Open Season

Book 34: BOB SKINNER

by Quintin Jardine

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

From acclaimed author Quintin Jardine comes the latest gripping mystery in his bestselling Bob Skinner series.

Amidst a family celebration, a cataclysmic storm uncovers long-buried horrors - and a team of detectives struggle to solve a thirty-year-old double murder.

The police are also searching two countries for traces of a mysterious crime novelist who appears to have vanished. Has the faking of his own death been his masterpiece?

Alongside each inquiry as it evolves is former Chief Constable Sir Robert Skinner, relishing his new role as a media magnate, but drawn into reluctant action and towards a chilling discovery of his own.

With evil on one hand and intrigue on the other, will Skinner escape with either his integrity or career intact . . . or is it open season on him?

'The legendary Quintin Jardine . . . such a fine writer' DENZIL MEYRICK

Praise for Quintin Jardine's Bob Skinner series:

'Scottish crime-writing at its finest, with a healthy dose of plot twists and turns, bodies and plenty of brutality' SUN

'Well constructed, fast-paced, Jardine's narrative has many an ingenious twist and turn' OBSERVER

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: November 10, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

‘Do you think Mia’s going to keep managing this place herself?’ Sarah Grace Skinner asked. She glanced around the public dining room of Black Shield Lodge. There were a few breakfasting guests, and a full complement of waiters, but the majority were family members.

Her husband frowned as he spread ginger preserve on a slice of toast. ‘Of course, she is,’ he said. ‘Cameron’s will provided for it. Why shouldn’t she? Cheeky’s company might be the legal owner, but she has a baby, plus she’s still with her accountancy firm.’

‘What does Mia know about running a hotel?’

‘What do I know about the hands-on side of running a modern media empire? Not much more than sweet fuck all, but I do know how to oversee the management of an operation at the top level, and how to ensure that all the component parts are running efficiently, that supply and distribution is working and that profit targets are being met. I doubt that Grandpa McCullough could have gone into the kitchen himself and knocked up the six-egg soufflé that was served as a starter last night . . . another reason why I didn’t go running with the lads, by the way . . . but he knew a manager who knew a chef who could. Mia’s no fool. She’s been running the radio station for a while; the app that she introduced has global listeners and attracts chunky advertising, making it very profitable. Between you and me it would be a nice fit for Intermedia’s UK division, but she doesn’t want to sell.’

‘You’ve asked her?’

He smiled. ‘Of course, I have. I’d look like a prat if I let the opposition snaffle it from right under my nose, would I not? No, she’s emotionally attached to it, she says . . . just as she is to Black Shield Lodge. She told me that she thought this place was the love of Cameron’s life.’

‘And she wasn’t jealous of that?’ Sarah asked.

Bob grinned. ‘I asked her that too. She said she would have been if it had been a busty blonde female, but she was quite happy to live in a menage à trois with a country house hotel.’

Sarah frowned, glancing across at the table where Seonaid was breakfasting with Cheeky, Trish the children’s carer and the two babies. Mark, their middle son, and Pilar were at another, by a window. ‘I suppose,’ she murmured, ‘that Mia’s in the same place as Xavi. And yet . . .’

‘She hides her grief so well,’ he suggested, ‘that you wonder whether it’s there at all. Is that what you were going to say?’

‘Not quite, but she doesn’t let it show.’

‘How do you know? We’re here for her son’s twenty-first. She’s not going to put a damper on that. Look, make no mistake,’ her husband told her, ‘Mia loved Cameron, and his sudden death came as a huge shock . . . as it did to all of us. But it’s not in her nature to let that show. It isn’t her first unexpected bereavement. She came from a real lowlife family, remember; her brothers both met bad ends, and as for her mother . . . well, we won’t go there. My God, she’s the only survivor. Mia Watson grew up tougher than you can imagine, but even back when we had our very brief fling she was an expert at concealing her background. As Mia Sparkles, her radio persona, she had a massive fan base among teenage kids back on that Edinburgh station that most people have forgotten about. Alex was one of them. None of them had a clue that her brother used to push hard drugs for her uncle in their high school. The station’s ownership certainly didn’t. But if she hadn’t got out of the city, as I told her she needed to, all that would have come out and it really would have destroyed her.’

