"Cahal, please."
"Fine, Cahal. But can you fill us in on the background to the
event?"
"Sure, it started off as a glory trip. Some bright boy in the Scottish
Arts Council dreamed up the idea. He thought it would be a good
lead-in to the Papal visit, and sold the sponsorship to Candela and
Finch. Then they discovered they didn't really know how to go about
organising it. All that C and F know about art is that you can write
it off against tax, and the SAC boy found that it wasn't as easy as
he'd thought to persuade galleries around the world to part with their
priceless works. So, Nike baseball cap in hand, he had to come to me,
to the Roman Catholic Church and to various others, to ask for our
support. We wound up making a joint pitch for most of the major works
on show over there. In one or two cases we had to visit curators to
win them over."
"What about the Vargas?"
O'Reilly grimaced. "That's my sore point; it's cost me a lot of grief
on the telephone this weekend. That was my baby. The Catholics didn't
veto it, but given its, let's say, controversial nature, they didn't
want to be seen to be involved in negotiations. So I got to go by
myself to the Guggenheim in Bilbao, which owns it, to secure the piece.
Some building, I tell you. You think our parliament's something? It's
a Wendy house compared to that. Seeing it was the only saving grace of
the whole show as far as I was concerned.
"We had to make all sorts of promises, of course. Among them we had to
take personal responsibility for the reception and storage of each
piece, and we had to be present when they were hung, to ensure that the
positioning and lighting matched the specification of the owner
gallery."
"So you were there when the Vargas arrived?"
"I saw it unpacked."
"How did it look when it came out of the crate?"
"Perfect. In perfect condition, that is. Personally I thought it was
a load of crap, but everyone to their own taste and all that. I'm no
art critic'
"Did you see the back of the picture?" George Regan asked
"I suppose I did. Why?"
"Can you describe it?"
O'Reilly frowned. "How do you describe the back of a picture? Frame,
canvas, that's it; it looked like a sack stretched tight. Will that
do?"
"Very well indeed," said Steele. "When it was hung on the wall the
back was covered over with brown paper. While it was in storage
downstairs, between the arrival and the hanging, someone placed an
incendiary device inside the frame and then taped paper over to cover
it."
"That's what happened, was it? I read someone had claimed
responsibility."
"Someone usually does, Cahal. We don't always believe them, though. I
have to ask you something; when you went to the Academy to receive the
picture, did you go alone?"
The principal clerk leaned against the high back of his chair. "No, I
thought there was an outside chance that the couriers would actually
expect us to remove the thing physically, so I took Jan Laing, my
secretary... you spoke to her earlier.. . and Andrea, our clerk, with
me."
"Andrea?"
"Andrea Strachan; she asked if she could come with us for a sneak
preview of the pictures. She's with us on a sort of temporary basis.
We pay her a little, but she's more or less a volunteer. Jerome
Strachan, her father, even if he is a bit right-wing in Presbyterian
terms, is a friend of mine; he lectures in religion up at Napier. The
girl's had emotional problems, and he asked if I could fit her in
somewhere as a sort of therapy. She's a nice lass; pretty serious, but
very helpful and keen, almost over-keen at times."
"Do you know the nature of those emotional problems?"
"Jerome told me she's been treated for schizophrenia, if that's what
you mean."
"That's all he said?"
"Yes, and I didn't press him. Should I have?"
"Not the way I see it. He's your friend, so why should you?" Steele
glanced across at a fridge in a corner of the big office. "Do you
think I could have some of that water you were offering earlier?" he
asked.
"Sure." O'Reilly rose to his feet. "Still or fizzy?"
"Still; and don't bother with a glass. By the neck will be fine."
The Principal Clerk took three bottles of mineral water from the fridge
and brought them back to the table. He opened one himself and handed
the others to Steele and Regan. As he took his, the sergeant smiled,
for the first time. "Why were you guys not on the list for the
opening, since you did so much work?" he asked.
"If I was interested, George, that would be another sore point with me.
