‘How far back will you go?’
‘As far as I can. Now, please, let’s talk about something else.’
‘Such as?’ She grinned.
‘Anything,’ Stevie pleaded. ‘Your day, for a start.’
‘Mine was pretty ordinary. Tomorrow I start the handover to my stand-in.’
‘Ah, you’ve got one at last. Who is it?’
‘Your old boss, Mary Chambers; for the moment at least. They’ll review that when I tell them how long I’ll be staying away, and I will not do that until the baby’s safely delivered. I had a visit from the ACC today. I don’t think he’s too pleased with me over that, but he didn’t say as much.’
‘Brian Mackie knows you too well to do that. Anyway, I reckon you’re wrong: I reckon the assistant chief constable would be just a wee bit relieved to see you go, if you did. You’re a better copper than he is, all round, and you’re a better leader. The whole bloody force knows that, and so does he.’
‘You’re biased.’
‘Sure,’ he agreed, ‘but that doesn’t stop me from being right.’
‘You’re underestimating Brian. He’s had “Command Corridor” written in his stars for years.’
‘And so have you,’ Stevie insisted. ‘He beat you there on seniority, that’s all, but he knows that if you’re both in the game he won’t beat you to the next level. It’ll suit his long-term ambitions if you’re not around.’ He grinned. ‘It’s too bad that he’ll be disappointed.’
‘What do you mean?’ She frowned across at him, and her tone was defensive, for all that she tried to disguise it.
‘I mean, love of my life, that I don’t buy into the notion of you putting motherhood before the career that’s been the focal point of your adult life. Yes, you’ll take your maternity leave, and you’ll devote all that time to the baby. Then when it’s up, we’ll find a carer and you’ll get back on the ladder. A year or two after that, you’ll start looking for promotion opportunities . . . that’s if they don’t come looking for you first. The chief retires in less than a year, remember.’
‘And I’ll still be on leave.’
‘That doesn’t stop you being considered for the vacancy that’ll arise when Bob Skinner steps up.’
‘You’re getting miles ahead of yourself there. Who says the DCC will take over as chief constable?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Maybe he doesn’t,’ she retorted. ‘I was his executive officer for a while, remember. I know him, and I’m not sure he wants it. The job would frustrate him: he’s a hands-on guy, always has been. Stevie, he could have been a chief five years ago; he would have been in with a shout for every vacancy that’s arisen since that time, anywhere in the UK. There was even a rumour not so long ago that he’d been sounded out about the Met.’
‘Maybe, but this is his patch. He loves Edinburgh; he’s been happy as long as our present chief’s been in post, but can you see him welcoming an outsider into Sir James Proud’s office with open arms?’
‘That might depend on who the outsider is. What if Andy Martin goes for it?’
Stevie’s grin became a laugh. ‘Andy Martin was his protégé until he moved to Dundee. The two of them are blood brothers. Do you really see Andy going for Proud Jimmy’s job over the head of his best friend?’
‘I do, if Mr Skinner tells him to.’
‘Which he won’t. Look, Mags, what’s the big man doing now?’
‘He’s enjoying a well-earned sabbatical, after a most horrendous year.’
‘Which he’s using to prepare himself, so the story goes. Tarvil Singh’s wife works at Heriot-Watt, in the Borders campus: according to her, he did a specially arranged six-week course during February and March, researching the management of stress in the workplace. Then, last month, he spent three weeks in Toronto, on secondment to the RCMP.’
‘How do you know that?’ She paused. ‘Of course: your cousin Joey.’
‘That’s right, he’s a Mountie sergeant in the Ontario division. I had an e-mail from him last month: he told me that our DCC had been on a tour of all their offices, spending time with each of the departments. It was all set up through their CO.’
‘You never told me!’ Maggie exclaimed.
‘Okay, but there are things you don’t tell me, operational stuff. I wouldn’t expect you to. By the same token, I reckoned that if this wasn’t on the bulletin board, maybe I wasn’t meant to know about it.’
