Noel Salmon was easy to find. There was no answer to the doorbell of his seedy flat, when Skinner rang it, but a single phone cal to John Hunter established that the Spotlights former ace reporter could be found on most mornings in a pub cal ed the Eastern, not far away.
Skinner knew it well. It was the type of place where knives were regarded as fashion accessories.
The journalist had his back to the door as Skinner opened it. The two men's eyes met in the mirror behind the bar, but before Salmon had time to react, far less to run, the policeman reached across, seized his col ar from behind and hauled him out into the street, into the summer rain. 'Your place, or mine?' he hissed. 'Yours I think, this time. More discreet and I don't mind making a mess there.'
He hustled his helpless captive along the wet pavement as fast as he could, away from the Eastern, as the first curious morning drunks lurched out to see what was happening. Together they turned a corner, and found themselves almost at the stairway to Salmon's building.
The policeman was barely breathing hard when they reached the fourth-floor doorway, yet the little man's chest was heaving. 'Open it,' Skinner snarled. Salmon tried to obey, but he could only fumble for his key and poke it ineffectively at the lock, with a shaking hand.
Impatiently, the detective tore it from his grasp, opened the door, and threw him roughly inside, sending him tumbling and fal ing along the floor of the hallway.
The quarry scrambled to his feet, completely terrified now. 'You
… you… you…' he wailed. To Skinner's disgust, his former tormentor wet himself.
'Through there,' he ordered. 'The living room, if that's what you call it.' Salmon obeyed and collapsed, helpless, into a chair.
'There are no lawyers about now, Noel,' snarled the policeman.
'Not a soul in fact, just you and me, and this place being where it is, no-one wil remember having seen us on our way up here.'
He crossed to the sash-cord window and pulled it up, tugging hard and opening a gap of around two feet. 'Know what defenestration means, cockroach?' he asked.
Salmon gaped at him, speechless.
'It means jumping or being thrown out of the fucking window.
And that is just about where I am with you. You've given me grief, son, and now you're going to find out just how stupid you've been.
'I'm not going to thump you around or anything. It's as simple as this: you either give me the name of the person who tipped you off about Pam and me, and who gave you the info on this bribe setup, or out you go. Splat. You'l be back on the front page again, only as a headline, not a byline.
'A drunken suicide, it'll be. There won't even be a Fatal Accident Inquiry.'
Skinner seized the reporter by the collar once more, jerked him upright and hauled him, whimpering, over to the wide-open window.
'I know it was one of two people. I think I know which, and I'm certain you do too. For your sake, I hope I'm right.
'So what's it to be?' he asked, and Noel Salmon found himself with no reason to doubt the sincerity of his question. 'Are you talking or flying?'