‘Yet you’re still able to say to me that you could execute someone, just like that, and feel nothing.’
‘Since I’ve told you I don’t feel remorse, are you saying that I enjoyed it?’
‘I hope not. I think I’m wondering whether you carry enough anger within you to make you able to do anything.’
He shook his head in denial. ‘It’s just a dirty job, that’s all. When it’s done I go home to my wife, and my children.’
‘Could you kill me if it was necessary?’
‘Don’t be daft, woman.’
‘Seriously. Could you kill me?
‘If I found you threatening to use lethal force on me or anyone else, I probably could. But that’s academic, because you couldn’t do that.’
‘How can you say that so confidently? You hardly know me.’
An expression that she had not seen before spread across his face; there was mischief in it. She had not thought him capable of that.
‘Sure I know you,’ he told her, in a slow, easy drawl. ‘You’re thirty-six years old, the daughter of a chartered accountant and a nurse. You were educated at Hutcheson’s Grammar School and Strathclyde University: you’ve got an honours degree in civil engineering.’
His smile vanished, and his voice grew serious. ‘When you were twenty-three you went to South America to work on an irrigation project in Surinam. You were caught up in a revolution, and you set up a refugee camp for women and children running from the fighting. You fed, sheltered and saved the lives of hundreds of people. Then a platoon of rebel militia arrived; the government were winning, they were on the retreat, and they were out to scorch some earth. You faced them down, and they left your camp untouched. You weren’t so lucky, though. You were raped by their commander. Luckily for you, he was one of the few men in that group who wasn’t HIV positive, but you didn’t know that until you were tested, after the revolt collapsed completely and the army arrived.’
He paused; Aileen de Marco’s mouth was set in a tight line. ‘After that,’ Skinner continued, ‘you came back to Scotland and you took a job with a firm of consultant engineers. You also became an active member of the Labour Party, where before you had only been a supporter. When you were twenty-six you were elected to Glasgow District Council. By that time you had established a charity which raises funds for the relief of refugees from civil wars, of which there is never any shortage. At the beginning of your second term on the council you were appointed chair of the planning committee. You were instrumental in uncovering a bribery scandal involving contractors, officials and a couple of your fellow councillors. They all got the slammer; as a result you’ve got some enemies yourself. They did their best to stop you getting a seat in the parliament, but they failed. That was their one chance. Now you’ve got power and you’re going to get more in the future. You’ve become a career politician. You don’t run a car, and you live alone in Glasgow, in a flat by the side of the Clyde. You’ve never married, although you had a relationship with another councillor that ended six years ago. Since then your male acquaintances have included a journalist and a musician. Currently unattached.’
He paused again. ‘Oh, yes,’ he added. ‘And confirming your attraction to the oppressed and the under-privileged, you’re a Partick Thistle supporter.’ He looked at her. ‘You couldn’t kill anyone, and you couldn’t even threaten it. If you saw someone threatened with death, you would say, “Kill me instead.” And you know what? They probably would, because people who are capable of killing usually do it when they’re challenged to.’
She sat in silence as he finished. ‘That’s me taught, isn’t it?’ she whispered eventually. ‘Does it say on my file that I couldn’t kill anyone?’
He smiled. ‘No, Aileen, I said that. My wife made a forceful point to me a few days ago. There are no angels, she told me.’ He flashed her a quick, wicked glance. ‘But there are some who can call up the Devil when we need him.’
‘And I should be grateful you’re on our side?’
He nodded, and his grin widened. ‘Very.’
She gave a snort of laughter. ‘God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re up front, aren’t you?’
‘Very rarely. You’d be surprised if you knew how few people I’d talk to like I’ve talked to you this evening.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t. You might be surprised too; the normal everyday Aileen de Marco’s as private a person as you are. I guess that having read each other’s files has given us a sort of intimacy.’
‘I suppose.’ He swung round in his chair, then suddenly looked her in the eye. ‘Tell me something. That rebel, the one in Surinam: he didn’t rape you, did he? Not forcibly, that is.’
