Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (29 page)

'In
other words,' he concluded, 'Sarah couldn't say whether they were tied together
or not.'

'Right.
Ten out of ten; damn near word perfect. Now; leave the question of
identification to one side for the moment, add your alien pube to the situation
and try this. A sex game: our victim was into bondage. He liked it upside down,
the woman in control, not him. So he lets himself be tied to the bed posts and
be fucked
...
and then it all goes
very sadly wrong.'

Dan
Pringle's expressive face wrinkled; he scratched his heavy moustache. 'So are
you saying he was killed by a woman?'

'I'm
saying he could have been, not that he was. I don't know how the other half
lives; maybe the victim was gay. Or maybe he was straight and it was a set-up;
she jumped off and in came a squad of guys with big hammers.'

'Not
hammers, not according to the report.'

'Okay
then, baton-like instruments, if you want me to quote verbatim. Terminal,
whatever they were.'

'What's
the time?' Skinner asked suddenly, glancing at his watch to answer his own
question. 'Eight twenty-five. Late enough to try the Diddler's office. They do
business in Europe, so the switchboard's always open at eight. His secretary
could be in by now
...
and so, of
course, could he.'

'What's
his firm called?'

'Daybelge
Fund Managers.' He picked up Yellow Pages from Pringle's desk. 'I can never
remember the damn number. Ah here it is.' He picked up the direct line
telephone, punched in seven digits, and waited.

'Daybelge;
how can I help you?' The telephonist's voice had the tone of a bell.

'Is
Mr Shearer in?'

'No
sir.'

'Janine
Bryant?'

'Yes,
sir. Who shall I say is calling?'

'Mr
Skinner, a friend of Mr Shearer.'

He
waited again, until a new voice came on line. 'Good morning, Mr Skinner.'

The
DCC had spoken to Janine Bryant many times, and had met her once when he had
given the Diddler a lift home from his office on a Thursday evening. She was a
clever, confident, assured woman in her late thirties. He had never heard her
sound remotely apprehensive before, and so when she spoke, it was as if a cold
fist had punched him in the stomach.

'Where's
the Diddler, Janine?' he asked, quietly.

'I
don't know, Mr Skinner. I was afraid that you did and that you were going to
tell me. He hasn't been in the office since last Friday; but he didn't warn me
he was going away or anything. I've had to ask other partners to take over his
meetings all this week.'

'Have
you called Mrs Shearer in France?'

'I
didn't like to do that.'

'Why
not?'

He
sensed her hesitation. 'I hardly like to say this, even to you, but I have a
feeling that he might be with a girlfriend.' 'What makes you think that?'

'I
can't put my finger on it; it's just that last week there was a spring in his
step, one that I've seen in the past, one that's usually been associated with a
discreet adventure. With Mrs Shearer and Victoria leaving for France last
Friday morning
...
well, I have a
suspicion.'

'Is
that why you didn't raise the alarm?'

'No,'
said the secretary, 'not at all. Mr Skinner,' she continued, 'Daybeige is a
partnership, but Mr Shearer is very much the senior partner. He takes all the
strategic investment decisions; the others implement them and report to him. We
have some extremely important clients and if word got around the market that he
was missing, I hate to think of the consequences for the firm.

'I
discussed the situation with the others on Wednesday, and we agreed that we
would do nothing and say nothing, but wait for him to surface.'

Skinner
sighed. 'I fear that he may have surfaced already, Janine. Have you read about
the unidentified man who was fished out of the Water of Leith last Saturday?'

She
gasped, 'Yes,' she replied in a trembling whisper.

'There
were terrible facial injuries, but in the circumstances
...
it could be the Diddler. Do you know
who his doctor is?'

'He
never goes to one, Mr Skinner. He's in perfect health. He has an annual
check-up at the Murray field, just to be sure
...
his MOT, he calls it and he always passes with flying colours.'

'Would
they have a note of his blood group?'

'They
have better than that. They have some of his blood. Mr Shearer has a rare blood
type, so he has the hospital take a pint every six months and store it, just in
case they ever have to operate on him.'

Skinner
nodded to Pringle, who was standing beside him, hanging on to one side of the
conversation. 'That's good,' he told the secretary. 'We'll get an
identification from that; one way or another.

'Now,'
he continued, 'do you know where Graham, the son, is?'

'He's
in Australia. He's spending the university vacation in Sydney working with a
firm with whom Daybelge has a link. Mr Shearer arranged it for him.'

'Damn.
I'd have liked him here for his mother, if it comes to that.'

'I
have a number where you can reach him. Hold on.' He waited while she looked it
out, then noted it down as she read.

'One
last thing, Janine. If the Diddler was up to his old tricks and was shacked up
somewhere, do you have any idea at all where that might have been.'

'No,'
she replied. 'Unless
...
unless he
used Graham's place. That would have been empty.'

'What's
that?'

'It's
a cottage. Mr Shearer bought it but the mortgage is in Graham's name. It's down
in Coltbridge. I don't have the address, but I know that it
...'
She stopped in mid-sentence.

'You
don't need to tell me,' Skinner said. 'It backs right on to the Water of
Leith.' 'Yes.'