‘Secretive bugger.’ She sniffed. ‘They should have given you the Special Branch job, rather than plucking Dottie Shannon out of her inspector’s uniform.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You’re forgiven. I still don’t go with your theory, though. He’s got to fill in his time somehow, and the whole point of sabbatical leave is that you use it for professional development.’
‘So what are you going to do on your maternity leave? Just feed the baby and nothing else?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Indeed? In that case, what was that stuff about an Open University business management course that I found in the printer the other day?’
She glowered at him. ‘Bloody detectives: you’re never off duty.’ She paused. ‘Stevie, the truth is I don’t bloody know what I want to do. But if I did an OU course, would it bother you?’
‘My darling, nothing you do could bother me. If that’s what you want, go for it. Just hold off till the baby’s born and you’ve recovered, that’s all.’ He slapped himself on the side of the head. ‘Ah, that reminds me: I checked the answer-phone when I was in the bedroom. There’s a message for you from the maternity unit at the Royal: they want you to call them.’
‘Did they say about what?’
‘No. All the guy said was that it was purely routine.’
Maggie laughed. ‘Purely routine: even medics are using police-speak now. Next thing you know I’ll be helping them with their enquiries.’
Six
‘This is all right,’ said Detective Constable Tarvil Singh, as he looked around the room, ‘apart from the noise of the kids next door. What’s this place called?’
‘Gullane Village Hall,’ DS Ray Wilding replied, ‘simple as that. The playgroup doesn’t last all day, and it was a lot easier to borrow this office than to bring a mobile unit down. And, by the way, it’s a truly sad bastard who hardens his heart against the joyous sound of children at play.’
‘Spoken like a single man. I’m well familiar with that sound, believe me. I get plenty of it at home.’ A wooden seat gave an ominous creak as he settled his massive frame into it. ‘Where do we start?’ he asked.
‘We’ve started,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ve got uniformed officers down on the beach and in the car park behind it, interviewing people, looking to find those that go there every day, showing them the photo and asking if they know who she is. You and I are going to do the rounds of the pubs in Gullane, Aberlady, Dirleton and North Berwick to see if she’s recognised in any of them.’
‘What about the DI? Where’s he?’
‘He’s down at the bents, briefing the uniforms and getting them under way.’
‘What about the golf club? He doesn’t really think there could be a link there, does he?’
‘Of course not,’ a voice from the doorway exclaimed. Stevie Steele stepped into the room. ‘We had to check out the possibility that the victim might have been brought to the scene using the road that runs across the course, but that’s been eliminated. I spoke to the secretary last night, and to the steward and the head greenkeeper. There’s a gate at the top of the road, beside the clubhouse, and it’s padlocked overnight. The greenkeeper’s an early bird: he was there at seven, and he didn’t unlock the gate till eight.’
‘Could somebody have opened it before seven?’ Wilding asked. ‘Picked the padlock?’
‘Then locked it again on his way out? Hardly, but if he’d tried, the steward would have seen or heard him: he was up early too. I showed all three of them the girl’s picture, but none o
f them recognised her.’ He looked at Singh. ‘Tarvil, if we don’t have her identified by this afternoon, I want you to have some posters done. We’ll put them up in shops, hotels, banks, pubs, clubs and post offices in all the coastal towns.’
‘Will do, boss. Pubs first, though, yes?’
‘Absolutely. I want an identification this morning, if possible. This girl didn’t parachute in here. Somebody saw her before she was killed.’ Steele headed for the door once again. ‘Come on, let’s get to work.’
‘Are you going to help us, sir?’
The DI grinned at Singh. ‘You think I don’t get my hands dirty any more? You two split up: there’s three hotels and one pub in Gullane, two coffee places, and other shops all along the main street, so do half each. I’ll talk to the post office and the bank staff, after I’ve made my priority call on the local VIP.’
‘Who’s that? The wee actor chap?’
