07 - Skinner's Ghosts Read online

  She pulled herself free from his light grasp, shaking her head. ‘No! It’s as if he’s in the house with us. If you don’t answer it, I will.’ As the muffled voice continued to float through to them from the living room, she twisted and threw herself across the recumbent Skinner, reaching out with her left hand. She was smiling, but he took her threat seriously enough to grab her and pull her neat little body back down towards him, holding her away from the phone.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But you keep quiet. I’ve said I’ll tell him, but in my own time.’ He reached behind him with his free hand and picked up the telephone.

  ‘I’ll try the mobile,’ he heard Andy Martin say, ‘but if you get this first, call me . . .’

  ‘Andy! Sorry, mate. I was in the garden. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Did you get any of that?’

  Involuntarily, Skinner shook his head. ‘No, not a bit of it.’ The coiled-spring tension in Martin’s voice grasped him at once. Releasing Pam from his grasp, he swung his legs from beneath the duvet and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘What’s up?’ he growled.

  ‘Bob, you’re going to hate this. I’m at Leona McGrath’s place, down in Trinity.’ There was a pause. ‘Leona’s dead. She’s been raped, battered and strangled.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Skinner shuddered, so suddenly and violently that, to Pamela, the bed seemed to shake. He ran his fingers through his tousled, steel-grey hair, grasping a clump as he fought to control his shock. Behind him, the mattress squeaked as Pam sat up once more. He waved her to silence over his shoulder.

  ‘When?’ he asked, hoarsely.

  ‘She was found about an hour ago. She’d been due to attend a constituency event. When she didn’t turn up, the local party chairwoman called round to ask why. There was no reply to the bell, but the back door had been forced. The woman had a look around, and found Mrs McGrath upstairs.’

  Skinner sat stunned. As she looked at him, wondering and fearful, Pamela saw that the battle scars on his back and thigh were standing out vivid purple, and realised that he had gone pale. She gripped his arm again, squeezing.

  ‘And her son?’ the DCC asked at last. ‘Wee Mark. What about him?’

  ‘There’s no-one else here, Bob. Neil McIlhenney, Sammy Pye and I have been over the place ourselves. We’ve been everywhere. There’s no sign of the kid.’

  ‘Mark!’ said Skinner sharply. ‘His name is Mark.’

  He squeezed his eyes tight shut, partly to stem the hot tears which he felt springing up, and partly to try to stop himself shaking with tension.

  ‘After what that woman’s endured, and done,’ he murmured, when he had calmed himself. ‘For it to end like this . . .’

  He stood up, still holding the phone and turned to face Pam, his back to the muslin-draped window. ‘You say Neil and Sammy are there?’

  ‘That’s right. Sammy was with me when the call came in. And I thought you’d want the big fella here.

  ‘I tried to raise Sergeant Masters, but she’s on a day off.’ Skinner searched for an undertone in his friend’s remark, but found none.

  ‘Forget Pam,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t need to be there. I’ll be with you in Edinburgh inside an hour. Meantime, I suggest you contact the grandparents. Mark’s very close to Roland’s father. Let’s pray that he’s with him.’

  He replaced the phone in its cradle and looked down at Pamela.

  ‘What . . .’ she began, before Skinner forestalled her question.

  ‘A very good friend,’ he said. ‘Leona McGrath. The MP for Edinburgh Dean. You must remember her. Her husband was killed in the plane crash last year. She fought the seat, and won it.’ Pam nodded.

  ‘Well, now it’s her time to die. She’s been murdered.’

  He stood there before her, naked, and heaved a huge sigh. ‘Oh my girl,’ she said, ‘when you live with me, you find that some terrible things force their way into your life. Even in the quietest moments, you’re never safe from them.

  ‘Think you can cope with it?’ He reached for his clothes and began to dress.

  3

  The house was so familiar to him. He walked past the uniformed officers who stood guard at the head of the driveway, his sandals crunching their way up the narrow gravel path which led from the gate.

  The front door was open. He stepped into the hall, pulling on a white scene-of-crime tunic and overshoes before venturing further.

