The Roots of Evil

Book 32: BOB SKINNER

by Quintin Jardine

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

THE DARKEST DEEDS ARE HIDDEN FROM SIGHT . . .

Bob Skinner is back in the latest gritty mystery in Quintin Jardine's bestselling series, not to be missed by readers of Ian Rankin and Peter May.

New Year's Day, and Edinburgh lies sleeping. But two men will never wake again . . .

When struggling ex-copper Terry Coats was discovered in bed with an air hostess, his excuse that he was 'going undercover' cut no ice with the force - or his wife. But now he's been brutally killed on Hogmanay night, it seems there may have been more to his plea.

Dragged from the New Year celebrations, Special Constable Sir Bob Skinner is shocked to find Coats' body alongside that of Griff Montell: his erstwhile protégé, and former lover of Skinner's own daughter, Alex. Could there be some dark truth under Coats' cock-and-bull story, after all?

As the secrets start unravelling, Skinner realises he has gravely underestimated someone close to him - and the effects will cost him, and those he loves, dear . . .

Praise for Jardine's gripping mysteries:

'The legendary Quintin Jardine . . . such a fine writer' Denzil Meyrick

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

'Another powerful tartan noir that packs a punch' Peterborough Evening Telegraph

'Incredibly difficult to put the book down . . . a guide through a world of tangled family politics, hostile takeovers, government-sanctioned killing, extortion and the seedier side of publishing . . . Quintin Jardine should be . . . your first choice!' Scots magazine

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

(P)2020 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: November 12, 2020

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 400

Sample

One

‘Happy New Decade, my love,’ Sir Robert Morgan Skinner murmured to his wife, as the fireworks lit the darkness outside, and he had finished shaking hands with everyone around him, as tradition demanded. ‘May it bring you all you wish for.’

‘The last one did pretty well in that department,’ Professor Sarah Grace replied. ‘It brought a few surprises too.’ She inclined her head towards a pair who stood a few feet away from them, watching the scene through the bay window of the golf club’s first-floor dining room. ‘For example, if you’d told me this time last year that those two would be here, let alone as a couple, I’d have sent you for a cognitive test.’

‘How many times?’ he murmured. ‘My daughter and Dominic Jackson are not a couple. They are house-mates, no more than that.’

‘So you say.’

‘So Dominic assures me.’

‘Are you telling me you asked him?’ she chuckled.

‘I didn’t have to. Before Alexis moved in with him full-time, he came to me and asked if I had any objection. He told me something she’d kept from me herself, that she hadn’t been able to settle back into her flat after she was attacked there. More than that, he said that psychologically she was on the edge. He believed she had never had a really close friend outside of family, and that it was telling on her. The more success she had in her career, the more it contrasted with what she perceived as failure in her private life. She felt empty inside.’

‘But everybody loves Alex,’ Sarah protested.

‘Everybody but Alex herself, it seems,’ Bob murmured. ‘I said what you just said, but Dominic was adamant, that her self-esteem was at a critical point. “She’s never failed at work,” he told me, “so when she perceives that she’s a failure as a person, she has no idea how to cope with it. Let her move in with me, Bob, and I will be the friend she needs so badly . . . but nothing more than that, I promise you.” Given that the man has an honours degree, a masters and a doctorate in psychology, I wasn’t about to argue with him, so I agreed. And it’s worked. Look at her, for Christ’s sake! Compared to how she was, she’s blooming.’

Sarah looked again at her stepdaughter. ‘I’ll grant you that,’ she admitted. ‘Why didn’t you share this with me at the time?’ she asked.

‘You were away at that forensic pathology conference in Paris when it happened. By the time you came back she’d moved in. I told you then what the arrangement was.’

‘And I doubted you then. This is Alex, remember.’

‘Her mother’s daughter? Is that what you’re saying?’ His voice was low; his smile was not reflected in his eyes.

‘No, I didn’t mean that at all,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘But I do know her; we are close.’

‘Not so close you can’t accept that she’s capable of sharing a house with a man but not a bed?’

‘And can you? Really?’

