‘As you’ll remember, that led me into one disastrous situation, before I realised that the only woman for me was right before my eyes. I just hadn’t noticed that she’d grown up.’
He laughed, but sadly, without humour. ‘So look at us now, you and me. My dream’s come true. I’ve become like you were. I’m in love, settled and happy for the rest of my life. You? You’re stumbling about like a lost soul.
‘You talk about feeling safe, my old friend. Well, I think that’s cobblers. I think you’re on the fucking rebound, that’s what. And I should know. It used to happen to me all the time. I rebounded from one to the next so often that I felt like a human pinball machine.
‘You ask me what I think? Well here it is. I’ve nothing against Pam. She seems like a nice woman, and a couple of years back I’d probably have fancied her myself. But I love Sarah, and I think it’s fucking tragic that you and she, between you, are in the process of tearing apart one of the best marriages I’ve ever seen.
‘I don’t often presume to speak for Alex, Bob, but I’ll tell you that if you asked her, she would tell you that she feels exactly the same way.’
Skinner sat motionless on the bench, staring out across the wide Firth, over to the Fife coast, towards the string of one-time fishing villages, transformed by fashion and affluence into holiday resorts. He sat there for minutes before responding, still without looking round.
‘You’re my best pal, Andy. Truth be told, one of the very few real friends I’ve ever had. I value your opinion, and I’m sorry that Sarah and I have caused you distress. You’re right about our marriage; it seemed perfect. But remember that it’s possible to shatter even a diamond into smithereens.
‘However, as for Pam and me, we’re sort of tied together now, by the Spotlight thing, and by this killer’s possible focus on me. I do care for her too, make no mistake.
‘I couldn’t just abandon her, even if I wanted to. I accept what you say, about my being on the rebound. Sure, I know that I let my cock do my thinking for me. I suppose I just needed to be told, and only you could do that. But it’s happened, and things may have gone beyond redemption now, between me and Sarah.’
He looked around, at last. ‘Right, that was your personal view. How do you see it professionally?’
Martin frowned. ‘You sure you want to hear?’
‘Aye, Chief Superintendent. I can take it. Fire away.’
‘Very good, sir.
‘You used the word earlier: indiscretion.
‘However you justify it, and however properly you think you acted, by transferring Pamela out of your office before your slept with her, I believe that you’ve laid yourself wide open to accusations of indiscretion . . . at the very least.
‘I know you’ve said in the past that your officers’ sex lives are their business, as long as it’s legal, but you’re no ordinary copper. You’re going to be accused of abuse of your position, and maybe even sexual harassment, by at least two female members of the Police Board that I could name, and the Chief is going to have some bloody job defending you.’
Skinner sighed. ‘You saying I should resign, Andy?’ he asked, sombrely.
‘Like hell! If the Board asks for your resignation they’ll have mine too, not to mention the Chief’s and those of half a dozen senior officers. No, you’ll ride it out. Your real worry should be Pamela.’
The big DCC frowned. ‘Tell me why.’
‘Think about it. Is this relationship going to last for ever, or will it come to an end? Any way you size it up, she has no future in our force. Working in my office, she’s just about okay as the DCC’s girlfriend, as long as you keep your private lives miles away from Fettes. But she can’t stay there for ever. How would she survive in a division? Who among her colleagues would trust her with a confidence?
‘Suppose in the future you were to marry? No, Pam’s position would be completely untenable.’
Martin paused. ‘On the other hand, what will happen if it comes to an end? How do you expect the girl to survive as the Deputy Chief’s cast-off mistress?’
‘Jesus,’ said Skinner loudly enough to draw a frown from a golfer on the seventh tee, thirty yards away. ‘I really have made a nonsense of things, haven’t I? So what do we do to protect her?’
‘You know the options as well as I do,’ said Martin. ‘If you and Pam decide to marry, I expect she’d want to resign. If that doesn’t happen, if you carry on as you are, informally, shall we say, and she wants to stay in the police, we should offer her a transfer to another force - Central, maybe, so she could still live in Edinburgh. Should you split up, the same would apply.’
