He was still seething quietly when he reached the gym. Since his teens karate had been one of his favourite sports. He had maintained it on reaching high rank, partly as an example to his troops, but also because it compelled him to keep up a high standard of fitness. He changed into his whites, tied on his black belt, and went into the gym, to the club which he had helped to found.
The instructor was a newcomer. He was an army drill sergeant who had been sent along, at Skinner’s request to try to improve standards. Skinner was prepared to stay in the background, his normal practice, and work on coaching beginners, but the soldier, with a trace of cockiness, singled him out.
‘Shall we work out, sir? Let’s show these people what it’s all about.’
Skinner sighed and nodded. They exchanged bows and moved to the centre mat, surrounded by a group of around twenty policemen and women in white tunics. Skinner was aware, suddenly, for the first time ever, that he was the oldest person in the room.
The thought was still in his mind when the man kicked him painfully on the left calf.
‘Just trying to get your mind on the job, sir.’
Cheeky bastard, thought Skinner. But he did not react. The cocky look grew in the man’s eyes. Another flashing kick caught the tall detective on the right thigh.
‘Still haven’t got your attention, sir.’
Skinner feinted to his right, then pivoted on the ball of his left foot. His right toes, bunched, jabbed the inside of the soldier’s thigh, with force. The foot swept up, the outside edge slamming into the testicles. The leg retracted, then swung up and round, until the foot slammed into the soldier’s left temple. Clutching his groin, the sergeant collapsed in a crumpled heap.
‘You’re wrong, son,’ said Skinner to the white-clad figure. ‘I couldn’t take my bloody eyes off you. Class dismissed!’
He took a quick shower and caught up with Andy Martin in his office. One of the detective constables in the class had beaten him there from the gym, carrying the news that the boss had kicked the shit out of the karate instructor.
Martin eyed him warily. ‘You all right? Or are you still in your Bruce Lee mode?’
Skinner cocked an eyebrow at his assistant. ‘Never better, Andy. Let’s drink some lunch. Fancy a pint in the Monarch?’
They found a Panda car heading out on patrol. It dropped them outside a big grey pub which was situated on the edge of one of the city’s worst crime spots, and which boasted one of the biggest beer sales in the East of Scotland. Skinner had no doubt that the two statistics were related.
When the two policemen entered the public bar, several patrons drank up fast and left by the nearest available exit.
‘Thanks very much, Mr Skinner,’ said Charlie, the manager. ‘Not even the Salvation Army can clear this place quicker than you can. Thought you’d be up the High Street the day, onyway.’
‘We won’t catch anyone up there in the daylight, Charlie. And the way our luck’s been, we wouldn’t spot the bastard if he was running down the High Street waving a chainsaw.’
‘Naw, youse’d probably jist think he was yin o’ thon Labour cooncillors. By the way, ah wis sorry tae hear on the radio about the young polis.’
‘Thanks, Charlie.’
Skinner ordered and, despite Charlie’s protests, insisted on paying for two pints of McEwan’s 80 shilling ale. He took a bite out of the thick, creamy head, and motioned Martin over to a table. The inspector could see that the unaccustomed black mood had gone.
‘You know, Andy, all of a sudden I feel optimistic. Daft, isn’t it. Not a clue, almost literally, yet there’s a voice in here that’s telling me we’re going to catch this guy. There’s still something there that I’m missing, but I’ll get it. And when I do, I’ll get him.
‘I think that this man’s too intelligent to be killing just for fun. There has to be something behind it. Let’s assume that neither John Doe the Wino, or wee Mrs Rafferty, or even Mortimer had stumbled over the truth behind the Kennedy assassinations. So what else can it be?
‘I’m going back to square one, with Mortimer. I’m going to see David Murray, and go through his professional life, trial by trial.’
Martin looked at his boss. Bob Skinner’s success was founded on intellect and powers of analysis, two of the three secrets of successful detection. The third, Andy knew, was luck, and history showed that Big Bob made his own.
Skinner had been Martin’s role model almost from the day he had joined the force. He had shocked his parents, both doctors, by turning his back on Chemical Engineering, his original career choice, after graduating twelve years earlier from Strathclyde University with an honours degree.
Instead he had joined the Edinburgh police force, having seen enough of Glasgow, and had been thrown on to one of the toughest beats in one of those areas of which the City Fathers do not boast to tourists. He had pounded the pavements for a year and a half, before being allowed the luxury of a Panda car.
Community policing for Andy had meant putting a cap on vandalism, breaking up drunken domestic disputes, sorting out youth gangs, keeping an iron hand on solvent abuse and looking out for the introduction of cannabis and harder drugs into his patch by the capital’s many pushers.
He was well equipped for the job, physically and temperamentally. He stood a level six feet in his socks. He was broad and heavily muscled, although he dressed to hide the fact. His eyesight had just been good enough to meet entry requirements, but equally, had he not been an outstanding candidate for the force, it might have been bad enough to fail him.
He had joined the force’s karate club at an early stage in his career, when he realised that shift work would mean an end to his hopes of playing rugby at a high level in Edinburgh, and of carrying on what had been a promising career as a flank forward with the West of Scotland club.
As a beginner in his new sport, he had been taken under the wing of Detective Chief Inspector Bob Skinner, and had progressed speedily through the grading structure.
The two men had hit it off from the start. Martin had heard all about Skinner’s war on drugs in Edinburgh and about his outstanding arrest record. Talking to the Big Man — an occasionally awarded Scottish nickname which has as much to do with leadership as with size — had convinced Martin that CID was for him. And Skinner had recognised in the younger man a commitment to the job and the simple desire to catch the bad guys which marks out good detective officers.
Two years after joining the force, Martin had been transferred to CID, on Skinner’s drugs squad. From that time on their careers had progressed in parallel. After a further two years, Martin had been promoted to Detective Sergeant, just at the time of Skinner’s appointment as Head of CID. Five years later, Skinner had chosen him as his personal assistant, with the rank of Detective Inspector and the responsibility of liaison with the various units which made up the Criminal Investigation Department.
Close as they were, when Skinner changed the subject in the Monarch, Martin was astonished.
‘Andy, can I ask you to do me a couple of favours. The first is to do with the CID dance this Christmas. Sarah and I think that it’s time to come out of the closet, and so we’re going together. The other is maybe more difficult. It’s about that terrible all-night piss-up that the students have in Glasgow. Daft Friday, they call it. It’s at the end of the first term.
‘You remember I took Alex to the dance last year. Well she’s determined to go again, and to go to this Daft Friday thing. The only thing is, she needs a partner for both. She’s still a bit shy, so she asked me if I would ask you if you’d like to take her.’