‘I believe her. So should you. End of story.’

‘That story, okay.’ As the fireworks climaxed, she glanced once more at Alex’s huge companion. ‘I wonder what this crew here would say if they knew his history, that all those qualifications of his were gained in prison doing a life sentence for murder, under another name?’

‘They would say nothing, because he’s here as my guest. God knows what they would think,’ he conceded, ‘but trust me, nobody would utter a word.’

‘Not in your presence,’ she said, ‘but as soon as you left the building, the place would be chattering like a tree full of starlings. This is a golf club, for heaven’s sake. Rumour and innuendo spread faster than on Facebook in places like this.’

‘Yeah, maybe they do, but nobody is going to find out this secret. Dominic keeps a low profile professionally, and the circles he moves in, nobody’s likely to link him with Lennie Plenderleith.’

‘Until Alex calls Dominic as an expert defence witness in a High Court trial,’ Sarah suggested. ‘There are still plenty of advocates and a few judges who were around when he was there last.’

‘Yes, but he’s changed a lot since then; the beard, the change in body shape since he stopped pumping weights.’

‘He’s still two metres tall.’

‘That’s not as exceptional as it used to be.’

‘Isn’t there a parole officer who knows who he is, or was?’ Sarah argued.

‘They would be bound by confidentiality,’ her husband countered, ‘but Dominic doesn’t have to check in anymore. Yes, he’s still on licence as a life-sentence prisoner, but the terms of that licence are as limited as they can be. He has a passport; he can go anywhere he likes without asking permission or informing anyone.’

‘How about the USA? My home country is very choosy about who gets in. He’d be required to declare his personal history, and withholding information from US immigration is never a good idea.’

Bob grinned. ‘We let your president into the UK.’

‘Our president doesn’t have any murder convictions.’

‘There are those who would say he doesn’t have convictions of any sort.’ His attention was caught by the three-piece band shuffling back into position. ‘Come on, kid, let’s dance the night away.’

‘Give my feet a break, Twinkletoes,’ his wife groaned. ‘They’ve suffered enough for one night.’

‘Are you suggesting I’m not a Strictly candidate?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything, I’m telling the world out loud: cops can’t dance.’

As she stepped away from the window, Alex heard her. ‘That’s a given,’ she agreed. ‘I did my level best with him, but my old man has no sense of rhythm, none at all.’

‘How about you, Dominic?’ Sarah asked.

‘I don’t think that dance floor’s big enough for me,’ he laughed as they approached. ‘Besides, I think it’s time to run the gauntlet and drive home. If I’m not pulled over between here and Edinburgh, at one a.m. on January the first, it’ll be a sad reflection on the state of policing in modern Scotland.’

‘But don’t let us drag you away, Pops,’ Alex insisted. ‘This shindig still has a while to go, by the looks of things.’

‘No, I think we’re done.’ Bob glanced out of the window. ‘All of a sudden it’s chucking it down out there. If you are going, maybe you could drop us off at home, and wish your brothers a Happy New Year in the process.’

‘Brothers?’ she repeated.

He grinned. ‘You don’t think Jazz is going to be in bed, do you? Mark certainly won’t be, and Ignacio doesn’t have the clout to make them. Trish would lay down the law if she wasn’t spending Christmas with her folks in Barbados, but the boys won’t take it from him. Besides, I promised him that we’d be back in time to let Pilar and him catch up with some pals at a party.’

‘I haven’t met the girlfriend yet,’ Alex observed. ‘They’re on the same uni course, yes?’

‘That’s right, she’s a would-be chemist too. She’s from Madrid; her father’s a banker, and her mother’s Norwegian. The mum did her degree in Edinburgh too; she got a two one in chemical engineering at Heriot Watt.’

‘Do you think it’s serious between them?’

‘Ignacio’s in love,’ he conceded, ‘and the lass seems smitten too, but everybody does when they’re twenty. You’ve heard me talk about my old Uncle Johnny . . . he wasn’t really my uncle though; he was my dad’s best pal. He was a man of many sayings and one was that you shouldn’t look at your girlfriend, you should look at her mother, because that’s what she’s going to look like in twenty-five years or so.’

