Superintendent Rose and take it up with her. She'll probably arrange for you to swap jobs with young Sauce. That would suit me, for frankly, probationer or not, he'd be more use to me in here right now, and you'd be more use to the force in uniform, and out on the reception desk."
Regan threw him a dagger-filled look, but Steele stared him down. "What are we looking for, then?" he asked, grudgingly, and still grumpily.
"We're after anything that interviewees saw that was odd. We were so hot after the girl when we spotted her there that we didn't give these statements any more than a cursory glance."
"I'm not surprised. God talks to the girl, Stevie."
Steele grinned at his persistence. "George, enough."
"Aye, okay." He picked up a folder.
"We are looking into that, by the way," the inspector added.
"What?"
"God's phone call; Maggie's checking it out."
"She's got His number has she? Or does her old man? They tell me he's got plenty of numbers in his book."
Steele caught a flicker in Regan's eye. "If you mean what I think you do, George, you should make a point of forgetting any rumours you've heard. You don't want to mess with Mario; no way, not at all."
"He doesn't bother me."
"Don't get in his way or he will. And don't let the boss hear you talk about him either, in case she takes it personally. One of those two's going to be the next head of CID when Dan Pringle goes; you want to remember that."
"So what?"
Steele was about to tell him when his phone rang. He picked it up, with a touch of relief that the conversation had been brought to an end before Regan could say any more. "Stevie?" said a familiar voice.
"It's Jack." Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk had recently been appointed as Bob Skinner's executive assistant, during the DCC's absence in the US. He sounded excited, and Steele hoped that he could guess the reason.
"He's back," McGurk exclaimed. "It's official. The Big Man is back in post. The chief's just had me in and told me; he was reinstated by the chair of the Police Authority, after a private meeting this morning. He saw the buggers off, Stevie. I had a feeling something was going to happen today. Neil Mcllhenney called into my office this morning, and warned me to stay close."
"Did the chief say anything else?"
"No, but he had to stop himself from grinning all over his face."
"Is he back in the office now?"
"Not yet. It might be a few days before he is, given what happened to his brother, and everything else."
Steele wondered what 'everything else' might be, but he knew better than to ask with George Regan within earshot. The sergeant looked across at him and raised an eyebrow. Steele nodded, hung up and went through to Maggie Rose's office. He knocked on the door and walked in.
Before he could open his mouth, she smiled at him. "I know," she said.
"Mario just called me; he had it from Neil five minutes ago. Batman is back in action. Which means… that very soon we are going to have an anxious Dan Pringle, and maybe even ACC Haggerty, wondering what's going on with the Academy investigation."
"Good point. I'd better get back and crack the whip even harder over George."
Rose looked up at him from behind her desk; she was still smiling. "Do that anyway, but I've got some more good news for you. I've just had the result of the check I told you I was going to run with BT. I've also had Adam Broadley confirm with Andrea that she didn't have any other calls on Friday… apart from the one from God, that is. It seems that as the ads used to say, He's every one-to-one you've ever had. When He called Andrea, He used His mobile. And guess what else?
When He's not presiding over all of creation, He's a trainee solicitor with Candela and Finch."
Thirty-Six
Although he lived by the sea, and owned a villa in Spain where people cast lines into any stretch of running water, Bob Skinner had never been a fisherman. Standing thigh-deep in water, waiting for hours for a shortsighted salmon to make a fatal mistake, may have been fine for the Queen Mother, but it had never held any attraction for him. His sporting tastes were all much more physical.
Nevertheless, he knew how serious a business salmon fishing was in Scotland, and, with the royal connections, how powerful a lobby its enthusiasts could be.
Skipper Williamson was doing well out of them, that was for sure. His fishing hotel, called Fir Park Lodge… a nod, Skinner knew, to the football club that had started him on the road… was situated not far north of Perth, near the town of Birnam.
Skinner had found it without difficulty on several of the many websites that attract anglers from around the world to Perthshire throughout the salmon season. He had driven north in Sarah's Freelander rather that his own BMW, in case there was a need for four-wheel-drive capability, but the hotel was easily accessible.
He had found it without difficulty; now, sat in a lay-by on the A9, he could see it clearly as he looked down through a gap in the trees. He trained his binoculars on its main entrance, then used their zoom to pan out. Fir Park Lodge stood in several acres of ground. It was a nineteenth-century, grey stone country house, with a turret on each of its four corners. There was a wide lawn in front, and to the left a car park, in which stood two big Toyota off-roaders and a minibus.
Beyond them Skinner saw a Rolls Royce and a small white Mercedes A-class. He zoomed in again, and saw the house in miniature, on a corporate crest on the Merc's front door panel.
From the vehicles he guessed that Skipper Williamson had guests, and that they were probably at lunch, before heading back to the river.
Behind the Lodge, he could see it sparkle; his web research had told him that Williamson owned rights on that stretch of the Tay, but that his visitors, placed with him by a variety of tour companies, were ferried around to other beats and other rivers.
He sat in the Freelander and waited. The call from Mitch Laidlaw had come through on his cellphone an hour earlier, but he had forgotten it already. Now that his job was secure, it was no longer his top priority.
Skinner had done some research on Cecil "Skipper' Williamson. Through a contact in the General Register Office, introduced to him by his friend Jim Glossop, before his retirement, he had learned that he was fifty-nine years old, and that he had been married briefly in his late thirties and early forties. That marriage had ended on grounds of irretrievable breakdown. The big detective found himself wondering why.
He sat in Sarah's car with only a very rough plan of action. He had thought of simply walking into the hotel and introducing himself to Williamson, to see if that would trigger a panic in the man, but had discarded that. If the man had been responsible for his brother's death, or even if he had simply disposed of his body for some bizarre reason, it was likely that he would be expecting a visit from someone, sooner or later.
He had thought also of interviewing a member of the hotel staff. He had run a check that morning through a private contact in the Department of Social Security, and knew that Fir Park Lodge had five full-time employees, a resident housekeeper, two kitchen-maids, a waitress and a handyman. His name was Angus dAbo, and a few years before he had done time in Perth Prison for housebreaking. He wondered whether Skipper would know that.
Before he braced dAbo, though, if he did, there was something he wanted to do first. He had visited the Mother well Times, where the helpful editor had found a photograph of Skipper Williamson from his archives, the only one the paper held. It was thirty-three years old, and it had been on newsprint, one of a sea of faces in a pre-season team picture.