‘She’s been on to the chief’s office, kicking up merry hell,’ Mackie explained, ‘demanding a criminal investigation and all sorts. He asked me to get a report from division; since your boss is off, I decided to look into it myself . . . because it gets me out of the bloody office,’ he added.
‘He’s not going to give in to her, is he?’
‘That’ll depend on what I report back. What’s your feeling? Put your CID hat back on and tell me.’
‘CID or uniform, my feeling is the same. Based on the information we got from the autopsy, I’d expect the fiscal to classify it as an accidental death and close the file. If CID get involved, the first thing they’re going to do is interview the social workers; if the media get hold of that they’ll be portrayed as under suspicion. I’ve interviewed them already and I’m satisfied they had no involvement.’
‘And Sarah? What’s her view?’
‘Same as mine. Mr Stevens had free access to his medication; he had dementia and in that condition he had no idea how much he was taking or, like as not, what he was taking. If you ask me, Mrs Langham is lashing out in all directions to divert attention away from her own guilt.’
‘Guilt for what?’
‘For buggering off back to England as soon as her mother’s ashes were scattered and leaving her eighty-six-year-old father to fend for himself. Mr Stevens deserved better; I know that and so does she.’ She stood, stretching her back. ‘The chief isn’t going to give in to her, is he? He won’t take the easy option and open a suspicious death file, will he?’
The deputy chief smiled. ‘You don’t know Neil McIlhenney, do you?’
She shook her head. ‘No, sir, he had moved to London long before I transferred to this area.’
‘If you did, then you’d understand that he’s never taken an easy option in his life, in any respect. Jesus, he used to play football with Bob Skinner’s Thursday night mob. I never saw them in action but, from what I’ve heard, that was life-threatening!’
Twenty-Five
‘Can I finish my round now?’ Philomena McBride asked the senior of the two uniforms, as the trio stood on the landing.
‘No chance,’ Sergeant Malcolm Robertson declared. ‘You’ll wait here for CID and forensics just like us. The detectives will want a statement from you and the SOCOs will want fingerprints and DNA swabs for elimination.’
‘But what about my mail?’ she moaned. ‘I’m letting folk down here.’
‘Call your office,’ PC Mary Hill suggested. ‘Get them to send someone else out to take over from you.’
‘Wi’ our staffing levels? Fat chance of that.’ She nodded towards the open door of the flat. ‘What d’you reckon about him?’ she asked.
‘I reckon he’s dead,’ Robertson replied. ‘The fact that his blood’s splattered on the wall, that’s a fair indicator. Other than that, you probably know more than us.’
‘That’s the thing,’ Philomena said. ‘I don’t have a clue. It’s like the place is an Airbnb; there’s never a name on the mail.’ She checked her watch. ‘How much longer are they gonnae be?’
‘God knows. The SOCOs are coming from Gartcosh, so they’ll depend on traffic. This’ll be a job for Serious Crimes, obviously; they’ll be pulling a team together.’
As the sergeant spoke, a tall figure appeared on the staircase in a crime-scene tunic with the hood pulled back, revealing a shock of red hair. ‘Paul Dorward,’ he announced. ‘Who’s in charge?’
‘That’ll be me, for now,’ Robertson replied. ‘We’re still waiting for CID.’
‘Have you been inside?’
‘Obviously,’ the sergeant replied, dryly, ‘to verify what Ms McBride here reported.’
The young scientist looked at the officer’s feet. ‘Do you lot not carry overshoes in your kit?’
‘We do,’ Robertson said, defensively, ‘but we assumed it was a sudden death from the information we were given. I didn’t realise it was a crime scene until I walked in there. As soon as I did I backed out and told PC Hill not to come any further. We didn’t go any further than the doorway. Okay, it’ll be contaminated, but not by much. And by the way,’ he added, ‘I don’t appreciate being told how to do my job by somebody whose university degree hasn’t dried yet.’
