Skinner's ordeal bs-5 Read online

  Skinner's ordeal

  ( Bob Skinner - 5 )

  Quintin Jardine

  Quintin Jardine

  Skinner's ordeal

  ONE

  There are few things in life as stomach-tugging as the ringing of a telephone at an unusual or unexpected hour.

  Professor Sarah Grace Skinner lived with the phone in a state of watchful neutrality. For years, in medical practice in New York and in Britain, and more recently as a policeman's wife, it had been her constant companion.

  Yet, even in the few weeks since she had taken up her new post at Edinburgh University, she had come to regard her small study in the old building as an island of peace. No one bothered her there. In all that time she had received precisely three telephone calls; one, internally, from the Principal to wish her luck with her first lecture, and the others from her husband, warning her that he would be late for dinner.

  Now, when the phone rang in the second that she hung her overcoat on the tall stand in the corner of the room, she jumped involuntarily. She glanced at her Giorgio watch. It was 8.17 a.m., on the last Friday in October.

  She stared at the flat cream instrument in surprise, and in apprehension. As she took the three paces from the coatstand to her desk, fingers of fear ran through her. The baby had been asleep when she had left him, twenty minutes earlier, in the nanny's care, lying in the recommended position, the one which was credited with such success in the reduction of cot deaths.

  Her husband had left home half-an-hour before her, bound for a snap and unannounced inspection of the CID office in Hawick, where there had been a consistent decline in detection rates over the previous six months. He would still be driving, down the fast, sometimes difficult A7.

  Her step-daughter, only ten years younger than her, at twenty-one, had been back at university in Glasgow since mid-October, pining for the recently discovered love of her life. He, in his turn, was at an anti-drugs liaison meeting in Cambridge.

  Her father? He had just turned seventy-two, and his health was far from robust, although he had declared himself hale and hearty when she had called him the weekend before.

  She steeled herself and picked up the phone.

  None of her personal-disaster scenarios had come true, but as she listened to the shocked voice on the other end of the line, she felt her hand shake, and the blood drained from her face.

  Of course,' she said, very quietly. 'I'll cancel today's lectures and tutorials. I'll be there within the hour.'

  TWO

  He was on the outskirts of Galashiels when the car-phone's trembler sounded over the droning voices of Good Morning Scotland.

  `Bugger!' he said aloud, annoyed that the call had interrupted an item on the Radio Scotland news magazine reporting on the contrast in drug-related fatalities between Glasgow, where the previous year's record high had been surpassed before the end of the tenth month, and Edinburgh, where the incidence had fallen yet again.

  Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner tolerated his earphone as a necessary evil, something that went with his job. But every time it rang he resented its intrusion. He valued drive time as an opportunity to think, away from interruptions, or as he was doing on the journey to Hawick, to catch up on the news of the day. Just as his wife enjoyed the sanctuary of her office, so he regarded his car as a place of peace.

  Frowning, and with a slight shake of his steel-grey mane, he pushed the button to take the call. 'Skinner,' he snapped into the microphone clipped into the panelling above his head.

  `Bob. It's Jimmy here.' Chief Constable Sir James Proud's voice was distorted by static, but still Skinner could hear the tension in his friend's tone. 'Where are you just now?'

  `Just coming into Gala. Why?'

  There was a pause. Uncharacteristically, Skinner felt anxiety grip him. He glanced at his car clock. It showed 8.19 a.m.

  The silence extended, and Skinner realised that the connection had been broken in his hilly surroundings. For a second or two, as he drove on into the small Borders town, he fretted about whatever it was that had shaken his imperturbable boss.

  But then the presenter of Good Morning Scotland, her voice sounding as unsteady as Proud Jimmy's, overrode the drugs story. As the woman read the newsflash, the DCC drew his car to a halt at the side of the road and sat there, listening in horror.

  By the time the phone rang again, he had turned the car around, and was heading back north up the A7, filled with fear of what awaited him.