‘No, Tarvil,’ Steele chuckled, ‘more important than him, as far as we’re concerned. I’m going to see the DCC, as per the head of CID’s order. He might not have asked to be kept informed, but we’re going to do him that courtesy anyway ... and show him the picture while we’re at it.’
Seven
Alex Skinner was smiling as she replaced her phone in its cradle. Leaning across her desk in her small screened office space, she thought no one had noticed, but she was wrong.
‘That’s the weekend fixed up, is it?’ asked Pippa Clifton, the secretary she shared with two other associates of Curle Anthony and Jarvis, Scotland’s leading business-law firm.
‘Mind your own, woman,’ she replied cheerfully.
‘Come on, spill it. That was him, wasn’t it? Your new Mr Perfect.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You damn well do. You had your girlie face on, and these days that’s a dead giveaway: it was him.’
‘Pippa, we’re too busy for this,’ Alex protested.
‘It’s now or I’ll hound you after work.’
She sighed. ‘Okay, that was my next-door neighbour and friend, Detective Constable Griffin Montell. As it happens, he was apologising for breaking a date tonight as he’s been roped into a big investigation.’
‘But you were smiling.’
‘Yes, because I didn’t really want to go out tonight.’
‘Ah!’ Pippa’s eyebrows arched. ‘So he’s coming to your place once he’s finished.’
‘No, he’s not. How many times do I have to tell you? Griff’s a friend, that’s all. I like him, he makes me laugh, and that’s fine, for there is no way on this earth that I’m ever getting seriously involved with another copper. I repeat, but for the last time, he’s just a friend.’
‘Mmm.’ The secretary sniffed. ‘There’s nothing in my rule book that says a friend can’t give me one on occasion without either of us assuming that we’re engaged.’
Alex felt her cheeks flush and hoped that her tan disguised the fact: she kept her face straight.
‘Your dad approves of your friend, doesn’t he?’ Pippa continued relentlessly, even as her boss picked a folder from one of her trays.
‘I don’t seek his approval, any more than he seeks mine.’ She almost bit her tongue as she finished the sentence.
‘Which reminds me. I meant to ask you: is it true about him and the new First Minister, Aileen de Marco? The word is out, you know.’
Alex glared across her desk, signalling a jibe too far, and with it, the end of the conversation. ‘Pippa,’ she snapped, ‘there is office gossip, and then there is pushing your luck. Guess where you’re at? Get to work, now.’
As her secretary beat a hasty retreat, the young lawyer focused on the work before her, a study for a retail client on the consequences of a potential acquisition. She sketched out her analysis and her recommendations, then dictated it in memo form into a handheld recorder for Pippa to type and pass to Mitchell Laidlaw, the practice chairman, for his approval. Next she turned to her notes of an early-morning meeting with Paula Viareggio, the chief executive of the company to which she was legal adviser. As she turned them into a formal report, with action points, she found herself thinking about Paula.
The two women had become good friends, although there was the best part of ten years between them in age. They were confidantes: where Alex would not have dreamed of discussing her sex life with Pippa or, for that matter, with anyone else in the office, she was able to be reasonably open about it with Paula, knowing that if she asked for it, she would receive very good and very direct advice.
She smiled as she recalled what her client had said about Griff Montell: in fact, she had expressed much the same view as Pippa. ‘Okay, you like him,’ she had said, ‘but you don’t love him. You don’t want to marry him. You’re not yearning to have his babies. Fine, now we’ve dealt with all that. Do you fancy fucking him? Yes? In that case, if the opportunity arises, so to speak, what the hell’s stopping you? If I was in your shoes, or underwear, or whatever, I bloody know I would.’
In turn, Paula had felt able to discuss her relationship with Mario, confessing that, cousin or no cousin, she had been hopelessly in love with him since her mid-teens, and that she had never wavered in that, not even when he had married Maggie Rose. She had wished them no harm, but she had been sure from the start that they were wrong for each other, and had simply waited them out. Any relationships she had had herself before or during that time, including her brief fling with Stevie Steele, had been short-term affairs, safe and with no chance of permanency.
