Skinner laughed lightly. 'Al knowledge is power, mate; I thought that was your lot's motto. But you're right; I was wondering if you'd get someone to look into that legendary computer of yours and see if you can come up with a list of unsolved homicides where robbery was the motive…'
'Jesus, Bob, it'l take a lot of paper to print that out!' Doherty interrupted.
'Humour me on this, eh?'
It was as if he could hear Doherty's brain click into gear. 'Okay. You want anything else while we're in there?'
'Yes. Can you also print me out a list of murders, also unsolved, where a wire ligature was used?'
'I guess we can manage that too. But I hope you got a good-sized document case with you.'
'A Zero Hal iburton attache, my son. The strongest there is.'
'We'l fil it for you; you can bet on that.' Doherty paused. Skinner heard a click and guessed that he was lighting a cigarette.
'Haven't you chucked smoking yet?' he asked.
'Say that in a soprano voice and you'd sound just like Philippa. Have you any idea how many people around the world rely on guys like me to keep them in a job?'
'Sure. I've met several; all of them were either oncologists or cardiologists.'
'I prefer to think about the little guys in the tobacco plantations and on the production lines. But whatever way you look at it, I'm performing a public service. Anyhow, what are you going to do with al this stuff I'm going to get for you?'
The? Nothing. I just want to help the investigating officers al I can, that's al.'
'Sure. By shoving firecrackers up their asses… I know you.'
The Scot chuckled again. 'If they're not doing it already I'm sure they'd get round to it eventual y. I just thought we could help the process along, that's all. Kid gloves, Joe; I'll wear kid gloves, I promise you.' He paused; for a second or two, Doherty thought they had lost the line. 'He never did say it in the movie, you know,' he resumed, at last.
'Uh?'
'He never did say it.'
'What?'
'Play it again, Sam.'
Skinner could almost hear the American's bewilderment as he ended the cal and headed for the boarding gate.
11
Stil, sleep failed them. They made love again, but again, the usual drowsiness did not fol ow. There was something there stil, something unsaid, a question begging to be asked. And so, eventually, Mario did.
'When was the last time you saw him?'
'I told you. When I grabbed Eilidh's hand and hauled her out of that kitchen. The last time I saw my father was twenty-three years ago, and he was battering blood and snot out of my mother.'
'Never since then?'
'Never.'
'Have you ever felt the need to find him?'
'Never. Why in God's name would I want to do that? The man was a beast.'
'How does Eilidh feel?'
'I don't know, because I've never talked to her about what happened.
She was very young; to this very day, she might not have realised what happened to her.'
'What if he does turn up, out of the blue?'
'Then you deal with him. Okay? I real y mean it; if I confronted him I don't know what would happen.'
'Okay'
She jumped out of bed and went into the en-suite bathroom. Returning, she slid in beside him once more, face down, propped on her elbows, looking at him in the dim crystal light of their beside alarm. 'There's guilt there, Mario; so much of it. I feel guilt over what happened to my mother. If I'd kept quiet it would have saved her al that pain. On the other hand, I feel guilt about not waking up sooner to what was happening, to the fact that there was something terribly wrong about our
"wee secret", my dad's and mine. If I had, maybe I could have prevented it from happening to Eilidh.
'And even now, when you ask me whether I want to trace him, I feel guilt because I don't. What if he found another woman? What if he had more daughters? What if he stil has? By doing nothing, I'm shutting my eyes to that possibility. The truth behind it al is that I don't think I've got the guts to face him.
'I just hoped he was dead, Mario. And now I find out that he isn't.'
'What's his first name?' he asked, quietly.
'Jorge,' she answered, pronouncing the name in the Iberian fashion.
'Jorge Xavier Rose: my grandmother was Portuguese, and he lived in Lisbon for the first few years of his life. His father decided to see out the war there. That's where the Christian names came from.' She guessed the reason for his question. 'Listen, if you're planning to do anything about this, I don't want to know,' she whispered.
