'No.'
'Well, stop getting sexist on me. What can I do for you, ma'am?'
'I was wondering how the response to George's appeal had gone, that's all.'
The smile left Steele's face. 'Poor,' he told her. 'Piss-poor, in fact. We'd one extremely nasty call saying that he was a copper so who cares, and a few from well-meaning people who couldn't tell us any more than we know already. Otherwise there's been nothing. And since it's in the nature of these things that all the response comes in the immediate aftermath of the telly appearance, I think we have arrived, very quickly, at the dead end we feared.'
'So what are you going to do?'
'First off, recommend to the Fiscal that he release the body for burial; second we're going to submit our report and let him decide whether he wants a formal fatal-accident inquiry.'
'Which he won't.'
Stevie shrugged his shoulders. 'I doubt it very much.'
'Why don't I think you're entirely happy with that?'
He smiled at her once more. 'You know me that well already? Maybe it's just that I knew the boy and know his parents, but my nose is twitching, that's all.'
'You know, you sounded just like Bob Skinner when you said that.'
'I'll take that as a compliment. Speaking of the DCC,' he asked cautiously, 'is he back from his break?'
'Yesterday. Jack McGurk called me this morning, looking for George Regan's home address; he said that his boss wanted to visit him and Jen.'
'And did he come back alone?'
'I'd hardly ask Jack that, would I?' she said. 'However, an observant if not too discreet sergeant under my command did let it slip that he saw him being dropped off near Fettes yesterday by a lady who did not look at all like Sarah.'
'Bloody hell!'
'Just what I said to Sergeant Evesham. That's a piece of information he'll be keeping to himself from now on, as, my darling, shall we.'
'Too right: I don't want to get anywhere near that situation. I've been too close already.'
Maggie grinned at him, eyes flashing with mischief. 'Come on, the boss's wife had a crush on you. Most guys would be secretly flattered by that… especially if she looked like Sarah Skinner.'
'If she wasn't that particular boss's wife, maybe, once upon a time, I would have been. But that was then, and this is now.'
'So what's different?'
'Stop fishing for them.' He chuckled. 'You're the difference and you know it.'
'Sure, but I love to hear you say it.' She paused. 'Will you be free for lunch?'
'God and Mary Chambers willing. Canteen?'
'Hell, no. Pub snack at Ryrie's: there's some stuff I want to tell you away from the office.'
'Can't it wait till we get home tonight?'
'Yes, but I don't see why it should. See you at one.'
Twenty-three
Skinner and McIlhenney had crossed the Forth Bridge and were heading along the M90 for Kinross before the silence was broken. The chief inspector had insisted on driving: he knew that his friend must still be tired from his long journey, but there was more to it than that. His recurrent nightmare had left him with an irrational unwillingness to sit in the passenger seat.
They had paid an awkward, painful visit to George and Jen Regan, offering what condolences they could, before leaving and heading almost gratefully out of the city.
The DCC had indeed nodded off almost as soon as the Vectra had turned on to the Queensferry Road, but he woke when they pulled up at the toll booth. As they sped away, McIlhenney muttered his usual imprecation about having to pay for driving on the public road. Skinner grinned: he had heard it all before, and as a long-term property owner in Spain he was used to paying road-toll charges.
'What do you think, then?' he asked, out of the blue, as they passed the exit that led to Deep Sea World, the giant aquarium to which he had promised to take his children on the following Sunday.
'About what?'
'About the bloody Albanians, what else?'
'Honestly? Until I see the original intelligence reports on them, I think the Home Secretary has his knickers in a twist. So four gangsters disappear from their home base and are traced to Britain. The best way to find them is by involving all the agencies with an interest in what they might be doing, not by handing it over to the spooks and having them screw it up by running covert operations with unreliable bampots like Jingle Bell.'
The DCC nodded. 'I agree with you, up to a point. Telling them not to advise or involve anyone else was a mistake, but that's what can happen when politicians start taking operational decisions. When it comes to intelligence reports, if Whitehall hasn't learned by now to treat them with the utmost caution, then it never will.'
