Skinner's Mission

45

The roar of the crowd in the rebuilt Tynecastle engulfed them as Maggie Rose turned off grey-tenemented Gorgie Road, and parked in the enclosure towards which she had been directed by a uniformed officer. It rose and fell, a joining of two giant voices each singing out its alarm, expectation, disappointment and exultation.

As they reached the entrance to the main grandstand the sound rose in a crescendo and became a single, sustained shriek of joy. ‘Somebody’s scored,’ said Sammy Pye, a closet Rangers supporter.

There was a lone policeman on duty at the gate, together with a security guard employed by Heart of Midlothian Football Club, or the Jam Tarts, as they are known by the entire population of Edinburgh; some friends, some foes, very few indifferent.

Rose and Pye showed their warrant cards. ‘We’re looking for Jimmy Lee,’ the Chief Inspector said to the doorman.

‘Ye’ll no’ get him till time up, hen. He’ll be up in his seat among the Willie Bauld Restaurant guests.’

Maggie fixed him with the special steely glare which she reserved for men who called her ‘hen’. ‘If I want him, I’ll get him,’ she said, then paused. ‘But we’ll wait till full-time. How long is there to go?’

‘About thirty-five minutes,’ said Pye.

‘On yis go through and watch the rest,’ said the steward. ‘There’s no seats, but if yis go through that door on the left,’ he pointed through the entrance hall, ‘it’ll take ye out on to the pitch. Yis can watch the rest frae the entrance tae the tunnel. Yis’ll find Superintendent Johnston there.’ Rose nodded. Fred Johnston was commander of the police division which took in Tynecastle.

‘S’a great game so far. The Jambos have just gone one up.’

‘How do you know who scored?’ Maggie asked. ‘You’ve never left the door.’

‘Listen,’ said the man, putting hand to ear.

Inside the stadium, the great single voice of Jambo support boomed out an anthem.

Can ye hear the Rangers sing?

Cannae hear a fuckin’ thing,

Nana Na Na Na Na!

‘Ahh,’ said the Chief Inspector. She and Pye followed the steward’s directions. A narrow passageway led them past two rooms from which emerged an overpowering liniment smell, then round to the right and up a slight incline towards the field.

As they emerged into the open air of the arena, floodlit even in the daylight hours, the atmosphere sent shivers through them. Opposite and on either side the three newly-built cantilevered grandstands towered a hundred feet above their heads, each packed tight, blue colours predominant on the left, maroon on the right. Behind them, the crowd in the old stand bayed for more Rangers’ blood, as on the field, Hearts pressed home their advantage against the league leaders, looking to spoil a million football-pool coupons and fixed-odds betting lines.

As Rose and Pye stood there, suddenly overwhelmed, a tall uniformed man, carrying a walkie-talkie and wearing an overcoat and silver-braided, peaked cap bore sternly down upon them. His expression softened as he recognised the red-headed Rose. ‘Hello, Maggie,’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’

‘We need to interview someone called Jimmy Lee. The doorman sent us through here to wait for time up.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Superintendent Johnston, leaning close to make himself heard. ‘But you can’t stay here.’ He pointed to his left, past the Rangers management team in their technical area, who were leaping, jumping and gesticulating manically as they urged on their players. ‘There are two seats down beside the ambulance men. Sit yourselves down there. Go back to the entrance at full-time and I’ll have Jimmy Lee brought to you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rose. ‘Has it been a good game?’

‘Wouldn’t know,’ said Johnston. ‘The game’s the last thing I can watch.’ They realised for the first time that the man was as tense as a drawn bowstring. ‘I’ve got about eighteen thousand people in here, most of them hysterical, and they’ll all be funnelling out into tight exit roads at the end.

‘Rangers need at least a point out of this game, and if they don’t get it, I’ll have ten thousand very unhappy Bluenoses to control.’

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,’ shouted the Chief Inspector, over a sudden scream as the Rangers goalkeeper pulled off a seemingly impossible save.

They settled into their seats beside the first aid team, who were Hearts supporters to a man. As the game wore on the home side continued to press their advantage, looking for the game-winning second goal. The champions’ rock-solid defence seemed on the verge of collapse several times, but on each occasion, as if heeding the cries of their support, they simply refused to surrender.

Gradually, as the Hearts players began to tire, they began to command more of the ball. But the home-bred Tynecastle defenders were as heroic as their cosmopolitan counterparts, and they dug in desperately to hold on to their winning lead.

