He swung off the roadway and pulled up alongside Neil McIlhenney’s car, which was parked between a patrol vehicle and an ambulance. Its rear doors were open and its paramedic crew sat inside, their life-saving skills clearly not needed.
The DCC stepped out on to the dock, glad of his heavy jacket in the November cold, and walked behind the big green screen, past the two uniformed constables who stood guard, bracing himself for what he would see. He hated moments like these, but did his best to keep that to himself.
The first person he saw was not McIlhenney, but Mario McGuire. The big superintendent’s back was turned to the thing on the ground, beneath the tarpaulin, but the look on his face told Skinner everything he needed to know and confirmed the conclusion to which he had leaped following the guarded call that had brought him there.
‘Fuck,’ he whispered to himself, as he approached.
McIlhenney heard his footstep and turned. ‘Boss,’ he began.
‘It’s the American, yes?’ the DCC asked brusquely.
His colleague nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘What happened?’
It was Mario McGuire who answered. ‘He’s drowned himself,’ he told him, in an anguished voice.
‘Easy, big fella,’ Skinner murmured, stepping up and taking the superintendent by the elbow. ‘You’ve been close to Inspector Mawhinney for the last couple of weeks, maybe too close to be here.’
‘This is my patch, sir. I belong here.’
‘Okay, but keep it under control.’ He turned to Detective Sergeant Sammy Pye, McGuire’s assistant, who had transferred with him that morning from the Borders division. ‘Sam,’ he ordered, ‘send those two PCs up to the main entrance. I just drove past one of the security guys on the gate like he wasn’t there, and I don’t want the press doing the same thing. Get another couple of uniforms from the Queen Charlotte Street office to take their place here. A lot of people work in these docks; we could need some crowd control.’
He moved over to McIlhenney. ‘Has the ME seen him?’
‘Not yet. We’re still waiting for him. Do you want to look?’
‘I’d better, I suppose. Will Mario be okay?’
‘He’s had a shock, but he can handle it. He and Sammy were on the scene first; he called me while they were on the way.’ He leaned over and turned back the tarpaulin.
Skinner looked down at the body of Inspector Colin Mawhinney. His hair, slacks and his heavy navy-style pea-jacket were slicked with green slime from the dock, and in death, his face had a similar, if very faint, tint in its colouring. He looked as if he could simply have fallen into the dock and drowned, had it not been for one thing; a long, thick and very heavy chain lay on the ground beside him, its links leading under the jacket. Skinner crouched beside the dead man, turned back the garment, and saw that it was twisted and lodged in his belt.
He turned and glanced up at McGuire. ‘Again, Mario, what happened?’
The detective superintendent pointed towards two men who were standing a few yards away at the water’s edge, watching the scene; one wore worker’s overalls, and the other a suit, beneath a raincoat. ‘They found him, sir,’ he replied. ‘You’d best hear it first hand.’ Skinner straightened himself and followed him across to the pair. ‘This is Benny McCaffrey,’ he said, introducing the labourer first, ‘and this is Stanley Guinness, from the port office. Tell the DCC what you told me, Benny.’
The man nodded; he looked to be in his mid-fifties, with a grimy face; strands of grey stringy hair protruded from a dirty woollen cap. ‘Ah saw a fella,’ he began. ‘Ah was working over there and Ah saw this wee bloke. Ah thought he was maybe frae the pipe works or somewhere. He nivir saw me, mind.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘Just walkin’, like, mindin’ his ain business, ken. He was carrying a bag thing, that wis a’. He stopped, and he took a quick shooftie round, then he had a pish in the dock.’ McCaffrey chuckled. ‘Probably improved the watter quality. But when he wis finished I saw him looking doon, doon the dockside. Then he picked up a pole somebody hid left lyin’ and poked it in the watter, like that.’ He made a prodding movement as if he was gripping a pole himself, one hand above the other. ‘Next think I kent he wis runnin’ like fuck.’
‘And what did you do after that?’
‘Ah came doon here, tae see what had scared him, ken. Ah saw all right. That poor bloke there. Ah went straight tae the port office and got Mr Guinness.’
‘Who took the body out of the water?’
‘My men did,’ the port official replied. ‘I always have a couple of people handy who are trained divers and who can go into the dock in. . emergencies like this. They freed him and brought him to the surface.’
‘When you say they freed him,’ Skinner interrupted, ‘what exactly do you mean?’
‘That chain you can see there,’ said Guinness. ‘He’d secured it in his belt as you see, and wound it round his waist, several times, for ballast I assume, to make sure he’d go down. There were stones in the pockets as well.’ He paused. ‘But when he went in, the end of the chain seems to have caught in the dock wall and held him there. The basin’s tidal as well, so when the water level dropped a few feet, he became visible.’
‘What about this man? The guy Mr McCaffrey saw pissing in the dock?’
‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.’
‘Sammy had a word with Site Security, boss. One of them saw a bloke legging it through the gate and up Constitution Street, but he couldn’t get near giving a description.’
The DCC scowled. ‘That’s a poor show,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t suppose it makes any difference, though. Mawhinney was in the water for longer than a couple of minutes. Whoever that guy was he can’t tell us anything we haven’t found out already. Come on, Mario,’ he said, turning and leading him away from the other two men. ‘Let’s you and Neil and I go up to your new office; there’s some things I need to ask you, away from here.’
‘I want to stay, boss, till the ME’s been, and they’ve taken him off to the morgue.’
‘No. Sammy Pye can do that, and organise formal statements from McCaffrey, Guinness and the divers. Then he can fix up a pathologist to do the post mortem.’
‘But, boss. .’
‘It’s not for discussion, Mario.’
The superintendent sighed. ‘If you say so, sir. But there’s something else I’ve got to do, and that’s break it to Paula. She’ll be gutted.’
‘So will Sarah. She liked the man too.’ Skinner looked at him. ‘Tell you what, where will Paula be right now?’
‘In her office, round in Commercial Street.’
‘Okay. Let’s go there. We should probably talk to both of you.’
‘Why?’
The DCC looked at him patiently. ‘Mario,’ he said, quietly, ‘I know you’ve had a hell of a shock, but get your heid in gear, will you? As far as we know right now, you two were the last people to see that man alive.’
50
Dan Pringle glared at Auguste Malou across the table in the Dalkeith police office. When Ray Wilding had called to explode the bombshell in his lap he had gone incandescent, and ordered that he be picked up and taken to the East Lothian divisional headquarters, rather than to the Haddington office.
‘I’ve been dancing to those buggers’ tune since yesterday. I’ll be fucked if I’ll do it any longer.’
He had calmed down a little on the drive from Fettes, but not so much that he was about to defer to the Belgian. Equally, the peppery colonel was irate at the sudden and unexplained summons, which, he protested, had been presented with all the indignity of an arrest.
‘Father Collins shall hear of this,’ he bellowed at the chief superintendent. ‘Monsignor di Matteo shall hear of it. Before I am finished, His Holiness himself will hear of it. When he does, sir,’ he gave a grim little laugh, ‘yours will be a heavy penance.’