‘What was that?’
‘Skidmarks. There were none on the road where the body was found. None at all. That means. .’
‘I know what it means,’ the Archbishop intervened. ‘It means that the driver didn’t even try to stop, but just steamed straight through the poor bloke.’
‘Correct; and that in turn says to me this was a deliberate hit-and-run. I’ve never seen a fatal involving a drunk where the driver didn’t brake hard and leave some sort of trace on the road.’
‘What about the other one, Lebeau, the one who was poisoned?’
‘It changes our thinking altogether. We’re no longer inclined to believe that he was a random victim of a contaminated product. We know the tube that killed him was bought in Newcastle on Friday while the band was there.’
‘By one of them, do you think?’
‘Not possible, they were playing at the time. I guess it was bought there to make it look as if Lebeau had bought it himself, and to make us react in exactly the way we did, by blowing the whistle and starting a national product recall.’
‘Do you think these two men were picked out, or were they random victims within the band?’
‘We don’t know for sure, but on the evidence we have at the moment, they’re random. Hanno ran out of fags and went to get more from their bus; that’s why he was outside. How could the driver of the car have known that was going to happen? It suggests that he was just waiting for any one of them. In that case,’ he continued, ‘we’ll have to give the whole bloody lot protection from now on. I’ve booked them into a hotel. .’
‘The Church will pay for that,’ Gainer told him at once.
Skinner smiled. ‘Thanks for that. I’m glad I didn’t have to ask you.’ His expression grew serious once more. ‘There is something, though. What is it with these people? Why are they here at all?’
‘I wish I could tell you,’ the Archbishop murmured, ‘but I can’t, for I’ve been asking that myself. Without bragging, Bob, I’m probably closer to the Holy Father than anyone except his brother, but not even I know why he’s invited the Bastogne Drummers to play at his rally. If you want answers, you’ll have to ask him yourself.’
The DCC’s gaze went to the ceiling. ‘Not me, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘There are very few occasions when I hide behind my chief constable, but this will be one of them. If anyone’s going to question the Pope as a potential witness in a murder inquiry it’s going to be him!’
He turned to leave, and the Archbishop moved to show him to the door. As they went along the hall, he asked, ‘What’s happened to you, Bob?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that, compared to last week, you’re a different man.’
Skinner glanced sideways at him. ‘You sure, Jim? Are you sure it isn’t the old one coming back?’
56
As was the case with many pubs, Monday was the quietest evening of the week in the Wee Black Dug. There were fewer than a dozen customers in the saloon when McGuire walked in and Malky Gladsmuir was behind the bar with only one assistant.
‘What can I get you, sir?’ he asked, eyeing the detective up and down.
‘A pint of seventy and your undivided attention.’
‘Oh, aye?’ said Gladsmuir, giving a slight smirk as he started to draw the beer.
The detective looked him dead in the eye. ‘I want you to think hard about this,’ he said, under his breath. ‘Do you want to cross me? I mean it, do you reckon you want to get on my bad side?’
‘Fancy yourself, do you?’ Gladsmuir growled, but there was a tiny flicker of hesitation in his voice.
‘All the fucking way, Malky, and any time you like. Now you listen, and take note; the name is Detective Superintendent McGuire, and I’m not here to bring you good news. My predecessor probably came across to you as a guy you could keep stringing along. A wee bit of info here, another wee bit there, and you were left alone to get on with whatever fucking scams you run in this place.’
‘Ah run a straight pub. You ask your guys.’
‘Like hell you do. You hammered that drug-dealer because he moved gear in your bar. .’
‘That’s right. See what I mean?’
‘. . without giving you a cut,’ McGuire concluded. ‘Greg Jay might have placed too much trust in human goodness to have figured that one out, but I’m not like him. So if you want any sort of slack. . and that will not include drugs being dealt in here, by the way, not ever again. . you will do what I tell you.’ He took a deep swallow of the beer. ‘Not bad,’ he conceded. ‘The first thing I’m going to tell you is this. We pulled a friend of mine out of the Albert Dock this morning.’
‘Another copper, I hope,’ the bar manager mumbled.
‘In your office, now.’ McGuire pointed to the door behind him and stepped through the hatch. He followed Gladsmuir into the private room, closed the door behind them, and in one continuous movement swung his right fist up and buried it in his belly. The breath left him in a groan and he sat down hard on the floor.
The detective stood over him, glaring down with angry, dangerous eyes; Malky Gladsmuir had the good sense to be scared. ‘You might be a hard man in your own league,’ McGuire said quietly, ‘but you’re not in mine, so don’t you ever show disrespect to a police officer in front of me. As I was saying, we recovered the body of a friend of mine from the water this morning. There are a few questions in my mind that still need answers, and I want you to help me. My pal left my partner’s place at about ten last night. . she lives in the warehouse conversion just off Great Junction Street; you know the one I mean. He walked from there, back to the Malmaison Hotel, only he never went in there. They’re trying to say he jumped, and maybe he did, but I need to be certain. We called in here for a pint earlier; you were off duty, but there were a few people in. On his way back, he’d have gone past this place, more or less. I want you to ask around, and I want you to find out if any of your regulars remembers seeing him. He was about six feet tall, slim built, but he was wearing a big heavy jacket so he’d have looked quite bulky. If that does ring any bells, I need to know also whether there was anyone else around, anyone, or maybe more than one person, who might have been following him.’
Gladsmuir looked up at him from the floor. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He winced.
‘No, you’ll fucking do it. I’ll bet Greg Jay gave you his direct line number, didn’t he?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well, that’s my number now. Call me on it as soon as you’ve got anything for me. And don’t get cute and make up any stories to get me off your back. So far you’ve only seen my friendly side.’
57
‘Hey,’ said Skinner, quietly, as he helped Sarah fasten her sterilised blue gown, ‘before we go in, there’s something I want to tell you. I’m sorry I leaned on you to do this; moral blackmail isn’t very nice and I wish I hadn’t said what I did, about you letting me down. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t even true.’
‘Sure it was true,’ she replied. ‘That was how you saw it at the time, and if you were being honest with yourself rather than simply trying to be nice to me, you’d see that it still is. I’ve got no ethical problem with doing this; my reluctance was personal. So can we please stop saying sorry to each other? It’s all right for us to disagree, Bob, and it doesn’t even matter who’s right and who’s wrong.’ She pulled on her cap. ‘Now let’s do this thing.’
She led the way from the dressing room into the autopsy theatre, where a postgraduate pathology student and a police photographer were waiting, standing over the body of Colin Mawhinney as it lay on the stainless table, naked, washed clean, white, still and cold.
She went straight to work, running through the preliminaries, giving the corpse a thorough external examination, speaking into the microphone above her head as she did so, dictating the notes that she would type up later. ‘I can find no marks on the body,’ she said, ‘no signs of injury, not even any old scars.’ She turned and nodded to the photographer, who snapped off a couple of shots. ‘I’m now going to look inside the mouth,’ she continued, picking up a spatula, and pulling the jaws apart. ‘Inside, I can see traces of weed, and general debris that’s come from immersion. That’s what I would expect. We’ll take samples later. Let’s have a look at the hands now.’