She’d let it stay that colour. Most people who’ve come to know her only in the last few years thought that she was ash blonde, and she didn’t make them any the wiser. But then she’d fallen pregnant: great news for us, and a nice one for Charlie Kettles, her hairdresser. His profits took an instant hike when she decided that it made her look too old to be a first-time mum.
She wasn’t done with our discussion. ‘Remember that guy,’ she persisted, ‘the one who slashed Maggie a few years back, when she tried to arrest him? He cut her arm right to the bone, so I heard. Were you objective with him when they had him locked up in the cells at St Leonards?’
‘Absolutely,’ I insisted . . . perhaps a little too insistently. Was she guessing, I wondered, or had someone been talking out of school?
‘Aye, that’ll be right,’ she scoffed. ‘I’ll bet you even made sure he was tucked in at night, and had a full Scottish breakfast in the morning.’
I nodded. ‘Complete with a slice of fried dumpling.’
‘That’s if he had teeth left to chew it.’
‘He had, I promise you.’ That much was true; I hadn’t left a mark, for all the pain I’d visited on him.
‘Okay, okay, okay.’ She held up a hand, as if she was conceding the point. ‘So you’ve always been purer than the driven slush. I assume that explains why you’re being so hard on these naughty cops of yours.’
‘I’m not,’ I protested. ‘It’s the chief constable who’s chucked the book at them.’
‘Not quite, Mario,’ she argued. ‘All that Bob Skinner’s done is hand you the book and told you to clobber them with it.’
‘No . . .’ I was going to contradict her, but I didn’t. I’d have been wasting my time.
I never win arguments with Paula, even when I’m right and she’s wrong. She’s the most single-minded woman I’ve ever met in my life; when she sets herself a goal, or takes a position, be it a business decision, a major life issue or in a simple debate, she always scores. Ally that to her determination . . . some might call her obdurate, or obstinate, but there isn’t really a word strong enough to define her . . . and you have an exceptional person.
Her pregnancy’s a classic example. When I was married to my first wife, we had a phase when we tried to start a family. No, I’ll be honest with you: I was always more keen than Maggie was. She went along with the idea for my sake, not from any great desire of her own. We never told anyone about it. That was just as well, for after a year of earnest by-the-book effort, cycle-watching and all that stuff, and Mags never being as much as a day late, we consulted a fertility specialist. He examined us both, gave us the full range of tests. She passed with flying colours. I failed. The cock-doctor, as Neil McIlhenney, who is and always will be my best friend on the planet, christened him when I finally got round to confessing all, pronounced that my baby-juice was entirely unfit for purpose.
I suppose that was the beginning of the end for Maggie Rose Steele and me. In truth, she had sexual hang-ups that went back to her childhood, and I always suspected that marital relations . . . with me, at any rate . . . always did require a certain amount of thinking of Scotland on her part. When I found that I was thinking of Italy at the same time, I knew we were done.
There were no hard feelings on either side when we split, and Paula and I began, those two events being simultaneous. No, any difficulty there was lay within my circle of friends and family, or rather, ours. You see, Paula and I are first cousins.
There’s no reason why anyone should think twice about that, but people did. My mother was one of them, for a while, and sure as hell Uncle Beppe, Paula’s dad, would have disapproved as loudly as he could, if he’d still been alive to continue his unspoken feud with me.
Fact is, I was in the ‘anti’ lobby myself for a while. I’m a few years older than Paula, so our paths crossed very little as kids. It was only as young adults that I became properly aware of her, when she started hanging out in the same pubs and clubs as my crew. She claims that she was after me even then; if that was true, and I still doubt it, the guys she pulled made a pretty good smokescreen. And in those days, I was as constrained in my thinking as most people. Sure, she used to flirt with me, but when she came to me for help dealing with a bloke who was showing signs of not taking ‘No!’ for an answer, I decided that she saw me as Big Brother, and that was it.
