‘Okay, Bob,’ Payne said, ‘but if I do this, I’ll need to report it up the ladder, to the new hierarchy, McIlhenney and McGuire.’
‘Absolutely,’ Skinner agreed. ‘When you do, though, keep my name out of it. They wouldn’t be happy if they knew I was involved. They’re big boys now, and they need to be seen to be standing on their own four feet.’
‘I can see that,’ the ACC admitted. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’ll always be grateful for all the advice you can give me. Also, given that you have a continuing connection with MI5 that nobody talks about, there’s a valid reason for us to keep in touch, professionally as well as personally. And that,’ he added, ‘brings another thought to mind. If this character isn’t a figment of Sir Andrew’s vivid imagination, and he’s watching Karen as well, given their long associations, shouldn’t we consider the possibility that he might have an interest in Alex too?’
‘Jesus,’ Skinner hissed, ‘you’re right. In that case, Lowell, keep me in the loop. I will look after my daughter, whatever the new high heid yins think about it.’
Seven
‘Thanks for doing this,’ Noele McClair said, as she greeted the new arrival at the door. ‘I could have got a GP to handle it, if only I’d the patience.’
‘It’s all right,’ Sarah Grace assured her. ‘I know how much pressure the practices are under, and I wasn’t doing anything else. Where is the deceased?’
‘Through here. Follow me.’ She led the pathologist to the living room, standing aside as they reached the doorway.
Grace put her bag on the sideboard, opened it and slipped on a pair of disposable gloves. She stepped up to the armchair, and leaned over its occupant, put two fingers against his neck, then shone a light into the slitted eyes. ‘The formalities,’ she murmured, as she raised the arm that lay on his lap then replaced it gently. ‘He’s been dead overnight for sure; rigor’s worn off. When was he found?’
The inspector recounted the events leading to the discovery.
‘You let the carer go?’
‘I had to. She was due somewhere else, with another vulnerable client. Her company’s getting me the name of the next of kin.’
‘Fine, she wouldn’t have known his medical history, anyway. I need that in determining a cause of death. If I can do that without cutting the old fellow open, it’ll be better.’
‘She did say that he’d been diagnosed with vascular dementia, if that helps.’
Grace nodded. ‘It does. My first thought is that there’s been a cerebral accident, a major stroke. It’s a common cause of death among patients with that condition; maybe even the most common. Did she say what medication he was on?’
‘No,’ Benjamin said from the doorway, ‘but I found this in the bathroom.’ She held up a long flat box, with compartments.
The pathologist took it from her. ‘It’s a dosette box. It holds his daily medication.’ She opened the section marked ‘Sat’, and peered inside, at a white pill and two capsules. ‘Yeah,’ she murmured, ‘they’re what you’d expect in a dementia patient. That looks like Ramipril, for blood pressure, the white one, l guess will be a statin for cholesterol, and the third is Dabigatran, that’s a blood thinner. Preventative, all of them. You can’t cure dementia, you can only keep it at bay, and then only for so long.’ She turned to McClair. ‘Noele, do you see anything here that gives you cause for concern? I’m looking at a sudden death, no more.’
‘Me too.’
‘In that case I’ll issue a death certificate. I don’t see any need for a post-mortem. When you advise the next of kin, you can tell them that Mr Stevens can go straight to the funeral parlour.’
