Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel (28 page)

The man peered up at him, dumbstruck; behind him the woman smiled, discreetly.

I laughed. ‘Most people only know
Mash
from the TV series, Andy, not the movie. But you’re right, I’m definitely more Donald Sutherland than Alan Alda. My name’s Skinner,’ I told the bloke, ‘and this is DC Martin; he’s got a weird sense of humour, but he’s a nice lad really. I’m not; I’ve had a two-hour drive in a matchbox, I’m stiff as a chocolate frog, and I’m not nice to know. We’re from Edinburgh and we’ve got an interest in your two stiffs.’

Finally, the Geordie stood. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought you were press.’ In certain circumstances, there are standard cop excuses; that is one of them.

‘I take it you’re not the force PR officer, then.’

The uniformed woman snorted, and put a hand over her mouth.

‘As a matter of fact I am,’ he replied. ‘Detective Constable Ranson.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I whispered. The guy made Inspector Hesitant look like Bernard Ingham.

‘DI McFaul’s inside,’ he continued. ‘Interviewing,’ he added.

‘What were you saying about not deferring to rank, sir?’ Martin chuckled, once we were back outside.

‘Don’t. I was taught to be careful with other kids’ toys, in case I broke them, but sometimes it’s hard when it’s so clear they need fixing.’

I took my first good look at the hotel. It was a two-storey building, probably not that old, but in need of refurbishment. It was called ‘The Seagull’, but the second ‘1’ was missing from the sign above the door; also the paintwork and a couple of windows were streaked by offerings from the birds whose name it bore. It was no better inside; a mix of smells that I’d rather not have been experiencing, cigarette and cigar smoke that had probably become part of the fabric of the building, the unpleasantness of stale beer in an empty bar, kitchen odours that made me forget how hungry I was, and lurking in the background, but evident, drains.

My distaste must have been showing. ‘It’s not our finest, I’m afraid,’ a man exclaimed as he walked towards us, mid-thirties, same as me, slim, grey-suited, hand outstretched. ‘Detective Superintendent Skinner?’

‘Correct,’ I said as we shook. ‘And this is DC Martin.’

‘Ciaran McFaul. You guys made good time. I saw you coming out of the van and guessed who you must be. Did Scoop send you in my direction?’

‘As in DC Ranson? Yes.’

The DI must have picked up something in my tone, for he smiled. ‘He’s best avoided when he has a press statement to prepare.’

‘You actually let him do that?’

‘After a fashion. He does the draft and I rewrite it. He has a brother-in-law on the police committee. Need I say more?’

‘No, I get the picture. Milburn and Shackleton,’ I went on. ‘Are the bodies still here?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. The SOCOs are done, but we kept them here till you arrived. Come on, I’ll show you.’

He led the way to the upper floor then headed right, along a corridor, towards a constable, on guard outside the last door but one. He saluted and stood aside as we approached. McFaul opened the door, carefully, then held it ajar for us. A short narrow passage led into the room; its curtains were drawn but every available light had been switched on. A man was lying on his back, bare feet towards us, eyes open, arms by his sides. He wore jeans and a black crew-necked jersey. In life he’d been large and probably menacing; in death he was just an ugly pile of meat. I looked for blood, but there was none. I looked for wounds, but saw none, only what could have been a tear in the middle of the sweater.

‘That’s Warren Shackleton,’ the DI told us. ‘A man without a single redeeming feature, until now, his first one being he’s dead.’

I felt something odd beneath my feet; I realised that I was standing in dampness. ‘The chambermaid,’ McFaul explained. ‘Poor woman wet herself. Go on inside.’

We stepped past the body, carefully, into an irregularly shaped area, furnished with twin beds, two small armchairs, and a dressing table. At first there was nothing to be seen. ‘Beyond the beds,’ our tour guide said, pointing. We followed his sign. The second body lay on its right side, head turned, face pressed into the dirty russet carpet, clad in black trousers and a red check lumberjack shirt.

‘And that was Glenn Milburn. You know his story. Small-time, muscle, cruel bastard, would have done anything to anyone for money. Anything he’s ever been involved in, Shackleton’s always been close by.’

I crouched beside him. Again, at first sight the body was unmarked, but when I looked more closely, I spotted a small pool of blood beneath it, flowing from a wound in the centre of his chest. I stood up and stepped back, allowing Martin to look.

‘You get the picture?’ McFaul asked.

‘It’s pretty plain. Shackleton opened the door and died where he stood. No blood, so he was killed instantly. Milburn might not even have known till the intruder reached him, for there are no signs of defensive wounds on him. What does your pathologist say about time of death?’