Yes, that was it: until there came a morning, after a party we’d both been at and where I’d really tied one on, when I woke up to find the other side of the bed crumpled and heard someone in the en suite, brushing teeth. When Paula walked out, wearing a short-sleeved Hibs football outfit, minus the shorts and socks, I stared at her like someone, she said at the time, and still does, who’s realising he’s been stitched up by the News of the World.
‘Tell me nothing happened,’ I croaked: yes, I had been that drunk. She wouldn’t, though; her only reply was a wink and a broad smile. (It took me years to make her confess that she hadn’t been able to rouse me, in any way.) When I sobered up, I was shaken up by the incident, confused, and not a little alarmed by the fact that the sight of her in that green and white shirt had made me, instantly, as stiff as a chocolate frog. In the aftermath, I was careful to keep distance between us, even when I was married and she was going through a series of short-term relationships with guys, including Maggie’s future second husband, the ill-fated Stevie Steele.
I made myself think of her as just another family member, and even imagined rivalry between us when it came to the future destiny of the Viareggio family businesses, although I’d never had any real interest in running them. Uncle Beppe had taken over after my grandfather’s death, and he and I never got on. When I told him that I’d decided to join the police force rather than work with him, he couldn’t keep the smile from his face.
He wouldn’t have been grinning if he’d been around when, finally, I looked at Paula and saw not a kid cousin, but the woman I’d loved all along, even through the years of my marriage. As it failed, I turned to her for comfort, and discovered that I didn’t want to be anywhere else, ever again.
My old inhibitions didn’t disappear in a flash, nor in anything like it. For a while the fact that we were sleeping together was a secret to be kept, even from our mothers. When the shackles were finally broken it was by the unlikeliest person: Nana Viareggio, our grandmother, our matriarch. She’s a wise old bird and she spotted the difference between us before it had dawned on anyone else. When she asked me about it, I started to apologise to her, to seek her understanding, if not her forgiveness.
She laughed at me. ‘You must be a secret Calvinist, boy, for all you were raised in the Holy Catholic Church. That’s Scotland for you; where your Papa and I came from, your relationship would have been encouraged. His father and my mother were cousins. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that? What’s wrong with such marriages? The European royal families have been marrying with each other for hundreds of years.’
She was right; Nana’s wisdom encouraged me to do some research on the subject, and I discovered that in many cultures, it’s the norm, not an exception. When I showed this to Paula, she laughed, and told me that she knew three women in the Edinburgh merchant community who were in happy marriages with cousins, arranged when they were children.
Nobody’s ever told us they disapprove of our relationship . . . or even been foolish enough to try . . . but I know we were the subject of gossip when we moved in together, as we did after a period of maintaining separate homes, for show. The chattering classes were pretty much silenced though, by our friends, first among them Bob Skinner. He made a point of inviting us, as a couple, to every formal dinner with which he was involved, and the chief constable, or deputy as he was then, hosts or organises plenty of those. He and Aileen, his politician wife, and Neil and Louise McIlhenney, were the only non-family guests when Paula and I were married in a private ceremony in Kelso just over a year ago, and they’re still among very few people who know that we’re man and wife.
It wasn’t long after we tied the knot that Paula got broody. Ironically, Maggie, my ex, had a lot to do with it. She remarried and had a baby daughter, born a few months after Stevie, her cop father, was killed, tragically, while on duty, by an explosive device that was meant for someone else. We gave her as much support as we could, saw a lot of her and the wee one, and it was those first few weeks of Stephanie Rose Steele that triggered a full-blown outbreak of the baby blues.
‘When you were told you were infertile, what was the diagnosis?’
The question came out of the blue, across the table in a corner of Ondine, a trendy restaurant on King George IV Bridge that Paula had booked for my fortieth birthday dinner. (Just the two of us: I’d warned her that if she organised a surprise party for me, I would tell the world when she hits the same mark.) I was taken aback, but more by the content than the timing, for I’d read the signs by then. However, I’d been expecting her to ask what I thought about adoption. If she had, I’d have said ‘Fine’, without missing a beat. But I’d misread her. She didn’t simply want to be a mother; she wanted to have a child.