‘What if it came out now?’

‘It might,’ Bob said. ‘She told me she’s thinking about doing a book, with an editor, a ghost writer.’

‘Not Matthew Reid, I hope!’ Sarah exclaimed.

‘He really would be a ghost writer, give that he’s probably at the bottom of the Whiteadder reservoir.’

‘Probably, but not certainly,’ she pointed out.

‘Best that he is. If he does show up somewhere he could be facing a murder charge in Glasgow, now that Lottie Mann and her team can place his DNA at the crime scene.’

‘Yeah,’ she conceded. ‘Arthur Dorward and his forensic team were sure he’d eradicated all traces of himself from his house and car. How did they finally come up with his DNA profile?’

Bob’s thick eyebrows rose. ‘That is something Sauce Haddock will not tell even me. Nor will McIlhenney, the Chief, or Mario McGuire.’

‘If it’s so secret, would it be usable as evidence in court?’

‘Ultimately that would be up to a judge to decide, but only if Matthew was still alive and they caught him.’

‘What do you think?’ Sarah asked. ‘Is he really dead? Or was his presumed suicide an elaborate hoax and will he turn up one day wanting his dog back?’

‘If he does, he’s not having him!’ Bob shook his head. ‘I’m as sure as everyone else that he’s dead, which only means that I lean in that direction, but we’ll never know that for sure until his body surfaces or is hooked by an angler. This too: Matthew Reid was a crime writer for fuck’s sake, one of the best. If he couldn’t come up with an untraceable exit route, nobody can. If he is still alive, I’m sure we’ll find out. If you really force me to think about it, the more I come back to this notion that Matthew might have seen himself as a Moriarty figure.’

‘And who’s Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Who do you think?’

Her riposte was forestalled by the sudden opening of the dining-room door. As both of his parents turned towards the source of the disturbance, Ignacio and Jazz burst into the room and headed for Cheeky’s table, leaving a trail of wet and muddy footprints in their wake. She and Bob watched as Nacho spoke to her, their interest fuelled further by his tone, although they were too far away to make out his words.

Abruptly, Cheeky pushed back her chair and headed for the door, followed by Skinner’s older son. Jazz would have followed them had his father not called out to him to wait.

‘It’s okay, Dad,’ the boy replied. ‘Your fifty quid’s safe. I doubt that Sauce will pay out, though. We didn’t complete the course.’



As she held her smiling granddaughter, Mia McCullough realised that she had forgotten how to be maternal. She had been capable of it when Ignacio was an infant, but an existence as a single mum escaping a shady past had worn it away before he had reached school age. Cheeky’s phone call, an advance warning of her visit, had taken her by surprise. She had wondered about its purpose, but nothing in her imagination could have anticipated what she was about to be told.

‘This is certain?’ she asked.

‘Apparently the DNA proves that Inez was my half-sister, not my mother,’ Cheeky said. ‘She was Grandpa’s daughter beyond question, ergo so am I.’

‘It also explains why Bob Skinner asked me for one of Cameron’s old hairbrushes,’ Mia said. ‘He must have known, or suspected.’

‘I must stop calling him Grandpa,’ Cheeky continued. ‘It’ll take a while, probably but I’ll get there. “Dad”,’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘It does mean,’ she added with a smile, ‘that I’ll never be able to call you “Granny” again. “Mum” it’ll be from now on.’

‘I don’t know if I’m ready for that either. Let’s stick to Mia and Cheeky.’

‘Cameron, I think,’ her stepdaughter countered. ‘Sauce will always call me Cheeky, just as I’ll never call him Harold, but I’d like to be known by my given name from now on. My father’s gone, so there’s no need to differentiate between us.’

‘Where did your nickname come from anyway?’ Mia asked.

