There's blood on her nails, and it might not be hers.' He rol ed the body over, and laid her face down, partly to help Banks cover her fingers and partly to hide her poor battered features from the others in the room. Almost without thinking, he unfastened the bra.

The doctor set the clear plastic covers in place over the dead fingers, securing them with elastic bands, snapped into place around the weals left in the wrists by the binding cable. He stood up, beside the DCC.

'Well?' asked Skinner.

'Whoever did this wasn't messing about,' said Banks. 'She was raped, and sodomised, pretty savagely, thumped around a bit, then strangled. Don't worry about fingernail scrapings,' he said dismissively.

'You'l find al the DNA you need in other places.'

Astonishingly, he smiled at the detectives, from one to the other.

'The press'11 have a field day with this. I expect I'll be all over the telly when I come to give evidence at the trial.'

Skinner felt himself come to boiling point, but it was the normally unflappable Andy Martin who exploded first. 'Are you enjoying this, Banks?' he shouted. The DCC stared at him in surprise, unable to remember ever having heard his friend raise his voice in anger.

'You know something, you little shit,' barked the Head of CID.

'I've never liked you; nor has anyone else on our team. You turn up late at crime scenes, then you give us half-arsed reports which don't usual y help us one bit. But the worst thing about you is your total lack of respect.

'We knew that lady lying there, Mr Skinner and I. This is a personal tragedy for us. She was worth a dozen of you, and in death she wil be treated with honour, not as a vehicle to advance your personal reputation.'

He stepped close to the doctor and prodded him in the chest with his broad right index finger. 'You can bet on this, Banks. You wil not be cal ed as a witness in the trial of Leona's killer. The pathologist's evidence will be enough. And you can bet on this also. You're at your last crime scene in this city, and with this force.

'First thing tomorrow, I will see to it personally that your name is removed from our list of medical examiners. Now, I think you'd better leave… before you make me lose my temper.'

Doctor Banks' face went from white to red in a couple of seconds.

'You can't do that,' he spluttered.

Skinner leaned forward, took him by the arm, and led him towards the door, past an astonished Inspector Dorward. 'Too fucking right he can, mate,' he said. 'Too fucking right.' He eased the doctor out on to the landing. 'Send the mortuary people up as you leave,' he ordered, and closed the door in his face. His mouth was set, tight and grim, as he turned back to Martin. 'Good for you, son,' he said, softly.

'Couldn't have done better myself.'

He glanced across at the red-haired inspector. 'Right, Arthur. Let's have your observations.' A sudden thought struck him. 'No, before that. Where are Mcllhenney and Pye?'

'I sent them off to see the grandparents,' said Martin, 'to check whether Mark's with them.'

Skinner nodded. 'Good. You could hardly have telephoned, right enough. Okay, Arthur, sorry. Carry on.'

Dorward coughed, clearing his throat. As he did so, the door opened, and two dark-uniformed mortuary workers, a man and a woman, entered, carrying a brown plastic coffin.

The three policemen stood aside. As the bloody, naked body of Leona McGrath was lifted and placed gently in its makeshift container Skinner turned away and looked out of the bedroom window into the street, lit by the summer evening sun, which shone on a smal crowd of around a dozen onlookers, and on a larger number of reporters, photographers and television cameramen. Their number had doubled since his arrival. He guessed that the tip-off industry had done its stuff once again. As he watched them he saw a camera raised and trained upon him. Quickly he reached across and pul ed the curtains closed.

When he turned back the coffin was gone. 'Arthur,' he said. 'At last.'

'Yes sir,' said Dorward. He paused for a few seconds, then went on. 'The only relevant comment I have to make is that Mrs McGrath must have been surprised in this room. Look over there.' He pointed 12 to a wardrobe door, which lay open. 'And there.' He pointed to a dressing-table drawer from which items of underwear hung. 'And there.' He pointed to a chair, across which denim jeans and a white blouse had been laid neatly.

'There are no signs of a struggle downstairs,' said Dorward, 'and precious few in here. No torn clothes, nothing like that. If you look in the en suite bathroom, you'l find a damp towel. I'd guess that Mrs McGrath was getting ready to go out when she was attacked.

'Her assailant burst in on her and found her virtual y naked. Maybe rape wasn't on his mind till then.'

'Or their minds,' Martin interrupted.

'That's true, sir,' Dorward agreed. 'But semen testing will tell us whether there was more than one rapist.'

'So what was on the kil er's mind… singular or plural?' asked Skinner. 'Robbery?'

Dorward shrugged. 'It doesn't look like it, boss. There's a handbag downstairs, in plain view on the kitchen table, so that the intruder must have walked past it. There's about a hundred and fifty quid in there, in cash. There's an antique clock on the mantelpiece in the living room that's worth a couple of grand. There was a diamond engagement ring stil on her finger, and more jewel ery on the dressing table. There's a briefcase in her study, but no papers seem to have been disturbed.

'No sir. Not robbery. That's pretty certain.'

'Then what?' Skinner barked the question, not at Dorward, but at the ceiling, feeling an uncomfortable nagging knot forming in the pit of his stomach as one possible answer grew larger in his mind.

He glanced across at Martin. 'Who was it found her?'

'Her constituency chair, a woman cal ed Marks. She was just babbling nonsense when I got here. Banks gave her a sedative, and I had her taken home. With luck we'l get sense out of her tomorrow.'

