Skinner’s round

`Trust in your judgement! Don't make me laugh. I did that once before. Remember him? And as for Andy, he's a walking disaster when it comes to relationships. I have a fair idea of the number of women that have stood in that doorway — and probably worn that dressing-gown too — and none of them stayed around longer than a couple of months.

Is that what you want to be? Another notch on the headboard?'

The girl's eyes flared and her jaw thrust out aggressively — in a way, although neither realised it, which mirrored his own. `God damn you, Pops!' she spat. 'You think I'm some sort of bimbo? Some easy lay? Maybe you've got your notches the wrong way round. Maybe Andy was my pushover.

`You're insulting me as a person if you suggest that I'm a victim here. I chose Andy just as much as he chose me. We.. She stopped short.

`Fuck it, I am twenty-one years old. I will NOT explain myself to you!' She stepped back and slammed the door in his face.

Hot rage erupted and engulfed him. He pounded the blue paintwork with his fist. 'Open up, girl!'

Her shout was muffled by the door. 'Don't "girl" me! I'll talk to you when you're ready to listen. Now piss off to your new family. You've just blown this one.'

He raised his fist to pound the door again, but a firm hand caught his elbow. 'Bob, easy!' said a soft voice behind him. He shook his arm free and spun round, ignoring the pain in his damaged right foot. Andy Martin stood there on the landing, unshaven, in jeans and teeshirt.

He held a newspaper and a white paper bag in his left hand.

Ski

Martin let himself ride backwards on the force of his shove, only tensing his powerful shoulder muscles to protect the back of his head. The vivid green eyes looked back at Ski

Ski

`Christ you've known her since she was a wee girl! Did you fancy her then, in her school uniform? Are you that bloody sick?'

Martin shook his head. 'No, Bob. I'm not. And neither is Alex. And neither are you. But you have had a bang on the head, and you have been up all night. So why don't you cool it and go back to Sarah; get some sleep and do some thinking.'

Ski

Martin put the flat of his free hand on his chest. 'Look, man. If you were going to take a pop at me you'd have done it by now. But you're too much of a straight arrow polisman for that.

So do what I say. Head off home and rest up. Unless you want to come in and talk this through over breakfast.

It's the last chance you'll have for a fortnight, for we're off to Florida in about three hours.

What's it to be?'

Ski

`No, I'll head off and do my thinking. And while you two are off in your holiday paradise, you can do some too, about your career path. For that's what I'll be mulling over.

`You've betrayed my trust, Detective Superintendent. And if you think you can do that and stay on my team, then… No, no one could be that naive!'

Two

Detective Superintendent Alison Higgins looked around the impressive area. 'As plush as any five-star hotel,' she murmured to herself. The hexagonal foyer of the Witches' Hill Golf and Country Club was carpeted throughout in a dark brown wilton, matched by the light flock pattern of the wallpaper. Portraits hung on two of the walls. One depicted a middle-aged man in Highland dress, sitting ramrod straight in a high-backed red leather chair. The face was strong, with a piercing gaze above a prominent, sharp nose, and iron-grey hair which seemed to rise from the temples like wings on a Viking helmet. The other showed an altogether more conventional figure, standing beside a desk. He was dark-haired, and wore a double-breasted business suit. Higgins had difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that this assured, smiling figure was the man she had just seen, waxy-hued and grotesque, in the Jacuzzi tub, newly emptied on Sarah's instruction.

A tartan-blazered receptionist was seated behind a mahogany counter, near the smoked-glass entrance. The young man wore a slightly stu

She was one of the highest-ranking woman police officers in Scotland, in day-to-day charge of criminal investigation in a sector which took in East Edinburgh, and a rural area which stretched through East Lothian and down to the border at Berwick.

She looked up at the two men. 'Sailing's my sport, lads, not golf, so humour me by explaining exactly what this place is, and what the rich man in the bathtub had to do with it?'

Martin glanced at his watch. 'No point in asking Neil. He wouldn't know a golf club from a walking stick. Briefly, you are standing in the clubhouse of the newest, swankiest golf course in Scotland; no, scratch that, in Europe. Witches' Hill is a championship-standard eighteen-hole course, built to attract the highest of the high rollers. Golf is an international game now, with huge money involved — dollars, yen, Deutschmarks, you name it — and Scotland is still recognised universally as its ancestral home.

`The land on which the course is built belongs, like much of the rest of this area, to the Marquis of Kinture. That's him on the wall over there.' He nodded towards the portrait of the man in the chair. 'By the way, the reason he's sitting is because he's wheelchair-bound. A few years back he landed a light aircraft rather harder than he had intended, and broke his back.

Before his accident the Marquis was a scratch golfer — that means he was very good, Alison.

Since then he's been involved in golf administration, as a member of the R. and A. Committee.'

Eh?' said Alison Higgins.

`The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, the ruling body of world golf.'

He paused, glancing at his watch again. 'Anyway, in his wheelchair the Marquis began to take a closer interest in his estates than before. One of the first things he found was that, in common with many other landed interests, his liquidity wasn't what it used to be. To succeed in farming today it takes foresight, good crop selection, and substantial investment, plus a good slice of luck.

`So he looked at all of his assets and tried to figure out how to make them work harder for him. Eventually, he focused on the triangle of land where we are now. It's never been much use for agriculture apparently. It's all bumps, hollows and ponds. But looking at it on the map one day, inspiration hit him. The biggest of the bumps has a name — Witches' Hill — and one of the ponds has too. It's called the Truth Loch.

The Marquis knew that in medieval times East Lothian was a notorious centre for witchcraft and the black arts. Not only that but Witches' Hill was right at its heart. In the sixteenth century, it was said that the biggest of the covens met there, a gathering of crones from all around — from Longniddry, North Berwick, Dirleton, all around here — and that they held their ceremonies on its top, casting spells, calling down curses, and sacrificing livestock to the Devil.'