Skinner's Mission

79

She lay along the sofa with her head on a cushion, replete from the dinner he had cooked for her, and relaxed by the wines he had poured. She was barefoot, and her white blouse was open at the neck. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire, in a polo shirt and chinos. The dinner dishes lay piled in the kitchen ready for the dishwasher, and his chef’s apron hung behind the door. His Caithness tumbler, with the smoky Lagavulin, was warming in his big hand, while hers was balanced on the crest of her belly.

The desperately sad voice of Maria Callas filled the room around them, matching his mood, and hers, after the story which he had set out for her over dinner.

‘What’ll happen to him?’ she asked at last.

‘He’ll plead guilty to the murders of Carole, Medina and the Comedian.

‘As for the others, we’ll keep our promise to McCartney and Kirkbride. The pair of them will do their twelve years each and think they’re the luckiest men alive.

‘Jackie Charles will plead guilty to tax evasion, up to an agreed amount, and will pay his dues, plus fine and interest, out of his Cayman Islands money. He’ll do about two years, and then he’ll disappear, off to the Caribbean, never to return.

‘There will be no trials, no evidence led in detail, no cross-examination, no verdicts for juries to deliver, no stinking linen washed in public. There will be no public chronicling of all the betrayals of trust and loyalty that my team has managed to uncover over the last few days.’

‘But Donaldson,’ she repeated. ‘What about him?’

‘He’ll be sentenced to a minimum term, not less than twenty-five years. He’ll expect to serve it mostly in solitary, for his own protection. But somewhere along the line, a man with a blade and a grudge will get close enough to him. Or maybe, he’ll tear off a strip of bedsheet and do the job himself. I don’t think he’ll ever breathe free air again.

‘I saw him this afternoon. I interviewed him formally, with Andy and the Chief, for more than four hours. Davie Pettigrew, the Procurator Fiscal, sat in on it as well, and Hamish Lessor, the best solicitor we could find to act for him. He confessed to everything, in detail.

‘Lessor will have him examined by psychiatrists. So will Pettigrew. I guess that there’s a possibility that he’ll be found insane and unfit to plead. But I doubt it. He knew exactly what he was doing, all the way along the line, from the moment he fell into Carole Charles’ honey-trap until the end, when he squared up to me with that blade.’

His head dropped down and he hissed, aloud. ‘Ahh, what a traitor. Everything we stand for in this job. Everything I’ve ever believed and tried to teach, he betrayed. I’ve encountered some cold and ruthless people in my time. Indeed, if I was to be honest, I’d apply that description to myself. But Donaldson’s the worst I’ve ever met. His only motive was self-preservation. He had no guiding principles, no cause: only himself. For his own interests alone, he killed, or had killed, half a dozen human beings.

‘God protect his poor wife, and his poor kids. But God damn him to a hundred hells.’

She propped herself up on an elbow, and looked down at him, solemnly. She understood that the blow which he had suffered from Donaldson’s treason was only one of a series, physical and mental, that had torn his life apart. When he had called to ask her to join him for dinner at Gullane, and as he had prepared their meal, she had sensed the depth of his hurt, and had known the flood of feelings that he was holding back.

She wanted to hug him, to comfort him, to make him realise that trust and loyalty are not always repaid in kind. She wanted to, but instead she simply reached down and stroked his cheek. He looked up at her and smiled, weakly.

‘Forget Donaldson,’ she whispered. ‘He’s just another criminal you’ve caught. The point is that you did catch him. You alone found him out. And at last, after all this time, you’ve got Jackie Charles, and he’s going to jail.

‘Most of all, perhaps, you’ve solved the mystery of Myra’s death.’ She smiled at him, as he took a sip of his malt.

‘What you have to do now,’ she said, ‘is to draw a line under it all, and get on with your life, and your career. Now that you know everything.’

