Quintin Jardine: Skinner's trail

`Has there been any sound from upstairs since last Friday?'

`Not at all. But I never hear anything from above. This is a good building. There's a layer of ash between the floors. That's what they did in those days. No noise gets through that. Are you sure her doorbell was working?'

Skinner nodded. 'Yes, quite sure. Has Mrs Plenderleith had any visitors lately?'

Mrs Angus thought for a moment or two. 'She hardly ever had visitors. But I did see her leaving with a man last Wednesday. It would have been early afternoon. Then she came back alone, an hour later.'

`What did he look like?' asked Martin.

`Well he'd be about your size, I'd have said. Very well dressed: one of those expensive shiny suits. Beautifully groomed. Looked like a very nice man. Maybe a friend of Mr Plenderleith?'

Neither detective responded to the heavily loaded question in her tone. Skinner simply smiled. The quality of Tony Manson's tailoring had been a legend in his lifetime. 'Thank you, Mrs Angus.'

`Andy, let's try again upstairs. Maybe Mrs Plenderleith was asleep last time.'

The sentinel of 492 Morningside Road peered after them as they disappeared once more into the tiled close.

They trotted up the stone stairway. Linda Plenderleith's green front door was on the first landing. Skinner pressed the brass button of the doorbell once more, leaning on it for several seconds. He and Martin stood in silence for almost a minute, listening for any sound within the flat, but hearing none. Skinner frowned at Martin. He tried the door handle, but the Yale lock was dropped. Suddenly he crouched down and, flipping up the letter-box, peered into the narrow hall. He shoved his nose into the rectangular opening, and sniffed deeply. Then, without a word, he stood upright once more, took a pace backwards, sprang up, and slammed the heel of his right shoe powerfully against the shiny brass circle of the door's Yale lock.

With a sound of ripping wood, the door burst open.

As soon as he stepped into the hall, Martin realised that it was the unmistakable smell of death which had alerted Skinner. They followed it into a bedroom, facing out on to Morningside Road, and found her there.

Where Tony Manson's ending had been clean, almost bloodless, Linda Plenderleith had been butchered.

She was sprawled on her back, naked, on the bed. The duvet had been thrown across the room, and lay against the wall on the right. The pillows were crimson. The sheets were crumpled, saturated with blood, and in one place stained with faeces.

Martin took a deep breath and stepped towards the body. Skinner followed slowly suppressing his revulsion and looking round the room. He saw, on the tiny dressing-table unit, a small framed photograph of a red-haired woman and a tall man. He noticed that one of the three doors of the white wardrobe unit lay open and saw, discarded on the floor before it, a bloody sweatshirt and a pair of black jeans. A pink dressing-gown had been thrown across a canvas director chair which faced the dressing mirror. Finally he steeled himself and stepped up beside Martin to look closely at what had been Linda Plenderleith.

The bloodless, pale-blue lips were beginning to shrink back from the teeth, giving them a look of protuberance. Already, with its sunken cheeks, the woman's face had taken on a skull-like appearance. The eyes were half open, but only the whites showed. The red hair was swept back, or had been pulled back, from the high forehead. The skin, where it was not smeared with blood, was exceptionally pale, almost translucent.

Skinner leaned over the carcass. As he studied it, he spoke to Martin, to maintain his detachment more than anything else. 'I think I can count six wounds to the throat. A big, crescent-shaped slash from ear to ear, probably not deep enough to do the job. Then three shorter deep cuts on the right side, and two on the left. It looks as if he straddled her, jerked her head back by the hair, and just hacked away until the blood was pumping. Look at that streak up the headboard and on to the wall. That must have happened when he hit the main artery.'

He looked more closely at the wall, his eyes widening. `Jesus Christ, Andy. Look at that. The daft bastard must have pushed against the wall when he was getting off her. That looks like a perfect left-hand print.'

Martin followed his pointing finger, and nodded agreement. 'Incredible. Whoever it was must have been in a complete frenzy. He certainly wasn't thinking about making things hard for us. Who's your money on? Was this the same bloke who did Manson? Or could this have been Tony getting even with the woman for blackmailing him?'

Skinner stood up from the woman's body and walked away.

`Andy, son, you know how much I detest jumping to conclusions, but big Lennie is a stick-on fucking certainty for this one. And I say that without even having confirmed that he's out of jail. Take a gander in here.' Martin looked around. Skinner was standing by the wardrobe units.

`There's man's stuff in here, and it's not Tony Manson's. Cheap suits, jeans, bomber jackets, all XL size. This is Lennie's kit. And look at these things on the floor. He's dumped his bloodstained stuff and changed clothes. Look at this, too.

Beckoning Martin to follow, Skinner stepped slowly alongside a trail of brownish smudges on the smoke-grey carpet, taking care not to tread on any of them. They led out of the bedroom into the hall, and from there into a long narrow bathroom. On the white PVC flooring, the brown stains were quite clearly dried blood. An electric shower was plumbed into the wall above the bath taps, and a white plastic curtain hung from a rectangular rail. A big pale-blue towel lay discarded across the toilet seat. Skinner moved carefully into the room, and looked into the bath. The safety mat had trapped some of the water from the shower. It was pink, matching that trapped in the channel between the white tiling and the edge of the tub. On the soap, in its dish, Skinner could see clearly a large, rusty-brown thumb-print.

He shook his head. 'God, he must have been covered in it! You're right, Andy. He must have been out of his tree. Wonder how long he knew. I wonder who told him about Manson and what he'd done to her. Get on the phone, Andy, and call the scene-of-crime people down here right away.'

As Martin took out his mobile phone, so Skinner pulled his own from his pocket. He searched his memory for a number, recalled it without reference to his diary, and dialled it in. `Room 35, please.'

There was a pause, then, 'Sarah Skinner.'

`Hello, my love. How are you and Jazz?'

`We're great. Jazz is out like a light. I've just fed him. God, what an appetite. I don't know how I'm going to keep up with him.'

Even in his grim surroundings, Skinner laughed. 'Listen, let me take your mind off your mammaries for a bit. I'm at another murder scene. There's a connection with Tony Manson. After your critique of Banks's performance on Sunday, I don't want to call him in on this one. I need to know with authority when the victim here died. Looking at her, I'd say she's been dead for two days at the very least, but I need to know for certain whether she could have been killed by the same person who did Tony Manson. If the answer is yes, then it looks as if all the pieces fit. Who else would you recommend?'

There was a drawn-out silence on the other end. 'No one. Send a car for me.'

`Sarah, you're kidding!'

The hell I am. Look, I'm fit as a flea. Jazz is going to sleep for three or four hours. Where are you?'

`Morningside Road.'

`Even better. That's only a mile or so from here. Now, come on, get that car down here, or you'll just have to call in old horse-doctor Banks!'

By the time that she arrived at 492 Morningside Road, Sarah's outright enthusiasm had been watered down into a strange mix of pleasure and agitation; pleasure at being back in action after her pregnancy-enforced lay-off, but a brand-new and totally unexpected restlessness over her first separation from her first-born.