Skinner's Mission

38

It was as if the vulture was peering out at them. Evan Mulgrew sat across the table, shoulders hunched, in the interview room in the administration block of Peterhead Prison. His prison uniform shirt was unbuttoned almost halfway down, giving Rose and Pye a clear view of part of his right shoulder, and of the bizarre bird’s head.

‘Memorable, all right,’ thought the Chief Inspector. The scavenger’s beady eye stared out at her. From its beak a piece of bloody carrion hung loosely, red and horribly realistic.

Mulgrew caught her glance and smiled. ‘Want to see the rest, hen?’ he said, beginning to unbutton his shirt still further. At once, he was grabbed by one of two big prison officers who were flanking him. He was hauled roughly to his feet, and his arms were held pinned to his sides while the other officer buttoned his shirt tight, up to the neck.

As he was slammed back into his seat Rose smiled evenly across at him. ‘Sunshine,’ she murmured, ‘I’ve seen better at home.

‘D’you know,’ she said, still smiling, ‘my husband nicked you, Mulgrew. Three years ago. He said that when it came to it, you were a pure pussy-cat. Pity you don’t have a cat’s luck. It has nine lives; you attack a judge’s daughter and get a twelve stretch.’

Mulgrew looked away from her and stared out of the barred window. Early Saturday afternoon in northerly Peterhead was much less mild than in Edinburgh, and thick globules of sleety snow were splashing against the glass. ‘Aye okay,’ he muttered. ‘So what d’yis want?’

‘When you were walking about on the outside, Mulgrew,’ Rose began, ‘you used to work out at the Commonwealth Pool.’

‘Aye.’

‘Do you remember talking there to a man called Carl?’

The Vulture scratched his chin. ‘Youngish chap, fair hair?’ Sammy Pye nodded.

‘Aye. So what?’

‘Do you recall,’ asked Rose, ‘telling Carl about a man named Douglas Terry, and about people who did odd jobs for him?’

Mulgrew’s slightly bored expression changed suddenly to one of real concern. ‘I might have done. I cannae remember.’

‘Come on, Evan, Carl didn’t make this story up. You were bragging to him, weren’t you?’

The Vulture looked down at the desk and shrugged his shoulders, very slightly.

‘You told Carl that you knew someone who did heavy work for Terry, and you mentioned specifically an attack on a Hearts footballer, Jimmy Lee.’

Mulgrew shook his head.

Sammy Pye took a chance. ‘Come on, Evan. D’you want us to bring Carl up here? Now, why did you tell him that story? Are you just a windbag, is that it?’

The Vulture stared hotly across at him. ‘You and me in a room, son, and we’ll see wha’s a windbag. I was trying tae sort out if Carl was interested in that sort of work. He said thanks, but he wisna.’

‘So who was the man you knew?’ said Pye.

Mulgrew’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Maggie Rose. ‘What’s in it for me?’ he asked.

The Chief Inspector raised her eyebrows and tossed her red hair. ‘You’re in for attempted rape, so it can’t be much. But we can put a note on your file for the Parole Board. Then maybe, just maybe, mind, we can get you transferred out of this Godawful place, to somewhere like Shotts or Saughton.’

The prisoner sat silent for almost two minutes, fidgeting, chewing his right thumb-nail, glancing occasionally out of the window. At last, he looked across at the two detectives. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll tell yis.

‘The man I mentioned tae Carl was Ricky McCartney. He lives out in Craigmillar, and he works for Dougie Terry.’

‘What do you know about Terry?’ asked Rose.

‘He runs a chain of betting shops and minicab companies. ’

‘What does McCartney do for him?’

‘He puts teams together. Heavies. Like when somebody’s out of order and needs sorting out.’

‘Like Jimmy Lee, you mean?’

‘Aye, like Jimmy Lee.’

‘And how was Jimmy Lee out of order?’

The Vulture hesitated again. ‘Saughton, right?’ Rose nodded.

‘The boy was a big gambler,’ he went on. ‘He was intae Terry’s betting shops for thousands. Terry sent Ricky to tell him that he’d let him off, if he fixed a game. The Jambos were playing some second division team in the League Cup, and the other team were great big odds against. It was an international thing, tied intae fixed odds gambling out in the Far East.

‘If ye check the records of Terry’s bettin’ shops, ye’ll find that he didnae take bets on that game.’

‘We will,’ said Maggie Rose, quietly. ‘So what did Jimmy Lee say?’

‘Nothing. Ricky wasnae giving him a choice.’

‘What did he do?’

Mulgrew smiled, almost respectfully. ‘The Jambos were a goal down wi’ half an hour tae go. Jimmy Lee scored a hat-trick and they won three - one.’

‘And that was why he was done?’

The Vulture nodded. ‘That’s right. A couple of weeks later, after a Saturday game.’

‘Who was on McCartney’s team?’

‘Apart from Ricky himself, I dinna ken. I wis supposed tae be on it, but I twisted ma knee lifting a couple of days before.’

There was a pause and silence hung over the room. It was broken by Sammy Pye. ‘Jimmy Lee always said that Hibs fans attacked him. Why would he do that?’

Mulgrew threw back his head and laughed. ‘The boy’s a true Jambo, son. A true Jambo would accuse the Hibees of bein’ behind the Kennedy assassination.

‘And onywey, he knew that if he’d said anything different, it would have been more than his knees that got broken. A true Jambo would rather die than fix a football match, but not if he had another option.’

‘Tell me,’ asked Rose, casually. ‘In all this was the name Jackie Charles ever mentioned?’

The Vulture smiled again, with a trace of scorn. ‘Miss, the name Jackie Charles is never mentioned. Nobody would be that daft.’

‘Mmm,’ murmured the Chief Inspector, staring at the ceiling. ‘We’ll see. We’ll see.’

She looked back across the table. ‘Where’s Jimmy Lee now?’

‘I can tell you that, ma’am,’ said Sammy Pye, beside her. ‘He’ll be at Tynecastle. The club gave him a job on the commercial staff, selling sponsorship and shaking hands with the guests in the hospitality suites on match days.

‘There’s a home game this afternoon, against Rangers.’

Rose looked up at the wall clock. It showed five minutes past one. ‘In that case,’ she said, pushing her chair back from the table, ‘if we put our foot down, we might just catch the second half.’

Mulgrew looked at the two detectives as they stood up, and as his guards pulled him to his feet. ‘Saughton,’ he said. ‘Remember.’

Maggie Rose nodded. ‘Okay, Evan. We’ll get you back to Edinburgh. And who knows, maybe Dougie Terry and Ricky McCartney can share your old room here.’