‘So,’ McGurk boomed, stretching his absurdly long frame in his chair, ‘why the hell are we dealing with it? In case you’ve both forgotten, CID stands for Criminal Investigation Department. The chief constable himself said he doesn’t believe that a crime’s been committed, and now we know that for sure. It’s a sudden death. Okay, someone chose to park him in a grave, temporarily. It’s not a homicide, and it wasn’t concealed. So? One for our colleagues in the furry tunics, surely.’
I picked up the phone on his desk and handed it to him. ‘Give the chief a call,’ I challenged. ‘Tell him that.’
He wasn’t up for that, so I went into the office and phoned Bob Skinner myself. Gerry Crossley, his civilian doorkeeper, told me that he had someone with him, but asked me to hold on. A couple of minutes later he came on line. I started to brief him on Sauce’s report from the post-mortem, but he knew already.
I asked McGurk’s question, but less bluntly. ‘Where do we go with this, sir?’
‘Good question, Becky. As far as you can; that’s all I can ask.’
That wasn’t quite the answer that I wanted. I’d been hoping that Jack was right and that the weird problem would be dumped on a uniformed colleague’s desk. My fingers had been crossed for that. I’m like any other punter; I’m only interested in backing winners, and I didn’t see much chance of a result with Mortonhall Man.
Deputy Chief Constable Margaret Rose Steele
I’ve stared into the pit, and a couple of times, I’ve fallen in, only to be caught by strong hands and pulled back to safety. My life has been saved twice, once figuratively by Mario McGuire, my first husband, then literally, by a surgeon called Aldred Fine, who operated on me when I contracted ovarian cancer, removed the tumour, and saw me through the follow-up therapy.
Now I am, officially, in remission; I’m not sure when I’ll be pronounced cured, but I must behave as if I am. One day at a time, sweet Jesus. Didn’t Kris Kristofferson write that song? If he did I wonder if he has any idea of how it feels to live that way. I tell everyone that I don’t dwell on it, but don’t kid yourself. I’ve never been more aware of my body. Every small twinge magnifies itself in my mind and when I go for what are still my six-monthly scans, I am nervous, right up until the moment when Aldred comes in smiling and says, ‘Everything’s normal.’
If it wasn’t for Stephanie, I don’t know if I’d have made it. Indeed if it wasn’t for my daughter I don’t believe I’d have tried too hard, after Stevie was killed on duty. But now I have her, and I must keep well for her sake; regression isn’t an option.
I never thought I’d have a child. To be honest with you, when Mario and I were going through the motions of trying to conceive I was privately relieved when my period came along, month after month. There was the possibility of adoption for a while, but when that fell through, it didn’t bother me either. That was just as well, for by that time our marriage was broken beyond repair.
He and I split up and I concentrated on my job; that I could do, very well, much better than marriage. Then out of the blue, Stevie happened, and I fell pregnant, and the world was wonderful, for a few precious weeks.
I should have known better.
I did something bad in my life, something I saw and still see as justifiable, but I crossed a line. Mario, God bless him, cleaned up after me and nobody ever found out about it, but afterwards I carried this foreboding around with me that one day, Nemesis would tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Excuse me, Margaret, there’s something we have to discuss.’
But she didn’t stop at me, that vengeful old Greek cow; as well as giving me cancer, she fingered Stevie as well. His tragedy happened and that bottomless pit opened up under my feet again, until. . she relented and I was saved.
It used to be that there wasn’t an hour went past without me thinking about it, remembering the shock, and then the horror, when they told me Stevie was dead. It was the darkest, darkest time. Having Stephanie, recovering from my surgery, and then going back to work all combined to bring me into the light once more, not least since I was secure in the knowledge that Bet, my sister, is happy as Larry (whoever he was) combining the roles of Steph’s carer and freelance designer. Being promoted into the deputy chief vacancy helped a little too; now I find that several hours can go by without me finding myself staring at the wall, remembering.
That’s what I was doing when the intercom buzzed and my secretary told me that DC Montell had arrived for his scheduled appointment.
