Fallen Gods Read online

  Fallen Gods By Quintin Jardine

  Back Cover:

  Can Britain's sharpest detective draw triumph from tragedy?

  The heat is on for DCC Bob Skinner, Scotland's most revered and , in

  some circles, most feared cop. His career hangs by a thread, as a

  recent illness gives his enemies a weapon to use against him. A body

  found in the detritus of a flood is identified as the hated brother

  whose existence he has kept hidden for years. On the crime front, an

  incendiary device destroys a valuable painting in the Royal Scottish

  Academy in Edinburgh. As Skinner and his team tackle these crises, his

  wife Sarah, left in America with their children to recover from the

  loss of her parents, finds comfort with an old college lover. When

  fate leaves her staring at a seemingly inevitable murder conviction,

  Bob will need all his fearsome resources to sort out the tangled mess

  his life has become.

  But is he still up to the challenge...?

  Lightning-paced and emotionally charged, FALLEN GODS is Quint in

  Jardine at his magnificent best.

  Praise for Quintin Jardine "Deplorably readable' Guardian

  It moves at a cracking pace, with crisp dialogue. It encompasses a

  wonderfully neat structural twist and taut, well-weighted action

  sequences and emotionally charged exchanges' Sunday Herald

  Having spent the first part of his working life trying, with modest

  success, to persuade journalists to accept his version of the truth

  about politicians and PR clients, Quintin jar dine took to crime

  writing both naturally and with relief.

  He is the author of twelve previous Bob Skinner novels, and of six more

  in the equally praised, but very different, Oz Blackstone series.

  Quintin Jardine is married with an extended family of four adult kids,

  and two Tonkinese cats. The rarely reclusive author can normally be

  found in the Mallard Hotel, Gullane, East Lothian, or in Trattoria La

  Clota,

  L'Escala, Spa in Spain.

  Copyright 2003 Portador Ltd

  The right of Quintin Jardine to be identified as the Author of the Work

  has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and

  Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2003 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  10 98765432

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on

  the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 7472 7448 7 (hardback)

  Typeset in Times by Avon Data Set Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham,

  Kent

  HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  A division of Hodder Headline

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk www.hodderheadline.com

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the lovely Gretta Bell, my

  mother,

  who died as it was being born.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks go to:

  Pat Holdgate, Church of Scotland (and my apologies, if required, to the

  real Principal Clerk to the General Assembly).

  The late Robin C B Stirling, OBE, the last of a now extinct species of

  weekly newspaper editor, gone to the great case room in the sky.

  He really did write all his copy in green ink with a fountain pen.

  Martin Fletcher, for doing his best to make me better.

  One.

  Nobody could remember weather like it in June. "A side-effect of El

  Nino," the lovely weather woman on BBC Breakfast had described the

  phenomenon, on the third morning of the blizzards that swept the

  Scottish mountains, a savagely unprecedented sting in the tail of a

  winter which, after seeming for a while to be endless, had been

  interrupted by the wettest spring on record.

  The hardy Highlanders had moaned their way through the dark months,

  counting at the same time the money as it flowed into the ski resorts,

  but even they found the summer snows too much to bear. On the second

  day, there was a report of a suicide on a remote farm, whose tenant had

  lost more than half of his sheep.

  And then, on the fourth day, it was over, as dramatically as it had

  begun. The clouds disappeared, the temperatures rose overnight by as

  much as eighteen Celsius, and the snows melted in the course of half a

  day.

  They poured into the mountain streams, which fed into the tributaries,

  which in their turn flowed into the River Tay, turning it into a sudden

  raging torrent.

  The people on the North Inch of Perth knew what was coming; many of

  them had experienced it before, and had supposed that it could not

  happen again, even though in their heart of hearts they knew that it

  could.

  A few piled sandbags in their doorways as high as they could, in the

  vain hope that they would prove an effective dam against the murky

  rushing water. The rest, those who had learned the hard lesson, moved

  as much of their furniture and as many of their valuables as they could

  into the upper floors of their terraced houses, and moved out to camp

  with relatives until the worst was over.

  If they had stayed, they would have seen the river rise, little by

  little at first, then more swiftly, foot by foot, until finally it

  broke out, forming a new loch as it swept across the low-lying Inch,

  finding the streets and the waiting houses, making a mockery of the

  sandbags as it poured through them, finding the lower floors and

  cellars, and filling them to drowning depth.