He looked at her and grinned, but very sadly. ‘Know everything? Know that my wife had a secret side, that she was two personalities, the classic mother-whore image acted out?’ He reached up and ruffled his hair, and in the instant, his mood seemed to lighten.

‘I’ll tell you what I do know. I know that, when Myra died, the whole village turned out in grief to bury her, because they knew and loved the same Myra I knew and loved: the one who was there for nearly all of our lives together, apart from the odd occasion when being Bob Skinner’s wife got too much for her.’ He laughed. ‘Myra was big-scale. When she kicked over the traces she kicked them good and high.

‘She’s dead now, and properly put to rest. Her diaries and her glad rags are ashes, and the person who killed her . . . well, one way or another, she died by much the same sword. No tears for Carole Charles, except perhaps from Jackie, although I wouldn’t bet the house on that.’

He smiled, looking, all at once, very, very tired.

‘Get on with my life,’ he chuckled. ‘Okay. Let me tell you about that. I’ve made a decision. A few weeks ago I was asked by someone very important if I wanted to be considered for a very senior job. I told him I’d think about it.

‘I have done, for over a month. This morning I went to see him in St Andrew’s House and I told him yes, that I do want my name to be in the frame. It would be a big jump, and I probably don’t have the command experience to be a serious contender, but even to be in the running is a huge compliment.

‘What I was really saying, really deciding, I think, is that having closed the book on the first half of his life, Bob Skinner is looking for new motivation. Maybe it’ll be in Edinburgh, maybe down South, maybe somewhere else, but he’ll find it . . . trust old Bob to do that.’

He sighed, and looked up at Pamela, into the warmth of her eyes.

‘After I’d made my call, I went to see Sarah, to tell her what I’d done, and to see how she would react. She wasn’t there. Instead I found this.’ He reached out and picked up a letter from the low table beside the sofa, handwritten, on plush cream note paper. He began to read, aloud.

My Dearest Bob,

This is to say I’m sorry, for what I did with Jimmy, and for the way I’ve behaved since you rediscovered how Myra died. Now, at last, I can tell you why I acted like I did.

Alex came to see me the night before last, in something of a state. She told me the whole story about you giving her Myra’s diaries, about her reading them, about wearing her clothes, and about learning the whole truth about her. I understood why the poor kid was so upset. Because you see, I’ve read those diaries too, from cover to cover. I knew about Myra, her affairs and her secret pregnancy by Jackie Charles, before either of you.

Understand me, I tried not to look in that trunk, after you told me what it was. But it was a hell of a temptation, and I just wasn’t strong enough to resist it. So piece by piece, whenever I was at Gullane on my own, I read my way through Myra’s life story. I almost tried on the clothes, just like Alex, but something held me back. Finally, when I was done, I tied all the diaries in yellow twine and put them back in the trunk, hoping against hope that you’d never read them; until I realised that once you started on your precious mission, inevitably, you would.

So you see, Bob, I have a secret side too. I’m not just the jealous manipulative woman you fell out of love with. I’m someone else who can give in to temptation. Only I found I couldn’t handle the consequences.

When I came to Gullane last week, after you had gone from here, it was to throw myself at you, to spill the beans and to make a last effort to rescue things. But when I saw you watching that cine film, I knew it was too late, and I realised how deeply Myra, dead as she was, still had you in her grasp.

If I’d been honest with you when it mattered, maybe it would have been all right. If I had confessed to you at once that I had looked in the trunk, and shown you what was in it, I guess you’d have had the strength to handle it. But I wasn’t honest. I wasn’t honest about that, or about my job. I wasn’t frank with you about one or two other things either; like for example about my being less than content to be settled in Edinburgh for the rest of my life.

The reason I couldn’t talk to you when it mattered was because of your shell, the wall that you have around you. It’s built on foundations of trust. You bestow it on people without question, and you expect unstinting loyalty in return, from all of us who carry it. That loyalty includes honesty and frankness.

