Quintin Jardine - Fallen Gods

As he looked around the grounds, they reminded him of Fir Park Lodge, but these were kept better. He could see the stripes on the close mown lawn, and appreciate the neatness of the flower beds, and the careful way in which the shrubs and bushes had been trimmed. Off to the back and to the left, he saw outbuildings; stables once upon a time no doubt, but now garaging for a russet-coloured Range Rover, which stood gleaming outside. He stood for a moment and listened; from somewhere not far away came the splashes of a river running. Even though the spate was over, it still sounded full and fast.

A small sign on the lawn asked him to "Keep off the grass', but he ignored it and marched straight across, towards the grey granite house.

He was several yards short of the heavy brown front door when it opened. A tall thin man appeared; he was wearing grey corduroy trousers from an age when fashion meant nothing, a green pullover with suede patches on the shoulders and elbows, and he was glaring at his visitor.

"Can't you read, man?" he barked, as Skinner approached. "And look where you've parked your car."

"Sure I can read," the policeman answered, "English, Spanish and French, in fact. But sometimes I like to ignore rules, if I think they're stupid. There's a bit of a rebel in me, you see. As for my car, I left it there because I didn't want it to disfigure your charming house." He walked on, unbidden, through the wide doorway and into a panelled hall; he stopped and looked around.

"Very nice," he said, amiably.

"Get to hell out of there!" the other man exploded. "Just who the hell are you and what do you think you're doing here?"

Skinner beamed at him. "Just imagine that I'm Michael Aspel, that this

Jiffy bag I've got under my arm is a big red book, and I'm saying, "David Candela, This is Your Life". Let's start off there."

Candela made a furious, exasperated sound. "You're a lunatic," he exclaimed, 'a well-dressed lunatic, but a lunatic nonetheless. I'm calling the police."

Suddenly, Skinner seemed a little less amiable. "I wouldn't do that. I am the police."

"In that case I'll complain to your inspector."

"You'd be several ranks too low if you did that."

Candela blinked, then stepped into the hall himself, heading for a small silver box on the wall, beside a grandfather clock. "Don't do that either," his visitor advised. "I know what that is; it's a panic button linked to your alarm system. It would only be an inconvenience to your monitoring station if you activated it. There wouldn't be a response."

The lawyer stopped. "Very well," he said. A little uncertainty had crept into his voice, but he was still in control of himself and showing no sign of alarm. "If this is an official visit, you'd better come through to the drawing room. I've seen a few of you people over the last ten days or so; I have to say they were all a damn sight more polite than you."

Skinner smiled at him, cheerily. "This is me being polite, Mr. Candela," he exclaimed. "I'm nowhere near being rude, not yet, and rude's only a step along the way to nasty."

"Bloody lunatic," Candela muttered as he led the way into a long room, oak-panelled like the hall. It was furnished with big soft armchairs in flowery fabrics; a refectory table stood near the door, and three portraits, each carefully lit from above, were suspended from a rail along one wall. Windows looked out and down towards the river, and a double patio door opened out on to the grounds.

"Nice place," the policeman commented; a sincere compliment. "I suppose it's been in your family since the nineteenth century?"

"Yes, we built it," the lawyer snapped impatiently. "Look, do I know you?"

"You should; if you were serious about your precious firm and not just a fucking dilettante, you'd know me all right. You know my family, though; Candela and Finch has represented it for about thirty years.

And of course you have a personal connection with us."

Candela frowned. "Would you like to explain that?"

"I'll explain it by asking you something. How did my brother Michael die?"

The colour drained from the thin man's face in an instant. He looked towards the patio door as if he was about to run for it; Skinner forestalled any attempt by taking a step to his right, blocking the way. "You're…" he gasped.

"I'm Bob Skinner," said the policeman. "I'm pretty well known in

Edinburgh, but you're not really interested in the city, are you?

You're interested in the casino and in playing up here. For all you pretend, your position as senior partner is written into your firm's constitution. You don't actually manage it, one of the other guys does that."

He took the padded envelope from under his arm. "It really is all in here, you know, your whole exciting life."

Candela had gathered his thoughts. "I know nothing about your brother!" he exclaimed. "I read about his death in the newspapers, but that's all."

"Oh, don't be fucking silly," Skinner retorted. "I wouldn't have brought it up if I didn't know for certain. Before I came here, I spoke to a man called Angus dAbo, in Birnam. I showed him your photograph…" he tapped the envelope '… and he identified you right away as the man who came into his local with Michael a few days before he died. Mike got completely trousered and you carted him off.

Before I spoke to dAbo I faxed the same photo to Brother Aidan at Oak

Lodge. He clocked you too, old as he is. He identified you as the man my brother called Skipper, the man who took him away from his home and never brought him back." The DCC grinned; he was taking a deadly enjoyment from the account.

"Skipper was your nickname in the army, Mr. Candela," he said, then saw the man's eyes narrow. "Yes, I've got your service file in here too; I had it sent up to me by secure fax this morning. I've got Michael's as well, of course. They tell me that the two of you served together in Honduras; you were a company commander in the Scots Guards, and he was a lieutenant in the Sappers. When you went out on patrol, he and his guys would often go with you, in case something needed blowing up."

The policeman paused; a corner of his mouth flicked upwards, a strange gesture. When he spoke again there was a catch in his voice. "There was so much I never knew about my brother, Candela, because I never asked. I did as my father wanted and I left him to live out the rest of his life away from me; at first because I couldn't trust myself near him, then eventually because I didn't see the point of reminding him of the old hatred between us. Rodney Windows… in case you don't know him either, he's one of your partners in Candela and Finch… sent me reports on him every year, but that was all I ever knew about him.

"When I read his army file this morning, though, I found out a hell of a lot. For example, he was some sort of a fucking genius at demolition. You guys were on special ops down there, weren't you? He wasn't there just to clear fallen palm trees in the jungle. You were setting traps for the insurgents, booby-trapping their supply dumps, setting remote devices in their villages, all sorts of brutal stuff that never got reported anywhere. Mike was so good at it that for a while your CO and his turned a blind eye to his drinking. Until the fire-fight incident, that is."

Skinner held up the Jiffy bag and took a single step towards the other man. "It really is all in here, Candela; everything, including the answer to something that's always niggled me. When my father eventually told me about Michael's discharge from the army; he said that he was spared prosecution for manslaughter because of my dad's own military record. If he told me that, then that's what he believed, but as a policeman I always doubted it. And I was right. The two guys who were killed were shot by his weapon, all right, but there was no evidence of him actually firing it. More than that, some of his guys, the other Royal Engineer lads with the unit, testified that when you ambushed those rebels and the fire-fight happened he was so cross-eyed drunk that he couldn't have fired anything. They said that he wasn't even there; he was flat on his back at your camp in the jungle."