‘Very good. I’ll leave you to get on with the papers. How was the coverage of your briefing?’
‘Restrained,’ Skinner told him. ‘There are news reports of my appointment, and a couple of photos, but nothing about the interruption. Mitchell Laidlaw’s interdict is pretty comprehensive in what it prohibits. One of the tabloids has done a background piece on me that includes a picture of Alex, but that’s as close to the wind as anyone seems to have sailed. I’m nearly finished. Just the Herald and the Saltire to read.’
He picked up his mug as Crossley left. It was half-full, but the contents were cold, and so he tipped them into the basin in his private bathroom, then poured himself a refill. Coffee was one of his vices, and he knew it. Only Aileen’s firm instruction had made him switch to decaf.
He was studying the Herald when his phone rang. His appointment was reported on page three, but his attention was focused on the front. He reached across to his desk and took the call.
‘I have a call for you, Mr Skinner,’ said his assistant, ‘but I’m not sure you’ll want to take it.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘It’s from Brankholme Prison, near Darlington; the deputy governor who put it through here told me that it takes high-risk remand prisoners from the regional courts. The caller’s Dražen Boras, the man who’s awaiting trial for-’
‘I know who Dražen Boras is, Gerry. Why would that bastard want to speak to me? To congratulate me on my appointment?’
‘He says he has information, and that he’ll only give it to you, nobody else. He says it’s vital, and that you’ll be very interested in it. The deputy governor said she reckons he’s genuine.’
Skinner took a deep breath and gazed out of the window, at the uninspiring view of an empty playing field. The last time he had seen Dražen Boras, one of only two meetings, he and Mario McGuire had arrested him in a hotel in Monaco, and had charged him with the murder of Stevie Steele, Maggie’s husband. The Bosnian-born millionaire had thought himself beyond their reach, thanks to the help of American friends who had repaid favours owed, but he had been wrong. Skinner knew that there was a good chance he would have to see the man again, to give evidence of his arrest, but in truth, if he could have tossed him from the balcony of his room in the Columbus to save the expense of a trial, he would have done so without a second’s thought.
‘Vital, is it?’ he murmured, feeling the anger welling up within him. ‘OK, Gerry, I’ll take Mr Boras’s call, but you be listening in. Tell him he’ll be recorded.’
‘But we don’t have that facility, Chief.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Dražen’s the sort of bloke who’ll assume we do. I wouldn’t want to ruin our image in his eyes.’ As he waited, he realised that he was gripping the phone as tightly as he might if he had his hand round Boras’s throat. He forced himself to relax, to be calm.
‘Mr Skinner.’ The voice was smooth, the accent that of an English public schoolboy, as he had been. ‘I’m slightly surprised you’re speaking to me, since I know you and your people would like me dead.’
‘You’re being dealt with as we would wish, Mr Boras. You’ll have your day in court, then if you’re convicted, as our evidence says you will be, you’ll have your thirty years, or whatever, in jail.’
‘Thirty years, you reckon?’
‘Less than the time my colleague might have had left. Did you know his widow has a baby daughter that he never saw?’
‘That’s a great pity. Without making any admission for your tape, I assure you that I am genuinely sorry about that, as I am about the unfortunate death of DI Steele. If I send you a gift for the child, will you pass it on?’
‘No, I’ll have you charged with attempted bribery. Now what is it that you want? What’s this information that you have for me?’
‘I won’t give it to you over the phone, or in any environment where I can be recorded. I’m a sitting target here.’
‘Be sure you stay close to the window,’ said Skinner, drily.
‘They don’t let me do that. I need to see you, Mr Skinner, to tell you what I know. If you have me brought up to Edinburgh, I’ll tell you there.’
‘There’s no chance of that.’
‘I thought not. Then you come to me, you and that gorilla of a colleague who thumped me in Monaco.’
‘You’re kidding. You really don’t want to meet DCS McGuire again. Anyway, he’s away just now.’
‘Then someone else.’
‘Are you trying to work a plea bargain? If you are, talk to the Crown Prosecution Service, not me.’
‘No, I’m not. Maybe I’m just looking for some credit, when it counts.’
‘Like when it comes to sentencing?’
‘No comment.’
‘You’ll get nothing from me.’
Boras sighed. ‘OK, if you come to me, I’ll take you on trust.’
‘I repeat, why should I? What have you got for me?’
‘This morning,’ Boras replied, ‘when they woke me at the usual ungodly hour, they gave me my usual newspapers. In the Daily Mail, I saw a photograph, three actually, of a man you are looking for, someone calling himself Hugo Playfair.’
‘Yes?’ said Skinner, feeling the hair on the back of his neck start to prickle.
‘I know who he is.’
Sixty-eight
‘What do you think, Sarge?’ Sauce Haddock asked. ‘Will things be much different now that Mr Skinner’s chief constable?’
‘In theory, no,’ Ray Wilding replied, ‘not for us, at any rate. The word that’s filtered down from Neil McIlhenney is that he’s going to keep hands-on with CID, just like he did before. But there are bound to be changes. There’ll be somebody new in the command corridor, for openers.’
‘Someone from outside?’
‘You’d assume so, especially with the big man’s being promoted internally, but I wouldn’t put money on that. He’s loyal to his own, and it’ll take a good candidate to beat Brian Mackie for the deputy job. If that happens-’
‘Mr McGuire for ACC?’
‘Wait and see, lad; I don’t expect anyone will give us a vote.’
‘What about Andy Martin?’ Alice Cowan called out across the CID room.
Wilding stared at her. ‘Are you pulling my chain?’
‘No,’ she replied innocently. ‘Why not him?’
‘If you don’t know, I’m not going to be the one to tell you. Let’s just say that Judas bloody Iscariot’s got more chance.’
Cowan turned to Haddock. ‘Sauce, what have I missed?’ she demanded, but the young DC was saved by the ringing of his phone.
He snatched it up. ‘Yes?’
‘DC Haddock, Leith? Communications Centre. I have a call for you, foreign, from Belgrade.’
His heart jumped in his chest. ‘Put it through.’ He heard a click. ‘This is DC Harold Haddock,’ he said.
‘I received email,’ a woman replied, ‘from you, yes?’
‘Yes. Are you Vsna?’
‘That’s my name, Vsna Vukic. You tell me the man who email me before is dead?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘How?’
‘Murdered.’
‘Shit! Then I shouldn’t be speaking to you.’
‘I won’t take long.’
‘He ask me about some people, give me names, Andelić, Nikolić, asked me if I knew them.’
‘Why did he ask you?’
‘I am journalist in Sarajevo. Someone we both know sent him to me, a lady in America.’
‘Did he say anything else to you?’
‘When I reply to his mail I ask why he want to know anyway. He send me another. It said, “It’s about the cleaner.” That’s all I need to know. I delete his mails, just like I’m going to delete yours now. Don’t send me no more. I going to close that address.’
‘But. .’ There was a sound, louder than a click, the sound of a phone hitting its cradle, hard. And then the dialling tone.