Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel (29 page)

I realised that I was holding my breath, and let it out in a great exhalation. As I did so, I became aware of Ciaran McFaul beside me, and heard him moan softly. I glanced behind me; Easton and Martin were still in the hall, their view blocked by our bodies.

‘Let’s all back out of here,’ I said quietly. I turned, drawing the DI with me, and heard a small squeal escape Easton as she saw what was in the kitchen. Not your everyday crime scene, even in Newcastle. ‘Come on,’ I ordered. ‘Everybody, all the way outside.’ I swept them before me, through the hall, back under the pergola.

By that time, McFaul had recovered himself, so I didn’t presume to tell him what he should do. It wouldn’t have been necessary anyway. He tossed his car keys to Easton, instructing her to call in an incident report, and ask for forensic, CID and uniform support, then he turned to me. ‘What did you see?’ he asked.

‘The attacker broke in through the back door, and went out through the front, leaving it open behind him. Your SOCOs will probably find a blood trail to the door. He couldn’t have done that without stepping in it and being splashed. Surmise: Church may have been in bed and heard the glass break or . . .’

‘He was watching a video,’ Martin interposed. ‘I took a quick look in the living room while you were heading for the kitchen. The telly’s on, and the player’s on pause. Porno,’ he added.

‘One of his remaining business interests,’ the DI said. ‘I’m thinking the same man as the Seagull. Are you?’

‘Absolutely,’ I replied. ‘Whoever hired them for the Edinburgh job isn’t leaving any traces behind. This was our only lead and it’s been well and truly closed off.’

‘Was he killed before or after the South Shields pair, d’you reckon?’

‘He wasn’t worried about being covered in blood, so I reckon it had to be after. He broke in here, so he wasn’t expected this time.’

‘But why, sir?’

Martin’s question took me by surprise. ‘What do you mean?’ I challenged.

‘Isn’t it a bit extreme?’ he asked. ‘They were hired hands, supplied by Church. Okay, but why kill them all?’

‘Somebody’s being super-cautious.’

‘Or . . . you’re looking at this from the wrong angle?’

‘You what?’ I snapped, then realised what he was getting at. ‘Shit!’ I exclaimed. ‘I told Tony Manson we were looking in Newcastle. I even mentioned Milburn by name. But no, Andy, no fucking chance. Manson’s more subtle than that. Mind you, if Bella was leaning on him . . . Shit, shit, shit!’ Out of nowhere, I could see my fast-tracked career about to be derailed. I turned to McFaul. ‘Ciaran, DC Martin might be pushing his youthful luck here, or he may have a point. There’s an outside possibility at our end that I’ll need to look into, if only to eliminate him. I’ll get back to you when I’ve done it.’

‘Okay.’ He looked up at me. ‘This place is going to be overrun in a minute, and very soon after that my boss is going to arrive. If he finds you two here . . . well, he’s a bit of a stickler and he might want to know why two Scottish officers were active on his patch. If you’re not here, there’s no reason why I should tell him. Your choice.’

I thought about it. ‘The book says we should give your SOCOs our prints for elimination,’ I pointed out.

‘Did you touch anything in there?’

‘I don’t believe I did. DC Martin, how about you?’

‘I was careful not to, boss.’

I laughed. ‘Boy, if you don’t stop being perfect you’re going to make a lot of enemies. Come on, Ciaran’s right. We’re out of here.’ I shook McFaul’s hand. ‘Thanks, Inspector; I’ll be in touch. You keep me in your loop as well, okay?’

‘Will do.’

We cleared the exit from the Crescent just as the first of the Northumbria cars arrived. ‘By the way, Andy,’ I said as we headed for the A1, ‘you can be as clever as you like and you won’t ever make an enemy of me. But don’t ever put me on the spot again in front of another officer, or you will.’

He nodded. ‘Point taken, boss. I’m sorry.’

In truth I was far more angry with myself than him. I had told Manson far too much, in the hope that if he had any ideas, he would share them. I’d thought that I knew him; if I’d been wrong, I could have signed three death warrants. Either way, it was a big mistake, reckless. The saving grace was that Martin had been there as witness to the knowledge that I had given the gangster, and that of itself would have been a constraint on him. I might have let the business lie quiet, undisturbed, but by mentioning it in front of McFaul, my young DC pal had taken that option away from me, and that was his real transgression.

Suddenly, without warning, my mind was dragged back to that kitchen. I’d hit my ‘detachment’ button before I walked in there, for I knew it was going to be bad. That normally worked, but it wasn’t a hundred per cent effective.