‘He sounds like a real old sexist pig,’ his daughter declared. She glanced towards her stepmother, who was making her way to the toilet. ‘Mind you, if that’s true, my little sister’s boyfriends will be impressed when that time comes. Sarah looks fantastic with the new silver hair. I’m still getting used to it.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘me too . . . and it’s natural!’

‘You’re kidding me!’

‘No, she’s been covering grey streaks for a few years now. One day, after we’d been out for dinner with Mario McGuire and Paula, on a whim she copied her and spent a small fortune having all the dye removed. What you see is pretty much how it looked.’

‘Maybe I should try it,’ Alex mused.

‘No way!’ her father said. ‘You’re far too young. Plus, your Grandma Graham didn’t start to go grey until after your mother died, and you’re very like her. If you did have the tint taken out, you’d be wasting your money.’

‘I’m also very like you,’ she pointed out, ‘and you were grey in your mid-thirties.’

‘True,’ he conceded, ‘but I still say don’t do it. One’s enough.’ He nodded towards the door where Dominic was waiting. ‘Let’s go . . . once I’ve said goodnight to the Captain. Got to observe the formalities.’

‘When will it be your turn for that job?’

‘Never. I was a cop for thirty years, love, and I finished at the top of the tree. I’m an autocrat to my bootstraps, not a committee man. In fact, I rage against those, like Jimmy Proud did, God bless and keep him.’

Skinner said his farewell to the golf club captain and his party, joining his own on the back stairway that led out to the car park. He recovered an umbrella from his locker, sheltering his wife and daughter from the bite of the cold rain as they bustled back to Dominic Jackson’s massive SUV.

It was a short distance to the Skinners’ home, no more than three minutes’ walk, but they were both grateful not to have to make it as the rain grew heavier, battering on the roof of the Mercedes G Class. Their driver pulled up as close to the door as he could, and all four leapt out and into the porch of the modern villa. As Bob had expected, only their two youngest children, Seonaid and Dawn, were in bed; Mark and James Andrew were still awake, but both were flagging. Alex kissed her half-siblings . . . Mark was half her age and Jazz was twenty years younger . . . then she and her escort disappeared into the night, as Bob and Sarah went upstairs to change out of their formal clothing into casual.

‘Who are you first-footing?’ Skinner asked Ignacio, his oldest son, as he came back down.

The young man stared at him. Clearly, the phrase meant nothing to him.

‘Christ,’ he lamented. ‘Did your mother tell you nothing of your Scots heritage when she was bringing you up in Spain? Traditionally, the first person across your threshold in the new year should be a tall dark handsome man. In an ideal world he’ll be carrying a lump of coal and a bottle of whisky.’

Beside Ignacio, his girlfriend Pilar Sanchez Hoverstad laughed. ‘I don’t think I would let anyone in if he was carrying a bottle of whisky,’ she said. ‘Vodka, yes, or maybe schnapps.’ She pulled a face. ‘But not whisky, never. And what is coal?’

‘Yes,’ Ignacio echoed. ‘What is it?’

‘Seriously? You mean . . . ? Fuck! I give up. Where are you going?’

‘To our friend Ronnie’s house. She lives on Goose Green, where you used to live with Alex.’

‘Ronnie? She?’

‘Veronica, Dad, Veronica Goodlad. She’s at uni too, studying English.’

‘Well, you’d better get moving,’ Bob said, ‘or she’ll have graduated by the time you get there. Have you got a bottle of anything to take with you?’

‘Two,’ Pilar replied. ‘Spanish wines; a Tempranillo and a Verdejo.’

‘Very nice,’ he murmured. ‘Can I come?’

‘The hell you can,’ Sarah retorted, as she re-joined them.

‘Nah. You’re right. I’m too old for all-nighters. On you go, you two, but don’t forget to be back for the Loony Dook at midday.’

‘What’s that?’ Pilar asked.

‘A swim in the sea on New Year’s Day, on Gullane beach. It’s become a tradition.’

