‘A long time ago,’ he began, once we’d got past the ‘hello, how are you’ stage, ‘I found that it was much more fun finding out how the dead died than administering mostly palliative care to the mildly unwell, and pandering to malingerers. Maybe I’m being cynical,’ You could say that, Joe, I thought, ‘but I believe that all doctors should be specialists. You’re not a specialist general practitioner, Sarah, and you never will be, but you are a gifted pathologist. There’s a vacancy here at Edinburgh University, linked with the health authority at consultant level, and I’m sufficiently eminent for recruitment to be entirely in my hands. The person appointed will be my number two, and will succeed me as Professor of Pathology, by the end of next year, no later. I owe my wife some time, before she becomes my widow. I’ve put a lot into this department, and I want to leave it in good hands. That’s why I’m offering the post to you.’
I was silent for so long that he thought I’d hung up on him, and hung up on me. I waited for five minutes before I called him back. When I did there were pieces of metaphor all around me on the floor. That bubble was burst. I had purpose; I had self-belief. I was smiling, no, I was beaming.
‘What would I have to do?’ I asked, as soon as we had reconnected.
‘Practise and teach,’ he replied, ‘as I do. You’ve been in the academic word before; you know how it works.’
‘When do I start?’
‘When can you start?’
‘Give me three months to extract myself; May.’
‘That’s ideal, but don’t you want to know about salary and conditions?’
‘No.’
I resigned my New York job next morning and put my property on the market. The kids were with me for Easter when it sold, but I didn’t say anything to them. The only person I told was Andy Martin, out of courtesy because he’d put Joe in touch with me in the first place, but I didn’t give him any details other than that I was coming back to Scotland in May. Bob and the witch? They would find out in due course.
And they did, when I moved into a rented apartment in the city centre a few days before I took up my unannounced appointment. By that time, Bob had heard from Andy that I was coming, but he had no idea that I was back for good. I called him, at the office, and invited him to lunch with me in a restaurant of his choice. He wasn’t keen on a public meeting; instead he proposed the senior officers’ dining room, a small oasis of privilege in the police headquarters building.
We ate there, and I told him about my career move. He congratulated me, without meaning a word of it, I’m sure, but we chatted politely about it, and about his appointment, although he had been in post for nine months by then. We did our real talking afterwards in his office.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, abruptly, as soon as the door closed on us.
‘What do you mean?’ I played the innocent, badly; it doesn’t come naturally to me.
‘You know bloody well what I mean,’ he snapped; just like towards the end of our old times.
He’d asked for it, so I laid it out. ‘I want what’s best for the children,’ I told him. ‘I’ve bought a house in the Grange, and I’m moving in in a month. During the school term, I’ll have them with me at weekends. Okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ he grunted. ‘I’ll need to think about that; they have their own weekend routines. The Jazzer plays mini-rugby on Saturday mornings.’
‘All year round?’
‘Of course not.’ He frowned. ‘Look, Sarah, you’ve bounced this new situation at me. The first thing I need to do is explain it to the kids. Then Aileen and I need to discuss it.’
I felt a chill, as if an ice cube had fallen into my cleavage. ‘Excuse me.’ I suspect that it came out as a hiss. ‘This has nothing to do with that woman.’
‘Oh, it has,’ he murmured. ‘And you’d better believe it.’
Two minutes alone and we were at loggerheads: I’d expected it to take at least five. I stood to leave. ‘Weekends, Bob,’ I repeated. ‘And holidays. For a while.’
That’s how it’s playing out; even if the witch opposed it, although I’m quite certain she didn’t, she’d have been overruled by a higher authority. That same evening, after a brief call to check that I was free, I had a visit from Alex. She brought a bottle of wine, and we had a girlie chat. It wasn’t until the she was leaving that she murmured, ‘Sarah, please don’t hurt my dad, or embarrass him.’
‘I don’t want to do either,’ I told her truthfully. ‘I never did.’