  THREE

  ‘Mario, enough! Okay, the boss is away today, but that makes it worse. It means I have to shift all the crap in the in-tray myself, and sort out for him only the things I reckon he has to see.'

  The grin on the big, swarthy face widened into a broad smile. `So this is the reality of marriage! When we were living in sin you wouldn't have said "no" to a spot of morning glory.'

  Maggie laughed. 'Dream on, Detective Sergeant McGuire. Sunday, maybe, but not through the week!'

  She stood up from the breakfast table and dropped her cereal bowl into the dishwasher, holding out her hand for her husband to pass his across. The smile was still there, full of mischief. He caught her wrist, drew her to him gently and kissed her, ruffling her red hair.

  'Okay then, Inspector Rose, let's go and put in another day towards our pensions.

  She chuckled at his sudden sombre tone. 'You really are up for the job this morning! Has Superintendent Higgins been rattling your cage?'

  Alison? No, she's fine. It's just the way things have been since we got back from our honeymoon. On this shift I've been catching the shittiest, most boring shouts, that's all. I feel more like a road-sweeper than a CID man. I'm thinking about putting in for a transfer to Andy Martin's outfit.'

  His wife's eyebrows rose. 'Drugs and Vice? Indeed, you will not! That might be all right for Neil Mcllhenney, but I'm not having you mixing with all those whores and junkies!'

  The last traces of McGuire's grin vanished. 'I'm serious. Car thefts and shop-lifting, that's all I'm doing these days. I've been in that office long enough.'

  Maggie straightened his tie, and kissed him, quickly. 'Maybe you have. I'll let you into a secret. There's an acting Detective Inspector vacancy coming up in Special Branch. The Boss asked Brian Mackie yesterday if he'd like you posted to him.

  And the Thin One said "Yes please". I wasn't going to tell you, but..

  He looked at her, incredulous. 'Are you serious?'

  `Never more so. But just you remember, when the Boss Man tells you, it comes as a complete surprise — okay? I like being the DCC's personal assistant, and I'm not after a transfer, except on promotion.'

  He nodded, the customary smile back in place. 'Trust me. I'll give Big Bob my best

  "bewildered Italian" look.

  When'll he tell me, d'you think?'

  At the beginning of next week, probably. The vacancy's there already. It's Joe Brady's job. Remember, he won a million or soon the pools. Now, McGuire,' she said firmly, 'let's go. I do not like being late.'

  Mario gave her rump an affectionate squeeze and picked up his jacket. 'Okay. You go and run the world. I'll go and stamp out shop-lifting.'

  He was about to close the front door behind them when the phone rang. Maggie looked up at him in surprise. 'Yours or mine, d'you think?'

  `Who knows?' he said. 'Let's find out.' He stepped back into the hall and picked up the phone.

  `Hello,' he said. 'You're connected to Mario and Maggie's answering machine. If you'd like to leave a message, please speak after the tone. Beep.'

  Watching from the doorway, Maggie saw him stand suddenly bolt upright, to attention.

  'Sorry, sir. Yes, she's still here. The radio? No, we didn't have it on.' He fell silent and a
s he listened his face grew grim.

  Oh my God.' His left hand went slowly to his mouth; with the other, he held out the phone. 'It's Mr Skinner, Mags, for you.

  It's..

  She grabbed the instrument from him, consumed with anxiety. 'Yes, sir. What is it?'

  It's the Shuttle, Maggie — the seven a.m. flight to Edinburgh from Heathrow. It came down just after eight, away up behind Gifford, on the Lammermuir Hills. The thing just fell out of the sky! The disaster that we've all rehearsed so often — it's happened. I'm on my way there now, and so is the Chief. Jim Elder's heading for Fettes, but he won't be there for a while yet.

  I want you to alert Charlie Radcliffe at Divisional HQ, then to call out every available officer to assist him. If they can walk, I want them there. Tell Radcliffe to close off all the roads to the Lammermuirs to everything but emergency vehicles. I want a helicopter over the site if you can dig one up. Call the RAF at Pitreavie, and see what they can give us.

