‘Ms Marguerite Hatton, Daily News political correspondent. She is the Scottish Labour leader, as I understand it. Surely you discuss important matters with her.’
‘You’re either very smart or very stupid or just plain ignorant, lady,’ Aileen murmured. ‘You’ve just lit a fuse.’
A very short one, as was proved a second later. ‘What the hell has her position got to do with this?’ her estranged husband barked. ‘I’m a senior police officer, as senior as you can get in this country. Are you asking, seriously, whether I seek political approval before I take a career decision, or even an operational decision?’
‘Oh, really!’ the journalist scoffed. ‘That’s a dinosaur answer. I meant did you consult her as your wife, not as a politician.’
On the screen Skinner stared at her, then laughed. ‘You are indeed from the deep south, Ms Hatton, so I’ll forgive your lack of local knowledge. I suggest that you ask some of your Scottish colleagues, those who really know Aileen de Marco. They’ll tell you that there isn’t a waking moment when she isn’t a politician. And I can tell you she even talks politics in her sleep!’
‘Jesus!’ Aileen shouted. ‘Joey, switch that fucking thing off!’
‘Relax,’ he said, ‘it’s not true.’
The woman from the Daily News was undeterred. ‘In that case,’ she persisted, ‘how will she feel about you taking the job?’
‘Why should I have any special knowledge of that?’ He looked around the room. ‘No more questions about my wife, people.’
On camera, John Fox raised a hand. ‘Just one more, please, Bob? How is she after her ordeal last night?’
‘Last time I saw her she was fine: fine and very angry.’
‘Where was that, Mr Skinner?’ Marguerite Hatton shouted.
‘You’ve had your five minutes,’ he growled. ‘Any more acceptable questions?’
The woman beside Fox, Stephanie Marshall of STV, raised a hand. ‘You weren’t a candidate for the Strathclyde post last time, Chief Constable, but will you put your name forward when it’s re-advertised?’
Watching, Aileen saw him lean forward as if to answer, then hesitate.
‘If you’d asked me that last night,’ he began, ‘just after Dominic asked me to take on this role, I would have told you no, definitely not. But something was said to me this morning that’s made me change my attitude just a wee bit.
‘So the honest answer is, I don’t know. Let me see how the next couple of weeks go, and then I’ll decide. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I must go. We have a major investigation under way as you all realise, and I must call on the officer who’s running it.’
Aileen reached out and grasped the work surface, squeezing it hard.
‘What are you doing?’ Joey chuckled.
‘I’m checking for earth tremors. You might not know it but what he just said is the equivalent of a very large mountain starting to move. I can’t believe it. I told him last night he’d never leave Pitt Street once he got in there, but I didn’t think for one second that he’d actually listen to me. It’s a first.’
He reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘No, dearie, it’s you that wasn’t listening to him. His words,’ he pointed out, ‘were “this morning”, not “last night”. So whoever made him think again, it wasn’t you.’
‘You’re right,’ she whispered. ‘Which makes me wonder where the hell he was this morning.’
‘While I’m wondering about something else,’ Joey said. ‘Why did that News cow ask where he’d seen you last night?’
Nine
‘I’m sorry about that News woman, sir,’ Malcolm Nopper said. ‘I’ve never seen her before. I can’t keep her out of future press conferences, but I’ll do my best to control her.’
Skinner looked at the chief press officer he had inherited from Toni Field, and laughed. The media had been escorted out of the conference room in the force headquarters building and the two men were alone. Nopper eyed his new boss nervously, unsure how to read his reaction.
‘How the hell are you going to do that?’ the chief constable asked. ‘Sellotape over her gob? So you didn’t know her? I didn’t know her either, and it would have been the same if she’d turned up in Edinburgh, on my own patch. She’s a seagull; we all get them.’
‘A seagull, sir?’
‘Sure, you know, they fly in, make a noise, shit on you, then fly away again. As for controlling her, you don’t have to. If she turns up at one of my media briefings in future . . . not that I plan to have many . . . I’ll simply ignore her. You can do the same at any you chair.’
