Skinner's Round (23 page)

`What! Had he fallen in? Was he drunk? Had he decided to go swimming.?'

`No,

Maybe you don't understand me. He was dead.'

Òh my God!'

Skinner thought that the man was whispering, until he realised that he had taken the phone from his mouth. When Highfield spoke again, his voice was tremulous. `What happened?'

Àll I know so far is that he was found in the loch, beside the eighteenth fairway.' He decided not to go into detail. 'My people are there now, and so's my wife. She's a police surgeon. I'll head down there myself, as soon as she gets back here.'

`What do you want me to do about the tournament?'

That's what I wanted to discuss. When does the first team play off?'

`We're scheduled to start at nine-thirty a.m., gates open at eight forty-five.'

ÒK. My first instinct was to seal the site, and call the thing off. If I thought that the public would be at risk, that's exactly what I would do. But these murders are very specific, and I have to assume that they're connected in some way. Instinct ells me that the best chance I have of catching the killer is to let the thing go on, and keep everyone here.

Ì could simply call off today's play, but with thousands of eople heading for the course, and some of them probably underway already, I don't want to do that if I can avoid it. My technical people will be there by now. They'll do what they have to do there as quickly as possible, and we'll move the body soon as the photographers are finished. I'd like to keep the immediate area sealed off until we've given it a thorough sweep. Once we've done that I'll feel able to reopen the course.

Can you postpone the start until ten-fifteen and keep the punters out till nine-thirty?'

Ànything you ask, Mr Skinner, we'll do. We've got a commercial firm handling the admissions. I'll call them and let them know.'

`No, leave that for the moment. I want you to keep this to yourself for now. I'll be along at Bracklands by eight o'clock. That'll give you time to alert your people at the course.

Meantime, I'd rather no one else knew about this till I get there.'

Òf course,' said Highfield. 'I shall stay in my room. I can hardly cope with this, you know.

Good God, you saw Masur last night, so full of himself. Why on earth would he want to do something like this?'

Skinner smiled grimly. 'See you later, then.'

He ended the call, then dialled Andy Martin's mobile number, which he still knew by heart.

Àndy, 's'me. Where are you?'

`Down by the loch with Sarah. She's just finished. She says that it's Masur all right. She thinks that he was cracked on the head, then dunked in the pond. He's been in there long enough for the fishes to have had a few nibbles.'

A shiver of sudden excitement ran through Skinner as he remembered Mike Morton's Italian imprecation, a day and a half earlier.

The crime scene people are here, plus Alison and Neil’

‘Good. I'll be down as soon as Sarah gets back. How many uniforms have you got with you?'

`Boyd and young Pye are here, and there are three more up at the clubhouse.

ÒK. Use as many people as you can to do a fast sweep of the area around the stool, looking for anything at all. Hankies, footprints, blunt instruments . . . oh yes, and fag-ends. You never can tell.'

He paused. 'Once that's under way, I want you to head up to Bracklands. See the Marquis and tell him — and him alone - what's happened. And take Mcllhenney with you. I don't want anyone leaving there for the moment. I'll join you there as soon as I can.

`With a wee bit of luck, when the house guests come down to breakfast you and I'll be there to give them all a nasty surprise ... except that for one of them, I don't think it'll be a surprise at all!'

Thirty-five

His wellies were less trendy than his wife's. They were the old-fashioned, wide-topped, black sort, and they had lain in the dark recesses of successive car boots for over ten years. The dried mud of countless crime scenes packed the ridges of their soles, and another layer was being added as Skinner crouched to look into the grey, mottled, dead face of Bill Masur.

The body still sat in the chair, crumpled and shapeless. The right eye was slightly open. There was no sparkle there, no light, no life. The weight of the head was pressing the jaw into the chest, and the fleshy bottom lip stuck out grotesquely.

Òld Japanese proverb,' said Skinner, softly, conversationally. ' "He who play in heavy traffic sometimes get run over." I don't think your Yakuza pals are going to know what to make of this at all. I just hope that if they decide to do some getting even, they do it well away from here.'

He pushed himself to his feet. With a squelch, he backed away, then climbed up the slope to where Alison Higgins and Mario McGuire were standing on firmer ground.

