‘Nobody’s memory’s a hundred per cent, son, but . . . why’s it bothering you? You’re divorced and have been for a while. You’ve had relationships. Why shouldn’t Karen meet her own needs, so to speak? “A bit on the side”, you said. That’s not what it is, Andy. There is no side; she’s entitled.’
‘If he’s around my kids, I’m entitled to take an interest in him. I remember when you were with Aileen de Marco and Sarah was living in the US, you were still interested in what she was up to. Don’t deny it.’
‘I won’t,’ Skinner conceded. ‘Look, can I make a suggestion?’ he ventured.
‘Could I stop you?’ Martin countered.
‘Probably not, I’ll grant you. So, if you’re that bothered, why don’t you ask Karen about it?’
‘It may come to that. I suppose I want to give her the chance to tell me.’
‘Andy, this is getting to you. You really do want her back, don’t you?’
He saw his friend’s hesitation. ‘Yes and no,’ Martin admitted. ‘Part of me would like to give it another try, but the other part’s afraid of fucking it up again. I had a second chance with Alex and I did exactly that.’
Skinner grinned. ‘If you’ve become that insecure, pal, I’m glad you opted out of the London job. Listen, is this why you FaceTimed me, to see if I can put a name to Karen’s bloke?’
‘Can you?’ Martin challenged.
He was almost certain that he could, but he shook his head, frowning. ‘If I could, I wouldn’t tell you. You have to ask Karen.’ He paused. ‘So, was that it, or is there another reason for the call? Do you still think you’re being stalked?’
Skinner could have sworn that his friend blushed. ‘Squirrels,’ he replied. ‘I installed a security camera and caught the culprits straight away. Waste food recycling is not the greatest Green idea. The other stuff, probably some disgruntled plod who found out where I live and decided to take the piss. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Remember that ACC somewhere who had a ton of horse manure dumped on his front garden? No, Bob, there is another reason. I’m looking for a new career, one that’s different from anything I’ve done in the past.’
‘But definitely not in London?’
‘Definitely no, that’s out.’
He paused, considering a possibility. ‘Not with the Saltire, surely,’ he said.
‘Not unless there’s one going that fits my skill set and will pay the sort of money I’m used to.’ Martin smiled, faintly. ‘Bob, you’re going to tell me I’m crazy, I know, but I’d like to go into politics.’
Skinner gasped. ‘Politics? You?’
‘Yes, me,’ he retorted, defensively, but still with a grin. ‘Why not?’
‘No, no, no. Why yes? What’s your motivation?’
‘Simple, I want to make things better. Not for myself, like too many of them, for people in general.’
‘So go and work for a charity. You’ve got a “Sir” before your name, that’ll open most doors.’
‘That might help individuals, but it wouldn’t change anything, and you know it. I want to be an influencer, Bob, not an administrator. That’s all I was as a chief constable, a gamekeeper for humans. You know that, you were one yourself and that’s why you walked away.’
‘I can’t deny that,’ Skinner admitted, ‘even if don’t care for the analogy. I always thought of myself as a public servant, first and foremost. I still do, to be honest.’
‘And that’s what I want to be too, but I want to be the kind who initiates, rather than implements. I have experience that none of the people in the Holyrood Parliament can match; I could shake the place up if I got in there, but I don’t have the contacts to take the first steps. You have. Can you help me?’
‘Are you having a mid-life crisis, mate? Is this the sort of thing that a good shag would put right?’ He paused. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘cynicism must be an after-effect of Covid-19. But Andy, do you even know the party you want to represent?’
