Gallery Whispers by QUINTIN JARDINE.
A Bob Skinner Mystery.
Book Jacket.
With his boss still recovering from a heart attack, Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner is filling his shoes - and that means more time than he'd like sitting behind a desk. But death - sudden and violent, or slow and insidious - is about to provide him with more drama than he could ever want.
Intelligence reports suggest that one of the world's most ruthless freelance terrorists is on his way to Scotland - and he can only have one thing on his mind: the forthcoming special meeting of world Heads of Government in Edinburgh. If Skinner doesn't pick up his trail fast, he could have a global disaster in his backyard.
And while all eyes are focused on the terrorist threat, a terminally ill woman is found dead - an apparent suicide. But a sharp-eyed policewoman sees the subtle marks of an assisted death - and therefore, according to the law, murder. A murder that soon appears to be part of an ominous pattern.
For Skinner, the desperate race to find a heartless terrorist mixes uneasily with the search for a mercy killer - a search which takes on a poignant personal significance. One thing's for sure, Skinner will soon be staring death straight in the eye...
Quintin Jardine was a journalist before joining the Government Information Service where he spent nine years as an advisor to Ministers and Civil Servants. Later he moved into political PR, until in 1986 he 'privatised' himself, to become an independent public relations consultant and writer.
Praise for the previous Skinner novels
SKINNER'S RULES
'Remarkably assured...a tour de force'
New York Times
SKINNER'S FESTIVAL
'Robustly entertaining'
Irish Times
SKINNER'S TRAIL
'Engrossing, believable characters...captures Edinburgh beautifully...It all adds up to a very good read' Edinburgh Evening News
SKINNER'S ROUND
'The Skinner series grows in authority and should be a natural for television' Time Out
SKINNER'S ORDEAL
'Quintin Jardine has created the toughest Scottish cop since Taggart' Peterborough Evening Telegraph
SKINNER'S MISSION
'Once again Jardine serves up a thriller full of action, gritty realism and sharp patter' Darlington Northern Echo
SKINNER'S GHOSS
'More twists and turns than TV's Taggart at its best' Stirling Observer
MURMURING THE JUDGES
'A hair-trigger thriller...quality crime reading'
Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Also by Quintin Jardine and available from Headline.
Skinner's Rules
Skinner's Festival
Skinner's Trail
Skinner's Round
Skinner's Ordeal
Skinner's Mission
Skinner's Ghosts
Murmuring the Judges
the Oz Blackstone Series
Blackstone's Pursuits
A Coffin For Two
Wearing Purple.
GALLERY WHISPERS.
Quintin Jardine.
HEADLINE.
Copyright Quintin Jardine 1999
The right of Quintin Jardine to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 1999
by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING
10987654321
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written
permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Jardine, Quintin
Gallery whispers - A Bob Skinner mystery
1. Skinner, Bob Fictitious character - Fiction
2. Police - Fiction 3. Detective and mystery stories
I. Title
823.9'14F
ISBN 0 7472 1946 X hardback
ISBN 0 7472 6442 2 trade paperback
Typeset by Avon Dataset Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warks
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives pie
HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING
A division of Hodder Headline PLC
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.headline.co.uk
www.hodderheadline.com
This is for Eileen, who shines her light into dark places.
1
'How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?'
She looked at him across the dinner table, with a light, indulgent
smile. 'Okay,' she said, quietly. "Let's have it.'
He beamed, in his small triumph. 'One.' He barked the word out,
and in that instant his heavy eyebrows seemed to slam together in a
frown. '. .. and that's not funny!'
Olive shook her head. 'You're not wrong there.'
Lauren, seated on his right, looked up at her father. 'I don't get
that, Dad.'
He grinned. 'No, I suppose you're still a couple of years short of
getting it.'
'Oh,' said the child. 'Do you have to be twelve before you can be a
feminist?'
Neil gazed down at her, bland innocence written on her small
round face, and realised yet again that if ever there was a mother's
daughter it was Lauren Barbara Mcllhenney.
A small hand tugged at his shirt-sleeve. 'Daddy, Daddy!' Spencer
shouted, eagerly. 'Did you hear the one about the Hearts supporter
who went into a pub with an alligator?'
He laughed as he ruffled his son's thick fair hair. 'Aye, I did,
Spence, often. The first time I heard it, it was a Celtic supporter that
had the alligator. Don't you go telling that sort of joke outside, though.
You could get into real trouble if the wrong lad heard you.'