'Ahh,
that's it,' the DCC hissed. 'Thanks, Janine. I'm really sorry. Look this has
got to stay secret, even from the partners, until we've confirmed the
identification by DNA comparison, and until Edith has been told. My colleague
Dan Pringle will keep you informed of what's happening.

'So
Daybelge can arrange damage control, we'll tell you before we make any
announcement. That will not happen before Edith and Victoria are back in
Scotland, or before Edith has spoken to Graham and he's on his way back home.'

'I
understand.' She sounded under control.

'Good.
You'd better give me your home phone number.' Again, he noted as she dictated.

'Thanks.
So long, and again
...
I'm sorry.'

He
hung up the phone, and turned to Pringle. 'Okay, Dan. I want you to get McGurk
up to the Murrayfield to collect a sample of the Diddler's stored blood. Then I
want you to find an address in Coltbridge occupied by one Graham Shearer.'

The
Superintendent picked up a copy of the electoral register from his desk and
flicked through it. 'There's no Shearer listed anywhere about there,' he
announced, after a few minutes.

'The
boy's only twenty, Dan. His vote's probably still in Gullane, but he'll be
paying Council Tax in Edinburgh. Check it out with the City.' He turned towards
the door.

'Damn!'
he shouted suddenly. 'Damn! Damn! Damn! Who the Hell would want to do that to
the Diddler? And why, for God's sake? Alec Smith and him, on the same bloody
night!'

'But
no connection between them, Boss.'

'No,
but
...'
He gasped. 'Wait a minute, of
course there's a bloody connection. They both belonged to the Legends. They
played together.'

Pringle
stared at him. 'My Thursday football group,' he explained, curtly. 'Alec was a
member for a while, till his knee went; the Diddler's been a member almost from
the start. And they're both murdered on the same night. One in North Berwick,
one in Coltbridge. And what was the time gap between the two killings?' He
thought for a moment. 'Four hours,' he snapped. 'It's possible; it could have
been done.

'Dan.
Get that blood; find that house. I'm off to talk to Sarah.'

40

'No,
Bob, no. Those two murders could not have been committed by the same person.'

'Come
on, can you say that for sure? The time-frame fits.'

'Maybe
it does, but that's all. There are major differences between the two. Look at
poor Diddler; let's go with the sex-crime scenario, I accept that it's the
likeliest explanation for the nature of the binding. He's tied, has sex, or at
least there's enough contact for him to acquire that single strand of hair,
then he's battered to death.

'The
Smith case was completely different. He was stripped and bound, yes, but that
was for torture. There was nothing remotely sexual about it.'

'What
about the burning of the genitalia?'

'That's
an anti-sexual gesture, a classic'

'This
is only theory though.'

'Okay,
you want fact, here it is. The blows to Smith's head and the blows which
Diddler sustained were certainly not inflicted by the same person. Now that is
a hard, under-oath statement. I wouldn't call Smith's wounds superficial, but
they were not the cause of death, nor did they contribute.

'Howard
Shearer, on the other hand was battered savagely to death, with great force.
Different people, Bob, different people. I'm sorry to blow your theory, but
look at it from this angle. How many people have played football with your
crowd over the years?'

'God
knows,' he conceded. 'Dozens of regulars; if you count the guys, and one woman,
who have played just once or twice, you could be into the hundreds.'

'And
Alec Smith really wasn't there for all that long, was he? Three years or so?'

'True.
Okay, I get your drift.'

'Exactly.
Two members of your squad of hundreds being killed violently in completely
different circumstances is, I grant you, something of a coincidence, but it's
not like winning the pools. Whereas, the possibility of their having been
killed by the same person does not exist.'

'Right,
right, right, I'm beaten. I guess I got over-excited. Give my love to the kids;
see you later.'

Skinner
replaced the phone and looked across his desk at Neil Mcllhenney. 'Sometimes
it's just impossible to argue with my wife,' he said. 'Especially when she's
right.' He paused. 'We don't have a sniff of a motive. The Diddler was a
wealthy man, he could have been killed for money, or for his Rolex, even; that
alone was worth a ton.

'Nonetheless,
as soon as we have a positive ID on the body, as we will, I want you to
organise a meeting of the Legends, the other seven and us, or as many as are
available, in the Golf in North Berwick, six o'clock this evening. I want to
tell them all before they read it in the papers. If Grock or Stewart Rees or
Andy John are golfing, tell them to cancel it. The poor wee bugger deserves a
wake.'

'I'll
need to bring the kids,' said Mcllhenney.

'Fine,
Sarah will give them their dinner, and they can have a play on the beach with
the lads.'

He
recalled the night before. 'Here, was Karen okay about you being late?'

'Aye,
she was fine,' his exec replied. 'She was a bit strange, I thought, but it was
nowt to do with that, I'm sure. Lauren said this morning that she seemed sad,
and she has her mother's eye for people's moods.'

'She's
a capable woman, is Sergeant Neville; she'll sort it, whatever it is.'

The
big Inspector stood and made to leave. 'Oh,' he said, as an afterthought. 'I
tried to raise DCS Martin as you asked, but he isn't in yet. I left a message
with Sammy for him to call you.'

'Fine,'
the DCC acknowledged, just as the telephone furthest from his right hand sang
into life
...
the phone which hardly
ever rang. He picked it up, frowning, as the door closed behind Mcllhenney.