‘Of course,’ Martin insisted. ‘I’m pro-independence, so it would be the Nationalists.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Skinner countered. ‘I know a few Tories who voted Yes in the referendum. Mind you,’ he admitted, ‘they keep their heads down. Nevertheless . . . you are an SNP member, yes?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Fuck!’ he gasped. ‘So you want me to go to Clive Graham, the First Minister, and tell him that I have the answer to all of his prayers, a potential SNP front-bencher that someone outside the Scottish Parliament has actually heard of, and that he’d even join the Party if it gave him a leg up?’ He grinned, suddenly. ‘Actually, that might work. Clive’s been in the job for years, and one of the things that keeps him there is the private belief that none of his colleagues come close to being up to it. If I do this, Andy, you’re not going to let me down, are you? This isn’t a whim, is it?’
‘No,’ he promised. ‘I’m serious.’
‘Then we’d better move fast. The election is looming and most of the candidates will be in place. I’ll call Clive and if he’s up for it, I’ll arrange a private meeting between the two of you. Any days you can’t do?’
‘I have the kids at the weekend, but I suppose Karen would take them . . . if she isn’t otherwise engaged. Will you be there, Bob? It might be helpful. I’ve never met the man, not even when I was chief constable. I dealt with the Justice Minister and the chair of the Police Authority.’
‘Hell no! You’ll be on your own, mate. I have a new job myself, and I can’t be seen to be involved in that sort of manoeuvre. Plus, you may be a man of leisure, I certainly am not. When I’m not running an international operation, I’m delivering groceries to old dears in Gullane.’
Seventeen
The day began earlier than Sarah Grace had anticipated. Her husband had tried not to waken her as he showered and shaved in preparation for his early morning flight to Spain, but inevitably she had stirred. Once she was awake, there would be no return to sleep, she knew, and so she went downstairs and made him coffee. Breakfast could wait, she decided, knowing that there would be catering on the company aircraft.
‘You’ll let me know if your flight time slips?’ she asked, in the kitchen.
‘Yes,’ Bob promised, ‘but it won’t. There’ll be hardly any air traffic out of Girona today.’
‘This is weird,’ she said, smiling, ‘this whole thing, you as chairman of the board, company jet, the whole works.’
‘Isn’t it just?’ he agreed. ‘But it’s an adventure too, and I’m ready for it. One thing I learned in isolation was how low my boredom threshold is.’
‘Low? It’s non-existent.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘Go on, get out of here. That’s Campbell arriving in his taxi, your lift to the airport.’
Bob finished his coffee; she walked with him as he headed for the door. ‘What have you got on today?’ he asked.
‘A Zoom lecture at ten o’clock, at the infirmary. I could have done it from here, but I have a couple of autopsies scheduled, on Covid victims, plus whatever emergencies the day might throw at me.’
He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Knock ’em dead,’ he murmured, opening the front door.
‘No need,’ she replied. ‘They come that way.’
She returned to their suite and readied herself for the day, aware of stirring noises from the children’s rooms. The boys and Seonaid were all self-starters, but Dawn had to be taken care of, and in Trish’s continuing absence the task fell to her, mostly. In theory her sons could have helped, and even Seonaid, but she found that she still enjoyed the basic tasks of motherhood. Knowing that she would never have another chance, she relished them.
Grateful that none of her brood needed to be taken to school, she was able to leave for the Royal Infirmary by nine, arriving well in time for her remote lecture, even after dropping Dawn off at the hospital creche. Most of
her students logged in on time, although some of their questions were affected by inadequate broadband connections.
Her scheduled post-mortem examinations were part of a national study into the effects of the coronavirus. The great majority of Covid-19 victims were not autopsied, only a few, selected because of underlying conditions and other factors, and always with the approval of their families. When she read the notes that accompanied her first subject, she was shocked, even before her assistant removed the sheet from the body on the examination table. It was a twenty-three-year-old woman who had succumbed to the disease within three days of displaying the first symptoms. Her medical history was minimal; she had not seen a doctor since contracting chickenpox as a primary school child. ‘God help us all,’ she whispered, ‘if it can do this.’ The memory of Sheila Craig, Xavi Aislado’s wife, sprang into her mind, laughing and joking over the dinner table in her Spanish home, and dead two weeks later. She had been middle aged, with a history of asthma in her youth, but no recent episodes, not in a high-risk group, and yet she was gone, leaving grief and bewilderment behind her.
