‘He’s tough and he’s trained. How are you going to break him? Are you changing your mind about physical persuasion?’
Skinner shook his head. ‘It’s a matter of giving him a reason to talk to me. It needn’t be fear; in fact it rarely is. Most often it’s guilt: people can’t carry its weight. But in quite a few cases, it’s arrogance. I’ve got Rudy marked down as a very self-satisfied person. It was the first thing that struck me about him when he came up to Edinburgh at the start of this business. If he was made of marzipan, he’d eat himself. One of the reasons why Sir Evelyn asked me to do this job is because I’m just another plod from the sticks, or at least that’s what Sewell thinks. He’ll be offended when he walks into the interview room and sees Dottie and me there. It’ll throw him off balance. I can work on that: I’ll start to demean him, attack his intellect, attack his motivation. It might take a while, but sooner or later, and I don’t care which. . I can be patient when I have to be. . he’ll be provoked. He’ll start to talk, and when he does, he’ll be bragging, he’ll be showing me how clever he really is.’
‘We’re going to find out pretty soon,’ said Dennis, as she turned off the road into the approach to the safe-house. They negotiated the barrier, cleared the encircling woodland and drove up the winding road. The morning was cold and wet: they rushed from the car park at the side round to the front door, and the shelter of its porch.
Winston Chalmers was waiting for them inside. ‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘Not such a nice day, is it?’
‘No,’ Skinner replied. ‘And here was I thinking I might take Mr Sewell for a walk in the garden.’
‘I’m sure he’d enjoy that. When do you want to see him?’
‘Let me top up my caffeine level first, then we’ll get on with it.’
‘Do you want me to let him shower and shave, like we did yesterday with Hassett?’
‘No, I want this one as uncomfortable as possible. I want him stinking, and knowing it.’
Chalmers laughed. ‘Oh, he stinks, that’s for sure. Where do you want to see him? In the upstairs drawing room like yesterday?’
‘No, that’s much too civilised. Do you have a really dark and depressing interrogation room?’
‘There’s one of those downstairs. I’ll go get him out of his bed-sit and put him in there for you.’ He turned and headed for the stair at the back of the hall, which led to the lower level of the house.
Skinner walked through to the kitchen, with the two women in his wake. He filled the kettle and switched it on, then started to search the cupboards for coffee. He had just found a jar of Alta Rica, and three mugs, when the door crashed open. A man whom Skinner had not seen before stood there, out of breath. ‘Sir,’ he gasped, ‘will you come with me, please?’
The detective frowned, then followed him. He took the steps two at a time, turning, at their foot, to the right, into a corridor that seemed to run the full width of the house. A few feet away, Winston Chalmers and another man stood beside an open door. They looked at the floor as Skinner appeared, and he knew at once what had happened. He had noticed in the garden, the day before, that the windows were barred, so escape was nowhere in the reckoning. He walked past the minders and looked into the place where Rudy Sewell had been confined. A powerfully stale odour swept out to meet him, but he ignored it. The room was rectangular, not much bigger than some of the prison cells that he had seen during his career. There was a bed, against the wall on the right, and no other furniture. To his left, there was a toilet and a tiny basin. A hook had been set into the wall beside the cistern and it was there that Sewell had killed himself.
‘I’ll bet there’s no sheet on the bed, Winston, is there?’ said the detective.
‘No, sir, just a duvet.’ Chalmers stood beside him.
‘CCTV camera?’
Chalmers pointed up and to his right, towards the ceiling. ‘Up there. It doesn’t look into the toilet area, though, so we couldn’t see what he was doing.’
Sewell had shown the true ingenuity of the determined suicide. He had ripped the sleeves from his shirt, tied them together, and had used them to form a ligature, which he had fixed tightly round his neck, securing the other end to the hook. And then he had simply knelt down, let the makeshift rope take his weight and asphyxiated himself. It was a hanging, of a kind, unorthodox, but clearly very effective.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Chalmers, quietly.
‘Why today?’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘Talking to myself. I was asking, “Why today?” He’s had a week to do that, a week to work out what was going to happen to him, so why did he pick this particular morning to top himself?’ He looked along the corridor and saw that Dennis and Shannon were standing at the foot of the stair. ‘Hey, Amanda,’ he said. ‘You told me you never wanted to see him alive again. You can take a look now if you like.’
She walked towards him; he stood aside to let her look into the room, his eyes on her all the time. There was no gasp of shock or horror. Her expression changed not at all.
‘Who saw him last?’ Skinner asked.
The two minders each shifted from one foot to the other, their eyes still on the floor. ‘Answer him!’ Chalmers barked. ‘Marlon, it was you, wasn’t it? You took him breakfast.’
‘Yes,’ the man replied.
‘Did you help him do that?’
Marlon seemed to recoil at the detective’s question. ‘No way! He was fine when I left him.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘He complained that the scrambled eggs were runny and the tea was cold.’
‘Did you say anything to him?’
‘I told him that he had better make the best of them for he was in for a tough day. I said that a hard bastard. . sorry, sir. . was coming all the way from Edinburgh to have a serious talk with him.’
Skinner drew a deep breath. ‘Did you normally exchange words with him?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No indeed,’ Chalmers growled. ‘No communication: it’s an operational rule.’
‘Okay, Winston,’ said the Scot. ‘Don’t fry the man for a few injudicious words. Sewell was probably biding his time: looks like he didn’t intend to undergo any form of interrogation, from anyone.’ He frowned. ‘But it’s your mess; you clear it up.’ He turned and walked away.
‘What will they do with him?’ he asked Dennis, quietly, as they reached the top of the stairs.
‘They’ll invent a suitable legend about an operation gone wrong. The body may turn up in a warehouse in a few days, and be blamed on organised crime.’
‘Handy for your lot, in a way, Sewell killing himself.’
‘Means we don’t have to, you mean?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’d have volunteered for the job,’ she said bitterly. She looked up at him. ‘You let that man off too lightly, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was thinking of something Rudy said after that first meeting we had with you up in Edinburgh. You had left, and he said, out of the blue, “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of that man. I’ll bet that if he put his mind to it, he could make a rock spill its guts.” He wasn’t avoiding interrogation: he was avoiding being interrogated by you.’
‘Is that the impression I give?’ he mused. ‘Is it really?’
‘What do you want to do now?’ she asked him. ‘Have another go at Hassett?’
‘You can’t.’ Winston Chalmers’s voice came from behind them, at the top of the stairs.
Skinner spun round. ‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because he isn’t here, sir: he was taken away last night.’
‘Who took him?’
‘His own people: a man from Six called Piers Frame and another fellow. They said that now he’d been questioned, they’d deal with him.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘The DG’s. He called me early evening and told me they were coming.’
Skinner stared at Dennis. ‘Did you know anything about this?’
‘Nothing, Bob,’ she exclaimed. ‘I swear.’
‘Then I guess Sir Evelyn and I are going to have a chat. One conspirator dead, the other disappeared. Is someone trying to sabotage this investigation?’