The new ACC leaned back from the table as the waitress took away his soup bowl and laid a plate of braised beef, carrots and chips in its place. 'Can I have Maisie, here?' he joked. 'She's doing a great job so far;
Proud Jimmy shook his head. 'The needs of the senior officers' dining room supersede yours, William.'
The Glaswegian laughed; yes, the Edinburgh air was different, but it was fresh and it suited him. He had been astonished by Bob Skinner's phone cal , asking if he would be interested in the job, in the wake of the appointment of his predecessor, Ted Chase, to the office of the inspector of constabulary. The bluntness of the question had taken his breath away. He had felt himself to be in a rut, his career path at its end, marked down as too rough a diamond for the command floor, an unlikely choice, as a confirmed thief-catcher, to be given charge of uniformed policing.
'Apply for it, Willie,' Skinner had said. 'The job's yours if you do; Jimmy and I'll make sure of that.'
'But why me, for ruck's sake?' he remembered croaking the question.
'I'm having no more Ted Chases in here, pal. It's as simple as that.
Aye, we want new blood, but this time I'm going to make sure I know what type it is. You're my choice; and besides, it'll be a damn good career move for you. The Dumfries and Gal oway post will be coming up in a few years; that'd be a nice place to command.'
'Jesus wept, you think long-term, don't you?'
'I've got fuck all else to do in this job; other people catch the thieves and murderers now. When Jimmy said he'd make a politician of me, he didn't know the half of it. I don't like the breed, Wil ie, based on bitter experience. But they exist, so I'l play their game . . . only I'll make up my own rules.'
So he had applied, and Skinner had kept his promise, despite what Haggerty had regarded, privately, as the worst interview of his career.
He glanced around the headquarters dining room, at the heavy silver braid on the uniforms. Yes indeed, he thought. A different air from Glasgow.
He had almost finished his beef when Martin's mobile rang. The Chief gave a slightly tetchy frown; he had a firm belief that there should be sanctuaries in which the telephone did not ring.
'Sorry, boss,' the Head of CID apologised, but he answered its call nonetheless.
'Andy?' The word was a sob. The voice on the other end of the line was so contorted that it was almost unrecognisable. At first, he supposed 16
it was Karen; the fear of a miscarriage rushed into his mind. Then he looked at the number shown by the phone's LCD display, and he knew who it was.
'Sarah?' A muffled, gasping sound was her only answer.
'What's wrong?'
'Andy.' It seemed to be al she could say.
'Sarah, what is it? Are you ill? Is it one of the kids?'
'No,' she moaned. 'Andy, can you come out here? I need you. I can't get through to Bob.'
'Sure, I'll come. But what is it?'
He heard her sobbing intensify. 'I can't talk about it over the phone,'
she whispered, through her tears.
'Okay, okay. I'm on my way.'
He ended the call. Proud and Haggerty were staring at him; and not only them. He realised that the urgency in his voice had brought all conversation in the dining room to a halt.
'What is it?' asked the Chief.
'I don't know,' he answered. 'She couldn't, or wouldn't, say. I'm off out to Gullane; that's where she was calling from.'
He rose from the table and turned towards the door. Before he reached it, it swung open and Detective Inspector Neil Mcl henney came into the room, shock and concern written across his face. 'Andy,' he said, his voice low, 'I've just taken a call from a guy who said he was the county sheriff, in Buffalo, New York. He was looking for the Boss, but the message was about Sarah ...'
Detective Superintendent Maggie Rose was still on a high; the phone cal from Mario had come as a complete surprise. She knew that the Special Branch posting usually carried a reward thereafter, but she had not expected that her husband would have jumped straight from his secretive office to the status of divisional CID commander.
'How long have you known?' she had asked him, with more than a hint of suspicion, once the initial delight had subsided.
'I didn't; not until this morning, when the Chief called me in and told me. Honest, love, it's the truth. Do you think I could have kept something like that from you?'
'After all that time in Special Branch? Too bloody right I do. But I'l take your word for it. So what's happening to Dan Pringle? Early retirement?'
He had hesitated for less than a second, but she had picked it up. 'Far from it. He's the new Head of CID.'
