Skinner's rules

19

Two days and two miserable, barren night watches later, Skinner attended the first of the funerals. Mike Mortimer was cremated at Old Kilpatrick, a bleak post-war funeral factory standing behind Clydebank, where staff struggle with a crowded timetable to allow families to bid a dignified farewell to their departed. Skinner hated crematoria, the speed of the service, the euphemism of the curtains closing over the coffin, the theatricality of it all. Once he had said to Alex that when the time came for him. he was to be planted, like his wife, in the old-fashioned way in Dirleton Cemetery.

Waiting outside the chapel in the cold clear winter sunshine, he cast his eyes around for a familiar face. David Murray stood, almost hidden, in the midst of a group of middle-aged and elderly men in Crombie over coats, some wearing bowler hats. Among them Skinner recognised two judges, one of them Murray’s predecessor as Dean. Peter Cowan stood slightly apart, wearing the black jacket, waistcoat and pin-striped trousers that are the advocate’s trademark. Skinner caught his eye, and the two men ambled slowly towards each other.

‘Morning, Bob. Is this part of the investigation?’

Skinner nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is. Don’t look in his direction, but I’ve got a photographer in that out-building over there, just on the off-chance that we pick up someone in the crowd who shouldn’t be here.’

‘Will you go to the other funerals?’

‘Yes, we will. Even to poor old Joe the Wino’s. Doubt if we’ll see too many judges there!’

The Clerk of Faculty chuckled quietly. Still short of the years at the Bar necessary to take silk — to be appointed Queen’s Counsel — he retained an irreverence not found as a rule in seniors, many of whom were en route for the Bench, and comported themselves with that in mind.

Quite suddenly Cowan’s smile faded. ‘That was an awful business about poor Rachel.’

‘Yes, Peter. Just terrible. And preventable, if those buggers in Strathclyde had followed orders and seen her right on to the train, instead of allowing her to go under it.’

As the mourners from the previous funeral filed out of the chapel, and made their way towards the busy car-park, the Mortimer congregation moved forward to take their places. The cortege had arrived and was parked in the driveway, waiting for the moment to draw up to the door. A light-coloured wooden coffin, topped by a single wreath, lay in the hearse. Through the windows of the first limousine, Skinner saw a silver-haired man, and clutching his arm, a woman in black, her head on the man’s shoulder.

The gathering stood around while the family mourners were shown into the building, and led to the front two rows facing the pulpit. Then quietly, they followed, shuffling into rows of hard wooden benches on either side of the central aisle.

As they sat down, Cowan whispered to Skinner. ‘I gather that the verdict on Rachel will be suicide, not accidental.’

‘There’s no way that it was accidental, Peter. Since no one’s come forward to say that she was shoved, that’s the way it’ll go down. That McCann sighting… You heard about that?’ Cowan nodded. ‘That was a load of cobblers. McCann was sighted for real last night, robbing a filling station in Luton. He pinched a car, and the Met. found it abandoned three hours later at Brent Cross. So he’s in London. I believe they’re releasing the story about now.

‘All the indications are that the girl was a bag of nerves after Mortimer’s death and after that threat. It probably wasn’t planned, just a spur of the moment suicide.’

‘Mm, sounds like it.’

The congregation rose slowly and solemnly to its feet as the coffin was borne to the altar on the shoulders of the undertaker’s assistants.

As they resumed their seats, Cowan whispered again to Skinner. ‘I was speaking to George Harcourt yesterday. He was the Advocate Depute in the McCann trial. He said that Rachel was very shaky before the jury came in with its verdict. Oh yes, and he told me a funny thing, too. He said that she was upset by a Japanese bloke who sat all the way through the trial.’

Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘You what…!’

‘Brothers and sisters in Christ…’ The Faculty chaplain cut the conversation short as he began the funeral service.

Fifteen minutes later as the family party filed out to a background of solemn organ music, Skinner was able to speak again. ‘You said a Japanese bloke?’

Cowan nodded.

‘Peter, have you got a car here?’

‘No, I came with David.’

‘Right, if you don’t mind, you’re coming back with me. I want to have another look at that so-called Chinese trial. I smell something here.’