Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘Because his son’s car was torched outside his house last week. George Regan’s still looking for the guy that did it. I’ll pass that on to Mary when I see her on Monday.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Mackie. He led her over to the window of the command room, and together they looked out across the great bowl of the Scottish Rugby Union’s national stadium. With thirty minutes remaining until the scheduled kick-off time, it was less than half full; on the field a pipe band was playing and the New Zealand squad, massive in black tracksuits, was warming up.

‘It won’t look like this in a few days,’ Rose murmured, ‘when the Pope comes here. I am more than happy that you’ll be in charge of that one.’

‘Cheers, pal,’ her colleague grunted. ‘As you say, the stadium will look a bit different then,’ he told her, pointing out on to the field. ‘The main platform will be on the pitch, just beyond the centre spot.’

‘What’s the programme?’

‘Let’s go outside and I’ll take you through it.’

The two chief superintendents left the room and walked down the long staggered stairway that led, eventually, into the tunnel that would be used by the players in twenty minutes or so. As they stepped out of the huge west stand, on to the green, white-laned synthetic running track, the purpose of which was one of the great unsolved mysteries of Scottish sport, Mackie pointed towards the vehicle entrance to their left.

‘It’s relatively simple,’ he said. ‘The papal convoy, the glass bubble thing in front, and limos behind, will enter through there, and drive up to the platform. The youngsters will be in the west, north and south stands; the east won’t be used. His Holiness will get out and will be received at the foot of the steps by the Prime Minister, the First Minister and Lord Provost. . if they don’t fall out over the order of precedence. Then they’ll all mount the steps where some other people will be presented, the three wives of course, then the deputy First Minister and his wife, then the Justice Minister and her partner, then the Moderator of the Church of Scotland and his wife, and finally the chief and Lady Proud.’

Maggie was surprised by the last-named dignitary. ‘It’s not like him to put himself forward.’

‘The Pope insisted,’ Mackie told her. ‘They’re old friends. After all the introductions,’ he went on, ‘there’ll be the entertainment; the bands, the dancers and the singers. Once that part of the programme’s complete, they’ll all line up, and the Pope, the Prime Minister and the First Minister will come down from the platform and review them.’

‘All of them?’

‘Every last one. His Holiness wants to bless them all, personally. Once that’s done, he goes back up on stage and says mass, preaches a sermon, and closes the rally.’

‘At which point,’ said a voice behind them, ‘you all breathe hearty sighs of relief and head for the Roseburn Bar.’

They turned to see Mario McGuire behind them, looking even more solid than usual in a sheepskin-lined bomber jacket, flanked by Neil McIlhenney and Colin Mawhinney.

‘We should be so lucky,’ said Mackie.

‘It’ll be a cakewalk, Brian, don’t you worry.’ He smiled at Maggie in her uniform. ‘Suits you, ma’am,’ he chuckled.

She beamed back at him. ‘So does yours. I can just see you smoothing around the pubs in Leith in that, making your ominous presence felt.’

They turned and headed back towards the tunnel. ‘I wasn’t kidding,’ he said. ‘You really do have a spring in your step in your nice blue suit. . or is it just you?’

‘Maybe it is me. Maybe I’ve got what I want at last.’

‘In that case, love, I’m happy for you. Just don’t put all your cash on one horse.’

‘Sometimes we have to, Mario. Your trouble is that you’re scared to bet at all.’

If there was one place in the world that Bob Skinner preferred not to be it was an autopsy room. While in the main he missed the day-to-day contact with criminal investigation that his rank denied him, attendance as a witness at post-mortem examinations was a duty that he was happy to leave to others.

When he arrived in the suite in which his wife had been working, still in the sweater, shirt and slacks that he had worn for golf, the late Bartholemy Lebeau was still on the table. . at least, those parts of him were that had not been consigned to slides and jars for transfer to the police laboratory at Howdenhall, and examination by a toxicologist. He tried not to look at him.

Sarah was sitting on a workbench, waiting for him, as he swept into the room. ‘What have you got?’ he asked her, before the door had even closed behind him.

‘At first examination,’ she began, ‘I had some of the signs that I’m used to seeing in massive and instantaneous heart-attack victims, a little vein suffusion, mainly. It was only when I looked in the mouth that I saw something unusual, a violent irritation of the gums. After I opened him up and found no signs of cardiac malformation or malfunction, I went looking for something else, poisoning.’

‘Any specific poison?’

‘In a case like this, it’s usually cyanide, because it’s easy to administer and because it’s lethal in very small doses. The man who first isolated hydrogen cyanide in the eighteenth century died when he broke a jar of the stuff and inhaled it. It kills by inhibiting the ability of tissues to metabolise oxygen, and in sufficient quantity it will shut down the brain in seconds. Its most famous application was in the suicide capsules that were given to secret operatives in wartime, and used by some of the Nazi high command, like Goering and Himmler, to beat the executioner to the punch, but there are many examples of its criminal use, most notoriously, the Tylenol case in the US, twenty years ago.’

‘Can it happen accidentally?’

‘In theory it can, but this man did not have a large quantity of apricot or peach stones in his stomach, and he hadn’t eaten half a ton of chickpeas either. Forget accidental, Bob. Every case of cyanide poisoning I’ve heard of has involved the spiking of food. . apart, that is, from the people who were executed in gas chambers. . and apart from this one. I’ve sent the stomach contents for analysis, but there hardly were any. This man hadn’t eaten for several hours before he died.’

‘So how was it administered, if he didn’t swallow the stuff?’

‘Cyanide can be absorbed through the skin; the more tender the surface the quicker the absorption. That takes me back to the irritation of the subject’s gums. When he died, he was brushing his teeth. You’re looking for toothpaste, Bob. Take, say, three grams of hydrocyanic acid, about an ounce, and inject it into a tube; you have just laced it with sixty times the lethal dose. From the extent of the rash, and the rate of ingestion it implies, he’d have been dead before he’d even had time to wash his mouth out. Your friendly local undertaker did that for him but, fortunately, he left a trace between two of the back teeth. That’s one of the samples that’s going to Howdenhall.’

Sarah raised herself up and jumped down from her perch. ‘I may have been a little over-confident about that banker suicide the other day, Bob, but if this guy wasn’t murdered, I will quit and take up landscape gardening.’

Her husband threw back his head and let out a great sigh. ‘Just what I fucking needed,’ he exclaimed.

‘It’s not for you, is it? You delegate it to Division like everything else. I suppose that in this case it’s East Lothian, since the death occurred in Haddington.’

‘No way,’ said Bob, emphatically. ‘Greg Jay’s getting nowhere near this one. This man was due to play before the Pope in a few days’ time. That alone moves it on to a different level altogether, and makes it one I will definitely be keeping my hands on. But there’s another consideration too, one that makes my blood run cold.’