Thinking back, she had felt not even a twinge of disappointment; no, her instant reaction had been one of relief. 'Good for Clan. He's earned it.'
'Aye, sure, but. . .'
'I've told you, Mario. I've gone as far as I want for now. That job's about half a step below executive rank; I don't have the experience for it.
Besides, I've out-ranked you for long enough.'
'You think we'l make the papers? Husband and wife team and al that?'
'Are you kidding?'
'TFR, I'm kidding. The Chief said he wants that aspect played down; the press guy's under orders not to mention it.'
But someone would, she mused, as she stared out of the window of her small office, all but deaf to the bustle of the Haymarket traffic.
Sooner or later, some wag would decide to run a feature on the Nick and Nora Charles of Edinburgh CID, and for al ofAlan Royston's contacts and negotiating skil s, it would happen.
18
She was brought back to the present by a knock on her door. 'Come,'
she cal ed, sharply. It opened, with its familiar squeak, and a fresh-faced probationer constable came into the room. He was carrying a brown folder; she noticed that his hand trembled slightly as he held it out to her.
Christ, she thought, is that how the youngsters think of me?
'Yes, Constable?' she greeted him, deliberately softening her tone and offering a smile.
'I'm sorry, miss ... eh, sorry, ma'am, but. . .'
She interrupted him. 'That's at least one "sorry" too many, son. You're new here, yes?'
'First month, ma'am.'
'What's your name?'
'PC Haddock, ma'am.'
Poor lad, she thought. You 're going to have to be good.
'When they sent you up here, PC Haddock, did the lads tell you that I eat probationers for lunch?'
'More or less, ma'am.'
'They're right.' She paused. '. . . But not in their first few weeks. I prefer them a bit more seasoned. Now; what have you got for me?'
Pink-cheeked, the tal , gawky young man looked down at her. 'Chief Superintendent English cal ed in, ma'am.' She nodded; English was the senior officer in the division, the top uniform. 'He's been detained up at headquarters; the meeting with Mr Haggerty's going on into the afternoon. So he asked if you'd take a look at the night-shift reports.'
Inwardly, Maggie bristled. Manny English was pushing his luck; the night-shift reports were pure bloody trivia puffed up by the panda patrol ers to make it look as if they had been rushed off their feet. They could have been checked by a sergeant, but the Chief Super was a procedural paragon. In addition, he liked to keep in touch with everything that happened on his patch. Stil , palming off uniformed officers' reports to the CID commander, as the next senior officer, was taking it a bit far.
Outwardly, she smiled again at Haddock, and took the folder from him. 'Of course I wil ,' she said. 'Anything for Mr English.' He stood there, uncertain of what to do. 'You can go,' she told him. 'I'l send them down to his office when I'm done.'
'Very good, miss ... eh, sorry, ma'am.' The constable left the room much more quickly than he had entered.
Shaking her head as the door closed on him, Maggie opened the folder. By divisional standards, it looked like a light load. A false alarm at a chemist's shop in Fountainbridge, three assorted brawls, two domestic call-outs which turned out to be no more than loud arguments, and one in which a husband had been arrested and charged with assaulting his wife.
'Rubbish,' she muttered, and was on the point of closing the folder when her eye was caught by the last report; there was a photograph clipped to it. She slipped it out and looked at the Polaroid. It had been taken clumsily, and showed only the top half of a man's body, lying flat on a table. He was dressed in a heavy grey wool en jerkin, with a short zip, opened, at the neck. He looked to be in his fifties; he was bald, with a heavy, grizzled beard. Despite his weather-beaten complexion, from the blueness of his lips and cheeks, the Detective Superintendent could tell at once that he was dead.
She picked up PC Charlie Johnston's report and read carefully through his police-speak prose. The man had been identified by Dr Amritraj, who had certified his death, as Magnus Essary, of 46 Leightonstone Grove, Hunter's Tryst, Edinburgh, single, aged forty-nine. Using keys found on the body, Johnston had gained entry to the house and had searched thoroughly for any references to family, or next of kin; thoroughly, the constable insisted, but without success. There was nothing to be found, and the neighbours, delighted. Rose guessed, to have been wakened by a policeman at that hour of the morning, had al described him as a quiet, polite man who kept to himself. The report ended with the simple statement that its author had been unable to trace anyone who could be contacted and asked to take responsibility for the body.
