Autographs in the Rain

by Quintin Jardine

  impressive, if not new. It was made up of carefully chosen separates, like

  her own, all except the turntable from the Mission Cyrus range. She peered

  at it. 'Amplifier, power amp, CD player, tuner, Systemdek turntable.'

  She paused, and her eyes narrowed slightly. She bent and looked at the

  recordings, lined on their shelves. Twelve-inch LPs and compact discs.

  Straightening up she went back through to the kitchen and took the cassette

  box, empty of tape or label, from the rack.

  'Dave?' she called, stepping back into the hall. 'Have you come across

  a tape player through there?'

  The inspector emerged from the front bedroom. 'No. Why?'

  She held up the box. 'He didn't have a deck in his system either. I was

  just wondering what this was doing here. It was in the rack in the kitchen,

  but Ruth could have put it there. I think she must have tidied up, after you

  left her here the other day.'

  He took it from her and looked at it. 'Maybe. We'll take it anyway. It

  doesn't look as if it's been dusted, so we can always see if we can lift a

  print off it, other than Ruth's, the old man's and ours.

  'I don't know what it'll tell us though.' His wicked smile flashed back.

  'Here, maybe she had a karaoke machine in that box. Maybe the old fella

  was hooked on that as well!'

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  36

  When a man is six feet four inches tall and is brought up in Edinburgh,

  there has always been a fair chance that at some time in his youth, someone

  will persuade him to pack down in the back row of a scrum. (Today, when

  a woman is six feet four inches tall, that fair chance becomes a certainty.)

  In Jack McGurk's case, most of his classmates in his year at the Royal

  High School had been vertically disadvantaged, and so, in his penultimate year, he had been pitched into the second row of the scrum and the middle

  of the line-out.

  He had done well in schools rugby, not because of any inborn technical

  skills, but because his natural aptitude for violence in close-quarter

  situations, particularly those on the blind side of the referee, quickly had

  earned him a reputation which had made most opponents back off.

  Unfortunately he had carried this trait with him into senior rugby; his

  career had come to an end before his nineteenth birthday, two seconds after

  he had squeezed the testicles of a twenty-six-year-old policeman, and one

  time Scotland B flanker, named Andrew Martin, in the middle of a ruck.

  A trip to Casualty, a bad case of concussion, and four lost teeth had been

  all that it had taken to make him realise that the game at that level was

  something entirely different, and that he wanted no part of it.

  McGurk was fairly certain that ten years on there was little chance of

  the Head of CID, even if he remembered the incident... and it had been a

  fairly powerful squeeze . . . identifying him as the culprit. As it happened

  he was wrong, but Martin was not a man to bear a grudge, particularly

  since the referee, having seen the provocation, had been blind to the

  retaliation.

  The detective sergeant's jaw ached as he wandered into Raeburn Place,

  the traditional home of Edinburgh Academicals Rugby Football Club, the

  very ground where his brief flirtation with the game had ended. The Second

  XV was the only side in action that afternoon, pitted against Jedforest

  Seconds; he had decided to go along to the match out of nothing more than

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  curiosity, to see whether Lander and his manager chum were any good at

  the game.

  The rain was hammering down as he wandered into the ground, under

  his golf umbrella, and found shelter in the small grandstand. The first half

  was almost over and, already, Jed were fourteen points down. He could see

  why at the first line-out, when Arthur Symonds, on his own hooker's throw,

  had the ball stripped from him easily by a smaller, but more committed

  opponent.

  'Look at that big lad,' a disgruntled Jed supporter moaned, in the general

  direction of McGurk, as the nearest available listener. 'He looks like a

  fucking tree stood among all the rest of them, but all he is is the fucking

  fairy on top!'

  Accies' scrum-half used the unexpected good possession to feed his

  backs, but the inside centre was tackled in open field by a determined form

  whom the detective recognised as Glenn Lander. Unfortunately the flanker

  missed an easy opportunity to turn his man and regain possession. Accies'

  scrum-half used the resulting ruck to reset his attack, before spinning a

  long pass directly out to his left wing who crossed the line and ran behind

  the posts.

  'Look at them,' roared the Jed diehard beside McGurk. 'Boys against

  men .. . and the boys are still stuffing us!'

