Skinner's Round (14 page)

`So there's yet another mystery for you, Inspector. Did someone want the Tale of Aggie Tod's curse to be suppressed?' He stood up. 'Now, Miss Rose, it's close on one. Can I tempt you to lunch?'

Maggie shook her head. 'That's very kind, but another time, perhaps. Right now, I must go back to school!'

Seventeen

There was a light knock at the door.

`Come in, Brian,' called Skinner. 'Is that photocopy ready?' Mackie stepped into the room, slowly. 'Yes, boss, it is. But there's something else. You've got a visitor.'

Skinner frowned in exasperation. 'Can't you deal with it, Brian? I'll need to get moving if I'm to catch M'tebe.'

`Yes, but boss, I really thought you'd want to say hello. It's Mr Doherty of the FBI. He's waiting in Ruth's room.'

`Joe!' Skinner's face lit up. 'Christ, you should have brought him straight in. Joe's a VIP —

Very Important Polisman!' He strode out of his office and round to Ruth McConnell's small room. `Joe, my man! Too long a time. Welcome to Edinburgh!'

He beamed down at the slight figure of the American and shook his hand warmly. Doherty was around five feet nine inches tall, but the slimness of his build made him seem smaller.

Caught between Skinner and his statuesque secretary he seemed almost tiny.

`Well, Bob,' he said, in a Midwestern drawl, 'you know damn well that this far north the cold gets into my poor bones any time after July, but there are some things that would tempt me out of doors. Like even a small chance of making life awkward for the guy you asked me about yesterday.'

`You've got something on him?'

`Goddamn yes!' Doherty's thin, lined, sallow face lit up with pride. He squared the shoulders of his Savile Row suit and stuck out his chin. Ìf it's there, then the World's Finest Law Enforcement Agency'll find it.'

`Hah! Can't be too goddamn hot, if the World's Finest Law Enforcement Agency hasn't succeeded in locking him up for it.'

The smile left Doherty's face abruptly, and he winced. `That's a sad story, Bob. Come and I'll tell you about it.'

ÒK,' said Skinner, `but let's think about this. You booked in anywhere?' He nodded at the overnight bag on the floor between them. Doherty shook his head. 'OK, you are now. My place.'

`Hey Bob, I can't let you do that.'

Àre you kidding? If my wife found that I'd let her fellow American put up in a hotel — even if he is a bloody spook —she'd kill me! Come on.' He led the way back through to his office, and telephoned Sarah. As she answered he could hear Jazz crying in the background. She sounded tired. `Hello love,' he said. `You OK?'

`Yeah, I'm fine. Motherhood gets to be a ball and chain from time to time, that's all.'

Ìn that case . . .' he hesitated ‘. . here's something to lighten your life. D'you fancy having an American house guest this evening?'

Òf course, but who . .

Ìt's a guy named Joe. You'll like him. I'll bring him home now, then I'll have to go out for a while. I'm replacing poor Michael in the pro-am, and my team captain's called a practice session.'

Sarah, a keen golfer, perked up at once. `Yes? That's terrific. Whose team you on?'

`Darren Atkinson's, that's all.'

`Darren? You're playing with him? My God, will Alex be sick when she hears! Darren is our hero. Can Jazz and I come as your cheerleaders?'

He laughed. 'Only if you can guarantee that the wee fella won't howl at the top of Darren's backswing! Look, Joe and I are heading off. We'll be with you soon.

He replaced the phone and picked up his briefcase. Ruth and Doherty were standing just inside the door. `Ruthie, I'll be in tomorrow morning by eight-thirty, until around midday, and I should be contactable after that. Thursday and Friday I'll keep in touch.'

Ruth's grin was slightly lopsided, Brian Mackie called it her `Kim Basinger look'. 'Sir, as you said, you need to practise delegation. Enjoy yourself: you'll be fulfilling a million golfers'

dreams.'

Skinner nodded, suddenly solemn. 'Sure. But I'll always be remembering that I've stepped into a dead man's golf shoes. Come on, Joe.'

He led the way downstairs and out of the building to where his white BMW was parked in its designated space. Doherty placed his overnight bag on the back seat and climbed in, holding a document case on his lap.

