dark-haired, with eyes that seemed never to blink, and a gaze which
gave the clear message that here was a mind which never worked at less
than maximum capacity.
"Good morning, gentlemen," the chief constable greeted his visitors.
"Sorry to keep you waiting; I was just fixing my make-up. Are the
trains running all right this morning, Tom?" he asked the
Glaswegian.
"I gave up on them long ago," the solicitor replied. "I use the M8.
For all its uncertainties, it's still a better bet if you have an
appointment to keep."
"Sad but true, eh. How about you, Mitch? Traffic moving smoothly in
Edinburgh, was it?"
"I took a taxi, Jimmy, just to be sure; no way did I want to be late
for this one."
"Your implied criticism is noted." He glanced at his watch. "Is your
client ready to join us? I suppose he's paying his respects to Miss
McConnell, or checking up on DS McGurk."
Laidlaw pursed his lips. "My client will not be joining us, Jimmy. We
discussed the matter of his attendance; on balance he agreed with my
view that it might be better if he did not come face to face with
Councillor Maley. I'm here to present his position, and also to do any
barking that might be necessary. If Bob was present himself, it might
prove hard to restrain him from joining in, should there be any
resistance to our proposition. Mind you, he was easier to persuade
than he might have been, had he not been preoccupied with the death of
his brother."
"Yes, that came out of the blue. It must be disturbing for Bob, in all
sorts of ways. There's this local problem, his .. ." Sir James
hesitated as he searched for a suitable word '... difficulties in the
States, and then all the old family skeletons this has brought out of
the cupboard."
"I never knew Bob had a brother," Laidlaw confessed. "My firm's never
handled his family business, or I might have. Alexis did, though,
although not from her father. She found out by accident, she told me
yesterday, when I commiserated with her over it."
"He didn't tell Sarah: I know that," said the chief constable. "As a
matter of fact, I was one of the few people who knew about him, outside
the community in which the Skinner family lived. Since Michael
disappeared from there thirty years ago, his existence will have come
as a surprise to just about everyone. Bob chose to tell me when I made
him head of CID. He said that he felt that as such he could not have
any secrets from his chief constable." Proud Jimmy sighed. "He could
from his wife and daughter, though, which tells you rather a lot about
his attitude to his job, and the lengths to which he'll go to defend
it. At least we can try to resolve that matter for him today." He
glanced at his watch. "Let's see if the ladies are here."
He picked up one of his phones, pressed a button and spoke to his
civilian secretary, Gerry Crossley. "Are we ready?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," the young man replied. "The councillors are waiting in
reception."
"Thanks. Ask them to join us please, and send in the tea." Since his
health scare Sir James had given up coffee; it was no longer served in
his office, and if he had had his way it would have been banned from
the senior officers' dining room also.
Less than a minute later, the door at the far end of the room opened.
The three men stood as Councillors Marcia Topham and Agnes Maley
entered. The contrast between the two women was so marked that it was
hard to imagine them as political colleagues. Councillor Topham was
middle-aged, but managed to maintain her elegance in the face of the
bulk that Proud had watched grow over the years. Councillor Maley was
short and squat with short dark hair and distinctly unfeminine
eyebrows, below a low forehead. Where the former's manner bordered on
Maley had been a councillor for many years, and for most of them she
had served on the Police Authority. For a brief dark period in the
days of the old regional councils, she had been its chair. Although
she had once been famous as a left-wing firebrand, she had somehow
moved with the times, and had held on to her city-centre power-base
despite the revolution within her party. Proud had succeeded once in
having her removed from the Authority, but after the last round of
elections she had engineered a comeback, and had infuriated the chief
by seizing the chair of the human resources committee by a mix of
trickery and intimidation within the majority group. The grapevine had
it that, after the next council polls, she would replace the moderate
Mrs. Topham as chair of the Authority itself.
She bridled when she saw the two lawyers, and would have tackled the
chief constable head on, had not Maisie, the dining room waitress,
forestalled her by rolling in a trolley loaded with cups, a big steel
teapot, and plates of plain biscuits.
It took only a few minutes for the tea to be poured and distributed,
and for the biscuits to be passed round. As soon as Maisie had left
the room, Councillor Maley opened fire. "Right, chief," she demanded
brusquely, ignoring Topham completely. "What's this about?"
