Skinner's Mission

62

‘Holy Mother of God - if I may say so - Andy! So all we’ve got to do is trawl through all the Catholic males in Edinburgh one by one, till we find our killer.’

‘Not quite. You can forget McGuire and me for a start, and you can rule out any parishioner of St Magdalena’s.’

‘Can the PNC help, I wonder?’ Skinner mused. ‘Why not ask it to give you all Roman Catholic males with criminal form in the Edinburgh area, aged, say, between twenty-five and forty?’

‘Priorities, boss,’ said Martin. ‘Where am I going to find the manpower to follow it up?’

‘Okay, fine it down a bit more. Add in the old lady’s description of the Slateford killer. See what that gives you.’

‘But there’s no evidence, not even circumstantial, that Carole Charles and Medina were killed by the same person.’

‘Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ said Skinner. ‘It’s only computer time, Andy. Get the data and follow it up when you have people available.’

He fell silent. ‘A thought strikes me about Father Ahern,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe he was trying to tell you something else.’

‘Such as.’

The DCC shook his head. ‘It’s only a thought, and you’ve got enough on your plate. Anyway, it’s an area where we might need to call the Chief back into action, with the tact and diplomacy of which he’s so proud. Leave that to me.’

Martin nodded, turned to leave the office, then stopped. ‘I almost forgot. How did you get on at Shotts?’

Skinner sighed, and sat back in his chair. ‘Well. Too well. I can’t go into detail, because I swore that our conversation would be as privileged as Ahern’s confessional, but if you believe Lennie - as I do, implicitly - then far from being out to kill me, Tony Manson was my guardian angel.’

‘Which leaves you with . . . ?’

‘As far as I can see, with only Jackie Charles. Yet Jackie never did a stupid or reckless thing in his life, and for the life of me, I cannot comprehend why he would want to do anything as daft as that.

‘There has to be someone else, Andy: someone else who cut that pipe. Only I can’t see who it was.’

‘So why not leave it at that, Bob?’ said Martin, softly.

Skinner looked up at him. ‘Believe me, Andrew, with all my heart and soul, I wish that I could. But I have to go on until I find all the answers, even though I have this scary feeling that I’m never going to find the one that will let me live in peace.’

He pushed himself up in his chair and grabbed a file from his in-tray. ‘Still, this life goes on. Ask Pam to look in on me as you leave, will you.’

‘Ahh,’ said the Head of CID. ‘Something else I have to tell you. I’ve borrowed her.’

Skinner’s eyebrows rose in an unspoken query.

‘I’ve had a car take her up to Companies House, up in Saltire Court. The search of the Charles property company drew a blank. Only it did seem to confirm that, at one time, he did use his properties for private purposes.

‘So I thought to myself, suppose, after those two raids, Jackie decided that was too risky. A little while back he rolled three property-holding limited companies into one. But suppose there’s a fourth company, one that we don’t know about, in which neither Jackie nor Carole Charles is listed as a director. That’s what I’ve sent Masters to investigate.’

The DCC nodded. ‘I follow your thinking. But couldn’t he simply have bought another property for cash, without forming a company to do it?’

‘He could have, but that’s not the way he works. He always takes the corporate route, winding everything back to a holding company offshore.’

‘Just like Tony Manson did,’ said Skinner. ‘So that even if he had been caught and imprisoned, we’d never have been able to seize his funds.’

‘That’s right. Anyway, I’ve checked the register of properties. Neither Jackie nor Carole Charles are listed under their own names as the owner of any residence or office. Even the Ravelston Dykes house belongs to the property company. In theory, Jackie’s his own landlord, and his own tenant.’

Skinner nodded. ‘You could be right, then. If you are, Pam’ll find them out. One thing I know about her already: she doesn’t stop until the job’s done.’

‘She could answer another outstanding question for us, too,’ said Martin. ‘Where did Carole Charles go when she wasn’t at her Yoga class?’