newspaper guy isn't a football fan, but could he find out and call him back on his home number. What does that say to you?'
That he could have been trying taste fix himself up with an alibi for twelve noon?'
'Most juries I've known would call that a reasonable conclusion. Especially if you tell them that Rangers weren't playing at all yesterday. Their game's today.'
Haggerty washed down the last of his sandwich with lukewarm coffee. 'So what d'you want me taste do, Mr S?'
'I want you to be like sticking plaster to him, Willie.
Everywhere he goes, everything he does, everyone he talks to, I want to know. I'll detail a couple of guys to work with you. If he goes for a shit, I want to know how many sheets of paper he uses.
If he goes to Confession, I want to know how many Hail Marys he gets as his penance.'
Haggerty's eyebrows rose. 'If he's a Rangers supporter, he's hardly going taste Confession!
Skinner laughed. 'That's the other funny thing about the phone call. Grant Macdairmid's a Catholic. Not too many Tims at the Rangers end!'
'No' for long, at any rate!' said Haggerty with a snort. 'Right, sir. Leave it taste Haggerty's heroes. Every contact he makes will be reported back to you daily. What about other checks? Can you get us the authority to look into his bank accounts?'
'You've got it. Anybody gives you problems, call me. Use this number.'
He picked up a paper napkin and a rollerball pen, and wrote down the number of his mobile. As he did so, as if on cue, the phone itself, which was lying on the table, sang into life. He picked it up and pressed the 'receive' button.
'Hello.'
'Boss, it's Andy.' At once. Skinner sensed the tension in Martin's voice. 'I need to see you at the Sheraton – now. Suite 207.'
'What's the problem?'
'Ballantyne's bravery. Someone's bled for it – to the death.'
20
In fact there was very little blood. Yet Skinner recognised the odours of death as soon as he opened the bedroom door in the Sheraton suite.
The woman lay curled on her left side on the floor, in the centre of the room. Her right arm was thrown out in front of her, the hand palm downward. Her short, greying hair was wet, and plastered to her head. The left side of her face was pressed to the carpet. Her right eye seemed to stare at Skinner's feet as he stood in the doorway. Her expression, even in death, was one of pure aggression, accentuated by the fact that her top lip was curled back in a snarl from her prominent teeth. Her pale pink towelling robe had fallen open. Beneath her heavy left breast a single puncture wound was visible, dark red and vivid against the postmortem pallor of her skin. From it, a thin trail of blood ran down to form a small scarlet blot on the robe, which was marked also by a second stain, yellow-hued, beneath her hips.
Martin stood over the body. Sarah was by his side.
'Who is she?' Skinner asked.
Martin opened his mouth to answer, but it was Sarah who replied, in a strange soft voice.
'Hilary Guillaum. From Buffalo, New York. The world's greatest mezzo-soprano. I first heard her sing there, in a summer concert, when I was twelve years old. She'd come back to Buffalo to do a charity recital in an open-air theatre. My dad took me, and I thought she was wonderful. The second time was thirteen years later, at the Met. She sang Norma, and she was just glorious. She was due to sing at the Usher Hall tonight. I tried to get tickets for us, but they were sold out.'
She shook her head and looked at the floor, biting her lip as she fought to regain her professional detachment.
Skinner stared at the body. He too had heard Hilary Guillaum sing, on the records and CDs of her repertoire which made up a large part of Sarah's collection. He pictured in his mind the photographs – on the record sleeves and boxes – of a beautiful, confident statuesque woman with hair piled high and an extravagant cleavage, as he now looked more closely at the fleshy lump lying on the floor. He saw not the slightest similarity between the two. •Death doesn't compromise with dignity, does it.' Skinner spoke his thought aloud into the quiet room.
'Tell me what happened. Doc.'
Sarah banished all memories of the Metropolitian Opera House from her mind, and went to work. 'You see it there. Skinner.
Single knife wound, lower chest area, left of centre. Made by a very sharp, double-edged weapon with a long blade, thrust in and upwards into the heart. Death ensued certainly within ten seconds.
It would have been caused by shock, not haemorrhage. That's why there's very little external bleeding.'
'So show me how it was done,' he said. 'Andy, you be the victim. She couldn't have been far short of your height.'
'That's right,' said Sarah, with an appraising glance at Martin.
'And there's no sign of any struggle.
'OK, let's see. Andy, over here, please.' She led him towards the door to the ensuite bathroom. 'This is where it begins. She's just had a shower, OK. She's been across at the Usher Hall doing sound checks. She dries off and plasters her hair back, then goes into the bedroom.'
'Does she hear something that makes her go back in?' Skinner asked, knowing the answer but looking for confirmation.
'No. She didn't tie her bathrobe. But whoever killed her was in the room, waiting. Either behind the door, or else it was someone she was expecting, someone whose appearance there was quite normal and didn't cause her any alarm. Because she still didn't tie the bathrobe.'
'Do we know if she was here alone?'
Martin answered. 'Her husband travels with her occasionally, but not this time. There's always a voice coach, male, and a secretary, female. They were both still at the Usher Hall from the time she left there at 1:00 o'clock until the secretary came back across here and found her at 2:15.'
'So,' said Skinner, 'she was either taken completely by surprise, and overcome quickly and easily by someone very fast and very strong, or she was taken completely off-guard by someone she knew or didn't regard as a threat. If we look at the second of those options, it brings us back to the fact that she didn't tie the robe.
That means that she either had a boyfriend – or girlfriend – in town that we don't know about, or-'
Sarah broke in. 'Or the person in the room was another woman.'
'Would a woman have had the strength to do that?'
'If she took her by surprise, yes, no question. Looking at the wound, the weapon must have been so sharp that a child could have killed with it. It happened one of two ways. Either like this…'
She took a pair of long scissors from her bag, and held them as one would grasp a knife. She beckoned to Martin, and positioned him with his back to the bathroom door, close to where the body lay. Then she stepped up to him, quickly, spun him round with her left hand on his right shoulder, and imitated the upward thrust of the knife, pulling him down by the shoulder and towards her as she did so. Instinctively Martin's right hand came up and caught Sarah's shoulder.
'… or like this.'
She stood Martin with his back to the dead Hilary Guillaum.
She held the scissors inverted and point-upwards against the inside of her forearm, concealed from his sight.
'Let's assume that the killer was in the room, and that Hilary had just come in from her shower,' she said. 'He or she could have made as if to go into the bathroom. Then…'
Again she stepped in close, grasping Martin by the shoulder, letting the scissors fall into her hand and stabbing upwards.
Again, instinctively, the detective pushed against her with his right hand, but she was able to hold herself close to him.
'Right, I buy that so far,' said Skinner. 'Now, how did the victim react?'