Quintin Jardine: Skinner's ghosts

The mobile's display lit up, green amidst the bracken. Skinner pressed 'Send', then hefted his carbine up to his shoulder, looking through his very special telescopic sight, and training it on the window beside the black-painted front door of the house.

He heard the ringing in his ear, once, twice, a third time. On the fourth ring a tall, slim, fair-haired figure stepped into the hall, from the left. He was wearing glasses. Framed in the window, Skinner saw him pick up the telephone.

'Good morning, Mr Heuer,' he said calmly and evenly, before the man could speak himself. 'Please don't move a muscle, other than to look down at your shirt. Just left of centre, where you heart is.'

Through the sight, he saw the man look down slowly at a smal red dot on his shirt, a dot which was not printed on, yet which stayed rock-steady.

'That's good,' said Skinner. 'I think you might know what that dot is. Nod if you do.' Very slowly, Peter Gilbert Heuer nodded his head.

'That's right, it's the trace from a laser sight, mounted in this case on an H K carbine, not very far away. I am very, very good with an H K. My name's Bob Skinner, by the way. It's my turn to phone you now.

'As I'm sure you've worked out by now, Mr Heuer, if you drop the phone, or make any attempt to move from the spot on which you're standing right now, that nice wee red dot will turn all of a sudden into a black hole and you will be dead.

'Now.' His voice became rock-hard. 'Where are the children?'

'They are in the kitchen.' Heuer's voice was still flat and calm, but no longer assertive.

'Are they alive?'

'Yes.'

'And they are alone? There is no-one else in the house?'

'No-one.'

'If there is, you're dead, whatever else happens. You know that, Heuer, do you?'

For the first time, the voice was less than calm. 'There is no-one.

I swear.'

Skinner raised his voice, so that it would be picked up by the radio lying in front of him. 'Okay, Andy. Kids in the kitchen. Kick the back door in. Go. Go. Go. Fire two shots when you're clear.'

He held the sight on Heuer. 'If there's any unpleasant surprise waiting in there for my mate,' he said, 'I'll shoot your eyes out. Are you religious?' he asked suddenly, almost conversationally.

'No.' The voice was flat and calm once more.

'I'd give it some thought right now, if I were you. There are a few ghosts waiting for you on the other side. I asked about you, Peter, and now I know what your obsession is.'

He paused, studying Heuer's face through the sight, seeing it twitch, and watching his eyes shift around as he peered through the window into the sunlight.

'You're a contractor,' he pronounced at last. 'Or you were, until you cocked it up. You did wet jobs in the intelligence community.

You were an assassin, Peter, back then, when our paths first crossed.

'You didn't go into the Polish Consulate that night to steal the silver, did you? You went in to kil the Consul and his wife. Those were your orders. Our people were going to plant documents to make it look as if the Pole had been working for East Germany, and that the Stasi had killed him.

'The whole idea was to create a big stooshie within the Warsaw Pact, and give Solidarity a big shove forward.'

The red dot wavered on Heuer's white shirt, as a sudden tremor went through him. 'Careful,' cal ed Skinner, and it steadied immediately. 'I told you, not as much as a twitch, boy.'

He paused. 'But you made an arse of it, Peter. You didn't do your homework. You missed the second alarm. Or by your way of it, you weren't told about it.

'For you decided that you'd been set up. You expected your 270 paymasters to have you released on some technicality. But they felt that would be too risky, and that you'd have to do time for your mistake. Natural y, being a psychopathic type, you took it personally.

'But what I want to know is why you took it out on me, you cunt.

I was only a poor innocent copper doing my job when I gave evidence at your trial.'

In the sight, he saw Heuer look out of the window, his eyes searching the bracken. 'No you were not,' he said. 'You were part of the plot. It was your evidence more than any other which had me convicted, and you lied in the witness box, Skinner. There never was a second alarm. There was a last-minute change of plan; someone at the top took cold feet.

'My own people tipped you off. By then, it was the only way they could stop me. So they did, and then they left me to rot.'

Skinner laughed into the phone. 'How long did it take you to work that story out, Peter? Careful now,' he warned as Heuer reacted to his taunt.

'There was no plot to get you. Your mission was meant to succeed, but you fucked it up. Of course there was a second alarm. It was even visible too. A small line-of-sight transmitter on the roof, aimed directly into our communication tower at headquarters. It looked like a radio aerial, and that's what you thought it was.

'You can't accept the idea that you're fallible, can you, Heuer?

You never could. That's why you were kicked out of the Army. They let you off then, when you departed from an operational plan in Argentina in 1982 and had two of your men killed. They let you resign, because the op was secret and they couldn't have a court martial. And because you had a special talent for killing people, they passed you on to the intelligence community.

'How many people did you kil for our side, and for the Americans?

A couple of dozen, was it?'

As Skinner paused, two shots rang out around the Gul y. He smiled.

'Free and clear,' he said. 'Mission accomplished. You've cocked it up again, Peter. You'l probably blame the RAF this time.

'Face it, at last, man,' he went on. 'You got yourself caught in the Polish Consul's house, before you had killed him, fortunately. You were nicked by three carloads of our people. A dozen of them. There was no way, with that number of witnesses, that anyone could get you out of it.

'For fuck's sake, you were even paid when you were inside, even though you'd botched the job. To keep you loyal, they thought.'

His voice hardened. 'You've been planning this for years, haven't you? You did your time, five years with parole, and even took on a couple of jobs when you came out four years ago. Yet al the time 271 you were planning to make your bosses pay big-time for the years you did inside.'

Unexpectedly, Skinner chuckled, startling Heuer, making the red dot jump. 'They are not pleased with you this time, not at all. Do you know, they even asked me to kil you. They don't want any of this coming out in a trial, you see, so they asked me to do you in, very quietly, resisting arrest sort of thing.

'What d'you think of that?' he said, a shocked tone in his voice.

'Asking me, a policeman, to kil you. That's how much they want you dead.' He paused. 'No, Peter, no,' he said sharply. 'Don't move yet. Not til Andy and the kids are well clear. And keep the phone pressed to your ear.'

Through his own earpiece, he could hear Heuer's breathing, no longer even, but heavy and ragged, making the red dot seem to ripple on his shirt as he watched.

'Imagine, thinking that I'd do that,' he went on. 'Even though you terrified two kids out of their wits, and did things that may well scar them emotionally for life. I mean, did you hear Mark's voice when he learned from the radio that his mum was dead? And what about Tanya, after you blew her mum's brains out right in front of her?

'As for Leona, would you have raped and kil ed her, if she hadn't been someone you knew I was fond of? You were watching her house that Friday night, Peter, weren't you?

'Come on, I want an answer. You were watching, and you saw the bedroom light go on, isn't that right?'

'Yes!' cried Heuer.

The detective drew in a deep breath. 'Boy,' he said. 'You must be thinking that al your Christmas days have come at once, right now.