Quintin Jardine - Skinner’s round

`Practice, partner. Practice for a lifetime, and the impossible will become merely the difficult.'

Atkinson's birdie putt never wavered, and they moved on to the second, a 385-yard dogleg hole which bent right around the hill even more severely than the first, with an area of rough on the left placed strategically to force players, in theory, to hit iron shots from the tee.

Skinner's conservative shot left him further from the green than at the much longer first, but Atkinson took his four-wood from the bag and hit a high shot, with an early hip movement which helped it fade from left to right round the curve of the hill, bending like a well-struck free-kick in soccer.

They set off down the fairway. 'I don't mind telling you, Darren,' said Skinner. 'I'll be bloody glad when this week's over, and this whole circus has left my pleasant wee county.

This whole thing started with a murder, of a man I knew, and it's ending with something just as bad.'

`What, you mean Morton?'

`Who said anything about Morton, man?'

Atkinson paused. 'Well, he ducked out of the dinner last night, then he didn't show for breakfast this morning. I figured that you'd found Mr Nice and that he'd done a runner before you could arrest him.'

`Good guess, that. We've found Andrews all right. He's been a pain in the arse all week, but we've tracked him down.' Skinner stopped as he reached his ball. He looked at the lie and the line. 'Give me a three-iron, please, Neil,' he said to McIlhenney. Taking the club from his makeshift caddy, he hit another careful shot, which carried once more to the front of the green, a few feet closer to the flag than at the first.

`Good shot,' said Darren. 'Play to match par, not beat it. Pros play for birdies, all but the very best amateurs for pars. Remember that, play enough and you could get your handicap down to something near scratch.' His perfect tee shot had left him an approach of no more than 115 yards to the green. `Wedge please, caddy.' He took the club from McGuire and hit an approach to the flag which finished even closer than the shot at the first. For a moment Skinner thought that it would drop into the hole.

As they moved on to the third, a 220-yard par-three with a green almost surrounded by bunkers, Atkinson was already two under par. He smacked his two-iron to the back of the long green, its widest point, leaving himself with a long putt but with his par secure. Skinner's three-iron was short of the green, but his thin chip ran fortuitously close to the hole to secure a third par.

They came to the fourth tee and surveyed the 465-yard hole, its fairway bisected 240 yards away by the stream which flowed from the murky Truth Loch. 'You know, Darren,' said Skinner. 'I can tell you now, I've spent a good part of this week thinking that you might be the ultimate target of whoever's been killing people out there. Anyone as good as you, and as successful as you has to have a host of enemies, and if one hated you enough to want you dead… well. I've known circumstances before when a series of crimes were committed to confuse us, and throw us off balance, while the real target is achieved.'

He shook his head. Not this time, though. Every crime committed this week has had a purpose, and very strong motives behind it. The strongest of the lot, actually: power and money. The only time we've been off balance this week was when Hector Kinture's mother sent that bloody silly note to the Scotsman.'

He fell silent as Atkinson addressed his ball and hit a towering drive, carrying the stream by fifty yards and taking a high forward bounce. He stepped up in turn, concentrating with all his might. His drive cleared the water also, and ran on to finish 300 yards out, his longest of the week.

They strode off the tee together. 'By the way,' said Skinner, `the third note was dropped off in the early hours of this morning, at the Daily Record office in George Street.'

Atkinson looked across at him, with raised eyebrows. Skinner glanced back, with a sad look in his eyes, an expression of huge disappointment.

`You know, Darren,' he said, 'it was the way you treated poor Sue Kinture that started me thinking that maybe your feet had a touch of clay in them.

I reckon you must have women throwing themselves at you all the time. But if you took those opportunities, they'd deflect your concentration from the main mission, to be Number One, and you wouldn't be quite the ruthless bastard that you are.' They reached the narrow stone bridge which crossed the stream. Skinner stood aside to allow Atkinson to cross first.

`Sue's a really nice lady you know. OK, she's married and she shouldn't have made eyes at you, but old Hector is no good to her between the sheets, and out of his frustration with his condition, he gives her a hard time now and again, so there's an excuse. But she didn't deserve what you did to her, screwing her brains out in her own house on the night of the PGA dinner, then cutting her virtually dead the next day.

`No gentleman behaves like that, Darren — yet that's your image, the first gentleman of golf.

I was really disappointed in you, when Sue told Sarah, and Sarah told me.

And then I realised.' He stopped at his ball, and hit an adrenaline-charged six-iron into the heart of the green. He handed the club back to Mcllhenney. 'As I said, I realised what had happened to cause your change of heart.'

They stopped at Atkinson's ball. The champion took an eight-iron and hit a solid shot ten feet from the flag. 'Hope I'm not putting you off talking like this,' said Skinner. 'I've got a few quid riding on you after all. It's just that it's so much easier to tell you my story out here.'

They strode steadily towards the green.

`We were discussing your behaviour towards Susan. It came to me that you changed towards her after I told you about the Keyman arrangement Hector had with Michael White, and that, because of it, he wouldn't need or want any new cash in Witches' Hill.

I remembered that and I thought, "What a pity, Darren's not such a nice guy after all, shagging the poor lady just to get her to support him as the replacement investor in the venture, then dumping her when he finds that's a non-runner." And that's all I thought at first.'

He lined up his putt and sent it a foot or two past the hole, marked his ball and watched as Atkinson's ten-footer lipped the hole, drawing a gasp from the crowd, then swung a few inches past. The champion tapped in, slapping his thigh in frustration. Skinner said nothing, but rolled in his putt for a fourth straight par.

They walked across to the fifth hole, another par-three, but shorter at 170 yards than the third.

The air seemed heavier than ever. Skinner glanced up. The clouds seemed lower, leaden and more threatening. 'Yes,' he said. 'That's all I thought at first. But then my nasty, dark, suspicious polisman's imagination went to work, and I started having the sort of thoughts that wake you up in the night.

`That's when detecting really does become like golf, Darren. After all the practice, a good golfer imagines playing the shot he's faced with, and then he plays it to make his vision reality. After all the teamwork, the good detective pictures in his mind the commission of the crime. Then he goes out to see if the evidence is there to colour in his outline. And when the really good detective goes looking, a guy like me, with a really nasty, suspicious mind, it nearly always is.'

Atkinson's back was to him, over his ball, as he finished speaking. His shot was majestic, a high seven-iron pitching over the flag. Behind them their massive gallery cheered, then groaned as the backspin this time took the Titleist back down the slope of the green. Skinner hit a five-iron. The ball caught the sole of his club and flew low. It pitched short of the green but ran on, finishing, to his and the crowd's surprise, slightly closer to the hole than the classic shot of the champion.