As soon as we were clear I called the Strathclyde communications centre. ‘This is Chief Constable Skinner, from Edinburgh,’ I told the answering officer. ‘I want you to connect me with Chief Constable Field.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the man exclaimed. ‘Who did you say you are?’
‘Chief Constable Bob Skinner,’ I repeated. ‘Now put me through to Toni Field.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir,’ he droned. ‘I’m not allowed to do that. If I put you through without verifying your identity, it’d be more than my job’s worth.’
‘No, pal,’ I roared at him, ‘you’re not sorry. You don’t know the meaning of the word sorry, but you fucking will by the time I’m finished with you. Connect me!’
The bastard hung up on me.
I called back at once; long odds against me drawing the same operator, but I did. ‘My name is Chief Constable Robert Morgan Skinner,’ I snapped. ‘What you will now do is wait one minute then call my force communications centre and ask them to put you through to me on my mobile, as verification. If you are not reconnected to me within two minutes, trust me, you will not have a job on Monday.’
I closed the line, called the comms centre myself, and gave them their orders. Two minutes later I was reconnected to PC Obstinate.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he began.
‘No time for that,’ I said. ‘Toni Field, now: urgently.’
I waited; the only thing I will say for Strathclyde is that they didn’t play me the theme from fucking Z Cars while I was hanging on the line. If they had, it would have played at least five times as I waited. All I could do was sit there going quietly crazy, no, make that noisily, for at least once every minute I screamed, ‘Come on!’ into the mike.
I couldn’t believe how long he took; we were driving past Glasgow Fort when he came back on the line. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he lied. ‘I’ve tried all the chief constable’s numbers. She appears to be incommunicado.’
‘Then get me ACC Allan,’ I retorted, unimpressed by his vocabulary.
‘I’ve tried him; I can’t get in touch with him either.’
Christ! My brain was frazzled; I was fighting to think properly, time flying past while I tried to work out what to do next.
‘Okay,’ I said at last, when I’d decided. ‘Divisional Commander, Glasgow Central. Who’s he?’
‘That would be Chief Superintendent Reardon.’
‘Put me through to him.’
‘I believe he’s on holiday, sir.’
‘Then give me whoever is sitting in his fucking chair,’ I screamed.
‘Very good, sir,’ the communications officer replied stiffly. The waiting hum returned, and stayed with me for another God knew how long. I couldn’t look at the car’s clock.
‘This is Chief Inspector Spencer.’ I’d been hanging on so long I was startled when the woman spoke. ‘I’m the acting divisional commander. Chief Constable Skinner, is it?’
There was something indulgent about her tone that blew the last couple of shreds of my restraint. ‘We’ve established that,’ I yelled at her. ‘I have reason to believe that a terrorist operation is under way at the Royal Concert Hall. You need to get an armed response team there now.’
‘We have armed officers there,’ she protested. ‘We always put on a show of force when there are VIPs. Chief constable’s standing order.’
‘In that case, I’m willing to bet you’ve got two more people on site than you think. I believe you have a two-man hit team there posing as police officers. Are all your guys accounted for?’
‘I assume so.’
‘That doesn’t cut it . . .’
‘Mr Skinner,’ Clyde cut in on me. I looked up and realised that we had left the motorway and were heading down Port Dundas Road towards the hall itself.
‘We’re arriving at the site now,’ I told Spencer. ‘No debate; get armed back-up here, now.’
We ran two red lights and swung on to the one-way Killermont Street, against the traffic flow, braking and swerving to avoid an on-coming van. Houseman stopped the car and jumped out, unholstering his pistol.
As I followed I could see why he had. Two uniformed police officers lay on the pavement in front of the entrance doors. They’d been armed, but it hadn’t done them any good. Two other men stood over them, identically dressed, in blue T-shirts and light cotton trousers; the stockier of the pair, a guy with a low forehead and a crew cut, held a silenced pistol in his right hand. As I looked at them, they registered our approach.
The gunman swung round to face us, but he didn’t get his weapon halfway up before Clyde shot him through the head.
By that time his companion was running. I started after him, then something hit me as hard as the other guy’s bullet might have if my young ex-schemie pal hadn’t nailed him. We’d caught them on the way out, not the way in. They’d done what they came to do.
I stopped chasing after the fleeing hit man. Instead I picked up the H and K carbine that one of the fallen officers had been carrying, sighted it on him as I’d done a hundred times before on cardboard targets on our firing range, and on a couple of live ones in other places, and nailed him, twice, right between the shoulder blades. See how fast you can run now, pal.
Clyde was on one knee, checking the cops for pulses. ‘This one’s alive,’ he said. ‘I think the other’s gone.’
Then the door to the hall swung open and ACC Max Allan stepped out into the street. His eyes were all screwed up, and I realised that the interior of the concert hall was without windows other than the glass panes of its doors, and that it was in darkness.
He looked at his fallen men, and he looked at me. ‘Bob,’ he whispered, and I could see he was in shock. ‘Bob, she’s dead.’
