'Bob. Can you come up, please. We need you here.'
87
Skinner almost fainted when he saw the body lying on the crumpled bed. Involuntarily, he turned his head away, grasping either side of the doorframe to hold himself steady. But at last he forced himself to look back into the small room, with its dampstained yellowing wallpaper, its wardrobe, its cracked mirror, and its twin divans.
And on one of them, he saw his Alex, dead.
For it had to be Alex. The girl, stretched out on her back, was tall. Alex's height. She was tanned all over; Alex's tan from sunbathing topless in the secluded cottage garden at Gullane, or on the beach in her early summer trips to their holiday home in Spain. Her legs – Alex's legs – were long and lithe, unpitted, still those of a girl rather than of a woman. Her small pink, proud nipples, set on young Firm breasts – Alex's breasts – pointed towards the ceiling.
She was wearing only a pair of cream panties, wet at the crotch; and, grotesquely, a white pillow-case. It was pulled over her head like a hangman's hood, and it was blood-stained at the front. It reached down to her shoulders, covering completely her hair, face and neck.
Still braced in the doorway. Skinner, feeling his heart thundering in his chest, looked desperately at her hands for jewellery, for a wristwatch, for anything strange or new to him, anything that would let him tell himself, 'No, this is not my daughter.'
But he saw no sign, nothing there to give him that comfort.
Maggie Rose moved past him, towards the body.
'Stop, Sergeant.'
She froze in her tracks at the sound of his voice.
'I have to do this, Maggie.'
Dreadfully slowly, or so it seemed to those who watched. Be walked towards the body. Andy Martin was not in the room. He sat at the foot of the stairs, trembling, the knot of fear in his stomach now grown to a grasping, twisting fist.
At last, Bob Skinner reached the dead girl. He leaned over her, then gently, reverently, lifted her shoulders up from the bed and drew the pillow-case away from her head.
As he did so he closed his eyes. It was only with an effort of will that he opened them again – and looked into the face of Mary Little Horse.
The girl's eyes stared back at him, lifeless. Above them there was a dark, round hole in the centre of her blood-smeared forehead.
Later Skinner would feel guilt at his immediate reaction, but in the moment of recognition he knew only a sense of relief deeper than any he had ever experienced in his life. And he gave thanks to whoever was there to hear him, that it was this girl.who was dead, and not another.
He gave way suddenly to a great weakness. He felt unmanned, and so, afraid that his frailty might be recognised, he laid Mary Little Horse – a murderess but another father's daughter nonetheless – back down on her death-bed, walked from the chamber, head bowed and without a word, and locked himself in the bathroom across the landing.
He sat for a while on the white enamelled edge of the old castiron bath and, alone behind the solid oak door of the little room, he wept tears of relief. He was trembling and his heart was still pounding. He had been certain that it was his Alex lying there, and in that short time from his first sight of the body to his discovery that it was not her, he had been swept by a sense of bereavement so profound that, even although it had now been lifted, the shadow of its desolation would remain with him for ever.
He lost all track of time for a while, but eventually he calmed himself and recovered his strength. But with it he found a feeling of new foreboding. His daughter was alive, but now his best chance of recovering her safely had evaporated. Mr Black had outguessed him. Now they would have to risk the Jewels, staking them, and most of all, staking his daughter's life, on the plan he had devised.
Feeling a sudden pressure in his bladder, he raised the wooden toilet seat and the lid, together, and urinated heavily into the •wwl. Finished, he pulled the flush lever, zipped himself, and turned to wash his hands in the white basin. As he turned on the ps, his eye was caught by a piece of white paper folded and Jammed under a plastic shell-shaped soap-dish which sat on a wooden shelf above the basin. Curious, he lifted the pink dish and picked it up.
The three sheets of paper appeared to have been torn out of a diary. They were folded across tlie centre. As he opened them out, his earlier foreboding was swept away by his sudden joy at the sight of his daughter's message, written in pencil on the torn dirty pages, scrawled but still legible.
Hi, Pops,
They let me watch TV today. I saw you, and know what this is about. Ingo says I'm Mr Black's second chance, so I can guess what my ransom is. He and an American called i Dave brought me here during the night. On the way they 1 picked up a girl called Mary. She'd been living rough in a hut near Gifford.
It's 8:00 pm. A woman called Ariel just turned up, and ' we're leaving in a hurry. She said Mr Black? assumed you'd get someone called Carl to talk. They've allowed me a quick pee and a wash first, though.
Ingo just killed my room-mate, Mary. He came in as she was changing, pulled a pillow-case over her head, and shot her. He said she was too risky baggage to carry further. I, don't know where we're going now, but if I see a chance. I'll leg it. When you catch up with Ingo, Pops, be careful. He's very dangerous. I'm sorry I got you into this.
Love you.
Alex.
He was smiling as he walked out of the bathroom and down intdS the hall where Martin, Mackie and Arrow waited, anxious, nont of them certain what sort of a man would emerge. He waved thq note at Martin. 'Look at this, Andy. It's from our lass. She's something else.'j Martin took the note and read it, arid, as he did, Bob Skinnerj laughed to himself, and shook his head again in wonderment at hisdaughter.
He had never been prouder of her. She had just seen murder done, sudden and shocking but she had still had the presence offt mind to leave a note, to try to give what assistance she could.
Bright, tough, and brave, too. Hi hoped in the hours to come he could live up to her example.
88
'If you were there, you'd be putting Alex's life at risk! There's no way, love, I'll let you do that!'
'Bob, that's an awful thing to say. How could you!' Sarah wore, for a moment, an expression which was completely new to him: one of pure hurt. Then it melted into one of anger and frustration. 'Dammit man, I'm a member of your team. You made me one, remember.'
'Well, as of now, you're off the pitch. I didn't tell you about last night's operation until it was over because I knew that, if I had, we'd have had this argument then.'
'But you could need me there! As a doctor. If there is trouble, if there's shooting, people could get hurt. Alex could get hurt. You could get hurt.'
He put his big hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. She leaned back against the larder cupboard of their kitchen at Fairyhouse Avenue, tears gleaming in her eyes.
He did his best to soothe her. 'Sarah, my darling, I hope with all my heart that, when I catch up with them, these people will decide that they are not on a suicide mission, and will let Alex go. In fact, I'm forcing myself to believe that's what will happen. If I'm wrong, then yes, there will be shooting. If there is, then believe me, the people on my team are the best – me included. But to give our best, we have to be completely focused on the job. If you were anywhere near, you'd be a distraction for me, and probably for Andy too. If the shit did start flying we'd have you to worry about as well. All our thoughts have to be focused on protecting Alex, and rescuing her. If you were there to distract us, then, as I say, you would be adding to her danger. Look, wherever we end up, if we need a doctor, we'll get one quick. If I do decide to take one, it won't be you; it'll be an Army medic. But Adam Arrow's Probably as good as anyone. He'd seen action, and deaR with wounded.'