'And you could get into real trouble if the wrong woman heard you
tell that other one,' Olive countered. 'Wherever did you pick it up
anyway?'
'From Karen Neville.'
'Neville? Isn't she the new DS in Andy Martin's office?'
'That's the one. Not so new now, though. She's been there a right
few weeks now.'
'Mum, can Spence and me leave the table? It's nearly time for the
Holiday programme.'
She turned to her daughter and raised an eyebrow. It was enough.
'Sorry. May Spence and I leave the table?'
'That's better. Have both of you finished all your homework?'
Lauren and Spencer nodded in tandem.
'Very well; you may.'
Neil Mcllhenney gazed at his children as they ran from the small
dining room and across the hall. 'A gentleman's family,' his father-in-
law, Joe Baxter, had pronounced after Spencer's birth. Son and
daughter. One of each.
'I'll get the coffee,' he said, rising from his carver chair. 'You want
milk in yours, or just black?'
'Have we any of that Bailey's left?' she asked him. 'If so, I'll take
some of that in it.' He nodded.
; Olive, in her turn, watched her husband as he left the room. Neil
wasn't exactly fat, but over the thirteen years of their marriage, he had
gained over two stone. Sure, he had a massive frame to carry it, but
still, every time she thought of Chic, his father, and remembered the
sudden awfulness of his death at the party for Spencer's christening,
she felt a pang of fear for him. Chic had been fifty-four, a big, bulky
man like his son. And he was only two years short of forty.
Without warning she felt another type of pang as the cough reflex
kicked in.
Neil, in the kitchen, heard the paroxysm, then the quick puff of the
inhaler as the fit settled down. This wasn't right; it wasn't bloody
right. Anybody who knew them well would have realised that, simply
by the fact that he was there making the coffee. Everyone in their
circle knew that Olive couldn't stand his bloody coffee. Christ, she'd
told them often enough. He either used too much or not enough, or
ruined it by putting in too much milk, or made it straight from a
boiling kettle and damn near scalded her. Now here she was letting
him make the Kenco without a murmur. Indeed it was not bloody
right.
'D'you not think you should go back to the doctor?' he asked, as he
set a mug, its contents heavily laced with the last of the Irish cream
liqueur, on the coaster which lay before her on the table.
She shot him the stare; the full, high-intensity spine-chiller that he
knew so well, the laser look she could snap on in an instant. 'Olive's
Silencer', her colleagues called it in the staff-room, in their awe at her
ability to bring order to the rowdiest class without ever raising her
voice.
'No I do not,' she retorted. 'I have asthma. The doctor's told me
that, and she's given me my inhaler. She warned me that the cough
would come and go.'
'It's the "go" part that I'm concerned about, love. Surely she could
give you something that would settle it a bit quicker.'
'I'll be all right,' she snapped. 'Now pack it in. Change the subject.
What sort of a day did you have? What's the news on the Chief?'
Neil backed off, for that moment at least. 'He's coming on,' he
said. 'The boss says that he has another appointment with the heart
specialist in Spain next Tuesday. If that goes okay they'll let him come
home, provided that they take at least three days for the journey and
that Lady Proud does most of the driving.'
'When will he be back at work?'
'There's no news on that yet. I understand from the boss that one of
the force examiners will have to pass him fit before he can come
back. The moment can't come soon enough for Big Bob, I can tell
you. He hates every day he spends in that office.'
Olive smiled. 'I'm sure he's just saying that, in case anyone thinks
he's trying to undermine the Chief. He's probably loving it, really.'
Her husband shook his head. 'DCC Skinner is many things, but he
ain't that subtle. He doesn't like being tied to a desk, and he never
will. I'm his executive assistant. I know this.'
'What if the Chief doesn't come back?' she asked. 'What would he
do then?'
'Ah, but the Chief will be back. It was only a mild heart attack.
They've put him on light medication and given him a diet.'
He paused, and she seized her chance. 'Speaking of diets, Neil
Mcllhenney; you could do with losing some weight.'
Elbows on the table, shoulders hunched, head bowed, he looked
across at her; his look this time, out from under his heavy, beetling
eyebrows with a secret smile that went right into her soul, and told
her, far more eloquently than the words which now they used to each
other only occasionally, how much he loved her.
'Christ,' he rumbled in his slow, deep voice. 'She sits there with
bloody Bailey's in her coffee, and tells me to lose weight!'