Rather than take the shortest route out of town, Skinner turned right as he exited from the headquarters building. 'Let's take a look at my old town, Joe.' The day was overcast but dry as he headed along towards Stockbridge, past Raeburn Place, where the recently re-erected rugby posts signified the coming of autumn, then climbed the hill towards the hogsback centre of the New Town. Turning into Charlotte Square he pointed along George Street towards St Andrew Square, a straight kilometre away. 'They call this part of town "The Dumbbell" because of its shape. Not so long ago, there were billions of pounds managed here. Insurance companies, banks and fund managers used to litter this area. Now most of them have moved out to new buildings, still in and around the city, but state-of-the-art, to let them count even more money. That's what we do now. We don't make things any more. We don't make steel, we don't dig coal, we don't build ships. We just count money, and serve teas to tourists. Oh sorry, I should have remembered. We make beer. We're very good at making beer.' He turned down Castle Street and left into Princes Street, resplendent in its Festival colours.

Ì love this place, all year round, but there are times when I worry about where it's going. I mean look at this.' He waved his right hand in the air as he drove past the Royal Scottish Academy. 'All the flags, all the Festival handbills littering the street and fly-posted on empty shop windows: sometimes I think that Edinburgh's become just another bloody theme park, built around history and the Arts, rather than around cartoon characters.'

Doherty laughed at his friend's cynicism. 'OK, Bob, but so what? Theme parks make money; they give people work. Your city probably earns more foreign currency now than it did when it was building ships. And is there more crime now, or less?'

Skinner scowled sideways as he turned right, heading across the North Bridge and into the Old Town. Òkay, our crime figures are down, but that's because of my people's good work.'

Òr because the nature of crime is changing,' Doherty interrupted. `Remember the old saw that you can steal more with a fountain pen than with a gun? Well, you can steal even more with a computer, or with financial products where the company takes so much out in management fees that the poor suckers who buy them would be far better just putting their dough in the bank.

Skinner shook his head. Not here you can't. Our money men are unimpeachable, and even if they weren't, this place is so much of a village that if anyone was up to naughties, word would get out soon enough.

Àh, don't listen to me. I know that Edinburgh is one of the great cities in the world. It's just that I grew up in an industrial society, where men made tangible things. That's where my core values lie, in every way. The twenty-first-century version isn't a natural state of affairs for me. As I said to another friend yesterday, I'm Seventies Man — and I guess I always will be.'

Suddenly he laughed. 'In fact, if you asked my daughter, she'd tell you I'm set further back than that. She'd say that I'm in the same mould as the old bigot who lived in there!' He jerked his left thumb sideways. Doherty followed its direction and saw that they were cruising past the house of John Knox, Scotland's Reformation firebrand.

Skinner drove in silence for a while, down the narrowest part of the Royal Mile, towards the Palace of Holyroodhouse. He skirted the grey stone residence and cruised through Holyrood Park, round the crumbling Salisbury Crags and the Radical Road, past the reed-encircled Dunsapie Loch and out through Duddingston Village. As they picked up the eastward route once more, Skinner nodded down towards Doherty's document case.

`What's the big secret, then, Joe? What've you got on Morton that the Florida people don't know about?'

Doherty's drawl broadened. 'Why nothin' at all, pardner.

They know all about Morton. They just choose to ignore it. You figure out why.'

He unzipped the document case and took out a manilla folder. 'This here's a summary of the FBI file on Mike Morton, CEO of Sports Stars Corporation. First thing it tells us that his real name is Luigi Morticelli. Mike Morton came into existence at Yale Law School. I guess he figured that an Italian surname could hamper his career opportunities. That's one explanation.

The other is that his father, Guiseppe Morticelli, is rumoured to be connected.'

`Rumoured,' said Skinner. 'Is that all?'

`Yeah. He's a very slippery customer. Officially, he owns a light engineering company, but once or twice his name's been mentioned by informants as being a man of influence . . . very great influence.

`Luigi graduated from High School in his own name but when he went to college it was as Mike Morton. He practised law for a while, with a corporate firm on Wall Street. They had great plans for him, but in his late twenties, he left and went to Florida to set up SSC. Within three years it was the top sports management company in the US. Within ten years it was the most influential promoter in world sports, and Mike Morton was the number one man.'