He saw her cheeks redden. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I think that was the deal. It was the price you had to pay to save the people you were looking after. Am I right?’
She nodded, eyes downward. ‘How did you know that?’ she asked quietly.
‘If he’d raped you, taken you by force, I mean, it would have been a violent act. He’d have killed you afterwards and his men would have slaughtered everyone in your camp. You took a chance that he would keep his word.’
‘I couldn’t do anything else.’
‘Of course not. You were lucky that the guy had some sort of honour.’
‘They killed him, you know,’ she murmured. ‘The government troops caught him and shot him, in front of his men. Then they shot the rest of them.’
Skinner shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fair enough, in your man’s case. You might pretend to yourself that there was a sort of treaty between you at the time, but in truth he did rape you, as sure as if he’d held a gun to your head.’
‘I suppose you’d have shot him too,’ she challenged.
He looked her in the eye, smiling cheerfully. ‘Only if he was very lucky,’ he replied.
‘God,’ she exclaimed, ‘you mean that too, don’t you? Stop it. Turn off that magnetism.’
‘Hey!’ He touched his chest, just below his left shoulder, where his pacemaker had been implanted. ‘A magnet could do me some serious harm. I’m computer-driven, remember.’
She laughed. ‘You mean that’s your equivalent of a krypton necklace, Superman? That’s a powerful hold you’ve given me over you.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind when they’re putting you through the metal detector. “Look out for magnets!” I’ll warn them.’
‘Me too?’
‘You too.’
‘I don’t think I’ll bother going in that case.’
‘Some chance. Atheist or not, you won’t pass up the chance to meet Gilbert White. Oops, sorry,’ he exclaimed, ‘His Holiness. I haven’t got used to giving him his title yet.’
‘Are you an atheist, Bob?’
He grinned. ‘Are you still trying to find my soul?’
‘Maybe. Are you?’
‘I thought I was, twenty years ago. Now I’ve seen some stuff, and I’d say I’ve slid into agnosticism. Talking with Jim Gainer, and with other clergymen, has given me a new slant on spiritual matters. It’s made me realise that the older I get, I seem to be moving towards defining some sort of belief. Consider this. The New Testament portrays War, Famine, Pestilence and Death as anthropomorphic entities: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They’re all too real in today’s world, the whole fucking quartet, and you and I have no trouble accepting their existence. God’s portrayed as an anthropomorphic entity, too, so why do we have trouble accepting its existence?’
‘We’re shown proof of the existence of the Horsemen every day. Where’s the evidence for God?’
‘By definition, that’s where faith comes in: steadfast belief, in the absence of evidence. That’s my problem, you see. I’m a copper and so I’m trained to require evidence. I’m still searching, though . . . and I am searching, believe me. I think I see a little every time I look at my daughters and my sons.’
‘Mmm.’ She mused. ‘Maybe I should too. It can’t do any harm, can it?’
‘No
t that I can see, as long as you don’t become a zealot. Converts have a reputation as extremists.’
She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not that good.’
‘Oh, no? Should I caution you, then?’
‘Maybe you should.’ She hesitated and then looked up at him. ‘You haven’t always gone home to your wife, have you?’
‘Ahh. Back to my file, are we?’
‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No, you shouldn’t.’
‘But since I did . . .’ They met each other half-way, not pulling back. She opened her mouth and flicked his tongue with hers, pressing her body, her small, firm, hard-nippled breasts, against him. ‘If you said, “Yes, Minister,” ’ she whispered as they broke off, ‘I wouldn’t laugh this time.’
He leaned back and looked at her. ‘Aileen, when you said you liked danger, you weren’t kidding.’
She bit her lip and looked down, suddenly chastened. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me do that.’
‘I thought we both did it,’ he said. ‘And in my case, I know why. You are a very attractive woman, and I’m flawed and lustful, just like most on my side of the sexual divide. Listen to me! One minute I’m talking of searching for God, and the next I’m wondering whether I might find Him up your skirt.’
