‘Do you know who sent him after you?’ he asked.
‘His father, I guess; my old buddy.’
‘Technically, but actually it was me. But to square things between us, it was me that warned you he was coming, too, through Merle Gower in your London office.’
‘Clever.’ The American grimaced. ‘I take him out and you come in to pick up the pieces. But what if it had gone the other way?’
‘He’d still have been taken out, by somebody if not by me. But I had faith in you, Titus. An old soldier like you against a poser like him? I’ll back experience every time. Now, sit down.’ He took a white linen cover from a table by the window and tossed it to him. ‘Here, use that to stop the bleeding.’
‘Thanks.’ Armstead slumped into an armchair. As Skinner stepped across to silence the radio, he rolled up his right sleeve, gingerly, and bound the cloth round the hole in his arm. ‘Feels like the bone’s shattered,’ he said. ‘Was that a lucky shot?’
‘It was for you; I was aiming at your hand but I missed. If it hadn’t hit you there it would have gone clean through your chest.’
‘Remind me to salute you some time. . if I can ever bend my arm again.’
‘Come on, no hard feelings. Give me credit for a bit of class too; I used your own gun. I found it on board your stepson’s houseboat. It’s a CIA weapon of choice, with no serial number, so I assume it came from you.’
‘You assume right. What do you want from me?’
‘I want the truth, the whole truth, and fuck all else, as a colleague of mine named Haggerty is fond of saying. And I want it on this.’ He produced a camcorder from his bag, and displayed it. ‘But first,’ he continued, as he produced a collapsible tripod, ‘I want you to tell me why you put Adam. . I’ll call him that, because that’s how I knew him. . on your payroll.’
‘Why not?’ the wounded man replied. ‘I have discretionary use of considerable funds, and my stepson was in the same business as me. As a matter of fact, I mentored him; I followed his career all the way through, and once he had made his reputation as a killer in the SAS, I used my contacts to get him into the intelligence world. Why shouldn’t he have worked for me as well as you? We’re both on the same side, and after the same people. Reviving his old identity and letting him make a little money out of the business seemed sensible to both of us.’ Titus Armstead stopped, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowing. ‘You knew Moses; in that case I know who you are now. He told me once about a Scotch buddy he had; a cop, tough bastard. Is that you?’
Skinner nodded.
‘Yeah, I guess. He said you were the scariest fucker he ever met in his life. . apart from me, that is, but I guess I’m getting old.’
Eighty-five
Another ‘ Saturday night.’ Alex found herself singing the familiar song quietly in the back of the cab as it cruised through Comely Bank just after ten o’clock. When she had awakened, uncomfortably, on Pippa’s couch, she had felt better in her life, but despite her mild headache, the night out had done her good, and the crisp clear winter morning was lifting her spirits with every moment. It was her habit on Saturdays to go out to Gullane to see the kids, but this one was going to be different: this, she was determined, was the day when her trouble was going to end. She would lock herself in her flat, she would wait for the phone to ring, and she would trust the police to nail her perpetrator, good and hard.
Despite Raymond Weston’s denial, she still harboured a nagging suspicion that he was her stalker, more by default than anything else, for she had no other suspects. He was cocky, he was arrogant, and thinking back to their brief relationship, she had suspected then that there was a dark vein of cruelty running through him. Good luck to him: she thought of him in a small room with Mario McGuire and Neil McIlhenney and wondered how self-assured he would be then.
She told the taxi driver to drop her at a convenience store close to her apartment, where she bought a copy of The Times, a bottle of Lucozade and a Mars bar, to serve as breakfast. Walking home, she stopped, on impulse, on the bridge on Deanhaugh Street and looked along the river. Yes, she reckoned, there was room to swing a cat on the footpath, and it would not have required superhuman strength to launch it on to her balcony. As she stood there, her neighbour’s patio door opened and Griff stepped outside. He glanced up towards the bridge, saw her and waved: she returned his greeting and moved on, feeling guilty and embarrassed. God, she thought, the other day he saw me seeing off my gentleman caller, now I’m getting in well past daylight in my party clothes. The man will think I’m a call-girl.
When Edinburgh enjoys a night out, it takes time to recover: Leith Water Lane was deserted as she approached the building. She let herself in, then, happy that she had encountered nobody in the hallway, unlocked her flat and cancelled the alarm. As she did she noticed that she had mistakenly put it on night setting when she had gone out. ‘Silly girl,’ she muttered, ‘but no harm done, the living-room sensor was still active.’
She laid the paper and the bag containing her makeshift breakfast on her desk and slipped out of her coat. She was on the point of heading for the shower when the phone rang. The red light was unblinking: no calls were waiting. She was on the point of letting the machine answer when she remembered that her watchers were back in place. She picked it up. ‘Alex.’
Silence.
‘Ah,’ she said wearily, ‘it’s you again. Your timing’s immaculate: I’ve just this minute walked in the door.’
Silence.
‘Be that way if you want, but since you’re on the line, let me give you a piece of my mind. That thing with the cat: how could you do something like that? You’re not just a pervert, you know. You’re a fucking sadist. I reckon when my friends catch up with you they’ll have to send for the men in white coats.’
Silence.
‘That’s right: I reckon you’re mental, friend. You know, until yesterday, you had me feeling just a wee bit guilty, in spite of myself. Not any more. Now I’m just one hundred per cent angry, you ba …’
The cord came over her head in an instant, knocking the phone out of her hand. She had no time to react before it was tight round her neck, choking her, cutting off her breath with a man’s strength. It felt cold and soft, as if she was being throttled with a silken rope. Her defence mechanism and her martial-arts training kicked in at the same moment. She sagged back into the figure behind her, twisting and throwing her right elbow into his gut, and at the same time lifting a foot and slamming it down, hoping against hope that her high heel would find his instep, hearing a crunch and a gasp of pain as it did. The ligature slackened, only for a moment, but long enough for her to grasp it with her left hand, slipping her fingers under it, scratching herself but not caring. She pulled as hard as she could against it, but her attacker used her own momentum against her, turning her and forcing her down on to the floor. She felt his knee in the small of her back, she felt the pressure grow, she felt herself weaken, she heard a crashing sound, and as red spots swam before her eyes, she wondered if she would ever hear anything again.
And then the pressure was gone, and the weight was lifted from her. She lay there, her face pressed into the carpet, gasping for breath. Something was happening in the room: she heard snarling, the sound of flesh on flesh, and finally a crash, but she was too shocked and too dazed to be concerned by it. Her only interest at that moment lay in sucking air into her lungs. She lay there until the hammering of her heart subsided and its beat came back to something approaching normal.