There was a renewed silence at the other end of the bench. ‘Let’s not discuss the first option, Andy,’ the DCC responded finally, this time in a quiet voice. ‘Put feelers out regarding the second, once this Spotlight business has blown over. I’ll talk to Pam about it, in due course.
‘Meantime, I’d be grateful if you’d give her a week’s leave, as of now. I’ll take her back to her place in Leith tomorrow. It’ll be easier for the watchers, and more discreet.’
‘Do you want to take some time off yourself?’
‘Do I bloody hell! The media would say I’d been sent on gardening leave. Anyway, I’m going nowhere till we’ve nailed down the bastard who killed Leona McGrath, and till we’ve got wee Mark back safely.’
Skinner stood up, looking down at his friend. ‘You know, son,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m generally reckoned to be quite a smart guy, ace detective and all that; but over the last few months of my life, I’ve been made to realise that when it comes to women, I just haven’t a bloody clue!’
21
Ruth McConnell was at her desk when Skinner arrived at 8.20 a.m. on Monday, for his first morning in the office since the Spotlight story had broken.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she said, with exactly the same friendly smile to which he had become accustomed.
The DCC glanced at his watch. ‘Jeez, but you’re early, Ruthie,’ he said.
‘I thought it might be a good idea,’ she replied, standing up from her typist’s swivel chair, elegant as ever, the slimness of her long legs accentuated by her tight skirt and her high heels. She picked up a pile of newspapers from her side table. ‘There’s fresh coffee in your filter machine.’
‘I’ll need it, when I go through those. Come in and have some with me. I should talk to you anyway.’
‘Have you seen any of the papers yet?’ asked his secretary, as they crossed the corridor to his office.
The big policeman shook his head. ‘No. We left Gullane before mine arrived.’ His expression changed for a second as a thought struck him. ‘That reminds me. Would you call my newsagent, please, and cancel them till further notice. He’s in the book. Surname’s Hector.’
He took off the jacket of his dark blue suit and draped it round the back of his chair, while Ruth poured coffee into two mugs.
‘So,’ said Skinner as she sat down, facing him across the rosewood desk. ‘What do you think of my new-found notoriety?’
‘I think it’s absolutely disgraceful, sir,’ the woman exploded, her full lips pouting in her anger. ‘I think it’s offensive, intrusive, and damned unfair. Even if I’ve never said it to you, I’m as sorry as everyone else in here about your marriage breaking up, but that’s your business.
‘To have your private life poked into like that . . . Well, it’s intolerable!’
‘I have to tolerate it, Ruthie. No choice. I can roar on about what I’m going to do to the so-and-so who put that wee swine Salmon on my trail, but I just have to bear it.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but it’s the double standards that get me. I mean, if it had been Neil McIlhenney having an affair with Sergeant Masters, he wouldn’t have been all over the front page.’
Skinner surprised her, with his sudden laughter. ‘Oh yes he would!’ he said. ‘Because Olive would have killed him, stone dead.’
His smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. �
��No, you’re right. But that’s the way it is. Sergeant and Sergeant; so what? Deputy Chief and Sergeant, and the press eat it up. I’m a daft bastard. I should have known better.’
He looked across the desk. ‘Tell me something, Ruthie, had you guessed that something was going on?’ To his surprise, she gasped as a mixture of shock and fear flooded her eyes.
‘Sir you don’t think I . . .’ she began.
He threw up his hands instantly, in horror which matched hers. ‘No, no, no!’ he insisted. ‘Not for one second have I thought that. I trust you absolutely. No, I just want to know how stupid I’ve been. Alex guessed, and so did McIlhenney, I think. Did you?’