‘I tend not to do that, Chief,’ Nopper said. ‘When an investigation’s in process, I let the senior investigating officer take the lead.’
‘Not any more. Lottie Mann will have to go before the media later on. From something that Max Allan told me a while back, I guess she hasn’t had any formal media training. Am I right?’
‘None that I can recall,’ the civilian agreed.
‘I know she’ll be fine, but I’m not sure she does, so she must have a minder. I’ll be there but if I go on the platform it’ll undermine her. As you said, she’s the SIO. So you’ll be there, you’ll introduce her and you’ll pick the questioners. Ms Hatton will not be one of them. Your regulars won’t mind that. In my experience they don’t like seagulls either.’
‘As you wish, Chief.’
‘Mmm. Where will you hold it? Do you have a favourite venue?’
‘No. Normally it would be where it’s most convenient for the officer in charge.’
‘In that case we do it here in Pitt Street, in this room. I spoke to DI Mann on the way through here. She’ll be finished at the concert hall by two. She and I agreed that given the nature of this investigation it’s best that it be centrally based, rather than in a police office that’s open to the general public. Nobody else will be using this room this afternoon, will they?’
‘Not as far as I know, but suppose somebody was, you want it, you get it.’
‘Okay, set it up for four. That’ll give Lottie time to brief me, and it will give me time to get used to my new surroundings.’
As he spoke, a figure appeared in the double doorway.
‘Lowell,’ Skinner called. ‘You found us. DCI Payne is going to be my executive officer during my stay here,’ he explained to the press officer. ‘When you want to get to me, you do it through him. That’ll be the case for everyone below command rank, but be assured, I will be accessible; his job won’t be to keep people out, but to help them in.’
He moved towards the exit. ‘Your first task, Lowell. Show me to my office. I knew where it was in Jock Govan’s time, but I have no clue now.’
As one of her first signs of her new-broom approach, Antonia Field had rejected the office suite used by her predecessors and had commandeered half a floor in the newer part of the headquarters complex. ‘Have you decided where you’re going to live, sir?’ Payne asked as he led the way up a flight of stairs towards the third floor.
Skinner stopped. ‘Lowell,’ he said, ‘I don’t expect to be “sirred” all the time by senior officers, least of all by you. You want to call me something official, call me “Chief”. When there’s nobody else around and you ask me something you’d ask me over the dinner table, call me Bob, like always.’
‘Fair enough. Although,’ he added, ‘it was really a professional question, since I’ll have to know where to raise you in an emergency.’
‘True. The answer is that as much as possible I plan to live in my own house. I will have a driver and I plan to use him.’
‘That’s in Gullane?’
‘Sure. Where . . .’ He halted in mid-sentence. ‘Ah, you thought I might stay in Aileen’s flat.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘That won’t be happening. It will become apparent soon, if only because we’re both public figures, that she and I are no longer together.’
Payne was silent for a few seconds, as they resumed their climb. ‘I see,�
� he murmured. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. So that’s why you weren’t with her at the concert.’
‘That was part of the reason. Anyway, it’s not public knowledge yet, although I came close to making it so in my press briefing, when that bloody News person wound me up. It is something I’ll have to deal with, and soon, but not right now. Once we’ve both calmed down, we may issue a joint statement, but we’re both too hot to discuss that just now.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘Gullane is where you’ll reach me most of the time. When I have to stay here I’ll use a hotel; Hanlon’s already said he’ll pick up the tab for that . . . without me even asking, would you believe.’
They reached the top of the stairway; Payne turned left, and headed along a corridor that was blocked by a glass doorway, with a keypad. He opened it with four digits and led the way into a complex with more than a dozen rooms around a small central open space, with four chairs surrounding a low table, on which magazines were piled.
‘This is it, Chief, your new command suite. Your office is facing us.’
Skinner stared ahead. ‘It’s got glass walls,’ he exclaimed.