‘Granny Abby,’ Cameron said. ‘She came up with it when I was a toddler. She said I was a cheeky wee thing and Grandpa . . . Dad,’ she murmured, ‘adopted it. You know, I feel really sad that she wasn’t my real granny. It turns out that she was no blood relation at all. I really loved her though, and that won’t change.’

‘What about your real mother? What do you feel about her?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ she admitted. ‘There’s only so much I can process at once. Maybe tomorrow I’ll start to think about her. But this is for sure,’ she added, ‘she’s going to have a proper funeral, and so is her half-brother, my uncle. I still have another uncle, I’ve been told, in Australia. When I’m ready I’ll reach out to him. He’s the only person who can tell me what she was like: Naomi, my mother. I should invite him to her proper send-off, shouldn’t I?’

‘That’ll be your call,’ Mia said. ‘Have you been told anything about your grandparents?’ she asked.

‘Sauce said that my grandmother left when Naomi and Samuel were small, and didn’t keep in touch, so I have no interest in finding her. My grandfather, my real one, he’s still alive, but apparently he’s a crazy evil old man. Sauce made me promise never to go looking for him. If he feels strongly enough to do that, it’s enough for me.’ She paused. ‘The one thing he isn’t telling me, him or anyone else, is how the two of them came to be under those trees. Just now I have enough to cope with but one day, I will ask.’

‘No,’ Mia said, quietly. ‘If you want my advice, don’t do that. I don’t know any more than you do, but my gut is telling me that if you press that question, you probably won’t like the answer.’



‘You can send it by WhatsApp,’ Seamus Corbett said, then interpreted correctly the moment’s silence that followed. ‘You’re surprised that an old fella like me knows about WhatsApp? We have a church parishioners’ WhatsApp group, Sergeant. It’s how we communicate, so I don’t have any choice but to get on board.’ He paused. ‘You’ve got WhatsApp yourself, have you?’

‘Yes, I have,’ Cotter replied, still shaken by the image that Haddock had shared with him. ‘I suppose I can access you through your mobile number.’

‘That you can.’

‘Okay, Seamus. I’m sending the photo now. Will your phone have a big enough screen for it to be clear?’

The old man laughed; hands-free mode gave it a metallic sound. ‘I won’t be looking at it on my phone. You can use WhatsApp on your computer these days, did you not know?’

Cotter sighed yet again as he clicked on the arrowhead icon and sent the photograph. He waited, counting the seconds on his wall clock: ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

‘Got it,’ Seamus called out. ‘Let me make it as big as I can.’

‘Take your time,’ Cotter cautioned. ‘We need to be absolutely sure.’

‘Sure, and I couldn’t be any more sure, son,’ the old priest replied. ‘That’s David Murphy. He still looks as serious as he did when he was fourteen, and he still has that shock of hair, or most of it. That’s your man.’

Cotter was silent for a few seconds as he considered the implications of what he had been told. His thoughts were interrupted, by Seamus.

‘And there was something else,’ he exclaimed. ‘It slipped my mind completely . . . not unusual because my old mind is porous. I was so taken aback at seeing David that I didn’t take a photo until he was down the road and couldn’t see him again. I did get his camper van though.’

The DS was instantly alert. ‘Does your photo show the registration number?’ he asked.

‘Of course, it does,’ the old man laughed, ‘clear as a bell.’

‘Seamus,’ Cotter said, ‘do me one more favour. Send it to me; use WhatsApp again.’

‘Sure, and I’ll do that right now. Will it help?’

‘Oh yes, it’ll make a giant haystack a hell of a lot smaller.’



The Crown Agent gazed at Chief Constable Neil McIlhenney with incredulity in her eyes. ‘I have to warn the Lord Advocate,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘No question,’ he agreed. ‘One of you should tip off the First Minister and the Justice Secretary too. Technically what happens next has nothing to do with them, but they’re the ones who’ll be facing questions from the media and in parliament when this comes flying off the fan. But,’ he paused, ‘nothing leaves this room until we make the arrest. There are categories of people that I distrust en bloc, and politicians are top of the list.’

