Skinner's Round (41 page)

`Premeditated killers, as opposed to the spur-of-the-moment domestic variety, are totally ruthless in their pursuit of an objective. They are totally determined. They are dedicated.

They are mentally very, very strong.

Ì've just described the qualities which go to make business tycoons, fighting soldiers, successful policemen and many others, including champion sportsmen. The difference between all of them and the sort of person who killed White is that they possess compassion.

They have the conscience gene that's missing from the killer's DNA make-up.

Ì've dealt with people like that, Darren. I can pick them out. My method's pretty crude, but I've never known it to fail. I choose my moment, and I just look into their eyes!'

They stopped at Skinner's ball. He beckoned McIlhenney towards him, and selected a wedge.

His shot was high and sure, to the back of the green, not flirting with the bunker on its front edge, behind which the hole was cut. Atkinson, emotionless, called for his sand-iron, and floated a soft, delicate shot. If the putting surface had been a dartboard, it would have been a bull.

They approached the green and the champion looked stonily at the ground ahead. 'I've looked into your eyes, Darren. I did it again, just now. Every time you concentrate on a golf shot, and hit it, the real you is there to be seen. You can't hide it. I look, and I see ruthlessness, determination, dedication and strength. But I don't see a trace of compassion.

Ì've looked in your eyes, my friend, and I believe. You could do it. You've got deadly eyes, Darren, the kind I've seen in dozens of interview rooms and, once or twice, in people standing over their victims. None of them have ever walked away from me.'

He lined his putt and hit it straight and sure, to the edge of the hole. Atkinson's attempt, from fifteen feet, stopped on the edge. Characteristically, he slapped his thigh, the only form of emotion he had shown since the round began.

They walked off the green together. 'I can read your mind as well,' said Skinner. 'You're thinking, "I'm all right. He can't prove a thing. I was in England when White was butchered, in the midst of a crowd at Bracklands when Masur was drowned, and at the dinner last night when Morton was set alight."'

Skinner looked quickly at him, sideways as he spoke. Atkinson's expression stayed stony.

`That's it, Darren,' the policeman said quietly. 'That's the last piece of proof, and all the confession I'll ever need. The fact that I told you about Morton, whose death is still a secret to everyone except my people, Lord Kinture, and Arthur Highfield, and you never even twitched . . . because you knew!'

They stepped in silence on to the seventh tee. Atkinson looked down the length of the 575-yard hole, reached out a hand to McGuire for his driver and crashed out one of the longest drives that Skinner had ever seen. The ball carried for over 300 yards and bounced on for another fifty.

As he bent to retrieve his tee, for an instant the real Darren Atkinson looked up at Skinner. He spoke not a word, but in a flashing moment, his mask of affability was ripped away and a driven fury shone in his eyes.

The policeman stared back at him, unblinking, before turning away to concentrate his mind on the shot ahead. His drive was as straight as Atkinson's, but finished sixty yards shorter.

Ìt's right, though,' said Skinner as they jumped down from the slightly elevated tee. 'You do have alibis for each crime. But Rick, your brother, he doesn't.'

They walked in silence to their second shots. Skinner's three-wood approach left him fifty yards short of the green, but Atkinson's sweetly struck two-iron soared unerringly to its heart.

`You might not believe this,' said Skinner, on the move once more, 'but the fact that you and Rick are twins might have escaped me, but for my friend Henry Wills. He saw you yesterday, in the exhibition tent, and he thought you were Rick.

`Because he taught him, you see, at university back in the early eighties. He taught him history. In the tent, Henry called out, "Reginald". I turned, and you were there with Sandro Gregory, stepping off the Shark's Fin stand. But you didn't see us, or react to Henry's shout, and I thought nothing of it at the time.

`When Henry saw you later, from a distance, and learned who you were, he thought he'd made a mistake. Of course in effect he was right. When he saw you, he really did see the face of his old student. But Henry's only good with faces, and he couldn't recall the name that

"Reginald" used, so at that point, I didn't twig. I didn't make the connection until Morton said something about you and your doppelganger brother. Even then it took me a while to say to myself, "Bugger me, they're twins!"

