Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘This is my patch, sir. I belong here.’

‘Okay, but keep it under control.’ He turned to Detective Sergeant Sammy Pye, McGuire’s assistant, who had transferred with him that morning from the Borders division. ‘Sam,’ he ordered, ‘send those two PCs up to the main entrance. I just drove past one of the security guys on the gate like he wasn’t there, and I don’t want the press doing the same thing. Get another couple of uniforms from the Queen Charlotte Street office to take their place here. A lot of people work in these docks; we could need some crowd control.’

He moved over to McIlhenney. ‘Has the ME seen him?’

‘Not yet. We’re still waiting for him. Do you want to look?’

‘I’d better, I suppose. Will Mario be okay?’

‘He’s had a shock, but he can handle it. He and Sammy were on the scene first; he called me while they were on the way.’ He leaned over and turned back the tarpaulin.

Skinner looked down at the body of Inspector Colin Mawhinney. His hair, slacks and his heavy navy-style pea-jacket were slicked with green slime from the dock, and in death, his face had a similar, if very faint, tint in its colouring. He looked as if he could simply have fallen into the dock and drowned, had it not been for one thing; a long, thick and very heavy chain lay on the ground beside him, its links leading under the jacket. Skinner crouched beside the dead man, turned back the garment, and saw that it was twisted and lodged in his belt.

He turned and glanced up at McGuire. ‘Again, Mario, what happened?’

The detective superintendent pointed towards two men who were standing a few yards away at the water’s edge, watching the scene; one wore worker’s overalls, and the other a suit, beneath a raincoat. ‘They found him, sir,’ he replied. ‘You’d best hear it first hand.’ Skinner straightened himself and followed him across to the pair. ‘This is Benny McCaffrey,’ he said, introducing the labourer first, ‘and this is Stanley Guinness, from the port office. Tell the DCC what you told me, Benny.’

The man nodded; he looked to be in his mid-fifties, with a grimy face; strands of grey stringy hair protruded from a dirty woollen cap. ‘Ah saw a fella,’ he began. ‘Ah was working over there and Ah saw this wee bloke. Ah thought he was maybe frae the pipe works or somewhere. He nivir saw me, mind.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Just walkin’, like, mindin’ his ain business, ken. He was carrying a bag thing, that wis a’. He stopped, and he took a quick shooftie round, then he had a pish in the dock.’ McCaffrey chuckled. ‘Probably improved the watter quality. But when he wis finished I saw him looking doon, doon the dockside. Then he picked up a pole somebody hid left lyin’ and poked it in the watter, like that.’ He made a prodding movement as if he was gripping a pole himself, one hand above the other. ‘Next think I kent he wis runnin’ like fuck.’

‘And what did you do after that?’

‘Ah came doon here, tae see what had scared him, ken. Ah saw all right. That poor bloke there. Ah went straight tae the port office and got Mr Guinness.’

‘Who took the body out of the water?’

‘My men did,’ the port official replied. ‘I always have a couple of people handy who are trained divers and who can go into the dock in. . emergencies like this. They freed him and brought him to the surface.’

‘When you say they freed him,’ Skinner interrupted, ‘what exactly do you mean?’

‘That chain you can see there,’ said Guinness. ‘He’d secured it in his belt as you see, and wound it round his waist, several times, for ballast I assume, to make sure he’d go down. There were stones in the pockets as well.’ He paused. ‘But when he went in, the end of the chain seems to have caught in the dock wall and held him there. The basin’s tidal as well, so when the water level dropped a few feet, he became visible.’

‘What about this man? The guy Mr McCaffrey saw pissing in the dock?’

‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.’

‘Sammy had a word with Site Security, boss. One of them saw a bloke legging it through the gate and up Constitution Street, but he couldn’t get near giving a description.’

The DCC scowled. ‘That’s a poor show,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t suppose it makes any difference, though. Mawhinney was in the water for longer than a couple of minutes. Whoever that guy was he can’t tell us anything we haven’t found out already. Come on, Mario,’ he said, turning and leading him away from the other two men. ‘Let’s you and Neil and I go up to your new office; there’s some things I need to ask you, away from here.’

‘I want to stay, boss, till the ME’s been, and they’ve taken him off to the morgue.’

‘No. Sammy Pye can do that, and organise formal statements from McCaffrey, Guinness and the divers. Then he can fix up a pathologist to do the post mortem.’

‘But, boss. .’

‘It’s not for discussion, Mario.’

The superintendent sighed. ‘If you say so, sir. But there’s something else I’ve got to do, and that’s break it to Paula. She’ll be gutted.’

‘So will Sarah. She liked the man too.’ Skinner looked at him. ‘Tell you what, where will Paula be right now?’

‘In her office, round in Commercial Street.’

‘Okay. Let’s go there. We should probably talk to both of you.’

‘Why?’

The DCC looked at him patiently. ‘Mario,’ he said, quietly, ‘I know you’ve had a hell of a shock, but get your heid in gear, will you? As far as we know right now, you two were the last people to see that man alive.’

Dan Pringle glared at Auguste Malou across the table in the Dalkeith police office. When Ray Wilding had called to explode the bombshell in his lap he had gone incandescent, and ordered that he be picked up and taken to the East Lothian divisional headquarters, rather than to the Haddington office.

‘I’ve been dancing to those buggers’ tune since yesterday. I’ll be fucked if I’ll do it any longer.’

He had calmed down a little on the drive from Fettes, but not so much that he was about to defer to the Belgian. Equally, the peppery colonel was irate at the sudden and unexplained summons, which, he protested, had been presented with all the indignity of an arrest.

‘Father Collins shall hear of this,’ he bellowed at the chief superintendent. ‘Monsignor di Matteo shall hear of it. Before I am finished, His Holiness himself will hear of it. When he does, sir,’ he gave a grim little laugh, ‘yours will be a heavy penance.’

‘This may seem like sacrilege to you, Colonel,’ Pringle drawled, ‘but I answer to Sir James Proud and Bob Skinner. If you’ve got a problem with me, you tell them about it. In fact,’ he picked up the interview-room telephone, ‘if you like I’ll call DCC Skinner right now and you can speak to him. I don’t advise it though. If you think I’m a bear when I’m angry, you don’t want to rattle his cage.’

Malou gave him one last icicle stare. In spite of himself, Pringle found it strangely disconcerting: it was as if the old eyes were made of frosted glass. ‘I will accept your apology,’ he said, in a grudging tone, as if one had been offered. ‘Now get on with it. Tell me the reason for this outrageous behaviour of yours.’

‘My reason, Colonel,’ the head of CID replied, ‘can be expressed in one name: Philippe Hanno.’ The eyes seemed to mist over. ‘I want to know why the first time I heard it was this morning, when one of my officers phoned from the place where they’re interviewing your bandsmen. Why the hell didn’t you tell me about Hanno yesterday?’

‘Because you didn’t ask,’ the older man spat back at him. ‘And what difference would it have made anyway? Philippe was killed by a drunken English driver, and poor Barty was made victim by some English lunatic who gets his kicks by poisoning toothpaste tubes.’