‘Nothing for the record,’ he told me, ‘but he guesses between eleven last night and one this morning. He won’t even go firm on the murder weapon until he’s got him on the table. Either a knife or a silenced gun with a small-calibre soft-nosed bullet; that’s all he’s giving us for now. I’ll go a bit further myself on time of death, though. The front door is always locked at midnight. If anyone wants to come in or go out, they have to call the night porter. So it stands to reason it had to be before twelve.’

‘There must be emergency exits,’ Martin pointed out. I noticed that he was paler than usual.

‘All secure.’

‘They must have been expecting him,’ I said.

‘You reckon?’ the Northumbrian mused, scratching his chin.

‘For sure. There’s a spyhole fitted. If you’re in a hotel room, and someone knocks on your door at that hour of the night, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to take a look to see who it is before you let them in. Shackleton did that and, bingo, he was dead. Look at his face. He didn’t even have time to be surprised. Milburn, he was round the corner, and didn’t see or hear anything. There’s no sign of him having reacted when the man appeared, no signs of him struggling either. These are two fucking bruisers, Inspector, who killed a man on my patch, killed him brutally, and yet they’ve been despatched like sleeping children.’

‘You’re speaking in the singular,’ he noted. ‘Could it have been only one man?’

‘The way I see it, yes. There isn’t room in that entrance area for more than one. Here’s my scenario, overall: these men were hired to extract information from a man in Edinburgh called Marlon Watson, probably about his boss, an organised crime figure. They may have been told to kill him, no, scratch that, they probably were. After the job was done, they were told to burn the van they’d used to destroy any forensic evidence, then get out of sight. When did they check in here?’ I asked.

‘Saturday evening. They paid cash for four nights. They used the names Hughes and O’Brien.’

‘Right. They planned to leave on Wednesday, latest. My belief is that they thought their visitor was coming to pay them off. He did, permanently.’

‘That late at night?’

‘Yes. That bar downstairs, is it public?’

‘Sure, it can be quite busy.’

‘And the visitor didn’t want to be seen. I don’t even need to ask if there’s closed-circuit TV in this place, because I know there isn’t. I bet you’ve got no witness sightings either.’

McFaul sighed. ‘No, Superintendent, we’ve interviewed all the staff, and nobody saw a damn thing. Clean as a whistle,’ he murmured. ‘We’re stalled already.’

‘Not quite. There’s one place we can go. The NCIS computer puts these two close to a man called Winston Church.’

‘The Prime Minister?’ I raised an eyebrow; he grinned. ‘This is Tyneside; we don’t do subtle nicknames. Yes, they run for him, but not exclusively, not any more. But I’ll grant you, they could have been hired out through him.’

‘Then let’s pay him a visit.’

‘Now?’

‘Right now,’ I said, ‘before he finds out about this.’

‘I’m game for that,’ the DI agreed. ‘I don’t see the old guy having had anything to do with these two being killed, but I’m going to have to talk to him anyway.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘Morpeth. It’s the right side of the city for you; once we’ve heard what he’s got to say, you can head home.’

‘Depending on what he tells us.’ McFaul’s affability seemed to lessen, fractionally; I didn’t really blame him. A couple of guys from the Met had turned up on our patch a few years before, with attitudes so bad that it had almost come to pistols at dawn. ‘Not that I expect him to tell us a fucking thing,’ I added. ‘For the record, my interest in this is in finding the person who set Milburn and Shackleton on to Marlon Watson. I’ve got enough on my plate without getting involved in this mess.’

‘Fair enough. Look, I know the way to Church’s house. I’ve been there often enough. You come in my car, and my DS can go with DC Martin.’

His detective sergeant turned out to be a woman called Wilma Easton, a veteran of twenty years’ service, with short, salt and pepper hair and a sturdy build, but small enough to fit more comfortably into the Mazda than I had.

We headed back the way we had come, to the Tyne Tunnel. We were heading into it when my ringtone sounded, then stopped as the signal was lost. As soon as we were on the other side, I checked ‘missed calls’. Alison.

I rang her back, and explained where I was, and why. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘In that case this can wait till tomorrow.’

‘How are you getting along with linking Weir and McCann?’ I asked her.

‘I haven’t,’ she replied, ‘not yet at any rate. But something’s come up in the course of it, something curious. I’d like you to see it.’

‘What is it?’

‘Probably nothing, but it struck me as odd. I’d rather you saw it for yourself. If you call me tomorrow morning, or whenever you get back, I’ll come up to Fettes and show you.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I will do . . . whenever that is.’

I slipped the phone back into my pocket. ‘Business back home,’ I explained to McFaul. ‘I’ve been in my new job for five days and I’m running two major investigations.’