‘Relax,’ his aide said, noting his indignation. ‘There are internal blinds between the panels. I’m told that Chief Constable Field kept them open all the time.’
‘That will change; they’ll be closed permanently. I never did like people watching me think.’
‘There’s a bathroom and a changing room as well. They have solid walls,’ he added.
‘Just as well, or I’d be going back to Jock Govan’s old suite. Do I have a secretary?’
‘Of course, but she isn’t here today. I called her and told her what was happening, about you, and your appointment. I didn’t want her finding out from the telly. She offered to come in, but I told her not to.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Marina Deschamps.’
‘Mmm,’ Skinner murmured, then he blinked. ‘Deschamps, you said? Wasn’t that Toni’s birth name?’
Payne nodded. ‘Yes. It’s her sister; the chief brought her with her. She insisted on it, apparently, before she accepted the job.’
‘Eh? The bloody Human Resources director didn’t think to tell me that last night.’ He frowned. ‘What about the mother? Are we flying her up here?’
‘The Met took care of that. They got her on to the first Glasgow flight this morning.’
‘I wish to hell they’d left her down there.’ He sighed. ‘I know I have to pay her a courtesy call, but I’ll leave that until tomorrow. Meantime, the sister should be regarded as on compassionate leave. Does she have a contract of employment?’
‘I don’t know for sure, Chief, but I’d imagine so.’
‘She’s a civilian, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Tell the Human Resources director that her contract will be honoured. If she wants to stay here in another capacity, she can. If she wants to leave, then she may do so at once, but she’ll be paid as if she’d worked a full notice period, whatever that is. Then tell him to find me a replacement, pronto, someone with full security clearance, mainly to manage my mail and yours.’
They had been walking as they talked, and reached Skinner’s new office as he finished issuing his orders. The door was locked, but Payne took a ring with three keys from his trouser pocket and handed it over. ‘I had the lock changed,’ he said. ‘Easier than searching through Ms Field’s things and getting Marina’s back from her.’
‘Good thinking.’ He detached a key from the ring, used it to unlock the door, then handed it to the DCI. ‘Yours,’ he said then stepped inside. As he did so he felt a sudden and unexpected shiver run through him. ‘Weird,’ he murmured. ‘I have never imagined doing this, not once.’
He looked around. The room was larger than the one he had left in Edinburgh, but furnished in much the same way. His desk was on the left, facing a round meeting table, with six chairs that slid underneath it. Beyond, there was another door; he could see through the unscreened glass wall that it led into another office.
He pointed towards it. ‘Secretary’s room?’
‘Yes,’ his aide replied.
‘Where are you going to go?’
‘I hadn’t given that any thought.’
‘Where’s the deputy’s office?’
‘That’s the one beyond the secretary’s.’
‘Then use that. It’s vacant.’
‘Okay, Chief, thanks.’ Payne walked behind the desk and opened a door behind it. ‘Your personal rooms are through here,’ he said. ‘There’s a safe in the changing room, but apparently nobody knows the combination, unless Marina does. I’ll ask her. If she doesn’t I’ll . . .’ He smiled. ‘Actually I’m not sure what I’ll do.’
‘Too bad Johnny Ramensky’s dead,’ Skinner chuckled.
‘Yeah: the last of the legendary safecrackers. As for the rest,’ the DCI continued, ‘all of Ms Field’s things have been removed, from the changing room and the bathroom, and everything from the desk as well, that wasn’t office-related. Her business diary is still there, so you can see what she had in her schedule. There are also some files. I had a look at them, a very quick look, and then closed them up again. They seem to contain her observations on her senior colleagues.’
‘Then take them away and shred them,’ Skinner instructed him. ‘I don’t want to know about her prejudices and her grudges.’ He grinned. ‘I prefer to develop my own. What’s the general view of Michael Thomas?’ he asked. ‘You can be frank, don’t worry.’