The one thing you can’t handle is betrayal of that trust. I’ve seen how much that hurts you, and how fiercely you can react. That’s where the cycle of conflict came into being. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you about Myra’s life of betrayal, because I knew that it would devastate you. Yet in trying to save you from learning what I knew, in your eyes, I wound up betraying you myself.

That’s why you don’t look at me any more like once you did. Because, just like Myra did all those years ago, without your knowing it, I’ve failed the Bob Skinner loyalty test, and Bob Skinner doesn’t hand out second chances. The reason I look differently at you now is because I can’t penetrate your shell any more, or carry the weight of your unspoken expectations.

I heard about Donaldson. Andy called in this morning to tell me. I’ve never seen him really angry before, but I think that if he could have got his hands on him he’d have killed him. He understands that you and Jimmy had to play it so close because it was so sensitive, but I think it would be a good idea if you explained that to him anyway.

Given the beliefs that you hold, and that make you what you are, I know how it must have hurt you, to find that you had a traitor in your midst. So I’m sorry to pile on this last piece of betrayal. I have decided that the way things are, I can no longer stay in this house, in this city, in this country.

So I am taking Jazz today, and flying to the States, to be with my folks for now. They deserve a visit from their grandson. Time will tell where he and I go from there.

I don’t want anything from you, Bob, other obviously than your love and support for our son as he grows. If you want anything from me, you know where I am. For now at any rate.

Love from the heart

Sarah

He leaned back and gazed at the ceiling. ‘So there you are. I don’t have much luck with wives, do I. Nor they with me. I can’t live with secrets being kept from me, Pam.’ All at once he looked at her, with a helpless expression. ‘How can I when my job, my life is dedicated to rooting them out?’

‘But look, there are two sorts of secret, surely,’ said Pamela. ‘There’s the kind you keep because if they’re uncovered they’ll hurt you, then there are the others, the ones you hold on to so that they don’t hurt someone else.’

He grunted, ironically. ‘Sarah’s right, isn’t she. I don’t give an inch.

‘Pam,’ he said, ‘I am riddled with guilt. Guilt over having such a hold over Myra that she became a whore, just to seek respite, guilt over Sarah being afraid to talk to me when it really mattered, guilt because I promoted Donaldson even as he was selling us out . . .’

He shook his head. ‘I am one very contrite polisman, believe me.’

She leaned back, smiling. ‘You’ve nothing to be contrite about, Big Bob. You’re only human, like the rest of us. It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it,’ she murmured, ‘when you realise that you’re not perfect. It came as a shock to me when it happened, I can tell you.’

Bob laughed, softly. ‘And when was that?’

‘Tuesday. Around midnight, when I realised that I didn’t really want you to sleep in that spare room.’

As he looked at her, astonished, she swung herself off the couch to sit alongside him on the floor, and took the letter out of his hand. ‘Let’s see, shall we, what Sarah is really saying to you.’ She read quickly, then reread the final section.

‘She’s confused, she’s guilty, she’s hurt, she’s bitter and she’s angry with you,’ she murmured, as she read, ‘but through it all, you know what she’s saying, don’t you?’

Bob gazed at her, still slightly stunned by her frankness, and shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

‘She’s asking you to knock down your wall, to put everything else to one side, and to go out there and get her!’

‘But am I like she says? Do I have that impenetrable wall around me?’

She looked at him appraisingly. ‘Maybe you do, but I can’t see it. When I look at you, all I see is the Eagle. I see you. I’m a little in awe of you, but I’m not afraid that if I touch you I’ll break.’

‘So where should the old war-bird land, do you think, Pam?’ he asked her, hesitantly. ‘Should it be America?’

‘I’m not the one to tell you,’ she said. ‘Only you can answer that question.’

He reached out and took her hand. ‘I know that, Pam, love, I know. But the trouble is, I don’t know if this Eagle can fly that far.’

‘Maybe, for his own sake, he has to try,’ she said, smiling, as their eyes met, and locked.

‘But it doesn’t have to be tonight.’