I frowned, as I recalled the moment when the cock-doctor had broken the news. ‘Diagnosis?’ I repeated. ‘How many ways are there of telling you your tadpoles don’t work?’
‘Lots,’ she replied. ‘What did he actually say?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Word for word, I can’t recall. He gave me the headline news straight up: “Mr McGuire, you’re the problem.” Then he said I was producing sperm, but that they were no use.’
‘You mean the count was too low?’ she persisted, like a QC in court.
‘I dunno. That was what I assumed.’
She drew me that look, over her glass. ‘You did want a baby, though.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Pfffff. Why does any bloke? Because he’s married and it’s what you do. We did try, you know; we read textbooks on the subject, took her temperature, did it with a cushion under her bum. We even went by the phases of the moon for a while. None of it worked.’
‘So you gave up?’
‘What else could we do? We weren’t left with any choice.’
‘My darling boy,’ she purred, ‘do the words “second” and “opinion” have any significance for you?’
‘The man who did my tests was an expert, a top consultant,’ I protested. ‘He cost a load of money.’
‘For which you didn’t get value,’ she suggested, ‘if that’s all he told you.’
‘There was more,’ I admitted, ‘but I wasn’t listening. He gave us a written report, but I never read it.’
‘Aw!’ she exclaimed, with more than a hint of mockery. ‘Poor wee boy. Mario threw a huff. You took it personally, saw yourself as unmanned, so you went away and flexed your muscles in a corner, without even thinking “underlying cause”, and looking into it.’
I felt myself go red. ‘If your sperm is useless, love, that’s it,’ I muttered.
‘Not necessarily,’ she countered. ‘Do you still have the report?’
‘Hell no. It hit the bin the next day.’
‘Can you get another copy?’ she asked.
‘I imagine so.’
‘Will you?’
I looked her in the eye and I saw something I’d never seen there before, an unspoken thing that was, beyond any doubt, a plea. She wasn’t asking me to go back to the cock-doctor; she was begging me.
‘Of course I will, love,’ I promised. ‘With neither hope nor expectation, but I’ll do it.’ I paused. ‘And if it confirms what I believe, then we’ll look at other options, like a donor, for example.’
‘No.’ She reached out and touched my cheek. ‘I want your baby, nobody else’s.’ Then she grinned. ‘But I warn you. If the consultant says there’s just one viable tadpole in there that’ll do the job, and I have to squeeze it out with my own bare hands, then I will.’
Thank God, it didn’t come to that. When the copy of the report hit my email inbox and I read it, I found out that it said that the problem required further investigation before the precise cause of my infertility could be established. I went straight back to the consultant and told him to go ahead. My output was collected and observed. It didn’t take the specialist long to tell me that I suffer from what he called asthenospermia; what that means is, the little buggers were there, but they were lousy swimmers. That being the case, he proposed that we assist them by trying in-vitro fertilisation. He warned us that the odds were against success, even after several attempts, but he didn’t know Paula. The first shot was a bullseye.
When her pregnancy was confirmed, I’ve never seen her so happy. No, scratch that; I’ve never seen anyone looking so happy. Me? Looking at her, I couldn’t stop myself; I cried like the baby she’s expecting.
She picked up the metaphorical bones of our unfinished discussion and gnawed on them some more. ‘So how are you going to play it?’ she asked.
‘Like any other criminal investigation,’ I replied.
‘Criminal?’
‘Yes. Varley and Cowan compromised a CID investigation; worse than that, they leaked information to a suspect. Jack McGurk and Sauce Haddock had a man called Kenny Bass under surveillance in connection with a cigarette smuggling operation; they’d had a tip that he’d imported a cache of dodgy fags, and they were playing him. They had an authorised phone tap in place on Bass’s mobile, trying to pull in other people involved in the scam. Late yesterday afternoon, when they were just about to finish for the day, they were told about an exchange of texts setting up a meeting that same evening. They traced the other number to a man called Freddy Welsh. He’s a building contractor, and he has no criminal record, but the fact that he initiated the get-together interested my guys. The venue was Lafayette’s, Regine Zaliukas’s pub out in Slateford.’