Bob had given me his file, and, he said, carte blanche to proceed as I thought appropriate. But he’d also reminded me why he couldn’t deal with the matter himself, knowing full well, I believe, that I’d feel constrained. The man Skinner is many things. He’s bold, he’s brave, he’s brilliant. He’d have made a great soldier, but a lousy general, for he can only lead from the front; those are some of his strengths, but make no mistake, he has his weaknesses.
The one that’s quoted most often is his eye for the ladies, and I can see why, but I’ll defend him on that front. He has never made a pass at me in all the years I’ve known him or offered me a single improper word, glance or suggestion. But I doubt if he ever has with any woman; from what I’ve seen he’s much more prey than predator. The truth is that Bob’s a sucker for a pretty face, as long as a powerful personality goes with it. I doubt if he’s ever shagged a bimbo in his life.
You couldn’t pin that label on Sarah, no way; oh no, she is smart. He was the head of CID and she was the new pathologist, when she sized him up, saw he was ripe, and flashed the lashes at him. A few of his colleagues saw what was happening, but nobody had the stones to tell him.
When the marriage first hit the skids, and another scheming woman sank her claws in, briefly, that might have finished him, in every respect. It didn’t, and he moved on, until eventually it was him and Aileen, and he seemed more content than I’d ever known him. Even then, I had the feeling that he was hiding in that marriage. From what, I don’t know; maybe from himself.
His other flaws? He can be cruel, he can be lethal, he can, on occasion, be petty. He makes instant judgements about people and they are usually irreversible, be they right or wrong. That exposes him to accusations of favouritism, of gathering an elite of cronies around him, and when he was less senior it laid him open to the sniping of his enemies, most notable among them a man called Greg Jay, a former CID colleague who found out in the hardest way that it is one thing to dislike Bob Skinner, but that crossing him is a luxury nobody can afford.
His inner circle? I’m one, so is Mario, Neil McIlhenney was a third, before he left for London, and Brian Mackie, my predecessor, the fourth until he went to Tayside. The closest of all, though, is Andy Martin. Bob promoted all of us, but Andy has flown highest, to a level at which there simply wasn’t room for both of them in our force.
There are, or have been others; Stevie, of course, and now DC Haddock. You look at young Sauce and you might well think that he’s Bob’s diametric opposite. In some ways he is; he’s gawky, and he has a tendency to say too much at the wrong time. But he’s also perceptive, and he has an analytical brain. It wasn’t the first thing that brought him to my attention. . no, his daft nickname did that. . but once I could see past the air-scoop ears, I realised that a serious mind lies between them.
Recently, the boy Haddock showed his patron’s propensity for landing risky women, but he’s come out on the right side of it. From what I’ve been hearing lately, that relationship survives; the surprising thing is that far from frowning on it, Bob seems to be taking an almost fatherly interest in its health.
And Griff Montell? Where does he stand in the serried ranks of Skinner’s army? That’s what I wondered as I peered at his file, at the summary of a career that began in South Africa, then migrated to Edinburgh. And what did Bob want me to do with him?
‘Your call,’ he’d said, ‘entirely your call.’
Sure, and what have I just said about Skinner being devious? What had Montell done? Why wa
s he about to enter my office for a disciplinary interview that could lead to proceedings that would fire him from the force? He’d screwed up an undercover operation by telling his girlfriend all about it.
Yes, she was a cop, and yes, he’d assumed she was trustworthy, but the whole thing had blown up in his face, and very publicly at that. A serving officer had just been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, and the indications were that he’d defend the charge.
Worse, from what Mario had added when he’d called me to break the news, there might even be a defence of impeachment, putting Montell’s girl on the rack. Either way he’d be a witness, and wasn’t that the real problem? Cowan was going for sure, but if he was still a serving officer, would he have any career left himself after taking a hammering from the defence in the witness box? Would I be doing him a kindness by recommending dismissal? Was that what Bob wanted me to do?
What, Maggie? I asked myself. Was I to assume that he wanted me to fire the guy who, as our whole professional circle knew, used to sleep with his daughter, at least while Andy Martin was otherwise engaged?