‘You’ll take it from me, though,’ an older voice said, firmly. The police officers and the post-person looked round at the staircase as the newcomer reached the landing. Thirty years separated the two men, but the resemblance was striking, emphasised by the colour of their hair. ‘I don’t care how long you’ve been on the job, Sergeant,’ Arthur Dorward growled, ‘when you’re called to a fatality you assume nothing and you go in with sterile footwear and gloves, minimum. If you’ve still got them, put them on now.’
‘The horse has bolted, surely,’ PC Hill suggested.
‘You’ve got a body in there and a suspicious death. Is the perpetrator still inside? I guess not. That means that he entered and left by this landing, so you three are walking all over his tracks. Get those overshoes on, now.’ He turned to his assistant, a step behind him on the staircase. ‘Lance, give the post lady a pair.’ He looked back at the sergeant. ‘How many dwellings are there in this close?’
‘Six,’ Robertson replied, ‘two on each floor. I gave the next-door neighbour a knock but got no reply.’
‘You should check the others. If you find anyone, ask them to stay indoors.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Not that I’m telling you how to do your job, mind.’
Twenty-Six
‘What do you make of the Martin announcement?’ June Crampsey asked.
‘I think nothing until he’s elected,’ Skinner assured her. ‘After that, we’ll see.’
‘Did you know what’s behind it? How did the Nats come to recruit him? I’m assuming you’ll know,’ she added.
‘Boredom, frustration, a sense of failure leading to a desire to restore his reputation. I don’t know any of that for sure, but it’s one of those, or even a combination of all three. After Andy resigned after his brief stint as chief constable, I heard someone remark that he got his knighthood for bugger all. The same thought will have occurred to him; it’ll have hurt him, and will have wound him up. As for his recruitment to the ranks, he approached the First Minister, through an intermediary.’
‘He’s going to get a seat,’ she said, ‘and the way things stand the Nationalists will win the next election, possibly outright. Will Graham give him a job?’
‘For sure; it’d be an obvious snub if he didn’t. Which one? That will depend on whether Clive sees him as an ally or a threat. If he’s wary of him he could give him a job in a poisoned chalice department, health or education, for example. If he rates him, he’ll give him something with fewer landmines to step on.’
‘Justice?’
‘That would be my bet.’
‘Can I run a leader speculating along those lines?’
Skinner grinned. ‘Why are you asking me? You’re the managing editor.’
‘And you’re the group executive chair.’
‘In which case that’s well below my pay grade. Manage and edit,’ he chuckled. ‘Get on with it. You won’t hear from me unless our sales plummet. Now,’ he said, ‘I have to go. My real job is calling me. One of my elderly clients in Gullane asked me if I could pick her up some bananas from Marks and Spencer at Fort Kinnaird on the way home. She prefers them to Tesco bananas, apparently. Maybe they’re straighter.’ He frowned. ‘You know, June, I haven’t been in that store for a while. Ever since that awful incident in the car park, I haven’t been able to go back.’
‘So go to another. There’s an M&S food place in Morningside. Or,’ she suggested, ‘you could nip into Waitrose instead. She won’t know the difference.’
He laughed. ‘And you don’t know Mrs Alexander.’
Skinner returned to his office, cleared his desk, and took
the lift down to the basement garage. That held bad memories for him also; in the recent past he had been mugged there by a Russian hoodlum. In the event, his attacker had come a bad second, but it had been a reminder that he was no more immune than anyone else to the advance of time.
He switched on the Tesla and steered it silently out of the garage. It was a senior executive model, an S Type, with a quoted ability to reach sixty from a standing start in under two seconds. It was a claim he had never tested; the cop in him felt that manufacturers should be barred from unleashing a car that fast on the public highway. His boys, on the other hand loved it, because it allowed gaming in the back seat, with an alleged ten teraflops of processing power. Skinner had no idea what a teraflop was. When he had asked Mark to explain it he had told him to stop after the word ‘trillion’. ‘Everything uses up brain capacity, son, and at my age there’s only so much of that left. I’d rather keep it for things I need to know.’
