Skinner's Round (30 page)

`Darren, does he have any medical condition that you know of?'

The golfer shook his head. Not one that he's ever mentioned. It looks like he's having a fit, doesn't it?' He knelt beside Skinner, concern mingling with shock. 'Hold on Brav, old son.

We'll get help.'

Skinner looked around towards the crowd. 'I need a doctor,' he called. In swift response a short man in a long raincoat ducked under the rope barrier and bustled across the fairway. He turned to Sue Kinture. 'Susan, in my bag you'll find a telephone.' She unzipped the side pocket of his golfbag and, finding his flip-phone, brought it across. He switched it on, dialled in the unlocking code, impatiently, then pushed a short-coded number.

Àndy, this is Bob. Where are you?'

Ì'm in the command centre, boss. The television's on so I know what the problem is. There's an ambulance on the way.' `Could you see what happened, exactly?'

`Yes, the camera was on him at the time. He put down the bag then he just crumpled up.

What is it?'

`Don't know.' He looked at the little doctor, who had joined them and was bent peering into Bravo's unfocused, panicking eyes. 'Doctor?' he asked, kneeling beside him.

`Could be an epileptic attack, or some other sort of cerebral incident, even stroke or haemorrhage. We'll need to get him out of here, quick.'

Ìt's all right,' said Skinner. 'The paramedics are on their way.'

He spoke into the telephone again. 'Andy, tell Highfield to suspend play for the moment.' He turned to Atkinson. 'Darren, do you want to call it off?' Suddenly he felt his sleeve being gripped, tightly, as he crouched. He looked down. Bravo was staring at him, his eyes still wild and his brow knitted tightly. `No!' he whispered insistently. 'Don't, boss. Be OK! Drink.

Tasted funny.'

Skinner looked across the grass. The plastic soft drink bottle lay beside the fallen clubs.

'Doctor,' he said, 'could this be poisoning?'

Ìt could,' said the little balding man, 'though I'm no expert. Equally, a cerebral incident could affect the sense of taste.' `Still, just in case.'

The ambulance swung on to the fairway as Skinner stood up, telephone still in hand. 'Andy, where are Neil and Mario?'

`McIlhenney's watching Morton. McGuire's about on the course, just keeping his eyes open.'

`Right, find McGuire and get him here on the double. And get the nearest uniform over here to collect a drinks bottle from me. I want it off to the lab for testing pretty damn quick. But even before you do that, there's something else. Do it very quietly, but very quickly. I want you to shut down every one of the drinks dispensing points around the course, and make sure that all of the stock stays where it is.'

‘Yes, boss. I'll attend to all of that. Meantime you just hang on there.'

`Got nowhere else to go, Andy.'

Skinner ended the call, and, as the paramedics prepared to lift Bravo on to a metal-framed stretcher, walked across to Atkinson's fallen clubs. Carefully, with his gloved left hand, he picked up the bottle. He looked around, and saw PC Pye running towards him, his uniform raincoat flapping.

`Well done, son, you got here fast.' He held out the bottle. `Right, I want you to take this to Superintendent Martin at the command centre. Touch it as little as you can, and hold it inside your coat so it doesn't get any wetter than it is already.' PC Pye took the container from him, gingerly. 'Right, Constable, on your way.' The young man turned and bustled away, with his left shoulder hunched oddly as his coat shielded the bottle.

Skinner took the few steps back across to the ambulance, as Bravo was being loaded inside.

Atkinson walked beside the stretcher, his face lined with concern, squeezing his friend's hand. 'Sure you don't want me to come, Brav?' he asked quietly.

`No . . . bloody . . . way,' hissed the caddy, with as much vehemence as he could muster. The paramedics lifted the stretcher into the ambulance, and the little doctor climbed in behind them.

`Where'll you go, Doc?' called Skinner. ‘Haddington?'

`That'll be our first stop, yes,' said the little man from inside the ambulance, as its driver jumped out.

`Good. I guess he'll have his stomach pumped as soon as you get there. When that happens, don't let them throw anything away!' The doctor's face was screwed up with distaste as he closed the door.

As the ambulance headed back up the fairway towards the clubhouse Skinner turned to Atkinson. 'Do you feel OK, Darren?'

`Shocked, but otherwise, yes. Why?'