"And a good day to you also, Ms Maley," said Sir James, with glacial
courtesy. "And to you, Marcia." He softened visibly as he nodded to
the Authority chair. "Thank you for coming, on short notice. This
meeting has been called at the request of Mr. Mitchell Laidlaw, of
Curie, Anthony and Jarvis, who is acting for Deputy Chief Constable
Skinner. Tom Hogg's here to advise me, and you ladies, if necessary,
on the Authority's legal position."
Maley twitched with inner fury at the gender reference. "Councillors,
please," she muttered. "Why wasn't I given notice of the agenda?"
"Because I chose not to give you any. Mitchell, do you want to
open?"
Laidlaw nodded. "Thank you, Sir James," he said, noticeably more
formal than before. He took five documents from his briefcase and gave
one to each person at the table. "I'd like to begin by asking you to
read that report, carefully. It's an exhaustive report on the present
physical condition of Deputy Chief Constable Skinner, prepared by Mr.
Peter Patience and Mr. Hugh Hurley, consultant cardiologists at
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, following an examination which took place
yesterday evening at the Murrayfield Hospital."
"Mmm," Marcia Topham murmured, nervously.
The chief gave the lead, picking up his copy and beginning to read, but
Maley left hers on the table. "This isn't relevant," she protested.
"The deputy chief constable has to be examined by the force's official
medical officer. He's said that he's going to give him a month more to
recover before he looks at him."
"That is not strictly true, councillor," Proud intervened. "It was
your subcommittee that instructed the MO to wait for a month. Your
minutes may not be publicly accessible, but I can see them at any
time."
"Thank you, chief," Laidlaw said
. "That was my understanding also,
from my client. It is his position that a delay is unnecessary and
unreasonable. Further, it is his belief that it has been imposed to
give your subcommittee time to rush through changes to local standing
orders which would ban arbitrarily any officer who underwent the
procedure that he experienced recently from ever returning to work,
regardless of their physical condition, or prognosis."
He fixed Maley with a piercing stare. "I'll be blunt with you. If you
refuse to read that report, I'm going to ask Councillor Topham, as
chair of the Authority, to assume executive responsibility for this
matter, and to exclude you from this meeting. If she refuses, I will
promise you, an interdict compelling the Authority to deal with this
matter now."
"You can't do that," the dark-haired councillor shouted. "This is a
committee matter."
"Nonsense," said the chief constable, sharply. "This is not an
appointment; it's an administrative matter, and either of you have
executive power." He turned to the other solicitor. "Tom. What's
your advice on the matter at issue? Do you think Mitch is bluffing
when he assures us he'll get his interdict?"
Hogg picked up the report. "If this says what I assume it does, I
think it's ninety-five per cent certain that interdict would be granted
ordering you to deal with this now. I think it is
one-hundred-and-ten-per cent certain that the court would forbid you
from making any changes in your regulations that might affect Mr.
Skinner, in advance of receiving a report on his medical condition: My
advice is, read the report now, and deal with it now. To do otherwise
would be seen as perverse and might even lay individuals open to a
civil action raised by DCC Skinner."
Proud looked directly at Councillor Topham, ignoring Agnes Maley
completely. "Marcia," he said, 'you've had independent legal advice.
Now, I'm not asking you to get into the issue of whether the
subcommittee's decision to defer Bob Skinner's medical might have been
motivated by antipathy towards him by certain members. We don't really
want to go there. I am asking you, as chair, to consider the
reputation of the Authority, and your own position should you find its
actions condemned by the Supreme Court. Are we going to deal with this
matter now?"
Mrs. Topham glanced to her left. "No, councillor," the chief
exclaimed, firmly. "I'm asking you alone. Will you read that
report?"
She looked at the document, then up at Sir James once more. "I
suppose," she murmured. "I suppose we must."
Agnes Maley slapped the table. "Ah, bugger the report," she snapped.
