Ignacio lives with me now, and is embarking on a degree course at Edinburgh University; he’s a very talented chemist – too talented, with a couple of things on his teenage CV that will never become public. His mother has found a safe haven – I will qualify that; it’s been safe so far – having married a guy from Tayside called Cameron McCullough, known as ‘Grandpa’ to his associates and on his extensive police file, although only his granddaughter gets to call him that to his face. My side had him marked down as the biggest hoodlum in Scotland, but we never laid a glove on him. He always pleaded innocence, as still he does, and was never convicted of anything; indeed, he was only in the dock once, but that case collapsed when the witnesses and the evidence disappeared, traceless. There is an irony in him being my son’s stepfather, one that isn’t lost on either of us, or I’m sure on any of the few people who are aware of it.
I didn’t think of Grandpa, though, as the X5 bus bore me homewards to Gullane. My mind was too full of Jimmy’s mysterious call and what might lie behind it. It wasn’t the first of its type I’d had since I’d become a private citizen, and quite a few of those had been the triggers for some accursedly interesting times.
Have I ever doubted my early termination of my police career? In a word, yes, but just the once. The first time I had to drive myself from Gullane to Glasgow, through the dense motorway traffic, I found myself looking back nostalgically on the times when I’d made the same journey in the back of a police car, with my driver in front. He never flashed the blue light; he didn’t have to: one glimpse of it in a trucker’s rear-view mirror and he vacated the outside lane, sharpish.
That was the only time I ever regretted my decision to turn my back on the controversial national police service that I’d always opposed but had been unable to prevent, even though I was married at the time to one of the few politicians who might have stopped it. I’m not saying that was the reason why Aileen de Marco and I split; it didn’t help, but we were pretty much doomed from the outset, by the lingering occasional presence of a famous Scottish movie actor, and by the fact that I’d never really fallen out of love with Sarah, Aileen’s predecessor.
I knew at the time that I was right about police unification, and I still know that I am, although I take no pleasure from the obvious truth that a great majority of Scots now agree with me, both serving cops and civilians.
There’s nothing I can do about it, though; only the politicians who caused the fuck-up can repair it, and there’s very little chance that they will. However, I am content. I still have, as an old guy in Motherwell used to say, my feet in the sawdust.
I don’t call myself a private detective, but I do accept private commissions from individuals. Also, recently, I have been called in by an old colleague and friend in London to help with a couple of situations. As a result, I now carry a piece of plastic that gives me Security Service credentials; that’s MI5 to most people. Nobody outside my inner circle knows about my involvement, that being the nature of the beast. At the moment I’m inactive on that front, but Amanda Dennis, the director general, could ask for my help at any moment.
All that occasional activity sits comfortably alongside what’s become my main employment in my second career, my part-time executive directorship of a Spanish-owned company called InterMedia, which operates internationally. Amongst a long list of media outlets, newspapers, radio and TV across Spain and Italy, it’s also the proprietor of the Saltire, an old-established Edinburgh newspaper that was hirpling towards the press room of history until its star reporter, Xavi Aislado, persuaded his brother to buy it, transformed it and made it the only title I know of that is still maintaining the circulation figures of its printed version. Not only that, he is spreading the readership of the online edition across the English-speaking world, and increasingly into Hispanic territory, for we are translated. Hector Sureda, our digital guru, told our last board meeting that the Saltire now has as many Spanish-speaking subscribers in the USA as it has Anglos. Globally, the main Spanish title, GironaDia, does better, but we’re catching up fast.
I got off the bus in Gullane just as the school crossing patrol woman was seeing James Andrew and Seonaid across the road. Jazz – he’s never quite shaken that nickname – does not like that too much; having the traffic stopped for him by a lollipop lady is beneath his dignity, he feels, but I have told him firmly that looking after his sister is a responsibility I entrust to him and that he will do what it takes to fulfil it.
I could see them from my bus stop in the distance, and waited for them. As I stood there, Sir James Proud walked past me, a newspaper under his left arm and a Co-op shopping bag in his right hand.
‘Afternoon, Bob,’ he said briskly, with the briefest of glances in my direction, then passed me by without breaking his stride.
Three
I pushed the mystery to the back of my mind for a few hours, devoting them to Sarah and the kids as I had planned. Dawn was teething and had given her mum, and Trish, the children’s carer, a tough day, but I have experience in such matters, and some skill; pretty soon she was back to her placid best. Smug, Skinner, smug.
I’d hoped to spend some time with Ignacio too, but he called from university to say that he needed to work late on a class end-of-session project and would be staying at Alex’s overnight. I didn’t mind that; he and his half-sister had bonded from the moment he appeared in our lives. My kid, as Alex has always been to me, is always great with the second family – she is James Andrew’s idol – but she liked having a sibling with whom she could speak as an adult. Ignacio, he just liked having a sibling, period.
A set routine is important for all children – when Alex was growing up, it was just the two of us, and that was difficult – but bedtime is a fluid affair in our house; homework is done after supper, and then they have some free time until it’s lights out. For Seonaid, that’s seven o’clock, for James Andrew it’s eight, although often he crashes early. Mark is old enough to set his own limits now, but he’s usually asleep by ten thirty.
Jazz had just disappeared upstairs with a mug of hot chocolate when I told Sarah I was going out for a while.
‘Where you off to?’ she asked.
I grinned. ‘I’m going to see a man about a dog.’
She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She assumed, I assumed, that I was going to the golf club or to the pub.
I imagined her raising the other eyebrow a few seconds later when she heard me start the car.
