Skinner's Rules (11 page)

‘Mr Harcourt. Advocate,’
the brass name-plate announced. However its portent of aloofness was not borne out by the man who answered the door to Skinner and Cowan, and who invited them into a book-lined drawing-room.

George Harcourt was a slightly rumpled Glaswegian, with a round head, set on a stocky frame. He had a voice which seemed to echo from the depths of a well, and which in court had the effect from the outset of his trials, of convincing juries that they were there on serious business.

Skinner had encountered him twice professionally; on the first occasion Harcourt had been acting for the defence, and on the second he had been prosecuting. He had been impressed by the man, in each role. A judge in the making, he had decided.

Harcourt poured each a Macallan, and offered them seats in red leather Chesterfield chairs.

Skinner took a sip from his glass. ‘George, I’m going to ask you to look at a picture.’ He drew Yobatu’s photograph from its brown envelope and handed it to his host.

Harcourt looked at it and gave a start which in other circumstances would have seemed theatrical. Skinner did not doubt its sincerity for a moment. The stocky advocate looked towards Cowan.

‘That’s the guy, Peter. That’s the guy I was telling you about. I’d know that face anywhere. That’s the guy who sat through the McCann trial, staring at Rachel. If she’d asked me, I’d have had the judge throw him out. As it was, she never said a word, but I could tell that she was aware of him, and that she was rattled. And no wonder. Look at those eyes!’

When Skinner returned to his office, at just after 9.00 p.m., he found in his in-tray another telex from Strathclyde CID. It was marked, ‘Urgent. FAO DCS.’

He picked it up, switched on his desk lamp and read quickly.

The report told him that at that moment, John Ho, one of the two accused in the Yobatu trial, was safely locked away in Peterhead Prison. While Mike Mortimer’s excellent advocacy had seen him acquitted of the rape and murder charges, it had been unfortunate for Ho that when he was arrested following Shirai’s murder, the police had found, hidden in his apartment, heroin with an estimated street value of £100,000.

The case had been tried a week after his acquittal of the murder. Ho, represented by a different advocate, since Mortimer’s clerk had arranged, skilfully, for him to be elsewhere, had pleaded guilty. The judge had sentenced him to twelve years.

Shun Lee too was out of circulation: permanently.

In October, ten weeks after the murder acquittal, he had been found hacked to death outside his home in Garnethill. The killing was brutal, and fitted the pattern of a Triad assassination.

Shun Lee’s murder was still unsolved, but an informant in the Chinese community had suggested to Strathclyde CID that he and John Ho had stolen the drugs found at Ho’s flat, to sell for their own profit. According to the story, which Strathclyde believed to have the ring of truth, the Triad gangsters who had owned the heroin had been mightily put out. Shun Lee had been killed by a ritual execution squad recruited from London. It was said that a bounty of ten thousand pounds had been offered on the prison grapevine to anyone who would assassinate Ho in jail.

While there was no hard evidence to back up the informant’s Triad story, it had been taken sufficiently seriously for John Ho to have been removed from the main prison and placed in solitary for his own safety.

Skinner buzzed the outer office. To his surprise, Mackie answered.

‘Brian? I thought you’d gone home.’

‘Not me, boss. Just nipped out for a fish supper. We’re on stake-out tonight again, remember.’

‘Could I forget? Look, since you’re here, would you try to get hold of Willie Haggerty for me. He’s the investigating officer in the Shun Lee killing.’

‘What’s that, boss?’

‘Those two Chinese lads I asked you to check on - seems that one of them went to join his ancestors a wee while back; courtesy of the Triads, so they say. The other’s in solitary in Peterhead, in case he’s next on the list.

‘I’ve read the report; now I’d like to hear the story from Haggerty.’

Five minutes later he was back on the line. ‘I’ve got Detective Superintendent Haggerty now boss. He’s off duty, but I told them it was urgent.’

‘Thanks, Brian.’ The line clicked. ‘Willie? Bob Skinner. How are you? It’s been a year or two. Superintendent now, eh.’ Skinner and Haggerty had worked together in the past, on an inter-force investigation of a country-wide stolen car racket.

‘Aye, it’s going well for me, Mr Skinner. I see you’re having a busy time though. Is that what this call’s about?’