Eight
Skinner stood in his garden, gazing northwards across the Firth of Forth, towards the Fife coast, which was bathed in pale winter sunshine. In his hands he cradled a mug of his son’s carrot and coriander soup, which he had to admit was pretty damn good; Jazz might find himself extending his kitchen duty, he decided. The thought lifted his spirits but did not erase his funk completely. During his isolation he had cut himself off from all but family, close friends and necessary business contacts. In the days following his positive test, as he was riding out his symptoms, and fighting off visions of being ventilated in an intensive care ward, he had come to realise what depression really was. He had made light to Sarah of his Mental Elf emoji, but it was serious to him, a symbol of the secondary peril of the pandemic, its dangers to individuals and to society as a whole. The most immediate threat, as he saw it, was a downward spiral of resigned pessimism, and the smile on the tiny hair-braided figure’s face was his shield against that. Of course, he worried about the longer-term effects of the mutating virus on society, in ways that the majority had yet to confront. There would not, that he could contemplate, be a benchmark date in the history that was yet to be written when the world would say, ‘It’s over,’ and life would return to what it had been. On day six in their confinement quarters, the face of Professor Brian Cox had appeared on the TV screen that he and his wife were barely watching. ‘That’s all you know, mate,’ he had grunted. His wife had cast a bewildered stare in his direction, but he had declined to elaborate. The academic’s role in the banal and over-optimistic anthem ‘Things can only get better’, would always outweigh in Skinner’s mind his contribution to popular understanding of the cosmos.
He had barely finished his soup when his ringtone sounded in the pocket of his jacket. Laying his mug on the stone garden table he dug it out and peered at the screen. The caller ID ‘M Reid’ was displayed. With a faint grin he took the call. ‘Hi, Matthew,’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’
Matthew Reid was a member of what Skinner referred to as his village circle, a small group who had risen to the status of friends rather than simple acquaintances. When society was free and unrestricted, half a dozen of them had been in the habit of gathering in the Mallard Hotel late on Friday evenings. Most were retired; Reid was still working, although his age was a mystery, even within the circle. He was an author, the creator of a series of crime novels, a second career that had begun by accident thirty years before and which showed no sign of reaching a conclusion. His protagonist was an Edinburgh man with the unlikely name of Septimus Armour . . . ‘My granny was an Armour, one of a family of seven,’ he would explain . . . who had risen from an under-privileged background, running away from a life of petty crime in the capital and, as Reid put it, ‘blagging his way into Strathclyde Police as what he saw as a temporary hiding place from his former associates, and staying on when he realised it was a hell of a lot more lucrative than crime.’ At the turn of the century the series had come close to being commissioned by a television channel, only to fail at the last hurdle. Reid maintained that while it might have cost him a lot of money it had saved him even more grief.
‘More to the point, Bob,’ he countered, ‘how are you? I saw your daughter’s Facebook announcement.’
He and Skinner had met in the early years of the series when the author had approached the cop, tentatively, for background information on police practice. He had been happy to help, on condition that it was not acknowledged publicly. ‘Otherwise I’ll have every bugger ringing my doorbell,’ he had said.
‘I’ve been better,’ Skinner admitted, ‘but others have suffered worse than I did. My friend Xavi’s lost his wife to the thing. Are you vaccinated yet?’
‘Ten days ago. No side effects, I’m pleased to say.’
‘I’ll have to wait my turn for mine, although I suppose that Sarah and I will have antibodies for a while. It’ll possibly be this month, if not, early April they say. Maybe by that time we’ll be able to meet up in the pub again, although the virtual Friday nights you’ve been running are a good substitute.’
‘They’ve been cheaper too,’ Reid grunted. ‘It’ll be a while before we’re back in the Mallard, and even then, it won’t be the Mallard. Have you heard that the new owners are ch
anging the name?’
‘Yeah, we’ll see how long it takes the village to catch up. Are you busy, Matthew? Will there be a new Armour yarn out this year?’
‘Yes,’ the author replied, ‘it’s taking shape in my brain even as we speak. All I need to do is keep making the time to write it.’
‘I thought the current situation would be perfect for guys like you.’
‘It should be, but I have other interests. That’s why I’m calling. Bob, would you have the time or the inclination to join the resilience group?’
‘What the fuck is that?’ Skinner asked, chuckling. ‘It makes me think of the Maquis, the French resistance.’
‘In a way it’s much the same. It’s a bunch of us offering our time to look after people who need it and who’ve been overlooked by the system, the elderly, disabled, people shielding. Checking they’re all right, running errands, getting prescriptions, doorstep chats, whatever helps.’
‘Does it get you out of the house, legitimately?’
‘We believe so,’ Reid replied. ‘The real question is whether it allows you to enter other people’s. We’re advised that it does, but only if there’s a need.’