She dropped her gaze from him. Her long hair fell over the shoulders of her blue business jacket as she nodded. ‘As soon as you transferred Pamela out of here, I knew exactly why you were doing it. I remembered those late nights when you were chasing Jackie Charles; that time you were snowed in. I could tell from then that something was cooking.’
‘And you never said anything.’
‘Of course not. I’m your secretary, not your chaperone.’
The policeman grinned at her once more. ‘Maybe that’s what you should have been. Seriously, though, I’m sorry I kept you in the dark along with everyone else. You have my confidence in every other area; I should have trusted you with that too. Come to think of it, if I had asked your advice, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess now.’
Ruth shook her head. ‘You have too much faith, Mr Skinner. I’ve been living with a separated man for the last month. Mine’s a doctor, a country GP. We’re the talk of the community too, although on a smaller scale than you.’
He looked at her in surprise. Ruth was in her late twenties, and when it came to men, she had always led him to believe that she sought safety in numbers. ‘I wondered why you’d changed your contact number,’ he murmured.
‘And I didn’t tell you,’ she countered. ‘Which, if you want to look at it that way, puts us both at fault.
‘Now, are you ready for what the papers say?’
The Deputy Chief Constable nodded. ‘As much as I ever will be.’
‘I’ve been through them already. I’ve marked the pages you should look at. The red numbers are the stories about you. The blue ones are about the McGrath investigation.’
Skinner picked up the paper on top of the pile. As always in Ruth’s arrangement, it was the Scotsman. His heart sank as he looked at the lower part of the front page, from which his likeness gazed out at him: at once he knew what the tone of the coverage would be.
Rather than recycle the Spotlight’s sensational scoop, the responsible Scotsman had taken as its front-page lead the announcement by five members of the Police Supervisory Board that they intended to raise the Deputy Chief Constable’s conduct at the next meeting of the Board on the following Wednesday. The Chair of the Board had agreed to accept an emergency motion of censure for debate.
Skinner scanned the rest of the story. In careful terms, clearly legally approved, it sketched out the allegations about his private life, naming Pamela Masters, and carrying the statements released by his solicitor and the Chief Constable’s office. It closed with a footnote directing readers to Page Sixteen.
He leafed through the pages until he arrived at the Editorial column. There were two leader articles. The second was headed ‘Morality and the Media’.
The detective scanned it through then read it aloud.
‘If it is to be of true value to society, and ultimately to protect its freedom, the media as a collective entity must never be afraid or reluctant to comment critically on one of its own, when condemnation is justified.
‘It is with that in mind that we deprecate the conduct of Spotlight magazine in its invasion of the private life of Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner, and in particular the methods which it chose to adopt. This newspaper disapproves thoroughly of the surreptitious photographing of honest citizens within their own homes. That is why we will not reproduce the photographs which appeared yesterday, although we were offered publication rights, at a price.
‘Spotlight is a publication without any perceptible moral standards, driven only by the greed of its owners, and restrained only by the civil law of defamation. Your publishers find it distasteful whenever this newspaper occupies the same shelves in the relatively few outlets where they are sold together.
‘Nevertheless, when questionable behaviour comes to light, the fact that its exposers are beneath contempt themselves does not make it any less questionable. Mr Skinner occupies a high-profile position which demands exemplary standards of personal behaviour. We will not pass judgement on the motion which will be put before the Joint Police Board on Wednesday. All we will say is that the Deputy Chief Constable, despite his great service to the city, is not above personal censure. On this occasion, if his professional and moral conduct is called into question, then in the circumstances, it seems that he cannot blame the Spotlight, however unprofessional and immoral a rag it might be. He can blame only himself.’
He folded the paper and laid it aside. ‘I can’t disagree with much of that,’ he said. ‘Who could, given that it’s so circumspectly written?’
He gave a wry smile. ‘Mind you, for all its position on the high moral ground, I can’t help noticing that the Scotsman still manages to put my private life on its own front page.
