"Which I do not!" Skinner opened the big larder fridge in a corner of
his kitchen and took out two cans of Seven-Up. He popped them both and
handed one to his friend. "You, at least, know how I feel about my
job," he said, more quietly. "Sarah seems to have gone native back in
Buffalo; she's moved Trish, the nanny, over there, and she's settled
herself and the kids comfortably into her parents' home. She's even
sending Mark to school over there."
"But she says it's temporary, doesn't she?"
"She says so, but I don't think I believe her, Andy. She's turning
back into a Yank and she wants me, and my kids, to become Yanks too. It
may be her world over there, but it is not mine. There's no logic to
her, anyway. Her parents died over there, tragically, and some stuff
happened in the aftermath that I can't tell even you about. You'd have
thought she couldn't wait to get back here, to our life, after all
that."
"Maybe that's why she's reluctant to come back right now," Martin
suggested. "Maybe she still has some getting over to do."
"And maybe that's why she wants to turn me into a kept man?" Skinner
shot back at him.
"Don't be daft; it's not that and you know it. Whatever you call it,
you dropped like a stone at her feet and she thought you were dead.
That's how she put it to me; she's a doctor, and she thought that. It
might have turned out to be a freak condition, but your heart stopped,
man. For ten to fifteen seconds, so she told me. Of course she's
worried about you ... and she does want you around, for all that you
say."
"Is that so? Well, last time I spoke to her, she told me that if I was
so devoted to Scotland I could and I quote, "fucking well stay here".
She told me in a loud voice too."
"When was that?"
"Last night. I called her again at lunchtime and she wasn't even
there. Trish said she's gone off on some sort of trip, but she wasn't
sure where."
"Call her on her mobile."
"She's left it behind. She's probably got herself sorted out with a
man over there."
"Bob!"
Skinner glanced at him, defensively. "Why not?" he muttered. "It
wouldn't be the first time."
"All the more reason to go back over there then, is it not, if that's
what you're thinking?"
"Ah man, I'm not. She's just playing me along, that's all. She thinks
I'm being unreasonable; I fucking know that she is." He paused, to
take a swig from his can. "Look, I've been obsessive in the past, I
admit that. But this is different. I have enemies on the joint Police
Board, as you well know. Councillor Agnes Maley and her friends have
always been afraid of me, and they haven't gone away; Jimmy Proud's
squashed them in the past, but he could never get rid of them. Forget
their politics, that doesn't have much to do with it. There are a
couple of them who are friends of, or friends of friends of, people
with whom you and I have had professional dealings in the past. That's
to say, we've banged them up.
"These characters, led by Agnes, have wanted me out for years. They
tried once before, remember, without success; now they've plucked up
the courage to have another go. Even as I speak, there's a group of
them on the manpower sub-committee who are trying to change the rules,
so that people who've had a range of specified complaints and
incidents, including the minor heart procedure that I've had, must be
retired on grounds of ill health. They're saying, for example, that
the chief should have been retired automatically after he had his
wobbler. It's not just about me, you see, although I'm the prime
target. These people want all the power over the police that they can
get. They're not an isolated group either; that sort of thinking runs
pretty high up in the current regime. Look at these civilian patrols
they've got in some places now. Fucking crap." He paused.
recommendation to the full committee and put a three-liner on, it could
go through. Once I'm back on duty, though, they're stuffed. They
can't do it retrospectively, because I'd sue them and win, and they
know it. That's why they've told me I have to have another month's
recuperation before I have my medical." He smiled, wickedly.
"So on Monday, I'm going to demand a definitive medical, now. If the
force examiners, who report to ... and take their orders from ... this
wee sub-committee, try to stick to their timetable, I'll go to court
and interdict them. Mitchell Laidlaw has the petition ready to roll.
He's acting for me, by the way. I need the best there is, in the
circumstances."
"What if you lose?"
"I won't. Mitch never loses."
"But if he breaks his duck this time, and you don't succeed; will it be
the end of your life, Bob? No, it won't."
"That is unthinkable, pal. It's not going to happen. I won't have my
career end just because of a temporary electrical malfunction in my
ticker. I've got places to go yet, as you know."
"That wouldn't scupper your plans though, would it?"
"If I wasn't a serving officer, yes it would."
Martin frowned; he was silent for a few seconds as he considered what
his friend had said. "I see," he murmured at last. "Bob, I'm sorry.