‘In the sea?’ she gasped. ‘Nacho, you never told me that. All you said was to bring my costume, that we were going to swim. I thought you meant in a pool.’

He nodded. ‘I know, they’re crazy here. You don’t have to, really.’

‘No, I will,’ she insisted. ‘If my mother was here, she would. She is very proud of being Norwegian. I have her blood so I must too.’ She looked up at Bob. ‘Are you doing it?’

‘Yup. Jazz too.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Sarah murmured.

‘Try and stop him.’

‘I think he’s beyond my control,’ she admitted.

Bob escorted his oldest son and his partner to the door, returning to the living room with a brandy in one hand and a bottle of Corona in the other. He handed the goblet to his wife and settled down beside her on the sofa. ‘Want to watch Jools Holland?’ he asked.

‘Tomorrow maybe; it has less attraction now that I know it isn’t live. Mind you, I’d like to be in the audience when they record it. Could you fix that for next time? You’ve got contacts everywhere.’

‘Not quite,’ he corrected her. ‘I have contacts in the media, in the security service and in the police. None of those will cut much ice with the producers of the Hootenanny.’

‘What about your former wife’s actor boyfriend? He’s got cred with them, surely.’

‘Maybe,’ he acknowledged, ‘but given that I once offered to make Aileen a pair of earrings with his nuts, he might not be too willing to use it. Ask me in six months and I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Who knows where we’ll be in six months? I’ve been following the press coverage of the new coronavirus in China after I read a piece on a pathology website ten days ago or so. Unless they find a quick and effective treatment, and very fast, that could become global. If it does, the consequences are anyone’s guess. Who’s to know what’ll happen?’

He frowned, and his mood darkened. ‘Who was to know a couple of years ago what would happen with Jimmy Proud? Hell no! More recently than that, could I have imagined Alex being attacked in a secure penthouse apartment? Hell no! Could I have foreseen what would have happened to poor Carrie McDaniels?’ He shuddered.

‘Go back those two years,’ she countered. ‘Could we have imagined that now we’d have a beautiful second daughter? Not really. Or that you’d be chair of InterMedia UK? I didn’t see that coming. Or that you would be back in the police?’

‘I’m not back in the police,’ he corrected her. ‘I’m mentoring rising CID officers. As for InterMedia UK, that’s only a division of the parent company, and it’s at the pleasure of my friend Xavi.’

She sipped her brandy and smiled. ‘Your friend Xavi Aislado: the only man I know who’s as big as Dominic Jackson.’

Bob nodded. ‘That’s why he was a goalkeeper, until his knee packed in on him. Big Iceland, they used to call him at Tynecastle. Strange thing is, I never saw him play. I only knew him as a young journalist.’

‘How did you two get close? Did you feed him insider information?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘And put my career in jeopardy? I don’t think so. The fact is, Xavi tells people I saved his life. I didn’t; I turned up after he’d been shot, and I got him to hospital, but it was never life-threatening.’

‘That’s not what he means when he says that,’ Sarah argued. ‘He told me that if you hadn’t turned up when you did, he might have put another bullet in his head and you’d have found three bodies instead of two.’

‘He may say so, but he wouldn’t have done that. Yes, what happened was tragic, but he’s too strong a character.’ He sighed. ‘That’s another story, though. Let’s look forward today. Have you made a New Year resolution?’

She laughed. ‘Yes, I resolve to dissect the next person who calls me “Lady Skinner”. I’m an American; we don’t do titles.’

‘Of course, you do!’ Bob declared firmly. ‘Half of your compatriots refer to themselves by their job titles. Chief this, Coach that: look at Blue Bloods on the telly, everybody round the table has a title; it’s a status thing. You do it yourself, Professor Grace.’

‘Yes, I do, because I’ve worked damn hard to attain the status. Lady Skinner makes me out to be an appendage of my husband. It’s archaic, it’s . . . it’s . . . anti-feminist!’

‘Enlighten me, do.’