Skinner smiled. 'How'd it get so big so fast?'

‘Gtood question. That's why we took an interest in him in the first place. SSC seemed to attract top-name clients from the off. Morton targeted baseball first. Within a year he had signed up virtually all the top names. In most cases he didn't have too much difficulty. He was promising the earth, and in those days damn few of these guys had representation. When he did run into problems, they always seemed to have lucky solutions. One guy wanted too much money: he was busted for drug-dealing. One of the top pitchers refused him point blank. He had an accident at home, involving his pitching hand and his waste disposal. After that one, baseball was sewn up and SSC moved on to other sports.

`When it came to golf Morton's tactic was to leave the big names alone, and to concentrate on buying up the young guys as they came out of college. He just threw money at them and pretty soon all of the new generation were SSC clients.

`That gave him his chance to develop into golf promotion. He had so many guys signed up that he could stage his own events. It got so that if you wanted to make real money in golf you had to go with Morton. Non-Americans began to find that too. If they wanted to play the big-money invitation events in the US, they had to give SSC American management rights.

By the end of the seventies, Morton/Morticelli had international golf by the balls, you might say.'

Doherty grinned at Skinner as they swept on to the Al. Èventually SSC began to look for investments in sports-related enterprises all over the world. It had plenty of opportunities.

Along the way, one or two people said "no". There was an automobile accident. Another guy came home to find his wife dead. After that, everybody just seemed to say "yes".'

Èxcept for Michael White and the Marquis of Kinture,' said Skinner, quietly.

`Yeah, interesting, isn't it? And it gets better. Because now, SSC isn't the only game in town any more.'

`You mean Greenfields? You got something on them too?'

`Sure have.' Doherty nodded, and took a second folder from his case. 'There was something of a power shift in world golf in the first half of the eighties. The Yanks stopped producing superstars, and the non-Americans sort of got their shit together. All of a sudden the US

stopped winning the majors. At the same time, the Japanese started to pile serious money into Pacific and Australasian golf, and they had the sort of dough that could overcome even SSC's resources.

`Bill Masur and Greenfields rode in on that magic carpet. They began to sign up all the top Japanese, the way SSC had done ten years before with the American college kids. Pretty soon there were rival Pacific invitation events, to attract the top Southern Hemisphere players, and the Europeans.

`They made ground in boxing too. They set up a new organisation, with their own champions, and again, the Japanese money talked. SSC started to lose out on the biggest TV deals.'

Ìnteresting,' said Skinner. 'So how is it now?'

`There seems to be a sort of truce in operation. SSC still dominates American golf, and baseball, of course. Greenfields runs Australia and the Far East. Europe is neutral territory.

Your event this week's a good example. The guys who own the course couldn't run it themselves, so they did the sensible thing. They hired SSC as promoters and managers, and they found the sponsor through Masur's Far East contacts.'

`What about Darren Atkinson's new organisation?'

`The big boys don't seem to mind it, for now. As long as he sticks to Europe, and doesn't try to muscle in on their territories, SSC and Greenfields will leave him alone, so my people reckon. They wondered if Masur might have been pissed when the young South African kid signed up with Atkinson, but so far there's no sign of it.'

I wonder,' said Skinner. He told Doherty of the mysterious kidnapping of M'tebe senior.

`That's interesting. If there's anything behind that, Darren could be in line for some burned fingers.'

`Let's hope not. He seems like a good guy.' He paused, slowing as he approached the Meadowmill junction.

`There's one thing I don't understand about your scenario, Joe. If Mike Morton's a son of the Mob, how come Masur was able to muscle in on him?'

Doherty's grin was infectious. 'The Mafia ain't the only outfit, my friend. I take it you've heard of the Yakuza!'

`Jesus Christ, you mean they're Masur's insurance policy?'

‘Yup.'

Skinner turned the car on to the North Berwick road and accelerated. 'You're telling me that I'm teeing up this week, in my own home county, alongside two bloody gangsters!'

`You might be taking an extreme view of the situation, my friend, but no one could really fault you for it. That's why I thought I'd better tell you about it in person.'