I've been so wrapped up in my new job that I didn't realise things were
so serious for you. I understand now."
"I'm glad you do. There are four people in the world I need to have on
my side over this; Neil Mcllhenney, you, my Alex, and Sarah. You make
it three for; it's the one against that's tearing me apart."
"Would you like me to call her, Bob, to put your case, so to speak?"
Skinner smiled, gratefully. "It's nice of you to offer, son, but she
has to work it out for herself." He drained the can. "But listen,
when you said that there was something you wanted to talk to me about,
I didn't get the impression that it was my bother with the Maley
tendency on the Board."
"No, it isn't."
"Fine, but give me a minute, will you. I'm fucking honking; I must
have a shower, or I will start to rot. Once I've done that, we'll go
for a walk on Gullane beach and enjoy this fine day, and you can tell
me what the problem is." He left the kitchen.
On his own, Andy wandered through to the living area. He knew the
house well: the Skinners had built it after their split, and
reconciliation, when they decided to sell both their weekend house and
their Edinburgh bungalow, and bring up their family full-time in the
East Lothian village of Gullane. He looked at the photograph of Sarah,
in its usual spot on the sideboard, and began to worry. He was
slavishly devoted to her, remarkably so, for she might have become his
mother-in-law. He had been engaged for a while to Alexis, Bob's
daughter from his first marriage; the engagement had ended
acrimoniously, but both he and Sarah had made sure that it did not
affect their friendship. He thought about what Bob had said. He gave
no credence to his suggestion that she might have found someone else,
but he knew that she was as stubborn as her husband; if she had taken
up a position, she would not give it up easily.
The living room opened into a big conservatory; he wandered through the
glass doors and gazed out across Gullane Bents and over the Firth of
Forth to life. He saw three tankers moored in the wide estuary, riding
high in the water as they waited their turn to take on a cargo of oil
at Hound Point.
"Okay, then?" Bob's voice snapped him back to the present. His hair
was still damp from the shower, but he was ready to go, having changed
into light cotton trousers, a pale blue polo shirt, and Timberland
sandals.
They left the house, Skinner setting the alarm with quick, nimble
fingers, and headed out into the village street. One left turn took
them down on to the Bents, down the road that led to the car park,
thronged as always on a June Saturday afternoon. "Where'll we go?" Bob
asked, then said, 'tide's on the way out; the Nature Reserve." Decision
made. He led the way, half running, half walking, down the narrow path
that led to the sands. Jumping down from a dune onto the beach, he
started to head westward, then stopped.
"What's up?" asked Andy.
Skinner pointed, with his right index finger. His friend followed its
direction until he saw, near the water's edge, a big, dark-haired man,
muscular in a shortsleeved shirt and denim cut-offs, knocking a
brightly coloured ball towards a toddler.
"That's McGuire, isn't it?" Skinner muttered.
"Yes. That must be the kid I heard he and Maggie are adopting."
"Let's go the other way then. Mario's a good guy, but I'm not in the
mood for any more chat about my career prospects." Without waiting for
an answer he turned on his heel and headed off towards the rocks and
dunes at the eastward end of the big bay.
"I didn't see Maggie there," said Martin, 'but I've heard the talk. How
are things with him and Detective Superintendent Rose?"
"Officially, fine. But in reality, from what Neil tells me, they're
rocky. I didn't press him about it, for in truth it's none of my
business, but I think it's to do with Mario becoming a trustee of the
family interests, along with his cousin. You know his cousin, do
you?"
"Paula Viareggio? Stevie Steele's ex? Oh yes, I know her all
right."
Skinner laughed. "Christ, not her too! Is there a woman in Edinburgh
you didn't shag when you were single?"
"Plenty, and I didn't know Paula in that way. I just met her a couple
of times. She's a deep one; she had a way of letting you know right
from the off where you stood with her, and the answer I got was always
"No way". Her and Mario? Is that what they're saying? No, they're
cousins, remember."
"They're also Italian." Skinner laughed. "But Mario doesn't run the
trust on a day-to-day basis. He's appointed a lawyer to do most of the
work for him, so that he's hands-off. He only takes decisions on her
advice."
"Her?"
"Alex. My kid's getting on in the world."
"Glad to hear it. How is she?"
"Very well, and before you ask, she isn't behind McGuire's problem with
Maggie either. She's still based in London; there's an actor bloke in
tow, I believe, but I've still to meet him. Anyway, enough of all
that. How about you? How's Karen? How's the baby?"