All us organisers were thanked very effusively, by the boy at the Arts
Council, and were told very apologetically that space at the opening
bash would be limited and that only the Moderator and the archbishop
would be invited; no one else from any of the executives.
"The Mod did his nut, I have to tell you; he was going to decline, but
I persuaded him that my Saturday would be more ruined if he did that,
than if I missed out. I was sorry Jan and Andrea didn't get in on the
act, but as far as I was concerned, he'd drawn the short straw. I'd
seen the exhibition and I don't like champagne, even when it's free."
"What about the boy with the Nike baseball cap?" asked Regan,
casually.
Cahal O'Reilly frowned, then his face split into a grin. "Oh, he was
there all right, don't you worry!"
Twenty-Eight.
"You've fair taken my breath away, Robert, I don't mind telling you."
The old man beamed as he handed a cup of tea to his visitor. "When you
called it was like hearing a voice from the past."
"I'm just glad you remember me," said Bob Skinner.
"Remember you? Remember you?" Pale blue eyes twinkled in a bald
wrinkled head. "I remember you all right, and even if I didn't I only
have to look at you to know who you are. You're William Skinner's son,
and no mistake. I remember him well, and your grandfather, Mr. Michael
Skinner, before him."
The old man lowered himself gently into an armchair. "I'm just
astonished that you remember me."
"Don't be daft, man, the whole bloody town remembers you. Nicol
Falkirk, CBE, the editor of the Mother well Times for the best part of
the last century."
"Not quite the best part," his host corrected him, 'but a good bit of
it nonetheless."
"How old are you now, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Eighty-four, and starting to feel it."
"But not look it," said Skinner, deferentially. "I passed by Hope
Street when I was driving round town. I guess the paper isn't printed
there any more."
"Nor has it been for a long time. They turn it out on a big web offset
press somewhere well out of the town. I'm glad I'm not part of it any
more. I was an old school editor; I wrote my copy in fountain ink, and
it was set in hot lead by craftsmen, then made up into page form by
hand,
by people who, in the main, lived in the town which they were
serving. That's what a local newspaper should be, Robert; truly local.
That's what it was like when you worked there as a young man in your
holidays, remember; just before it was sold, and everything changed."
"Worked is maybe an exaggeration, Nicol. Copy-boy, they called me."
"Not a bit of it. You did your share in the months you were there. You
could write better than some of my regular reporters, I'll tell you.
They were always trying to copy the tabloid style, so they could move
on to bigger jobs in Glasgow. More than a few of them did, of course;
most of my trainees wound up with their own by-lines on the Herald, the
Scotsman, the Mail and so on."
The venerable editor laughed. "I always liked the football reports you
wrote, Robert. They were as partisan as anything," he wheezed. "You
understood without being told that being unbiased is not the business
of a local reporter. The readers expect you to be on the side of the
home team."
"They needed all the help they could get," Bob muttered. "They still
do."
"Ach, that's changed too. I was never a football man myself, but I
don't approve of all these damn foreigners we have these days. This
County of Lanark produced the likes of Matt Busby, Jimmy Johnstone and
Ian St. John. What chance does a boy have today?"
"Come on, Nicol; times change."
"Maybe, but your father would have agreed with me. He usually did,
apart from one time."
"When was that?"
"When I told him that I had hopes you might become a journalist after
you left university. He said to me that if I put that idea in your
head, he'd hang me up by the thumbs until the rest of me dropped off
them."
Bob looked astonished. "My father said something like that?"
"He certainly did; those were his exact words, at a civic centre
reception too. And do you know what? I think he meant them. Your
father was dead set on you going on to do law after you finished your
arts degree, and following him into the firm. He wasn't best pleased
at first, when you went into the police. He did his best not to show
it, but I remembered that brush that we had, and I knew."
"So did I," Skinner murmured, 'but he got over it, eventually."
"I was sorry to hear about your wife, Robert," the old man said
quietly. "I remember young Myra very well; it was just too bad that
she should die so young .. . the motor car's a blessing, but a curse
too. That's why I've never had one. Aye, a girl of spirit, she
was."