  Had it not been for the incessant heavy rain, which continued all through

  the match, the policeman would have left at the half-time break. Instead he

  stayed under his shelter and watched the debacle until the end. A further

  converted try soon after the restart put the result beyond any doubt, and the

  home side seemed content to contain their opponents from that point on.

  Happily, the referee exercised merciful common sense; with almost

  twenty minutes left to no-side, he abandoned the meaningless match because

  of the deteriorating ground conditions. Thirty players, and around the same

  number of spectators applauded his decision in evident relief, and, as a

  man, headed directly for the pavilion and the sanctuary of the bar.

  The tall detective, who had come to the match by bus, saw the sense of

  this approach. As he hustled across the pitch, avoiding, like the rest, the

  most churned-up areas, he saw a man in a waxed cotton coat and matching

  flat cap walk over to Glenn Lander and speak to him. The young estate

  owner, his face a mask of mud, turned as if to reply, then caught sight of

  McGurk.

  At first, it was impossible to read his expression beneath the camouflage,

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  AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN

  until he grinned, said something to the other man and, as he turned towards

  the exit, headed in the direction of the policeman. 'Did you decide to follow

  us, Sergeant?' he asked, just as they reached the pavilion. He was still

  breathing heavily, evidence that at least he had tried until the end.

  'Nah! I just got curious, that's all. I haven't been to a club game since I

  chucked playing myself, so I thought I'd come along to see what you boys

  were like.'

  Lander gave a short breathless laugh; as he folded his umbrella McGurk

  glanced at him and noticed that blood was seeping from a slight cut beside

  his right eye, mingling with the mud. 'And what's the verdict?'

  'The truth?'

  'Plain and unvarnished.'

  'You asked for it. You cover a fair bit of ground, but you never seem to

  put your hands on the ball. As for your big pal Symonds, your fucking trout

  can jump higher than him. You'd be better off at home looking after them.

  'Sorry,' he added.

  Lander shook his head. 'Don't be. Our coach is going to say a bloody

  sight worse when he gets us in that dressing
room. I take your point about

  the fish, really; we should be back at Howdengate trying to sort out

  re-stocking. But if Art and I had stayed at home at such short notice, the

  team would have been light. The club could have landed in hot water with

  theRFU.'

  'Unlike your two and a half ton of trout, which by now will be in very

  cold water . . . frozen in fact.'

  McGurk shook the young landowner's hand, then climbed the stairs to

  the pavilion. Only the smaller of the two bars was open, and the lounge

  area was crowded. He stood his brolly with the rest, edged up to the bar,

  secured a pint of lager and turned away, to find Andy and Karen Martin

  smiling at him.

  'The game's much better watched from up here, Jack,' said the DCS. 'I

  didn't know you were a member.'

  'Guest,' the sergeant replied.

  'Whose?'

  He looked around. 'Yours, probably.'

  'That's all right, then. This club needs all the income it can get. This

  social or professional? I saw you speaking to one of the Jed lads.'

  'Social really. Mr Pringle and I saw him this morning; him and that big

  useless second-rower of theirs. He owns a trout farm, and the big lad's his

  manager. You'll never guess what happened to them last night.'

  Martin's vivid green eyes narrowed. 'You're joking.'

  'I wish I was, sir. But when it comes to security, these boys just won't

  take a telling.'

  'Maybe not,' said Martin quietly. 'But you tell Dan Pringle from me that

  I want an action plan from him at Monday morning's divisional heads

  meeting. Three strikes, and someone's out.'

  He sipped his orange juice, then shot the other man a curious look. 'Funny,

  Jack, when I saw you there I wondered if you were considering a comeback.'

  V At that moment the sergeant knew that he knew. 'I won't if you won't,

  sir,' he answered.

  'My days are long gone,' he chuckled. 'Do you reckon I did you a favour,

  then?'

  McGurk switched his pint to his left hand, put two fingers into his mouth

  and withdrew a dental plate, with four upper molars. 'I didn't think so at

  the time, sir,' he said, 'but I've still got a few of my own teeth left, so with

  hindsight I reckon you did.'

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  37

  Bandit Mackenzie slid a plate of four chocolate doughnuts across his desk.

