‘As well for him,’ the other man said. ‘I’d have fucking killed him myself if I’d found him.’
‘You’d have been in a queue. But this has nothing to do with why you’re here. So tell me why the deputy chief constable of Tayside has chosen to by-pass his boss in making contact with me directly. Your opposite number is Brian Mackie, not me.’
‘Not any more,’ said Martin, quietly.
Skinner’s eyebrows rose. ‘You haven’t quit the force, have you?’ ‘No, but I’m on my way out of Tayside. I assume you saw the circular a few days ago, advertising the deputy director post at Serious Crime and Drug Enforcement.’
‘Yes. Are you telling me you’ve applied for it?’
‘No, I’m telling you I’ve got it. I was approached on Wednesday and told that the job was mine, there and then, if I wanted it. There are new circumstances. Arnie Vardy, the director, is on long-term sick leave; he’s been diagnosed with motor neuron disease, so the Justice Secretary told his department to fill the deputy job fast. They came to me, I said yes. It was effective immediately, so as of Monday I’m acting director general of the agency.’
‘Lucky for you that Aileen’s lot are no longer in power,’ Skinner growled, ‘or I’d have squashed that.’
Martin smiled. ‘No you wouldn’t, Bob. You and I might have fallen out big time, but you wouldn’t have let that affect your judgement. Without being big-headed, out of all the candidates for the job, I’m the best qualified, given that no currently serving chief would apply for it. We both know that, and if you’d been asked for an opinion, you’d have said so.’
The chief constable glared at him, eyes narrowed. ‘You think?’
‘I fucking well know. You might be a hard-headed, hot-tempered bastard and you might have a down on me for the rest of our lives, but I know you too well to believe that you’d ever let any of that get in the way of your integrity, or make you act against what you knew to be in the public interest.’
‘So now you want me to congratulate you?’
‘That would be nice, but no. I want you to accept that you and I aren’t on different sides of a territorial fence any longer. My remit covers the whole country. By definition most of the agency’s work is in Strathclyde, since that takes in half of Scotland, but there will be occasions when I’m active on your patch. Professionally, we have to get along.’
‘We always did professionally, chum,’ the chief constable conceded. ‘The job transcends personal issues; you don’t have to tell me that.’
‘So, is there any chance of you burying what’s between us, and being civil to each other again?’
Skinner threw back his head, and drained his bottle of formerly sparkling water in a single swallow. ‘Christ, son,’ he said, ‘we were always more than civil with each other. You were my best mate once. You were going to marry my daughter before the pair of you messed that up. And it’s Alex that’s the problem. I’m joined at the hip to my kids. . not just to her, to the younger batch as well. If we get close again, you might get close to her. And that could be a disaster. That’s the real reason why I built the wall between you and me, that’s why I ostracised you, even after I’d cooled down from the stuff that happened six months ago: to protect my daughter, to protect your Karen as well, and maybe even to protect you. You and Alex, you need to stay apart. You’re like nuclear particles. When you collide, any fucking thing can happen. All three of us know that, and to be honest, its potential scares the crap out of me.’
‘Not just the three.’
Skinner frowned. ‘No?’
‘No, Karen knows it as well, and she’s not about to live with it; with that and quite a few other things. She’s binned me, Bob; we stayed together while the baby was on the way and to see him through the first few months, but now it’s over. As you know, my new base will be in Paisley; I’m going to move closer to it, but Karen’s not coming. She’s staying in Perth. She likes it there; she’s even talking about rejoining the police when the kids are a bit older.’
‘Aw, hell,’ Bob exclaimed, as his reserve and his recrimination dissolved. ‘Andy, I’m sorry. For both of you. . what am I saying?. . for all four of you.’
‘Thanks,’ Martin replied, ‘but we’ve talked it through, and we’re agreed it’s for the best. We recognise that we got together for the wrong reasons, on both sides. It’s civilised, honest.’
‘But your kids. .’
‘They’re very young. I’ll be a good absentee dad, and it’ll be more or less what they’ve always known.’
‘Where are you going to move to?’
‘As a first step, back to Edinburgh. You’ll remember that I never sold my place in Dean Village; I kept it as an investment and rented it out. The tenants moved out a month ago, so I’m going back in there; this weekend, in fact. I’ll commute by train most of the time, and see how that goes. I might wind up stopping there. But I’ll stay away from Alex, I promise.’
‘Andy, make me no promises that you can’t keep. As the Tartan Army would put it, que sera, sera.’
He smiled. ‘Sera, indeed. That reminds me, sort of; I had an email from your ex the other day, completely out the blue.’
‘From Sarah?’
‘It would hardly be from Myra, would it?’
Bob smiled; Martin’s levity in using the name of his dead first wife reminded him of the way it had been between the two of them, before their lives had become so complicated. ‘What’s she saying to it?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, really, just hello, and that she’s looking forward to seeing me again.’
He stared. ‘Eh? Are you going to New York, with this new job on your hands?’
Martin looked back at him, blankly. ‘No, she’s coming here, in May. You didn’t know?’
‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. What is that woman up to?’
‘Oh dear. Foot in it, sorry.’ He paused. ‘I suppose there’s something else I should get off my chest.’
‘Go on, then, clear the decks.’
‘I’ve pinched your press officer.’
Skinner beamed. ‘Is that supposed to upset me?’ he asked.
‘I thought it might.’
‘Not a bit. Alan Royston needs a move; you’ll be fine with him.’ He rose, extending his hand; they shook. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to tell Alex about this?’
‘That’s your decision. I’m not going to knock on her door; don’t worry about that.’
‘Hell, Andy, I don’t know anything any more. I’ll tell her though. Like we said, what will be, will be. I’m off; you hang about here, if you like, catch up with some old chums.’
He waved goodbye to Mary Chambers, then headed for the door. As he stepped through it, he came face to face with Maggie Steele. ‘Bob,’ she exclaimed, ‘sorry I’m late. Stephanie took a while to settle tonight.’ She smiled. ‘Have I missed much?’
Fifty-nine
George Regan willed himself not to shiver in the cold evening air; he stood as close as he could to the floodlights that had been set up, hoping to absorb a little of their energy in the form of heat. The old quarry seemed to be a magnet for mist, adding dampness to the list of his discomforts. His new old Crombie coat was hanging on a peg in the Haddington office, ornament perhaps, but certainly no use to him at that moment, and he cursed his lack of foresight, no, his idiocy, in forgetting one of the tenets of policing, that every time you went on a call, you were partly blind in that you could never be quite certain of what was waiting for you out there.
But he kept his mouth shut, his hands in his pockets and his expression as close to normal as he could manage. He had no intention of letting Lisa McDermid know what a clown he had been, Lisa wrapped up in her parka, with the furry hood that she had pulled over her head. No, he stood, impassively, watching as the fire and rescue team worked away, cutting away the roof of the Jaguar, which had been righted and sat on all four wheels, on the uneven rocky ground. They had been at it for three hours, and still the late Ken Green was jammed in his death trap as tightly as before.