'Okay'
She leaned across and kissed him. 'Now can we get some sleep?'
'Unlikely, I'd have thought,' he murmured, cupping her right breast in his big hand. 'Not without tiring ourselves out a bit more.'
They did, until final y, the drowsiness overtook them.
12
DC Alice Cowan was in the office when Mcllhenney stepped into the small Special Branch suite. 'Morning, sir,' she said, with just a shade of caution in her voice.
'And a good morning to you. Constable,' he greeted her. 'If you haven't heard, I'm the new broom.'
'Yes, I had heard, sir. Mr McGuire told me yesterday afternoon.'
'Told you, but has he asked you yet?'
'What do you mean?' she asked, stil in a cagey tone.
'You know damn fine. Has he asked you whether you'l go to the Borders with him? I know he rates you.'
Her cheeks turned a delicate pink. 'Yes. He's asked me.'
'So?'
'So I told him that I'd like to stay here. That's if you want me,' she added. 'I know that Special Branch commanders sometimes like to bring in their own people.'
'Their cronies, you mean? Their yes-men, like the guy you replaced, Tommy Gavigan? Relax, Alice; that's not my style. If my friend McGuire rates you, that's all the more reason for me to want to keep you.'
He nodded towards the door of the inner office, which would soon be his. 'Is he in yet?'
She shook her head. 'No. He's a bit late; it's not like him.'
'Ah, he and Maggie'l have been out on the razzle last night.'
Bang on cue, the door swung open, and a slightly bleary-eyed Mario McGuire strode into the room. 'Sorry, Alice. Sorry, Neil,' he boomed.
'Traffic.'
'Traffic, my bottom,' Mcl henney grunted. His marriage to Louise had resulted in a moderation of his language that had surprised his friends, male and female alike. 'If you can't make it to Fettes on time, how are you going to manage the commute down to the Borders?'
'Mags and I were talking about that over breakfast,' he said. 'We might move further out; maybe to somewhere near the city bypass.'
'As long as you don't actually have to go on the thing!' In common with most Edinburgh car-owners, the big inspector regarded the constantly overcrowded ring road round the capital as a bad joke.
'How much time have you got?' McGuire asked him.
'The rest of the day, more or less. I've gone through the Boss's mail and there was nothing spectacular. Plus, he's up in the sky somewhere over the north Pacific, so I won't be getting any surprise phone cal s.'
'Any progress on that, by the way? Have the Americans caught the guy who did it?'
'Not that I've heard. They'd better get their acts together, though.
They'l be under scrutiny in a few hours.'
'I just hope they're taking it as seriously as he thinks they should.'
'I'm sure they are; Sarah's old man was quite a local heavyweight.
Anyhow, apart from that, I'm clear. If anything unexpected crops up, Ruthie knows where I am.'
'Fine. This isn't going to be a short hand-over. The mysteries of Special Branch are many and complex; I've got to teach you al the secret handshakes and code words, and of course the safe combinations
… which you'll have to change once I'm gone, so I don't know them any more.'
He led the way thro
ugh to the inner office. 'So what's it really like, this Special Branch?' Mcllhenney asked.
His friend looked him in the eye. 'The truth, as between buddies?'
'Of course.'
'It's a rucking anachronism, most of it; a hold-over from the Cold War days. In some ways it's a wonder we're stil here, because you would not believe how amateur this place used to be back in the fifties and sixties.
Tommy Gavigan told me a story about a guy back then, name of McGinley, the bloke he fol owed into the job, who actual y used to go around local newspaper offices offering to pay journalists for private reports on Communist Party meetings… who was there, who said what and so on.
'Some of the stuff he got's still on file, and it's rubbish; it's obvious to a blind man that the joumos just took the piss out of him, and took the money as well. Mind you, a couple of the informants are interesting.
Back then they were juniors on local papers, but now they're senior guys, one in newspapers, the other in telly.'
Mcl henney smiled. 'Do they know you know?'