  Some had stayed, sitting safe upstairs, and even out on their roofs, in

  the blazing sunshine, watching the personal disasters unfold, and

  shaking their heads as they did. "This will never be allowed to happen

  again," the politicians had declared as the North Inch householders had

  cleared away the mud from the last inundation.

  But all too often, the attention span of politicians lasts no longer

  than the next election, and so, inevitably, it had.

  Meanwhile, three thousand miles to the west... Two.

  "It must have been a hell of a shock for you, with your husband just

  dropping in his tracks like that."

  "Have you been playing football for long without your helmet?" Sarah

  Grace Skinner asked, wryly, her voice suddenly brittle. "Of course it

  was a hell of a shock. All I could do was scream." Her mouth set

  tight for a few seconds. "Bob collapsing at my feet, I'm a damn

  doctor, and all I could do was stand there and scream." br />
  Ron Neidholm's massive quarterback's hand enclosed hers. "Hey there,"

  he murmured. His voice had always struck her as surprisingly gentle in

  such a big man; its contrast with the rest of his physical makeup had

  always amused her. Indeed it was that, rather than his rugged good

  looks, or the blueness of his eyes, which had caused the fluttering in

  her chest at their first meeting, thirteen years earlier. "Don't go

  taking the guilt on yourself," he told her, earnestly. "This is your

  husband we're talking about, and at your parents' burial into the

  bargain. Goddamn right you screamed. In your shoes I'd have done the

  same thing."

  She glared at him across the small table, and then the moment passed,

  and her face creased into a smile. "Oh no you wouldn't," she retorted.

  "You're a lawyer. First you'd have checked whether the ground was

  slippery, in case you could sue the funeral company, then you'd have

  gone straight home to look out the will."

  He laughed out loud. "That's what you think of me, is it? I may have

  a law degree, but I've never practised, remember."

  She took her hand from beneath his and reached out to touch his face,

  her fingers tracing its scars, gently, on his nose and above his left

  eye; then she slipped it inside his open-necked shirt, feeling the lump

  on his collarbone, the relic of an old fracture. "Maybe it's time you

  did," she whispered.

  "Maybe it is," he admitted, with the awkward grin she remembered so

  well, 'but it's just I love football, Sarah. Even when I was at

  college, it was my whole life. Apart from you, that is," he added,

  quickly.

  It was her turn to laugh. "I don't think so. That damn ball was

  always more important than me, when it came to the crunch. Pity help

  the woman who forced you to a choice."

  "That's never happened: not even with you, if you remember. When I

  told you I was going to Texas to turn professional, you just said

  "Fine. Good luck." You didn't give me any argument."

  She leaned forward and looked him in the eye. "Would there have been

  any point?"

  He shook his head. "No. To be honest I was glad when you took it so

  well. I had this idea that I'd come back from the season, whenever it

  ended, and you'd be there, waiting for me. Was I ever wrong, huh? Like

  Babs Walker said, you got bored damn quick."

  Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth tightened once more. "Yes, my dear

  friend Babs ... devious little bitch that she is. I tell you, if she

  wasn't Ian Walker's wife I'd have knocked her head clean off her

  shoulders for what she did. I thought it was just going to be the

  three of us for supper, after Ian's evening church service. When I

  walked in there last night, and saw you..."

  He grinned again. "I could tell, don't worry. When I caught the look

  on your face, I thought Oh shit! and tried to remember what I'd done

  to make you hate me."

  "It wasn't you."

  "I know that now, otherwise I wouldn't have dared suggest we have

  dinner tonight."

  "In that case, I'm glad you understood: you never did a thing to make

  me hate you. No, it was Babs who got under my skin. I knew straight

  away it was all her idea; it's in her nature. She's supposed to be my

  best friend, yet she does things like that. She'll say she's only

  looking out for me, and I guess she thinks she is, but sometimes it's

  her motive I can't stand. She hated Bob from the start, you know."

  "I'd guessed as much," he admitted. "She ..." He was stopped in

  mid-sentence by a tap on the shoulder; he looked up, into the eager

  face of a middle-aged man.