‘Is all the rest of it like this?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Ruth replied. ‘There are no other leaders, and no-one else has used the photos, but all the stories lead on the censure motion. Everyone’s used it. Even the Telegraph.’
‘Let me guess. On Page Three?’
‘Right first time.’
Skinner picked up the Daily Record and turned to page seven, as Ruth’s red number indicated. ‘Five Hunt Top Cop!’ he read. He waved the newspaper in the air, indicating a row of head-and-shoulder photographs.
‘There they are, the Famous Five. Unreconstructed Lefties, all of them; every one of them keen to take any opportunity to put their own party on the spot.’
His secretary looked across at him. ‘Will you go to the meeting on Wednesday?’
‘I’ve thought about that. I’ll go only if the Chair guarantees me the right to a personal statement, after the discussion but before the vote.’
‘Do you think she will?’
‘It won’t be her choice. It’ll be a group decision. My bet is that she won’t be allowed to.’
He rearranged the newspapers into a pile.
‘Will you issue any more statements before the meeting?’
Skinner shook his head. ‘No. Pam might, though. She’s been advised that she has a case for defamation against the Spotlight, since they suggested that she slept with me to get on in the Force. I’m telling her to sue.’
He saw Ruth wince. ‘You don’t agree?’
‘If she was sure they’d settle out of court,’ she said, ‘yes, I’d agree. But if it goes to trial, she could be hammered in the witness box. I wouldn’t fancy being cross-examined about my sex life.’
‘They’ll settle, Ruth. Sooner rather than later too. That rag’s used to paying off libel suitors.’
He slapped the papers on his desk, in a typical gesture. ‘But enough of that,’ he said, suddenly grim again. ‘Let’s see what the press say about the McGrath case. That’s my priority, and the thing that makes me most angry about the Spotlight is the fact that they deflected me from it!’
22
‘The media gave my Saturday phone call quite a show, Andy. Lead story in three tabloids, and page one in every other.’
‘I’m not surprised, sir,’ said the Head of CID, always more formal in the office, at least in the company of others. He and Neil McIlhenney were seated with Skinner on the low leather sofas in a corner of the DCC’s big office, drinking still more coffee. ‘All they’ve had to report since the murder is a succession of fruitless searches. Did you see the Herald? It commissioned a psychological profile of the killer.�
�
‘Yes, I saw it. It says that he’s a highly intelligent psychopath, aged between twenty-five and forty. Probably the son of a widow, divorcee or single mother. I’m glad we only paid forty pence for that opinion. I don’t know who they got to do it, but they’d have been better with Mystic Meg.’
‘Aye, boss,’ grunted McIlhenney. ‘She might have given us a name to go on, at least.’
Skinner grinned. ‘We’re going to have to dig that out for ourselves, Sergeant,’ he retorted.
‘If they did use a professional, I’d have thought he’d have focused on the real give-away from the call; the fact that the man chose to call me, and went to the bother of getting my home phone number, presumably so that he could do it without being tied on the Fettes switchboard long enough for his phone to be traced.
‘It’s me he wants. It’s me Salmon wants. Salmon claims his source could be anonymous. Could the killer be his informant? If so, how did he know about me and Pam? Come to that, who else knew about me and Pam?’
He took a sip from his mug. ‘Let’s try and answer all those questions, lads, but let’s begin by looking at my former clients. Names, you said, Neil. Let’s start with a few of them, those still alive, and at liberty. Put some people on to it, Andy. Draw up a list and start checking on current whereabouts. Discreetly, though. If our man is one of them we don’t want to tip his hand.
‘We’re already checking out known rapists and paedophiles. Add this lot to them and spread the load among the officers deployed already.’
‘How far back should we go?’ asked the Head of CID.
‘As far as you have to. Meanwhile I’ll see if the clever people down south have had any joy with that tape.’
23
Martin and Mcllhenney had barely left Skinner’s office before he picked up his secure telephone and dialled a London number.
07 - Skinner's Ghosts Page 10