'A right nasty bastard, was Mr Masur,' he said. 'I thought he might have had something coming to him. Didn't think it'd arrive so fast, though. Have the photographers finished?'

`Yes, sir,' said Higgins, 'and the technicians say they can't do any more here either. They've taken samples from the rope that ties this thing down. Now they're looking for footprints around the bollard to which it's attached. They think they've found the exact point where Masur was loaded into the chair.

‘D'you see how it was done?' She took several steps past the pillar of the stool, which rose from the ground beside the steepest point of the bank to an area where the flatter ground widened out. She grabbed the rope which hung from the end of the long wooden boom which carried the chair. It was at least ten feet above her head. 'When there's nothing in the stool this can be moved about, no bother, and can be swung over there.' She pointed to an area behind Skinner and McGuire where a square had been sectioned off with Day-Glo tape. 'That's where it happened, sir. There's an indentation in the ground that seems to match the base of the chair, and we assume that it was made when Masur was tied into it.' She took a few steps to her right, to where a small, mushroom-shaped metal bollard was fixed securely into the ground. It was roped off also. 'Once the chair was loaded, it was raised up, swung round and dropped in over there. You can tell how deep the chair went by looking at the water mark on the boom. There's mud on it, and on Masur's legs, so it must have been sitting right on the bottom.'

Skinner walked across towards the Superintendent, his eye following her pointing arm to the surface of the loch. 'Could one man have done it all, I wonder?' He strode across to the end of the boom and took hold of the rope with both hands. Winding it around his wrists for added purchase, he tugged downwards.

On the other end of the boom, the chair and Masur's dead Weight rose, dripping, into the air, with surprising ease. 'No problem. The length of the lever makes it relatively simple, if you've got the basic strength to get the bugger off the deck! Holding the body aloft, he stepped to his left, to the very edge of the bank, and lowered it, gently, on to flatter, drier ground, just beside the sectioned area. He unwound the rope from his wrists, and brushed the hemp strands from the sleeves of his jacket, then walked back, ducklike in his flapping wellingtons, to rejoin Higgins and McGuire.

`You can have the body removed now. PDQ in fact, just in case there are any long-range cameras on the scene already. Make sure the ambulance doesn't go out past the clubhouse, but along the buggy track and out through the Bracklands Estate road.

`Complete the sweep of the ground as fast as you can, then tape off the spot where the body was landed, and clear everyone out of here; by nine-thirty if you can manage it.'

McGuire looked at Skinner in surprise. 'Is the tournament going ahead, boss?'

Ì don't see why it shouldn't, unless I have to arrest all the players! The body'll be out of the way, and the public can't contaminate the site. Deacon Weekes's team will be one short, but I'm sure he'll manage.

ÒK, you two attend to all that stuff. I'm off to join Andy for a working breakfast at Bracklands!'

Thirty-six

Bracklands was a truly great house, a palace of yellow stone. It stood in the centre of a vast oval paddock, enclosed by a surround of high trees, planted over the centuries to shield its masters' eyes from the privations of their tenants, and to hide from theirs, in turn, the splendour which their toil helped to sustain.

`So what's new?' Skinner said aloud, as he steered Sarah's Frontera through the break in the trees and up the long drive which led to the Kintures' ancestral seat. 'The tenant farmers still pay him rent, and the Webbs, the Watts and the Hays still cut his grass, and mend his fences and fix his burst pipes. The difference is that now he has an international share portfolio, and that through it he'll own parts of companies whose wealth is founded on subsistence level wages in Third World countries:

Yet even as the thought spoke itself, he pondered on his own inherited comfort, his investment and his pension provision. The really big difference, though, is that today, so does a guy like you!'

A silver car stood on the red gravel concourse which lay between Bracklands and its lawn.

Two men leaned against it and from afar, he recognised them. He drew the Frontera up parallel to the new Mondeo, a few yards away, and stepped out.

He took the few paces to close the space between himself and Andy Martin, both literal and symbolic, with a smile spreading across his face and his hand stretched out in greeting.

Martin pushed himself off the Mondeo's rounded side and came to meet him halfway.

Normally, Skinner would have avoided such an obvious punch as it looped towards him.

Instead he stood his ground, motionless, as the fist smacked into his chin. He rocked back on his heels, but stayed on his feet . . . and the smile never left his face. Neil Mcllhenney started forward in confusion, until Martin, breathing slightly heavily, grasped the still-outstretched hand, and shook it.

