'Don't worry: I won't let it be that way. I don't love you either, Sarah, not any more.'
'Don't cop out now,' she exclaimed, still smiling. 'You never did. Admit it, officer.'
'Not the way I should have, no. When I met you, I was a flawed, lonely guy.'
She looked at him, sadly. 'Bob, you still are.'
'Maybe, but you took it away for a while.'
'And, in the process, became flawed and lonely myself.'
'How's leaving me going to help that?'
'It'll give me a chance to find someone who does love me, the way it's supposed to be.'
'Mr Right, you mean? Watch out for that bastard: usually Mrs Right's expecting him home by midnight.'
She laughed and sat on the sofa beside him. He switched off the television and turned to look at her. 'What happened last night?' she asked him, quietly.
'You saw on the news. Some Albanians tried to hijack the prince and hold him for ransom; Neil, Mackenzie and I, and four soldiers, stopped them.'
'Yes,' she whispered, 'but what else happened?'
'Isn't that enough?'
'There's more. You're wearing it like a cloak.'
'Two of my soldiers were killed. I sent them to a place where someone was waiting.'
'But you didn't know that.'
'I should have guessed, though. I'll never make a general.'
'You are a general,' Sarah retorted. 'But there's still something you're not telling me.'
'Maybe I don't want to; maybe I can't, for your sake.'
'You've told me things in the past. I'm your doctor as well as your wife, remember: you're suffering from post-traumatic shock, I want to know the cause, and I'm bound to keep it confidential.'
'Okay,' he said abruptly. 'I'll tell you one more dark secret, never to be repeated. That attempted kidnapping last night was actually a plot by some right-wing intelligence officers who shared a paranoid fear of what might happen to this country if that boy becomes king. So they used an MI6 asset called Peter Bassam, who'd worked for them in the Balkans till they had to pull him out. He recruited the Albanians, sheltered them in Edinburgh, and kept them fed and quiet until the time was right to attack. We got on their track and put a man in under cover to find them. He was betrayed, and on Saturday night he was murdered. My two soldiers weren't ambushed by the Albanians, but by one of the plotters, who was in St Andrews to make sure that everything went according to plan. When it didn't, he tried to kill the prince, but I spotted him and I dropped him first. Before he died, he told me most of it. The rest of it we got out of an MI6 operative called Miles Hassett, one of the plotters, who was sent up, right into my very office, to find out how much I knew.' He stopped. 'How's that, Doctor?'
'It sounds like the thriller of the year; come on, you made all that up.'
He looked at her and saw that she was frightened. 'No, I didn't; my imagination isn't that good. Oh, yes, the man I killed? It was Adam.'
The colour fled from her face; she had known Arrow. 'It's not true,' she murmured. 'Tell me it's not.'
'I'd love to. I'd love to wake up and find that it never happened. But it did.'
She sank back into the couch, her hands pressed to her cheeks. 'And the morning after I come home to tell you that I'm leaving you. God, Bob, what lousy timing. I'm so sorry. I can't go now, not when you're trying to deal with this.'
He gave a huge weary sigh. 'Who would your staying help, Sarah? Not me. What are you going to do? Take me to bed and hug me till all the monsters go away? You can try, but they won't. I've been dodging the truth about you and me for long enough. I've been hiding behind you for years, tying you to me, watching you become sadder and less of a person as you took second, probably even third place in my life. If you'd come back and said, "Let's try to make it work," I'd have said, "No." So let's do what we know to be right, and let's do it now. I'll move out. I'll find somewhere in Edinburgh.'
'With your politician friend?'
'Maybe, but not straight away, and maybe never. I'm going to need a lot of breathing space for a while. Besides, Aileen's just like me: she's married to her job as well.'
'You sound just right for each other; I hope it works.' She pursed her lips. 'But listen, I don't want you to move out. I've been doing a lot of thinking of my own, and I've found my truths as well. Somewhere along the line, Bob… I don't know when exactly; maybe it was when my parents died, but maybe even before then… I handed control of my life to you.'