‘When will you do that? Make the arrest?’ Jenny Sprake asked.

‘Early doors tomorrow morning. Six o’clock knock, pick him up, and take him to the Fettes building for interview under caution by DS Cotter and DCI Haddock. When that’s done, he’ll be charged; I want him in the Sheriff Court for a remand hearing by midday.’

‘You are sure of a conviction, Chief Constable?’

‘I always prefer a guilty plea, cos it’s cheaper and quicker, but if it goes to trial he’ll be convicted. Our bet is that he’ll plead, then argue mitigation, to get as short a tariff as possible.’

‘The remand hearing will be in open court, with media present,’ the Crown Agent pointed out. ‘We have no grounds for withholding the name.’

‘I know that,’ McIlhenney said. ‘One very important member of the media is aware already. Sir Robert Skinner. He found Reid’s body in Spain. Then he made an important link that led us to the accused. By that time, DS Cotter was closing in from another angle.’

She frowned. ‘You’re right,’ she mused. ‘I don’t think of Sir Robert in that context, but that’s what he is. Do we know Reid’s cause of death yet?’ she asked.

‘Lethal injection,’ he replied. ‘A massive dose of pentobarbital. The Spanish also found a paralysing drug in the blood sample.’

‘You’re describing a modern-day execution,’ she observed.

‘I know.’

‘I appreciate you bringing this to me directly. It minimises the chances of a leak.’

McIlhenney grinned as he rose. ‘It also gives me a prime suspect if there is one.’ He was turning to leave when she called after him.

‘By the way, what about the Black Shield Lodge inquiry,’ she said. ‘Do you know how that’s going?’

‘I know where it’s going,’ he replied. ‘Nowhere. The skeletons were victims of a domestic double homicide. We know who did it, but the man will never be fit to plead. He’s on licence from a life sentence for another crime, so he can stay where he is, on medication in a secure location for the rest of his life. From what I’ve been told about him, I hope that won’t be very long.’



Bob Skinner could remember the first interview of a suspect that he had ever undertaken; it was more than thirty years past. Alf Stein, his boss, had let him take the lead. He had been nervous, that first time, but never since, not until he walked into the room and took his place beside Mario McGuire.

The accused was wearing a black shirt and Levi’s, an incongruous outfit compared to the manner in which Skinner was used to seeing him dressed. His lawyer sat alongside him but his chair was a foot or so away from the table, a subconscious indicator, perhaps, that he would rather be somewhere else.

Skinner glanced up at the camera high in a corner, knowing that somewhere, his daughter and Neil McIlhenney, prosecutor and chief constable, were watching.

‘Which name do you want me to use?’ he began. ‘The indictment’s going to say “David Murphy also known as Arthur Dorward”, but you choose.’

‘You don’t know David,’ the murderer replied, ‘so it’s best that we make it Arthur.’

He nodded. ‘So be it. Why are you doing this, Arthur? Why me, why DCC McGuire?’

Dorward shrugged. ‘Because we go back,’ he said. ‘Because you two and big McIlhenney are the only three police officers that are worthy of this. Sauce Haddock will be one day, but not yet. The other one they put in front of me, Cotter, Tyrion, he’s just a sad insecure wee boy, being thrown a bun for working hard but probably just for getting lucky.’

‘I’ve seen the result of Cotter’s hard work,’ Skinner said. ‘Indeed, I’m looking at it. As for being lucky, there was an element of that in many of the cases that Mario and I closed, maybe in most of them.’ He paused, laying his hands on the table. ‘Before we go any further, let me tell you what the Crown case will be if this turns out to be just a stunt on your part and they have to go to trial.’

‘It’s not,’ Dorward said.

‘Humour us,’ he replied. ‘On the night before Matthew Reid disappeared, a Sprite Edge motorhome, owned by Murphy Agricultural, an Irish firm in which you are a shareholder, was booked into the Caravan Club site at Yellowcraig, approximately three miles from his home. It rained that evening, hard; that’s possibly why a resident of Gullane remembered, when interviewed by the police two days ago, seeing it heading in the direction of Reid’s house while he was walking his dog in Erskine Road.

