Quintin Jardine: Skinner's ordeal

Oh my God.' His left hand went slowly to his mouth; with the other, he held out the phone. 'It's Mr Skinner, Mags, for you.

It's..

She grabbed the instrument from him, consumed with anxiety. 'Yes, sir. What is it?'

It's the Shuttle, Maggie — the seven a.m. flight to Edinburgh from Heathrow. It came down just after eight, away up behind Gifford, on the Lammermuir Hills. The thing just fell out of the sky! The disaster that we've all rehearsed so often — it's happened. I'm on my way there now, and so is the Chief. Jim Elder's heading for Fettes, but he won't be there for a while yet.

I want you to alert Charlie Radcliffe at Divisional HQ, then to call out every available officer to assist him. If they can walk, I want them there. Tell Radcliffe to close off all the roads to the Lammermuirs to everything but emergency vehicles. I want a helicopter over the site if you can dig one up. Call the RAF at Pitreavie, and see what they can give us.

Get on to Air Traffic Control after that, and make sure that they declare an exclusion zone.

I don't want TV cameras buzzing around our ears up there.

`Call Brian Mackie too, just in case there are foreign nationals on board. Oh, and you might as well tell Mario he's on Special Branch duty as of now. He's to report to Brian this morning, as acting DI.

`Remember, Mags, every available officer. By God, we're going to need them!'

The spinning blue light in his rear-view mirror snapped him out of his trance, breaking the fearful thoughts which gnawed at his stomach.

In his quarter of a century as a police officer he had attended so many scenes of carnage, that sometimes he had the strange feeling that the bulk of them had fused together in his mind, into a single bloody experience. Some had not. He recalled a bomb outrage in an auditorium in the heart of Edinburgh, where many had been killed and maimed, torn apart as they had watched an innocent entertainment. He recalled the aftermath of a fire-fight, where four people had been shot dead, and one of his own men badly wounded. He had walked in the aftermath of these bloody occasions, and of many others, not coldly, but professionally and objectively.

Yet there was something un-nameable dreadful about this call, something that had him trembling behind the wheel of his BMW.

Skinner glanced at his speedometer as the siren's whine sounded behind him. He was doing 85 m.p.h. down a straight stretch of the B6368, just past Humbie. He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he could not remember overtaking the patrol car. He slowed down and waved an acknowledgement behind him, but the vehicle overtook him at speed and pulled in, stopping unnecessarily quickly in his path, and forcing him to brake hard. Two bulky officers jumped out of the white Peugeot and headed back towards him.

Hissing with annoyance, the Deputy Chief Constable pressed his window button. The two uniforms were both Constables, in their late twenties.

`Who the fuck d'you think you are,' shouted the driver as he approached. 'Michael bloody Schumacher?'

When Skinner felt his temper go, he always began counting to ten, but he rarely made it past six. He swung the door open and stepped out of the driver's seat to face the man and his partner, staring at them, unblinking, with deep blue eyes. His features were set hard as he moved to meet the policemen.

`You tell me who I am, Constable,' he said, with something in his tone that made the driver freeze in mid-stride and his passenger edge backwards towards the patrol car.

The officer's truculence seemed to drain out of his boots. He stared at Skinner, his mouth hanging open, trying to say, 'Sorry sir,' but struck speechless.

`What's your name, Constable?' Skinner snapped.

The man recovered control by standing rigidly to attention. `PC Reader, sir.'

`Very good, Reader. At least that's something you know. Listen, I don't have time to fillet you in the way you deserve, but let me tell you this. From now on I'll be watching you like one of those things..' his right index finger jabbed upwards at a kestrel hovering in the still morning air above the hedgerow on the opposite side of the narrow road, intent on its prey.. and if I ever hear of a complaint against you of incivility to a member of the public, I'll make you wish you'd joined the Brownies rather than this police force. Now tell me this. Have you two been called to an emergency near Gifford?'

Reader nodded. 'Yes, sir.'

Okay, here's something else you should know. That takes priority over everything, especially over hassling your DCC.

Now get back in that car, keep that blue light flashing and lead me to the scene, just as fast as you can.'

The door of Yester Kirk was open as the two cars swept through Gifford village, their speed moderated.

People stood on the pavements of its wide main street, in groups of two or three, some in deep conversation, others staring at the sky, as if awaiting a slow-motion replay of the disaster.

A white-collared minister waited outside the Kirk. Skinner thought that he looked stunned, as if trying to reconcile his faith with the reality of what his Saviour had allowed to happen on his doorstep.

The cars swept up the hill out of the village, climbing towards the moors. At first the road was lined with trees, clinging to the last of their autumn colours in the wan morning sun, but gradually woodland gave way to cattle-dotted fields as the slopes began to level out.

The transition from farmland to moorland was almost instantaneous. The cars rumbled across a cattle grid, and past a final copse of trees; suddenly, the pasture grass had been replaced by acres of brown and purple heather, rolling and undulating in a strange alien landscape. Skinner looked ahead as a mottled valley opened out before him. On the far side, in the middle distance he could see three, no, four thin columns of black smoke rising towards the sky.

The smoke grew nearer, the columns thicker as they drove on over and through the bumps and hollows of the otherwise featureless moorland. At last they came to a fork in the road, with twin signs each pointing to Duns, via Cranshaws, and via Longformacus.

A uniformed Sergeant stood by the signpost, as if on guard. Skinner flashed his headlights at his escort car, and pulled to a stop himself. The officer approached as he climbed out.

Skinner recognised him at once. 'Hello, Sergeant Boyd,' he said, but without his usual affable smile of greeting. 'Where is everyone?'

The whey-faced, forty-something policeman gave him a loose, wavy salute. 'Chief Superintendent Radcliffe took the rest of the lads up the Longformacus Road, sir. He left me here to divert the traffic and to direct. So far there's only six of us here.'

Skinner grunted. 'That's a start. But in just a few minutes this place is going to be like Princes Street at the Fireworks.' Footfalls sounded behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw PC Reader and his partner approach from their parked car.

`You two,' he said, not unkindly, beginning to feel guilt over his savaging of Reader, who, after all, had been only doing his job, if a little over-aggressively. 'Stay here with Sergeant Boyd. Use your car as a road block, and divert any traffic from Gifford down the Cranshaws Road. As our people and the other emergency services get here, send them on up the road.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'Others, and especially the press and telly, hold here. Don't let them past you, and don't let them head on down the other road where they can get round behind you. I don't want cameras all over the scene, at least until the rescue operation's well under way… Sergeant, get on your radio and make sure that this road's being blocked at the other end too. I'm off to find Mr Radcliffe.'