And yet, that morning, Alex had sensed a difference in her: she had not been the usual razor-sharp Paula, and once or twice, in mid-meeting, she had seemed to drift off somewhere else. It was as if there was something on her mind that she felt unable to discuss, even with a friend. There were no business worries, of that Alex was certain, and so her strange mood had been even more troubling.
Finally, she had asked her. ‘Paula, is everything all right? You and Mario haven’t had a row, have you?’
She had been quietly, and politely, brushed off. ‘Mario and me? Row? No way: he wouldn’t dare. We’re fine, I’m fine. But how about you? What about Griff the friendly detective?’ Subject closed, and not too subtly.
‘Him?’ she had lied. ‘Let’s just say I’m still thinking over your advice.’
‘What’s holding you back?’
‘I don’t want to spoil a nice friendship. You know the trouble with hunks: they have so much expectation to live up to, usually too much.’
Paula had smiled, normal service resumed. ‘Usually, but not always. I used to have a simple philosophy with guys like that. I thought of them as very expensive sports cars, sitting on their lacquered tyres, gleaming in the showroom. You know what I mean: the running costs might be prohibitive but you can always take them for a test drive.’
‘The Ferrari syndrome? Nice one, Ms Viareggio. I wonder if men think about women like that?’
‘Are you kidding? They invented the game. But the great thing is that nowadays, as often as not, the players are women like us. Role reversal at its finest.’
Alex smiled as she finished the report; she dictated it on to the same tape as the earlier document, filled in her time-sheet on her desktop computer, then took the micro-cassette along to the secretarial area. Pippa was absent; coffee break, she guessed. She checked her watch and decided that she too could afford five minutes for a break.
She walked along the corridor to the professional staff rest room, bought herself a diet drink from the dispenser, and picked up a copy of the first edition Evening News from the table, nodding to Grey Bauld, another associate who was the only other person in the room. He was sitting crouched over The Times, concentrating on a sudoku game.
The picture jumped out at her from the front page. There was something odd about it, something strange about the face, its lack of expression, perhaps. Yes, that was it: the eyes, they were vacant, emotionless. ‘My God,’ she whispered ‘she’s . . .’
She began to read the story below, to confirm her realisation. ‘Police investigating the murder of a young woman,’ she murmured aloud, ‘whose body was found on an East Lothian beach yesterday afternoon, admitted today that they are no nearer identifying her. Releasing an artistically improved photograph of the victim, media spokesman Alan Royston said, “We are appealing for the public’s help in identifying this unfortunate girl. Anyone who thinks they know her should . . .”
‘Artistically improved.’ Alex snorted. ‘She’s bloody dead.’ Although the background was a hazy blue colour, giving nothing away, she would have bet that the shot had been taken on a mortuary table, and retouched later using computer software to make the subject look as lifelike as possible. But nothing can truly restore life, once its light has been extinguished.
She stared at the page, not realising that she was frowning, until Bauld, frustrated once again by his puzzle, called out to her, ‘What’s up? Did your team lose?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have a team.’ She held up the paper. ‘It’s this photograph; this murdered girl. I can’t put my finger on it, but I have this weird feeling that I know her.’
Eight
‘I’m very impressed,’ said Louise McIlhenney.
‘Oh, yeah?’ said her husband, rising to the bait.
‘Yes, it’s Wednesday, you’ve been at home for three days, and not once have you picked up the phone to check on what’s happening at work.’
‘That’s the deal. That’s why they call it leave. You go away and you forget about it.’
‘Fine. That’s for normal people, but this is you. I’d expected you to be a fidgety bear by now, especially after that burst of shop last night with your pal Mario.’
Neil smiled at her. ‘You want the truth?’ he asked, looking down at her as she cradled Louis. ‘What’s happening in this house right now is the focal point of my life. It’s more important than any crime, any investigation; at least it is for the next week and a half. He’s just wonderful, you’re just wonderful, and it’s a huge privilege to be able to spend this time with you.’
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