‘There’s no record of that vehicle ever returning to Yellowcraig, but, just after eight next morning, it did check into another site, this one in Bishopbriggs, not far from where you live, Arthur. Two days later, it was on a ferry from Cairnryan to Larne in Northern Ireland, and a day after that it boarded another, sailing from Rosslare to Bilbao in Spain.’

He stopped, but only for a second or two. ‘How did the motorhome get to Scotland in the first place?’ he asked, then answered his own question. ‘By ferry from Ireland to Holyhead, a few days before these events took place.

‘A couple of days before that,’ he continued, ‘a passenger named David Murphy had flown from Edinburgh to Cork, the same David Murphy whose Irish bank account funded all of the subsequent crossings that vehicle made, and its fuel, on its travels through Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Spain and then France and England on its return journey.

‘The Crown can put Mr Murphy in that vehicle, and now, thanks to your opposite numbers in the Garda’s forensic department, we can put Matthew Reid there too, in the upper sleeping section. Oh yes,’ Skinner added, ‘and thanks to our friends in Spain, obtained in his house we have Arthur Dorward’s thumb print on the handle of the freezer where you put him. Well, nobody’s perfect, as Osgood says at the end of Some Like It Hot.

‘We could go on, man, but we don’t need to do we? We don’t even need to look too far for a motive. Matthew Reid sexually abused you as a fourteen-year-old, but got away with it. You’ve probably had him in your sights for years, so the only remaining question is, why now? Why wait so long?’ Skinner’s nerves were gone; his blood was hot.

Arthur Dorward was impassive as he looked back at the two men. ‘We’ve reached the point,’ he said, ‘where I don’t need or want legal representation. Mr Harper, you can go.’

‘Mr Dorward,’ the lawyer protested. ‘I strongly advise . . .’

‘And I reject your advice. Please leave us.’

Reluctantly, the solicitor withdrew, leaving Skinner to wonder whether his daughter would welcome that move, or worry about it.

Dorward smiled. ‘Bob, there’s something you’ve got fundamentally wrong, you and everybody else. Matthew didn’t abuse me. I seduced him, and he abandoned me. Why did I do it? I didn’t do it for revenge for any abuse. I did it because he was my first and only love, and he betrayed me.’

He laughed at the expression on the faces of Skinner and McGuire. ‘Can’t you get your heads around that, you two? My God, for all you’ve seen and done, you’re innocents, the pair of you.

‘Let’s go back,’ he continued, ‘back to the early eighties. I was fourteen years old; David Murphy, a very frightened young man, banged up in an institution. I’d lost the father I idolised, and had a mother who was so ill that I really thought she was going to die as well. That was me, I was David, and I was terrified,’ he exclaimed; his laughter was gone, replaced by an expression of real pain.

‘I needed someone, I really did; and there he was: Matthew Reid. He was a really beautiful young man, you know. He was maybe ten years older than me, a temporary teacher in a home for boys with a whole range of problems, where it was very obvious that he was looked down on by everybody else on the staff.

‘I could tell that Matthew was as sexually uncertain as I was. You two alpha males will have trouble understanding this, when I tell you that I fell in love with him, and even more when I insist that he did with me too. Matthew paid attention to me when nobody else did. He helped me with my English, where I was struggling. He spent time with me outside the classroom. He talked to me about books, about music, about his life in Hong Kong. He understood my loss and my fear about my mother. He saw that I was broken and he fixed me. And he smiled at me in a way that made me feel special.’

Dorward looked across the table, his expression earnest. ‘So,’ he murmured, ‘one night I went to his room. It was after midnight when the whole place was snoring, and I got into his bed. He was asleep, but when he woke he wasn’t startled, he was calm. When I kissed him he just whispered, “Oh dear.” We lay there for a while, neither of us saying a word, me hugging him with all my fear and anxiety gone. I felt his erection, then realised that I had one too.