‘Could be, Willie, it just could be. But it all depends on the strength of your Triad information in the Shun Lee business. Is it cast-iron?’

There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘If you want the official answer, it’s yes; our information is believed to be accurate. If you want the Willie Haggerty view, it’s a wee bit on the iffy side. Ever since that film - what was it called -
Year of the Dragon,
Triad gangs have been flavour of the month. A Chinese cook gets drunk and chops off a finger, and the gossip machine has it worked up to a Triad punishment.

‘Okay. They do exist. There was an execution - if that’s the word for it - a couple of years back, but most of the talk’s just bullshit.

‘Now my informant on the Shun Lee job - no names no pack drill, but he’s a restaurant owner with a real Triad phobia - he hears about Ho gettin’ caught with all that smack, then he heard about Shun Lee gettin’ done not long after he was back on the street from his murder trial, and he comes to me with the word that the two of them were in the drugs thing together and that the hard men put them on a hit list.

‘Maybe he’s telling the truth, but there’s another possibility, and one that I fancy, that Ho wasn’t a wide-eyed innocent who took a chance and nicked some smack, but that he was part of a drugs operation all along, one that our Squad didn’t know anything about. As for Shun Lee, well he was just a horny wee waiter!

‘Those boys worked together, right. Well they didn’t live the same way. Shun Lee stayed in a pit in Garnethill. John Ho was nicked in a nice wee flat in the Merchant City. The tips must have been good for him to afford that.

‘Another thing. Shun Lee drove a clapped-out Mini van. John Ho drove one of those big Nissan shaggin’ wagons. If Shun Lee was into drug money he must have been sending all of the profits home to feed his starving brothers and sisters.’

‘Any chance of that?’ Skinner asked.

‘Not much. He was born in Drumchapel, and there’s no’ too many signs up there of a rich benefactor sending pound notes home to the poor folk!’

Skinner laughed. ‘So your informant’s tale, that Shun Lee was belted because he and Ho stole some candy from the big boys, is thrown into doubt because Ho could have been one of the big boys himself, and had the stuff on him as a matter of business.’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Has Ho said anything?’

‘Not a dicky bird, and he won’t. It’s quite a cushy life being banged up in solitary in Peterhead, compared with the rest of the place. Especially when you’re Chinese. There’s some nasty racist people up there, and one or two who might just take a fancy to a nice wee yellow boy.

‘What it comes down to is this. If the Haggerty notion is right, and Shun Lee wasn’t into Ho’s smack, then he was done for some other reason. But the Triads could still be the bookies’ favourites, because there were imilarities between Shun Lee’s murder and the few Triad hits that are on record. Several people involved, and several weapons used.’

‘You’ve no fingerprints, no footprints? No forensic leads?’

‘Next to nothing. We’ve got a machete that was left stuck in the guy’s collarbone. Other wounds include two different-shaped axe cuts, and knife punctures. Oh ay, and they cut his balls off.’

Skinner felt his scrotum tighten at the thought. ‘Were they left at the scene?’

‘No, they’ll be in someone’s trophy case somewhere. That happens in Triad hits, by the way. So what about it, Mr Skinner? Does that help?’

‘It’s possible. I’ve got to think this one through. Did you hear about that advocate going under the train in Queen Street?’

‘The suicide? Aye.’

‘She defended Shun Lee in his murder trial. Ho’s advocate, Mortimer he was the first one killed through here.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Look, Willie, not a word about this for now. I’ll pursue my lead through here, and obviously if I get anything that has any bearing on your enquiries, I’ll be in touch. Sit tight till you hear from me.’

‘No, Brian, we will not scale down the Royal Mile patrols, even though the Queen has gone. It’s what, only ten days since the last murders, it’s Friday night, and we don’t have an arrest yet.’ Mackie could see that his boss was adamant, and dropped the subject.

‘But I am having a couple of nights off. Your arm’s fine now. You can take charge on the streets.’

‘With respect, sir, I’m only a detective sergeant, and this is a big operation.’

Skinner smiled. He picked up a sealed white envelope from his desk and handed it to Mackie.

‘With respect, Brian, as of this moment you are promoted to Detective Inspector. That letter confirms it. Now I’m off to think about tackling Toshio Yobatu.’