Paula McGuire
I had to laugh when I got there. As the government car rolled up at the surprisingly anonymous vehicle entrance to the Royal Concert Hall, I saw one of the pair of armed cops on duty outside say something into a radio transmitter. A few moments later, before my transport had even come to rest, the double doors opened and a man emerged. He wore a dark suit and a heavy gold chain round his neck, and I am not talking about the type they sell at H. Samuel.
When my driver opened the door, and I stepped out on to the pavement, the Lord Provost’s face registered complete confusion. Glasgow’s first citizen glared at the gun-toting blackshirt who’d summoned him.
‘I thought you said the First Minister was arriving,’ he snapped.
‘Sorry I can’t oblige,’ I told him, wearing my finest arch smile, ‘but don’t I rate a polite welcome too? I’m accompanying Ms de Marco to the event, and she’ll probably be First Minister again by this time next year.’
The civic dignitary recovered his ground, and his composure. ‘Of course, madam,’ he murmured, schmoozing forward with hand outstretched. ‘So nice to see you. In fact our Aileen’s arrived already; let me take you to her.’
He escorted me inside. As we approached a wide flight of stairs, I had a moment of confusion. I thought I’d caught the briefest glimpse of Maggie Steele disappearing from sight round a corner, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it as my official greeter led me up and into some sort of anteroom, where the usual pre-concert champagne reception was under way.
Aileen seemed to be its main attraction. She was in the middle of a crowd of people, but she spotted me just as I saw her, and excused herself from them. She stared at me, and I had to laugh again. So had she. Instead of red, she was wearing a dress of shimmering green satin. And there was I, in my black satin trouser suit.
‘You too?’ she chuckled. ‘I decided we’d better not look like twin pillar boxes, so I dug this out. It’s from my pre-Bob era and it sends out all the wrong signals to half of Glasgow, but what the hell? I haven’t worn it for a while and I want to get back to being the woman I once was.’
Did I detect an underlying message there? Yes, sure, and hadn’t I just seen Maggie Steele downstairs when she was for certain back home in Edinburgh fus
sing over her daughter.
I put both those misconceptions out of my mind. ‘I’m sorry, Aileen,’ I said. ‘After you called, I remembered I had this thing in my wardrobe, and that it still fits, just about. I should have phoned you back to let you know.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she assured me. ‘We both look fantastic. Let’s revel in it. Front row seats, two along from Clive Graham and his partner for the night, whoever she is. Let them all look on our works and despair.’
‘Sounds fine to me, Ozymandias,’ I agreed, taking an orange juice from a tray that a young blonde waitress offered me. According to her badge her name was Katya, one of the loyal Poles who had stuck with Scotland through the recession, I imagined. Quite a few of them work for me.
A tall, dark-haired, drop-dead good-looking guy came walking towards us. He was wearing a white tux and trousers with a shiny strip down the side; he looked a million dollars and he knew it. I was sure I had seen him somewhere before.
‘Joey,’ Aileen exclaimed, ‘great to see you again.’ They embraced and she kissed him on the cheek, for maybe half a second longer than was necessary. ‘Paula, this is Joey Morocco, Glaswegian made good, and our MC for the evening; Joey, Paula Viareggio.’
God, and I barely recognised him; showing your age, lady. Joey Morocco is an actor who started his career on a dodgy Scottish soap, then went upmarket very quickly, into network television productions, and most recently into movies. Hollywood has called and there are whispers that he’s going to be the next James Bond.
‘Hi, Paula,’ he said, ‘great to meet you.’ He sprinkled a little stardust on me, but not as much as he’d given Aileen, I noticed. ‘Ladies,’ he murmured. ‘As well as being host tonight I’m the guy who has to ask everyone to switch off their mobiles. Can you do that . . . if you’re carrying, that is?’
‘Joey,’ I replied, glancing down at my bump, ‘if you can’t see that I’m carrying, someone needs to have a talk with you. As for my mobile, if I switch it off in this condition my husband will go radio rentals. He might even take it out on you, and you’d hate that. But as long as you’re prepared to handle the flak, I’ll do that for you.’
‘Fantastic,’ he beamed, then moved off on a wave of over-statement, after a little squeeze of Aileen’s hand.
‘Would there be some history between you two by any chance?’ I asked her, mischievously.
She smiled as she nodded. ‘A brief encounter or two, when he was still on Scottish telly.’
‘He still fancies you, I’d say.’
‘I know.’ She winked at me. ‘I could tell by the way he squeezed my bum when he hugged me. The question is, do I still fancy him?’
Before I’d had a chance to take that any further, there were sounds of a small commotion behind us. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the car they’d been expecting outside had turned up at last. The First Minister was among us, with the Lord Provost on one side, and on the other a smallish woman with brown skin, copper hair and the most sexually aggressive body I have ever seen, packed into a tight red evening dress.
‘Didn’t we do right,’ I murmured to Aileen, but she wasn’t listening. Instead she was gazing at the new female in our midst with eyes like ice and a wholly insincere smile fixed on her face.