`You had one of those drinks, hadn't you?' Atkinson nodded. Ì finished it back on the tee, and threw the empty in the bin. But you had one too, hadn't you?'

"S’right, and I feel OK. But I was given mine separately. Remember what happened. The wee chap gave Bravo a drink, then gave you one. But you put them both in the bag.'

`What are you saying?'

Skinner looked at him, seriously. 'If Bravo's drink checks out OK, I'm not saying anything, but if anyone is handing out spiked isotonics, then you're a far likelier target than him! If that drink was dodgy, then I'd guess it was meant for you, but that they were mixed up in the bag.

`Christ, we could be looking for the world's smallest poisoner.'

`You won't have to look far, then.' Atkinson pointed over the policeman's shoulder to the crowd, twenty yards away. 'He's over there.'

Skinner looked round in surprise, but his eye was caught by the figure of Mario McGuire, broader than ever in his waterproofs.

`Sergeant, good to see you. I've got a job for you.' `What's that, sir?'

`This is Darren Atkinson. He's got five and a half holes to play, and he needs a caddy. There's just a chance that he might also need protection. Welcome to big-time golf, Mario.'

Skinner looked at Atkinson. ÒK?' The golfer nodded solemnly. 'Good. You two get to know each other. Before we get started again, I'm off for a quick word with the master criminal over there!'

Forty-seven

Edinburgh is full of absolute enchantments, that its people take for granted,' said Henry Wills.

'Look at those tile pictures. Works of art, unique, and yet hardly anyone who comes in here gives them a second glance.'

Maggie Rose gazed around her. The Café Royal bar was busy, packed with men and women in business clothes lingering over the last lunch-hour of the week. They stood in groups, deep in conversation, not one looking up to admire the magnificent likenesses, picked out in hand-painted tiles, James Watt and Michael Faraday among them, as each advanced human knowledge in his unique way.

Ì suppose,' she said, 'that we should be grateful that they're still there, and that this place has been preserved.'

`True. Our City Fathers have allowed far too many old pubs to be gutted and turned into unspeakable resorts for the young. Much of the town's history was made in its public houses.

They were important meeting places, yet apart from this one, the Abbotsford, and one or two others, they've all been swept away.'

He took a generous mouthful of his Guinness. 'When I was a young man, there were around three dozen fine old pubs along Rose Street. Now there are perhaps a dozen, and most of them are not . . .' he leaned heavily on the word `. . . to my taste!'

`Nor mine,' said Rose, grinning. 'We, I mean the police, like the old places too. They never give us any trouble. Our weekend call-outs in the city centre usually come from the places with the strobe lights and foreign beer at three quid a bottle.' Awkwardly, she took a bite of her mutton pie. It was hot and juicy, and she savoured its sharp peppery taste and the feel of the firm, doughy pastry in her mouth. 'I love this. When we have a Saturday off, Mario and I sometimes treat ourselves to the Roseburn Bar and a pie-and-a-pint lunch. We can relax there, knowing that we're not going to run into someone that we've nicked a month or so earlier.'

Henry Wills laughed in his delight. 'You're a woman after my own heart, Margaret. Young Mario doesn't know how lucky he is.'

'Oh yes he does! I've made damn sure of that!'

Wills spluttered into his Guinness. Suddenly his eye was caught by the door as it swung open.

A stocky, balding, wheyfaced figure shouldered his way into the bar and looked around. As he caught sight of the University Registrar, he broke into a smile. He waved across the bar, and eased his way through the press. Wills waved to a barman and pointed to the Guinness pump.

`Hello, Henry,' said the newcomer, in a North of England accent blunted, Maggie guessed, by years of exposure to Scottish tones. Wills shook his hand.

Ìnspector Rose, this is Jim Glossop, an old friend. He's something terribly important in the General Register Office, and, in return for a pint of the Liffey Water, he's going to help us with our search . . . I hope.'

Glossop shrugged his shoulders. He and the patrician Wills made an odd couple. 'As much as I can, Henry. I have been able to find out one thing. We do 'ave parish registers covering Longniddry, back almost to the start of the sixteenth century. The only thing is that the oldest volumes are in use today. We've got some researchers in from America. You can go back as far as 1601, though. Cheers.' He took the black Guinness from Wills and drank, savouring the creamy head. `Nice pint, that.'

`1601, eh,' said Wills. 'That might well be far enough back for our purposes.'