Yellowcraigs Beach lies just outside Dirleton, the neighbouring village to Gullane; it’s also called Broad Sands Bay on some maps, but not many people know that. It’s a favourite spot of James Andrew and Seonaid, not so much for the sands, more for the children’s play park. It has a pirate ship theme, a reference to Fidra, the small island which is situated not far below the low-tide mark. Legend has it that Robert Louis Stevenson, a frequent visitor, drew inspiration from it in writing Treasure Island, which is in my eyes the greatest adventure story ever written in the English language.
Mark would go there too on occasion, but with less enthusiasm. The boy is a natural mathematician, with computer skills that I come nowhere near to understanding, but he doesn’t know his left hand from his right, nor does he have any interest in finding out which is which. The climbing frames and rope roundabouts in the playground never offered a challenge to him, only a hazard to be avoided.
That’s where Jimmy took me. He was waiting for me when I reached the car park, a couple of minutes after eight; Bowser, his springer spaniel, was still on its lead, tugging. Both of them looked impatient. The light of day was dying, but its warmth lingered. I’ve known many years when the Scottish summer has been over by the middle of May; I wondered if this would be another.
‘Sorry,’ I said as I climbed out of Sarah’s new car, a big Renault hybrid. She chose it because it has seven seats, a sign of the family times. ‘I got caught behind a cycling club,’ I added, by way of an excuse.
‘No matter,’ he gr
unted. He glanced around. We weren’t alone. Yellowcraigs is a popular dog-walker destination in an area where pooches seem to outnumber pigeons. I’ve never had a dog, but Seonaid is beginning to drop hints about puppies. Since she’s known how to push my buttons since she was a year old, I suspected that the household would soon hear the patter of tiny paws.
Sir James gave Bowser a quick tug. ‘Come this way,’ he said, to the dog and to me. ‘There are no kids around at this time of the evening, so it’ll be private through here.’
I followed him out of the car park, across the road and down the short tree-lined path that led to the Treasure Island mock-up. Last time I’d been there, four days earlier, I’d watched Jazz climb to the top of the rigging surrounding the tall pole that represented a mainmast, while Sarah called after him to be careful. I don’t think he’ll ever be that, but I don’t worry as she does, because he’s strong, agile and he knows his limits, as did I when I was his age. However, I do worry about his determination to join the military when he grows up. I don’t like the idea of any of mine in harm’s way.
I took a seat on a long, snake-like swing as Jimmy unclipped Bowser’s lead. The spaniel shook itself, then found its way through the rigging and lifted its leg against the Hispaniola’s mast. ‘Piss on you, Long John,’ I whispered, then looked up at my friend.
His silver hair was thinner after his course of chemotherapy, and he had lost some weight, but physically he looked okay. His expression suggested otherwise.
‘So, Jimmy,’ I exclaimed, breaking the silence. ‘What precisely the fuck is all this about?’
I must have sounded exasperated, for his immediate reaction was to whistle for his dog and snap his fingers. ‘Here, Bowser!’ he called out, fiddling with the clip of the lead. ‘I’m sorry, Bob, this is a mistake. I have no right to put this on you. You’ve got enough on your plate with the newspaper, the family and everything else in your life. It was thoughtless of me to call you.’
I glanced across at the simulation of the Hispaniola, where Bowser was ignoring his master and having a real good sniff.
‘Bollocks to that,’ I retorted. ‘You’ve looked out for me more often than I care to recall. If you’ve got a problem and you took it to anyone else, I’d be seriously, seriously pissed off. So come on, man, out with it.’
He seemed to sag, and lowered himself onto the circular perimeter of the enclosure, wincing as he settled on to it. He’d had surgery as well as the therapy.
For the first time since we’d come together, he looked me in the eye. ‘Does the name Matthew Ampersand mean anything to you?’ he asked.
I did a quick trawl through my memory; I can’t claim to recall every investigation during my career, but most of them left a mark. ‘I can’t say that it does,’ I admitted when I was done. ‘Professional?’
‘Yes, but this business happened before you joined the force. I thought you might have remembered the name from the newspapers of the time, but no matter. He was a murder victim whose body was found in the old quarry at Traprain Law, here in East Lothian, on a Wednesday three weeks before Christmas. It had been freezing hard for days, otherwise he’d have gone to the bottom of the quarry pond, but the ice was so thick he didn’t go through it, just landed on it very hard. At first they thought he was a suicide, but Joe Hutchinson, the pathologist, found injuries that were inconsistent with him having jumped.’
At the back of my mind, something stirred. A vague recollection of headlines about ‘The Body in the Quarry’ around the time I was completing my university degree. ‘Yes, maybe I do recall it,’ I murmured. ‘Why? Has he come back to haunt you?’
‘You could say that,’ he snorted. ‘I’m being accused of killing him.’
To continue reading Cold Case,
download the ebook now.
www.headline.co.uk
Uncover the very best in crime and thriller writing . . .
Sign up for the Crime Files newsletter
@CrimeFilesBooks
/crimefiles
/crime-files-podcast
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Author
Praise for Quintin Jardine
Also by Quintin Jardine
About the Book
Dedication
Then . . .
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
Sixty-Four
Sixty-Five
Sixty-Six
Sixty-Seven
Sixty-Eight
Sixty-Nine
Seventy
Seventy-One
Seventy-Two
Seventy-Three
Seventy-Four
Seventy-Five
Seventy-Six
Seventy-Seven
. . . And now
Read an extract from COLD CASE
The Bad Fire (Bob Skinner series, Book 31): A shocking murder case brings danger too close to home for ex-cop Bob Skinner in this gripping Scottish crime thriller Page 35