doesn't show up too fast.
'What do you have? Three businesses operating on the edge of
profitability; anyone who steals their fish is actually doing them a favour,
for they can restock with the insurance lift and still have a tidy sum left to
reinvest, or reduce debt, or whatever. Of course if they're stealing their
own fish themselves, they're doing even better, aren't they?'
'They are indeed,' Pringle agreed. 'We're pretty close to nailing Lander
and Alvarez. Now all we need to do is tie in that bastard Watson.'
'If it is him,' Martin countered. 'Adrian Watson's worth about seven
million quid cash. On top of that he owns the estate, and he has two fucking
Botticellis hanging on his walls. What the hell's he doing involved in a
thirty-grand insurance scam, especially one with murder involved?
'His fish are worth stealing, though. Especially ...' He stopped in mid
sentence and a big grin spread across his face, wiping away all his earlier
weariness.
Pringle stared at the Head of CID; the grin was infectious, it spread to
him. 'What is it?' he demanded. 'What the hell have you been hiding up
your sleeve?'
'It's funny,' said Andy Martin slowly, 'that a good copper's a good copper
all the time. Neil Mcllhenney was out for a drive yesterday with a friend.
He took her down to the western end of the Lammermuirs, to the far end of
the track that takes the walkers to Longformacus. While he was up there,
he spotted a fish farm.'
'But there's no fish farm there, sir,' McGurk protested. 'I've listed them
all and I've visited them all. There just isn't one there.'
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'You're right, Jack. There isn't, according to the local environmental
health department, or to the Scottish Executive Department of Agriculture,
or to the Trout Farmers' Association. Sammy Pye checked with all of them
this morning, and called me while I was driving down here.
'It doesn't exist, but it's there nonetheless, because big Neil says it is,
and so does the lady who was with him. I have a feeling that if you look at
Raymond Anders' business records you might find some unexplained
equipment purchases that can be explained right there.'
Martin leaned back in his chair. The grin was far from extinguished.
'Sammy checked something else for me too ... bright lad, Sammy. The
land in that area is owned by a family trust; there's not much you can do
with it other than graze sheep, shoot and fish the river that runs through it.
'The trust was established by a rubber planter who bought the land when
he came back from the Far East sixty years ago. He must have seen the war
signs in the air and got out in the nick of time. It's administered by a small
firm of surveyors to the landed gentry, based in Edinburgh.
'There are only two trustees now; the planter's daughter and her son.
His name is Gates: Bill Gates.'
'The...' exclaimed Dan Pringle, then ran out of adjectives '... bastards.'
'Aren't they just. They steal their own fish, take the insurance money, or
nearly all of it, and restock at a profit, having transferred the originals to
another site for sale in the normal way at top market prices.
'Total take, probably fifty grand each, after they'd paid off Anders and
the third man in the team.'
'So what do we do now,' Pringle mused. 'Lift them?'
Martin shook his head. 'Too soon, too soon. You'd get Gates, but if he
kept quiet, the Crown Office wouldn't act against Lander or Alvarez on the
basis of the evidence we have at the moment.
'We have to catch them together. I don't envy you the job, Dan, but it's
got to be done. We have to stake out that farm, until they all show up.'
Karen sat in her car and took a deep breath and looked up the narrow path
which led to the terraced house. 'Well, Sergeant Neville,' she whispered to
herself, 'if you had known that this came with the territory, would you have
taken it on?'
She saw a curtain move in a ground-floor window. 'Of course you would,'
she answered herself. 'Doesn't make it easy though.' Steeling herself, she
stepped out of the car.
The front door opened before she reached it; the woman who awaited
her was in the second half of her twenties, only a few years younger than
she was herself. She was casually dressed in a Hard Rock teeshirt and
designer jeans, but she wore them well. Her dark hair was wavy - permed,
Karen guessed.
'Mrs Martin?' the woman in the doorway asked, unnecessarily, for she
had been expecting the visit. 'I'm Mary McGurk; come on in.'
She showed the visitor into her small living room; a toddler sat in the
middle of the floor, playing intently with a plastic hammer and bricks.
