Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel (4 page)

‘So you think I might have an interest in this, Alison?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen him before, sir.’ She was always impeccably formal with me, on duty, when there were others around. ‘And I’m sure, too, that it was in my time on the drugs squad.’

‘Has the body been moved?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘So you’ve only seen him in profile, as he is now?’

‘That’s how sure I am,’ she replied, confidently.

‘Has the doctor been yet?’

‘And the pathologist,’ Martin volunteered, ‘and the photographers.’

‘Then turn him over.’

The young DC nodded, squatted down beside the corpse and rolled it on to its back, then straightened the arms and legs. The left side of the face had been smashed by the impact, but it was still recognisably human. And recognisable as . . .

‘Marlon Watson,’ I said, loud enough for Jay to hear, above us at the poolside. ‘Fucking hell, but that’s one unlucky family.’

‘Marlon?’ Martin echoed.

‘Age twenty-three or twenty-four, born in nineteen seventy-two, when
The Godfather
was the big film of the year. Mr and Mrs Watson didn’t have a lot of imagination when it came to naming their kids. This one had a brother called Ryan; he was born in nineteen seventy, the year
Love Story
came out. There was a sister, too, so I’ve been told, older than either of them. Her name’s Mia; spot the movie.’

‘
Rosemary’s Baby
.’ Alison was a movie buff.

‘That’s right: a movie about the spawn of Satan, and Bella Watson called her kid after its star.’

‘Why did you say they’re unlucky?’ Jay asked.

I looked up at him. ‘Don’t you remember? Maybe not; it’s a few years back now. I wasn’t long on the force when it happened. This one’s brother was at Maxwell Academy, that hellish school they pulled down a few years ago, and his uncle, a bad bastard called Gavin Spreckley, had him selling heavily cut smack to the other kids, under the protection of the janitor. The
Saltire
newspaper got on to it and ran the story. We didn’t have enough on Gavin to lift him, but Ryan was arrested and remanded to a secure unit. He disappeared from there; he didn’t break out, though, he was snatched. The staff were careless, or maybe somebody was bribed. Anyway, a day or so later a parcel was delivered to the
Saltire
newspaper office. It was a box, with two right hands in it, the boy’s and the uncle’s, cut off after they’d been killed. We never found the bodies, but Tommy Partridge . . . he led the investigation . . . reckons that he knows what happened to them.’

Jay scowled. ‘That’s not bad luck as far as I’m concerned; it’s good luck for the rest of us.’

‘The boy was fourteen,’ I barked at him. ‘A year older than my daughter is now; he never stood a fucking chance, being brought up in that environment.’

‘Tough shit. I remember the wee swine now; he carried a razor, and cut somebody with it, one of our guys.’

‘Sure, and you carry a spring-loaded baton in your jacket pocket, Superintendent.’ His face flushed with anger, and I stopped short. I’d been drawn into an argument with the guy in front of his own troops, not a smart thing to do. ‘But the family trouble didn’t end there,’ I went on, cutting across any potential retort. ‘We all remember that,’ I glanced at the DC, ‘apart from you, Martin.’

‘What happened, sir?’ he asked me.

‘Mayhem. Partridge and his team knew who did for the pair of them; there wasn’t much doubt about that. Spreckley was a known dealer; his supplier was a guy called Alasdair Holmes, the younger brother of a man called Perry Holmes. I won’t give you Perry’s life story, but you can take it that he was a man of many business interests, some straight, others criminal on a national scale. Every cop in Scotland wanted him, but none of us could get near him. Anyway, the Holmes brothers knew nothing of what had been going on in the school, and when they found out . . .’ I felt my eyebrows rise.

‘The belief was that uncle and nephew were killed by Al Holmes and a big German monster who worked for them, called Johann Kraus, and Partridge’s bet was that they were cremated in an incinerator on a smallholding that Perry owned and where Kraus lived. He also believes that they made Gavin’s brother Billy watch the executions. If Gavin was small-time then Billy was tiny, a gopher, no more than that.’

I smiled, but I wasn’t laughing inside. ‘However,’ I continued, ‘there was a wee bit more to him than they thought. It took him a few years to work up the courage, but one day he walked into the Holmes business office just off Lothian Road and shot both the brothers. Alasdair was killed instantly and Perry took four bullets. He should have died, but he didn’t; instead he wound up in a wheelchair, paralysed. As for Billy, Johann Kraus saw him off, then he went berserk himself and killed an innocent bystander. There was a short siege, before one of our snipers blew his brains out.’

