Quintin Jardine: Skinner's trail

Jazz looked towards the window, as if weighing his father's words, and contemplating treats to come.

`That's enough excitement for now, though,' said Bob. As gingerly as he had picked him up, he laid the child, still less than a day old, back down in the crib. 'We'll take another walk later.'

He turned towards Sarah, and found her still-scanning the autopsy report, turning pages quickly, pausing every so often at something which she found of special interest. The bound sheaf of photographs lay at her feet, open at a close-up shot of the fatal wound.

Bob sat on the edge of the bed and waited silently for several minutes, watching her as she studied, admiring the depth of her concentration, amused by the occasional furrowing of her brow as she considered the implications of different parts of the report, frequently snorting and shaking her head as she found something with which to take issue. Eventually, she laid the book in her lap and leaned back in her chair, looking over at Bob.

For a professional report, this shows some of, but not all, the imagination of a particularly dense rock. It tells you that Manson was killed by a knife-wound to the heart — and that's it. Mary the tea-lady in my old surgery could have told you the same! No suggestions, no conclusions, nothing that will take your inquiry one step further. I suggest that in future you use this man for looking after the police horses. . no, maybe not.'

`What do you draw from it, then?' said Bob. 'Can you make suggestions?'

She shot him a look which was almost withering. He smiled at her professional pride.

`Yes. The first is a heavy probability; the second is a God shy;damned certainty! I'll excuse Banks the first one, but the other. . My God! A horse-doctor, I tell you?.

She leaned over and picked up the book of photographs. `How big was Manson?'

‘Tony? About five-eleven, I'd say. Weight? Let's see, he was a light-heavyweight boxer when he was young. That would make him twelve-and-a-half stone in his prime. He hadn't run much to fat, as you can see from the photos. Let's say fourteen stone, tops.'

`Age? Oh, yes, the report said forty-eight. Reasonably fit?'

`For sure. He could still have done his own bouncing in the pubs if necessary. . not that any of his regulars would have been so daft. What does all that tell you?'

Sarah paused.

`What I think it tells me is that whoever killed Manson was someone he knew, and he was either expecting or wasn't surprised to see.'

`How do you work that out?'

She paused again, considering her answer, examining her logic once more before committing herself. Eventually she leaned forward in her chair and looked him earnestly in the eye.

`This is a tough guy, right. A no-nonsense guy. A hard man, as you would say.'

Skinner nodded.

She lifted up the book of photographs from her lap, and turned to a wide-angle shot of the death scene that she had marked with her thumb. 'This is exactly as your people found it, yes? I assume all of them knew to touch nothing.' Again, Skinner nodded. 'Right, look at the door. Fresh prints on the handle, and it's all the way open. That means that Manson was all the way into his bedroom when he was attacked. And a fresh thumb-print on the switch means that the light was on.'

She turned back to the close-up shot of the wound. 'Look here. The angle of entry, as Banks describes it, and the force of the wound can mean only that he was attacked from the front by a strong right-handed person, let's assume a man. He was stabbed, and then he was run backwards, all two-hundred pounds of him, fast enough to smash that damned heavy balustrade when he was forced into it. For that to have happened, there must have been no defensive reflex at all from Manson as he was being attacked with the knife. If there had been, then not even Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been able to generate the sort of force and speed with which he was moved backwards. And he must have been travelling that fast for the body to have such an effect on that solid wood.'

She paused, considering her words. 'Now you're Tony Manson, major operator, experienced villain of repute, afraid of nothing and very hard man. You walk into your bedroom, switch on the light and there's a stranger facing you with a knife. Even if he's coming at you fast, you react. It's your instinct. So even as he's sticking the knife into you, you're moving against him, resisting, your last active thought being to take a pop at this intruder. You're heavy, so even a strong man will have trouble holding you up, let alone moving you backwards.'

She shook her head. 'No, Bob, I believe that Manson came into the room, switched on the light, saw someone that he knew, and was so surprised that he was frozen, his muscles completely relaxed as he was killed. Look at his face, even. He died with his jaw dropped and his eyes wide open. . in surprise. The man just slammed right into him with the knife and kept moving, making sure to get him down, to be able to finish him if he had to. Only he didn't. He'd done the job first time of asking. That's how I see it. Questions?'

Skinner looked at his wife, considering everything she had said. He stood up from the bed and walked across to the window. He gazed out at the Meadows for a few seconds, still thinking, then glanced back over his shoulder towards Sarah.

`Could he have in fact resisted, and could they have struggled together back through the doorway on to the landing?'

She shook her head with conviction. 'No way. The wound is too clean and too deep; and that way the body wouldn't have developed pace enough to smash the balustrade. Look at the photos — see how solid it is.'

He cast his mind back to the day before, and nodded his agreement. 'Yes, you're right. They were built to stop people falling, those things, not to simply give way. Could he have been attacked from behind by a stranger, and stumbled backwards?'

`Again, no way. The angle of the wound is wrong. No, either Tony was a closet wimp and froze with fright-'

`You can rule that one out!'

‘or he was surprised to death.’

Skinner looked at her for a few seconds more, then smiled. `Okay, Prof. If that's your heavy probability, I'll buy it. Now what's your certainty.'

She smiled back, pleased, and picked up the photographs once more. As she flicked through them she asked, Was Manson left-handed?'

`Eh? Buggered if I know.' Bob's forehead wrinkled as he searched his memory. 'Hey no! Wait a minute! I remember seeing him box once; must be twenty-five years ago. He was a southpaw. Yes, that would mean that he was left-handed. Why d'you need to know?'

She found the photograph for which she had been looking. `See here.' She held it up to Skinner. Taken at the postmortem, the shot was a close-up view of the ends of the fingers of Manson's left hand, facing palm upwards.

`Yes?'

`Standard practice at an autopsy: look under the finger shy;nails.' She turned to the next photograph. 'This is what they found under the nails of Manson's left hand' Skinner looked again. The ragged bits were magnified so that, in the colour exposure, Skinner recognised them easily as scraps of skin all flecked with blood, and one clearly with tissue attached.

He stared back at Sarah, his question clear in his eyes, and she answered at once.

`The knife's gone in. Manson's dead but he doesn't quite know it yet. Even as he's hurtling backwards, with the blade in his heart, his left hand clamps on to the wrist holding the knife. Like this.'

She reached up and grabbed his arm, her palm underneath, her fingers touching the base of his hand.

The nails dig in, deep. It's a death grip. When he goes down, the man rips his hand free, and Manson's nails tear a great chunk out of his wrist. Just about there.' As she released him, she stroked the area which she had held. 'When you find the man who killed Tony Manson, you may take it from me, he will have either deep, ragged scratches or — if you don't catch him that quick — small scars on the inside of his right wrist.'