He had just picked it up, when his internal telephone buzzed. He picked it up. "Jack," he said, knowing that his exec would be on the line.
"Sir," said Detective Sergeant McGurk, briskly. "The head of CID's been on; he's got Superintendent Rose and Inspector Steele in his office, and he'd like to bring them along. He wants to brief you on an investigation they've had running in your absence."
"Tell Dan to hold on for a bit, please, Jack. There's something I have to read up on first; I'll call them when I'm ready."
He hung up and turned back to the contents of Adam Arrow's package. He read through them slowly and carefully; once or twice he raised an eyebrow, but for most of the time his expression remained impassive.
Finally, he finished the last of the three documents, returned them to the Jiffy bag in which they had been delivered, and stored it in a deep drawer in his desk. When he was finished, he picked up the phone once more and called McGurk. "Okay, Jack," he announced, "I'm ready. Wheel them in; you come in too; most things I hear you can hear as well."
"Very good, sir. Will you need coffee?"
"If anyone's desperate I've got a filter machine here that's rarely empty; I'm not running a cafeteria, though."
Two minutes later, his door opened and Detective Superintendent Rose stepped in, followed by Steele, Pringle and McGurk. Maggie had been the DCC's exec, on her way up the ladder. He knew her well, and gave her an appraising look as she sat on one of the sofas that he used for informal meetings. He was pleased to see that the tension she had been showing the last time they had met seemed to have gone; she looked purposeful and relaxed. In contrast, Pringle looked gloomy and preoccupied. He wondered whether it was just another of Dan's famous Monday mornings, or if there was something more.
"Good to see you all," Skinner began, once everyone was settled comfortably, or in McGurk's case as comfortably as anyone of his height could on the low furniture. "It's bloody good to be back, I don't mind telling you. Now, what have you lot been up to while I've been away? You're going to need to start from scratch, I'm afraid. A few things have happened to me lately; I feel more out of touch than I've ever been in my life."
He saw Rose glance at Pringle; he caught the head of CID's brief nod for her to proceed. "This has all built up in the last week, sir," she said. "It began last Saturday, with a fire at an exhibition of religious art in the Royal Scottish Academy. A picture went up, in the middle of the opening speech by the chief sponsor, Mr. David Candela."
"Who?" asked Skinner.
"David Candela; he's senior partner of Candela and Finch, the lawyers."
"Mmm. Okay."
"It was clear from the start that an incendiary device had been planted. The building was cleared, the fire services turned out en masse, the fire was extinguished, the rest of the exhibition was checked out and cleared, and the guests were allowed back in."
"A storm in a champagne flute," the DCC murmured.
Rose smiled. "That's what we thought. We attended, we interviewed everyone present and we conducted a thorough investigation. This led us to a suspect, a young woman who was present at the opening, even though she hadn't been invited, and who'd had access to the picture before the event. This person was an obvious suspect; last year she was involved in an incident of attempted religious fire-raising and underwent psychiatric treatment as a result."
"The girl Strachan?" Skinner interrupted. "Yes, I remember hearing about the case. The treatment didn't work, then?"
"That's just the point, sir. It did. We were fed the girl; she was meant to take the blame. Someone made a malicious call to her, told her that God was calling her again, and that she should go to the exhibition. Given her recent history, she just flipped."
"You pulled her in, though?"
"Yes, of course. We might have bought her as the culprit, too, but for Stevie." She glanced at Steele and he saw a trace of a smile cross her face. "He thought to check her phone records, and he traced the mobile from which the call had been made."
"Good, but standard procedure nonetheless. So you had another suspect?"
"Yes, a trainee lawyer employed by Candela and Finch. But he denied making the call. He claimed that someone could have borrowed his phone and used it, during an office party. We had no way of disproving that, so we had to release him."
"Did he know the girl?"
"They were at university at the same time, but there's no evidence of an acquaintanceship. However, when she appeared in court last year she was represented by Dav Chapin, of Candela and Finch, so anyone in the firm could have known of her."
"Okay, so your investigation was rubbered. Or did you have a way forward?"
"No sir," said Rose, 'sideways. Stevie took a broader look at the whole situation, and came up with a completely different scenario. As a result we believe that the fire at the Academy had nothing to do with protests or religion. We believe it was staged deliberately, to engage the fire services. They were barely there before there was a second outbreak, in the empty office of Tubau Gordon pica fund manager up in the Exchange district. By the time the firemen got up there, a whole floor had been completely destroyed."
"And was this fire deliberately started?"
"There's no evidence of that, sir. But an entire division of the company was wiped out; its records all the way back to January were totally destroyed. When the chief executive of the company did a financial reconciliation, he discovered a loss of thirty million pounds."
"So it was deliberately started?"
Rose smiled. "As I said, there's no evidence of that. The fire service, and independent people, conducted a complete investigation. Everyone's agreed that it was an electrical fire caused by overheating in a computer, which was routinely left switched on. The experts say that as far as they can see it was an accident."
Skinner grinned. "But we're not as bloody stupid as them, are we? We don't ignore the obvious."
Rose returned his smile. "No, boss, we do not." She turned to Steele.
"Stevie, would you like to take this up?"
The inspector nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The obvious, sir, is that these two fires were both spontaneous outbreaks, but there was evidence of detonation in one and not in the other. The experts' view is that if there's no forensic evidence of fire-raising, there's no case. But what if the computer where the fire started was the timer? What if it was rigged to set it off itself at a specific time? There would be no forensic evidence, would there? None you could see, that's for sure.
So we're down to circumstances. Let's consider the loss. Tubau Gordon is an investment trust manager, and a good one; there's no way even a bad investment manager could blow thirty mil within an IT without it starting to showing up to his colleagues from the start. So as I see it, the loss must have been generated in the company's secondary business."
"Which is?"
"Currency speculation," Steele replied. "And guess what? The computer where the blaze began was the one used for that activity."
"But why go to all the trouble of holding up the fire brigade? Even with an automatic call out system, the computer would be gone by the time the fire-fighters got there."
"Because the back-up computer and all the paper records had to be destroyed as well. And it had to be done that weekend. Three days later those records would have been archived off-site."
Skinner smiled, and punched the air in a mock gesture. "Clever boy, Stevie. So who's the link?"
"David Candela. His family has a private investment trust which uses the dealing services of Tubau Gordon. It's located on the Oriental floor, where the currency division was also housed. Mr. Candela manages his trust himself; all the instructions to the brokers come from him. He enjoys round-the-clock access to the building and he's a regular attender at weekends; the security log shows that.