‘She just went straight for my fly. She said, “I’m going to have you, son. No more messing around. This is your big night.” I’ll never forget it. All the time she was laughing at me.’ He looked across at Angela Muirhead, who stood staring at him, her right hand gone instinctively to her mouth.
‘What did you do?’ asked Rose.
‘I just lifted her off me, and sat her down, on her bum, on the desk. I said, “No way, Mrs Charles. I’m sorry, but I’m not daft enough to fuck around wi’ the boss’s wife.” I zipped myself up and I walked right out of there.’ He paused, and looked again at his fiancée.
‘I didn’t know what to expect when I went in to work the next day. But nothing happened, or was said. In fact, I didn’t see Carole for a week after that, till one afternoon she came in. She didn’t say a word to me. She just started going over one of the purchase ledgers, one I hadn’t opened for weeks.
‘After a few minutes she picked it up and went to see Jackie. Next day he called me in to see him. He said that Carole had caught me on the fiddle, and that I was fired. He said he was sorry, because he had always liked me, but his wife was adamant that I had been in the till and that was it.’
‘Did you deny it?’ asked the red-haired Chief Inspector.
The man shook his head. ‘What was I going to say? “Look Jackie, your wife made it up. She’s in the huff wi’ me because I wouldn’t shag her.” No, all I said was, “She’s wrong, but too bad.” Then I cleared my desk and I went home.’
‘Where were you yesterday evening?’ asked Donaldson, quietly.
Angela Muirhead answered. ‘He was here.’
‘All evening?’
‘Yes,’ said Medina. ‘Angie got in just before nine. I had the dinner ready to heat up.’
He smiled, then gave a soft laugh. ‘Look, I didn’t go anywhere near that garage. I’m not the vindictive type. But if I had wanted to sort out Jackie or Carole, I’d have taken a copy of something she left lying around in the office one day.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know what it was for sure, but it wasn’t about the car business. It was a ledger and it showed cash movements in and out, with dates, sources and recipients of payments, but with initials, not names. I scribbled a few notes at the time. It occurred to me afterwards that if I’d stuck the damn thing under the photocopier, I might have been able to use it to hang on to my job.’
‘Or you might have lost a lot more than that,’ said Maggie Rose, bristling inwardly, all of a sudden, with excitement. ‘You don’t still have those notes, do you?’
‘I might have. I’ve got lots of old junk in my briefcase. I’ll have a look through it. If I find anything I’ll let you have it.’
‘Okay,’ said Donaldson, sourly. ‘If you do turn up these mythical bits of paper, bring them with you to the St Leonard’s police office at four o’clock tomorrow, and ask for me. But be sure you turn up then even if you don’t find them. I’d like you to make that formal statement we mentioned.’
He nodded to Rose. ‘That’s enough for tonight, though, Maggie. I imagine these two will have some talking to do. Let’s leave them to get on with it.’
Angela Muirhead showed them to the door. It had barely closed before Rose looked up at Donaldson. ‘That was an interesting half-hour, and no mistake.’
The Superintendent’s eyebrows rose. ‘You thought so? The only thing that I could hear was a liar covering up the Porky Pie that he told his girlfriend when Jackie sacked him for cooking the books. Redundant, indeed!
‘As for the stuff about the man with the vulture tattoo; all that could just have been a half-hearted attempt to smear Charles.’
‘Maybe lies, maybe truth,’ said Rose, ‘but for sure, Carl Medina’s given us a few hares to chase. D’you think we should report this to Andy Martin tomorrow morning?’
‘Aw, come on, Maggie,’ said Donaldson. ‘I know that Martin’s in personal charge, but we don’t want to go running to him with every rumour we pick up off an informant, or a guy like Medina, who’s scared and tossing out crap.’
She stopped as they reached the top of the stairway. ‘I agree that the story about the man with the vulture tattoo was vague and a bit fanciful. But these notes that Medina promised us, that could be something else again. We’ve been looking for years for anything that ties Jackie Charles to the illegal activities which we know he runs or bankrolls.
‘Whether admissible as evidence or not, these scribbles that Medina says he made could be the first return we’ve ever had. Let me ask you something, Dave. If the Boss was running this investigation, would you hold something like this back from him?’
Slowly, the Detective Superintendent shook his head.
‘Well,’ said his deputy, ‘in that case my advice is, don’t for one second treat Andy Martin any less seriously than you would treat Bob Skinner.
‘Unlike the Boss, Andy’s famous for being even-tempered and imperturbable. But I’ve always had the feeling when something really does rattle his cage, the outcome could be spectacular!’
13
Bob Skinner sat on the low stone wall of his cottage in Gullane, looking out across the lamplit Goose Green. It was just after nine, but the rain and cold of the previous evening had been driven away by an unseasonably early warm front, and he was perfectly comfortable in his jeans, and a denim shirt.
Not much moved in Gullane after dark, other than in the constantly busy main street. The Green was still and silent, as silent as the house behind him. He looked across it and thought of long-gone summer days, his first in the village. He remembered sitting in the sun, on the same piece of wall, with Myra beside him and with their newborn daughter asleep in her pram.
He smiled in the dark as he remembered the outrage of the new parents when the August funfair had set up on the Green, with the loud music which accompanied its carnival rides, and his attempt to force them to turn down the volume which they feared would disturb their child.
The showmen had been pleasant and understanding. They had turned the volume down a notch and had promised that they would stop before darkness fell. ‘But you wait and see, Mister,’ they had said. ‘After a couple of days your baby won’t even notice that we’re here.’
Of course they had been right. On the second evening of the fair, Baby Alexis had slept through the cacophony as if it had been a lullaby. In years thereafter, the showmen’s arrival had been one of the highlights of her summer, and the carnival people had become welcome visitors and good friends. Bob smiled again, and if anyone had been there to see they would have called it wistful, as he recalled their shock on the day that they arrived to learn of Myra’s death a few months before. The reality of their grief and the depth of their sympathy were still fresh in his mind. Had he accepted, all of his and Alex’s rides on their swings and roundabouts would have been free that summer, but he had insisted on paying their way.
He looked across the Green, through his memories, and counted four cars mounted on its verge outside the rear entrance to the Golf Inn Hotel. That had always been a popular parking spot for patrons. When the Skinners had first arrived, those cars, almost invariably, would disappear after closing time, but after only a few weeks of their residence, once word had spread that the eyes of the law were upon their owners, most would still be there in the morning.
In fact, Bob had always mentally put away his warrant card as soon as he had driven into his home village, but his presence there, especially as he had risen through the ranks, had seemed to ensure that the patrolling constables were always on their toes. Now, as he sat in the dark and the silence, he saw a man emerge from the pub’s back door, climb into one of the cars and drive away, up the Green and out, towards Erskine Road. He wondered to himself if standards had slipped since he had become, in the main, a weekend resident. He wondered too how long it would be before the village’s sharper eyes and tongues would note that he was back among them permanently. Already that evening one pair of eyebrows had risen, a moustache had twitched, and a mental note had been taken when he had wandered alone into the Mallard and ordered a pint of Seventy Shilling and a bar supper.