The Bad Fire (Bob Skinner series, Book 31): A shocking murder case brings danger too close to home for ex-cop Bob Skinner in this gripping Scottish crime thriller Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Portador Ltd

  Extract from Cold Case copyright © 2018 Portador Ltd

  The right of Quintin Jardine to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2019 by

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  First published as an Ebook in 2019 by

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  Ebook conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

  Jacket photograph © age fotostock/Alamy Stock Photo (burning barn); © Brenda McGee-Paap/Shutterstock (field and fence); hxdbzxy/Shutterstock (smoke).

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 5582 2

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Quintin Jardine

  Also by Quintin Jardine

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Then . . .

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Seventy-Seven

  . . . And now

  Read an extract from COLD CASE

  About the Author

  Quintin Jardine was born once upon a time in the West: of Scotland rather than America, but still he grew to manhood as a massive Sergio Leone fan. On the way there he was educated, against his will, in Glasgow, where he ditched a token attempt to study law for more interesting caareers in journalism, government propaganda and political spin-doctoring. After a close call with the Brighton Bomb, he moved into the riskier world of media relations consultancy, before realising that all along he had been training to become a crime writer.

  Now, more than forty published novels later, he never looks back. Along the way he has created/acquired an extended family in Scotland and Spain. Everything he does is for them.

  He can be tracked down through his website www.quintinjardine.me.

  Praise for Quintin Jardine

  ‘A masterclass in how murder-mysteries ought to be written’ Scots Magazine

  ‘Well constructed, fast-paced, Jardine’s narrative has many an ingenious twist and turn’ Observer

  ‘Very engaging as well as ingenious, and the unravelling of the mystery is excellently done’ Allan Massie, Scotsman

  ‘Remarkably assured, raw-boned, a tour de force’ New York Times

  ‘Deplorably readable’ Guardian

  ‘A triumph. I am first in the queue for the next one’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘The perfect mix for a highly charged, fast-moving crime thriller’ Glasgow Herald

  ‘Gritty cop drama that makes Taggart look tame’ Northern Echo

  By Quintin Jardine and available from Headline

  Bob Skinner series:

  Skinner’s Rules

  Skinner’s Festival

  Skinner’s Trail

  Skinner’s Round

  Skinner’s Ordeal

  Skinner’s Mission

  Skinner’s Ghosts

  Murmuring the Judges

  Gallery Whispers

  Thursday Legends

  Autographs in the Rain

  Head Shot

  Fallen Gods

  Stay of Execution

  Lethal Intent

  Dead and Buried

  Death’s Door

  Aftershock

  Fatal Last Words

  A Rush of Blood

  Grievous Angel

  Funeral Note

  Pray for the Dying

  Hour of Darkness

  Last Resort

  Private Investigations

  Game Over

  State Secrets

  A Brush with Death

  Cold Case

  The Bad Fire

  Primavera Blackstone series:

  Inhuman Remains

  Blood Red

  As Easy As Murder

  Deadly Business

  As Serious as Death

  Oz Blackstone series:

  Blackstone’s Pursuits

  A Coffin for Two

  Wearing Purple

  Screen Savers

  On Honeymoon with Death

  Poisoned Cherries

  Unnatural Justice

  Alarm Call

  For the Death of Me

  The Loner

  Mathew’s Tale

  About the Book

  Nine years ago, divorcee Marcia Brown took her own life. A pillar of the community, she had been accused of theft, and it’s assumed that she was unable to live with the shame. Now her former husband wants the case reopened. Marcia was framed, he says, to prevent her exposing a scandal. He wants justice for Marcia. And Alex Skinner, Solicitor Advocate, the dau
ghter of retired Chief Constable Sir Robert Skinner, has taken on the brief, aided by her investigator Carrie McDaniels.

  When tragedy strikes and his daughter comes under threat, Skinner steps in. His quarry is about to discover that the road to hell is marked by bad intentions . . .

  This is for my lovely wife, Eileen, whose essence is unchanging.

  Then . . .

  Threat and danger come with the territory I patrol, the place where I make my living.

  It’s the nature of my work. Scottish criminal defence lawyers are guided by a professional principle that we can’t pick and choose our clients, and I have to adhere to that rule, difficult as it may be on occasion. Some of the people I have represented in court have been as utterly reprehensible as the crimes of which they have been accused, but even beasts have a fundamental right to the best defence available. Sometimes that’s been me, Alexis Skinner, Solicitor Advocate. Sometimes I’ve gone home and stepped straight into the shower to wash off the taint of the creep I’ve been doing my level best to return to society.