She gave a small smile, and patted me on the shoulder. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said.
The arrangement that Alex had brokered was the one I’d proposed, but outside term time, Bob has them at weekends rather than me. Their carer, Trish, is the glue that holds the routine together; she transports them between homes, and has every weekend off.
I had breakfast with them, and said my farewells, before I left for the morgue, to work on the mystery man from Mortonhall. It was a holiday Friday morning and the boys weren’t due back at school for another month at least, but they would be in Gullane by the time I got home again.
Young Sauce Haddock is a keen one; he was waiting for me when I arrived at the horrible brick and grey concrete mortuary on the corner of Cowgate and Infirmary Street. Its appearance is as depressing as its purpose and I never enter it without my spirits being lowered. How bereaved people must feel if they have to go there is beyond my imagination. If I had the power to raze just one building in Edinburgh to the ground and start over again, I would flatten that one.
As Bob had asked, I’d given the victim a quick, preliminary examination the night before. There had been no extra toes, no tattoos, no bar code on his ass, or anywhere else; in fact he didn’t have a single distinguishing mark anywhere on his body. Dental records weren’t going to be any help either; his teeth were perfect, thirty-two of them, all present and correct. In fact, the only part of him that was missing was his foreskin. But there was saliva foam in his mouth, and that interested me.
‘The chief says he wants you to. .’ Haddock began, but I cut him off.
‘I know what he wants,’ I said. ‘He wants me to make his job, and yours, as easy as possible; but that isn’t up to me, that rests with the guy in the next room.’
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he murmured.
‘Don’t be. If he wants to spell things out, that’s his privilege. I do what I do, regardless. You ready for this?’ I asked him, as Roshan, my postgrad assistant, and I stood with him outside the examination room.
‘You mean will I faint, Doctor,’ he asked, with a Brad Pitt smile, ‘or chuck my breakfast? We won’t know until we get there, but I hope not. Where do I stand?’
‘There’s a viewing panel, with a loudspeaker so you can hear us.’ I looked at him. ‘Or you can come inside, if you want, as long as you suit up like us, and get the hell out at the first sign of queasiness.’
He grinned again. ‘Might as well get it over with. Got a suit?’
We waited until he was sterile, then walked into the room, where our subject was waiting for us. He’d been X-rayed earlier, section by section, as a matter of routine, and an image of the torso was displayed on a light board. My technician, Roddy Frame, was fingerprinting the body as we entered. ‘All the other exposures are unremarkable, but you might want to take a look at that one, Sarah,’ he called across, his voice muffled by his face mask.
‘Why are we wearing masks?’ Haddock asked. The laugh lines round his eyes were creased. ‘Is it in case he catches something off us?’
‘The other way around. You can get some nasty molecules in the air in this room.’
I stepped up to the light board and peered at the image, and saw at once what Roddy had meant. ‘Indeed,’ I murmured. ‘Look, Roshan.’
‘What?’ the DC asked, behind me.
‘He had broken ribs,’ I told him. I pointed at the X-ray, counting the fractures. ‘One, two, three, four.’
‘That’s from the bruising on his chest?’<
br />
‘Yes. It must relate.’
‘Is that what killed him?’
‘No. I’d say it was meant to be the opposite. Injuries such as these are common when CPR is applied, that’s. .’
‘Attempted resuscitation?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So he might have had a heart attack?’
‘It’s possible, but I won’t know until I look inside.’ I looked over my shoulder at Roddy. ‘Are you finished?’
‘Yes, Sarah, he’s all yours.’
As I went to work, with Roshan alongside me and Haddock standing stoically a few feet away, but in my eyeline, so that I could spot any signs of weakness, I had a few possibilities in mind. The first was the one that the young cop had raised, the kind of congenital cardiac condition that can strike down the fittest without any prior warning, but when I opened the chest cavity, all the internal organs were in perfect condition. I made a point of checking the lungs and airways for soil or fabric from the sheet in which he’d been wrapped, but they were clear. Given the circumstances, that was important; it meant that he hadn’t been buried alive.