With lockdown in place, the roads were almost deserted; for all that, the lights held him up at the five-way Holy Corner junction, as they always seemed to do. Beyond them, and past the Church Hill Theatre, he took advantage of the lack of traffic to slow as he passed Newbattle Terrace to glance along at the Dominion Cinema, the Art Deco movement’s finest gift to Edinburgh. It had been a favourite of his and Myra’s when Alex was a baby and they could find a sitter, and again when Sarah had moved back to Scotland and their reconciliation was in its early days. He made a silent vow to return, if it survived the burden of enforced closure.
The M&S food-store did indeed have bananas. He chose the straightest bunch he could find, and on a whim added two stalks of rhubarb. The route out of the city took him so close to Maggie Steele’s house that he found himself making an unplanned stop. Mrs Alexander isn’t going anywhere, he told himself.
The Margaret Rose Steele who answered his ring was a version he had never seen before. She wore jeans, ripped at one knee and a sweatshirt. Both were marked with paint matching the colour of the brush she was holding. Her grey-flecked red hair was long, tied back in a ponytail. ‘Bob,’ she exclaimed. ‘This is a surprise. You should have warned me, so I could change out of this mess.’ She smiled; he thought she looked as relaxed as he had ever seen her, and certainly happier than at any time since her husband, Stevie Steele, had been killed in the line of duty.
‘Just passing,’ he explained, ‘only I couldn’t.’
She raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Coffee withdrawal symptoms?’
‘Something like that.’
She led him through to her large kitchen, where she dropped the paintbrush into a large jar of white spirit. ‘Thankfully the DIY stores are still open,’ she said. ‘The longer lockdown lasts the more I’ll get done.’
‘Where’s Stephanie?’ he asked. ‘Pasted behind a strip of paper? Myra did that once, with a contact lens, behind a roll of anaglypta, if you can remember what that was. By some miracle we found it and got it out with the aid of a razor blade.’
‘Nothing so dramatic,’ Steele replied with a smile. ‘She’s watching Peppa Pig. It makes a pleasant change from Iggle bloody Piggle.’ She opened a cupboard, produced a jar of coffee and scooped four measures into a cafetiere. ‘So, what’s happening in the Saltire building?’ she asked as she filled the kettle. ‘Congrats, by the way. I saw that understated announcement on the business pages. Group chair, indeed.’
‘Temporary, and I wish it didn’t have to be. I do get to fly in my own plane though, and to drive a ridiculous electric car.’
She glanced out of the kitchen window. ‘That one out there? What does it do?’
‘Everything. It’s got fucking teraflops in it.’
‘What’s a teraflop?’
‘Christ knows. My only concern is that they’re not carnivorous. Have you heard about Sammy?’ he asked, suddenly and quietly.
She nodded. ‘We all knew it was coming, but it’s no less of a shock, a lad his age, dying in such a God-awful way. Do you have a contact for Ruth? I want to get in touch with her, not so much as a former colleague, but widow to widow. She’s had a while to get used to the idea, but you never truly believe that the worst is going to happen until it does. Sometimes,’ she added, ‘you never quite believe it.’
‘Sure,’ he promised, ‘I’ll give you her number. I called her myself this morning; stoic, describes her best. She’s a strong girl, but she sounded wasted.’
‘Of course, you know her; she used to be your secretary at Fettes.’
‘That’s right, the best I ever had. She’ll be all right financially for the moment, but I’ve told her that if she wants to go back to work, I can fix her up with something, either at the Saltire, or somewhere else where I have influence.’ He sighed. ‘God, it makes me feel very old. I remember Sammy as a fresh-faced kid, working out of Haddington. He was a really bright lad, full of promise even then, the sort that stood out from the rest.’
‘Me too: I can picture him as he was back then. He was a good-looking boy, no question.’ Steele paused. ‘Here, didn’t he and Karen Neville . . . ? There was a story about the storage cupboard. I wonder if it was true?’
‘Oh, it was true all right,’ Skinner confirmed. ‘But really they were just . . .’