'This is Regan,' said her mother. 'We called her after the guy in The Sweeney. Jack's idea, but it suits her.
'Look at her. She's about as good at the DIY as her father.' She glanced
at her visitor again. 'Here, have we met?'
Karen grinned, pleased to be recognised. 'Yes; at a CID dance a couple
of years ago. You were with Jack, and I was with Sammy Pye. I was DS
Neville then, in the Head of CID's office. I still am in a way ... I married
him a few months back.'
'Yes; I remember now, you were the girl in that dress. Fast track to the
top, eh?' said Mary McGurk, with a light laugh. 'You're off your mark in
another way too, I see. When are you due?'
'The early summer, actually. God, is it that obvious already?'
'Well, you're quite well endowed naturally . . . who could forget that
dress, come to think of it... so ...'
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AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN
'Hah,' laughed Karen, 'tell me about it. I expect that I'll have boobs like
mountains for a few months, but that after that they'll be off to the deep
south.'
'No,' the other woman smiled, 'that's not necessarily how it goes. Good
luck to you anyway. There'll be times when you're grateful for the company,
if nothing else. Now, would you like a cup of tea? It's made.'
'That'd be nice, thanks.' As she waited, in an armchair, Regan put down
her hammer, crawled over and climbed up on to her lap. 'Aunty,' she said
in a clear voice.
'Get you down off there!' the mother scolded as she returned.
'Ah, leave her alone, she's fine.'
'Fine, but a bit erratic still, though. Put her down if she starts to feel
warm; these new nappies are good, but they don't work miracles.
'So, Mrs Martin,' she said, as she put a cup of tea and a two-finger
KitKat on a small table beside her chair, 'what brings you here?'
'For a start, I haven't come to act the grand lady. It's Karen, okay?'
Mary McGurk nodded.
'Andy, my husband, said I should come, but not before Superintendent
Pringle spoke to Jack and he agreed.
'I've had a bee in my bonnet for a while, Mary, about the police service
and the way it handles its officers. Now, although I've left the force, I'm
actually in a position to do something about it.
'When a police officer has a problem on the job, if he ... or she ... has
a close call, or he sees something that's r
eally hard to take, then there's
very good established machinery these days to deal with the consequences.
The force . . . our force at least... is as interested in a person's emotional
well-being as in his physical fitness, and that stretches from the rawest
police cadet to the Chief Constable.
'For example, Andy even had counselling himself earlier on this year
. .. but keep that to yourself.
'There's a flaw in it. We . . . listen to me, talking as if I'm still part
of it... give support for on-the-job developments, but we tend to forget
that there can be trauma down the line as well, especially if the officer's
partner isn't part of the force. When coppers marry coppers, like Andy
and me, or like Maggie Rose and Mario McGuire, there's a built-in
understanding in the relationship, just the same as when teachers marry
teachers, doctors marry doctors, social workers set up home with social
workers, and so on.'
AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN
'But when a copper marries an art teacher, you mean . . .' Mary
interrupted.
'No, I didn't. I'm still speaking generally here. In my own case, when
Andy goes out of that door every day, for all his rank I know that there are
risks because of the way he does his job; you do not always get to deal with
nice people. Ironically, his predecessor rarely set foot outside his office,
yet he was killed in a plane crash coming back from a meeting in London.
'I can live with these risks, because I've been exposed to them myself
and I can keep them in perspective. But it has to be more difficult for you to
watch Jack go out on an investigation where someone's been murdered and
Vwhere the person who did it is still at large.
'Now the fact is, the risks are minimal, but they're always going to be
there, in your mind. When the niggling stress they cause is compounded by
something else .. . like in your case a career move to another division ...
then too damn right it's going to affect you.
'And because of that it's inevitable that it's going to affect Jack.'
Karen held up a hand. 'I promise you this. Jack has not been running around the Borders moaning about his bloody wife or anything like that.
But he and Dan Pringle work very closely together; Dan likes him and he
cares about him, so even if Jack tried he couldn't hide his worries from
him.