The things you see: the mind has ways of managing them. If you’re properly professional, and experienced, it allows you to take the humanity out of the situation, and to accept the inanimate as what it is. In extreme cases, it will block out the memory altogether. But every so often, in my case at any rate, even back then when I was at my most battle-hardened, I’d see something that would return to me later, and sneak under my emotional guard. For example, something like Winston Church, his face cut almost in two, half-naked and eviscerated on his kitchen table, severed fingers in the pool of blood beneath him. I wondered how long it had taken him to die, and at the thought of it my stomach started to heave.

I looked ahead and saw in the headlights, for darkness had fallen completely by that time, that we were approaching a parking place. ‘Pull over, Andy,’ I said. He did, I jerked open the door and swung myself out of his awkward little bastard of a car, gulping in lungfuls of cool night air, retching violently, on an empty stomach with nothing to bring up but a little bile.

The spasms took a little while to subside, but they did. My face was covered in a cold sweat, and I was shaking slightly, but I was back in control. Martin had stayed in the car, discreetly. I wasn’t ready to get back in myself; instead, I took my phone from my pocket and pressed the ‘menu’ key. I found Mia’s number on the illuminated keyboard and called her. ‘Hi,’ she murmured, and at once I felt warmer. ‘Twenty to eleven. The light’s still on and I’m still awake. Are you close?’

‘I’m the best part of two hours away.’

‘But are you coming?’

I considered my options. Go home to an empty house. Crash out in the office. Call Alison and probably cry on her shoulder, since she would understand why. Go to Mira’s starving, exhausted and shell-shocked, and let her see me at my worst.
Why the hell not?
I decided.
As good a way to start as any
.

Martin made good time, but even at that, it was almost twelve thirty by the time I arrived, after I’d picked up the Discovery from Fettes. The gate in the garden wall creaked, a curtain twitched, and before I could ring the bell, the door opened and she pulled me inside by the lapels of my jacket. She closed it again, with her foot, put her arms around my neck and kissed me. Fortunately, I’d refuelled on Lucozade and sandwiches from a filling station just short of Belford, and swallowed an entire box of Tic Tacs afterwards, otherwise God knows how I’d have tasted.

She looked up at me as we broke off. ‘Poor man,’ she murmured. ‘Have you had a rough night?’

I hugged her again and let myself relax against her body, feeling hours of tension leave me, and realising that she was wearing a silk robe and nothing else. ‘The strangest of the strange,’ I murmured. ‘The queerest of the queer.’

‘Hey, I played that this afternoon,’ she whispered. I knew that; I’d heard her. ‘Remember how it ends? “You can touch me if you want.” Well, do you?’

I let her lead me into her bedroom. It was lit by at least a dozen candles. The silk whispered as it fell to the floor, and her bare skin seemed to shimmer in the flickering light as she slipped my jacket from my shoulders. When I was naked too, she stood back and appraised my body, running her fingers over my pectorals, my abdominals, and then down. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Thirty-six, for a few weeks more.’

‘You’re in pretty good shape,’ she conceded, ‘for an old guy . . . although that shape is changing by the second.’

She had found the condoms in my jacket. I let her put one on me, and then I let her do everything else too, lying on my back, looking up at her as she straddled me and moved, very, very slowly, smiling, until she stopped smiling and began to moan, a sound that grew in intensity until it became a howl of pure pleasure, tailing off and ending in a long soft sigh.

‘Ooooh,’ she whispered in my ear as she stretched her body out along the length of mine. ‘It’s been a while, Bob, since I’ve been with someone properly; it’s been a while.’

I couldn’t say the same, so I said nothing. Instead, I rolled over, easing her on to her side.

‘Is that better?’ she murmured, as I disposed of the evidence. ‘I could see the pain in your eyes when you came in. Was it bad where you were?’

‘Mmm,’ I admitted. ‘I went down there to a double homicide; it turned into three, and the last one . . . fuck! You know, I’ve spent the last five days looking at dead people. Even in the job I do, that’s a hell of a lot.’ And then I recalled something that had gone out of my mind entirely, a highly relevant fact. ‘But if you want the good news,’ I continued, ‘the three tonight were the ones who killed your brother.’

As soon as I’d spoken, it was as if the good imp had jumped on to my shoulder and said, ‘What the hell did you tell her that for? You don’t mix personal and professional, Skinner.’ But the bad imp didn’t hang about; he was straight in there, shoving him off.