  Get on to Air Traffic Control after that, and make sure that they declare an exclusion zone.

  I don't want TV cameras buzzing around our ears up there.

  `Call Brian Mackie too, just in case there are foreign nationals on board. Oh, and you might as well tell Mario he's on Special Branch duty as of now. He's to report to Brian this morning, as acting DI.

  `Remember, Mags, every available officer. By God, we're going to need them!'

  FOUR

  The spinning blue light in his rear-view mirror snapped him out of his trance, breaking the fearful thoughts which gnawed at his stomach.

  In his quarter of a century as a police officer he had attended so many scenes of carnage, that sometimes he had the strange feeling that the bulk of them had fused together in his mind, into a single bloody experience. Some had not. He recalled a bomb outrage in an auditorium in the heart of Edinburgh, where many had been killed and maimed, torn apart as they had watched an innocent entertainment. He recalled the aftermath of a fire-fight, where four people had been shot dead, and one of his own men badly wounded. He had walked in the aftermath of these bloody occasions, and of many others, not coldly, but professionally and objectively.

  Yet there was something un-nameable dreadful about this call, something that had him trembling behind the wheel of his BMW.

  Skinner glanced at his speedometer as the siren's whine sounded behind him. He was doing 85 m.p.h. down a straight stretch of the B6368, just past Humbie. He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he could not remember overtaking the patrol car. He slowed down and waved an acknowledgement behind him, but the vehicle overtook him at speed and pulled in, stopping unnecessarily quickly in his path, and forcing him to brake hard. Two bulky officers jumped out of the white Peugeot and headed back towards him.

  Hissing with annoyance, the Deputy Chief Constable pressed his window button. The two uniforms were both Constables, in their late twenties.

  `Who the fuck d'you think you are,' shouted the driver as he approached. 'Michael bloody Schumacher?'

  When Skinner felt his temper go, he always began counting to ten, but he rarely made it past six. He swung the door open and stepped out of the driver's seat to face the man and his partner, staring at them, unblinking, with deep blue eyes. His features were set hard as he moved to meet the policemen.

  `You tell me who I am, Constable,' he said, with something in his tone that made the driver freeze in mid-stride and his passenger edge backwards towards the patrol car.

  The officer's truculence seemed to drain out of his boots. He stared at Skinner, his mouth hanging open, trying to say, 'Sorry sir,' but struck speechless.

  `What's your name, Constable?' Skinner snapped.

  The man recovered control by standing rigidly to attention. `PC Reader, sir.'

  `Very good, Reader. At least that's something you know. Listen, I don't have time to fillet you in the way you deserve, but let me tell you this. From now on I'll be watching you like one of those things..' his right index finger jabbed upwards at a kestrel hovering in the still morning air above the hedgerow on the opposite side of the narrow road, intent on its prey.. and if I ever hear of a complaint against you of incivility to a member of the public, I'll make you wish you'd joined the Brownies rather than this police force. Now tell me this. Have you two been called to an emergency near Gifford?'

  Reader nodded. 'Yes, sir.'

  Okay, here's something else you should know. That takes priority over everything, especially over hassling your DCC.

  Now get back in that car, keep that blue light flashing and lead me to the scene, just as fast as you can.'

  FIVE

  The door of Yester Kirk was open as the two cars swept through Gifford village, their speed moderated.

  People stood on the pavements of its wide main street, in groups of two or three, some in deep conversation, others staring at the sky, as if awaiting a slow-motion replay of the disaster.

  A white-collared minister waited outside the Kirk. Skinner thought that he looked stunned, as if trying to reconcile his faith with the reality of what his Saviour had allowed to happen on his doorstep.

  The cars swept up the hill out of the village, climbing towards the moors. At first the road was lined with trees, clinging to the last of their autumn colours in the wan morning sun, but gradually woodland gave way to cattle-dotted fields as the slopes began to level out.

