'Yes?' asked Steele as the girl came on the line. 'What have you got for me?'
'I've found that payment,' she said, brightly. 'But Ah'm no allowed to talk tae yis about it. It's one o' Mr McCart's files; and only he's allowed tae talk about it. Ah'm no.'
'Okay. Can I speak to him then?'
'He's no here. He's away till Monday.'
'Monday. Is there no-one else?'
'Well, there was Mr Biggins… but he's died.'
'Miss Malone,' said Steele heavily. 'This is an important investigation.'
'Ma job's important to me. Mr McCart said Ah was never to give information off his files tae anybody.'
The Sergeant looked across at DCI Rose. She shook her head. 'Leave it. Alec's not going to be any deader, or any less dead, by Monday; this can wait till then. The chances are it's nothing anyway.'
'Okay,' Steele conceded, finally, to Miss Malone. 'But you tell Mr McCart to be there. I'm coming up to see him myself.'
32
DC Tommy Gavigan was thin-faced, weaselly. The desiccated shell of a man, Skinner thought as he looked at him across the table of the small room. He was wearing a brown suit that was overdue a trip to the dry cleaners, he needed a shave, his grey hair looked lank and oily and he smelled of sweat. A night in the cells had done him no favours
… or did he always look like that?
Gavigan, a Detective Constable, was older than the Deputy Chief Constable himself. He had been around for all of Skinner's career, and yet not around, since for almost half of that time he had been buried in Special Branch, doing the bidding of Alec Smith and his successors, Martin, Mackie and McGuire. Too convenient to transfer, too stolid to promote, he had stayed there, anonymously.
The big DCC took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the empty chair opposite the prisoner policeman. The room was hot; it was in the basement of the headquarters building and he had chosen it deliberately, knowing that Gavigan would have conducted more than a few interviews there himself, in his time.
He made as if to sit, but instead leaned across the table. A big hand flashed out and slapped the other man, powerfully, on the side of the head, sending him tumbling from his chair on to the floor.
'That wasn't just from me, Tommy,' he said, as the Detective Constable stared up at him, earlier apprehensiveness turned to sheer terror. 'That was from the Chief, ACC Elder, DCS Martin, Inspector McGuire, and everybody else whose work, whose very lives, you've soiled.
'Get up man!' he snapped. 'I'm not going to hit you again; you'll walk out of here… for now.' He waited as Gavigan, hair dishevelled, tie askew, clambered back on to his chair. Finally, Skinner sat himself.
'I know that I'm rarely accused of sentimentality,' he went on, 'but the fact is I love this force. I have done from the moment I joined, from the first day I put on its ill-fitting, uncomfortable uniform. I'm intensely proud of the job we do; I mean, in essence, that we protect the innocent and pursue the guilty.
'It makes me want to chuck my breakfast to learn of a case where the innocent have been persecuted. And it compounds it to know that in this case, I'm going to have to protect the guilty… by which I mean you, you little toe-rag, and if you show me even a glimmer of a smile of relief, I will break my word and put you back on the deck again.'
All the time he spoke, he stared across the desk at Gavigan, cold, deep and unblinking, mesmerising the man, holding him as securely as a hand on his throat.
'I've never gone into a murder investigation with mixed feelings before, but in the case of Alec Smith, I do. I dread the thought of what else we're going to find out about the man; I am gripped by a sort of certainty that whoever it was tortured him to death had a bloody good reason for doing so.
'DCS Martin has just interviewed a man who was driven mad by what Alec Smith and you did to him. Gus Morrison, poor sad bastard that he is, was a prime suspect, but we're certain that he didn't do it. If he had I'd have been really sorry about locking him up. I hate it when one of mine goes rotten. The only other time it happened I wanted to kill the bastard, and I was glad when he hanged himself in his cell. His widow got a pension and will be able to tell her kids, for a few years at least, that their daddy died in the service. On top of that the force wasn't embarrassed by a trial.
'I'm glad Alec's dead too, but I need to know who the other madman is, the one with the strength to do what Morrison wanted to, but couldn't.
'How many others are there, Tommy? How many others like him, framed and persecuted by Smith because they upset him, or found out too much about him? You had better tell me now, because if you don't and I find out later that you've kept something from me, I promise you it will change altogether the way I think about you.'
He kept his gaze on Gavigan, reading the fright on the thin face. 'None that I know of, Mr Skinner, honest,' the man exclaimed. 'There was Lawrence Scotland, there was that Iranian, Basra, and there was Morrison and Forrest… that's all.'
'Did you ever give perjured evidence against anyone else?' 'No… sir.'
'Or combine with Smith to force a confession out of anyone?' 'No, sir.'
'Or turn a blind eye to anything that Smith was doing?' 'Sir, I never knew what DCI Smith was doing, unless he told me about it.'
'Scotland and Basra… you sure they were guilty?' 'Dead certain, sir.'
Skinner paused for a few moments. 'Remind me,' he continued, eventually. 'When you and Smith played your game with Scotland, what did he tell you would have happened if Scotland had lost?'
'Mr Smith had a contact in the army, in military intelligence. He'd told him what he was going to do; he didn't care whether he killed Scotland or not. He wanted… and the army guy wanted… a scare thrown into the bloke so bad that word would get to the guys he associated with in Ireland. He told me that if it had gone wrong, his army pal would have buried Scotland up there, and that's what I told Mr McGuire. But thinking back on it, I'm not sure that he didn't palm the real bullets after he showed them to Scotland and load up with blanks, just in case.
'Whatever he did, Lawrence Scotland believed there were real bullets in the gun. His bowels emptied on him the second time he pulled the trigger.'
The DCC frowned. 'Funny. Alec Smith's bowels were emptied when he died.' He made a cutting movement across his lower abdomen. 'Only they were emptied right out.'Tommy Gavigan gasped and shuddered.
'So what about you, mister?' Skinner murmured. 'Let me tell you something. I have a friend in Military Intelligence; not the pal Smith had… if he ever existed. He really does have the power to bury you up on the Pentlands or something like that. Normally you'd be too small for him to bother with, but he owes me a couple of favours, so
…' He paused, watching Gavigan turn even paler.
'For now, though, you can have your early retirement, Tommy. I don't want any scandal. You can have your full pension.' He locked on the stare again. 'But if ever I find out that you've breathed a word, a single word about any of this outside this room, or if ever I find out that you've been holding something back from us…
'You think about me, that's all. Remember me, because I won't forget you. And remember my army friend, and the favours he owes me. You look me in the eye and you know I'm not kidding.'
He put both palms on the table and pushed himself to his feet. 'Now get out of here. You're stinking the place out. Basement exit please; I'm not having you mixing with my people again, not even on the way out.'
Gavigan almost ran to the door; as he was about to open it, Skinner called to him. 'Hey, Tommy. You just remember now; we'll be watching you. You're not an SB officer any more, you're a target.'