Quintin Jardine: Skinner's ghosts

'Mark!' said Skinner sharply. 'His name is Mark.'

He squeezed his eyes tight shut, partly to stem the hot tears which he felt springing up, and partly to try to stop himself shaking with tension.

'After what that woman's endured, and done,' he murmured, when he had calmed himself. 'For it to end like this…'

He stood up, stil holding the phone and turned to face Pam, his back to the muslin-draped window. 'You say Neil and Sammy are there?'

'That's right. Sammy was with me when the cal came in. And I thought you'd want the big fella here.

'I tried to raise Sergeant Masters, but she's on day off.' Skinner searched for an undertone in his friend's remark, but found none.

'Forget Pam,' he said. 'She doesn't need to be there. I'l be with you in Edinburgh inside an hour. Meantime, I suggest you contact the grandparents. Mark's very close to Roland's father. Let's pray that he's with him.'

He replaced the phone in its cradle and looked down at Pamela.

'What…' she began, before Skinner forestal ed her question.

'A very good friend,' he said. 'Leona McGrath. The MP for Edinburgh Dean. You must remember her. Her husband was kil ed in the plane crash last year. She fought the seat, and won it.' Pam nodded.

'Well, now it's her time to die. She's been murdered.'

He stood there before her, naked, and heaved a huge sigh. 'Oh my girl,' she said, 'when you live with me, you find that some terrible things force their way into your life. Even in the quietest moments, you're never safe from them.

'Think you can cope with it?' He reached for his clothes and began to dress.

The house was so familiar to him. He walked past the uniformed officers who stood guard at the head of the driveway, his sandals crunching their way up the narrow gravel path which led from the gate.

The front door was open. He stepped into the hal, pul ing on a white scene-of-crime tunic and overshoes before venturing further.

Properly clad now and knowing exactly where he was going, he strode into the drawing room, then through to the wooden conservatory.

Around him, specialist technicians were bent over their work, dusting down doors, windows and furniture for fingerprints, in the hope that one – even a fragment of one – would have been left by the intruder rather than by Leona or her son. Skinner nodded approval of the team's tenacity, even though experience told him that the chances of their work being rewarded were around one in five.

As he stepped back into the hall he col ided with another white-suited figure, three or four inches shorter in height than his own six foot two, but distinctive, with his shock of red hair.

'Hello Inspector,' he said grimly. 'How's it going?'

'All the mess is upstairs, sir. It looks clean as a whistle down here,' said Arthur Dorward, confirming Skinner's pessimism. 'The back door's been jemmied, but other than that, nothing's disturbed. Mrs McGrath's in the front bedroom, top of the stairs.

'That's where you'l find Mr Martin.'

The DCC nodded. 'Come with me then. I'l welcome your insight.

ME still here, is he?'

Inspector Dorward nodded. 'Aye, sir. Dr Banks as usual.' He paused. 'He's not a patch on his predecessor, if you don't mind my saying so.'

He did mind, very much, but he let it pass. There was no point in taking his bitterness out on an honest soldier like the scene-of-crime Inspector, especial y when he knew that he was speaking no more than the truth. Dr Sarah Grace Skinner was the best murder-scene examiner he had ever encountered, gifted with an uncanny ability to paint compelling pictures of events from the very slightest of clues. As he and Dorward climbed the stair a huge pang of regret shot through him.

Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Martin, Head of CID, was standing in the doorway of the bedroom as they reached the upper landing, leaning against its upright, his broad back to them in its white suit.

Skinner stepped up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing him out into the hal. 'Hi, son,' he said quietly. 'Is Banks nearly finished?'

Martin nodded. 'You know him. He's taken forever, but he's just about done now.'

'Mmm,' said the DCC. 'I suppose I'd better take a look then.' He made a conscious effort to brace himself as he stepped into the room.

Skinner believed deeply that every good police officer had a tolerance limit when it came to viewing the bodies of murder victims.

He knew that he had passed his own a long time before. One of the benefits of Chief Officer rank was the ability to delegate, to opt out personal y from the messy end, where once he would have attended automatical y.

Yet some circumstances, like the murder of a public figure, and this, the murder of a woman who had come to be a very close friend, stil demanded his presence. And of course, once there, on view himself, he could show no weakness.

He thought that he had prepared himself mentally for what he would see, but a moan still escaped his lips as he looked at the body of Leona McGrath.

'Oh, no,' said Bob Skinner, out loud for al to hear. 'You poor wee lass. What bastard did that to you?'

And then the rage – cold, blind, savage rage – took over. 'When I lay hands on you, whoever you may be…' he hissed.

'I think we all feel like that, sir,' said Martin, his green eyes narrowed slightly and his shoulders bunched.

Skinner knelt beside the body. The little woman… she had been not much over five feet tall… lay on her back. Her arms were twisted under her and the policeman knew without looking that the wrists were bound together. She was naked, save for a brassiere, still fastened, but forced up above her breasts. She was covered in blood.

From her vagina, it was matted in her thick growth of pubic hair, and smeared across her thighs and belly. From her nose and mouth, it was spread across her face, shoulders and chest, staining the white bra. From her left ear ran a single crimson line. Before her heart had stopped pumping, it had flowed into a puddle, congealed now on the fawn-coloured carpet.

Great vivid bruises and welts showed all over her pallid, yellowish skin. The most vivid were on her face, and on her side, just below her left breast, as if a fist had pounded on her, time and time again.

Her face was swol en grotesquely, from the beating and from the white garments – panties, he guessed, possibly more than one pair 10 which had been stuffed into her mouth. A single black nylon stocking had been wound around her neck, more than once, as a strangling ligature, then tied off, ferociously tight. The flesh around it was blue and puffed.

Finally, when he could avoid them no longer, Skinner looked at her eyes. They were bulging, staring up at him, and so ful of anger and remonstration that he winced and looked away for a second, before closing them, almost reverently, with his right hand.

Gently, he turned her on to her side. Her wrists were indeed bound, with the electric cord of a black hair-dryer. Just above the blood which was caked on her buttocks, there were vivid red marks where its plug had been crushed into her flesh. He leaned closer, to look at her hands.

Her fingernails were long, and appeared to be painted with a hard clear varnish. On the tips of three, on her right hand, he could see what appeared to be blood.

He glanced up at Martin. 'Andy,' he said. 'Untie her hands, while I hold her, would you.' Without a word, the grim-faced Head ofCID did as he was asked.

'Plastic bags on the hands, please Doctor,' said Skinner to the Medical Examiner, who stood a few feet away. 'There's blood on her nails, and it might not be hers.' He rol ed the body over, and laid her face down, partly to help Banks cover her fingers and partly to hide her poor battered features from the others in the room. Almost without thinking, he unfastened the bra.