She sat up, her eyes wide. ‘Really?’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh yes, I’m certain. Two did it, the third was involved.’

She blinked, and shook her head as if she was trying to clear it. ‘That’s incredible,’ she gasped. ‘So . . . so . . . so who killed them?’

‘Don’t ask me that, love.’

‘But you must have an idea. Please, Bob.’

I sighed. The waters were lapping around my chin and rising. ‘Your mother’s fancy man has to be a possibility, although I don’t believe that. If not him, then unless they were involved in something else, something on Tyneside that the cops there know nothing about, then it has to be the person who hired them. But we do not have one clue who that is, and the trail is freezing cold.’

‘It was probably my mum,’ she whispered.

That was a possibility that had crossed my mind. I’d set it aside. Even if I was wrong and Bella Watson did have the stuff to take out two big thugs, alone and unaided, she’d been looked after by Lennie Plenderleith over the weekend, and as far as I knew she still was. Plus she wouldn’t have had the faintest idea of where to find them . . . any more than would Manson, I supposed.

‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Forget about that, Mia. It’s my other life and it doesn’t belong here. By the way, Alex says thanks for the CD. You’re right; those girls will do well for themselves, until the next craze comes along.’

She settled back down beside me, and kissed my forehead. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she murmured. ‘I haven’t had a man in my bed for a long time. I was beginning to think that there was some sort of curse hanging over me.’

I laughed. ‘You have to be kidding, don’t you? You’re one of the most . . . the most desirable . . . yes, that’s a more dignified word than shaggable . . . women that I’ve ever met.’

She grinned, wickedly. ‘Is that so?’

‘Absolutely,’ I murmured. ‘As a matter of fact . . .’

Some time later, I fell asleep.

Fourteen

N
ormally I will roll into wakefulness like waves on to a beach, steadily, in small advances, until my tide has risen and I’ve emerged from the last episode of whatever dream I’ve been having, from wherever I’d been during the night.

But not that morning. My sleep-bound adventure wasn’t drawn from my imagination: it was a full colour replay of the previous evening, beginning with the struggle to escape from Martin’s MX5 in the car park outside the cruddy hotel in South Shields, then taking me, step by step, back along the way, until I was standing once again in Winston Church’s kitchen, staring at his ravaged body on the table.

When his intestines started to move like snakes, that’s when I came to, in a hurry. Only I didn’t, not completely. I sat up, eyes wide open but taking nothing in. I was awake, but my consciousness remained in that bloodbath in Morpeth. I recall shouting something. Whatever it was, it made Mia reach up and take hold of my left arm. But I didn’t know it was Mia, did I? So I wrenched it free, violently, then slammed it across her chest and twisted round, forcing her down on to the bed and pinning her to it as my right hand gripped her throat.

‘No,’ she screamed. ‘Bob, no! It’s me, it’s Mia, it’s all right.’

That was enough . . . thanks, God, for that one . . . to bring me back. If it hadn’t been, I might have crushed her windpipe. I saw the fear in her eyes, and took my weight off her, then gathered her into me. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ I whispered. ‘Bad dream.’

She wriggled in my grasp, trying to free herself. I let her go and she pulled away from me, staring at me as if she’d woken up with the Blagdon Amateur Rapist. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, again. ‘I thought I was . . .’ I smiled, weakly, hoping to reassure her. ‘Call it a Stephen King moment, eh?’

‘Call it nothing!’ she shouted. ‘You scared me. I thought you were going to kill me. Is this normally what happens after you have a bad day at the office?’

‘No,’ I retorted, unreasonably irked, ‘but I don’t usually sleep with anyone, so maybe I wouldn’t know. Calm down. I had a nightmare, okay?’

She put her fingers to her throat; I could see the red marks that mine had left. ‘No,’ she moaned, on the verge of tears, ‘it’s not okay! This is not how I wanted it to be. I don’t need violence in my life! I’ve had enough of it. Men!’ The ferocity of her sudden scream took me by surprise. ‘You’re all the fucking same! All bastards. Go, will you, just get dressed and go.’

‘Mia . . .’

‘Fuck off!’

It’s impossible to be dignified when someone’s glaring at you as you’re trying to get the other foot into your briefs, so I gathered up my clothes, and my overnight bag, and took them through to the bathroom. I ran the Philishave over my chin a few times, then showered quickly, and dressed, same suit and shoes but a change of everything else. I was almost ready when my phone sounded.