'You can say that again, gaffer. Do you think they're telling us everything they know?'
'I think they are. At the very least, they're telling us everything we need to know.'
'What about Green?'
'I don't know about that lad: he was a bit glib about pulling that knife on Andy, and that begs the question nobody's asked him yet.'
McIlhenney's eyebrows rose slightly. 'You mean what would he have done if Andy hadn't been there, when Jingle called him in as back-up?'
'Exactly. Would he have carried on in his Richard Cable mode, and would he have carved up Mackenzie?'
'That's a question that hasn't occurred to the Bandit boy yet. When it does, I hope our Sean has a convincing answer.'
'A good reason why they shouldn't work together in this operation. Make sure it doesn't happen, will you?'
'As far as I can; but what if the ACC throws them together? I'm reporting to you and him, remember.'
'No, you're reporting to me. Willie's role is to talk with the Scottish refugee charities and the other public bodies; yours and Bandit's is to keep an eye on the underworld; and mine is to keep an eye on everything. So you come straight to me. I'm sorry: I should have made that clear.'
'No matter, I know now. What do you think our chances of tracing these guys are?'
Skinner frowned. 'I expect you to trace them, if they're still here. I've got no doubt that you will. The question is, can you do it before they attempt whatever stunt they've come here to pull?'
'Let's hope so.' Suddenly McIlhenney chuckled. 'Hey,' he said. 'A thought occurs. What if those four big rucksacks the Dutch guy described had golf clubs in them? Maybe they're just here on a golf tour.'
Skinner laughed with him. 'If they are… well, I've seen bigger gangsters than them as visitors to my home village. There's nothing better than a golf tour for bringing out the worst in middle-aged men.' He paused, looking out of the window as they passed the turn-off for east Fife. 'When are you going to ask me, Neil?'
'You mean why we're heading for Kinross to meet Andy? No point, you'd only have to repeat it once we got there.'
'I didn't mean that. When are you going to ask me about Sarah and me?'
'I'm not. I'm going to wait for you to tell me, in your own time.'
'And what if I tell you that we're finished?'
The chief inspector concentrated even harder on the road ahead. 'Then I will be very sad,' he replied, slowly, 'for both of you, because you're both very fine people. But I'll be sadder for your children.'
'So will I, but if it isn't right for us, can it be right for them?'
'There's no simple answer to that. So, are you telling me that you're finished? Can't you save it? The fact that you came home alone might say as much.'
'No, I'm not saying that, not yet; but I'm having trouble finding anything to save, other than friendship.'
McIlhenney sighed. 'I've never been in that situation, so I can't offer anything. Can I chance my arm and ask you one thing, though? Does this have anything to do with Aileen de Marco? When the Justice Minister calls me on my private line and asks if it's okay if she picks you up from the airport rather than me, it's liable to make me a bit inquisitive.'
'Touche,' said Skinner. 'I might be deceiving myself here, Neil, b
ut I honestly don't think it has. Aileen's… a friend; but if she didn't exist, Sarah and I would still have this trouble. There are issues between us that can only be resolved by one of us capitulating. I won't; I've told her so. Now she's got to decide how to deal with that.'
'I see.' The DCI drove on in silence for a while, until the exit for Kinross came into sight. As he drove off the motorway, he glanced across at his friend. 'Good luck, Bob,' he murmured. 'That's all I can say.'
'It's enough; thanks.'
They followed the road off the roundabout that took them into the small county town, and drove along its leafy main street until, on their left, they came to the Green Hotel.
Twenty-four
George Regan stood in his kitchen, looking through the open door at his wife as he made another pot of tea: he thought that it was the fifth of the day, but in truth he had lost count. Jen was staring at the wall, at the same spot that had held her attention since the call had come about their son.
