The first performers arrived just after midday: a student revue from Oxford University. They set out their props on one of the lorry stages and soon gathered a crowd as they began to perform snatches of their show, involving the audience whenever they ;ould. Gradually, more and more spectators and more and more layers filled the Park, until by 2:00 pm it was thronged with happy folk, singing, playing and laughing in the sunshine. The only people there who could not relax were Skinner's plainclothes team, the SAS soldiers, and the ninety-five policemen and policewomen in uniform, who continued to mingle with the crowd.
He was standing with Sarah, some way off, when it happened.
A few minutes earlier, a wide circle had opened amid the crowd, perhaps one hundred and fifty yards across. A motorcycle had roared into life, then another, then a third, and a fourth.
'It's Le Cirque Mobile,' Sarah cried. 'Let's have a look.'
But he had held her back, seeing no easy way through the thick crowd. So Sarah had stretched on tip-toe, catching only glimpses of the riders' lightweight helmets, and occasionally the clown make-up on their faces, as they bucked and twisted their bikes in wheelies, or left the ground in acrobatic leaps.
Skinner was looking away when he heard the first screams, and Sarah grasped his arm tightly. He looked round, to see the wide circle of spectators burst apart as one of the riders revved his bike and roared through them, steering with his left hand alone. The bike carved a swathe amid the diving people as it ploughed through the panicking crowd. It headed straight towards a wide platform stage, on which a group of dancers were performing, dressed in a colourful folk costume. One by one, they stopped and stared as the cyclist roared towards them. They could only look on, frozen with shock, as he threw the object which he held aloft in his free right hand.
The grenade exploded in mid-air, among the dancers. Bodies flew everywhere, and a fine red mist seemed to hang in the air for a second or two.
As the screaming erupted and escalated, Skinner, running now towards the scene, saw the motorcyclist veer away from the makeshift stage, pulling a squat, ugly gun from his jacket. There was something about his movement, about the way he handled his bike, which made Bob certain that this was the same man who had shot at him in Charlotte Square. But this time he was carrying an automatic machine-pistol. As he roared through the scattering crowd towards the Meadowbank gateway, he sprayed fire from right to left and back again. To his horror. Skinner saw young Barry Macgregor go tumbling backwards, gun in hand, blood spraying from his throat.
And then the man had broken through the last of the crowd.
The bike accelerated towards the exit, the rider steering now with both hands. He had thrown the gun, spent, on the grass behind him.
It was a hell of a shot, they all agreed later. Brian Mackie fired only once. Technically, Skinner might have rebuked him for failing first to call out, identifying himself as an armed police officer, but in the circumstances he decided to let this pass.
The rider's back arched and his arms flew wide, as the bullet cut through his spine. He seemed to rise out of the saddle, and to hang, cruciform, in mid-air for a second, before falling, almost gracefully, on to his back. At the same time, the front wheel of the motorcycle reared up, and the whole machine spun in a grotesque somersault, crashing, handle-bars first, to the ground with its engine still roaring, a few feet away from its spread-eagled rider.
Skinner ignored the biker, and ran instead towards Barry Macgregor. As soon as he reached him, he realised that there was no hope. The young man was convulsing. Blood pumped from an awful wound in his throat, squirting through his fingers as he struggled in vain to stem its flow, and running down his neck and shoulders to stain his braided hair.
Sarah arrived only seconds later, but even in that time the last of the life had ebbed from the boy's body.
For a time. Skinner knelt beside him, blood on his hands and tears in his eyes, though his jaw was set firm. When eventually Sarah took him by the shoulders and drew him gently to his feet she found, on his face, an expression which she had never seen before; not his, not Bob's, but that of someone she did not know at all.
Suddenly, in the stillness and silence which surrounded their little tableau, she felt very frightened; fear for her husband, and – for a flash – fear of him and yet not him, of someone cold, vengeful and absolutely deadly who dwelt within him.
60
'Bob, isn't that our clown? Remember, on Saturday. The one on the unicycle at the Mound, with the leaflets.'
'It could be love, could be. But I do know I saw him somewhere else that same day.'
Skinner had banished his grief and rage, and looked his normal self again, controlled, hardened against the horror, and deferring; his time of mourning until the job was done. They were standing with Andy Martin and Brian Mackie in the area which bad been cordoned off around the motorcycle assassin. A hundred yards away. Sir James Proud stood at the head of an honour guard over; the body of young Barry Macgregor, as his officers cleared the park slowly of public and performers. I In contrast to the stillness of the two groups, the ambulance '.: crews were working feverishly to tend the casualties. There were some who were as far beyond help as Barry Macgregor. Four of the six members of the Belorussian Folk Ensemble, the onstage targets of the grenade attack, lay sprawled in death. The lucky survivors were already in an ambulance which was screaming its way out of the Park, towards the Royal Infirmary, its blue lights whirling. Three members of the crowd had been killed, including a baby still clutched in the arms of her stunned mother, and fourteen others wounded either by the explosion's deadly shrapnel I or by gunfire. I The motorcylist, in his turn, was very dead.
One or two colleagues had bestowed on Brian Mackie the nickname 'Dirty Harry' because of his legendary prowess with various firearms on the rifle range at St Leonard's Police Station.
But Brian never acknowledged the title, nor played up to it in any way. Not for him the dint Eastwood stride, or throwaway lines about days made. Brian took his role as an expert marksman very seriously indeed. It was an important part of his job as a policeman, and not the subject for humour. On the one occasion in his career when he had been called on to fire at a human target, his disciplined approach ensured that his reaction had been instant, emotionless, and absolutely effective. Afterwards, his conscience had been untroubled. He had not, as he said once in answer to Andy Martin's question, lost a single night's sleep.
So it would be again now, he knew. As he looked down at the body of the motorcyclist, he banished from his mind any feeling of elation that he had felled the man who had killed Barry Macgregor. This was just another job done well, and on that basis alone he was pleased. As an expert, Mackie believed in arming himself to suit the occasion and the possible circumstances. His choice of weapon that morning had been a Colt.45 magnum revolver. The gun, he noted as he looked at the body, had lived up to its awesome reputation. There was a fist-sized exit wound right through the biker's breast-hone. Mackie saw chips and slivers of white bone mixed in there. He surmised that the bullet had spread when it struck the spine, shattering it and sending fragments of bone and lead tearing through the heart.
Sarah had removed the man's helmet, but through the clown make-up it was difficult to tell anything about the man's appearance, other than that he was blond.