Quintin Jardine: Stay of Execution

‘Maybe they did, sir. Have you checked missing persons information?’

The divisional commander bristled in his uniform, and Steele knew that he had made a mistake. Manny English was a notorious book operator: his question was one that could, and should, have gone without the asking.

‘There haven’t been any,’ he replied tersely. ‘Not in the past week at any rate, and you’ve just heard what the MO has to say. Do you want him photographed again?’ he asked.

‘No sir. There’s no point.’

‘Very well. Let’s get him into a plastic coffin and off to the mortuary where they can thaw the poor bugger out.’ He waved through the slightly thinned fog to two uniformed men, who were waiting beside a blue van with a ventilator on top.

‘One thing first,’ said Steele. He bent over the body and felt around the chest area, then opened the dark grey suit, and from an inside pocket produced a wallet. He opened it and, from a compartment within, drew out a business card. ‘Ivor Whetstone, MCIBS,’ he read. ‘Director of Business. .’ He glanced up at English. ‘He’s a banker, sir.’

The chief superintendent nodded sagely. ‘I could tell by his suit that he was some sort of a business type; banker, lawyer, accountant, something like that.’

Steele could tell in his turn why his senior officer had not prospered in CID. ‘I once arrested a bank robber who wore the same brand of suit as this,’ he said.

‘I wonder what drove him to do it?’ English murmured.

‘Drove whom to do what?’

The uniformed commander looked at the detective in exasperation. ‘Him.’ He pointed at Whetstone’s body. ‘That.’ He pointed at the tree.

Steele sighed. ‘At the very best, sir,’ he said, ‘this has to be a suspicious death; maybe even a homicide.’

‘Ohh, really?’ English exclaimed. ‘Honest to God, that’s CID all over, rushing to judgement.’

‘I’m judging bugger all, sir.’

‘You’re ruling out suicide, though.’

‘I’m not ruling out anything, but I don’t see this as suicide.’

‘Why not?’

‘Where’s his support?’

‘What?’

‘Whatever it was he climbed to top himself: the guy’s feet were about a metre off the ground.’

The chief superintendent frowned, and thought for a few moments. ‘He could have climbed the tree, then out along the branch and jumped off.’

Steele could not restrain himself: he laughed. ‘I’ll tell you what, sir. You’re about the same age, size and build as that bloke, and your shoes are much like his. You show me how he did it. You climb up that wet, slippery, thick tree-trunk, with not a single foothold, and then you climb out along that limb.’

‘Maybe he did,’ English persisted.

‘Listen, sir. If we’d found him lying under the tree with his fucking neck broken, then I might just have agreed with you. The way things are, I’m calling a full scene-of-crime team here, and I’m calling Detective Superintendent Rose.’

‘If you must, you must.’ The divisional commander stalked off.

‘I must, sir,’ the inspector called after him. ‘There’s one other thing too.’ English stopped. ‘Where’s his coat?’ The chief superintendent frowned but said nothing.

‘If this guy came out here last night to end his life, he wouldn’t have needed to string himself up if he wasn’t wearing a coat. All he’d have had to do was lie down and go to sleep. Nobody would have found him and he’d have been dead of hypothermia by morning.’

Skinner was in his office in the early afternoon, working his way through the day’s paperwork, when Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk, his executive assistant, came in to tell him that Archbishop Gainer and Signor Rossi had returned unexpectedly. He frowned. ‘Don’t keep them waiting outside, man,’ he snapped. ‘Show them in at once.’

The DCC and McGurk were still new to each other. When Neil McIlhenney had left the exec post for Special Branch, he had been given the job, in Skinner’s absence, of choosing his own successor. That absence had been longer than anticipated, and the young sergeant had spent the time cooling his heels and reporting to the rough-hewn Willie Haggerty. It was not an ideal situation: McGurk could have exercised the option of going back to divisional duties, but he had been assured that a stint in Bob Skinner’s office would be a career springboard, as it had been for the likes of Brian Mackie, Maggie Rose and especially for Andy Martin, who had made it in his mid-thirties to an ACC’s uniform in the Tayside force. So he had stayed, and he had waited for the return of the Big Man.

When, finally, it had happened, McGurk found himself wondering about the wisdom of that decision. He did not know Bob Skinner well but, like everyone else in the force, he knew of his legend as a crime-fighter, and as a leader who earned respect and loyalty rather than demanding it. The reality turned out to be a short-tempered, menacing figure, intolerant of the slightest error, delay or omission.

He had taken the job in the belief that if the DCC liked you, you were made, and with the assurance of Neil McIlhenney that there was no better man in the force for whom an officer could work. With every day that passed, the less secure the sergeant felt in his job, the more he wondered how he had displeased Skinner, and the more he missed his former boss, the dour, quirky, but likeable head of CID, Chief Superintendent Dan Pringle.

After a few weeks of rockets and reprimands he had gone to Pringle and had asked what he could be doing wrong. ‘I can’t help you there, son,’ the veteran had told him. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone. I got a right bollocking the other day because Greg Jay’s clear-up rate had gone down. I even heard him shouting at McIlhenney one day, and he’s his best pal in this place now that Andy Martin’s gone.’

‘He yelled at Neil? How did he take that?’

‘Oh, he yelled back, because he was right. But don’t you try it, son: you’re not McIlhenney, not yet at any rate. The best thing to do is make allowances for him. He’s been ill, although he tries to pretend it never happened, and on top of that his brother died. Big Bob’s human just like the rest of us; if he’s no’ himself, maybe it’s not that surprising.’

McGurk had taken his advice, but he had come close to forgetting it on a couple of occasions. With the Archbishop and his colleague at the door, and within earshot, he swallowed the latest rebuke impassively, stood aside and ushered them in. He made to leave, as the guests sat on the soft leather couch, opposite the window, but the DCC called after him: ‘No, Sergeant, you stay here. I may need a note of this meeting.’

Grateful of the recognition, McGurk took a pad from the desk and a pen from his pocket, and pulled across an upright chair. He was almost six and a half feet tall, and he had found that he could not fit comfortably into the DCC’s reception seating.

‘Anyone want coffee?’ Skinner asked. The Archbishop shook his head; Rossi, the Italian, looked across at the filter machine on a table in the corner and made a face.

‘Would you like some, sir?’ McGurk volunteered.

His boss frowned at him. ‘I’m not bloody helpless, son. If I did I’d get it.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Yes, well. .’ Suddenly Skinner stopped; his frown deepened. ‘No, Sergeant, I’m the guy who should apologise. That was plain rudeness. I’ll tell you what, maybe you could fetch some bottles of water from the fridge beside my desk, and some glasses from the table.’ He looked back at his visitors. ‘Or would you guys like a beer?’

Archbishop Gainer put his hands together in supplication and glanced upwards for a moment. ‘You see,’ he said, with a grin, ‘prayer does work sometimes. I thought you were never going to ask.’