‘Do you think she will?’
‘No, I don’t. She had a hell of a shock too when I told her what had happened, but she understood what I was saying. I told her that we were releasing the name after the identification anyway, and that it would be public by tonight.’
‘Did you ask her anything else while you were there?’
‘Of course I did. I asked her how well she knew Whetstone. She told me that he and her husband were pally, and that they played golf together. I asked her about his demeanour recently. She said that he’d been on top of the world, and really chuffed with himself over the way his job was going. She said that he was a workaholic as well, by the way, but that at least he found time for his golf.’
‘But not for his wife?’
‘She didn’t say that, but now you mention it that may have been implied.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a niggle yourself?’ he asked.
‘No, not really. It’s just . . . I’ll be happier when there’s a clear line of inquiry. I’ll be happier when we have Dorward’s crime-scene report, and I’ll be happier when we’ve got the post-mortem report. With those together we should be able to say whether we have a suicide, or something else.’
‘If we do, I’m pretty clear where we go after that,’ said Steele. ‘Straight back to the bank. We should talk to his golf pals, just in case he had any worries that he mentioned to them, but I’m sure our best way forward lies in looking at his client relationships. Nobody loves their bank manager; maybe one of Mr Whetstone’s customers was in trouble and had good reason to hate him.’ He chuckled. ‘We could always charge wee Moash, of course, but even the rawest advocate would get him acquitted if we did. He didn’t nick the bike till this morning, and he didn’t make the phone call till then, but the man died last night.’
‘Agreed,’ Rose murmured, ‘but what if . . . We know Glazier didn’t kill him, but what if it was just a random mugging that went wrong? What if the hanging was an attempt to cover it up?’
‘The autopsy should tell us that. When’s that happening, by the way? And who’s doing it?’
‘Sarah Grace is handling it, but she can’t do it before tomorrow morning. It’s longer than I’d have liked, but it’s acceptable. Rigor mortis will have passed off by then. I want you to go along, incidentally: nine a.m. tomorrow, at the new Royal Inf irmary.’
A corner of his mouth twisted in a smile. ‘You’ve made my night,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t think about it and it won’t put you off your food,’ she said, as the waiter approached.
16
‘This is excellent,’ Sarah pronounced, as she finished her first mouthful of fillet steak. ‘Why don’t I let you cook more often?’
‘Why don’t I volunteer more often might be a better question.’
‘Okay, why don’t you?’
‘Because I like your cooking too much. How about that?’
She gave a gasp of surprise. ‘What is this? Bob Skinner the diplomat? Am I hearing things?’
He reached across and poured her some more wine, a nice light Rioja called Marques de Griñon, that he bought by the case from a website with the well-chosen name of Simply Spanish Wines. ‘Funny, you’re the second person who’s said something like that to me today.’
‘Who was the other?’
‘An MSP. A minister, in fact.’
‘Does the thought that you might be mellowing worry you?’ his wife asked, a tease in her voice. ‘Does it make you feel like Samson with a short back and sides?’
‘If it did, I’d be sure to remember who cut my hair,’ he growled.
‘Ouch. I see you haven’t lost your bite.’
He cut off some more of his steak and forked up some of the escalivada, vegetables as he had learned to cook them in Spain. ‘I hope I haven’t lost anything,’ he said, once they had been despatched. ‘But it’s good to learn things along the way.’
‘Who’s been teaching you?’
‘Life’s been teaching me, honey. But it’s been a difficult process.’
‘Is this to do with your heart trouble?’
‘Don’t call it heart trouble.’ His sigh was full of exasperation. ‘It’s an inherited condition and it’s been dealt with. I have a pacemaker, and that allows me to function exactly as I’ve always done. You’re a doctor; you know that well enough.’
‘I don’t agree,’ she countered. ‘Physically you may be fine, but emotionally it’s left a scar. You’ve never had to question your health before. As a result you’re . . .’
‘There are lots of things I’ve never had to question before,’ he said, quietly, cutting her off.
A silence fell between them; they ate, not looking at each other. It was Sarah who broke it, pushing her plate to one side, leaving half of her meal untouched. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ she exclaimed. ‘I make a remark about your new-found diplomacy and you respond by tearing into me. I bet you didn’t do that to the MSP.’
‘No,’ he admitted, looking a shade guilty. ‘I didn’t. I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m on a hair trigger just now, and I don’t know why. I even had a small strip torn off me by Archbishop Gainer today for the way I spoke to Jack McGurk. He was right: the boy’s like a coiled spring every time he comes into my room, and none of it, or very little of it, is his fault. Maybe you’re right too, may be it is the aftermath of the pacemaker thing but, honestly, I doubt it. I think it goes deeper than that. I reckon that more than my health has been called into question this year. And as I see it now many of the things I’ve believed to be true may have been way off the mark.’
‘Things about me, I assume,’ she murmured.
‘No,’ he retorted quickly. ‘Don’t assume that.’
‘It’s true, though. Let’s face it, I’m not the gem you thought I was; I’ve got flaws just like everyone else. Most married women find another man attractive at some time or another; me, I did something about it.’