‘In that case, I’m up for it. How does it work?’
‘Through Facebook, for starters. People who need help can post on the group’s page, but mostly we’re working through word of mouth. We’ve established a list of people needing assistance, and we keep in touch with them, by phone mostly, checking they’re all right and whether they have anything that needs taking care of. The responses are wide and varied. One old lady couldn’t flush her toilet and was panicking about the . . . the backlog, so to speak.’
‘Nice choice of words, Matthew.’
‘It’s what I do,’ Reid retorted, cheerfully. ‘That one was easy to fix. Our friend Joe’s son-in-law took care of it. As you know, he’s a plumber.’
‘I thought he was a golfer, the time he spends on the course.’
‘No comment. Thanks for agreeing, Bob. I’ll email you a list of people, and you can get going. You’ll probably know most of them.’
‘Don’t count on that,’ Skinner warned. ‘It doesn’t matter, though. I spent much of my career knocking on the doors of people I didn’t know . . . sometimes knocking quite hard!’
Nine
The nameplate on the door of the modern suburban villa read ‘Martin’; initially Lowell Payne was surprised but understood after a little thought that while Detective Chief Inspector Karen Neville might use her maiden name at work, with two children of school age from her marriage, it would be generally confusing if she carried this into her private life.
He was about to press the button on the bell when the door opened.
‘Boss.’ Neville’s eyes registered curiosity rather than surprise. ‘Clever things, these video doorbells. My watch told me there was someone there, then my phone told me it was you. Mind you, with that mask on, I had to take a second look.’
‘I wish we could hack into these systems,’ the assistant chief constable remarked, as he removed his face covering. ‘It would make parts of our job a hell of a lot easier.’
‘Tell me about it,’ she said. ‘This thing records video and stores it on the Cloud. I have a camera in the back garden that does the same thing. My ex was here earlier on, picking up the kids; he told me he’s invested in a similar system. But enough of that,’ she exclaimed. ‘What brings you here on a fine Sunday morning? Don’t tell me you were just passing on your way home from church, for I won’t buy that one.’ She paused. ‘By the way, I would invite you in, sir, but as things stand, I’m not allowed to.’
‘I know,’ he conceded. ‘I have to admit that I forget about lockdown conditions from time to time. However, we’re both essential services; maybe that would cut us some slack, and also, the fact that you’re working from home most of the time. We can talk on the doorstep though.’
‘So it is work related, this visit?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘In that case, let’s compromise and talk in the garden.’ She picked up a black device from a table by the door and pressed it. There was a buzz and the door of the garage, to his left, began to rise. ‘Go through that way. There’s a door at the back that lets you in.’
Most of the neighbours had their cars in their driveways but he had to squeeze between Neville’s blue Volkswagen and two children’s bicycles. The space into which he emerged was a mix of paving and grass, with leafless trees and shrubs. Its maturity surprised him; he lived in the same town and knew that the estate had been developed only recently.
She seemed to read his mind as she emerged from a double glass doorway. ‘Do you like it? I got a real bargain; I bought the showhouse, and the garden had been laid out. Mostly you’re lucky if you get grass. Coffee?’ she asked. As he nodded, she pointed towards a square green plastic waterproof covering. ‘The outside table’s under that thing; it’s where it lives in the winter. Peel it off, please. I’ll only be a minute. I’m in the middle of making myself some lunch, but I can set that aside for now.’
Payne did as she said, folding the covering and laying it beside the doorway. Looking inside, he saw a spacious modern fitted kitchen, all blinding white units and stainless steel handles. Glancing at it, he saw chopped vegetables on a board, eggs, flour and milk unmixed in a blender, and dishes in a rack beside the sink, two cereal bowls. The leavings of breakfast, he surmised. I wonder whose the second was.
‘No kids?’ he asked as she emerged with a tray, laden with two mugs and a plate of KitKat biscuits. He pulled out two of the four seats that were stored under the table, maintaining an appropriate social distance between them.
