Read Online The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid - Free Book Online

days of when they were due to be arrested.’ Proctor called up another screen and frowned at it. ‘The paperwork had been processed, the operation had been ordered. But in the gap between set-up and execution —’ He flushed as he realised the inappropriateness of his choice of words.
    ‘— there was an execution,’ Macanespie blurted, only too predictably. Sometimes he couldn’t help himself. That Scottish black humour just wouldn’t sit quietly in the corner. ‘And how many of those cases were ours?’
    ‘Eight had Brits leading the investigation. The other three had Brits on the team.’
    ‘The same Brits?’
    Proctor ran his finger down the screen. ‘Doesn’t look like it. Alexandra Reid was second string on two cases then led one. Will Pringle led three, Derek Green led two and helped out on a third, and Patterson Tait headed up the other two. So we can probably rule them out as our vigilante. But we’ll have to work our way down the totem pole in every case to find the common factor. The mole.’
    Macanespie grunted. ‘You’re kidding, right? You’re not seriously talking about embarking on the biggest waste of time this side of the 1987 Labour Party election campaign? We all know what this has been about. It’s been a kind of ethnic cleansing of scumbags. Scrubbing the Balkans clean of the gobshites that made it hell on earth in the nineties. You know and I know the top name in the frame for all of these assassinations.’
    Proctor breathed heavily through his nose. He pursed his lips and scowled at his computer, stabbing the keys as if they were Macanespie’s eyes. ‘We don’t know that,’ he growled.
    ‘“We don’t know that,”’ Macanespie mimicked in a mimsy voice. ‘It’s been common knowledge round here for years, Theo. Don’t start pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
    ‘It’s just rumour and gossip.’
    ‘Rumour and gossip that nobody’s ever contradicted in my hearing. The Balkan boys, they all give a nod and a wink whenever people start going on about what a funny coincidence it is that another sadistic fucker with a war crimes record as long as your arm gets the wooden overcoat before we can get him into custody.’
    Proctor shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make it the truth. It’s just a good story.’
    ‘It’s a story that fits the facts. That’s why it keeps coming up again and again.’ Macanespie began ticking off the points on his fat fingers. ‘Who knows all the key players from way back when? Who’s the kind of great big fucking hero that half the bloody Balkans would lie their slivovitz-guzzling heads off to protect? Who shouted his mouth off to every news organisation that would listen about how useless ICTFY was before he went underground just a matter of weeks before the first assassination?’
    Proctor realigned the edges of his pile of files. They didn’t need it. ‘You’re talking about Dimitar Petrovic.’
    ‘Exactly.’ Macanespie stuck two thumbs up and grinned triumphantly. ‘You always get there in the end, Theo. Takes some pushing, but you always get to the top of the hill.’
    ‘As usual, Alan, you’re completely missing the point. Even if you’re right about Petrovic – and I’m not conceding that you are – even if you’re right, it still doesn’t get us off the hook. Wilson Cagney probably knows all about Petrovic already. Petrovic isn’t the issue here. The issue is where Petrovic is getting his information from. Somebody’s pointing him in the right direction, Alan. And from where Cagney’s sitting, it looks like one of us or else somebody very bloody close.’

8
     
    T here was good news and bad news. Annoyingly for Karen, the good news came first. Although that got the day off to the right sort of start, it made the bad news all the more of a disappointment.
    The plus side of the ledger came from the fingerprint officer who had picked up the card from the CSI assigned to the skeleton. Karen had left the