  'Get outside a couple of these,' he said.

  'One maybe. My diet's working.' Dell picked one up and dunked it in

  her coffee. 'You're splashing out, aren't you?'

  'I thought I should in the circs.'

  'What circs?'

  He looked at her awkwardly, even a little guiltily. 'Well, it's like this,'

  he began. 'If we'd got a result this afternoon out of our wee bit of private

  enterprise, I'd have been able to square your overtime with the DCI, no

  problem. But I doubt if I'll be able to persuade him that an empty cassette

  box counts as a result... not unless it turns out to have Bible John's DNA

  on it.'

  She laughed, ironically. 'How does your wife put up with you, Dave?

  You're the slipperiest bastard I know. One of your saving graces is that

  you're also the most transparent. I never had any illusions about being on

  double time this afternoon.'

  She grabbed a second doughnut and popped it into a brown paper bag

  which lay on the desk. 'So I'll have this for later.'

  He grinned. 'Still beats the St Enoch Centre on a Saturday though, doesn't

  it?'

  'I wouldn't know,' she answered. 'I'm a reasonably affluent single

  woman. I prefer Princes Square.'

  Mackenzie laughed. 'It's just as well I don't fancy you. You're way too

  pricey for me.'

  She wrinkled her nose and flashed her eyes at him. 'Of course you fancy

  me. But your other saving grace is that you love your wife.'

  'You're too fucking sharp by half, girl. You could wind up on point duty

  somewhere if you're not careful.'

  He reached into a side pocket of his jacket for the cassette box. 'Here,

  stick a label on this, and get it to a technician on Monday.' But the container

  he laid on the desk held a tape, the recording of his interrogation of Ruth

  McConnell earlier in the week.

  'Shit, wrong pocket.' He reached down to the other side, found the box

  which they had taken from John McConnell's kitchen, and laid it on the

  desk beside the other.

  'Here, wait a minute . . .' He sat upright, eyes narrowing. 'They're

  different sizes.'

  The sergeant leaned forward, peering at the desk. She took the tape from

  its box and tried to fit it into the other; it was too wide by a few millimetres.

  Then what the hell is it?' she asked.

  'I'll tell you,' Mackenzie said, quietly. 'It's a video eight cassette box.

  And old John McConnell didn't have a camcorder.

  'Gwennie; that big awkward bag your witness saw the woman carry into

  the house. A pound to a pinch of shit, there was a video camera in it. The

  bitch was filming him.'

  She looked at him in disbelief. 'But why in heaven's name would she

  want to do that?'

  'Heaven's got nothing to do with this.'

  He leaned back in his chair once more. 'Yes Sergeant, your overtime is

  safe with me. The DCI will okay it for sure, when I report this to him. Who

  knows, he might even okay some for me.'

  He smiled. Til report it somewhere else too. I'm looking forward to

  hearing what Bob Skinner makes of this.'

  38

  'I suppose I should thank you, McGurk,' Dan Pringle growled into the

  telephone, 'although it might have occurred to you that it was down to me

  to break the bad news to the Head of CID that my division's on the way to

  becoming a laughing stock. I tried to call him this afternoon; I was going to

  give it another shot tonight.'

  'I'm sorry, gaffer, honest. I couldn't have known that DCS Martin would

  be there, far less that he'd see me talking to Lander from the clubhouse bar.

  But when he did, I had no bloody choice but to tell him.'

  Pringle sighed. 'Aye, I know son. I'm just a bit pissed off, that's all, and

  you're in line. "Three strikes and someone's out", indeed. Our Andy is not

  known for his sense of humour either; not when it comes to the job at any

  rate.

  'So we'd better take him at his word and have an action plan in place for

  Monday.'

  The sergeant's heart sagged at the use of the plural. He knew what was

  coming next.

  'Did you have plans for tomorrow?'

  'Well, yes, sir.'

  'Aye, well so had I. We're both stuffed then. You said there are two

  other substantial fish farms on our patch, didn't you?'

  'That's right. In Berwickshire, just north of Coldstream, and down near

  Langholm.'

  'In that case, I want you to arrange for the owners of them both to meet

  the two of us on site tomorrow, whether they like it or not. If our weekend's

  buggered, so's theirs.'

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