'What I'm getting round to saying here, Mary, is that I believe that there
should be a proper support group for officers' partners as well as for the
men and women themselves, and I'm bloody well going to see that it is set
up.'
Mary McGurk opened her mouth to speak, but in the end only a sigh
came out. 'You're right in what you're saying,' she murmured at last. 'I do
feel remote sometimes, but.. .'
'Can I ask you a straight question?' Karen interposed. 'Suppose Jack
wasn't a detective, and this move wasn't happening. Would you two still
have a problem?'
'No. Not through me, anyway. I love him.'
'Okay, I want you to tell me what we can do to help, but first, I have to J
make a point. This is a disciplined service and Jack was in it when you two
married. In this set-up, in the lower ranks, you don't always get to apply for
your job. Very often an officer is offered a posting with his long-term career
development in mind. In a force like ours, with a big geographical area,
that can sometimes mean moving house.
That's what's happened with Jack. He wasn't posted down to the Borders
because Detective Superintendent Pringle likes the way he makes coffee,
or thinks he's fun to have around. Dan took him down there because he
believes that he's a damn good officer, who could fill his own shoes one
day; divisional commander and above.
'At the moment he's living Monday to Friday in a reasonably comfortable
police squat down in the division. That's not ideal for him, and it's bloody
awful for you, with the baby, and even worse since the job can have erratic
hours. They don't have many major investigations down in the Borders;
just your luck that he should pitch up there at the start of one.'
'Maybe,' said Mary, 'but what if I move down there and it's just the
same, with him never being home? It's such a big thing, moving house; and
at least in Edinburgh I've got my family, my friends.'
'Look, we can't solve all your problems. If you put enough pressure on
Jack, he can ask for a move back up town, and he'll get it. It'll be CID too,
not back into uniform, unless that's what he wants. But it will slow down
his career development and it could prevent him going as far as he might.
'So what can we do to make this move as positive for you as possible?
You're an art teacher. Would you like to go back to work, part-time or full
time? We'll get you a job. Would it be easier for you to move south without
the big commitment of buying a house? Fine; keep this one, put a tenant in
it, a young copper maybe, who'll look after the place or else. We'll find
you a nice place in a nice community that you can rent until it's time for
Jack's next move, which will probably be to a divisional detective inspector
job. Do you want to get to know people down there? As a first step you can
join the police partners' support group that I'm setting up. I've only sent
out one mailshot, and I've got two hundred members already, one third of
them in the Borders.'
'You can do all that?' asked Mary. 'Even a job?'
'I called round the education departments before I came here this morning.
I'm a trained teacher too; I know the ropes. There's a job going in a secondary
in Galashiels that you could start after Christmas. Full time or mornings
only; up to you.'
'Can I talk to Jack about it?'
Karen looked down at Regan, who was sleeping on her lap. 'I think that
would be a pretty good idea, don't you?'
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'Take it away, Jackie,' said Dan Pringle. 'You're looking a happier boy this
morning, even in this freezing bloody pit.'
f 'You're looking a bit smug yourself, sir, if I may say so.'
'You and Mary got things sorted out then?'
'For the foreseeable at least,' said the sergeant. 'She's going to give it a
shot. She's going for an interview with the Council head of education on
Monday, then once this thing cracks we're going to look at places to rent in
and around Gala.
'She's also going to help Karen Martin set up this support group of hers.
The way things are going she'll have no bloody time for Regan and me
when she gets down here.'
'Aye, well, we'll no' be sending the DCS's wife out to counsel you,'
Pringle rumbled.
'You boys still okay in here?' he enquired, conversationally rather than
solicitously.
'Fine, sir. DC Donovan and I have never been more comfortable. Have
we, Jason?'
'No, Sergeant,' the young detective constable agreed, not bothering to
hide the irony in his voice. 'But so far, it hasna' rained.'
The three were seated on folding chairs in a deep camouflaged hide
which had been dug out, under cover of darkness, on the crest of a hillock
<
br /> just over a quarter of a mile from the supposedly non-existent fish farm. Its
walls were lined with black plastic to contain the damp; a small butane gas
Autographs in the Rain Page 34