Aileen’s chuckle was low and throaty. ‘I’m not that complicated. I’m a single woman who’s just realised it’s been an absolute age since she’s had any. I know, you’re married, and I should be ashamed of myself. Crazy, isn’t it? I now feel ashamed because I don’t feel ashamed. I’m nuts, really.’
Bob shook his head. ‘You’re the most together woman a guy could encounter in a long day’s march. But would you move you brain back up to your head for a minute, please, and consider this? If you and I got involved, and it leaked out . . . as you can bet it would . . . the tabloids would feed on us like maggots on a corpse. It would finish my rocky marriage, make me a louse in the eyes of my kids, and damage my career. But as bad as all that would be for me, so would the consequences you’d face. You have places to go: you will become First Minister, as everyone is forecasting. That would all be blown out of the water. You’d be lucky to keep your seat in the parliament.’
‘I know.’ She smiled: it was soft, sweet, with an odd mixture of shyness and seduction. ‘But who said anything about getting involved? You’ve lived for years in a world that’s populated by secrets, and now, so do I. So what’s one more between us?’
75
There were so many officers required for the briefing that it had to be held in the gymnasium at the police headquarters building. They were all there as ordered, at eight thirty sharp, when the chief constable, ACC Willie Haggerty and Chief Superintendent Brian Mackie strode in, followed by a silver-haired man in a sharp suit.
Heads turned and a few eyebrows rose at the sight of Sir James: usually he was content to let his deputy or assistants run such affairs. Even more rose when DCC Bob Skinner brought up the rear, with a slender, attractive blonde woman by his side. While the first four stepped on to the dais at the front of the gym and took seats, they slipped quietly into the far corner.
Sir James Proud stepped up to the microphone that the communications team had set up. ‘I’d like to thank you all,’ he began. ‘Before we go any further I’d just like to do that. It’s a privilege to command people like you; I don’t have too many chances to tell you that, so I thought I’d take this one.’ Skinner smiled; Proud Jimmy could lay it on when he wanted. ‘I would like also to welcome,’ he turned to his left and nodded to Aileen de Marco, ‘the newly appointed Justice Minister, who expressed her wish to come along this morning to lend you her support,’ he turned to his right and nodded again, ‘and Signor Rossi, of the Vatican logistics department.’
He paused, and looked around his force. ‘In all my career,’ he continued, ‘this is, in my opinion, the most important event the city has ever seen. However, I want to get one thing out of the way at once. I recognise that Roman Catholicism is a minority faith in this country of ours. I appreciate also that there are sincerely held beliefs in Scotland that run contrary to its teachings. I’m not talking about bigotry, for I would like to think that I do not have a single bigot under my command. I’m talking about members of recognised churches, holding legitimate beliefs. I may also be talking to them. What I want to say is this, as diplomatically as I can. If there is any person in this room who feels, for whatever reason, that he or she might not be able to give one hundred per cent concentration to our task today, I’d like them to seek out their line commander after this briefing and ask to be excused duty. Similarly, if there’s anyone out there who’s not feeling up to snuff this morning, for whatever reason, I want them to do the same thing. Don’t walk out now; I don’t want anyone to feel self-conscious or stigmatised. If you’ve got a problem with this duty, do as I suggest, as quietly as you like.’
The chief’s eyes scanned the assembly once more. ‘Now that’s off my chest,’ he concluded, ‘I’m going to hand over to ACC Haggerty, the commander of uniformed operations within the Edinburgh divisions.’ He stepped back, and yielded the mike.
‘Good news, bad news,’ the pugnacious Glaswegian barked. ‘First, the weather forecast for the next two days says it’s going to be fine and sunny. Second, by the time this is over you’re all going to be bloody tired. We’ve got six events to cover, three today and two tomorrow, culminating in the rally at Murrayfield.’