‘Hardly,’ I said aloud. For any appeal to an employment tribunal would go public, and if Montell chose he might allege that he’d been fired for personal, and not professional reasons. It wouldn’t hold, but it would be messy. No, there was another solution somewhere. It was in Bob’s mind already, and he expected me to catch on without being told.
‘Thanks, pal,’ I murmured as I pressed the button that would summon my visitor.
Detective Constable Griffin Montell
I took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. I’m not a nervous guy as a rule, but I could feel a fluttering inside. It reminded me of an oral exam I once faced as a student. My degree hung on it, and I knew that I would walk out of that room as a success or as a failure.
Earlier, I’d had a call from Sauce Haddock, apologising for dropping me in it. I admit that the day before I’d been thinking about ripping his head off with my bare hands, but when I’d cooled down, I knew that if our roles had been reversed, I’d have handled the situation in exactly the same way he did. I told him as much. He thanked me and wished me luck with my interview, from which I guessed that it must have been public knowledge.
‘You’ll come out okay, Griff,’ he said. ‘I did.’
I was grateful for his support, but I lacked his confidence. I was going in to see the deputy chief as a serving detective constable, one who’d expected, just forty-eight hours earlier, to be promoted to fill a vacancy for detective sergeant. Whatever Sauce thought, there was a chance I would come out with my card marked for dismissal. If that happened, it would have huge consequences.
Having ‘Sacked from the police force’ on your CV is not the best reference on the job market. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to stay in Britain. I’m a Commonwealth citizen with a Welsh grandmother, but I haven’t lived here for five years, so I don’t have permanent resident status. Being chucked out of the country was my biggest fear: I’d left South Africa for a whole raft of reasons, but chief among them was my need to make enough money to support my kids from my failed marriage. If I was forced to go back there, we’d all be in trouble.
I knew the woman who was holding my life in her hands, but not all that well. She has a rock-solid CID background, but she’d been moving back into uniform and heading for the command suite when I secured my international transfer and arrived in Edinburgh. I knew her husband much better, Stevie Steele, God rest him. He was my DI in Leith, before Sammy Pye. We’d got on, and I carried the small lingering hope that his widow might bear that in mind.
I knew why I was seeing her and not the chief; that didn’t need to be spelled out. My sister Spring and I moved to Scotland at the same time and bought a flat together in Stockbridge, right on the Water of Leith and right next door to Alex Skinner, his daughter. She and I became friends, and both of us being young, free, single and liberated, there were evenings when the five-yard journey home from her place seemed too long for me to contemplate. We were discreet about it, but inevitably there was a degree of office gossip, at Alex’s end, not mine: I don’t believe there’s anyone in the force stupid enough to accuse me of trying to sleep my way to the top, not to my face.
Our closeness was over by the time Alex moved house; she never spelled it out but I learned later that she’d taken the hump with me because I didn’t tell her that I’d been married. Since neither she nor I was looking in that direction, I didn’t think it was relevant, but I made a mental note not to be so secretive in the future.
Mistake, Griffin, I thought as I turned the door handle and stepped into the deputy chief constable’s office.
She didn’t stand up to greet me, and she wasn’t smiling either. She was too busy frowning at an open folder on her desk, at some documents whose crest I recognised, even upside down. It was my career file, going right back to the beginning in South Africa. She finished the page she was on, and then looked up.
‘Good afternoon, DC Montell,’ she said. I tried to read her eyes as she looked at me, but they weren’t telling me anything. She was in uniform, but she wasn’t wearing her jacket, a small informality that might have been a good sign. . or might have meant, on the other hand, that she didn’t want to get blood on it. For a second I wondered if I should have worn mine, then was happy that I hadn’t, in case she’d taken it as an indication that I’d settle for being booted out of CID, as a better option than the sack.
She pointed to the corner of the big wood-panelled room, towards a low L-shaped leather seating arrangement, set on two sides of a coffee table. She rose to her feet. ‘When the chief had this room,’ she explained, ‘he held most of his meetings over there. I like to do the same.’