It was 7.30 p.m. When he arrived at Stockbridge, Sarah was waiting for him, dressed casually, as usual. She was barefoot; a big, bright, loosely buttoned shirt hung down to her knees. She opened the door, grabbed him by the lapels, pulled him inside, and kissed him. ‘Here,’ said Skinner, gasping, ‘does everyone who rings your doorbell get this treatment?’

‘Only policemen and insurance salesmen.’

‘Milkmen too low-caste for you, are they?’ They kissed again, longer this time. Her body moulded with his; he felt himself stir as she rubbed her belly against him. ‘Hey!’ he murmured in weak protest. ‘I told Andy to get there for about 8.30.’

‘Alex’ll be home by now. She’ll look after him if we’re late.’

Sarah looked at him, her hazel eyes filled with what he recognised by now as her bedroom look.

‘You’ve had a hard week, Chief Superintendent. I can feel the tension in you. And that’s not good for a man of your years. Lucky for you that Doctor Sarah is on hand with her amazing device for the relief of stress.’ She stepped back from him and wriggled her shoulders. The loosely-buttoned shirt slipped from her shoulders, and floated gently down to settle at her feet.

‘So this is what they mean by being under the doctor!’ Skinner murmured softly in Sarah’s ear. She lay on him, stretching down his lean body, her legs wrapped around his. As she moved against him she was still smiling, but the look in her eyes had changed from anticipation to satisfaction.

‘You know,’ she whispered, ‘there is absolutely no medical justification for the notion that men are sexually over the hill once they leave forty behind. And you are living proof of the opposite.’

‘This isn’t something that hard-bitten detectives are supposed to say.’ She bit his shoulder, gently. ‘ - Ouch! - but I love you, Doctor!’

‘That’s as well, my man, because I couldn’t live any more without your taste in music.’

On Sarah’s CD player, Joe Cocker, set on repeat programme, sang ‘We are the One’, for the eighth, or it could have been the eleventh, time. The choice had been Bob’s from a disc he had bought for her. One of the things that Sarah had discovered about her policeman lover was his remarkable talent for creating a mood.

Later, just after 9.00 p.m., as they drove down to Gullane, Bob slipped a cassette of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony into the tapedeck. ‘Just to remind you where you are,’ he said.

They drove mostly in silence; Sarah was almost asleep by the time they reached their destination, lulled by the richness of the music.

They were smiling and completely relaxed when they arrived at the cottage.

‘And where the hell have you been?’ said Alex, rising to her feet as the living room door opened. Then she looked at the pair, Bob’s arm round Sarah’s shoulder. ‘On second thoughts, don’t answer that. There are certain things a father should not discuss with his daughter.’

Andy Martin sat stiffly on, rather than in, a big recliner armchair, managing somehow to make it look uncomfortable.

‘Sorry we’re late, Andy,’ Bob volunteered, still smiling. ‘Traffic was murder tonight!

‘Let’s go. The chef will be getting anxious.’

Alex drove Bob’s car on the ten-mile journey from Gullane to Haddington. They had reserved a table in a riverside restaurant. The proprietor wore a relieved smile as they entered.

‘Sorry, Jim,’ said Bob. ‘This lot kept me back!’

The meal was superb. King scallop chowder was followed by three fillet steaks, with Alex opting for baked sea-trout. As Bob finished off the second bottle of Cousino Macul, Sarah was happy to note that the unwinding process was almost complete.

They talked of music and movies, or rugby and royalty, the light, amusing conversation of a close group on an evening out.

Just before midnight, Alex, who had restricted herself to mineral water, pulled the Granada to a halt outside the friendly, family-owned hotel in Gullane which Bob had adopted years before as his local pub. It was one of his special places, and one in which Sarah felt completely at ease.

They settled into a table in the broad bay window.

At the restaurant, Andy had insisted on paying for the meal. ‘This is my celebration,’ he had declared. In the bar, Bob countered, astonishing Mac, the laid-back barman, by ordering champagne.

‘Christ, Bob, is it your birthday or something?’

‘No, you bugger, at the prices you charge, it’s yours!’

An hour later, with the car secured in the hotel park, the foursome walked home under a clear crisp winter sky. In the cottage, as Alex made up the bed in the guest room, Bob poured three glasses of Cockburn’s Special Reserve port. As Andy accepted his nightcap, he looked hard at his host.