The woman on the table was less than half Sheila’s age. She had the body of someone who was used to regular exercise, a gymnast, perhaps. No, a rower, Sarah decided, when she noticed crossed oars tattooed on her right forearm. She made the Y incision herself, as she always did. Some pathologists left that to their assistants, but she did so only rarely. Her instinct had always told her that it was disrespectful to the patient . . . always ‘patient’ in her mind, another of her idiosyncrasies. She went straight to the lungs; the cause of death had been certified as multiple organ failure, but its origin was self-evident. They were spongy, almost solid. She opened them, dictating as she worked, and found the answer straight away, an undetected tumour attached to the left primary bronchus. If the woman had been a rower as her body art suggested she must have been exceptionally fit when the virus struck, or more likely, to have been in denial. She checked the other organs for metastases, finding two in the lymph nodes and one in the brain.
She was in the final stages of dictating her summarised findings, when her phone sounded, its screen advising that the caller was Adrian Spott, the head of the lab where autopsy samples were analysed. She had known him since her earliest days in the pathology department and liked him immensely.
‘Good afternoon, Lady Skinner,’ he began, jovially.
‘Piss off, Adrian,’ she replied, in the same spirit. ‘Do you have anything for me or are you just plain bored?’
‘Bit of both, truth be told. Me and my fella, we’re sick of the sight of each other. I imagine you and Sir Robert are the same.’
‘We were after a couple of weeks of self-isolation.’
‘That said we’re still rushed off our feet here, as you can imagine.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Grace said. ‘I’m about to send you some more tissue samples from a Covid victim with an undetected underlying condition. Somebody, somewhere will want to know whether the coronavirus affects tumour growth and if so how. Imagine if it turned out to be a cure for cancer.’
‘Aye, right,’ Spott said, dryly. ‘Send them across, but you’re not jumping the queue. Meanwhile . . .’ he drew a breath, ‘the blood sample you sent me from your elderly stroke victim, that was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. How much do you know about the subject?’
‘Personally, not a lot. I’d met him, in the village and through the golf club. I did certify his death, though, for no other reason than I was the easiest option for the police. I only did the autopsy to satisfy his family. As straightforward a cerebrovascular accident as I have ever seen.’
‘You could certainly be forgiven for thinking that,’ the scientist agreed. ‘How was his mental state? Did he have dementia?’
‘Yes, probably Alzheimer’s. Early stages, I was told.’
‘What was his medication?’
‘Ramipril and Dabigatran.’
‘Did he live alone?’
‘He had carers coming in, but yes.’
‘Then he shouldn’t have been; he certainly shouldn’t have had access to his own medication. He must have been popping the Dabigatran capsules like they were jelly babies. I’ve never seen such high levels as there were in that sample. I’m not saying that they killed him, that’s your department, but they could easily have been a contributory factor.’
‘There’s no doubt about this? Sarah asked.
‘You wound me, Lady Skinner, you wound me. None whatsoever. I think you’d better change your report to the fiscal and make it accidental death.’
‘As you well know I won’t be writing that report. But still, I’d better pass your findings on to the person who will.’
She ended the call, then found McClair’s mobile. ‘Noele,’ she said as they were connected, ‘have I got news for you!’
Eighteen
‘So, DCI Neville, tell me about yourself.’
‘There isn’t a lot to tell, Captain Houseman,’ she replied. ‘People see me as boring, really: divorced mother of two, very much a plodder as a police officer. Half my colleagues think I only got where I am because I used to be married to the founding chief constable of our glorious service, the other half don’t know that but would think the same if they did. And you know what? They might be right.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s not to say I haven’t had my moments. I once got drunk at a police do and made a pass at the new chief constable. I was even accused of sexual harassment in a cupboard by a brother officer. Fortunately Bob Skinner didn’t believe it. Mind you, I did shag someone else in the same cupboard.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me any more. But I wasn’t asking about your job, I really did mean yourself. You have very nice stretch marks, but I don’t know anything else about you.’