She raised her brandy goblet. ‘Certainly, Sir Robert. Suppose I had been honoured, not you. Suppose I’d been made a dame.’

‘You can’t be; you’re a US citizen.’

‘Piss off, Skinner, just suppose, for the sake of argument.’

‘I don’t want an argument.’

‘You asked me to enlighten you; let me. If I’d been made a dame, that’s the female equivalent of a knight, right?’

He smiled and eased himself closer on the sofa. ‘If you say so. I’ve never really thought about it.’

‘I do say so. So there I am, Professor Dame Sarah Grace. What are you?’

‘Bob.’

‘What else, idiot?’

‘Whatever you’d like me to be. How about Chief Skinner? That’s what they called me whenever I visited the States.’

‘But what would everyone else call you, instead of Lady? What’s the male equivalent?’

‘Gent? That’s how it works with public toilets.’

‘Nothing!’ she cried, her nostrils flaring. ‘There is no gender equivalent to the courtesy title given to the wife of a knight . . . or to a husband,’ she added, with a flourish. ‘It’s all right for the little wife, but it would be demeaning for a male to walk in his wife’s shadow . . . or his husband’s? Is that not sexism, is it not a denial of feminism? Go on, tell me.’

He put his head against hers. ‘The only thing I will tell you is that when you have a certain amount to drink, and get argumentative, you also get very horny. So what say I display my masculinity . . . ever notice that there’s no such word as maleism? . . . by carrying you upstairs, Lady Skinner, and we carry on this discussion in a more intimate setting?’

A few strands of her silver hair fell over her right eye. ‘Are you suggesting that we bring in the new year with a bang?’

‘Perceptive as always.’

‘And you’ll concede that I’m right?’

‘Whatever it takes.’

She put her arms around his neck. ‘In that case, Sir Robert, I’m all . . .’

He was in the act of lifting her from the sofa when they were interrupted by the powerful voice of P!nk, Skinner’s ringtone. He paused, looking Sarah in the eye.

‘Go on,’ she sighed. ‘You’ve never been able to just let it ring, and you never will.’

He laid her back down, took out his mobile, glanced at the screen and took the call. ‘Deputy Chief Constable McGuire,’ he growled, slowly, ‘if you’re pished and calling to wish me a Happy New Year, you can stick it up your arse.’

‘I’m not drunk but I wish I was, Bob. Happy New Year, of course, but it’s off to a lousy start.’

The tension in his normally unshakeable friend’s voice snapped him into full wakefulness. As she looked up at him Sarah saw his eyes narrow and his mouth tighten. ‘What’s up?’

‘I don’t want to tell you over the phone. How steamin’ are you? How heavy a night was it at your golf club do?’

‘It was okay, but on the quiet side, as these formal events usually are.’ He glanced at his Corona and saw that it remained more than half full. ‘I’m okay; not okay to drive, but every other way.’

‘Can I send a car for you? There’s one in your area.’

‘Seriously?’ Skinner checked his Rolex. ‘At five to two on New Year’s Day?’

‘Seriously. Could Sarah come too?’

He felt a ripple of apprehension. He realised that McGuire was asking for her as a pathologist, not as his partner. ‘Not a chance of that,’ he replied. ‘Get someone else if that’s necessary. Kids,’ he explained. ‘Ignacio’s gone out and Mark’s still too young to be left in charge.’

‘How about Alex?’

‘She’s gone too. Look, Mario, I’ll come if you really think it’s necessary.’

‘Bob, you’d have killed me if I hadn’t called you. I’ll send the car right now.’

He blinked as the call ended, shaking off the last of his drowsiness. Sarah stood. ‘You really have to go out?’ she asked. ‘Is this a set-up? Have you and your chums planned a stag New Year? Or are you being lured into one?’

‘My chums are all too serious for that, plus, if it was a ruse, he wouldn’t have asked for you and your little bag of tools. No, it’s a mystery, and I have a feeling that when I get to where I’m being taken, I’m not going to like it at all.’