'Too fucking right they do. When I found the file, I went to see them both and gave them back the reports they had sold McGinley. They were both deeply embarrassed, I can tel you. And of course, since they can't 46 be a hundred per cent sure I didn't keep copies… although I told them I didn't, and that's the truth… I now have two bloody good contacts as a result. So that money turned out to be a long-term investment.
'I'll give you their names and contact numbers; you might like to pay them a call when you've settled in.'
'I wil do. Okay, where do we start?'
'I'll brief you on the Special Branch network around the country; you'l know some of the names through your job with the Boss, but I'l give you the inside on them. But first, I've got a bit of private enterprise to do while I'm stil here. You never heard any of this, okay?'
Mcl henney nodded. 'As long as it's not treason, fine.'
McGuire unlocked a door in a pillar of his desk, and took out a drum like object, which his col eague recognised as an old-fashioned Rolodex.
'This thing is the Bible,' he said. 'All sorts of surprising people are in this box. It's been part of this office for donkey's years and soon, my boy, it wil be yours.' He spun it until he found a card, and dial ed the number printed on it.
'DSS,' he whispered, as he waited.
'Ron?' he said at last. 'Mario McGuire. I need a favour. Usual thing; I'll give you a name; I need to know if he's still alive and if so, where he is. How soon? End of the week will be fine.
'Okay? The guy's called Jorge Xavier…' He spelled out both forenames '… Rose. UK national, Portuguese mother. Last known address, Wellington Street, Leith, in the mid to late 1970s. He'll be early sixties now; too young to be drawing a state pension.
'Good. Thanks.' He paused. 'Oh you saw that, did you? Yes, I'm off soon. DI Neil Mcl henney's going to be my successor. What's he like?'
He glanced across the desk and winked. 'Imagine, if you can, a grizzly bear with haemorrhoids.'
The big inspector gazed at him as he hung up. 'Okay, I never heard any of that. But if it's who I think it is, why do I doubt that, if you find him, you're going to invite him to your place for Christmas?'
McGuire shot him a mournful look, and shook his head slowly. 'What I'm going to do, mate, is make sure that he never turns up at our place … at any time of year.'
13
Although it hurt her to be thought of as forbidding, nevertheless only one person ever came through her office door without knocking, and then only under special circumstances. So, when it swung open, she looked up, automatical y expecting to see Bob Skinner on the warpath.
Just as she remembered that he was en route for America, a man in a grey double-breasted suit swept into the room. He was squat, and ruddy faced, with greying crinkly hair, which swept back in a 'v' from his high forehead. She frowned at him, and the short fuse to an explosion started burning inside her, until she saw his smile and realised that there was something familiar about him.
'Hello there, Superintendent,' he boomed, in an unmistakable Glaswegian accent. 'Aye, you've come up in the world since the last time I saw you. Mind? A few years back when we were chasing thon bloke that was chopping people up all over Edinburgh.'
Of course, she remembered. They had never been introduced, but she had seen him with Skinner, after they had cornered their suspect in his suburban vil a. Wil ie Haggerty, the rough-edged detective from Strathclyde; the new ACC whose appointment had surprised everyone when Andy Martin had announced it at his weekly meeting of divisional CID heads, the same gathering at which he had confirmed the open secret of his own impending departure for Tayside.
'Good morning, sir,' she said, formally, rising from her chair.
'Sorry if I disturbed you,' Haggerty continued, beaming. 'They said you were on your own, and I like to make an entrance. Stupid of me, really; just to march into a female officer's room like that. Christ, you could have been adjusting your dress or anything.'
Although she was careful to keep her face straight, she smiled inwardly. There was something unreconstructed about the man, an innate charm that overrode the most outrageous comments and behaviour. More than anyone, he reminded her of her husband. 'Or touching up my makeup?' she suggested. 'That sort of girlie stuff?'
She could have sworn that his face turned a slightly deeper shade of 48 red. 'That's me sorted, eh,' he chuckled. 'Oh, by the way, don't be
"sirring" me, when there's no troops around. The name's Willie.'