Possibility number two was the jackpot winner. As soon as I opened the skull, I knew. ‘Massive brain trauma,’ I pronounced.
Haddock knew it also, for the blood that had been released made it obvious. He whistled; he was a cool one. ‘I can see that,’ he exclaimed, drawing a chuckle from Roshan. ‘Does that mean he’s been shot?’
‘I doubt it; I looked for an entry wound, but there was no sign.’
‘A blow to the head, then?’
‘No, the skull’s intact; a blow hard enough to do that would have fractured it and caused obvious external damage. I expect to find that this man, whoever he is, suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage, that’s bleeding between the outer membranes of the brain.’
‘So he was hit?’
‘I doubt that very much; in fact I’m quite certain that he wasn’t. You know the shit that happens to people?’ I asked.
He frowned. ‘I’ve got first-hand knowledge.’
‘Well, this is an example of it. A person, young and fit like this man, could be walking around with a weakness in the wall of a cerebral artery, usually at the base of the brain, knowing nothing about it until the day it gives out. When it does, there’s a fifty per cent chance that it will be fatal, and a good chance that the sufferer won’t even make it to hospital. It’s subject to completion of my examination, but I’d say right now that there was nothing untoward about the circumstances of this man’s death, and that the way in which his body was disposed of played no part in it.’
‘So like the chief said,’ he ventured ‘this might not have been a crime at all?’
I had to laugh at his incredulity. ‘He has been known to be right, Constable.’ When it comes to his work, I added mentally.
‘I’d better report this, Dr Grace,’ Haddock said, full of eagerness.
‘Don’t you want to wait till I’m finished?’
‘Will you be able to tell me any more than you have already?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I can’t tell you how the book will end till I’ve read it all.’
His chuckle was muffled by his mask. ‘In that case I suppose I’d better not miss a chapter. It’ll be colourful, if nothing else.’
Aileen de Marco Skinner
I know a few people who claim they went into politics for the excitement of the life. Every one of them is a fool. Today in our nation there are two professions whose members are excoriated by the masses, and held in universal scorn. You know who I mean: bankers and politicians.
I’m one of the latter, and while I am shamed and outraged by those of my colleagues who’ve betrayed the public trust, on balance I’m proud of my job. I’d rather have it than be one of the other lot, and that’s for sure. I don’t say this in the debating chamber or in my constituency newsletters but I sympathise with most bankers. We’ve seen the big headlines, but usually, the bonuses for which they take such stick are contractual, and performance-related. They’re not the fault of the individual, but of a lousy regulatory system set up by my lot, a fact forgotten by too many of us.
The one advantage that bankers have over me and mine is that, with the exception of the few at the top of the tree who are hauled regularly before self-righteous Commons Select Committees with their caps in their hands, they are anonymous. We legislators, on the other hand, are subjected to relentless public scrutiny and criticism. Some of it is justified, I acknowledge, but much of it is simply the reflex antipathy created by our adversarial system, its fires stoked by the media who line up on either side of the ongoing war.
These days there’s no escape in the public domain. Everything we do is scrutinised, and nothing we do is ever one hundred per cent right. We cannot leave our offices without being photographed, often in the least flattering light. This is particularly true for women, fly-away dresses on a windy day being especially popular with the tabloid snappers, and making the wise among us wear trouser suits or tight skirts all the time. The photo libraries have alternative images for us all; the nice ones for a good-news day, the off-guard for the opposite, or all the time, if the newspaper involved is rabidly against the victim’s party.
That’s the kitchen in which we have to work, and as Harry S. Truman advised, those who can’t stand the heat should know what to do about it. Sensitive souls need not apply: nor the paranoid either, for there are physical dangers, make no mistake about it. Those at the very top of the political tree have round-the-clock police protection, but the rest of us are vulnerable, and round the world, many tragedies have happened.