Ì asked Arthur Highfield this morning. "Two peas in a pod," he told me. "Darren takes care of the golf, Rick takes care of the business with the same dedication. You hardly ever see them together," he said, "but when you do you can only tell them apart by their clothes and by Darren's big golfer's hands." Oh yes, Darren, and by one other thing. Rick's a smoker, according to Highfield.

Ì haven't met your brother yet, but when I do, when eventually I choose my moment and look into his eyes, I bet I'll see the same thing there that I see in yours.'

Skinner reached his ball, and took his sand wedge from McIlhenney, who, with McGuire, was following just too far behind to be within earshot. 'With that,' he said, 'the jigsaw was complete. I saw the whole picture in my nasty detective's mind — a pair of murderous twins, ready to do anything in the pursuit of their objective. To be Number One . . . in everything.'

He chipped carefully on to the green, avoiding the direct line to the flag over a wide bunker, but making his par-five secure.

Ìt's quite a thought, isn't it?' he said as they walked on to the green. The Atkinson Twins, two psychopaths out to rule not just a chunk of some city, but the game of golf, both on and off the course.'

He stood back and watched as the champion's eagle putt rolled just past the hole, and joined in the applause of the gallery as he tapped in to go three under par. 'Keep it up, Darren,' he said smiling as he walked away, having completed his own par. Ì'm backing you to shoot sixty-three, remember.

Ànyway, back to poor old Michael White.'

`There you are, you and Rick, thwarted over Witches' Hill. Good losers, so Kinture and White think, for you agree to play in the Murano Million, and Rick signs M'tebe, Urquhart and Andres in as well. Rick even comes up and plays a round with Michael White, who shows him his private changing room, and tells him about his habit of bathing in his Jacuzzi, rather than showering, after each round.

`You and Rick make your plans. You know about the practice round last Sunday, because Andres is playing in it. So Rick leaves the tour event last Saturday . . . same day as Richard Andrews goes off to have his piles done.'

He stopped as they stepped up on to the eighth tee, from which the clubhouse was in sight once more. Atkinson ripped off another deadly accurate drive down. the 430-yard hole.

Skinner, following, played cautiously with a three-wood to avoid the meandering stream.

They fell in step once more, coming close to the skirting crowd, hearing their shouts of encouragement. 'Last Sunday, while everyone is out on the course, Rick just wanders in to the club. He hides in the starter's hut, over there.' As he walked, Skinner pointed casually towards the square building on the horizon.

`While he's in there, he smokes a couple of fags. Unusual fags. Last week's sponsors were dishing them out at the event, to those and such as those, but you can't buy them in the shops yet. He left a couple of stubs. There's nothing we can match on them, but they certainly cut down our list of possibles. Cut it down to one, in fact, since Andrews was having his arse examined in Surrey by that time.

Èventually he sees the first match coming in and it's White and Cortes. He nips, unseen, into the clubhouse through the open door which is normally used only as an exit. He goes into White's changing room and through into the Jacuzzi.'

Skinner broke off to play his second shot, a three-iron which finished on the front edge of the green, then he and the champion, their caddies following a few yards behind, walked off towards another stone bridge across the stream.

À few minutes later, White comes in. He puts his watch and stuff on the shelf, and he's hanging up his towel beside it when Rick smashes him on the side of the head. He drops like a stone. The blow might have killed him, but Rick makes sure. He's as big and powerful as you, and he heaves him into the bath, so there'll be no mess. Then he cuts the poor bugger's throat.'

They reached Atkinson's drive. The champion's wedge-shot was poor by his standards, but still finished only twenty feet from the hole.

`Can you imagine anything as callous as that? Of course you can, you helped plan it! While the rest are gathering in the bar, Michael White is left dead in bubbling water turned pink by his blood. It doesn't bear thinking about, but it happened.' Skinner shook his head, and shuddered.

Àfter he's done the business, Rick counts the rest in, then nips out by the door he used to come in. He takes White's wallet and wristwatch, in the hope that we'll assume it was murder associated with theft. Then he has his first piece of bad luck. He meets Hughie Webb, greenkeeper, nursing his Sunday hangover. Hughie, who's not too bright, takes him for you, and asks for an autograph. And Rick, desperate to be on his way, takes his grubby Gullane scorecard and signs on the back, "Best wishes, Darren Atkinson". From the quick glance that I had back on the first tee, his signature's quite like yours. Maybe he signs some of your photos, for you, eh?'