'This is daft,' the Detective Superintendent muttered as she finished the report. 'This man cannot have been a complete loner. He lived at a fairly posh address; he must have had some sort of business life. Even if he didn't have any friends, there must be colleagues. We can't just let the guy lie in the mortuary.'
She picked up the telephone and called Oxgangs office; she was put through at once to the duty inspector, Laurence Gray, an ex-CID
colleague. 'Laurie,' she began, 'I've got a report here on a sudden death on your patch in the middle of the night; man cal ed Essary. It was written up by Constable Johnston.'
'Oh aye, our Charlie,' Gray growled, with a faint chuckle. 'I've been half expecting the Chief Super to cal me about that one. Johnston's a book operator. . . the trouble with him is that he hasnae finished reading the bloody book yet.'
Rose relaxed. 'So you're following it up, not just giving up on it.'
'Come on, Maggie. I was in CID long enough not to be doing that.'
20
She accepted the reproof. 'Sorry. I should have known better.'
'Indeed, ma'am,' the inspector rumbled. 'As it happens, the thing's sorted. Mr Essary was in the wine importing business, in partnership with a woman called Ella Frances. She called Fettes this morning, and they put her in touch with me; I told her to go up to the Royal. She did; they called to let us know she's confirmed the identification and claimed the body. She's had it uplifted from the mortuary already. File closed.'
'That's good. No thanks to Johnston, though. It's just as well for both of you that the Chief Super was tied up.'
'Ach, don't blame Charlie. He didnae make any mistakes; he just focused a bit too hard on his finishing time, that's al . You know what the night shift's like. Short spells of action mixed in with long periods of near-terminal boredom.'
'You're right there. But you wait till you're in my job. There isn't a minute of your life you can cal your own completely, with no fear that the phone'l ring.'
'It'l be double for you from now on then, wi' your man's promotion.'
Maggie Rose was rarely surprised. 'How did you know about that so soon?'
'Hah! You think e-mail's fast? It's got nothing on the force grapevine.
Be sure to congratulate Mario for me, will you?'
'Of course. Thanks, Laurie.'
She hung up, slipped the report and photograph back into the folder, and leaned back in her chair, musing on the curse that Alexander Graham Bell had visited on mankind.
6
She was calm by the time she heard the big Dodge Caravan crunch its way up the gravel driveway. She opened the heavy front door to greet them; three of them, Andy Martin, Neil Mcl henney, and his wife, Louise, picked up on the way to Gul ane.
The two women embraced. 'Neil called to tell me what had happened,'
Lou murmured. 'He and Andy thought you might welcome a woman's company, and since Bob's daughter is working on secondment in London . . .' Her voice faltered for a second. 'Oh, I am so sorry,' she exclaimed, hugging her again.
Sarah felt herself begin to go again, but held on to her composure, steeling herself not to fold in front of the two men, however close to her and Bob they might be.
'Thanks, Lou,' she replied. 'Come on through to the conservatory.'
She led the way from the entrance hal of the modem bungalow, towards the big glass-walled room, which looked out over the Forth estuary, drab and grey in the dul spring day.
'Can I do something?' asked Louise, making a conscious effort not to sound as if she wished she was somewhere else. 'What about the children?'
Sarah gave her a weak smile. 'They're fine. Mark's at school, James Andrew's dismantling his toys in the play room, and Seonaid's having her afternoon sleep. Tell you what, though; you could pour the coffee.
I've made some in the filter.'
'Of course. What does everyone take in theirs?' She glanced at Martin.
'Nothing. Black, please.'
'Right now, I'll take brandy,' said Sarah. 'You'l find the cooking stuff in the cupboard above the coffee pot.'
'That's a done deal.' She turned and walked through to the kitchen; she had visited the Skinners on several occasions and knew her way around.
Left with Sarah, the two detectives looked from one to the other. It was she who broke the awkward silence. 'Sorry I was useless when I 22
cal ed you, Andy. But the phone cal came as such a shock; it just floored me, I did the little woman thing, went into complete hysterics, and upset the kids in the process.'
'Okay,' he murmured. 'Now sit down, and tell us exactly what happened.'