  It wasn’t always like this. When I left Glasgow University with my brand-new law degree (Honours), I wasn’t bound for the high court, or any other level of the justice game. My first port of call was Scotland’s top corporate law firm, Curle Anthony Jarvis. It was headed at the time – still is – by my dad’s friend Mitchell Laidlaw. (Everyone knows my father; my father knows everyone. I’m sure that if Lloyd George was still around, they’d be acquainted.) Don’t go thinking, though, that I was the teacher’s pet; Mitch is a tough dude, and with him, the reputation of the firm is head and shoulders above any other consideration. My success as a corporate lawyer was down to my ability and the hard work that made them shedloads of money. And I was successful; the youngest partner in the firm’s modern era, and winner of a couple of legal awards along the way. I was a rising star, with a glittering and lucrative future set out before me.

  Occasionally I would stare at the ceiling and ask myself, ‘Alex, why did you do something so profoundly fuckin’ stupid as walk away from all that?’

  But I know the answer. It was my dad, wasn’t it?

  I have met, but not for long, a couple of people – men, simpletons – who asserted that the legal avenue I chose at the beginning of my career was an act of rebellion against an authoritarian upbringing. Nothing could be further from the truth. My father, Sir Robert Morgan Skinner, QPM, remains the coolest guy I know. Yes, he had a ferocious reputation as a serving police officer. He scared the shit out of some very hard men. But at home he was Huggy Bear. My mother died when I was four, and he raised me to adulthood on his own. There were a few ‘aunties’ along the way, and one had some clothes in his wardrobe for a while, but he remained resolutely single until I was grown and flown. There are those who would say that he might have been better staying that way, for in the last twelve years he’s had three marriages, to two women, and another unfortunate relationship that did him no good at all, but he has settled down now, for good, I am certain.

  He is growing older gracefully. I am thirty-one, which makes him mid fifties, but he has the look and bearing of a younger man. He acts like one too, and that worries me. He’s always had a tendency to draw trouble, and I suspect that in times past he’s gone looking for it. He has an image of impregnability, but he’s been shot, and sustained a near-fatal stab wound in a random attack; and he has a cardiac pacemaker installed as a result of a condition called bradycardia, which makes the heartbeat drop suddenly and without warning, in his case to zero. Not long ago, he was mugged in a garage by a Russian thug. It didn’t end well for the guy, but not before Dad had sustained a heavy blow to the head. He said it was nothing, but Sarah, my stepmother, confessed to me that it’s had an aftermath: occasional but severe headaches and a couple of dizzy spells.

  When I was young, I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, as my mother had been. Somewhere along the line that changed, and I wanted to be a cop. The motivation for my switch was Pops’ girlfriend, Alison Higgins, who was a detective inspector. She showed me that women could be significant players in a service that was evolving rapidly, moving away from the sexist, bigoted outfit that my father had joined, emerging as one where merit was rewarded and where the glass ceiling, while it still existed, was moving higher and higher. He was one of the drivers of that change, and so it was only natural that I expected when I announced my future career choice, with the unshakeable self-assurance of a fourteen-year-old, that he would beam with delight and support me.

  ‘Like hell you will!’ he barked at me across the dinner table. To say that I was taken aback, that’s putting it mildly. I couldn’t remember him ever raising his voice to me in anger, not even when I was at my most wilful – and I had been wilful, after Mum’s death and again as puberty crept up on me, a period of my life that her sister, Aunt Jean, had helped me through. It wasn’t only the vehemence of his reproof that startled me; there was something in his eyes that I had never seen before.

  One of his team in the CID Serious Crimes squad, Mario McGuire, a detective constable on whom I had a small crush, had told me a story about being in the room when ‘the Big Man’ (Mario was huge himself) had interrogated a suspect in an armed robbery. ‘He never said a word, Alex. He sat there and looked at the suspect, stared at him across the table, never blinking, drilling holes in the guy with those eyes. It went on for minutes: Christ, I was scared, and I was sitting next to him. He never moved, never lifted a finger. The prisoner, who was no pussy, let me tell you, tried to stare him out, for maybe thirty seconds, but he couldn’t hold it, couldn’t look at him. The tension built and built until you could have cut in into blocks and built a house with it, until finally the prisoner threw both hands up and said, “Okay, okay, Ah was there! But Ah jist drove, mind. The other two had the shooters.” Then he told us where to find them, gave us a full statement and earned himself a couple of years off his sentence in the process.’