  The transition from farmland to moorland was almost instantaneous. The cars rumbled across a cattle grid, and past a final copse of trees; suddenly, the pasture grass had been replaced by acres of brown and purple heather, rolling and undulating in a strange alien landscape. Skinner looked ahead as a mottled valley opened out before him. On the far side, in the middle distance he could see three, no, four thin columns of black smoke rising towards the sky.

  The smoke grew nearer, the columns thicker as they drove on over and through the bumps and hollows of the otherwise featureless moorland. At last they came to a fork in the road, with twin signs each pointing to Duns, via Cranshaws, and via Longformacus.

  A uniformed Sergeant stood by the signpost, as if on guard. Skinner flashed his headlights at his escort car, and pulled to a stop himself. The officer approached as he climbed out.

  Skinner recognised him at once. 'Hello, Sergeant Boyd,' he said, but without his usual affable smile of greeting. 'Where is everyone?'

  The whey-faced, forty-something policeman gave him a loose, wavy salute. 'Chief Superintendent Radcliffe took the rest of the lads up the Longformacus Road, sir. He left me here to divert the traffic and to direct. So far there's only six of us here.'

  Skinner grunted. 'That's a start. But in just a few minutes this place is going to be like Princes Street at the Fireworks.' Footfalls sounded behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw PC Reader and his partner approach from their parked car.

  `You two,' he said, not unkindly, beginning to feel guilt over his savaging of Reader, who, after all, had been only doing his job, if a little over-aggressively. 'Stay here with Sergeant Boyd. Use your car as a road block, and divert any traffic from Gifford down the Cranshaws Road. As our people and the other emergency services get here, send them on up the road.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'Others, and especially the press and telly, hold here. Don't let them past you, and don't let them head on down the other road where they can get round behind you. I don't want cameras all over the scene, at least until the rescue operation's well under way… Sergeant, get on your radio and make sure that this road's being blocked at the other end too. I'm off to find Mr Radcliffe.'

  He folded himself back behind the wheel of the white saloon and headed off down the narrow roadway, towards the four columns of smoke. They were beginning to spiral on a light morning breeze, which Skinner guessed would have been triggered by the turning of the tide in the estuary a few miles distant. On either side of him, the heather was thicker than ever. The Longformacus Road was steep and twisting as it plunged and climbed in and out of a succession of feat
ureless gullies. At first the smoke beacons were dead ahead of him but as he grew ever nearer, they veered round to his left with the curving of the road.

  As he drove he was concentrating more on the smoke signals than on the road, and so, when his eye was caught at last by the shapeless, mangled body he had to brake hard, throwing himself painfully against the restraining seat-belt.

  The thing lay across the roadway, blocking most of it, only a few yards short of the crest of a steep climb. At first, Skinner registered only a red, torn mass beyond the bonnet of the BMW. Breathing heavily, he squeezed his eyes shut as he composed himself. Then, running his fingers through his steel-grey hair, he braced himself and stepped out of the car.

  SIX

  It was a sheep.

  As Skinner stared at it, shuddering in spite of himself, he could see, protruding from the carcass, the long, jagged piece of metal which had caught the animal as it plunged from the sky, eviscerating it and hurling it, in a trail of gore and entrails, from the heather in which it had been grazing across the road. It was almost wholly red, looking for all the world as if science had produced a new strain of pre-dyed wool. His nostrils were filled with the smell of it, the almost palpable reek of blood and guts and faeces, and he turned his head away, staring back down the slope where the rest of the flock had gathered together as if for security, against the terror which had seized one of their number.

  Suddenly his senses were caught by another odour, one which overcame even the stench of the sheep. It was an acrid smell of burning, of the reek of ignited aircraft fuel which still hung over the fields. He looked up the slope, to its crest; his dread returned as he realised that he was very close to the disaster scene. As he stared, a faint voice reached his ears, borne on the breeze.