He stopped to play his approach shot, striking it rather too hard, and knocking it twelve feet past the hole. But, after another birdie attempt by the champion had missed by a millimetre, he stepped up and knocked in the putt for his eighth straight par.

As they crossed to the tee of the 540-yard par-five ninth, which, like the opening holes, curved round Witches' Hill and back towards the clubhouse, Skinner said, reflectively, 'It's quite a story, champ. And you know, if you'd left it at that, at White's murder alone, I'd probably never have caught on.

`Hughie Webb's a lousy witness. He doesn't know whether it's breakfast or Easter, so even if I'd found that connection, I'd probably have assumed that he'd made a mistake and had met you on the Monday. It was only when I started thinking in the context of all three murders that I tied you in.

Ìf you'd just been a bit less greedy, a bit less ambitious. But not you and Rick. Suddenly you saw a chance to make the big jump you'd been dreaming about.'

They smashed two more crunching tee-shots down the ninth, but Atkinson's ball took a bad bounce and, to the groans of the gallery, was swallowed by a bunker 290 yards out.

`What you two want, Darren,' Skinner resumed as they walked on, 'is to make DRA Management, absolutely the number one, unchallenged leader in world golf management.

You told me casually that your ambitions extended to America. Now I see how strong they are. The fact that Mike Morton made a half-hearted attempt to lean on you a few years back probably convinced you that you wouldn't beat SSC by business means, and the whole of Asia knows about Masur's Yakuza connection.

`No, the game plan which the terrible twins drew up called for the elimination of the strong men at the head of SSC and Greenfields, each of whom held his business together. With them out of the way you'd move in. You'd sign up the top boys not just in Europe, but in the Americas, Asia and Australasia as well. You'd control the game. DRA would be Number One, worldwide.

`That's the plan. Suddenly you see a chance to put it all into practice in one sweep. Masur and Morton are both here. Even better, they're at each other's throats over Tiger Nakamura.'

Skinner's ball was only a few yards short of Atkinson's bunker. He thought about trying for the green but saw the sand lying in wait ahead, and hit a five-wood, leaving himself a thirty-yard pitch to the green.

The champion's ball was plugged wickedly in the bunker. Even with his strength and skill he was able only to coax it clear by a few feet, the ball landing in straggly semi-rough, only its top visible. Looking at the lie, Skinner expected him to select a mid-iron and to trust to his wedge to save par. But he was mistaken. Three-wood, please, Mario,' said Atkinson. To the astonishment of the gallery, Atkinson took the club and, from that position, fashioned the finest golf shot Skinner had ever seen. The ball soared away, on a right-left drawn trajectory, rather than the usual professional's faded shot, flying against the line of the curving fairway, flirting with the trees of Witches' Hill, but plunging, as if wire-guided, into the centre of the green and rolling up to the very edge of the hole. The spectators in the small stand behind the green rose to their feet as one. The gallery around the golfers cheered wildly. As the ball came to rest, Atkinson glared across at Skinner with fire in his eyes, and his lips drawn back in a silent animal snarl.

As they walked on down the fairway, the policeman said quietly. 'That was a sort of answer, Darren, wasn't it? You know, it's as well you use golf clubs, not firearms. Otherwise I think I'd have to kill you, and I'd hate that.'

His tone changed and became conversational once more. Às I said, I've encountered people like you two before. They've always perished on the sword of their own ambition. You guys have perished on your imagination. Just as no one else would have imagined that shot back there, so no one but Rick would have had the flair to fasten on that bloody stupid note by Hector Kinture's mother to the Scotsman.

`The trouble is, once I found something out, it was like a signature. And what I discovered was that Rick, as Henry Wills's student fifteen years back, had heard the vague, unsupported tale of the Witch's Curse.

Ìt was dismissed as colourful folklore by serious academics like Henry, but it stuck in Rick's mind, and when he read the old Lady Kinture's piece of nonsense in the newspaper, he had his brainwave. "Blade, Fire and Water", the old curse said, and here you were, with your potential victims, at Witches' Hill.' He paused to allow the champion to stride ahead on to the green, smiling and waving to the cheering crowds, and to tap his ball in for a fourth birdie.