The one place we’re entitled to feel safe and relaxed is at home. That’s why Bob’s explosion was so shocking to me. Yes, I know that I had a history of opposing a unified police force, but I am also a pragmatist, and as such, I’m open to persuasion. . unlike my husband. Considerations can change, and if I find that cons have become pros on cost grounds, I’m capable of changing with them.
It seems that Bob Skinner isn’t like that. I thought I’d married a reasonable man, but I’ve discovered that his equanimity only applies when he knows he’s going to win at the end of the day. When he doesn’t, he’s blinkered, he’s stubborn, he’s obdurate, he’s implacable, he’s unyielding and he’s every other adjective meaning that when he takes a position and refuses to listen to even the most reasonable counter-arguments he is quite unshakeable.
When I told him that I’d been persuaded to back the Nationalist administration’s bill to unify the police service in Scotland, not by Clive Graham but by the cost arguments in favour of the proposal, I was prepared for him to be disappointed, but I expected him to listen to my rationale and to be persuaded by it. So when he turned on me in fury and the shouting match began, it wasn’t just his attitude that set me off, it was the fact that my sanctuary had been invaded. I wasn’t in the debating chamber; it was my home.
Well, ‘Bugger that for a game of soldiers!’ as my constituency agent is fond of saying. I’ve cared for that man. I’ve been there for him when he’s been down, I’ve been his confessor, I’ve become a mother to his. . another woman’s. . over-indulged kids even though maternity has never been one of my life goals, I’ve massaged his prodigious ego and I’ve fed his sexual appetite, which is not inconsiderable either.
The least I expected was to be treated with respect when I took a position at odds with his own, and for him to make some effort to understand how I had reached it. But no, he turned on me and I saw him at his most intransigent.
Until I met Bob, I had no great history of long-term relationships, nor much time for them, if truth be told, but whenever I was involved with someone I had a rule: never let the sun set on an argument. I didn’t have a chance to follow it that night. Our blazing row was interrupted by a phone call. He took it, muttered something about having to go to Edinburgh, and headed for the door. When I went to bed I expected him to join me eventually, but he didn’t. I don’t know where h
e slept, but he was in the kitchen when I came down next morning, sweating like a horse in his running gear and guzzling a litre of orange juice straight from the carton.
‘Want some breakfast?’ I asked.
He crushed the empty carton in his fist, and tossed it into the waste bin. ‘That was it,’ he replied. ‘I’m off for a shower.’ He turned and walked out. I looked at his retreating form, and imagined a hand thrust out, keeping me at bay. I’d never felt isolated from him before, and never ever imagined that I could be but. .
A political commentator, no friend of mine either, once described me as ‘an irresistible force’. I was in motion and on a collision course, it seemed, with the immovable object that is my husband. ‘Sod him,’ I murmured, as I picked up my car keys. ‘We’ll see who can’t be moved.’
Parliament was in recess, but that didn’t mean that the place was deserted when I got to my office. Being a party leader is a year-round job and six days a week at that, although reaction to a Sunday newspaper splash often eats up much of the seventh as well. In opposition, it’s worse than being First Minister; the workload isn’t much less, but you don’t have the civil service support.
I was halfway though a substantial mail-tray. . yes, some people still communicate on paper. . when my phone rang. As I picked it up I guessed who it might be, and I was on the mark. ‘Ms de Marco,’ Russell Moore, the First Minister’s principal private secretary, purred in my ear, ‘Mr Graham wonders if you could spare him a few minutes. He’s in his parliamentary office.’
‘Sure,’ I sighed. Best get it over with. I finished the letter I’d been reading, a request for a questionnaire contribution to a postgrad’s PhD research, and walked the short distance to the room that had been mine until a year earlier, when I’d sacked my coalition partners and left the Nationalists to form a minority administration, in the hope that they’d shoot themselves in both feet.
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