‘What the hell’s this about, love?’ I asked her. ‘What’s he up to? What’s in it for him?’
‘I wanted to know those same three things myself,’ she told me. ‘He says that it’s something he heard from a guy in his health club, somebody who doesn’t know he’s out of the life and thought he’d be interested. He says that it’s a gesture of goodwill . . . his words . . . but that he doesn’t want anyone to know the source. He doesn’t even want you to mention his name to Mr Skinner, but to let him figure it out for himself.’
‘Jesus, Cheeky,’ I protested. ‘I can’t do that. If I get a tip I’m supposed to take it to Jack McGurk, or DI Stallings. The head of CID would fry my balls and eat them if I went over their heads, and his.’
‘I told him that too. He said that you’re only a sprog detective and that if you went through the usual channels they’d insist that you told them where the tip came from. He says that he can’t be seen to be an informant, and he only trusts Skinner to keep the secret.’
‘I don’t know,’ I muttered, doubtfully. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think nothing. I’m an unwilling messenger girl, Sauce, that’s all. Of course you could always forget it. There would be no comeback.’
But I couldn’t forget it, could I, because I’m a cop, and I’d been given information about a possible crime. I could have gone by the book, indeed I almost did. It wasn’t Grandpa’s reputation that stopped me, it was Cheeky; I was taking enough flak about her from Jack as it was and I didn’t want him knowing about her involvement.
So I plucked up the courage, I called Gerry Crossley, and I asked to see the chief. He asked me why, but all I said was that it was for Mr Skinner’s ears only, and very confidential. I had visions of being back in uniform next morning, but that didn’t happen. The boss said he’d see me when I’d finished my shift.
When I told him my story, he sat stone-faced all the way through it, and for a couple of minutes after. ‘Let me get my head round this,’ he said, as the sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck. ‘Your mystery informant wants me to take all this on trust, and commit police time to an operation that might be a complete fucking smoke-screen for something else. That’s how it is?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t believe it is. If it was a con, the information wouldn’t have come to me in the way it did.’
He frowned. ‘Luckily for you, son, I don’t believe that either. I’ll pass your tip on to Mr McGuire myself, and I’ll tell him to put DI Stallings’ team on the investigation. Nobody will ask me to name my source. But I warn you,’ he growled, giving me a look that scared me, ‘if this goes pear-shaped, your girlfriend will be in big, big trouble, and that will just be for starters.’
And so the operation started, with my fingers tightly crossed that it would all be plain sailing, that we would all have a nice arrest on our records and a shed-load of potentially toxic ciggies would be taken out of circulation. It nearly worked out that way too, until the complication of Freddy bloody Welsh popped up.
‘The weather forecast’s nice for tomorrow and Sunday,’ Cheeky said, breaking a bread stick in half. ‘When do you want to start off?’
‘Ah well,’ I murmured. ‘We might have to change that plan. How do you fancy St Andrews instead?’
‘St Andrews?’ she repeated. ‘In July? God no. The place will be crawling with caravaners and golfers. We wouldn’t be able to move. No, I want to go west. What brought that on anyway? I thought you did too.’
‘I did. I do, but . . .’ I paused. ‘Remember that message you gave me the other night?’
‘Of course. How could I not? Why? Did something come of it?’
I’d said nothing, as usual, and she hadn’t asked, as usual. ‘Did it ever,’ I told her. ‘We followed it up and a large bucket of shite hit a very big fan, in a way that nobody expected.’
I must have been looking even more mournful than usual, for her eyes creased and her smile appeared, the one that turns me into very spreadable butter. ‘And you’ve got to clean it up?’ she chuckled.
‘Not exactly,’ I replied. ‘You have.’
The laugh lines vanished in an instant. ‘Me?’
‘Only if you agree,’ I said, quickly and firmly, finding some of the balls that I’d been missing in the chief constable’s room. ‘If you don’t want to do this, you only have to say so, and it will not happen. I’ll understand and I won’t say another word about it. That’s a promise.’
