Quintin Jardine: Skinner's mission

‘Cocky bastard,’ growled Skinner. ‘So confident that his security’s minimal.’

Martin was almost ready to ring the doorbell once again, when a light went on in one of the upper windows, to their right. Behind the damask shade they saw the silhouette of a figure peering out into the pitch-black garden, looking around but failing to spot them. Eventually the windowframe swung open slightly, and a disgruntled, sleepy voice called out. . a male voice.

‘Christ, Carole, have you lost your bloody keys?! And what the hell are you doing coming in at this time anyway?’ At once, both detectives recognised Jackie Charles’ clipped voice, and his well-groomed accent. They had heard it often enough, yet it carried a frustrated, peevish tone that was new to them.

Martin took a full, deliberate step sideways back into the arc of the security light, triggering it once more. ‘It isn’t Carole, Jackie. It’s Chief Superintendent Martin and DCC Skinner. We need to talk to you, now. Come down and let us in, please.’

Jackie Charles’ tone changed at once. ‘God, Bob Skinner, you always were a tenacious bastard. Now you’ve got this one at it. Have I got to write to my MP to stop you lot harassing me?’

‘Your new MP’s a friend of ours, Jackie,’ said Skinner. ‘I don’t think she’d listen to you. Anyway, this isn’t harassment. Like Andy said, we need to talk to you.’ He laid heavy stress on the word, and his tone was an unquestionable command. The window closed.

Less than a minute later, the front door opened, and Jackie Charles held it wide for them to enter. He was wearing a blue silk dressing-gown, over matching pyjamas, with Morland leather sheepskin-lined slippers on his feet. He was a dapper man, around five feet eight, but with a stocky build which made him appear shorter. His dark hair, heavily flecked with grey, was expensively but traditionally cut, and looked neat even in the middle of the night, as it swept back from his temples and from his forehead.

He pointed them towards the living room. ‘You know the way,’ he said, dryly. ‘You’ve been here before.’

The policemen stepped into a room to the right of the hall. They took off their overcoats and threw them on an occasional chair beside the door, then crossed the room and stood with their backs to the fireplace. Charles followed them and bent to ignite a living-flame gas fire.

‘Where is your wife, Mr Charles?’ asked Martin, formally, as the dapper man sat in an armchair.

He frowned up at him. ‘She’ll be staying over at her pal’s place, I suppose.’

‘What’s this pal’s name?’

Charles shrugged. ‘Donna something or other. They go to a yoga class two nights a week. Other nights they go out on the town together. When that happens and Carole has a few too many she’ll crash out there.’

‘Often?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fairly often, but it doesn’t bother me. Carole and I have our silver wedding coming up soon. We’ve got no secrets.’

Skinner turned a laugh into a snort at the words. Charles looked up at him sharply. ‘What’s all this about anyway?’ he snapped.

‘Why isn’t your car in the garage?’ Martin went on.

‘Carole will have taken it. She preferred it to the new Jag I bought her. Less hairy around town, she said.’

‘Are you certain of that? Were you here when she left?’

Charles shook his head. ‘No. I was at Ibrox last night, as the guest of one of the finance companies that I use to provide hire purchase for customers. I was picked up from here at five, and I wasn’t dropped off again until around one. Listen. .’

Martin cut him off. ‘Was your wife doing anything else last night, other than seeing her pal?’

He nodded, quickly. ‘Yes, but why. .?’ He frowned.

‘We’ll get to that,’ said Skinner. ‘Answer, please.’

‘Okay,’ said Charles, testily. ‘She was going to the showroom yesterday evening. Carole’s been a working director of our car business from the earliest days. She’s familiar with every aspect of it. We have a book-keeper there, but Carole’s the finance director of the company, and she goes over the management accounts, regularly and often at short notice. She told me that she would be going there at seven, after the salesmen had finished, and that she’d be meeting Donna after she had finished her check.’

‘Would she have driven on to meet Donna?’

‘Possibly, but she could have called a taxi; I don’t like our cars being parked in town overnight.’

‘We can check that,’ said Martin quickly. Too quickly. For the first time genuine alarm showed in Charles’ face.

‘Come on,’ he said, insistently. ‘What the hell is this about?

Skinner sat down in an armchair opposite him. Old, but often-remembered horrors come back to him, and for the first time in his life he felt sympathy for the man who had been his target for so long.

‘Jackie,’ he said, gently, ‘someone torched your showroom tonight. They totalled the place. When the firemen had it controlled, and went in to clear up, they found a body.

‘From what you’ve said, it could be Carole.’

Charles’ jaw dropped open. His eyes widened. The colour left his face. His mouth worked trying to form words, but nothing came out.

‘Jackie, we need to trace this Donna woman. Where does she live?’

The man shook his head. He turned his head away, so that neither policeman could see his eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly.

‘What’s her second name?’

‘I don’t even know that.’

Skinner paused. ‘Well, where’s Carole’s yoga class?’

‘Marco’s, in Grove Street. Two nights a week.’

‘Okay, we’ll start there. But first, I want you to look at this.’

Standing up, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced the wedding ring found by the body. He stepped towards Charles and held it out for him to see. ‘Could this have been Carole’s?’

The man turned back towards him to look at the buckled band. After a few seconds he held up his left hand towards Skinner and Martin. The two policemen looked and saw that he wore a wedding ring, a close match, for all its distortion by the fire, in width and shade of the one which lay on Skinner’s palm.

‘We bought our rings together,’ he whispered at last. ‘I have fairly slim fingers, so they were interchangeable. ’

Skinner closed his fist on the gold band and touched the man on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, Jackie,’ he said quietly.

‘Appreciated.’ The reply was almost lost in a cough, as Charles struggled to regain self-control.

Andy Martin hesitated for a moment, before speaking, formally once again. ‘Mr Charles, can you give us the name of your wife’s dentist.’

The man stared up at him for a few seconds, with an expression of growing horror as he realised the purpose of the question, and as his imagination went to work.

‘His name,’ Martin asked again

Finally, Charles nodded. ‘John Lockie.’

‘Where does he practise?’

‘Eh? Oh, in Inverleith Row.’

‘Have you been his patients for long?’

Charles shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders, as if he was trying to focus. ‘Carole and I have been his patients for twenty years,’ he said, at last.

‘Thank you. We’ll contact him as soon as his surgery opens this morning.’

The man pushed himself to his feet. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

Martin shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, there isn’t; you just have to leave us to our work. We’ll do our best to trace this woman Donna, but at the same time, if the body is that of your wife, we’ll work to confirm it as quickly as possible.’

‘You’re alone here, Jackie, yes?’ asked Skinner.