'I've never tried to control you,' he protested.
'I'm not saying you did, honey, but I let you nonetheless. Well, that's over: as of now I'm in charge of my own destiny again. Sarah Grace is coming out of hiding and back into the world, but with a whole new agenda, not like she was before.'
She looked at him, and he could see in her eyes a determination which, he admitted to himself, had been absent for a while. 'For a start, I've had enough of pathology,' she declared. 'Actually, I decided that a while back. Any people I cut up in future will be alive at the time, and hopefully afterwards. Where will that be? Bob, I'm an American, and I'm a doctor, so I'm going home, and back to work. All my property in Buffalo, and the up-state cabin, is on the market and it'll all sell fast. I've spent a lot of time in New York City and I still have friends there. So I'm going to buy an apartment in Manhattan, and I'm going to practise real medicine again. But I won't look after people who can afford me: I'll be a doctor for those who can't.'
He reached out and touched her cheek. 'Well, good for you, Doc'
'You don't think I'm just being idealistic?'
'The world could use a few more of us idealists. Your parents have left you wealthy. What you're proposing will let a lot of people benefit from it. I only have one problem with your plan. I don't think I want my children brought up in Manhattan.'
She paused, unsmiling, letting his final sentence hang in the air, gathering its own tension around it.
And then she grinned, dispelling it in an instant. 'I knew you'd say that,' she told him, 'and I admit that, for a while, it was a hurdle I couldn't clear. I love my kids, Bob, just as much as you do, and I don't want to be parted from them. But neither do I want them to be caught in the middle of a great adversarial battle between you and me… one which I might not win… so I'm prepared to negotiate. I recognise that fathers have rights too and, damn it, obligations as well. I made you a promise in Florida: I said that, whatever happened between us, the children would be educated as we've planned. Sure, that was before I'd had a chance to think things through, but now that I have, I'm prepared to stick to it. You did a pretty good job with Alex; I reckon you can handle this lot too, for half the year at least.
'That doesn't mean I'll give up all legal rights,' she said quickly, 'but I could live with joint custody, on the basis that they stay with you during the school term, and that they spend the bulk of their holidays with me. I'll fly them and the nanny over to New York, or to whatever resort we go to. Plus, I'll pay Trish's salary all year round, because I've got a lot more money than you, and I'll contribute half of their school fees. Agreed?'
He closed his eyes; it felt like closing a book. 'Agreed.'
'Good, but there are a raft of conditions.'
'Okay.'
'One, I have visiting rights here, whenever I choose.'
'Okay.'
'Two, until we're divorced, you don't move anyone else in here, at least not while the kids are around.'
'Agreed.'
'Three, when they finish school, they get to decide where they want to go to college, the US or Britain, without pressure from either of us.'
'Agreed.'
'Four, if we did a conventional property split, it would be a hell of a lot better for you than for me, so I propose that we each take away what we brought in: you keep this place and its mortgage, plus your Spanish property, and I keep my parents' entire estate, from which ultimately the kids will benefit.'
'Agreed.'
'Five, we'll always be friends.'
>
Bob opened his eyes again, and grinned. 'Yes, that too.'
'And six, that you will never ever put your job above the interests of our children.'
'That's a solemn promise.'
She touched his arm. 'I could argue that you broke it last night. Did you have to risk your life?'
'You mean that I should have risked someone else's instead? Do you want me to raise the boys to think like that? Of course you don't. Anyway, I could argue that the maintenance of national security is in their interests.'
'I suppose you're right. What I'm really saying, Bob, is that you're at an age and stage when you don't have to lead every charge.'
'Hopefully, there won't be any more.'
She laughed. 'Are you kidding?'
'Probably, but let me tell you this. I will do everything in my power to discourage our three from following in my footsteps. I want Mark to be an actuary or a maths professor, I want the Jazzer to be a professional golfer, and I want Seonaid to be a doctor like her mum. I will never countersign an application by any one of them to become a police officer.'