  Properly clad now and knowing exactly where he was going, he strode into the drawing room, then through to the wooden conservatory. Around him, specialist technicians were bent over their work, dusting down doors, windows and furniture for fingerprints, in the hope that one - even a fragment of one - would have been left by the intruder rather than by Leona or her son. Skinner nodded approval of the team’s tenacity, even though experience told him that the chances of their work being rewarded were around one in five.

  As he stepped back into the hall he collided with another white-suited figure, three or four inches shorter in height than his own six foot two, but distinctive, with his shock of red hair.

  ‘Hello Inspector,’ he said grimly. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘All the mess is upstairs, sir. It looks clean as a whistle down here,’ said Arthur Dorward, confirming Skinner’s pessimism. ‘The back door’s been jemmied, but other than that, nothing’s disturbed. Mrs McGrath’s in the front bedroom, top of the stairs.

  ‘That’s where you’ll find Mr Martin.’

  The DCC nodded. ‘Come with me then. I’ll welcome your insight. ME still here, is he?’

  Inspector Dorward nodded. ‘Aye, sir. Dr Banks as usual.’ He paused. ‘He’s not a patch on his predecessor, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  He did mind, very much, but he let it pass. There was no point in taking his bitterness out on an honest soldier like the scene-of-crime Inspector, especially when he knew that he was speaking no more than the truth. Dr Sarah Grace Skinner was the best murder-scene examiner he had ever encountered, gifted with an uncanny ability to paint compelling pictures of events from the very slightest of clues. As he and Dorward climbed the stair a huge pang of regret shot through him.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Martin, Head of CID, was standing in the doorway of the bedroom as they reached the upper landing, leaning against its upright, his broad back to them in its white suit.

  Skinner stepped up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing him out into the hall. ‘Hi, son,’ he said quietly. ‘Is Banks nearly finished?’

  Martin nodded. ‘You know him. He’s taken forever, but he’s just about done now.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said the DCC. ‘I suppose I’d better take a look then.’ He made a conscious effort to brace himself as he stepped into the room.

  Skinner believed deeply that every good police officer had a tolerance limit when it came to viewing the bodies of murder victims. He knew that he had passed his own a long time before. One of the benefits of Chief Officer rank was the ability to delegate, to opt out personally from the messy end, where once he would have attended automatically.

  Yet some circumstances, like the murder of a public figure, and this, the murder of a woman who had come to be a very close friend, still demanded his presence. And of course, once there, on view himself, he could show no weakness.

  He thought that he had prepared himself mentally for what he would see, but a moan still escaped his lips as he looked at the body of Leona McGrath.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Bob Skinner, out loud for all to hear. ‘You poor wee lass. What bastard did that to you?’

  And then the rage - cold, blind, savage rage - took over. ‘When I lay hands on you, whoever you may be . . .’ he hissed.

  ‘I think we all feel like that, sir,’ said Martin, his green eyes narrowed slightly and his shoulders bunched.

  Skinner knelt beside the body. The little woman . . . she had been not much over five feet tall . . . lay on her back. Her arms were twisted under her and the policeman knew without l
ooking that the wrists were bound together. She was naked, save for a brassière, still fastened, but forced up above her breasts. She was covered in blood. From her vagina, it was matted in her thick growth of pubic hair, and smeared across her thighs and belly. From her nose and mouth, it was spread across her face, shoulders and chest, staining the white bra. From her left ear ran a single crimson line. Before her heart had stopped pumping, it had flowed into a puddle, congealed now on the fawn-coloured carpet.

  Great vivid bruises and welts showed all over her pallid, yellowish skin. The most vivid were on her face, and on her side, just below her left breast, as if a fist had pounded on her, time and time again.

  Her face was swollen grotesquely, from the beating and from the white garments - panties, he guessed, possibly more than one pair - which had been stuffed into her mouth. A single black nylon stocking had been wound around her neck, more than once, as a strangling ligature, then tied off, ferociously tight. The flesh around it was blue and puffed.

  Finally, when he could avoid them no longer, Skinner looked at her eyes. They were bulging, staring up at him, and so full of anger and remonstration that he winced and looked away for a second, before closing them, almost reverently, with his right hand.