‘I think “friends with benefits” is the approved term these days.’ She smiled. ‘Listen to us. A couple of fogeys. So,’ she continued, ‘is this really an impulse call?’ she asked. ‘Or have you called in to tell me you’re going to the House of Lords to be one up on Andy?’
‘I turned that down,’ he said, deadpan, for it was true. ‘Do you fancy joining him on the hustings? I know you’re not a Nat, but I know a couple of senior Tories and, believe me, they’ll accept any reasonable offer.’
‘It’s funny you should say that,’ she remarked. ‘I had one of them on the phone this morning. I told him where he could pin his rosette.’ She stopped the kettle just before it reached boiling point and filled the cafetiere. ‘Have you been in touch with Andy?’ she asked.
‘The other way round. He called me last Friday, looking for a way into Clive Graham.’
‘So it’s your fault!’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Skinner insisted. ‘Better than fine; Andy will be a good MSP, and a good minister too, if he gets that far.’
Steele shrugged. ‘I don’t doubt it.’ She paused. ‘I’ve heard from him too,’ she admitted. ‘He called for a chat and before I knew it he said if I wanted to bring Steph through to his place one weekend she could play with his kids. I had to tell him that Clive doesn’t allow that at the moment.’
‘Did he suggest what you two might do?’
She shook her head, firmly, then filled two mugs with black coffee, adding a little milk to both. ‘Nothing was even implied,’ she said. ‘You know, in the years when we were both younger and single, Andy Martin never made a move on me. I was almost huffed by that, Andy being as he was then. It would be a sign of desperation if he did it now. Mind you, if he did, he might be surprised by the outcome.’ She winked. ‘It’s been a while, Bob. In fact, that was one of the reasons I gave up the job. It was destroying me as a social animal. I was stuck in the uniform and it scared men off.’
He laughed. ‘If that was the case, Mags, they weren’t worth having.’
She smiled, her eyes twinkling. ‘Not worth keeping for sure, but possibly worth having, if you get my drift. In a weird way that makes me wonder how Noele McClair’s getting along. Your kids are friends, right?’
‘Yes, in the same primary class. Noele’s okay; coming out the other side, I’d say.’
‘But still alone. I guess Neil’s family base will be an advantage in his position.’
‘Oh it will, be sure of it. He and Lou are solid. She’s virtually given up her career for him. Have you heard from him lately?’
‘No,’ Steele replied, ‘not since he took over. Even Mario’s become more dista
nt. How about you?’
‘He’s distancing himself from me too,’ Skinner admitted. ‘Mario told me as much, and I understand why, completely. Not only does he want to be his own man he wants it to be seen.’
She laughed. ‘Has he asked for your Special Constable warrant card back? The one I gave you.’
‘We did talk about that. As I recall, I gave it to myself when I left the Strathclyde job. I still have it but it’s in a drawer somewhere. We agreed it would stay there.’
‘Alongside your MI5 credentials?’
‘No,’ he replied, solemnly. ‘I know exactly where they are. Tell me, and this is a spur of the moment thought, would you be interested in a relationship with that organisation?’
‘What? Chasing terrorists and spies?’
‘Not quite. Advisory, more like. They have an operative responsible for their interests in Scotland, but you have a background that might be useful to Amanda Dennis.’
Steele frowned, and was silent. ‘Bob,’ she said, when she was ready, ‘I’m a cancer-surviving single mother with a couple of non-executive directorships to keep us fed. When I’m ready I’ll find a full-time job or start a business myself. That’s my vision of the future and Dame Amanda Dennis doesn’t feature in it, nor anyone who comes after her.’ She finished her coffee; he took it as a sign and did the same. ‘Sorry if I’m rushing you,’ she apologised. ‘I have to finish my painting then take Steph up to Holyrood Park for some exercise. If I tire her out, then later on I might get some quiet time to work on my book.’
‘You’re writing a book?’ he exclaimed. ‘A memoir?’
‘Hell no!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s a crime novel. Every other bugger’s doing it, so why not me too?’
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