The referee’s whistle was almost in his mouth to blow full-time when the ball was swept out of midfield and down the right towards the Gorgie end and Hearts goal. Danish, Dutch and English genius combined. A perfectly weighted cross curved towards the far post, where, defying both age and gravity, Rangers’ legendary striker rose, leaping and hanging in the air like a salmon fighting its way back to its spawning ground against the river’s flow, to send a header bulleting into the back of the net for the equaliser.

Half of the crowd leapt up, waving colours in triumph, screaming their joy across the floodlit stadium. The rest sank back into their plastic seats, howling their disappointment and wringing their club colours between their hands.

The restart was a formality. As soon as the ball was in motion, three loud blasts of the referee’s whistle ended the game. Rose and Pye stood with the rest and applauded as the drained, exhausted players left the field, shaking hands as professional colleagues, the animosities of battle forgotten.

Maggie turned and looked up, for the first time, into the main grandstand. She scanned the crowd until, in the central area behind the directors’ box, she caught sight of Brian Mackie. He looked more sombre than ever.

As Fred Johnston had instructed, they made their way back to the entrance, past the closed dressing-room doors, through which the managers’ voices could be heard. They waited there for almost ten minutes before a slim, dark-haired figure made his way towards them, wearing a maroon blazer with a crested badge, a white shirt and club tie. He was led by a uniformed woman officer.

Rose and Pye stepped forward. ‘Mr Lee?’ asked the Chief Inspector. The young man nodded. He was in his mid-twenties, slim and strikingly handsome. The heavy limp with which he walked seemed entirely out of place.

‘DCI Rose and DC Pye. We need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere quiet?’

Jimmy Lee looked around. ‘This place is bedlam. All the function suites will be full. Let’s go across to my office.’

He led the way, slowly, out of the grandstand and across to a small single-storey building which housed the Hearts shop and commercial offices. As he walked, stopping occasionally to acknowledge a fan or return a handshake, the two detectives could see how badly he was handicapped.

Finally they reached the entrance door to the office suite. Lee opened it with a key, and showed them to a small room at the back. ‘In here,’ he said. The room was furnished with a desk and four chairs. Against one wall cardboard cartons marked, ‘Away strips’, were piled almost to the ceiling. In the far corner, stood two metal elbow crutches.

‘D’you still use those?’ asked Sammy Pye, pointing.

‘Most of the time. Not on match days though. I don’t like the punters to see me like that.’ Lee settled awkwardly into the chair behind the desk as the police officers took seats facing them. ‘So what’s this about?’ he asked, in a quiet, articulate voice.

‘Do you know a man named Evan Mulgrew?’ asked Rose.

The former footballer smiled. ‘No, I can’t say I do. Mulgrew isn’t a common name among Jambos. Why?’

‘Because we interviewed Mulgrew today in Peterhead Prison. He made allegations about you, a man named Ricky McCartney and another man named Douglas Terry.’ Briefly but graphically she repeated Mulgrew’s story.

‘Was Mulgrew telling the truth, Mr Lee? Was that what happened to you?’

The young man’s face had gone chalk white. He winced occasionally, as if recalling the agony of his attack. At last he looked across at Rose and Pye. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘Tell us about it,’ the Chief Inspector said, gently.

Lee leaned back in his chair, composing himself. ‘No point keeping my mouth shut now, I suppose,’ he said.

‘It was the life, you see. Players train in the mornings, and unless we’ve got businesses outside football, the rest of the day’s our own.

‘We get bored. You can only go to the movies so often. And anyway, we’re sportsmen. So some of us go to the bookies and play the horses. A few of us get out of control. We think we’re infallible because we’re young and famous, with a few quid in our pockets. But we find out that we’re wrong.

‘I was down a hundred grand.’

Pye whistled. ‘To which bookie?’

‘The John Jackson shop just along the road. The fact is I didn’t really know one end of a horse from another. When it came to winners I couldn’t pick my nose. Eventually, Dougie Terry - he runs all the Jackson shops - came in one day and told me that I was barred, and that he wanted my tab paid off in three months.

‘I told him that if he waited till the end of the season, in six months, I’d ask for a transfer and settle up with him out of my signing on fee. Not that I wanted a transfer, mind. I only ever wanted to be a Jambo. A few months before that Rangers had offered one and a half million for me, but I’d turned them down. Pissed the chairman off no end, I’ll tell you.’ He grinned at the recollection.

‘But Dougie Terry said, no, three months it is.

‘I did the best I could. Every bonus went straight to Terry, but after two and a half months I was still eighty thousand down.’

He paused and took a deep breath. ‘One day, I was leaving the ground after training, and Ricky McCartney stopped me. I knew him from around the betting shop.

‘He said that Terry had sent him to make me an offer.’

Rose held up a hand. ‘He actually said that Terry had sent him?’