  Gently, he turned her on to her side. Her wrists were indeed bound, with the electric cord of a black hair-dryer. Just above the blood which was caked on her buttocks, there were vivid red marks where its plug had been crushed into her flesh. He leaned closer, to look at her hands. Her fingernails were long, and appeared to be painted with a hard clear varnish. On the tips of three, on her right hand, he could see what appeared to be blood.

  He glanced up at Martin. ‘Andy,’ he said. ‘Untie her hands, while I hold her, would you.’ Without a word, the grim-faced Head of CID did as he was asked.

  ‘Plastic bags on the hands please, Doctor,’ said Skinner to the Medical Examiner, who stood a few feet away. ‘There’s blood on her nails, and it might not be hers.’ He rolled the body over, and laid her face down, partly to help Banks cover her fingers and partly to hide her poor battered features from the others in the room. Almost without thinking, he unfastened the bra.

  The doctor set the clear plastic covers in place over the dead fingers, securing them with elastic bands, snapped into place around the weals left in the wrists by the binding cable. He stood up, beside the DCC.

  ‘Well?’ asked Skinner.

  ‘Whoever did this wasn’t messing about,’ said Banks. ‘She was raped, and sodomised, pretty savagely, thumped around a bit, then strangled. Don’t worry about fingernail scrapings,’ he said dismissively. ‘You’ll find all the DNA you need in other places.’ Astonishingly, he smiled at the detectives, from one to the other. ‘The press’ll have a field day with this. I expect I’ll be all over the telly when I come to give evidence at the trial.’

  Skinner felt himself come to boiling point, but it was the normally unflappable Andy Martin who exploded first. ‘Are you enjoying this, Banks?’ he shouted. The DCC stared at him in surprise, unable to remember ever having heard his friend raise his voice in anger.

  ‘You know something, you little shit,’ barked the Head of CID. ‘I’ve never liked you; nor has anyone else on our team. You turn up late at crime scenes, then you give us half-arsed reports which don’t usually help us one bit. But the worst thing about you is your total lack of respect.

  ‘We knew that lady lying there, Mr Skinner and I. This is a personal tragedy for us. She was worth a dozen of you, and in death she will be treated with honour, not as a vehicle to advance your personal reputation.’

  He stepped close to the doctor and prodded him in the chest with his broad right index finger. ‘You can bet on this, Banks. You will not be called as a witness in the trial of Leona’s killer. The pathologist’s evidence will be enough. And you can bet on this also. You’re at your last crime scene in this city, and with this force.

  ‘First thing tomorrow, I will see to it personally that your name is removed from our list of medical examiners. Now, I think you’d better leave . . . before you make me lose my temper.’

  Doctor Banks’ face went from white to red in a couple of seconds. ‘You can’t do that,’ he spluttered.

  Skinner leaned forward, took him by the arm, and led him towards the door, past an astonished Inspector Dorward. ‘Too fucking right he can, mate,’ he said. ‘Too fucking right.’ He eased the doctor out on to the landing. ‘Send the mortuary people up as you leave,’ he ordered, and closed the door in his face. His mouth was set, tight and grim, as he turned back to Martin. ‘Good for you, son,’ he said, softly. ‘Couldn’t have done better myself.’

  He glanced across at the red-haired Inspector. ‘Right, Arthur. Let’s have your observations.’ A sudden thought struck him. ‘No, before that. Where are McIlhenney and Pye?’

  ‘I sent them off to see the grandparents,’ said Martin, ‘to check whether Mark’s with them.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘Good. You could hardly have telephoned, right enough. Okay, Arthur, sorry. Carry on.’

  Dorward coughed, clearing his throat. As he did so, the door opened, and two dark-uniformed mortuary workers, a man and a woman, entered, carrying a brown plastic coffin.

  The three policemen stood aside. As the bloody, naked body of Leona McGrath was lifted and placed gently in its makeshift container Skinner turned away and looked out of the bedroom window into the street, lit by the summer evening sun, which shone on a small crowd of around a dozen onlookers, and on a larger number of reporters, photographers and television cameramen. Their number had doubled since his arrival. He guessed that the tip-off industry had done its stuff once again. As he watched them he saw a camera raised and trained upon him. Quickly he reached across and pulled the curtains closed.