‘Clive,’ she greeted her biggest political opponent as he came towards us. He wore his usual slightly cautious expression . . . and his usual silly tartan waistcoat, although his evening’s choice did match his trews, I’ll give him that.
‘My dear,’ he responded. They shook hands, briefly, semi-formally; no cheek-kissing for them, in case someone snapped it on an illicit iPhone and flogged the image to the tabloids. ‘Glad you could come. You couldn’t persuade your husband though?’
‘Don’t go there,’ she said, cutting off that line of questioning. ‘I brought a friend instead, Paula Viareggio, married name McGuire; this could be her last night of freedom, so we’re out to enjoy it.’
‘Be sure you do.’ As Clive Graham spoke, a tall man moved in behind him; his hair was silver, more or less the same shade as the acres of braid on his uniform.
The First Minister’s companion didn’t seem to welcome his presence, but she couldn’t ignore it. She turned to me. ‘Paula this is . . .’
I smiled, not at her but at him. ‘I know who it is. Hi, Max,’ I greeted him. ‘You must be fit, to be carrying all that braid on your shoulders.’ Max Allan lives in Lanark, but he and his wife do most of their shopping in Edinburgh. They’ve been among the Viareggio delicatessen chain’s best customers since my grandfather’s time. I knew he was a police officer, but I hadn’t realised that he was that senior.
He beamed back at me. ‘Radiant, Paula,’ he exclaimed, ‘radiant.’ Then he turned serious. ‘First Minister,’ he murmured, ‘can I have a word in private?’
Graham nodded and led the way towards an unoccupied corner, well away from tray waitresses and the savoury tables. His companion went with him.
‘He doesn’t look as though he’s fit for her. Is that really Mrs Graham?’ I asked Aileen.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Mrs Graham’s recovering from what the press office described as varicose vein removal, which is true if you regard piles as a type of varicose vein. That wee red dragon is Toni Field, the new chief constable in Strathclyde.’
‘In which case,’ I murmured, ‘Max has just lit her fire.’ She followed my gaze. Whatever my customer had told them had made her go absolutely rigid with what looked pretty much like fury to me.
‘It can’t be bad enough news as far as I’m concerned,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t stand the bloody woman. Unfortunately I’m told that some of my parliamentary colleagues in London think the sun shines out of her fundament.’
‘What’s she doing with Clive Graham?’
‘One of them is using the other to make a point. I’m not entirely sure which; maybe they both are, but I suspect it’s her. Clive probably knows he’s testing my patience and my loyalty by wearing her on his arm at a do like this, but he doesn’t have the courage to put her in her place.’
She was still sizzling when a warning bell rang, and Joey Morocco asked everyone to make their way into the auditorium, apart from the principal guests and charity patrons. We were among the former category, so we hung back, until eventually we were arranged into a line, by a harassed wee man, who seemed to be in charge of everything. He looked like someone who’d just woken on Boxing Day to discover that he’d slept through Christmas.
When we were ready we filed in; patrons first, then the Lord Provost and Mrs Provost, then the First Minister and his ‘date’, then me and finally Aileen. She’d reversed the order into which the harassed man had put us.
‘Do me a favour,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t have me sit next to that bloody woman Field. She’s a philistine and I’m sure she’d talk to me all the way through the performance, just to wind me up. She doesn’t know you, so that might shut her up.’
As soon as we were settled in our seats, Joey Morocco moved on to stage, to gusts of applause, to stand in front of the assembled Scottish National Orchestra, and beside a piano that seemed to be minus a player. He made a short welcome speech, plugged the benefiting charities, and then went serious on us.
‘Now the bad news,’ he announced. ‘We’ve all come here tonight to be enthralled by the great Theo Fabrizzi. Well, I’m afraid I have to tell you,’ he paused, then lapsed inexplicably into Glaswegian, ‘it’s no gonnae happen.’
He waited for the buzz to subside, then he continued. ‘Poor Theo has been overtaken by one of those short notice things that can afflict us all, and he regrets enormously that he is not going to be able to play this evening. However,’ his tone turned upbeat, ‘we still have the nation’s finest orchestra to delight us, so the evening will still be memorable. Please just imagine the piano bits, okay?’
He left the stage to applause that was much less rapturous than at his entrance.
I wasn’t bothered. The piano has never b
een my favourite instrument, unless Elton John’s sitting at it. I was going to have a good time anyway.
A minute or so later, Joey reappeared on the left of the stage. ‘And now, my lords, ladies and gentlepeople,’ he announced, ‘please welcome your conductor, Sir Leslie Fender.’
A fat man in white tie and tails, with slicked-back hair and an enormously pompous bearing, walked out to centre stage, bowed theatrically, then stepped laboriously up on to his podium. He picked up his baton, raised it, and as if on cue . . . as it probably was . . . the house lights faded.
And that’s when it all got very strange. Time seemed to speed up. I was aware of something happening very close to me, of three thudding sounds, of something wet spattering on me . . . then everything went black, as if the darkest night you could ever imagine had fallen in an instant.
Someone screamed. I think it was me.
Funeral Note Page 36