  "Mr. Neidholm," the intruder burst out. He had fine features, lank

  brown hair and wore a formal black suit. He was holding a white card,

  and a pen. Oddly he was wearing white gloves, but Sarah noticed

  blotches on his wrists and realised that he suffered from a skin

  disease. "I'm sorry to interrupt you and your companion, but I'm a

  shameless fan of yours," he gushed. "Would you be kind enough to sign

  this menu for me?"

  The big, fair-haired foot baller smiled across at Sarah apologetically,

  then shrugged his wide shoulders. "Of course," he said. "Gimme it

  here." He took the card and the man's Mont Blanc ballpoint and

  scrawled a signature.

  "Thank you so much," the man exclaimed. "You've made my summer." He

  turned to leave, then paused. "May I just say that I desperately hope

  you play at least one more season. Will you?"

  Ron reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "We'll see," he said.

  "In a couple of months I'll know for sure."

  "That was really nice of you," she said, as the fan made his way back

  to his table.

  "Comes with the territory; football's about guys like him, about little

  men with physical limitations to the point of handicap, even more than

  it's about the fat guys with dreams who dress up in the colours and

  make jackasses of themselves every Sunday in the season. I'm always

  available to someone like him. Besides," he added, with a grin, 'if I

  ever do practise law.. . not that I'll need to ... he'll remember it,

  and so will everyone in this restaurant who saw us."

  "I don't believe you're that cynical," she said. "I know you, Mr.

  Neidholm. You did it because you're nice, and for no other reason. Not

  everyone's as devious as our Babs." She hesitated. "You were going to

  say something about her when that man appeared. What was it?"

  "Nothing. Or something that's probably best left unsaid."

  "Too late now, big boy. Go on."

  He sighed. "If you insist. I was going to say that she made a point

  of showing me a photograph of you and a guy she said you had a thing

  with, when you and your husband had marriage problems a while back."

  "Cow!" she hissed. "I told her to get rid of that."

  "So that was true?"

  "Yes, it's true. Bob and I did break up at one point; I came back over

  here to the States and I did have a relationship with someone. But

  it's history, and so, very definitely, is he. God," she gasped. "Babs

  really does hate Bob, doesn't she? Even now, she won't let go."

  "Forget her," he said, firmly. "She was always like that, even years

  ago. You're right; for a minister's wife, she's something of a bitch."

  He picked up the empty bottle of San Pellegrino that lay on the table

  and glanced idly at the label.

  "Did they ever pin down what happened to him?" he asked.

  She shuddered. "His heart stopped, just like that. Makes you think,

  doesn't it. There is no Superman; there is no Planet Krypton. Not

  even the great Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner was invulnerable. Now

  let's talk about something else."

  "Okay, but why are you so bitter?"

  "Because he's gone," she snapped. "That's why I'm bitter. I'm angry

  with him, and I'm angry with the whole fucking world. Ron, I'm trying

  to come to the terms with the fact that my peaceful, lovely parents

  have been robbed and murdered in their peaceful, lovely lakeside cabin.

  Even now, with them both in the ground, I can barely make myself

  believe
it. I needed Bob beside me more than I ever did before, and

  yet he's gone, and left me here in Goddamned Buffalo New York, with my

  three children, and the aftermath of all that horror."

  "But come on, Sarah. It was hardly his choice."

  Tears welled in her eyes. "Yes it was! He's gone because of his

  career, his fucking career!"

  "Okay, okay, okay, calm down."

  She took a deep breath and dabbed her eyes, briefly, with her napkin.

  "I will if we talk about something else."

  "Sure, let's do that. Do you still have much to do to get your

  parents' estate through probate?"

  "Not about that either," she said. "Let's talk about you. Will you

  play another season, like that man asked you?"

  Ron Neidholm, Sarah Grace's college lover, looked at her across the

  table, in an hotel dining room which seemed, suddenly, to be empty

  apart from them. "Honey," he said, in the soft drawl he had acquired

  in his Texas days, "I have three Superbowl rings, and I have been

  All-American or Pro-bowl quarterback more times than I can even

  remember. That doesn't stop me wanting more glory, or more trophy

  jewellery, and the Nashville Cats are offering me an unbelievable

  amount of money to throw that damn ball for another season.

  "If that guy had asked me a month ago whether I'd take it, I'd have