"We all know it's a whitewash without even reading it. Okay,
councillor, okay Sir James, you reinstate the man. But just you
remember this; my time's coming, and it won't be in the chair of the
Police Authority either. There's a by-election for one of the
Edinburgh seats in the Scottish Parliament due next month, and guess
who's going to be nominated as the Labour candidate as soon as it's
called? Once I'm an MSP, I'll sort you buggers out." She glared at
Laidlaw. "And your client will be top of my list: I promise you that!"
She threw the report back across the table and stalked from the room.
In the echo of the slamming door, the chief constable looked at Mrs.
Topham. "Is that true, Marcia?" he asked. "Is that woman really
going to the parliament? Surely to God your party organisation can't
let that happen?"
The councillor was trembling slightly, as she replied. "I don't think
it can prevent it, James. Agnes Maley has a pretty effective power
base in Edinburgh; none of the new brooms in our headquarters, or even
in London, have been able to sweep her away. In theory her selection
for the vacancy could be vetoed, but it won't be. There aren't the
grounds."
She pursed her lips. "Agnes is a dangerous woman, all right, and
she'll be even more so, when she gets to Holyrood."
Thirty-Five.
"Stevie, are you sure about this?" asked George Regan. "I mean it's
so bloody obvious that the Strachan girl's the one for this job. She
had the opportunity, she's a nutter with a religious kink, she's got a
track record for fire-raising, and she was there when it happened, with
a personal invite, she says, from God. But, no, you don't think she
did it. Are you kidding me, or what?"
Steele had had enough; Regan had been complaining for half an hour,
since they had begun to review all the notes made and interviews
transcribed after the Royal Scottish Academy fire. "No sergeant," he
said, heavily, "I'm ordering you to shut the hell up and get on with
it. If you can't do that, feel free to go and see Detective
Superintendent Rose and take it up with her. She'll probably arrange
for you to swap jobs with young Sauce. That would suit me, for
frankly, probationer or not, he'd be more use to me in here right now,
and you'd be more use to the force in uniform, and out on the reception
desk."
Regan threw him a dagger-filled look, but Steele stared him down. "What
are we looking for, then?" he asked, grudgingly, and still grumpily.
"We're after anything that interviewees saw that was odd. We were so
hot after the girl when we spotted her there that we didn't give these
statements any more than a cursory glance."
"I'm not surprised. God talks to the girl, Stevie."
Steele grinned at his persistence. "George, enough."
"Aye, okay." He picked up a folder.
"We are looking into that, by the way," the inspector added.
"What?"
"God's phone call; Maggie's checking it out."
"She's got His number has she? Or does her old man? They tell me he's
got plenty of numbers in his book."
Steele caught a flicker in Regan's eye. "If you mean what I think you
do, George, you should make a point of forgetting any rumours you've
heard. You don't want to mess with Mario; no way, not at all."
"He doesn't bother me."
"Don't get in his way or he will. And don't let the boss hear you talk
about him either, in case she takes it personally. One of those two's
going to be the next head of CID when Dan Pringle goes; you want to
remember that."
"So what?"
Steele was about to tell him when his phone rang. He picked it up,
with a touch of relief that the conversation had been brought to an end
before Regan could say any more. "Stevie?" said a familiar voice.
"It's Jack." Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk had recently been
appointed as Bob Skinner's executive assistant, during the DCC's
absence in the US. He sounded excited, and Steele hoped that he could
guess the reason.
"He's back," McGurk exclaimed. "It's official. The Big Man is back in
post. The chief's just had me in and told me; he was reinstated by the
chair of the Police Authority, after a private meeting this morning. He
saw the buggers off, Stevie. I had a feeling something
was going to
happen today. Neil Mcllhenney called into my office this morning, and
warned me to stay close."
"Did the chief say anything else?"
"No, but he had to stop himself from grinning all over his face."
"Is he back in the office now?"
"Not yet. It might be a few days before he is, given what happened to
his brother, and everything else."
Steele wondered what 'everything else' might be, but he knew better
than to ask with George Regan within earshot. The sergeant looked
across at him and raised an eyebrow. Steele nodded, hung up and went
through to Maggie Rose's office. He knocked on the door and walked
in.
Before he could open his mouth, she smiled at him. "I know," she said.
"Mario just called me; he had it from Neil five minutes ago. Batman is
back in action. Which means .. . that very soon we are going to have