'Let's hope so. We've got people interviewing neighbours, yes?'

'Yes. Clan Pringle's people are doing that.' Skinner nodded approval. Detective Superintendent Clan Pringle was Divisional Head of CID for the greater part of the City of Edinburgh. With him in charge there would be no chance of sloppiness.

'Where will you base the investigation?'

The DCS shrugged. 'Headquarters, I thought, rather than the Divisional Office. We've got everything we need at Fettes, plus we have more room to handle the press. With the political involvement, this wil be no ordinary murder enquiry.'

'I can't argue with that,' said Skinner. 'When are you going to see the press?'

'I've told Alan Royston to set up a briefing for seven thirty. Do you want to take it?'

The older man shook his head. 'No. You're Head of CID. That's your job.'

'They'll expect you,' said Martin doubtfully.

'Well they're not fucking having me, and that's an end of it. You take the first press conference, then leave the later briefings to Royston. That's what he's paid for.'

'Okay.'The DCS paused. 'Here,' he asked, casually, 'd'you know if Royston's still involved with Pam Masters? I know he was for a while. Did she mention anything when she worked for you?'

Inwardly, Skinner gulped. He stared at Martin, looking for anything devious in his eyes, yet seeing nothing. 'That finished a long time ago,' he said at last. 'What made you bring that up?'

Martin smiled. 'Plain old-fashioned curiosity, that's all. I've never known an officer who keeps her private life as private as she does.'

'So much for Pam s notions about Alex and Andy's shared conclusion,' he thought. He might have told his friend the truth there and then had not Neil Mcllhenney's shout drifted up from the hal way.

'Sir? You still up there?'

'Yes,' Skinner called out in reply, suddenly relieved by the interruption. 'We're on our way down though.'

Leaving Dorward to carry on his painstaking work in the bedroom, the two senior officers descended the staircase. Detective Sergeant Mcllhenney, Skinner's personal assistant, stood waiting in the hall with Detective Constable Sammy Pye, one of Martin's staff officers. The two flanked a tal man in his seventies, silver hair, pale and shaking.

'Hel o, Mr McGrath,' said the DCC, advancing on him with hand outstretched. The two had met for the first time at the scene of the death of the old man's son. On that occasion he had been dignified and purposeful. Skinner guessed that this would prove one bereavement too many. Harold McGrath seemed overwhelmed. Gently the tal policeman slid an arm around his shoulders and led him into the living room.

'Neil,' he said quietly, over his shoulder. 'Whisky. Over there, on the sideboard.' As the heavily built sergeant picked up decanter and glass, the dead woman's father-in-law lowered himself carefully into an armchair.

'Sergeant Mcllhenney has obviously told you what happened,' said Skinner, glancing across at his assistant as he spoke and noticing for the first time the strain in his normally jolly eyes.

'Yes,' the old man whispered.

There's nothing I can say to lessen the shock, or the horror of it,' said the detective. 'We al knew your daughter-in-law; we admired her tremendously. We're stunned too. But believe me, we will catch whoever did this, and we will put him away for the rest of his miserable life.'

'It was a man then?' asked old McGrath, bewildered, seeming to age before their very eyes. Skinner guessed that Mcllhenney had spared much of the detail. 'Beyond a doubt,' he replied, gently.

'Where's my grandson?' said the old man suddenly, urgently.

A sudden desperation hit the DCC, the earlier pang of concern gripping him now with a fierce certainty. 'He's not with you, then?'

The silver head shook. 'No. Leona said she would bring him over before she went to her constituency meeting. When she didn't turn up, my wife and I assumed that she had taken him with her after all.

She did sometimes, like a sort of mascot.

'So where is he?'

'That's just the thing, Mr McGrath. We don't know.' The old man looked up at him, his mouth slightly open.

'Look,' said Skinner. 'Does he have any pals around here? Could Leona have taken him somewhere else, before she was attacked?'

'No,' said the grandfather. 'I don't think so. Al Mark's friends are away on holiday just now. We were supposed to be going too, on Sunday, now that the House of Commons has risen.'

'You're sure there's no-one still at home, no pal where he could have gone?'

'Quite sure. Leona remarked on the fact just last night, on the telephone.'

'How about Leona's parents?' asked Martin. 'Are they still alive?'

Mr McGrath looked round at him, over his shoulder, clutching the whisky which Mcl henney had pressed into his shaking hand.

'Her mother is. Her name's Mrs Baillie, Mary Baillie. She lives in Broughty Ferry. But she's on holiday as well, in Greece with a friend.

They left last Sunday, from Glasgow Airport.'

Skinner turned to his assistant. 'Neil,' he said. 'Fast as you can, get on to the tour operators and trace Mrs Baillie. This is going to break very fast through satellite television. I don't want the poor woman to hear of her daughter's death from a Sky newscaster.

'Andy,' he said quickly to Martin. 'You'd better postpone your briefing till we've contacted the mother. Meantime, we'd better mobilise every available officer, CID and uniformed. I want an inch-by-inch search of the surrounding area. If Mark escaped from the house he could be hiding out somewhere. Whatever, if he's anywhere around here, we've got to find him!'

He stabbed the air with a finger. 'Every available officer remember, whether they're off duty or not. I'll even call the Chief and ACC

Elder. You turn out al your team.' He paused, then added as a seeming afterthought, 'Try and raise Pam Masters again. You never know.

She might be home by now.'