The ACC ran through the detail of the timetable from the arrival of the Prime Minister at Edinburgh airport, half an hour before that of the Pope, to their departure from the same point twenty-four hours later, then handed over to Brian Mackie.
The tall, slim chief superintendent removed his ill-fitting cap, laid it on his chair and moved over to three boards on easels at the side of the platform. They showed a route map, a ground plan of the airport and a plan of Murrayfield stadium, as it would be set up for the centrepiece event.
‘I want to begin,’ he glanced across at Skinner in the corner, ‘by emphasising that this briefing is confidential and that if certain things that I am going to tell you appear in the media, I will personally hunt down the person who leaked them and subject them to cruel and unusual punishment, something far worse than duty at Tynecastle. If the phrase “nuts for breakfast” means anything to you, bear it in mind.’
The assembly laughed. A young constable in the third row raised his hand. ‘Does that apply to the minister too, sir?’ he called out.
Mackie froze him with a glare. ‘If you think I’m joking, son, ask my senior colleagues how often I do that.’ He looked round the hall. ‘Any other comedians here?’ There was dead silence. ‘That’s as well for, as the chief said, this is as responsible a task as we’ve ever faced. Okay, this is where I start to get confidential. I can tell you that there are no specific intelligence reports of a threat against the person of the Pope. However, the man who’s greeting him at the airport and accompanying him throughout the visit is one of the world’s top half-dozen terrorist targets. At this point, if he wasn’t struck dumb, our funny friend in row three might ask why he’s coming. The answer to that is that he’s the head of the government of this country and he feels that it’s his duty. He feels that if he doesn’t show here, the terrorists will have won. So whether individually we agree with that or not, as a force we have a responsibility to protect him . . .’ he paused and looked around once more ‘. . . with our lives if necessary, just like young Barry Macgregor.’
76
There had been no word of the ‘people’ who the soldier policeman had promised would visit. As he had undertaken to do Steele had sent a JPEG image of Aurelia Middlemass’s security image to Dubai. He had also given Mary Chambers a detailed account of his conversation with the general.
‘That all sounds a shade heavy,’ she had pronounced, putting his own view into words. ‘I’ll talk to Dan Pringle about it, and I know for sure what he’ll do. This one will be pass
ed straight up the line, so when your contact’s friends do get in touch, you’d better be ready to bring the DCC in on the act, and have all your loose ends tied off.’
‘There are no loose ends. Don’t worry, I’ll have a full report ready for him.’
He had spent the rest of the day preparing it, waiting all the time for the phone to ring. When it had not, he had told the night staff when he left that he was to be advised of any call, whatever the hour. Of course, he had told Maggie of the development; she had been as keen as him to learn who the visitors might be.
The mystery remained unsolved. Steele sat at his desk, reviewing Arthur Dorward’s report of the search of Aurelia Middlemass’s home, under warrant from the Sheriff. The team had found clothes, male and female, in the wardrobes, bank statements, utility bills in Aurelia’s name, and fingerprints in abundance. There were no clues to where they might have gone, but there was a clear indication of how they had been living. The young inspector found it intriguing.
The house had three bedrooms, but one was completely unfurnished. The largest of the three was en suite and in its bathroom the searchers found Aurelia’s fingerprints on the taps, toilet handle and mirror, and hair in the bath and basin that matched strands found on her clothes and on the pillows of the room’s double bed. But there was no sign of Alsina: his prints, hair and other traces were found in the main bathroom and in the second bedroom. His clothing was hanging in its wardrobe and his shoes were on a stand.
As always, Dorward’s team had been thorough. They had checked the sheets on both beds for any traces of bodily fluids, but had found only a trace of menstrual blood on those taken from the main bedroom. There was no indication anywhere that Alsina and Aurelia had been living as man and wife.
He was pondering this when his phone rang. He snapped to attention and snatched it up.
‘Front desk here, sir,’ said a woman officer. ‘There’s a gentleman to see you.’
‘Is there a free interview room?’ he asked at once, imagining that the general’s envoy might not like being paraded through the CID suite.
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