‘Unfavourable,’ Payne replied, without a pause for thought. ‘I knew him as a constable, way back, after I’d made sergeant. He was “Three bags full” then, before he started to climb. Much later I was stationed in his division for a while when he was a chief super. He virtually ignored me. He has a reputation for efficiency, but also for being a cold fish. He was a big supporter of Toni Field, at least he kissed her arse regularly enough.’
‘I know that from ACPOS. He was her regular seconder in the debate on unification. What about Bridie Gorman?’
‘Now she is well liked. She spends a lot of time out of the office, in the outlying areas of the force. I think that suited her, and suited Chief Constable Field as well, for they were complete opposites, as cops and as people.’ Payne scratched his chin. ‘Obviously I don’t know what perceptions were outside Strathclyde, but the view in here was that Field planned to get rid of every chief officer apart from ACC Thomas. She’d already axed the deputy, and it was common knowledge that Mr Allan was next.’
Skinner nodded. ‘Yes, I could tell that at ACPOS too. She didn’t even try to be civil to him. Any word on him, by the way?’
‘Yes, I checked. He’s still in hospital, suffering from what they’re now describing as shock. They’re going to keep him in for a couple of days. I don’t know how he’ll feel about coming back.’
‘Then see if you can find out for me. Go and visit him, this evening if you can. Max is only a few months off the usual retirement age. If he’s up to talking about it, tell him that if he’d like to come back, I’ll be happy to see him, but if he doesn’t, I’ll sign him off for enough sick leave to take him up to his due date.’
‘Yes, Chief; I was planning to go and see him anyway. He’s always been good to me.’
‘Fine. Now who’s here, in the building now?’
‘ACC Thomas is. He said he’d be in his office, and that he’d like to see you as soon as possible. And ACC Gorman’s in as well. She came down from Argyll overnight.’
‘Does she want to see me too?’
‘No, she said to tell you she was about if you needed her, that’s all.’
Skinner smiled. ‘Okay then, let’s talk to her; I can spare a few minutes before I have to see Lottie. Ask her to drop in, then give Mr Thomas my apologies, tell him that I’ll fit him in tomorrow morning, and that he’s free to salvage what’s left of his Sunday.’
As Payne left, he walked over to the desk, tried the swivel chair fo
r height, and found, as he had expected, that it was set far too low. He stayed in it for only a few seconds, then pushed himself out. There was something not right about it, something that made his spine tingle. He knew what it was without any deep analysis. Less than forty-eight hours before, Toni Field had been sitting in it, and at that very moment she was lying in a refrigerated drawer in one of the city’s morgues, unless she was being autopsied by Sarah’s opposite number in the west.
He knew that he would never feel comfortable in her old seat, and so he wheeled it over to the secretary’s office, and left it in there with a note saying, ‘Replace, please,’ scribbled on a sheet torn from a pad.
He had just stepped back into his own room when he heard a knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.
‘I can’t,’ a female voice shouted back. ‘This door self-locks. It can only be opened with a key or from the inside.’
He stepped across and admitted his visitor. ACC Bridget Gorman was in civvies, light tan trousers and a check shirt. ‘Afternoon, Chief,’ she said. Her manner was tentative, not that of the Bridie Gorman he knew.
‘Hey, Bridie, last week at ACPOS it was Bob,’ he told her. ‘It still is, okay? Come in and have a seat.’ He showed her across to the table and pulled out two of the chairs.
She glanced across to the desk, taking in the missing swivel but saying nothing. ‘Wouldn’t be right,’ he replied to her unspoken question. ‘I feel bad enough being here.’
Gorman frowned, and her forehead all but disappeared behind a mop of black but grey-streaked hair. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘It’s just awful. And it could have been Aileen.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it could, and neither does DI Mann.’ He explained why.
She nodded. ‘Yes, I can see that. Somebody like them, they’d know exactly who they were shooting, I suppose. But why? Why Toni Field?’
‘They didn’t need to know that.’
‘But they’d know who wanted it done.’
‘Not all the way up the chain, not necessarily.’
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