Two

The police car pulled into Skinner’s driveway within three minutes of McGuire’s call ending; by that time he had donned a padded, hooded rain garment that he had bought one cold October night in Barcelona, but barely used since. He slid awkwardly into the back seat behind the uniformed PC driver and her companion, an older man with sergeant’s stripes whom he recognised from his time as chief constable in Edinburgh. He cursed himself inwardly for being unable to put a name to him.

‘Been busy?’ he asked, making conversation in the hope of prompting a recollection.

‘No, sir,’ the sergeant replied. Auld, Skinner remembered, with a surge of relief, Bertie Auld, a crazy Rangers supporter even though he had been named after a Celtic legend. ‘It’s no’ like the old days.’ He paused. ‘Well mibbe’s it is in the town. I’m not used tae East Lothian.’

Eyes met in the rearview mirror. ‘Do you know what this is about, Bertie?’

‘No, sir. The DCC never said. He just told us tae pick up Sir Robert and bring him into Edinburgh, toot sweet, blue light if we need to.’

‘Where in Edinburgh?’

‘Haymarket, sir.’

‘Eh? Haymarket what? The station?’

‘No,’ Auld replied. ‘He said they’d meet us at the War Memorial, that was all.’

‘They?’ Skinner repeated.

‘Him and the chief.’

He was taken by surprise. ‘Maggie too! What the hell? Has there been a military coup?’

The car slowed as they entered Aberlady. As always there were cars parked on either side of the road, but only one other moving vehicle, a Nissan Leaf, travelling slowly and making its way carefully through the space. ‘Do you think we should be stopping him, Sarge?’ the young driver asked.

‘We don’t have grounds, PC Gregg,’ Auld told her. ‘He hasn’t hit anyone, he’s taking care not to, and it isn’t an offence to do fifteen miles an hour.’ He had hardly finished speaking when the car clipped the wing mirror of a wide pick-up truck. ‘That, on the other hand . . . Show him some blue, Janice, and pull him over.’

The Nissan pulled into the kerb, past the last of the parked cars, the police vehicle stopping in front. Auld stepped out; the PC made to follow until Skinner intervened. ‘No, wait here, Constable. I’ll go; I know that registration. She’s one of us.’

He moved quickly to join the sergeant who stared in surprise as he moved past him leaning over beside the driver’s window as it opened. ‘Noele,’ he said, ‘are you okay?’

‘Sir? What are . . .’ There was a pause as the woman composed herself. ‘I’m okay, Bob, just a bit shaken up. That fucking pick-up shouldn’t be allowed to have unfolded mirrors that wide.’

‘Agreed, but what the hell are you doing here, and who’s looking after the wee one?’ He paused, turning to Auld. ‘Do you know DS Noele McClair?’ he asked. ‘She works with DCI Pye and DI Haddock on Serious Crimes. Our kids are best mates.’

‘Very good, sir,’ the veteran sergeant said quietly, ‘but has she been drinking? There’s lights on in that house over there and people are lookin’ at us. Bloody social media, ye ken.’

McClair replied for him. ‘I had a glass of Prosecco with my mother at the bells, Sergeant, and I gave myself a breath test before I left the house.’

‘Why did you leave the house, exactly, Noele?’

‘Duty, sir. I had a call from Sauce. He said I’m needed. He did offer to have me picked up, but I said I’d rather be in control of my own movements.’

‘Did he tell you why?’

‘No, just to meet him at Haymarket. I imagine he meant the divisional office at Torphichen Place.’

‘This gets stranger and stranger,’ Skinner murmured. ‘That’s where I’m heading, at the request of the DCC. Noele, don’t worry about getting home, that’ll be taken care of. Park up, come with me and let’s get there as fast as we can.’ He glanced at Auld. ‘Use all the blue lights you’ve got, Bertie.’

Three

The rest of the journey into Edinburgh passed by almost entirely in a silence that was broken only by the chatter of the police transmissions on the patrol car radio. The road traffic was as quiet as Skinner had expected it to be, and the broadcast transmissions were routine, none of them offering any clue to the reason behind the summons to the capital.