‘Later on,’ he said, ‘they had this specialist examine me for signs of penetration. He said he couldn’t find any. Of course, he couldn’t for there never was . . . not by Matthew.

‘I knew he wanted to, but it was me who took the initiative,’ Dorward continued. ‘There were two lads in my dorm who fucked each other senseless every night, so the process wasn’t a mystery to me. I could tell that it was to Matthew, but he let me roll him over and he let me . . . he let me.’ Skinner thought that his smile was the saddest he had ever seen.

The scientist’s voice faltered; his eyes misted. ‘For the rest of my life, gentlemen, which has been entirely heterosexual, I have never had sex as good as Matthew and I had that night. He was never active, not once, but he was compliant and he was relaxed, and when I told him I loved him he just smiled and kissed me on the forehead.

‘I went back to my dorm just before dawn, before anyone was awake, feeling happier than I ever had in my life. I was in love, I was walking on air . . .’

And then his face changed. The smile became something close to a snarl, so vicious that Skinner and McGuire each felt he was looking at a person he had never seen before. ‘Until next morning,’ he growled, ‘when I walked into the eleven-thirty English class. I expected to find Matthew there as always, gentle and kind and wise. But he wasn’t: he was gone. The headmaster was there instead. He said he was afraid that Mr Reid had left the centre without warning, and that he’d be taking our class for the rest of the session.

‘I didn’t believe it, not for a day or two,’ he said, ‘but finally I had to accept it as fact. Matthew had just backed his bags and left, without a word or a note. And all that love, it turned to hatred at what I saw then as betrayal and did right up to the day I killed him. Yes, both of you, I killed him!’ he barked.

Then he sighed once again, and seemed to subside, to diminish. ‘I’ve never been lower than I was after Matthew abandoned me; I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was a real suicide risk. I would probably have gone that way, had my mother not recovered from her operation against my expectation. As soon as she could, she came and took me from the centre. By then she was in love herself, with David Dorward, who’d been her surgeon in Glasgow. With her being so happy, it didn’t take her long to sense that I wasn’t right.

‘She asked me what was wrong,’ Dorward continued. ‘She was worried that it was her new relationship that was upsetting me, but I said no, that there had been this teacher. I said no more than that but she assumed that I’d been abused, and I let her believe it. All hell broke loose after that. Before I knew it, I was giving evidence to a handful of old bishops, telling them things that had never happened, all because I was so hurt and betrayed.

‘They were sympathetic yet we suspected that was mostly because they were terrified of us going public. I was right about that because they gave me a financial settlement, with fifty per cent more for a non-disclosure clause.’ He surprised them by smiling. ‘I bought premium bonds with the money. It’s still there. I’ve had a couple of big wins.

‘After the hearing,’ he went on, ‘we went back to Glasgow and my mother married David Dorward. He adopted me, I took his surname and to avoid confusion about the house, I started using my middle name, Arthur. I could do that in Scotland, because nobody knew me.

‘I got on with my life; I did my degree, I had a steady girlfriend who became my fiancée, and eventually I joined the force as a SOCO, in the days when we were specialist police officers.’

He paused, frowning once more. ‘I never forgot about Matthew though; the bitterness at his betrayal never faded. I’d have been about forty when I first saw his name in a book store; WHSmith in Argyle Street, it was. A hardback with a photo on the dustcover and a biography that was bullshit. He didn’t have a Dublin degree, and he was ten years younger than it said.

‘That’s when I began to stalk him. He never saw me from close enough to recognise me, but I was always on the edge of his life from then on. Even with a successful career, a happy marriage and a growing family, that anger was always there. I read everything that was ever published about him, in the press and on social media. I even wrote shite reviews of his books and posted them on Amazon under an alias.’

The frustration that had been growing within Skinner could be contained no longer. ‘Okay,’ he barked. ‘That’s the background. You were hurt as a teenager and you’ve been out for revenge ever since, but I repea. . .