Paula looked puzzled. ‘Which one’s that? I thought I knew everywhere in Edinburgh.’
‘It used to be called Caballero’s, before Regine made her now departed husband move it upmarket and clear out the pole dancers.’
‘Ah, that place.’ She smiled. ‘I went out with a guy once and he took me there. I did not go out with him twice.’
‘Did I know him?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Just as well for him. Anyway, our two planned to be in there, waiting for Bass and the other man when they turned up, but . . . Jack couldn’t make it. He and his partner were going to a wedding rehearsal last night, and he’s the best man, so he begged off. Becky Stallings, the DI in overall charge of the operation, called Sammy Pye, down at Leith, and asked him if he could borrow a replacement. Ray Wilding, Pye’s DS, was off limits, obviously, not just because he and Becky live together, but also because he was on the verge of leaving on promotion, so big Griff Montell got the call.’
‘Montell? As in Alex Skinner’s ex?’
‘She’d probably deny that, say they were just friends, but yes, him. He and Sauce watched them arrive, Bass first, then Welsh . . . they’d found a picture of him by that time so they knew what he looked like. They let the pair of them get settled into a booth with a table, and then moved in close enough for Sauce to use a very cute wee directional microphone, and eavesdrop on the conversation, while Montell filmed them with a video cam small enough to fit into his hand. They’d only been there for about a minute, talking about nothing much more than the weather, when one of the bar staff asked if there was a Mr Welsh in the place, for there was a phone call for him. He went off to take it. Because he’s a good cop, Sauce went with him, still close enough for the mike to pick him up as he took the call at the bar. I’ve heard the tape. Welsh says, “Freddy here. Who’s this?” There’s a pause, and then he says, “You’re fucking joking.” Another pause, and he says, “Thanks, you’re weighed in for this.” Then he hung up, turned around, and walked straight out the door without even looking at Bass.’
Paula was wide-eyed, hooked on the story. ‘What did Bass do?’
‘He sat there fo
r a while, looking puzzled.’ I knew this for sure, because I’d seen the video too. ‘Eventually he figured out that Welsh wasn’t coming back, finished his drink and left. Sauce sent Montell after him, to make sure they weren’t meeting up outside . . . which they weren’t . . . while he went and asked the bar staff about the call. The girl who took it could only tell him that it was a man’s voice. When he tried to check the number on one four seven one, it came up as unavailable, but BT were able to trace it for him later. And guess what? It was a public phone box, about a hundred yards away from Gayfield Square police station.’
‘Which anyone could have used,’ she pointed out, ‘so how did you link it to your two? Come to that, how did you even think to?’
‘Young Sauce is going to be a great cop,’ I told her. ‘His gut, and some logical thinking told him there had been a leak, and a very recent one at that. So who was new on the team? Montell. He called Stallings on her mobile, and asked her to meet him. He was even bright enough, or brave enough even, to tell her to say nothing to Ray Wilding, because he worked with Montell. He told Becky what had happened. First thing she did was promise him she’d said nothing to Ray. The second thing she did was call me. I went straight to Special Branch, Dorothy Shannon and Tarvil Singh, and I told them to find out as much as there is to know about Freddy Welsh’s background. A couple of hours later, Shannon got back to me. Welsh is Inspector Jock Varley’s wife’s cousin, Jock Varley is DC Alice Cowan’s uncle, and Jock Varley’s based at Gayfield Square. Tarvil had checked the station CCTV. It shows Varley going out with his coat on a couple of minutes before the call was made, and coming back in ten minutes later. We’ve even got a usable print off the phone.’
Paula whistled. ‘Poor you, having to deal with that. I take it you’ve known Inspector Varley for a while?’
‘All my career. Now I’m going to have to end his, and possibly worse. When Welsh said “You’re weighed in for this”, that can be taken to imply reward, and that, my dear, is “go to jail” territory.’
‘So how is Cowan involved?’ she asked.
Funeral Note Page 2