As they entered the city, PC Gregg turned left at the Willowbrae traffic lights, then right into Duddingston Village, choosing the road through Holyrood Park, where they saw the first of the revellers, their number growing steadily as they carried on into the Cowgate and beyond through the Grassmarket.

‘We’re coming this way, sir, because Princes Street’s cordoned off for Hogmanay,’ the driver explained. As a mere detective sergeant, McClair seemingly did not merit an explanation.

‘It takes us nicely down to Haymarket,’ she observed, asserting her presence.

Skinner sensed an edginess in her, one that he felt himself. McGuire’s call, and its nature, was unlike any he could recall either receiving or making in his career. His unease grew as they turned out of Grove Street into Morrison Street. It was empty, but for a black Range Rover, beside which stood two people recognisable to everyone in the police car, even out of uniform.

Mario McGuire signalled that they should pull in behind his car. Chief Constable Margaret Rose Steele was by his side.

‘Where’s Sauce?’ McClair wondered aloud, as they came to a halt. ‘I’m supposed to meet him.’

‘Let it play,’ Skinner told her, as he opened the door. The rain had become sleet, and the temperature made him thankful for his choice of overcoat. ‘He’ll be somewhere. Hasn’t it occurred to you that you’re not the only DS on his team? In fact, you live further away from base than any of them, you’re off duty and yet he called you.’

She offered a nervous smile. ‘He’s always saying I’m the best.’ She slid along the back seat and stepped out beside him.

‘Thanks for coming,’ the chief constable said, as she approached them. ‘We didn’t expect you both to arrive together.’

‘But you knew DS McClair was coming?’

‘Yes, she was called in on my instruction.’

‘Even though she’s a single mother like you? There must be a powerful reason for that.’

‘All four of us have got young children,’ she retorted. ‘We should all be with them, but this . . . Well, it overrides that.’

‘Even for me? I’m a civilian, remember.’

‘Neither of you are here because you’re cops,’ McGuire said, beckoning. There was something in his eyes that Skinner could not read, for all the years he had known the man. ‘Come on and we’ll show you what this is about.’

They fell in behind him as he led them a few yards down Morrison Street, pausing as they reached its junction with Torphichen Place, where the West End Police Office was located. As they turned the corner, Skinner tensed. Beside him Noele McClair gasped.

A crime scene tent had been set up at the entrance to the station. It was large, covering the pavement and half the roadway. At its entrance a ginger-haired man was climbing into a disposable tunic.

‘He’s here?’

McGuire nodded. ‘Aye, Bob; for this one, accept no substitutes.’

Arthur Dorward was head of the Scottish Police Authority’s Forensic Services Unit, and he was not a delegator. For major incidents he was usually the first on the scene. He turned as they approached, frowned, then stepped inside the tent.

‘He’s not happy about a Hogmanay call-out either, it seems,’ Skinner murmured.

‘Who would be?’ the chief constable replied. ‘We all need to be suited and booted,’ she continued, accepting a package from a crime scene technician.

Skinner shed his overcoat and donned the sterile garb as quickly as he could, only to find that McClair had a problem. She was wearing a skirt. ‘Sauce never said,’ she protested.

‘That’s okay, Noele,’ McGuire assured her. ‘Nip into the station and change in the ladies.’

‘Mario,’ Skinner barked as she left them, irritation overcoming him. ‘What the fuck is this?’

As he spoke a tall young man emerged from the tent, grim and white-faced. His ears had escaped from his sterile cap. He stopped short when he saw his former chief and continuing mentor, his eyes widening. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is about, Sauce?’

Detective Inspector Harold Haddock’s mouth tightened until it was no more than a slash across his face. He shook his head and looked away, then retraced his steps.

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Skinner growled. He made to follow, until Steele put a hand on his arm.

‘Please, Bob, wait for DS McClair. She’s going to need you, as a friend.’

Scowling, he obeyed her, biding his time until the DS returned, her change of clothing completed, then stepped through the opening into the covered enclosure, with her following behind.

The area was bathed in cold, bright white light. At its centre was a car, a blue estate; a sheet had been plac. . .