Skinner's Mission

51

Pamela Masters was waiting in the street when Skinner arrived to collect her, in the spot at which he had dropped her off after dinner the night before. She lived in Leith, in one of the many warehouse conversions which had sprung up along the river-front which ran through Edinburgh’s port.

Over dinner in Vito’s they had talked mostly of work, Skinner telling his new assistant most of the stories behind his more recent high-profile investigations, and she telling him something of her career in marketing, before her life had taken its change of direction.

He had enjoyed the meal, with its fellowship, more than any since his return from the States; in fact, he mused, as he cruised to a halt beside her on the pavement, as much as any he could recall in a long time.

She was dressed informally once again, in well-cut fawn trousers and a close-fitting cream sweater top, with a black blazer, and a cavernous bag slung over her shoulder. She smiled as she slid into the BMW’s front passenger seat. ‘Afternoon, sir,’ she said. He glanced at the clock. It read 12.13 and he had told her to be ready for midday.

‘Sorry once again, Pam,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to this visiting parent routine yet. You haven’t been stood outside since twelve, have you?’

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she lied, ‘only for a couple of minutes or so.’

He swung the car around in the cul-de-sac and headed out on to the road which led to Granton and Newhaven, turning left towards Ferry Road, the most direct route to the Forth Road Bridge.

‘I called Sergeant Whatnot before I left,’ said Skinner as he swept through a green light and on to the A90. ‘He’s got a christening to photograph at three o’clock, but he’ll be expecting us in the pub from around one.’

The Bridge traffic was light for a Spring Sunday, and there was no tailback at the tollbooth. With time to spare, Skinner might have taken the route through Aberdour, Burntisland and Kirkcaldy, but instead he headed up to Halbeath and down the new dual carriageway which had cut the time of the journey from Edinburgh to north-east Fife by around a third.

Without breaking a single speed limit, they rolled down the hill from Lundin Links and into the beachside village of Lower Largo just after 12.55 p.m. The narrow street was full of cars, lined down one side, most with the Glasgow or Edinburgh registration plates of weekend home-owners, and so Skinner had to drive for almost half a mile into the ribbon-like village before he found a parking space.

As he and Masters strolled back towards the Travellers’ Inn, they passed a house with a statue of a ragged figure over the front door. ‘Who’s he?’ asked Pamela.

‘Alexander Selkirk,’ said Skinner. ‘The real-life model for Robinson Crusoe. Born here, but spent years as a castaway on a desert island, with only illiterate tribesmen for company. Bit like being a policeman, really.’

Tam Whatling, Sergeant Whatnot to his colleagues for many years, looked up as they entered his pub. It was busy, warm and welcoming. Most of the customers were congregated around the windows set into the bright western side of the bar, and a mixture of Glaswegian, Edinburgh and Fife accents struggled for domination in a dozen discussions. The DCC and his assistant moved towards a table in the far corner, away from the throng.

The grey-haired, rotund Whatling followed them down to the end of the bar. Skinner reached across to shake his hand. ‘Good to see you again, Tom. This is my PA, Sergeant Pamela Masters.’

‘Good to see you too, sir. And you, Sergeant. What’ll you have? On the house, of course.’

‘I’ll have a pint shandy, and Pamela’ll have . . .’ He looked at her.

‘Beck’s, please.’

‘. . . and a couple of filled rolls if you have them. But we’ll pay our way. I’ve come to ask you for a favour, not drink away your profits.’

Ex-Sergeant Whatnot poured the drinks and laid four ham rolls on red-trimmed plates, but firmly rejected the ten pound note which Skinner pushed across the counter. ‘No thank you, Mr Skinner. I’m on quite a good pension, you know. You and the Sergeant take a seat at yon table there, and I’ll join you once my wife comes in to take over the bar.’

Skinner and Masters had just finished the ham rolls when Tom Whatling sat down beside them, carrying a steaming mug of tea. He turned his left wrist towards the DCC showing the gold watch with which he had been presented on his retirement.

‘There you are, sir. Still going strong. The gold hasn’t begun to wear off yet either.

‘Now, what can I do for you?’

Skinner looked at him, straight in the eye. ‘I’m looking for some photographs, Tom. They were taken eighteen years ago, by two officers who attended a fatal road accident in East Lothian. The victim was my wife.’

Whatling’s jolly face grew solemn as his heavy eyebrows knitted together.

‘I’ve spoken to George Shields, and he told me that negatives of that sort of occurrence would normally have been destroyed by now. But he said that you salvaged quite a few of them . . . for your memoirs.’

