Skinner's ghosts

She looked at him. 'You think…'

'Let's find out.' He stepped across to his hi-fi stack, took out the cassette and slipped it into the play-only deck, which was incapable of erasing tapes, even by accident. Using the remote hand-set, he switched on the amplifier, adjusted the volume upwards and pressed the tape button.

Beside him Pam jumped, as the shouts and background music of a rapper burst from the speakers. Skinner waited, guessing what would come next. 'It's Radio One,' boomed the disc jockey, as the music 166 track faded, 'the Nation's Number One. It's Thursday, it's eleven thirty, and it's time for the news.'

There was a short jingle, and a second voice cut in. 'This is Newsbeat, with Mary Slavin. Edinburgh police today released a photofit picture of the man they want to question about the murder of MP Leona McGrath, and the kidnap of her son Mark. It shows a clean-shaven fair-haired white man in his mid to late thirties…'

The news announcer was cut off abruptly. 'Uncle Bob! Uncle Bob!'

The child's cry which replaced it was unmistakably that of Mark McGrath, but not the self-possessed slightly precocious child whom Skinner knew. It was frightened, shocked and tearful.

'Uncle Bob, Mr Gilbert said that the news would show you when this tape was made and that I'm all right. But he never said what would be on it. What did the lady mean about my mummy? My mummy's al right, isn't she? You wouldn't let anything happen to her, Uncle Bob, would you!' It was not a question, rather a cry for reassurance – a cry for a denial of the horror that the boy had just heard on the radio, clearly for the first time.

He broke off, in a crying and whimpering sound which ended after a few seconds in a loud sniff. 'Mr Gilbert says I've to tell you, Uncle Bob, that he has one more thing stil to do, then he'll be ready to tell you what this is about. That's what he said. And he says he'l be in touch again, soon.' There was a click, and the tape went dead.

Skinner, who had been staring at the tape deck as if the child was actual y inside it, turned back to Pamela. Her hands were to her mouth, and there were tears shining in her eyes. 'How awful,' she cried. 'For the poor wee boy to find out like that about his mother being dead. You just can't imagine cruelty like that.'

'You can when you've seen it as often as I have,' Bob told her.

'But I doubt if the guy knew that would happen. We didn't release the photofit until eleven. Mr Gilbert would have no way of knowing that it would be the lead item on the eleven thirty news. Mind you, I don't think his conscience would be pricked by the way it turned out.'

'I knew you were close to Mark,' said Pamela, 'but I never knew you were on Uncle Bob terms.'

'I made a point of seeing him a lot after the accident, then later, I would look in to say hello sometimes on a Friday after work, when Leona got back from Westminster.' He sighed. 'He's a very gifted wee boy, but he hasn't half been touched by tragedy. His father, his mother, his mother's best friend: al of them dying violent deaths.'

'What'l happen to him? Assuming we get him back alive, that is.'

'Oh we will, Pam, we will. If you believe in anything, believe in that. As for afterwards, that's a good question. The grandparents are probably too old to take on a six-year-old ful -time, and there are no uncles or aunts. If it's adoption, it'll need to be a pretty special home.'

He reached down and took the tape from the deck.

'Let's concentrate on the first part for now, though, getting him back safe.

'That means getting this tape down to the technical people in London, to see if Mr Gilbert's given us any more accidental assistance.

I'm going to take it up to the office as soon as I'm showered and dressed. You'd better come, for I ain't leaving you here alone.

I'm beginning to regret getting rid of our watchers yesterday.'

'But you're not supposed to go to the office,' she protested.

'Fuck that for a game of soldiers. But if it makes you happy, you'll be going in. I'l just be there as your bodyguard.'

'Okay.' She started to say more, but hesitated.

'What is it?' he asked, as they moved together, towards the bedroom.

'Oh nothing. I was just going to teach my granny to suck eggs, that was all.'

'Come on, out with it,' he insisted.

'Well, it was that name. Mr Gilbert. I don't imagine it's for real, but al the same, have you checked?'

Skinner nodded. 'As soon as Carr came up with it, I had big Neil do just that. He checked every case on which I've led the investigation.

Way back. No Mr Something Gilberts; no Mr Gilbert Somethings.

'You're right. It was bound to be a phoney. Stil, we had to try.'

50

'Bob, I thought the Lord Advocate told you to stay away from here.'

Andy Martin looked up in surprise as the door of his office opened and they entered. Pam had noticed his car in the rear park, but Skinner had known already that with the search for the kidnapper in ful swing, and with his own absence, there would be no more days off for his friend for the foreseeable future.

'He can try having me arrested, or he can sue me, or he can piss off.'

He took a tape from his pocket and laid it on the desk. 'Play this.'

Without a word, Martin picked up the cassette, reached across without standing up to put it in the player, and listened in grim glowering silence to the child's desperate message.

'Bastard,' he hissed, very quietly, when it was finished.

'Another one for the specialists, Andy.' He wrote down a name and a number. 'Here's who to cal. That's a copy. I've got the original in an envelope in my pocket.' He patted his jacket. 'Sergeant, would you like to fly it down to London?'

Pam, surprised, nodded.

'Good. I'l drive you to the airport and pick you up. You'l be safe travelling, and in London, I reckon.'

He turned back to Martin. 'Anything strike you about the message?'

'You mean apart from the cruelty of Mark finding out about his mother's death?' the Head of CID growled. 'One thing,' he went on. 'That's what he said. "He has one more thing stil to do", before he tells us what he's up to. That one thing was kil ing our Mr Sweeney, no doubt. So we can expect to hear from him any time now.'

'No, I don't think that was it. Have you got a time of death on Sweeney yet?'

'About four o'clock on Thursday'

'That figures. You see, I don't think Mr Gilbert knew that he'd have to take the risk of killing Sweeney until he heard the news bulletin recorded on the tape. He must have known then that only Carr could have given us that detailed a picture, and he must have guessed too that we had the phoney number plate from the caravan.

Only at that point did it become a bigger risk to leave Sweeney alive than to kil him.'

Skinner stabbed at the table with a finger. 'So,' he said vehemently.'Mark's "one more thing" means something else. The guy's going to pul another stunt, maybe an even bigger stunt, and there he is, the cocky bastard, telling us… telling me… about it, knowing that I haven't clue where to start looking.'

His face twisted into a scowl of frustration. 'You haven't gone public on the link between the McGrath investigation and the Sweeney murder, have you?'

'Christ no. I didn't want to start a feeding frenzy in the media.'

'Quite right: you'd just have added to the pressure on the troops, and on yourself

The two detectives sat for a while, staring ahead, neither looking at the other, each concentrating so hard on possibilities that they almost failed to react when Pam broke the silence.

'A bigger stunt,' she said. 'He's kil ed an MP and stolen her son.

What could be a bigger stunt, as you put it, than that?'