‘So what do you think this is?’ Higgins asked. ‘The next round?’

‘Perry Holmes exterminating the Watsons? No, I don’t see that. Perry’s a quadriplegic; from what I’ve heard he’s looked after by a couple of male nurses. He still runs his kosher businesses, but that’s all. The other side of his life ended when that bullet lodged at the base of his brain, where it is to this day. It all seems to have passed over to Tony Manson now.’

‘So is DI Higgins right?’ Jay interrupted. ‘Did this Marlon guy connect to Manson?’

I knew where he was heading, from the tone of his voice. ‘Closely,’ I told him. ‘He was his driver.’

‘So it is one for your drugs squad,’ he exclaimed, beaming at the prospect of spin-passing a tricky investigation to someone else.

‘Maybe yes, maybe no. Tony does other things, as you know very well.’

‘Sure, among them prostitution, which still makes it your baby.’

I sighed, because I knew that one way or another, he was right: but I wasn’t for letting him know it. ‘We’ll let the boss decide that,’ I declared. ‘How did he get in here?’ I asked Alison, to avoid any debate.

‘There’s a door at the side. It’s been jemmied. The building isn’t alarmed, so there was no risk.’

‘Time?’

‘The janitors call in twice a week. The entrances were all checked and secure on Monday. The pathologist is sure he’s been dead for at least thirty-six hours, because rigor mortis is starting to dissipate.’

‘So we’re looking at something that could have happened overnight on Tuesday. There’s a pub across the road, and steady traffic through this street, so we ought to start with the premise that the break-in happened after closing time.’ I gazed up at Jay. ‘Do you know when that boozer closes? Does it have a late licence?’

‘Only at weekends,’ Martin volunteered. ‘It shuts at eleven through the week.’

‘Okay, that indicates a window from around midnight Tuesday onwards.’

‘Maybe he was in the pub before he broke in here,’ the DC suggested. I glanced upwards again; Jay had gone. He was doing his level best to dump the investigation on me, and the way things were going, he was succeeding.

‘That’s a possibility that should be checked,’ I said. ‘Was he? If so, was he alone or did he have company?’ I turned back to DI Higgins. ‘But first things first; you should get Marlon off to the morgue . . . that won’t take long, since it’s just round the corner . . . and you need to find out whether anyone knew what he was doing on Tuesday.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but . . .’ She knew the game that was being played between her boss and me, and she wasn’t having any of it. She needed clear direction, unambiguous; she didn’t need to be caught in the spray of a pissing contest between two guys who might be letting their dislike of each other get in the way of their judgement.

‘Fuck it!’ I hissed. Thing was, I knew something that none of them did: I knew about the announcement that was going to be made the next morning, at 9 a.m., on a force circular and an hour later to the press. ‘Detective Superintendent Jay,’ I shouted.

A few seconds passed before he reappeared, shoulders hunched in his baggy jacket, a cigarette cupped in his hand. He looked sour, ready for a fight. ‘Yes?’ he murmured, a challenge.

‘I’m taking over this investigation,’ I announced.

‘Just like that?’

Perverse bastard! It was what he wanted, but not how he’d wanted it. His hope was that if he couldn’t order me himself, Alf Stein would, that I’d be put in my place. His mistake was that I knew what that place was, he didn’t.

‘Just like that,’ I echoed. ‘Either I do it tonight with your agreement, or tomorrow morning, with or without it. For the sake of the investigation it’s best that it’s now.’

‘What’s tomorrow got to do with it?’ he snapped.

‘Tomorrow, Greg, I assume command of the Serious Crimes Unit, on promotion to detective superintendent. I’ll be working alongside the Scottish Crime Squad, and my remit will include organised crime. We’ll continue to have a dedicated drugs and vice unit, with Roy Old in charge, but it’ll work hand in hand with my team.’

‘Who defines serious crime?’ Jay was deflated; I’d let some of the air out of his balloon.

‘Within our force area, we do. The Scottish Crime Squad targets on a national basis, but its resources are limited. Our focus is within our own territory; we pass on intelligence when we have it, but we set our own local agenda. Tony Manson is very much part of that, and when we find his driver dead in these circumstances, that’s of interest to us.’

