Quintin Jardine: Skinner's trail

Skinner slumped to his knees beside the pool, faint suddenly with exhaustion. A few feet away, Lennie Plenderleith's head and shoulders broke the surface once more. Skinner reached out weakly for him, but he had floated to the centre of the pool. He crouched there, wondering if he had strength left to dive in and pull the giant out, and if he had the will to subdue him once again, should he revive. He hauled himself painfully upright — and, as he did, the chamber was suddenly illuminated by the beam of a flashlight.

Are you all right, sir?'

Skinner looked around. He stood in the spread of the light, his shirt soaked, his steel-grey hair plastered to his head, blood trickling from his broken nose, and from an angled cut over his left eye. His right foot was throbbing from the force of his last kick, and he stood awkwardly, trying to keep as much weight as possible on his left side.

Brian Mackie and Mario McGuire stood in the doorway, gazing at him in naked astonishment.

`Don't be flicking stupid, Brian. Of course I'm not all right! But I'm a fucking sight better than that guy in there — and better still than the one on the bottom. Now, fish Big Lennie out before he drowns, and handcuff him before he wakes up. I'd help but, quite frankly, I'm knackered!'

They brought us here in the same ambulance, would you believe. Big Lennie's still badly concussed, but he's conscious and talking. His right arm's broken and they've just taken him off to set it. Otherwise he's not too bad. I kicked him hard enough to take a normal man's head right off, but they say all he'll have is a headache and a stiff neck for a couple of days, and that'll be it. I had another talk with him once he'd come round. He said that he'd make a statement to the Guardia Civil, admitting to killing Santi Alberni. So tomorrow morning you can call Gloria and tell her she can begin to look forward to sticking it up her insurance company.'

`That's great,' said Sarah, on the other end of the telephone. `But what about you? You aren't kidding me, are you? You are fine?'

He glanced at his face in a mirror on the wall of the Royal Infirmary's Accident and Emergency Unit, from where he had been allowed to telephone his wife. He chuckled. 'I've been better looking, but, yes, love, I'm okay. Honest. They've straightened my nose and put a couple of stitches in my forehead. And they've taken pictures of my foot and satisfied themselves that it isn't broken. So I'll be limping home in a few hours.'

`A few hours! Why so long?'

`Because I'm going into the office to dictate a statement, while it's all still crystal clear in my head, for Ruth to type up in the morning.'

`Okay, I'll see you whenever. Just wear a paper bag over your head, if you think you might frighten the baby! He's with me just now and, as you can possibly hear, he's not best pleased at being wakened in the middle of the night!'

Bob laughed, a mixture of amusement and — though Sarah could not and, if he could avoid it, would never realise it — sudden relief at being alive to enjoy more moments with his wife and son.

'Oh,' said Sarah urgently. 'I almost forgot. How's Andy?'

`No problem. He's got a hard head, too. He was only out for a few minutes. It looked worse than it was. They've X-rayed him and stitched him up, and he's signed himself out. The doctor here offered him a bed for the night, but he said he'd rather sleep it off at home. I'd forgotten: he's signed off on two weeks' holiday. Now I'm off too. There's a driver waiting at the door for me. I had my car taken to Fettes in case I did wind up with my foot in plaster. Go back to sleep now, you and wee Jazz. I'll see you both in the morning.'

He hung up, wondering for that moment how Sarah had known of Andy Martin's accident. Then he shook his head and limped towards his driver at the door.

‘So that's the story, Ruth,' said Skinner to his tape-recorder, as the early-shift staff began to wind their way up the drive below his office window in the early morning sunshine. 'That's Skinner's trail. It started in Edinburgh, wound through half a dozen countries, and ended back on our own doorstep. The story's full of greed and violence and death. But it's about honour, too. Big Lennie Plenderleith, or Dominic Jackson as he would have been for the rest of his life, is in a strange way one of the most honourable men I have ever met. He had his legacy, the sort of fortune the rest of us can only dream about, and he had a whole new life in front of him. As he said, he was free and clear. And yet he gambled it all, and he lost it all, to repay his debt of honour to Tony Manson. I tell you, Ruth, Big Lennie is certainly the toughest man I've ever come up against, but he sure as hell isn't the worst.'

The recorder whined a warning that its micro-cassette was about to run out.

`Right,' said Skinner as he switched it off and took out the tape, putting it beside two others in his typing tray. 'That's it. Home, Robert — but on the way let's call in to compare stitches with young Martin.'

He drove the BMW carefully through the morning rush hour, saving his still-aching foot as best he could, enduring the traffic queues which he normally hated, until he arrived outside the grey Victorian terrace just behind Haymarket where Andy Martin lived. He parked, glancing in the driver's mirror as he climbed out of the car. He smiled, wincing, as he saw the swelling across the bridge of his nose, and the bruised bump around the cut.

`Let's see if you can beat that lot, boy,' he said to the sunny morning.

Martin's flat was on the second floor, and his injured foot made the climb awkward, but eventually he reached the blue-painted front door. He pressed the bell-push and waited. Thirty seconds passed without an answer. He pressed again, and waited for another minute. He smiled and shook his head.

`Dozy bastard,' he said. He pressed the bell for a third time and thumped the door with his fist. ‘Polis’ he shouted, disguising his voice, 'Open up in there!'

There was a muffled response from within. At last the door swung open. There stood a young woman. She was wearing a man's satin robe, in blue, with the monogram 'AM' on the breast pocket. She was rubbing her hair vigorously with a huge peach-coloured towel. One of its corners had fallen across her face.

`I'm sorry,' said the hooded woman, her speech muffled by the towel. 'I was in the shower. Andy's just nipped down to the shops to buy a paper and some-'

As she spoke she looked up and, as she did so, her voice grew more distinct, and the towel fell from her face. The sentence tailed off unfinished as she stared at Skinner. Her eyes were wide, mirroring the blank astonishment in his. Her mouth, like his, hung open slightly.

Time stopped. Afterwards, neither would be able to say for how long they stood there in their frozen tableau. But in whatever time it was, in that time worlds moved and lives changed.

Eventually the woman recovered her voice, or at least a vestige of it. She smiled, tentatively. `Hi, Pops.'