‘That really is boring,’ Karen sighed. ‘I’m an only child. My parents were mid-ranking civil servants who played bridge, did the Scotsman crossword on alternate days and listened to Radio Four. When I was allowed the telly I saw it through a fog. They both smoked too much and as a consequence died when I was in my twenties, Dad first, from heart disease, Mum two years later from lung cancer. I have one brother, Gareth. He’s ten years older, inherited the family home and most of the rest of Mum’s estate, never gave me a penny of the proceeds, fucked off to a job as an assistant golf pro in Dubai, and never keeps in touch. I have one uncle who’s a dear. He lives on the other side of the country but still I see a lot of him. We bubble together, each of us being single. I saw much less of him when I was married to Andy, because they couldn’t stand each other.’
‘I have met him, you know,’ Houseman said, quietly, gazing across the dinner table.
Neville stared back at her lover. ‘Who?’
‘Your ex-husband,’ he replied.
She frowned. ‘When he was chief constable, I suppose?’
‘Once at a meeting I can’t talk about, not even to you. The other time, it was way before that. It was the day I laid eyes on Bob Skinner for the first time. I was a rough kid then, my teens, top dog my gang. He parked his car in my street, and I pulled the old “Watch it for a tenner” trick . . . or I tried to. He put me right very quickly, made me realise that however tough I thought I was, there would always be someone tougher. We didn’t talk for long, but he made an impression on me. I cut myself loose from the local disorganised crime and joined the Marines as soon as I was old enough. The memory of that meeting stayed with me, crystal clear, every detail, including his gofer, a young fair-haired guy in his twenties, with green eyes. He didn’t make any impression on me, but Skinner scared me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.’
‘Maybe he did,’ Karen said, ‘but don’t confuse Andy with a softie. People have forgotten now, but he played rugby for Scotland at B level before he chose his police career over being a full international. Did you ever play rugby?’
&n
bsp; ‘I played truant more than anything else. There was a bit of football, and I used to run, but I never did anything organised until I joined the armed forces. In the Marines, I played cricket, believe it or not.’ He smiled. ‘I was an all-rounder, bowled a bit, batted a bit, but it was my fielding that got me into the team and kept me there. That ended when I joined the Special Boat Service; that was full on, no time for games. The training left you too knackered for any leisure activity more strenuous than chess.’
‘Where did you serve?’ she asked. ‘Can you talk about it?’
‘It’s discouraged. We’re not sworn to secrecy but given some of the stuff we do, we’re advised against writing our memoirs. That hasn’t stopped some guys, but what I was involved in, that’s definitely not for publication.’
‘You’re not even going to tell me?’ she teased.
He grinned. ‘I suppose I can trust you, given that you’re part of the state security network as well. Some of my SBS service was in Iraq, but most, the heavy stuff, was in Afghanistan.’
‘Eh? I thought that was pretty much desert and poppy fields. Why did they need boats there?’
‘We weren’t exclusively water-based, we did land-based ops too.’
‘Such as?’
‘Occasionally there would be rendition. Intelligence would pinpoint a Taliban or AQ target, we’d go in on foot, sometimes after dark, sometimes in daylight, extract him then be picked up by choppers. Back at base he’d be handed over to the Americans.’
‘What did they do with him?’
‘I don’t know for sure; we were never told. The popular belief was that they’d take him to one of those places that officially didn’t exist, a secret base, maybe Diego Garcia, and go to work on him with so-called advanced interrogation techniques.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not sure what’s advanced about water-boarding, or attaching wires to somebody’s balls, but who am I to judge?’ He winced as he sipped a little of the Malbec that he had brought with him. ‘Rendition ops were the exception though. Mostly we just killed them.’
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