Skinner nodded slightly, and the smile became a grin of delight. Martin looked at him and laughed. It was as if the fist had punched through the last barrier between them. They stood there, neither finding a word to say, just two old friends reunited after a long separation.

Eventually, Skinner released his handshake, and turned towards Mcllhenney. 'So there you are, Neil. Now you know about the family quarrel, and now you know it's over. You're family too, you and Brian, and Maggie and McGuire. The whole team's back together again, so the bad people can look out.'

He slapped his hands together. 'Right, gentlemen. What have we got inside?'

Ì did as you asked, boss,' said Martin. 'I told the Marquis, but no one else. He says that they're serving breakfast in the dining room from seven-forty-five this morning, and that all the house guests should be up by then.'

Skinner glanced at his watch. The time was 7.46 a.m. `Come on then,' he said, 'let's see if anyone doesn't choke on his corn flakes when we give them the news.'

The three strode towards the vast house and up the wide stone steps which led to its doorway.

Light shone through the morning gloom from several of the upper windows and all along the ground floor to the right of the entrance. Martin pointed in that direction. The Marquis's suite is along at the far end. It's been wheelchair-adapted. That's where I saw him. I don't know where Lady Kinture sleeps, but that was certainly not a woman's bedroom. Plenty of Paco Rabanne, but no Rive Gauche.'

The simple plastic bell-push was something of an anticlimax, but the echoing sound of its chime was impressive. The door was answered after a minute by a small middle-aged man in a dark suit. 'Hello again, Mr Burton,' said Martin to the butler. 'We are expected back. This is Assistant Chief Constable Skinner.'

`Yes, sir. The Marquis told me to show you to the dining room, and to serve you with breakfast. Please follow me.' He ushered them into the house, and into a wide entrance hall. It was floored in yellowish marble and a stairway of the same stone, its crimson carpet held in place by heavy brass runners, seemed to flow upwards out of its centre. Ancestral portraits lined its walls, and tall double mahogany doors led off in several directions. The policemen followed Mr Burton through the first doorway on the right, and down a corridor. Twenty paces on, he stopped and opened another set of double doors, then stood aside to allow the three policemen to enter the dining room.

Twelve people sat around the long dining table. 'Morning Skinner,' boomed the Marquis from his place at its head. 'So glad you and your chums could join us for breakfast.' The ACC saw a gleam in his eye; he was enjoying the grim game.

At his shout, ten heads swivelled round in surprise to stare at the trio framed in the doorway.

Arthur Highfield looked tense and nervous.

The butler showed Skinner to a chair at the end of the table directly opposite Kinture, seating Martin on his right, Mcllhenney on his left. Around them three maids bustled, serving breakfast to the party. 'Thank you, sir,' said Skinner, taking his place. 'Let's see, is everyone here?' He looked around the table, from left to right and from place to place. `Mr Gregory.

Nakamura-San. Mr Weekes. Mr Wyman. Mr Morton. Mr Highfield. Lord Kinture. Lady Kinture. Mr Atkinson. Mr M'tebe. Mr Urquhart. Senor Cortes. Yes, that seems to be everyone.' A maid placed a huge platter before him, piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding and mushrooms. Kylie, his baby-sitter of the previous evening, filled his cup with thick black coffee.

`What about Mr Masur?' said Susan Kinture, a puzzle-line creasing her forehead.

Ì hadn't forgotten him, Sue. He's been detained elsewhere. We've just left him in fact.' He stared down the table towards the Marquis, who was biting his lip with some vigour.

Darren Atkinson leaned forward and looked along. 'What's that, Bob? Detained? Are you saying that Masur killed Michael White?'

Skinner shrugged his shoulders. 'Whether he did or not, Darren, makes no odds now. I didn't say that
we'd
detained Mr Masur. No, he's been kept from his breakfast on account of being dead.'

Susan Kinture gave a small shriek. 'You're kidding,' said Atkinson. Highfield went even whiter. Gregory, Weekes, Wyman, M'tebe, Urquhart and Cortes all stared at him in blank astonishment. Tiger Nakamura looked simply bewildered. Skinner could not see Mike Morton at all. He had shrunk back into his seat.