‘Getting anywhere with either of them?’

I glanced at him. ‘Are you familiar with the topography of Shit Creek?’

‘Been there many times, Superintendent. No paddle, I take it?’

‘Right now, your Prime Minister pal is my last hope. That’s why I’m keen to see him.’

‘Let’s hope he can help you,’ the DI said. ‘But he’s likely to be more of a clutched-at straw. He’s never incriminated himself before, and I don’t see him starting now. What do you hope to get out of him, supposing he is shocked into talking?’

‘A name. He’s got one old Edinburgh connection in his past that I know of, a man no longer with us. I’d like to know if there’s another, or if I’m dealing with someone from out of town.’

‘That’s if he had anything to do with Milburn and Shack being set on your murder victim.’

‘Indeed,’ I conceded, ‘but that past acquaintance of his . . . I don’t know why, but it’s making me twitch.’

‘One thing I can tell you,’ McFaul offered. ‘Those two didn’t go after the man on their own account. They weren’t self-starters.’

We skirted Newcastle from the tunnel and joined the A1, then headed north. The Morpeth turn-off came up fairly quickly. I glanced in the wing mirror and saw Martin and DS Easton right on our tail. My driver seemed to know exactly where he was headed; I wondered how many times he’d stood on Church’s doorstep, and whether they’d ever achieved anything. Very little, I guessed, for the sod was still at liberty, like Manson, Perry Holmes, Jackie Charles and a few others like them on my territory, men with the brains to know their way around and through the criminal law that they broke for a living.

Two or three tight turns later, McFaul turned into a street called the Crescent, and pulled up in front of a driveway with blue wooden gates, blocking it. The house beyond was detached, a mock-Tudor pile in the midst of a street of stone Victorian villas. If a dwelling can seem embarrassed by its surroundings, that one did. It was set back off the road. I looked for a CCTV camera, or any other obvious security; I saw none, but I hadn’t at Holmes’s place either, so what did that prove?

There was a door set in the blue gate to the right, with a recessed brass ring handle. The DI turned it, and it opened. Yes, he had been there before. We followed him inside, on to a red gravel road that approached the house. It crunched, loudly, under our feet as we walked, a pretty effective intruder alarm. There was a double garage on the left; its up-and-over door was open, revealing a blue, round-bodied Rover coupé that looked as clean as it had been in the showroom, thirty years before, if the number plate was a guide. My dad had owned several when I was a kid. Beside it sat a much newer red Rover Metro, a tatty little shit bucket. For me, it showed the depths to which the marque had sunk, but at least Church had brand loyalty. ‘Is that the wife’s car?’ I asked.

‘No,’ DS Easton replied. ‘That’s Winston’s; his wife died ten years ago. He’s lived alone ever since.’

‘Any family?’

‘Yes. One son. He’s a brain surgeon in Auckland, New Zealand. That’s as far away as he could get from his father.’

McFaul had reached the pergola that covered a paved entrance area. There was a brass plate in the middle of the front door, with a button at its centre. He pushed it . . . and the door swung open. ‘Hello,’ he whispered, frowning. ‘What’s up here? That’s always locked.’ He leaned into the entrance hall. ‘Mr Church!’ he shouted. ‘Winston! It’s the police, CID. We need to talk to you.’

I have a keen sense of smell in any circumstances, but for some things I’m as good as any sniffer dog. I put a hand on the DI’s shoulder. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I told him. ‘You won’t get a response.’

‘But his cars are both here,’ he replied, ‘and the only taxi he ever uses is Milburn’s.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ I stepped past him, into the house. I didn’t have to follow my nose for long, no further than a big dining kitchen at the back of the house. Winston Church . . . I assumed that it had been him . . . was at home but he was in no condition to receive visitors. Outside, the daylight was fading, but I could still see what lay before me. He was sprawled, on his back, across a big farmhouse-style table, arms and legs hanging over the sides, bare feet clear of the floor. He’d been wearing a dressing gown and pyjamas when he died, no protection against a savage attack. He’d been gutted, ripped open, and his entrails had spilled out of a great diagonal tear that ran across his abdomen. As I stared at him I felt as if I was back in Joe Hutchinson’s workplace, after the pathologist had finished his examination. I inched forward, but not too far; I didn’t want to contaminate the place, nor did I want to get blood on my shoes. There was a slash across the dead man’s face, from his right cheek, across his nose and his left eye to his eyebrow. His right hand was missing the third and little fingers. I looked around, quickly. There was a half-glazed door opening on to the back garden. It lay ajar and I noticed that one of its astragal panels had been smashed.