Quintin Jardine - Skinner’s round

It turns out to be pretty easy. Rick phones Morton, doesn't he? He tells him he wants to meet him in secret, last night. Maybe he says that he wants to talk to him about his company and yours co-operating now that Masur's out of the way.' Skinner was looking closely at Atkinson as he spoke. Beneath the mask of impassivity, he thought that he detected the faintest twitch of an eyebrow.

`Morton agrees to meet him. He says he'll skip the dinner. Rick says, "Good, let's meet where no one'll interrupt us. How about on top of Witches' Hill, just after dark?" Morton says OK, and he's a dead man.'

Skinner lined up his putt, lagging it almost perfectly once more, leaving himself an eighteen-inch tap-in. Atkinson stalked his putt like a tiger, in pursuit of his seventh birdie, but once again found only the lip of the hole.

It was only when I stood on the top of that hill this morning, looking at what was left of Morton that the whole thing fell into place,' said Skinner as they walked from the green. 'I thought about his "doppelganger" remark, I thought about Henry's case of mistaken identity, I thought about the second note, and I knew right then what I should have worked out yesterday. If I had, I'd have saved Morton's life.

It takes a very special sort of person to plan and to do what your brother Rick did to Morton'

The policeman's conversational tone had gone, and his voice was hard and cold. 'I've only ever met one other man who could have done that. I breathed a sigh of genuine relief when he died. But now I've met two more like him.

`To lure him up there; to ambush him; to handcuff him to a tree; to pile the wood around him; to set fire to it; to stuff his handkerchief into his mouth to choke off his screams. And then, I guess, to watch him, as he writhed against the flames, until you were quite sure the job was done.

`Yes, you're very special guys, you Atkinsons. I'm looking forward to meeting you side by side.'

They had reached the fifteenth tee, 195 yards away from its small green, which sloped away so that only the top of the flag could be seen. Although only a par-three, it had proved the most difficult hole on the course.

`So how about it, Darren?' said Skinner, very quietly, so that only he and Atkinson could hear. 'This has been one-way traffic so far. I've shown you what I can see with my detective's vision. It's all logical, and to me it's all unanswerable truth, and maybe I can even prove it. So what d'you say? Underneath all that calm, have I got to you, you ruthless, murderous bastard?'

The golfer turned to him, with the animal look on his face once more. 'Sure Bob. I'm just scared helpless. Let me show you how scared I am.'

He turned and called to McGuire, the professional smile brought back as quickly as it had been banished. Four-iron, please, Mario.'

He took the club from McGuire, and hit a shot so audacious that even Skinner was amazed.

Rather than playing the hole in the only way which seemed possible, by hitting safely to the back of the green and settling for two safe putts, he fired in a shot on a lower trajectory. The backspin seemed to make the ball sizzle off the club-face. The crowd sucked in its collective breath in suspense as it zoomed towards the target, to pitch, clearly, above the flag. Suddenly the gallery clustered on the viewing platform behind the green, roared its applause. `Bugger,' said Atkinson quietly, after a few seconds. 'It hasn't gone in, they're not jumping high enough!'

Through the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth, Bob Skinner, the rest of the onlookers, and the television audience across Europe, saw a display which was to be ranked by commentators as the finest burst of tournament golf ever played. Atkinson seemed to select shots which looked impossible, then to execute each one perfectly. The ten-inch birdie putt at the fifteenth was followed on the next hole by two six-iron shots, one from the tee, the next to within a yard of the flag. The 527-yard seventeenth was humbled by an impossibly long drive, a five-iron and a six-foot putt for an eagle, taking the imperious champion to ten under par.

In the face of this awesome, intimidating display, Skinner kept his concentration. He felt himself inspired by the unspoken challenge of this chilling man, and played the best golf of his own life, extending his string of successive pars to what was for him an unprecedented seventeen.

At last they stood together on the eighteenth tee. 'Looks like you're in the money, Bob,' said Atkinson, and Skinner alone caught the trace of mockery in his voice. 'A par up the last for a sixty-two, and this finishing hole; I mean it really isn't worthy of me.' He looked down the 472-yard par-four hole. The southern side of the Truth Loch made a jagged bite into the fairway, intimidating to Skinner. From the championship tee, anyone taking a direct line to the flag had to carry his drive 290 yards over water to gain the reward of a mid-iron approach. Nearer the tee to the left there was a second landing area, allowing the professionals a safer option of hitting a two-iron or three-wood. Closer still there was a third section of fairway which required only a 180-yard carry but left a second shot of around 300 yards to the green.

`You went on about me rubbishing the course, Bob, and by and large you're right. All things considered, most of it is pretty good. But this hole really is too easy for me. All I have to do is hit over the water and it's at my mercy.

`Well, not for me. If O'Malley can't design a decent finish for me, I'll create my own challenge.'

I understand,' said Skinner. 'There's the rest of us, and there's you, Darren, or at least you and Rick. That's how you see life, isn't it?'

Atkinson looked at him, and Skinner caught in his eyes, as well as the deadly ruthlessness, something which he had seen only once before in his life, an arrogance, a belief in personal infallibility so strong that it seemed to engulf mere fanaticism and carry on to something beyond. 'Have it as you will,' he said.

He called out to McGuire. 'Four-iron, please, Mario.' The knowledgeable crowd murmured in surprise. Skinner, who had been doing his best all week to ignore the spectators' presence, looked at them over his shoulder, and saw for the first time among them, his daughter. A slight frown creased Alex's forehead.

He turned back to watch Atkinson, feeling on his face the first fat drops of the rain which had been threatening all afternoon. 'First landing area, Bob,' said the golfer quietly. He hit an easy gentle shot which soared high over the water to pitch softly in the centre of the first promontory. 'There, that leaves me three hundred to the green, and a bunker in line with the flag. No one could get on in two from there. A hundred quid says I get a birdie. Got the bottle for that, Mr Skinner?'

`You're on,' said the policeman, evenly. 'Neil, my driver please.' He lined up on the central landing area, swung smoothly and struck the ball as cleanly as he could. The distance across the water was 230 yards, but the adrenaline was coursing through his body and the ball cleared it easily. Its leftto-right fade was accentuated by a friendly bounce, leaving him around 190 yards to the green.

As Skinner walked from the tee, pulling on his new all-weather garment, Atkinson fell into step beside him. 'You know, Bob,' he said, with undisguised mockery. 'This story you've told me, it's really good. It flows along nicely, I have to admit. But a story is all it will ever be,

'cause it's got a couple of loose bricks.

“For openers, I remember quite well meeting that dozy greenkeeper — on Monday — and giving him an autograph. I was heading off to practice and I signed it in a hurry. Golfers are notorious among collectors; half the autographs we do are written on the march, so no two signatures look the same… apart from those on cheques. That's how it was with Webb.'