‘Yes. He said that Terry’s boss - I don’t know who that is - had been approached by a Malaysian gambling syndicate. The Jambos were drawn in the cup against some non-league team from Melrose. They had got there on merit but the odds on us to win were astronomical. McCartney said that Terry wanted me to make sure that we lost. I was to get our goalie in on the act and we were to fix it. If I did that, my tab was clear.’

‘And if you didn’t?’

‘McCartney made it clear that it wasn’t a request. He said that if I liked being a footballer, I’d better make it work.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘You must know what I did. I never said a word to our goalie, but he had a bad day and let one in in the first half. I got a dead leg early on, and it took me about an hour to run it off. But once I was moving freely it was easy.’ He smiled, sadly. ‘I was quite a player.’

‘You never considered letting the game go?’ she asked. ‘Not even when you were a goal down, and you were injured, and no-one would have known.’

Lee gasped audibly, and looked across at her with genuine shock on his face. ‘I’m a Jambo, Miss Rose. And I’m . . . or was . . . a professional footballer. Ours is the most honest game in the world, and this is one of the oldest and finest clubs in the world.

‘It’s unthinkable that any footballer would try to fix a game. That any Jambo would . . . I just can’t find the words.’

The Chief Inspector nodded. ‘I believe you. But why didn’t you report it to us?’

Lee smiled again, ruefully. ‘Because if I had, the truth about my gambling would have come out, and the fans would never have forgiven me. And because I was scared of Ricky McCartney.’

‘Yet you went ahead and won the game?’

‘Yes. I suppose I thought that I’d get away with it, that I was untouchable, and that after all, Terry would wait for me to get a transfer. I was wrong again.’

‘What happened, Jimmy?’ Maggie rose asked, gently. ‘On the night.’

Lee drew in his breath and furrowed his brow. ‘I was going home after a game. My last game. I still lived with my parents in Wester Hailes. I was nearly there when a guy stopped me and asked for an autograph. The place was deserted as usual. We were just chatting, when I was jumped and dragged off behind the building.

‘There were five of them. Ricky McCartney and four others. I recognised one of them - his name’s Barney something - but not the others. They were all wearing Hibs hats and scarves, and the other three had them over their faces.

‘McCartney said to me, “You made a big mistake, son. Dougie Terry’s boss had to pay off those Malaysians. Now you’re going to pay him off.” Then they set about me.’ He closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. He was trembling.

‘McCartney shoved a Hibs cap in my mouth, to stop me screaming. The other three used baseball bats, but he and Barney had big hammers. The three guys concentrated on my legs. McCartney and Barney battered my knees and my ankles with the hammers.

‘I fainted after a while. When I came to, they were gone. And so was I, as a footballer. I nearly lost both legs. I would have, but for an absolutely brilliant orthopaedic surgeon up at the PMR. I’ve got plastic knees and metal braced ankles now, but at least I can walk after a fashion.’

‘Why did you say it was Hibs fans who attacked you?’ asked Pye.

Lee shook his head. ‘I never did. I just said that they were wearing Hibs scarves, which was true. I just didn’t identify McCartney or Barney, that was all.’

‘Why not?’ asked Rose.

‘Because I was terrified, that’s why.’

‘Was that the end of it?’

‘Like hell! I got a hundred and fifty grand from my insurance, and Dougie Terry took the lot. But the club gave me a testimonial and that raised another eighty-five thousand. The organisers had that put in Trust, so they couldn’t touch it. The Chairman gave me a job on the staff too, so I could still be a Jambo. I always will be.’

‘We’re going to arrest McCartney,’ said Rose. ‘Will you identify him now?’

Jimmy Lee looked at her, as if making a decision, then nodded. ‘If you can guarantee me protection from him, I will. There’s no point in keeping my gambling secret any longer. Who’s to care? I’m just another ex-player on crutches.’

‘About Barney, the other man,’ said the policewoman. ‘That was almost certainly Bernard Cogan, a known associate of McCartney. He was killed in a pub fight about two years ago. It would help if we could identify at least one of the other men involved. How about the man who stopped you? Can you describe him?’

Lee nodded, emphatically. ‘Definitely. He was heavy built, with a big moustache and a scar across his forehead. ’ He drew a finger diagonally from his hairline down to his right eyebrow. ‘He was a real poser. It was cold, but he was wearing a maroon vest. He had a big tattoo on his right shoulder. A vulture, I think.’

Rose laughed in triumph. ‘Evan Mulgrew! We know where to find him, and I’ll bet that he’ll sing like a bird.’

She slapped the desk. ‘Come in Douglas Terry, your time is up. Or rather, it’s only just beginning!’