  I had doubted that story – Mario was one of my father’s fan club, and I thought he was exaggerating – but that look, that glare made me a believer.

  That’s not to say I was as compliant as the armed robber. I fired back at him. ‘It’s what I want, Pops! I want to be a police officer and you can’t stop me.’

  He may have scared himself more than he alarmed me. In an instant, the fearsome detective superintendent was gone and Huggy Bear was back. The glower became a smile, and he winked. ‘Actually, love, I think you’ll find I can,’ he said. ‘But I’d rather it didn’t come to that, and here’s why. I’ve been a cop for about fifteen years, and in that time I have seen awful things, some of them so bad that I’ve done my best to un-see them. Every instinct I have as a parent makes me want to protect you from that.’

  ‘You don’t protect Alison,’ I pointed out.

  ‘That’s not the same: Alison had made her choice before I met her.’

  ‘What would Mum say if she was here? She’d have supported me, I’ll bet.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what she’d have said. “No way, Josita. The pay’s crap and the hours are worse.” She’d have said the same about teaching too.’

  ‘Life isn’t about money or convenience,’ I protested.

  ‘Don’t knock either of those’, he countered. ‘But it’s more than that. Very soon now, I’m going to be head of CID, chief superintendent. By the time you leave university, there is every chance that I’ll be an assistant chief constable. If you were on my force, you’d be very difficult to manage. People are human; your line managers would struggle to know how to handle you. Do they favour you in the hope of finding favour with me? Or do they go out of their way to make life hard for you to show everyone else that there’s no special favours on their watch? It would be one or the other for sure.’

  ‘I could handle that,’ I promised.

  ‘I’m sure, but I couldn’t. If I thought you were having special treatment, I’d have to intervene for the sake of fairness to your peers. If it was the
other way, do you really think I’d stand by and let some sergeant with an attitude pick on my wee girl? He’d be on the night shift in Pilton before he knew it, then his successor would make you teacher’s pet and I’d have to intervene again.’

  ‘There are other forces. I could join Strathclyde.’

  ‘You take sauce on your fish supper,’ he retorted, ‘not vinegar. You’re east coast not west coast,’ he explained. ‘And I’m not having you walking a beat in any of the choicer areas through there. Kid, I have no doubt that you would be an excellent police officer, but the odds are stacked against you. On the other hand, if Grandpa Skinner was still alive and you were having this conversation with him, his eyes would light up – as much as they ever did – and he would welcome you into his profession with open arms and a promise of a partnership in his firm before the ink was dry on your practising certificate.’

  ‘Did he do that with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but family law, worthy as it is, had no attractions for me. For you, on the other hand . . .’

  ‘Grandpa’s firm doesn’t exist any more.’

  ‘No, but there are others, and much bigger. For example . . .’

  And that was the start of a process of persuasion that led me to the modern high-tech office of Curle Anthony Jarvis, the success I achieved there and the stellar future that was set out before me. Unfortunately, while we can fight our genetic inheritance for a while, long term it’s always going to win.

  My father and I share a low boredom threshold, and as for my mum, from what I’ve learned, hers was practically non-existent. She got bored putting on her knickers, which was why they came off so frequently – a trait I have not inherited, I rush to say.

  The process began at my last awards dinner. It was sponsored by a business magazine, and I had been chosen by a panel of ‘experts’ as ‘Young Dealmaker of the Year’, because I had led the legal team in the acquisition of a whisky distiller by a Chinese client of CAJ. The shiny statuette was presented by the finance minister in the Scottish government. She was fulsome in her praise as the flashes popped, and then it was my turn to make the obligatory speech of thanks. I hadn’t intended to say much, beyond thanking Mitchell Laidlaw for giving me the chance to shine, and paying tribute to my team. I did that, and that’s when I should have exited stage left and sat down; but I didn’t. I’d had a couple of drinks, and I was in a bad place with Andy Martin, my off-and-off love interest. He had stood me up with an excuse that I hadn’t bought for a second, telling him so in direct terms.