2
He watched her as she slept. She lay on her right side, and although he
could not see her face, he knew that her hand would be on the pillow,
the thumb gently brushing her lips in an unconscious gesture which
he had always guessed was a relic of a childhood habit. Her dark hair,
thick and wavy, tousled at the ends from their energetic lovemaking,
clung to her neck and shoulders.
Her back was to him as he looked at her, admiring the curve of
her hip in profile against the street light which shone outside their
curtained window. He had lain like this often before, sometimes
unable to keep from touching her, from running a finger-tip softly
down her spine, knowing what it did to her and that within a few
minutes she would be awake and they would be locked together
again.
Yet on this night her turned back seemed to him to be a rejection,
for all her commitment in their coupling only a few hours before. It
had been satisfying for each of them, yet there had been none of the
sense of spiritual union which they had known at the beginning of
their partnership. That was one of the things which had set her apart
from the other women who had lain in his bed, before he had found
her and she had tamed him. Yet now it was, at best misplaced, or
worse, he feared, lost.
'What's the matter?'
She did not stir as she spoke her question, but her voice was clear,
and wide-awake.
'Nothing,' he answered, softly. 'I'm just thinking, that's all.'
'About what?'
'Och, just the job. You know.'
'But the job's been quiet for the last wee while.' She paused. 'Are
you still having flashbacks to that man with the gun?'
He shook his head at once. 'No. Absolutely not. That's only
happened to me that one time, a couple of days after it happened.'
'Something else then?' She rolled on to her back and looked up at
him, frowning. 'Not Ariel, surely.'
He smiled at her concern: a small, sad smile. 'No, no; not her. That
was a long time ago, and she's dead. She never really existed, in fact.'
'Ah but she did. And so did her brother. Once or twice ... no, more
than that . . . I've wakened in the night thinking of him, and had to
hang on to you, to drive the fright away.'
'Nonetheless, they're in the past.'
'So?' she demanded. 'What's bugging you?'
'Nothing,' he insisted. 'I just can't sleep.'
No one could snort like Alex. 'Andy Martin,' she exclaimed, as she
propped herself up on both elbows. 'You are one of the world's great
sleepers. If you are lying awake in the dark, there is some reason for
it. Come on, out with it.'
He reached out his left hand to cup her breast, but she shied away
from him. 'That won't work. Tell me, what's the problem?'
He looked into her eyes. 'I think we might be.'
She frowned, quickly. 'Rubbish,' she said at once, but there was a
defensiveness in her voice which proved she didn't believe her own
denial.
He reached out his hand again, touching her forehead as if to rub
away the frown lines. 'Alexis Skinner,' he whispered. 'You can tell me
all night that there's nothing wrong, but you still won't make
either of
us believe it. I'm afraid ... and I mean that literally, because it does
scare me ... that you and I are losing our way.
'When we got together, we had a shared vision of what we wanted:
each other, above all else. I still feel that way. If I had to I'd give up
everything I have, and walk away from everything I've achieved, just
to be with you.
'But you've changed.'
'I haven't,' she protested. 'I love you just as much as I always did.
I want you just as much.'
'Then why do you keep changing your mind about marrying me?'
'I haven't. Anyway, that's not the issue.'
He grunted. 'No, it's not, is it. It's the issue that's the issue.'
'Ah, now we're getting to it.' She fired back at him, suddenly.
'You're still on about the baby thing. I thought we'd agreed that we'd
start thinking about a family in five years.'
'Aye,' he said, 'but there's a basic principle wrapped up in there,
isn't there, about levels of commitment to each other.'
Her frown was back. 'Ah,' she countered. 'Andy says that he'd walk
away from everything for Alex, so she must say the same thing. Is that
it?' It was his turn to look defensive. 'That's sentimental, emotional,
hypothetical crap, and not worthy of you. You've had achievements;
you've got a successful career that you say you'd give up for love;
well, good for you, boy. But surely I'm entitled to some professional
fulfilment of my own? Or are you really and truly saying that you
expect me to put aside all my ambitions to satisfy your need to extend
your line?'
'Hey, hey,' he soothed her. 'I'm not saying that at all. Apart from
your dad, there's no one who thinks more of your ability and your
potential than I do. I'm sorry about going back to the baby thing. That
was a cheap shot. Listen, if you want to become the managing partner
of Curie Anthony and Jarvis, I'll back you all the way. If you want to
become a QC, I'm all for that too.
'I don't begrudge you your ambitions, my darling. But I'm coming
to believe that as you pursue them, you'll leave me behind; you'll
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