‘Okay, you had an affair: but I’m no saint either. You’ve stuck by me before, and I’ll stick with you now.’
‘Is that what it’s about? Sticking with each other?’
‘For most people, I reckon that’s exactly what it’s about. It’s easy to walk away from marriage these days, once the early glamour fades . . .’
‘Like the McGuires, you mean?’
‘No, not them: there’s something deeper there.’
Sarah snorted. ‘Yeah, she’s got legs up to her armpits, silver hair and her name’s . . .’
‘Paula Viareggio didn’t break them up,’ Bob snapped. ‘She came after. Anyway, Maggie and Mario aren’t like us: they don’t have kids.’
She frowned at him. ‘You’re saying our kids are the glue that binds us together?’
‘Are you going to tell me they’re not? If we didn’t have them, wouldn’t you have been tempted to stay in Buffalo after your parents’ death?’
‘Bob,’ Sarah told him, ‘I never want to see Buffalo again. I could have stayed, with or without the children, but I chose to come back here.’ She paused. ‘Now you answer me something. Who do you love the most, me or the children?’
He stared at her. ‘What’s that? The chicken-and-egg question? I love my family, Sarah, there are no degrees involved there. It’s total.’
‘Okay, I’ll stop pussying around the real issue. If we had no children, like Maggie and Mario, would we still have a marriage?’
‘For my part, yes, I think we would. What do you say?’
She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘You “think” we would; hardly a straight answer, is it? You’ve changed, Bob, you’ve grown more remote, and I can’t help wondering whether it’s because, for all you say, you can’t really handle what happened with me.’
Bob looked down at his plate; the remnants of his meal, and hers, lay cold before them. ‘That was a fucking waste of two fillet steaks,’ he said heavily.
‘Maybe not,’ she countered, ‘if it’s what it takes to make
us sit down and talk to each other.’ She picked up the bottle and refilled both their glasses, draining it in the process. He picked his up and drank deeply.
‘Why don’t we just go to bed,’ he suggested, ‘and fuck each other’s brains out? That usually sorts us out.’
She smiled weakly. ‘That’s a palliative. This time we’re attacking the root cause of the problem.’
‘Well, it’s not you,’ he told her firmly. ‘We haven’t been talking to each other enough, that’s for sure, and maybe we have been sweeping some marriage problems under the carpet, but that’s not what’s been eating me.’ He got up from the dining-table, walked through to the kitchen and returned a minute later with another bottle of Marques de Griñon, from which he topped up his glass.
‘I’ve always laughed at the thought of mid-life crises,’ he continued. ‘I’ve seen them as post-yuppie status symbols. But not any more, not now I’m having one myself. I’ve suddenly started to look at myself objectively, and that can be a terrible thing. I realise now that for much of my adult life I’ve been intolerant, unforgiving, arrogant. I’ve made decisions about the lives of people close to me, as if I was God Almighty.’
‘Are you talking about your brother?’
‘Yes, I mean Michael. His death has been the trigger for all of this. My pacemaker incident, you losing your parents, our personal difficulties, I admit they may all have been contributory factors, but that lies at the very heart of it all. It’s made me look at myself, and at the way I behaved towards him, and I do not like what I see.’ He picked up his glass in both hands and took a sip, leaning forward, elbows on the table, shoulders hunched, peering into the dark wine as if the truth was written there.
‘I hated him when he was alive,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I really did. For all his faults, his weaknesses, and his cruelty towards me when I was a kid, still he was my only brother, and yet I could find no forgiveness towards him in my heart. As it turned out he was a victim himself, but I was never interested in that. I was his jury, his judge, and I might even have been his executioner, but for my father. I told Jim Gainer all about it this afternoon. He patted me on the head, sort of; he told me that as it worked out I’d done right by him, but I can’t buy that. I left him living as an outcast for years, when I could have brought him back into the family. You know, Big Lenny Plenderleith might get out quite soon, on a form of early parole, training for freedom. There was no parole for Michael, though; not in my heart. I left him to rot.’
He frowned savagely, knitting his eyebrows together. ‘What sort of a man does that make me? What sort of a policeman does that make me? I’ve made some momentous decisions, Sarah, when I’ve had to. I’m looking back on them now, and I’m looking for compassion within me when those things happened. I don’t see any. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always known that I’m a hard guy when I have to be and that there’s a merciless streak in me; it’s kept me alive a few times. But I thought that I was fully aware of it, and that I could control it. I never appreciated until now just how much a part of me it is.’
‘You’re exaggerating, Bob. There’s compassion in you: look at how you handled Jazz tonight.’
‘Jazz is a five-year-old in his first playground fight. I’m talking about judgement at a whole different level, and honestly I’m not certain any more that mine is up to the job that I have. Sarah, I made a promise to Alex a while back that the moment I feel that I’m burned out in the police, then I’ll pack it in and do something else. I wonder if that moment’s here.’
‘Wow!’ She whistled. ‘That’s something I never expected to hear from you.’
‘How would you feel if I retired?’ he asked.