‘Then you’d better tell me what it is.’
‘I’ve got a message for you,’ I replied. ‘From my boss; my Big Boss. He wants you to go back to your grandpa and ask him some questions.’
‘Such as?’ She seemed anxious, and for some reason that pleased me, made me happy that if there had been a set-up she hadn’t been in on it.
‘I need to know whether when he gave me that tip about Kenny Bass, he knew of the involvement of a man called Freddy Welsh. I need to know whether he knows Welsh himself, and even if he doesn’t, I need him to tell me everything he knows about him. Can you tell him that?’
I chose not to add the chief’s parting words: ‘Make sure she tells him that if he holds back on this, I’ll come up to Dundee myself and knock his fucking door down.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘How soon?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘So that’s why Oban’s scrapped?’
I nodded.
‘Then maybe we can rescue it. We can drive up there first thing in the morning. I’ll drop you somewhere or other while I go and see him. Then I’ll come back and we’ll head off from there. It can be just as quick as going from Edinburgh.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘That’s the deal.’
I nodded. ‘That’s okay by me. If he’s got anything to tell you that can’t wait, I can pass it on to the chief over the phone.’
‘From Oban?’
I laughed. ‘From Oban, if that’s how you want it.’
She smiled at me once again, any worry gone from those sensational eyes. ‘We’d better skip the nightclub after dinner,’ she said. ‘We’ll have an early start. We should turn in.’
I grinned back at her. ‘See you,’ I murmured, ‘you’ll be my downfall.’
Andy Martin
‘I’m worried about my dad.’
In the fifteen years or so I’ve known Alex, she’s never said anything to me that’s surprised me more than that. They’ve had occasional differences, the pair of them, but she has never displayed anything other than a total belief in him, and an inbuilt certainty that whatever happens he will come through, that whatever obstacles are put in his way he will prevail. She has reason to feel that way, for she’s had some dark times herself, one very dark, when she was kidnapped. He was there, with a metaphorically flaming sword in hand, to lay her abductors low and pluck her from danger. If it wasn’t for him, she’d be an atheist: she worships him, and him alone.
So, when she said that, it was as if a temple lay in ruins, in some unseen place.
We were sitting on what the builder described as a balcony in my house beside the Water of Leith. I suppose that’s a fair description; it’s big enough for two people and a very small table, it’s angled to provide privacy, and when the weather’s okay, it’s a very pleasant place to sit, taking in the evening sun and listening to the river flow by, as we were. There’s woodland on the other side; another plus point in that it means the neighbours opposite have feathers rather than annoying personal habits.
I could have sold the place when I landed the Tayside deputy chief job and Karen and I moved to Perth, but the market wasn’t great at the time and the rental income was way in excess of the mortgage over-head, so I hung on to it, maybe with half an eye on the possibility that I might move back to the Edinburgh force one day as Bob’s number two, a role that I’d filled, officially and otherwise, for much of my career.
I put my beer on the table. These days I tend to drink Mexican, complete with
wedge of lime or lemon. If I still hung around the rugby club, they’d call me a poser, or something worse, but my laddish days are long behind me.
‘Run that past me again,’ I said, quietly.
‘I mean it, Andy.’ She turned her head and looked at me, displaying that deep chasm that appears between her eyebrows when she frowns.
‘I’m worried about him, seriously. I’d hoped that finally, all the pieces in his complicated world were in place and that he could look as far down the road as his contract as chief constable extends, and then beyond, to nice happy years getting older and watching another generation of kids grow up. I’d made myself believe that Aileen was the right woman for him. Politicians seem to have a short shelf life these days, so I’d assumed that when hers came to an end she’d be there alongside him. I certainly didn’t expect her to put herself on a collision course with him.’
I peered at her through my glasses . . . I don’t wear my contacts around the house any more . . . and made my ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ face.