'And mine's Maggie, in the same circumstances.' She allowed her smile to break loose, as she settled back into her chair. 'So, Willie, why the surprise visit?'
'Just getting to know everyone,' he answered, taking the seat opposite her. 'The senior officers' dining room's all very well, but by and large it's only the headquarters brass that goes there. And that's no' where a police force is really run.'
Rose understood at once why Bob Skinner had such a liking for the man. 'Your predecessor held a similar view,' she commented.
'So how come he pissed everyone off so fast?'
'Who says he did? Mr Chase was promoted.'
'Promoted my…' Haggerty snorted. 'It's al right, Maggie; when he was moved into the inspectorate after only a few months, every copper in Scotland got the message. So, between us, what was his problem?'
She hesitated. 'I'm not privy to what goes on in the command corridor,' she began, cautiously, considering her words. 'But I do know there was resentment in the divisions over the way he went about things. He didn't just drop in for a chat in civvies, he turned up in ful uniform and staged snap inspections. Okay, an ACC Operations has the right to do that, but when he started using Inspector Good, his exec, in his place, that annoyed quite a few people.'
'Ahh,' Haggerty murmured. 'That explains it.' He glanced at Rose.
'I've been told I can have an exec,' he said, 'but the Chief was very careful to specify sergeant rank. Tell me… you've done that job for Bob, I know… d'you think I should appoint someone?'
'Depends how you work,' she answered. 'If you have a personal assistant, you have to keep him, or her, occupied. Ted Chase appointed Jack Good as a sort of status symbol, because Mr Skinner has Neil, but very soon he had to invent things for him to do, and that's where a lot of the trouble started.'
'Mmm. That's what I was thinking. Maybe I should hold fire for a while.'
'Maybe you should.' She looked him in the eye. 'So, Willie, is that the real reason why you dropped in on me? Just to ask me that? I mean, you could have spoken to Neil, right there in your office. He'd have given you the same answer. Nah, there's more to it than that.'
He gave her an innocent look. 'Like I said to you when I came in; I'm just getting to know the divisional offices and the people in them.'
'Sure you are. But why me? I'm CID. You're ACC Operations; you're not in my chain of command. I report to the Head of CID and through him to the DCC.'
'Maybe I ju
st heard so much about the great Maggie Rose I wanted to meet you for myself
'Flattery and bullshit smell exactly the same. I don't fall for either.'
Haggerty laughed out loud. 'Big Bob wisnae kidding about you, right enough. You don't mess about. I did want to meet you though, that much was true. I wanted to size you up, get to know you, like.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm on the lookout for a potential divisional commander.
No names, no blame and al that, but there's one that's past his sell-by date, and I've decided that I'm going to paint him a rosy picture of life after the polls. You interested in filling his slot?'
Maggie shook her head. 'I want the Head of CID job when Clan Pringle retires.'
'Even if it means kicking your husband into touch? You and he are on the same rung. In CID, there's only one move up. Are you saying to me you'd tramp on his fingers if you had to?'
Her eyes dropped from his and she shook her head. 'No, of course not.'
'It might come to that, though, if you set your heart on that job.
Anyhow, that's only a chief super post too, and it's a while off. And also, what's so great about it? Do you no' fancy my job?'
'ACC?'
'Why not? These are volatile days, Maggie; unpredictable too. It might come up sooner than Pringle's.'
She looked back up at him. 'The truth is, I've never seen myself as a contender for chief officer rank. I've come through CID fast, but that's because I'm good at it. I'm under no il usions that I'm cut out for anything else.'
'Well, hen, other people seem to be. But the thing is, if you decide yourself you want to get there, it would be in your best interests to broaden your experience.'
'You've been sent to tel me this, haven't you.' It was a statement, not a question.
He shot her such a look of mock offence that for a second or two she took him seriously. 'Nobody sends Willie Haggerty,' he exclaimed.
'Oh sorry. Let me put it another way; someone's suggested it to you.'
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