Thursday legends

'Andy…'

'Third would have been curtains. I just bellowed and went for him; went through him like a fucking train.

'I remember it all, Bob, in slow motion. Every single bit of it; the bitter taste of his finger… I think that must have been bone marrow… the blood. I was fucking swimming in it, but I couldn't let go. Could still be dead if I let go, I thought, and I couldn't die. Not there, not then, the time wasn't right.

'So I hung on, till the soldiers arrived, after that even… You know, looking at Alec, I thought, I'll never see anything worse than this… far less that I'd do worse myself.

'What did Scotland look like, Bob? When you saw him?'

'Dead, Andy. Very fucking dead.'

Skinner sighed. 'I didn't know at first, that he'd had you up there. Mario worked it out. Knew at once when he saw the bullets lying around and in the gun.'

He took a can of Irn Bru from his knapsack, opened it and handed it to Martin, then opened another, for himself. 'So it was Scotland, eh?' he murmured. 'A blast from Alec's past, come back as a nightmare.'

'Looks that way. He told me he really wanted to take him back up there, but knew he'd never manage it. I was second best. He knew someone would be for him eventually. Took him ten years to pluck up the courage, or to catch Smith off guard.'

'Where could he have got that animal tranquilliser?' 'He did night security at the zoo. He told me that… deliberately, I suppose.' 'Ahh.'

'He never actually said to me, "I killed Alec Smith" but…'

'Maybe not, but the overwhelming probability is that he did. If we keep the investigation going, more than likely we'll be chasing an answer we've found already. I've asked Mario to explain to Maggie, without telling her too much.'

'It just goes away then?'

'It dwindles; after a while I'll tell Royston that we have a prime suspect but that he's disappeared, believed out of the country. He can leak that to the press; I might even let him leak the real name. The guy isn't going to turn up anywhere.'

'Only in my dreams,' Martin whispered.

'They'll fade, son. You don't think so now, but they will. Your mind protects you after a while.'

Skinner took a slug from his Irn Bru. 'Just one small niggle…' he said.

'What's that?'

'Alec's room; where he was killed. There was something odd about that. It's probably of no significance, but it's wrong. It's just a feeling I have… only I can't figure out what it is.'

49

Karen Neville rarely smoked; occasionally in the pub after a couple of drinks, but never at home. She slammed her fourth cigarette of the day into the ashtray, knowing that none of them had done her any good.

'Karen!' she cried aloud. 'It'll be the drink next.'

She could restrain herself no longer; she picked up the phone and called Neil Mcllhenney. He sounded not in the least surprised to hear her voice.

'Hello, girl,' he said, kindly. 'Doing your head in, is it?'

'And how.'

'I wish I could help, really, but you've just got to be patient.'

'Neil, he really is all right isn't he? No-one's keeping anything back about him, are they?'

'No, love. I promise you they're not. Believe me, he's okay.' He hesitated. 'I saw him myself last night.'

'You did?' she exclaimed. 'Where?'

'Gullane. He's out at Bob's. But you must not — understand, must not — try to phone him there. Wait till he gets back to Edinburgh; that'll probably be some time today.'

She heard him hesitate. 'But when he does get back home, Karen. What are you going to say to him?'

She fell silent, realising. 'I don't know,' she murmured, at last.

He grunted. 'You don't? Well, it's bloody obvious to me. I don't know if it's going to make you any happier, girl, but I do know you've got to get it out.' And then he chuckled. 'But you never know. You might get a surprise… stranger things have happened.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean there's always a chance he might beat you to the punch.'

50

'So this is where it happened,' said Skinner as he looked around the attic room. 'This is where the Diddler got done.' Detective Inspector Arthur Dorward's team had finished their crime-scene work; the bedding and the binding ropes had been removed for examination, but the bloodstains remained, disfiguring walls and ceiling.

'Aye, this is it, sir,' Pringle replied, gruffly. 'Come on and I'll show you how they got rid of him.' He led the DCC back down the stairs to the hall where he found a brass handle, recessed into the floor, and lifted up a wide trap-door, revealing another flight of steps. The sound of lapping water came up from below.

'Down there is a wee jetty place. He was shoved in the water from there in the middle of the night. The Water of Leith was still high and flowing fast last Friday night, after all that rain the week before. They probably thought he'd be out to sea by the next morning.'

"They were hopeful, then,' said the DCC. 'If he hadn't snagged under that bridge, he'd probably have been bobbing along through Leith when the dawn came up.

'You said there was no money in his wallet?' he continued.

'No, it was cleaned out. They left his cards, but took his cash.'

'His watch?'

'Wasn't here, Boss, and there was no personal jewellery on the body when we found him.'

'You keep saying "They", Dan. What evidence is there that there was more than one killer?'

'Nothing hard, Boss, but… There's the hair, right; the one caught in his dick. We've got that. We found more hairs on the towels in the bathroom, and Dorward's preliminary report says that they match that one and that they're all female. So the woman took a shower after having sex with Mr Shearer.'

'… and possibly also to wash off his blood.'

Pringle looked at Skinner, doubtfully. 'I just don't fancy a woman as the murderer,' he said. 'The battering that Mr Shearer sustained was ferocious.'

'Okay, but I ask you again. What evidence for this male accomplice?'

'Other people used that shower too, sir; males other than the victim. Let's say the woman set him up and someone else did the butchery. Arthur found several different hair samples down there, trapped in the wastepipe. Some belong to Mr Shearer and some will be from his son, but there are others. There's a possibility that some of them came from the bloke who used that baseball bat.'

'They won't help us find him though; not unless they match with something on the DNA database.'

'No, but we do have something that will identify him. Arthur's got a print from the bar of soap… over one of the blood streaks. Whoever left it did so washing off Mr Shearer's blood.'

'We haven't matched it, though?' 'No, not yet.'

'Could he tell anything from it?'

'It came from quite a big hand; that's all he could say.'

'A great help,' the DCC grumbled. 'What have you got to take this thing forward, Dan? I'm just about to meet Edith Shearer at the airport and I would like to tell her we're making progress without lying in my teeth.'

'McGurk's been interviewing Mr Shearer's partners, sir. One of them seemed to know a bit about his private life. He told Jack that he used this organiser thing — a palm-top, he called it — and that it had a lot of Mr Shearer's personal information on it. It wasn't here, so the man's taken McGurk into the office to look for it.

'There's the missing watch too; the Rolex. Ms Bryant, the secretary, said that it was bought from Laing's a couple of years ago. We're going round all the known receivers and the licensed pawn shops with a description. If anyone tries to flog it, we'll get them.'

Skinner looked at the Superintendent, scathingly. 'Do you really believe that, Dan?' he asked. 'You don't batter somebody unrecognisable just to steal a few quid and a watch that you'll probably get nicked trying to sell. That Rolex was only taken to fool daft coppers like you and me.