‘You mean he hasn’t told you?’ she exclaimed, her voice rising. ‘I was sure he would have.’
I put a finger to my lips; my neighbours and I don’t overlook each other but they’re not that far away. ‘Told me what?’
‘You know this talk of police unification?’ she asked, more quietly.
‘Of course I do. We discussed it at ACPOS yesterday, and voted against it.’
‘It looks as if you were wasting your time. The government’s determined to force it through before the next election, to take it out of the political arena, so they say, and my dear stepmother’s party is backing them.’
I picked my beer up, and killed it, then went to the kitchen for another couple to give myself some thinking time. The first half of Alex’s revelation hadn’t surprised me, given the choice of venue for our meeting and given the evangelistic support for the idea that we’d seen from what Bob and I had taken to calling the Toni Field Tendency; but the second part had.
‘Labour’s going to line up with the Nats on this?’ I said as I handed her a fresh Corona.
‘Yes, and Aileen wants Dad to back off from public opposition to the bill when it’s published. He’s told her he’ll resign if a single Scottish force is created, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference to her.’
‘Do you think he would?’
She shot me a ‘silly boy’ smile. ‘Andy,’ she murmured.
Yes, rhetorical; of course he would.
‘Do you know,’ she continued, ‘Aileen actually had the nerve to call me today. The woman was working up to asking me to try to talk him round . . .’
I put my hand over my eyes. ‘Oh dear,’ I murmured, for I knew what was coming.
‘Exactly!’ she hissed. ‘I didn’t let her get that far. I told her what I thought of her. I blew up at her, I’m afraid. Honestly, I never thought that would happen with Aileen and me. Now it has, and I don’t know whether there’s any way back from it.’
I reached across and tugged her hair, gently. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘there’s always a way back. Look at you and me.’
‘One marriage and two kids later?’ she muttered. I must have winced, for she bit her lip and exclaimed, ‘Oh I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean that.’
‘It’s true, though.’
‘On the face of it, but it’s not the same; we’re not going back to where we were. Whatever the rest of the world believes, I didn’t break up your marriage, not by myself. No, the thing about Aileen, she seems to want unconditional love, yet she applies conditions to her own. I didn’t expect that of her. I don’t think I can ever respect her again.’
‘But isn’t Bob the same?’ I asked her.
‘No.’ She didn’t take a second to consider the question. ‘You’re sat beside living proof of that. I’ve done some silly things in my life, but never once has he wavered in his love for me. And even you; the two of you have had your differences over the years, your fallings out over me, yet he’s always seen you as the brother he should have had rather than the one he did.’
‘Surely there’s a solution, though, for him and Aileen?’
She pressed the cold beer to her forehead for a second or two. ‘You mean like parking their differences in the street outside?’
I nodded. ‘Something like that.’
‘I don’t know about Aileen, not for certain, although present evidence says “no”. But as far as he’s concerned . . .’ She hesitated.
‘Andy,’ she continued, slowly, ‘I barely remember my mum, that’s how young I was when she died in that accident, but I can tell you this. If she’d told him to swim the ten, fifteen miles, whatever it is, across the Forth from Gullane to Anstruther for fish and chips and bring them back, he’d have done it with boots on. They’d have been a bit soggy, but they’d have been as good as on the table. And for all that she wasn’t perfect, Mum would have done the same for him. If they’d faced a fundamental issue like this, they’d have realised that they, together, were far more important than it was and they’d simply have left it for others to sort out.’
‘Couldn’t he and Aileen do that?’ I ventured.
‘Put it this way. If she asked Dad to swim to Anstruther, his trunks would never be wet. If he asked her to walk to the Gullane chippie and bring back a couple of suppers, she’d probably phone for home delivery. And that’s why I’m worried about him, Andy. I’m afraid that things between the two of them are past fixing, and I don’t know that he could stand another broken marriage.’
‘And what about Aileen?’