'Thanks for that,' said Sarah. 'The trouble is that I've always encouraged them to try to grow up just like their dad, and I don't plan ever to change that.'
'Poor confused wee sods!'
'Maybe.' She dug him in the ribs. 'Hey, pal, know what?'
'Tell me, why don't you?'
'All of a sudden I feel less lonely than I have in years.'
Eighty-seven
Rod Greatorix had called in sick. A wicked cold had been brewing over the weekend, and when he had wakened to find every major joint in his body aching, he had realised that it had turned to flu.
His wife had put up a show of reluctance to give him the phone when Martin had called him, but eventually they had spoken and he had agreed that the DCC and another officer could visit.
He was sitting in a high-backed chair when they were shown into his study, with a sweater over his pyjamas, and wrapped in a heavy dressing-gown. His eyes were rheumy and his nose shone like a red traffic-light. 'Don't get too close,' he warned, but the two callers needed no telling.
'Will it be family flowers only?' Martin asked.
'Very funny,' the invalid grunted. 'Have you just come here to take the piss?'
'No, honest we haven't. Rod, this is DI Stevie Steele, from Edinburgh; he's been working on an investigation that's under wraps for now but likely to go public soon. Before that happens, we've got some questions that need answering, and you might just be the man who can.'
'That's a first,' said Greatorix. 'I've never been interviewed before. What's it about?'
'What do you know about Cleopatra Murtagh, sir?' asked Steele.
'Tommy's sister? Could Andy not tell you that?'
'I could have given him gossip, Rod. I'd rather he heard it from you.'
'If you must.' The older man sighed. 'The girl is believed to be the daughter of my brother-in-law, Brindsley Groves; her mother was his mistress for years, until she died, in fact.'
'Believed to be?'
'All right, then, she is his daughter. I had it out with Brindsley at the time and he admitted it to me. He promised that he'd never acknowledge her publicly, but he said that he'd always look after her.'
'Did he make the same promise about Tommy?' Martin's question took his colleague by surprise.
'Why should he?'
'Because Tommy's his son; the official version, the father's death, that's all balls. His mother was single, not a widow, and she lived in York while Brindsley was a student there.'
'Hell's teeth!' Greatorix hissed. 'So it wasn't just a case of looking after him because he was shagging his mother.'
'To come back to the girl, sir,' Steele intervened. 'What happened to her?'
'I don't know. Brindsley sent her to college somewhere, and that was the last I heard of her. Why?'
'Because she's dead: she committed suicide in jail ten years ago, after being convicted of killing a child in her care. The verdict was later overturned.'
'Would Brindsley know that?'
'It's reasonable to suppose that her mother might have told him, she was still alive at the time ... or that Tommy might, for that matter. He was on the Groves payroll then. But it doesn't matter who told him; he does know, that's for sure. The Groves Foundation's been paying an income to her husband ever since… and to Tommy Murtagh, incidentally'
'The bastard,' Greatorix swore. 'What if those payments can be traced? If my sister ever finds out…'
'Are you sure she doesn't know already?'
'Brindsley promised she never would. He told me he supported the girl through the mother's wage packet.'
'What about your nephew and niece?'
'Herbie heard some gossip when he came home from school one summer and started knocking around with the local lads; he'd have been sixteen at the time. He came to me and, again, I made him promise to keep it from his mother. He did, although he told his dad he wanted fuck all to do with him or his business. I don't think Rowena ever knew. She's a snooty wee cow and she never mixed with Dundee kids.'
'Your brother-in-law is late fifties, sir, yes?'
'Fifty-eight.'
'What sort of shape's he in for his age? Good, bad, any major health problems?'
Greatorix laughed. 'You must be kidding. He's a bloody monster. He was an international cyclist when he was young and he still rides his bike; he belongs to the local wheelers. They go up to Montrose and back once a month, and sometimes do longer trips than that. He rides horses too, and he leads a company team in the London Marathon every year. They're his big hobbies, them and his clocks: he collects them and rebuilds them; he's always tinkering with the bloody things.'