  When he turned back the coffin was gone. ‘Arthur,’ he said. ‘At last.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Dorward. He paused for a few seconds, then went on. ‘The only relevant comment I have to make is that Mrs McGrath must have been surprised in this room. Look over there.’ He pointed to a wardrobe door, which lay open. ‘And there.’ He pointed to a dressing-table drawer from which items of underwear hung. ‘And there.’ He pointed to a chair, across which denim jeans and a white blouse had been laid neatly.

  ‘There are no signs of a struggle downstairs,’ said Dorward, ‘and precious few in here. No torn clothes, nothing like that. If you look in the en suite bathroom, you’ll find a damp towel. I’d guess that Mrs McGrath was getting ready to go out when she was attacked.

  ‘Her assailant burst in on her and found her virtually naked. Maybe rape wasn’t on his mind till then.’

  ‘Or their minds,’ Martin interrupted.

  ‘That’s true, sir,’ Dorward agreed. ‘But semen testing will tell us whether there was more than one rapist.’

  ‘So what was on the killer’s mind . . . singular or plural?’ asked Skinner. ‘Robbery?’

  Dorward shrugged. ‘It doesn’t look like it, boss. There’s a handbag downstairs, in plain view on the kitchen table, so that the intruder must have walked past it. There’s about a hundred and fifty quid in there, in cash. There’s an antique clock on the mantelpiece in the living room that’s worth a couple of grand. There was a diamond engagement ring still on her finger, and more jewellery on the dressing table. There’s a briefcase in her study, but no papers seem to have been disturbed.

  ‘No sir. Not robbery. That’s pretty certain.’

  ‘Then what?’ Skinner barked the question, not at Dorward, but at the ceiling, feeling an uncomfortable nagging knot forming in the pit of his stomach as one possible answer grew larger in his mind.

  He glanced across at Martin. ‘Who was it found her?’

  ‘Her constituency chair, a woman called Marks. She was just babbling nonsense when I got here. Banks gave her a sedative, and I had her taken home. With luck we’ll get sense out of her tomorrow.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. We’ve got people interviewing neighbours, yes?’r />
  ‘Yes. Dan Pringle’s people are doing that.’ Skinner nodded approval. Detective Superintendent Dan Pringle was Divisional Head of CID for the greater part of the City of Edinburgh. With him in charge there would be no chance of sloppiness.

  ‘Where will you base the investigation?’

  The DCS shrugged. ‘Headquarters, I thought, rather than the Divisional Office. We’ve got everything we need at Fettes, plus we have more room to handle the press. With the political involvement, this will be no ordinary murder enquiry.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ said Skinner. ‘When are you going to see the press?’

  ‘I’ve told Alan Royston to set up a briefing for seven thirty. Do you want to take it?’

  The older man shook his head. ‘No. You’re Head of CID. That’s your job.’

  ‘They’ll expect you,’ said Martin doubtfully.

  ‘Well they’re not fucking having me, and that’s an end of it. You take the first press conference, then leave the later briefings to Royston. That’s what he’s paid for.’

  ‘Okay.’ The DCS paused. ‘Here,’ he asked, casually, ‘d’you know if Royston’s still involved with Pam Masters? I know he was for a while. Did she mention anything when she worked for you?’

  Inwardly, Skinner gulped. He stared at Martin, looking for anything devious in his eyes, yet seeing nothing. ‘That finished a long time ago,’ he said at last. ‘What made you bring that up?’

  Martin smiled. ‘Plain old-fashioned curiosity, that’s all. I’ve never known an officer who keeps her private life as private as she does.’

  ‘So much for Pam’s notions about Alex and Andy’s shared conclusion,’ he thought. He might have told his friend the truth there and then had not Neil McIlhenney’s shout drifted up from the hallway. ‘Sir? You still up there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Skinner called out in reply, suddenly relieved by the interruption. ‘We’re on our way down though.’

  Leaving Dorward to carry on his painstaking work in the bedroom, the two senior officers descended the staircase. Detective Sergeant McIlhenney, Skinner’s personal assistant, stood waiting in the hall with Detective Constable Sammy Pye, one of Martin’s staff officers. The two flanked a tall man in his seventies, silver hair, pale and shaking.