Whatling nodded. ‘That was what I said, and that was what I meant at the time. But Christ, with the pub and with my photographic work, I’m busier now than I’ve ever been. I think I’ll be retiring again in two or three years, the way things are going.’

He looked across the table at Skinner. ‘There was another reason for keeping those negatives. I love photography, but I value it too. I think that fire, the wheel, the printing press, photography and penicillin are the five most important discoveries that mankind has ever made.

‘Photographs are a record of history, good or bad, and I think that it’s a crime to destroy even a single one. It’s like drowning kittens because you can’t find homes for them. If you try hard enough, you can always find a home. I worked in the photographic unit for twenty years. Nobody realised it, not even George Shields, because I made light of it, but during that time I rescued as many negatives as I could that were marked for destruction.

‘I didn’t get them all. When I was on holiday, or on courses and the like, some would go into the fire. But if the pictures that you’re looking for aren’t on file anywhere, there’s a fair chance that I’ll have them.’

He paused, the frown returning to his big bluff face. ‘But tell me one thing, Mr Skinner. Suppose you do find what you’re after. What do you expect to get from it, after all this time?’

‘Satisfaction, Tom,’ said the DCC quietly. ‘Evidence that my wife died because the car had been sabotaged in an attempt to get me. Either that or the peace of mind of knowing that I’m completely wrong.’

Whatling nodded, and drained his mug. ‘Okay. Come on with me.’ He stood up and led the way out of the busy pub, Skinner and Masters following at his heels.

Next door to the Travellers’ Inn was a small shop, with an array of lavishly framed wedding photographs displayed in its single window. Whatling produced keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, disabled the alarm, and stepped inside. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to three high, grey, roll-down storage cabinets. ‘Everything’s in there.’

He stepped across to the cabinet on the left, knelt, and rolled up the front. Inside, negatives were suspended row upon row. ‘Eighteen years ago, you said. If I’ve got them, they’ll be somewhere in the lower half of this cabinet.’ He reached in and drew out a metal bar, from which hung a dozen strips of negative, each with twelve frames. ‘That’s how they’re stored,’ he said, holding it up to the light. ‘At the top of each strip you’ll find a number. That’s the file number of each incident, and that’s how you identify the negs without looking at them. Not the most helpful system in the world, but that’s the way they did it.’

Skinner sighed. ‘Oh bugger! I’ve left the report at home, and I’ve no idea what the number was. We’ll need to look at the lot.’

‘Don’t panic,’ said Whatling. ‘It’s not quite that bad. Each reference includes a series of letters telling you what sort of incident it was, like HB means house-breaking, ASS means assault and FA means fatal accident.’

He opened a door beside the filing cabinets and, beckoning them to follow, stepped through to another room. It was bigger than the shop, and full of equipment. ‘This is my processing room. What you should do is sort out all the FA negatives, then feed them through this viewer. Look.’ He took one of the strips from the rack which he held and fed it into a slot at the side of the machine. He threw a switch and an image of a negative frame appeared on a small flat screen above, magnified around twelve times.

‘It’s difficult to make out detail in negative,’ said Whatling, ‘but with luck you should be able to tell when you’ve found what you’re after . . . if it’s there.’

He withdrew the negative strip, leaving the screen shining silver, stepped through to the shop and replaced the metal bar in the cabinet.

From behind the shop counter, he picked up a huge canvas bag. ‘I’ve got to get to the old Kirk in Upper Largo to set up for my christening, so I’ll leave you here to get on with it.

‘I’ll be back at five. If you’ve found what you’re after by then, I’ll do you some prints. There’s the key, in case you need to step out for some air.’ He stopped in the doorway. ‘Tell you one thing,’ he said, with a grim smile. ‘I’d rather have my afternoon than yours, any day.’

As the door closed behind Whatling, Masters looked up at her boss. ‘What did he mean by that?’

Skinner’s eyebrows rose. ‘He meant, Sergeant,’ he said, unsmiling, with nerves clutching at the pit of his stomach, ‘that looking through photographs of fatal accident scenes, even in negative form, is no-one’s idea of a fun time.’

He looked down at her. ‘I should have thought of that, Pamela. Look, you don’t have to do this. It’s above and beyond the call. If you like, you can go for a walk; or wait in the car, or in the pub.’

She smiled up at him, dropped her bag to the floor, slipped off her blazer and threw it across the counter of ex-Sergeant Whatnot’s shop. She shook her head, the neon tubes above picking out highlights in her hair.

‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to it.’