He shrugged. ‘Good luck to you, then. I’ll be off home. Higgins, Martin, you can knock off too.’

Christ, the man’s lifetime mission seemed to be to rile Bob Skinner. ‘Normally, I’d have no objection to any of that,’ I said, ‘but in this case I need a team on the ground, now. So I’m commandeering yours, or some of them, at least. Higgins, Martin, you’re with me, and I’ll have the lad on the door as well.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘Before you ask, yes, I have the power to do it. Call Alf, if you doubt me.’

He could have called the chief constable too. I’d been called to a meeting in his office, that morning, without being given a clue to the subject in advance. It had been James Proud, Alf Stein and me, that was all. The chief had told me of my promotion, and of the reason for the strengthening of my unit. It had existed for a while, and I’d spent some time there as a detective sergeant, but it was being beefed up. ‘I don’t want my force to be marginalised,’ the chief had said, ‘or to see any of its investigative role being handed over to a central crime-fighting unit. One or two of my fellow chiefs would like to see that happen, but it won’t, not while I’m behind this desk.’ There was a school of thought within the force that Proud was more politician than policeman; I was pleased to learn that he was both. ‘For the moment, you’ll have the squad that Tom Partridge built up, but you can add to it, straight away or whenever it suits you.’

I kept on staring up at Jay. ‘I’ll let you know how the investigation goes, Greg,’ I told him. ‘If I need anything else from your division, I’ll let you know.’ I didn’t feel any guilt about putting him down in front of his own officers; that’s what he’d have done to me, if he’d been able.

He sloped off, without another word. Policing is no different from any other profession, or from humanity for that matter. It has those people with that little bit extra, or who exceed their natural ability by their effort and enthusiasm, and it has its great majority, those who do what’s expected of them competently, the people who, in the end, make it all work, life’s Poor Bloody Infantry. Then there are the others, those who want the ride for free, and whose weight is carried by the rest. Occasionally, one of those will climb the ladder through lack of proper scrutiny. Greg Jay wasn’t a typical example, he’d gone higher than most, but he’d been on my radar for a while, and with me having risen to the same rung as him, he knew that his card was marked.

I climbed the ladder out of the pit, beckoning to Higgins and Martin to follow. They’d both stood silent while Jay and I had our gunfight. At the top, I called out to the lead crime scene officer. ‘DS Dorward,’ I said, ‘I know this place must be a fucking mess, with council staff walking all over it twice a week, but I need you to get as much as you can out of it. First off, I need to know how many people were in here with the dead man.’ The SOCO opened his mouth but I cut him off. ‘Yes, I know it’s possible that nobody else was here with him, that he was off his face on something and thought he was Greg Louganis, but I do not believe that. I want everything there is. Start with the door that was jemmied.’

Red hair poking out angrily from under his tunic hood, the man stared at me as if I’d asked him whether he regularly had sex with pigs. ‘That’s the first place we went, sir,’ he retorted. ‘It’s covered in prints. If the victim’s are there, we’ll find them.’

‘Of course you will. Sorry. Give me everything you can, as soon as you can, but without compromising thoroughness.’

‘What does “compromising” mean, sir?’ he drawled. ‘Is that a CID term?’

I laughed. Dorward’s path and mine hadn’t crossed too often, but every detective in the force knew of his prickliness.

‘Nah,’ I replied, ‘it’s a general term, as in “compromising your promotion chances”. Sarcasm can be good for that.’

He smiled, calmly. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Now will the three of you please fuck off and let me get on with it.’ Dorward was untouchable and he knew it. He was a genius at what he did, and rank meant nothing to him.

We peeled off our sterile gear and stepped back outside, where Alex was waiting with McGuire. ‘Where’s Mr Jay gone?’ she asked, frowning as if she knew.

‘Home. I’ve taken over the investigation.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a suspicious death.’ I was always matter-of-fact about my job when I discussed it with my daughter. I didn’t believe in euphemism . . . not that she’d let me get away with any since she was five, and she’d forced me to use the ‘D’ word when I tried to explain why her mother wouldn’t be coming back from the hospital. For almost a year after the accident, that’s where I’d said she was, but with kids such deceits don’t survive a week at a village primary school.

‘You mean a murder?’ she persisted.