Finally, they were alone. Mary Chambers had just left, having come to tell them in person, rather than by phone, that the Procurator Fiscal had agreed to release George junior's body for burial. If such news could be described as good, it was, for at least it would give them something to do, something on which to focus for the next few days. After that they could both go back to work, him to the force, and Jen to her secretarial job with an accountancy firm.
Bob Skinner had called in too, with his Special Branch sidekick Neil McIlhenney. They had been en route to a meeting somewhere; Regan had found that a blessing, since both men were imagining all too obviously their own horror as parents at such a loss.
Before them there had been the grandparents, Jen's mum and dad and his own father, come as a group for no obvious reason. There was no consolation. The fact was that their visits, and those of their brothers and sisters, wee George's cousins, their colleagues and their close friends, only served to make the loss even less bearable. Each one brought their own grief, adding to the sum total in their quiet, still sitting room, and there had come a moment when George had wanted to scream, 'Please, thank you, whatever, just go and leave us to our private sorrows,' and another when Jen had run weeping from the room at the strident sound of the doorbell's ring.
In fact, that had not been another caller but another Interflora delivery. The house was full of flowers, more than they had vessels to contain them. They had been forced to borrow vases from the neighbours, and now the latest bouquet was displayed in an old ice-bucket that George had recovered from the garden shed.
As he dropped two Scottish Blend tea-bags into the green ceramic pot and poured in boiling water, he found himself wondering what it was that made people send flowers on every one of life's milestones: birth, marriage, anniversaries and most of all bereavement. He had been told, and maybe he would take Jen to see them, that dozens of floral tributes had been laid already at the spot where their son had died. But why? Was it an instinctive human reaction, or simply the result of subtle marketing?
Whatever it was, it was bloody good business for somebody, judging by the number of those cooler trucks from Holland that seemed to be about the city these days. He even remembered seeing one a few weeks back, parked at Fort Kinnaird at two in the morning. He and Jen had been on their way back from a party in Musselburgh and they had passed the bastard, parked on a public road for the night, skimming his expenses, no doubt, instead of taking a room in the King's Manor, less than a mile away. With a few cans under his belt, he had been for getting out his warrant card and rousting him out of his sleeping-bag, but Jen had refused to stop and driven on.
That party: high-flying Brian Mackie's promotion do, celebrating his elevation to command of the City Division, or the 'special forces', as George had christened it, another coppers' get-together. He thought of the guest list, trying to remember civvies who had been there. The only two he could recall were Brian's brother Rab, and Sheila's divorced sister Magdalena; they had made eyes at each other all night, until finally they had disappeared into the upper reaches of the house. The rest, though, had all been coppers.
He knew he wasn't the first to ask the question, and he wouldn't be the last. How many friends outside the force does your average police officer have? Damn few, was his answer. Inevitable, he supposed, that police people, being authority figures, should stand apart from the rest and group together socially, professionally, and even, in some cases, Masonically. It was getting worse, too. Now, with the increase in the number of female officers, more and more coppers were marrying other coppers. Look at Maggie Rose, for Christ's sake: she packs up with Mario McGuire and then she shacks up with Stevie Steele, swaps one CID suit for another. Not that George had anything against her, though. He liked Maggie, and Stevie too; a good lad and a lot safer bet than big McGuire. There was something about that one that said 'danger'. He was one of only three guys on the force, maybe anywhere, who were capable of scaring DS Regan, and the other two were not long gone from his house. Skinner himself, he was another example; his wife might not have been a cop, but she'd been a police surgeon when they had met, and his two closest friends were big Neil, and Andy Martin, who, come to think of it, also came into the 'scary' category… and who had married a detective sergeant.
'Should I chuck this job?' he mused aloud, as he poured the tea into two chunky mugs and added a dash of milk, no sugar, to each, not noticing that Jen had come to stand behind him.
'Why would you do that?' she asked.
He turned, surprised, spilling a little tea from one of the mugs as he picked them up. He kept that as his own and gave the other to his wife. 'Sorry, love,' he said. 'I was just talking to myself.'
