Skinner's rules

55

In the back of the police car, Skinner looked at the photocopied pages. Twenty thousand, deposited in joint names, in two tranches, after the London visits. Cash deposits, not cheques. Money laundering? A drugs pay-off? Any lawyers with criminal practices made some dubious contacts. But surely these two couldn’t have been bent. Not the Scots Law Times Couple of the Month.

Yet there it was, and it had to be viewed with suspicion. Skinner knew that all advocates’ fees were collected by Faculty Services, which took a levy off the top for administrative expenses. Could Mike and Rachel have been cheating their own company?

The searchers into files and effects were still only at the start of their painstaking tasks when Skinner called at the New Town apartments. Mackie had the tougher job, since Mortimer had been a stickler for detail. He was picking through the Amstrad disks when Skinner arrived.

‘How does it look, Brian?’

‘Green, boss. This bloody screen goes for your eyes. Apart from that it’s bleak. There was one personal file on this thing, full of letters to relatives, thank-you notes to hostesses, and a Christmas-card list ready for printing out on labels. None of the names look promising. The others were all business records. There are actually fewer files than there might have been. Some of the disks are almost empty. If he had a filing system, I haven’t figured it out.’

‘Okay. Get stuck into the paperwork with Mcllhenney when you’re finished with that. And keep a lookout for references to a joint project with Rachel, and a cash fee.’

‘Will do, sir.’

Back in his office just before midday, Skinner called Kenny Duff. ‘I need some financial info on our friends, Kenny. Did either one have a private source of income? Gambling, for example.’

There was a pause at the Charlotte Square end of the line. ‘I guess you’ve come across the joint account, and the nature of the payments. That came as a surprise to me too, when I found the account book. You understand that as executor I couldn’t volunteer that information to you?’

‘Sure, that’s all right. You’ve no clue as to the source of the money?’

‘None at all. It’s a problem for me, I don’t mind telling you. I’ve no way of telling whether it’s earned income, a gift or, as you suggest, a win on the pools. I just don’t know what to tell the Revenue, or even whether to tell them. As far as their general finances were concerned, both Mike and Rachel had good practices, and were comfortably off. Had they chosen a specialist area of civil law, rather than criminal, they’d have done even better, but neither one was short of a few bob. They were planning to sell Mike’s flat to help pay for the new house, and they’d have done well out of that deal too. All that makes twenty thousand in grubby fivers even more difficult to understand.’

Skinner grunted. ‘Thanks Kenny. You’ve been no bloody help at all but thanks anyway.’