Skinner's Mission

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This book is dedicated to the town of L’Escala, which allowed me the peace and quiet to write it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author’s thanks go to:

Jerry Joyce

The late Chic Murray

Tom Shields

1

‘This is just the sort of thing that can happen when you sell a dodgy Ferrari.’

Six heads turned towards the doorway. The white-coated scene of crime technicians stood automatically to attention. They shone like spectres in the white glare of the temporary floodlighting, which was reflected also by the puddles which covered much of the floor of the burned-out showroom.

The man, white-clad like the rest, gazed slowly around the ravaged shed. The scene took him back to the after-math of an urban riot to which he had been taken by the Los Angeles Police Department, during a month-long international police symposium visit in California, from which he had just returned. He counted, spread around the area, the skeletal shells of eight motor cars. They rested not on tyres, for they had melted into the floor, but on bare wheel hubs.

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