He paused, blew his nose and then looked at Steele, sharply. 'You know, you've got me wondering what all this is leading up to, son. But before you get round to telling me, let me stop you. I don't want to know. I'd do nothing for Brindsley, but I'd do everything in my power to protect my sister so, please, don't put me in an awkward position.'
'Fair enough, Rod,' said Martin. 'That's us done anyway.' He and Steele stood. 'I think you should speak to your sister, but for now just you sit there and fester, we'll see ourselves out.'
The inspector nodded. 'Yes, thank you, sir. I hope the flu clears up soon. By the way,' he continued, 'that's a really nice path you've got up to the house; very unusual stone. I've been thinking of renewing my place. Did you do that or was it there when you bought this house?'
'No,' the chief superintendent replied. 'That's one of the few advantages in having Brindsley for a brother-in-law. He has a stoneyard, and those were cut there. You'll never be able to find anything like them down in Edinburgh: they're grey granite and they'll never wear out.'
Eighty-eight
The Scottish Parliament building and its ever-spiralling cost had become an albatross hung round the neck of the restored legislature, but Aileen de Marco had refused to join the ranks of those who railed against it. She was fond of pointing out to the critics that many of the hotel casinos on the Strip in Las Vegas had cost much more, and that in England there were football stadia under construction which were in the same price bracket, or even more expensive.
As she reached the doorway to the chamber, her papers in her hand and Lena McElhone by her side, she felt serene. In the previous twenty-four hours her life had been stood on its head and her future changed. Against that background, she faced her biggest challenge, but she was ready for it.
As she looked into the impressive chamber in which the Parliament sat, Aileen became aware of a figure by her side. 'Ready to go?' Tommy Murtagh whispered.
She smiled down at him, his moustache and his chemically assisted hair, all the happier that she had chosen a pair of her highest heels. 'Never more so, First Minister,' she replied. 'I'm going to do you proud.' She saw him start, and knew that she had taken him aback.
She took her seat, looking around, noting once more all of the features of the f
ine modern hall, as Sir Stuart MacKinnon, the Presiding Officer, led the members through the business of the day, waiting patiently for her turn to be called. At last it came.
She made her way to the lectern from which ministers addressed the house, laid her folder down and took her notes and briefing from it. 'Mr Presiding Officer,' she began, in a strong clear voice, 'I come here today, as Justice Minister, to present a bill which will make certain changes to the way in which the police service is run in this country.' As she spoke, she saw a tall figure slide unnoticed into a seat in the public gallery. He was dressed in slacks, a black roll-neck sweater and a sheepskin-lined bomber jacket; his steel-grey hair was ruffled and he looked in need of a night's sleep.
'Members will know,' she continued, 'that I was fairly recently appointed to my present post. They will also be aware that parliamentary bills are not drafted overnight. Therefore while I am privileged to be laying this enactment before you, it would be ungracious of me to allow you to believe that I am its author.'
She picked up the speech, which the First Minister's office had prepared for her, and began to read from it. 'The legislation which is set before you will confer upon the First Minister certain rights. He will confirm every appointment at assistant, deputy and chief constable rank, and he will approve all short-lists for interview. In addition, he will have the power to intervene directly in the management of the police, and to impose sanctions. It should be made clear that these powers are sought as a means of safeguarding society against incompetence and excessive zeal, and against their consequences. Of course,' she focused on the paper in her hand, 'these powers are to be seen as benevolent. They will give the police a new degree of openness and a new degree of accountability, and they will be exercised responsibly and in the public interest.'
She laid the speech down, then lifted the printed bill and waved it. 'There you have it, all clear and succinct, a piece of legislation which has the support of our coalition partners, and I believe of the Scottish Socialist Party.' She looked towards the Presiding Officer. 'Incidentally, sir, may I take this opportunity to congratulate our partners on the appointment of one of their number to the new Cabinet post which was announced yesterday morning.'
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