`What's this all about anyhow?' asked Glossop, between swallows.

It's just a piece of historical research that I've been asked to do,' said Rose, noncommittally.

`Mr Wills is being good enough to help.'

Àh! Secret, is it? We'd better get on wi' it then.' He drained his glass and motioned them to follow.

The doorway of New Register House was no more than a few yards from the Cafe Royal.

Glossop led them into the anonymous grey building, past a security guard who saluted clumsily, trying at the same time, but failing, to hide a cigarette. They made their way along a series of corridors, until they came to a grey-painted wooden door with a plastic notice, screwed on at eye level, which declared it to be a study. Glossop unlocked it with a key, and held it open for them to enter.

In the centre of the room stood a library table, with two chairs on either side. Five volumes, bound in beige leather, lay upon its angled top. `Those are what you're after,' said Glossop.

Ènjoy yourselves. When you're finished, or if you want owt else, just give me a call on that phone by the window. Dial two, seven, zero; that's me.' He dropped the latch of the Yale and closed the door solidly behind him.

`Well,' said Wills. 'Let's see what we've got.' He leaned over and looked at the spine of one of the books. 'Sixteen sixty-one to sixteen eighty. Twenty years, five volumes; Jim's left us the whole of seventeenth-century Longniddry, or Lang-niddry, as it was called then. The name is believed to be derived from a primitive form of Welsh, as spoken by the Gododdin, a nomadic tribe which inhabited East Lothian in Roman times. The Romans called them the Votadini.'

He checked the spine of another volume. 'This is 1621 to 1640. Let's see what we can find here.' He took a pair of round gold-framed spectacles from his breast pocket and put them on, pinching them tight against the bridge of his nose. '1623, the family tree said.' He cleared space on the table, and, carefully, opened the heavy book near the beginning, standing over it to read more easily. The pages were stiff and yellow with age, and their thick paper creaked as they were turned. 'What have we here?' Wills muttered. 'March 22, 1621. A marriage record, signed by William Friel, the Minister and by the witnesses, between one Robert Glen, labourer, son of Mathew Glen, labourer, and Mary Glen, and Susan Watt, chambermaid, daughter of Hugh Watt, carpenter, and Susan Watt the elder. How interesting; the witnesses are both named Glen, and they both signed with a mark. No Watts there at all. I wonder if this alliance caused a family rift. The daughter of a skilled man marrying a labourer might have been considered in those days to have chosen beneath her.'

Maggie Rose snorted. 'You could say the same about me, marrying a Sergeant!'

Àh, yes, Inspector, but your chosen one has the prospect of advancement. In those days, your birth dictated what you would become. Self-made men usually ended up on the gibbet.'

He delved once again into the book, peering sometimes to decipher the crude script. The records are simply in order. Marriages, births and burials are listed in the order they occurred.' He turned the pages. Suddenly, he stopped. Ahh, how sad,' he sighed. 'This is a burial record. November 6, 1621, Susan, wife of Robert Glen, died November 3, and her son, Mathew, born November 3, baptised November 4, died November 4.' Maggie looked down at the yellow page with its black writing. In the awkward silence, she felt a catch at her throat.

'Sometimes it's best not to look too closely,' said Wills. `These people must have had a great stoicism, to live in times when such tragedies were commonplace.

He continued to turn the pages, tracing down their columns as he went. At last he straightened up. 'Yes! July 2, 1622. A marriage record between Archibald Tullis, estate clerk, son of William Tullis, estate clerk, and Rosina Tullis, deceased, and Elizabeth Carr...' His voice tailed off and he looked, bright-eyed at Rose. 'How very strange! There is nothing about Elizabeth Carr. No occupation, no parentage: nothing at all to give a clue to her background or her birth.'

He looked down at the page again. The witnesses: ah yes, here they are, two and both literate.

William Tullis, and...' he gasped: `...Matilda Tod! The witch's sister. We meet her again twenty-four years on. A witness twice: first to a pagan burning, and now to a Christian marriage. Astounding.'

He closed the book. Rose looked at him. 'Don't we want to go on, to trace the birth of Elizabeth's daughter?'

Wills shook his head, impatiently. 'No, no. We know about her already, from the family tree.

That, and the existence of Matilda Tod are authenticated by what we have found here today. We must go back in time, not forward, to find the origins of Elizabeth Carr. Back beyond her too, if need be.'