‘Not so long ago I’d have said, “Roll on the day,” but now I think I’d dread it. You’re right about your mid-life crisis. You’re racked with self-doubt and for the first time ever you’re questioning yourself. For the moment you’re unsure and indecisive, and yet here you are, talking about making a career decision. You cannot do that in your present state of mind. If you quit now, there’s a fifty per cent chance you’d spend the rest of your life hanging about the house regretting it, and I do not think I could stand that. Tell me something. On a day-to-day basis do you still feel functional in your job?’
‘I suppose I do,’ he conceded.
‘You don’t feel insecure about the preparations for next week’s visit, for example?’
‘Not at all. That’s routine; top-end stuff, but still routine.’
‘Any other command decisions you’re having to take just now?’
‘There’s a personnel thing; a senior CID post.’
‘Any doubts about that?’
‘No. I’ve known the people involved for years.’
‘So?’
‘That’s all peripheral stuff, decisions based on training and experience. It’s what’s at the heart of me that concerns me.’
‘Bob, you’re on a guilt trip: don’t take it out on the rest of us.’
‘I’m trying not to, but it’s no trip. As far as Michael’s concerned, I am fucking guilty.’
‘Man,’ Sarah exclaimed, ‘get it through your head. You are no closer to infallibility than the rest of us. You are no angel. I’m no angel. There are no angels. Let me ask you one last thing. Are you proud of James Andrew?’
‘More than I can say,’ he answered.
‘Me too. Now let me tell you one last thing. As I said earlier, he is you, everything you are, in miniature; if you could stand back and see the two of you together you’d understand exactly what I mean. My rough-and-tumble son is a lovely guy; you can see his soul through his eyes, and every time I look at him I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making him, and the others, the way they are. They’re the most important achievements of your life, and in their light you can make allowances for everything else.’
He closed his eyes for several long seconds, as if he was trying to find words. When he opened them and looked across at her, they were filled with tears. ‘That’s another thing,’ he said, as a smile broke through. ‘I never used to get emotional either.’
‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ she told him, although, in truth, she found that more disturbing than anything else.
‘I’ll keep it under control, don’t worry.’ He grinned. ‘Let’s get back to firmer ground. What have you got in your professional diary?’
‘I’m working for you tomorrow,’ she told him.
‘Uh?’ He stared at her, surprised.
‘Well, for Maggie Rose, really. I’m doing a post-mortem examination on a man who was found hanging from a tree in the Meadows this morning. The early CID view is that he may possibly have had some help, from person or persons unknown.’
Bob’s expressive eyebrows knitted together once more, and the fragile link they had woven between them was snapped. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ he growled. ‘I tell you, Chief Superintendent Pringle’s in for a kicking tomorrow!’
17
There was one thing about England that the drummer loved, and it was the same thing he loved about Belgium.
Once he had revelled in the universal dream of youth, of seeing the world, of following a martial life in glamorous, interesting and preferably sunny surroundings. It had been his ambition to go into private security work, not the kind that involved wearing drab uniforms and crash helmets but the upmarket type that would take him to Hollywood riding in the front seat of limos with movie stars in the back. He had made some early enquiries about possibilities, and had even registered with an agency that had promised him the sort of life he was after within a couple of years, once he had acquired the sort of experience they required.
But somewhere along the line . . . not very far along either . . . it had all gone wrong. It had been nothing of his making. He had simply been the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. A finger had been pointed at him, an order had been given, and he had obeyed. He would not have volunteered, and while he had been unsure of
the consequences of refusal he had been smart enough not to invite them.
That was all it had taken: a couple of minutes out of a hot day long ago, and his life had been changed irrevocably, his dream snuffed out, his imaginary CV of ten years on crumpled metaphorically and thrown in the waste bucket. He had called himself ‘Idiot!’ many times since, but unfairly, he knew. He had been given no choice.
Since then, his life had known no more dramas. He had been looked after and he had nothing really to complain about. His existence had been comfortable, almost pampered, and the envy of many of his friends. But it had been essentially ordinary, and worse than that, it had been spent in Belgium, a pleasant country, he conceded, but one that he had always found desperately dull.
True, the band had livened things up for a while. It was not the most orthodox of hobbies, but it was one for which he was trained and it was also one that kept him in touch with old friends. There were the trips too, the annual jaunts to Spain and Germany, with hospitality laid on, as much free booze as they could drink, and the occasional fumbling congress with a friendly lady, although, as the years had passed, those pleasant encounters had become fewer and fewer.
Nothing had been said, but he sensed that for some of them this would be the last outing. He and his contemporaries were all past sixty, and the colonel himself was closer to seventy. They didn’t have the stamina for these road trips any longer. Let’s face it, he had told himself, too often, they were all fucked. He could count on at least three nocturnal pisses, uncomfortable ones at that. It was a grievous curse for a man of his passions and he suspected that a few of his friends were afflicted in the same way.
He felt the pressure again as he walked away from the bus, two fresh packs of cigarettes tucked away in his pocket. His first port of call back in the club had better be the lavatory rather than the bar. It had been a good night though. They had been welcomed by their hosts in Hull as comrades in arms, as he supposed they were in a way, ex-servicemen all, linked by a martial bond that was international.
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