I looked at her as she led the way. DCC Steele is at the low end of medium height for a modern woman, five feet six tops, and her standout feature is probably her reddish hair, which she wears fairly short and has done, they say, since she went back into uniform. She has a figure that my sister, who works in Harvey Nichols ladies, would find easy to clothe. If she’d a mind to, Spring could make her look voluptuous, but that’s no way to think of a deputy chief constable, especially when she holds your career in her neatly manicured right hand. Neat: if there’s a single word to describe her, that’s it.
She steered me towards the seat facing the window. ‘Would you like coffee?’ she asked.
I hadn’t expected that. ‘No thank you, ma’am,’ I replied. ‘I’ve had my quota for today, I reckon.’
‘Then I’ll follow your example,’ she said, favouring me with her first small smile. ‘The chief’s an addict, and it’s bloody near compulsory in his office. Some of the stuff he brews can make you hyperventilate.’
She sat, and I followed, perching on the edge of the squab, not wanting to appear at ease, which I wasn’t in any case. She looked at me, then smiled again. ‘Relax, man,’ she exclaimed. ‘Whatever happens here, it’s not going to be fatal. I’m probably more nervous than you are. I’ve never been in this situation before.’
I took her at her word and settled myself into the well-worn leather; the tension was still there, but I did my best to hide it.
Then she was serious again. ‘Do you think you have any leverage in this room?’ she asked. ‘Your sister Spring is in a gay relationship with one of our senior officers. You have a past friendship with Alex Skinner and those of us who know her well, know also that she isn’t famous for celibacy. D’you reckon any of that’s going to get you off the hook?’
I shook my head. ‘No, ma’am. Nor would I want it to. If you’re working up to ask me to resign quietly because of it, I will, for my sister’s sake, and for her partner’s. As for Alex, she’s a big girl, she can look after herself and she wouldn’t expect me to do anything so noble on her behalf.’
The DCC laughed again. ‘Christ, you do know her well.’ She paused. ‘Do you know what carte blanche is?’
Was she patronising me? ‘French h
as reached Cape Town,’ I replied. ‘It means. . open season?’ I suggested.
‘That’s as good a translation as any,’ she agreed. ‘Well, that’s been declared on you, for that’s what Mr Skinner says I’ve got.’
The brought me up short; privately I’d been hoping that the boss would weigh in discreetly on my side. I helped Alex out of a scrape a while back, and I knew that I had his personal gratitude; but not professional, it seemed.
‘What have you got to say to me?’ she asked.
‘Sorry,’ I said, immediately.
‘That’s a start, but to whom?’
I didn’t have to think hard. ‘To the force, to the chief, and to the guys who were involved in the Bass investigation. I screwed it up for them.’
‘What’s your relationship with Alice Cowan, away from the office?’
I’d been asking myself that one for more than twenty-four hours. ‘We’re close. . or we were until yesterday,’ I added.
‘Would you say that you were a couple?’
‘Informally. We’ve never discussed the long term but we’ve been in a relationship for a few months now.’
‘Which you did not disclose to your line managers.’ That wasn’t a question.
‘No, we didn’t,’ I conceded. ‘We didn’t think we were at the stage where we had to. It has no bearing on our. .’ I didn’t complete the sentence as I realised how wrong that was.
‘Indeed.’ The DCC frowned. ‘Did you know how Alice came to be posted to Leith?’ She paused. ‘Just in case you’re thinking about protecting her, I’d better tell you that she’s resigned from the force.’
That was news to me; I hadn’t spoken to her since the previous morning, after my DI had called me into his office and ripped me to shreds. Sammy Pye’s a nice, friendly guy, which means that being taken apart by him hurts even more. Alice hadn’t appeared for work; she’d been ordered to stay at home. As soon as Sammy had thrown me out I called her on my mobile, from the toilet, yelled at her, thanked her for what she’d done to my promotion prospects and told her that was the last way she’d ever be fucking me. I felt bad about it a few hours later, but I reckoned that the bridge was burned right down to the water level. I probably would have protected her, or tried to, but her quitting had made that pointless.
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