"Sure, and then some. That was a long time ago, though."
"I suppose it was," he mused. "That's the thing about getting old;
your time-frame gets jumbled up." He smiled. "And how's your
daughter?" he asked. "How's she getting on?"
"My older daughter, you mean. Very well, I'm glad to say. Now, Alexis
would have made her grandfather happy. She is a lawyer, and showing
promise at it too."
"You have another daughter?"
"Yes, wee Seonaid; she's coming up for a year. Then there's James
Andrew, who's four and a handful, and Mark, who's going on nine."
"My, my, you have been busy."
"Not that busy. Mark's adopted."
"Busy enough." Mr. Falkirk picked up his neglected tea, took a sip,
screwed up his face and put it down. "Now, Robert," he said. "Charmed
as I am to see you, I know that you haven't come all this way to pay me
a casual visit. What can I do for you?"
"You can write an obituary for me, and persuade your successors to run
it in the Mother well Times?
"Oh, surely not. Whose?"
"You haven't seen a paper today?"
They're full of nonsense."
"True. I have to read them though, today especially. The obituary's
for my brother Michael; he was found dead at the weekend. There's no
one but you that I'd trust to do it."
The twinkle had gone from Nicol Falkirk's eyes. "Oh dear me," he
sighed. "I wrote your father's, I wrote your mother's, and long before
that, I wrote your grandfather's. When a journalist comes round to
writing three generations of obituaries, he knows he's lived too long.
Of course I'll do it, and I'll make sure it gets a good show in the
paper. I have emeritus status, you know'
"Do you remember Michael?"
"Most certainly; and before you ask, I know the story, Robert. Your
father told me what had happened. He wanted to make sure that nothing
appeared in the paper. He was the company's solicitor, and so he had
influence with the proprietors, but if he'd been any man off the street
I'd have done as he asked. It is not the function of a newspaper to
pry into the private grief of any family."
He pushed himself up slowly from his chair, and walked over to a bureau
beside the bay window of his bungalow. Skinner looked out through the
lace curtains; the day had begun brightly in the east, but now the sky
was overcast by grey cloud. It was Mother well as he remembered it.
Mr. Falkirk fumbled around in his desk, until he found a thick,
well-thumbed reporter's notebook, and a fountain pen. A flash of
memory came back to Bob from his copy-boy days as he watched the old
editor resume his seat; he always wrote in green ink. "Just give me
the basics," Mr. Falkirk instructed; suddenly there was a professional
tone in his voice. "I know your family background well enough. What
was your brother's full name?"
"Michael Niven Skinner; after my grandfather."
"Age?"
"Fifty-six."
"He'd have been educated at Knowetop Primary and Dalziel High, wouldn't
he?"
"Yes. He played rugby for the school, and he won the English prize in
his sixth year."
"Thank you, I'll mention both of those. He wouldn't have had far to
walk to Dalziel," Mr. Falkirk grunted as he made the notes, 'since
your house was just across the road, in Crawford Street.
"And after that," he continued, 'he was awarded a place at Sandhurst;
that's right, isn't it?"
"Yes. He went straight from school. I was only about eight then,"
Skinner mused. "I remember him coming home on leave, with this wee
swagger stick." He winced inwardly, but declined to mention that he
had often been beaten with the same stick.
"Where did he serve, after he was commissioned?"
"At home, initially, then Germany, and finally Honduras; he saw action
there."
"Yes. I remember your father telling me that it had a telling effect
on him. He resigned his commission after that, didn't he, and came
home?"
"Yes."
"But he couldn't settle down, could he?" the old man probed, gently.
"No. He was a lost and troubled soul."
"I know. I used to see him hanging around Mother well Cross with his
cronies, going in and out of the Horseshoe Bar, or into the bookmakers'
across from my office, and I used to grieve for your poor parents. I'll
gloss over that part of his life, don't worry. I'll just say th
at he
moved to... Where was it again? I only knew from your father that he
was committed for a while."