Skinner's ghosts

50

'Bob, I thought the Lord Advocate told you to stay away from here.'

Andy Martin looked up in surprise as the door of his office opened and they entered. Pam had noticed his car in the rear park, but Skinner had known already that with the search for the kidnapper in ful swing, and with his own absence, there would be no more days off for his friend for the foreseeable future.

'He can try having me arrested, or he can sue me, or he can piss off.'

He took a tape from his pocket and laid it on the desk. 'Play this.'

Without a word, Martin picked up the cassette, reached across without standing up to put it in the player, and listened in grim glowering silence to the child's desperate message.

'Bastard,' he hissed, very quietly, when it was finished.

'Another one for the specialists, Andy.' He wrote down a name and a number. 'Here's who to cal. That's a copy. I've got the original in an envelope in my pocket.' He patted his jacket. 'Sergeant, would you like to fly it down to London?'

Pam, surprised, nodded.

'Good. I'l drive you to the airport and pick you up. You'l be safe travelling, and in London, I reckon.'

He turned back to Martin. 'Anything strike you about the message?'

'You mean apart from the cruelty of Mark finding out about his mother's death?' the Head of CID growled. 'One thing,' he went on. 'That's what he said. "He has one more thing stil to do", before he tells us what he's up to. That one thing was kil ing our Mr Sweeney, no doubt. So we can expect to hear from him any time now.'

'No, I don't think that was it. Have you got a time of death on Sweeney yet?'

'About four o'clock on Thursday'

'That figures. You see, I don't think Mr Gilbert knew that he'd have to take the risk of killing Sweeney until he heard the news bulletin recorded on the tape. He must have known then that only Carr could have given us that detailed a picture, and he must have guessed too that we had the phoney number plate from the caravan.

Only at that point did it become a bigger risk to leave Sweeney alive than to kil him.'

Skinner stabbed at the table with a finger. 'So,' he said vehemently.'Mark's "one more thing" means something else. The guy's going to pul another stunt, maybe an even bigger stunt, and there he is, the cocky bastard, telling us… telling me… about it, knowing that I haven't clue where to start looking.'

His face twisted into a scowl of frustration. 'You haven't gone public on the link between the McGrath investigation and the Sweeney murder, have you?'

'Christ no. I didn't want to start a feeding frenzy in the media.'

'Quite right: you'd just have added to the pressure on the troops, and on yourself

The two detectives sat for a while, staring ahead, neither looking at the other, each concentrating so hard on possibilities that they almost failed to react when Pam broke the silence.

'A bigger stunt,' she said. 'He's kil ed an MP and stolen her son.

What could be a bigger stunt, as you put it, than that?'

The words left Skinner's mouth almost without conscious thought.

'To do it again,' he said quietly.

As Martin looked at him, his initial disbelief faded against his knowledge of a hundred other viable kites that his friend had flown in the time that he had known him. 'How many other MPs have young children?' he asked.

'No idea,' said Skinner. 'But the Special Branch offices around the country should know. I think it's time we got on the phone. You dig up McGuire, and I'll contact Strathclyde.'