"Lovely, both of them. Bob, I wish I could ask you and Sarah to be
godparents, but I think you have to be Catholics."
"Don't worry about it. I'm the wrong guy to ask anyway; God and I are
barely on speaking terms most of the time. There's not much point
asking Sarah and me to do something together either, but let's not get
into that again. Tell me about the job, how are you liking Tayside?"
Martin smiled. "It's excellent, Bob, it really is. Sure, compared to
ours ... yours, I should say... it's a pocket-sized force, but I'm
coming to think of that as an advantage. The clear-up rates are about
as good as they could get, for a start. Graham Morton's a first class
chief constable, and so are all his officers. I can say honestly that
since I've been there, I haven't come across a single piece of dead
wood."
"No Greg Jays, then?"
"None at all," he replied, then realised he had been tricked into a
comment. "Greg isn't all that bad, though," he added, quickly. "He's
a divisional CID commander after all."
"Aye, but he's past his sell-by date for the job. He's lost his spark,
and the new blood, like Rose and McGuire, are showing him up. He's
still well short of compulsory retirement though, and unless he chooses
to go that gives me a problem. I think I've solved it, though. Willie
Haggerty was all for giving Maggie Manny English's job when he goes
next winter, but I'm planning to put Greg in there. It's uniform, it's
a nominal promotion and it needs a good book operator, which he is." He
paused, and his face darkened. "Mind you, before I can do that, I need
to get myself back on the job."
They walked on in silence for a while, until they had left the big bay
behind, passed Freshwater Haven and come to another beach, this one
deserted, without a soul on its pale golden sands. Skinner pointed to
a path that led off inland. "We can take that and get back round the
edge of Muirfield," he said, 'or we can go on and have ourselves a real
walk."
Andy Martin frowned. "The short route will do me fine," he replied,
firmly, 'but before we go any further in any direction, I want to get
down to the thing that brought me here."
"Do that, by all means. I'm intrigued."
The younger man stopped, beside the ruins of an old stone cottage, and
took a seat on what was left of a wall. Skinner followed his lead and
perched alongside him, on his right.
"You'll have heard about the flood we had up in Perth," he began,
'after all that freak snow melted."
"The El Nino thing? Sure, I heard. I still find time to watch the
telly, son."
"In that case you can imagine what the place looks like now that the
water's gone down."
"A quagmire, I'd guess."
"Right. This morning we began the clear-up operation in the houses
that were flooded out. I was warned to expect all sorts in there;
cats, dogs, fish and frogs, sheep and even a few deer. I was not
warned to expect what we did find. I went with an old lady into her
basement, where she came upon the body of a man."
"Shit. Washed away by the flood?"
"Aye, with a mark on his wrist that could have been left by a rope, and
a mark on the side of his head that could have been put there before he
went in the river. There was enough about it for us to be treating it
as a suspicious death."
"Dramatic. You sure he wasn't the old lady's bidey-in?"
"Miss Bonney wouldn't know what a bidey-in is, Bob. She's sweet
seventy-six and probably never been kissed."
"Lucky for her. So what do you want from me? If it's advice on the
flood patterns of the silvery Tay, I know fuck all about them. If it's
the loan of some people to help with your investigation, you'd better
talk to Haggerty rather than me."
"That's a "No" to the first. As for the second, we're not at that
stage yet, and when we are it'll be my head of CID who does the asking
of Dan Pringle."
Martin reached for the back pocket of his jeans, then paused. "Once
the photographer and the doc were finished, we went through the man's
pockets."
"We?"
He grinned, fleetingly. "Okay, our young DC did. There was no wallet,
no driving licence, no old envelope with his name on it." Finally, his
hand completed its journey to his pocket. "Only this," he said,
drawing out the monochrome photograph, still in its plastic container,
and handed it over.
Skinner took it from him; as he looked at it, Martin watched him
intently. He had never seen a reaction remotely like it, not from Bob
Skinner, at any rate. His eyes widened, his mouth fell open, he seemed
to slip, for a moment, on his stony seat, and he gulped.
His friend sat, listening to the gulls as they broke the silence,
waiting as he stared at the photograph. Finally he was able to form a
long slow whisper. "Oh my God."
"You see?" said Andy. "That's you as a young man, isn't it?"
It was his turn to be astonished, as Skinner shook his head slowly.