‘She’ll survive.’ There was a bitter tone to her voice that wasn’t very pretty.
‘Don’t be like that, Alex,’ I told her. ‘Bob’s been ghost-hunting for as long as I’ve known him, even though it’s futile. It isn’t Aileen’s fault that she’s not your mum.’
Bob Skinner
‘I’m a lousy dad, and I’m ashamed of it.
‘That’s not what my daughter would tell you, and I don’t imagine that my younger children would either, if you were to put the question to them. But it’s what I believe.
‘Jesus, what have I just said? How self-revelatory is that? I called Alex, “my daughter”, as if I had only one, yet I have two. Seonaid’s approaching the age that her half-sister was when Myra’s car hit that tree. When that happened, afterwards I was consumed by the need to care for Alexis. My employer, the police force, understood completely; my bosses went out of their way to ensure that my shifts were synchronised with the hours of my childcarers, even though I was in CID, at the sharp end. They told me that they wanted to keep me, and that they’d do whatever it took to make things work. But it wasn’t easy. I was demanding of the people looking after my kid, and a few of them bit the dust. It reached the point when I was considering walking away from the job, but just then we found the perfect woman to take care of Alex. Daisy was an artist, and she lived in the village, so her career dovetailed perfectly with mine, and everything was sorted. I was able to do a proper job as a police officer and be a responsible loving dad at the same time, and Alex and I made it all the way through as a family unit until she flew the nest and went off to university in Glasgow.
‘I look back on that now, and I ask myself, “Skinner, how selfish was that?”
‘For I had an option all along: my old man was a successful solicitor in a prosperous town. He was the founder and head of a law practice that could easily have accommodated me while I finished a law degree, and would have given me a job for life afterwards. The firm would have become mine. That route was open to me at every point in my young adult life. I could have taken it whenever I chose, moved back to Motherwell, studied, and then put in a conventional working day that would have let me spend as much time with my kid as other dads did. Mr Skinner junior, man about town, director of the football club, member of Bothwell Castle Golf Club, Rotarian, all that conventional stuff that we need people to do to make the respectable world turn. Would it have harmed
me as a person? No. Would it have been better for Alex? Yes.
‘But you know that I didn’t. No, I stayed put in Gullane and I would not be moved from the cottage that in truth had been Myra’s more than it had been mine. I stayed in the force and with Daisy Mears’ help I climbed that fucking ladder . . . as relentless and ruthless as folk will tell you I was. In other words, I put my career before the best interests of my lovely wee daughter. I was a hands-on cop; I was famous for never holding back. And no kidding; there were times when if things had gone wrong, Alex might have been an orphan.
‘I’m not proud of that, any of it. I’m not proud of the fact that I haven’t learned either. Did you hear me just now? It was as if I was ignoring Seonaid’s very existence. I have a second family, and I love them, yet it feels as if they’re on the periphery of my life, in a great big bubble. I can see them, touch them, be with them, but somehow they’re not real . . . apart from James Andrew that is, apart from the Jazz man.
‘He’s my firstborn son, and in my macho mind that makes him special. Mark, though, he’s more like my charge, my ward . . . which he is in a way, I suppose being adopted. And Seonaid, she’s lovely, just lovely, but she’s like a wee doll, and I just can’t relate to her, because I don’t know how to, I’ve forgotten how to, because my second family has become almost entirely subordinate to my job. Just like my third marriage is, and ours was, only now I’m married to a woman who seems to have the same crap priorities as I do.’
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘And all I asked was what was on your mind.’
I gazed at her.
‘I haven’t learned a fucking thing, have I, Sarah?’
She gazed back at me across the breakfast bar in her brand new kitchen, in her brand new old stone house. Two plates lay between us, each one cleaned of all but a few strands of dark fried onion, and a couple of smears of mustard. Her elbows were on the dark wood surface and her hands were cupped around a crystal tumbler, half filled with clear sparkling water.
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