‘They’re with their dad for the weekend. Did you know he’s back from America?’ Neville added.
‘Yes, I’d heard. For good?’
‘We’ll see.’ She looked into her mug. ‘Whisper it, but there’s talk of a big job in the Met, Deputy Commissioner, no less. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? We get McIlhenney, they get Andy. Who’d get the best of that trade, do you think, boss?’
The ACC grinned. ‘No comment.’ Bob Skinner never told me that, he thought. I wonder if he knows.
‘Me neither,’ she murmured. ‘Are you going to tell me now?’ she continued. ‘What you’re doing here?’
‘Call it a job satisfaction interview,’ he replied, grateful for the time he had been given to come up with a plausible story. ‘In normal times, I’d be doing this in the office. Serious organised crime and counter-terrorism: the work might be low profile, but the stress is disproportionate. As its leader I have a duty to ensure that all my people are coping.’
The DCI peered at him. ‘As do we all, sir, don’t we?’
‘I suppose,’ he agreed. ‘Do you have any concerns within your team?’
‘Mine’s a widespread crew as you know,’ she said, ‘given that my job is oversight of possible terrorist activity across our three divisions. I’m happy with all my officers. They all report on time and flag up situations as soon as they arise. Liaison with the Security Service in Westminster might be a bit sticky from time to time – whenever London deigns to ask us for help, that is – but when it’s channelled through Clyde Houseman, their Scotland watcher, that’s okay too.’
‘Do your paths cross often?’ Payne asked.
‘We’re doing the same job,’ Neville pointed out. ‘For different masters answerable to different governments, but essentially the same job, spotting possible terrorist activity at an early stage and shutting it down if it turns out to be real.’
‘What do you know about Houseman?’
‘What’s to know?’ she countered casually. ‘As spooks go, he’s less spooky than most.’
‘He’s an interesting guy,’ the ACC told her. ‘Most of these Security Service people are recruited from university, but not Houseman, he followed another pat
hway. He was a gangbanger in Edinburgh as a kid, but he straightened himself out in time and instead of becoming an enforcer for some drugs gang, he joined the Royal Marines and got himself a commission. Then he transferred to special forces, the Special Boat Service . . . the waterborne SAS. He came out as a captain, or maybe even a major, can’t remember. I don’t know whether he was headhunted by the Security Service or he applied, but they’re a good fit. Bob Skinner reckons he’ll be moving up the Millbank ladder soon, and he knows these things. Bob’s still connected there and will be as long as Dame Amanda Dennis is in charge.’
The DCI frowned. ‘I hope it doesn’t happen too soon,’ she said. ‘Clyde would be hard to replace.’
‘Agreed,’ Payne said, ‘but I can think of a very good candidate.’
She looked at him, curious. ‘Are you going to share?’
He raised his mug. ‘No, but she makes a damn good cup of coffee.’
Her eyebrows rose, and then she laughed. ‘You can forget that. Andy wouldn’t allow it.’
‘Would he have a veto?’
‘He can be persuasive. We haven’t discussed it, but if the London thing materialised, I’m pretty certain he would ask me to relocate too. For the kids’ sake, you know.’
‘I’m sure you’d have no trouble getting a transfer.’ The ACC’s eyes found hers. ‘But if it happened, would you want one?’
‘Would I stay in Scotland? Would I go down there as a cop, or would I go down there as a wife and mother? Is that what you’re asking?’
‘I suppose so. Sorry, Karen, it’s none of my business.’
‘Of course it’s your business.’ She smiled. ‘I’m on your team, sir. The short answer is, I don’t know. It’s never really been discussed, but Andy’s been throwing out hints. The London thing isn’t certain. As for Andy and me, that isn’t necessarily connected to it anyway. He hasn’t flat out asked me about the chances of a reconciliation, and I am sure as hell not going to ask him. But . . . If he did, I would have to be satisfied that he’s over a certain Ms Alexis Skinner . . .’ She paused, her hand going fleetingly to her mouth. ‘Oh God, of course, she’s your niece.’
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