'Sure, but when you do that it usually means something. Are you thinking of chucking the police?'
'If I did, maybe we'd get a life.'
'We've got a life, George. It's been torn apart for the moment, but you and I remain. We could even have another child.' Her chin seemed to quiver for a second. 'I'm not too old.'
'As the minister pointed out to us so directly, and so tactlessly. The way I see it, Jen, the loss of one child is the worst possible reason for conceiving another. We'd be making comparisons from the cradle, especially if it was a boy. Let's discuss that in six months, if you want, but please, not now. As for me and the police, I don't suppose this is the time for me to be making career decisions either. I'll let that sit on the shelf for a while too. I've got things to do in the meantime.'
'Things?' Jen sipped her tea. 'What things?'
He leaned back against the work surface. 'I've got to do something, love. I know that Mary and Stevie and the lads have done everything they can, and for the last couple of days I've sat back and let them get on with it, as the book says I should. But no way am I going to sit back and let our son's death be signed off as accidental without doing everything I can, myself, to find out for sure what happened to him.'
'How will you do that?'
'I don't know yet, but big Tarvil's bringing me a copy of the completed report this afternoon. Once I've seen it, and seen exactly what they've done, I'll have a better idea.'
'You're not saying they've been lax, are you?'
'Not for a second. Think of me as an outside consultant, brought in to run a fresh eye over things. I won't see anything they should have done that they haven't, but there may be some things I can do differently.'
Twenty-five
Deputy Chief Constable Andy Martin was waiting for them in the hotel foyer. Skinner looked at him and saw a change; for the first time he noticed the network of lines around his friend's vivid green eyes, and the streaks of curly hair around his temples that had made the short transition from blond to silver.
He was dressed casually, in black slacks and a very conservative sports jacket, worn over a pale grey roll-necked sweater. 'Welcome to Kinross,' he said, as he shook hands with both of the newcomers.
McIlhenney looked around their comfortable surroundings. 'The inspector in charge of the loca
l nick must have a nice life,' he commented.
'He doesn't complain about it, that's for sure,' Martin agreed. 'There are worse places I could send him. You wouldn't be after an inter-force transfer, would you, Neil?' He paused. 'Ah, but you're a chief inspector, aren't you?'
'There's a few would take a drop in rank for that posting.'
'Where do we go?' Skinner asked, as if he was impatient to get down to business.
'I've booked a small meeting room, with a coffee and sandwich lunch for the three of us.' He caught McIlhenney's wince. 'What's up?'
'I don't eat bread,' the DCI told him. 'And I don't drink coffee.'
Andy Martin laughed out loud. 'Jesus,' he said, 'you used to start the day with three bacon rolls and a pint of Nescafe. What's happened to you?'
'I used to be three stone heavier and a bag of twitching nerves too.'
'Fair enough. Ham salad and fizzy water okay?'
'Fine.'
'I'll fix it. Bob's paying anyway; I got the impression that this wasn't something I could put on my force's tab, or on yours, and since he called the meeting…'
'If you'd told me that,' Skinner growled, 'we'd be having more than bloody sandwiches. Where's this room, then?'
'Just a minute.' Martin walked across to the reception desk and spoke to a young man behind it. He came out and led them through the hotel to a light, airy room with a conference table that could have seated up to a dozen.
'I'll serve lunch now, shall I, gentlemen?' the manager asked. Skinner nodded, and the man left.
The two visitors looked out of the window across the hotel's attractive gardens. They were in winter mode, befitting the approach of Christmas: the day had dawned crisp and clear and had stayed that way, although it had grown colder through the morning. Kinross was in for a hard frost that night, and maybe snow was not too far away. McIlhenney felt himself shiver.
As Skinner surveyed the grounds his eye fell on a woman pushing a pram or, rather, a modern multi-position device designed for the carriage of small children. 'Hey,' he exclaimed, 'is that Karen out there?'
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