He glanced at the entrance door as he spoke, and saw it open.
'That's her, sir,' Steele burst out, as the woman emerged, wearing Indian costume as before. She had a small handbag slung over her left shoulder and carried a handful of mail in her left hand. They watched her as she walked up to a blue Toyota Picnic parked nose-in to the building, opened the driver's door and climbed in.
'Okay,' the DCC murmured. 'On your way, Mrs. You're probably only going home, but let's just make sure.
'Do you know where she lives?' he asked Steele as the Picnic reversed back from the building and headed off up Calton Road. He started the Freelander and followed, a safe distance behind as Mrs Gopal turned into New Street.
'She and her husband have a shop up in Slateford, sir. They live not far from there, in Craiglockhart Avenue.'
'Indeed?' said Skinner slowly, watching the car indicate a right turn into Market Street. 'Why's she going that way then?'
'Probably going shopping in the town, sir.'
'I know the probabilities, Stevie. It's the improbabilities we're looking for.'
They followed her along Market Street, across Waverley Bridge and Princes Street, then left into Queen Street. 'So much for shopping,'
Skinner muttered to himself as the Picnic turned right towards Howe Street. The midday traffic was heavy as they neared Stockbridge, and so Skinner was forced to close up on their quarry. 'Bets?' he asked.
'Somewhere close,' Steele murmured. 'You don't go through Stockbridge to get to anywhere else; not on a Saturday, at any rate.'
Half a mile later, he was proved correct. Indicating at the last minute, the woman took a left turn off Comely Bank, and drew to a halt in a space no more than a hundred yards into the narrow street, beside a grey stone tenement building.
Skinner parked the Freelander twenty yards further along, pulling across to the opposite side of the road. Mrs Gopal seemed completely unaware of their attention as she stepped out of the Toyota, stepped up to a ground floor flat, opened its blue-painted door with a Yale key and stepped inside.
'And just look at what's parked there,' the DCC exclaimed, as the door closed behind the missing surgeon's mother. 'A silver Alfa 146 was it, Stevie? Registration T197 VSG?'
'That's the one, sir.'
Skinner beamed at his Spice-entranced son over his shoulder. 'What did I tell you, Wee Man? Every so often, you get lucky.'
'Maybe so, sir,' muttered Steele, following his glance, 'but what are we going to do about it? I mean, we can't'
'That's true. I'll tell you what, you mind the baby, I'll go in and lift him.' The DCC laughed out loud at the sudden consternation which showed on Steele's face. 'It's okay, Stevie. I think I've got that covered.'
He took his mobile phone from his pocket and began to punch in a number.
Less that ten minutes later the acting chief constable and the detective sergeant stood together at the blue door. Skinner rang the bell, leaning on it for a few extra seconds as he had at the Calton Road building.
Eventually the door creaked open. A tall young man stood in the murky hall of the flat, peering out at them. He was brown-skinned, and well-built, his muscles emphasised by his white tee-shirt.
'Dr Gopal?' asked Skinner. The man nodded.
'We're police officers. I think you'd better talk to us; don't you?'
45
'I don't believe it.' Sarah gasped. 'I know I said you could do what you liked, but… you took a toddler on a surveillance operation?'
'Sure,' Bob grunted. 'I've done it before. With this one here.' He nodded towards Alex, who stood beside the table, carrying her halfbrother on her hip. Jazz was hungry; he was beginning to wriggle, restively.
'It's true,' his daughter confirmed. 'I was a bit older than James Andrew, maybe, but sometimes Pops would take me out with him if he was working on a stake-out at weekends. Of course he only ever did it if he was certain that there wouldn't be any action.'
'But today there was action,' said her stepmother.
'No, no,' said Bob, mollifying her. 'Not action. Stevie and I just decided we'd better talk to the guy, just in case he moved on. As luck would have it, we were just round the corner from Alex's temporary digs, so I raised her on the mobile and got her to come round and baby-sit.'
'In a car! In the middle of Stockbridge!' Sarah shook her head, and took the baby from Alex. 'You're a bigger kid than he is in some ways.' The three older children, sat on a row on the far side of the Bar Roma table, gazed at her, reassured by her gentle, reproving laughter.
Bob signalled to the waiters to set an extra place at their table; when it was ready he sat, between his wife and his daughter. Jazz sat in a high chair, next to his mother.
'So,' she asked, quietly, as Alex began to quiz the three youngsters about their morning at the pool. 'Are you going to tell me about my son's first day on the job? What the hell was it, anyway.'
'There could have been a connection with Gaynor Weston,' he answered. 'Some diamorphine vanished from one of the hospitals, just before her death. Stevie and I did a bit of extra-curricular work, trying to trace the doctor who was suspected of taking it.
'I didn't really think we would find him, but we did. We trailed his mother from his flat to another place in Comely Bank. We had to go in, Sarah, you must appreciate that.'
She grinned. 'I suppose I do. At least you didn't have Jazz watching the back door.'
Bob whistled. 'Hey, I never thought of that.'
She punched him on the shoulder, playfully. 'And was there a connection with Gaynor?' she asked.
He glanced at the children, to make sure that they were engrossed in their conversation with Alex. 'No. We found something we didn't expect at all.' Suddenly his expression changed; the cleft above his nose deepened, with his frown.
'What?'
'Dr Gopal's younger sister,' he said, his voice almost at a whisper.
'The kid went off the rails a while back, started mixing with altogether the wrong crowd, and got herself hooked on smack. When he found out, her father, who's a real old-timer, a disciplinarian, chucked her out, into the street — literally. He forbade the mother, and Surinder, to have anything to do with her.
'Mrs Gopal, poor woman, almost went crazy. Eventually, Surinder decided that for her sake, he would help, even if his father never spoke to him again; he would try to rescue the girl. So he rented the flat in Comely Bank, short term. Then he went round all her haunts until he found out where she was living. It was a squat, a real dive of a place, down in Muirhouse.
'One morning about ten days ago, he turned up there, out of the blue, battered her boyfriend — a real smackhead, by the way — and took her out of there. The bugger had got her hooked; he even had her on the game to fund his habit as well as hers. Gopal's had her under lock and key ever since, weaning her off her habit. That's why he needed the diamorphine.'
'Was she that bad?' asked Sarah.
'Apparently so. Surinder was afraid that if he cut her off cold, the shock might kill her. So he's been giving her decreasing doses, lengthening the intervals between each one.'
'How's she doing?'
Skinner grimaced. 'She wasn't too well when Stevie and I saw her, but her brother said that she was actually a hell of a lot better than she had been. He's almost ready to take her off altogether.'
He broke off as the waiter arrived with the menus, ordering soft drinks for the children, a glass of white wine for Alex, and mineral water for Sarah and for himself.
'So what are you going to do about it?' she whispered.
'Nothing at all. The girl was well enough to confirm her brother's story, and to say that she agreed with what he was doing.'
'But what about the stolen diamorphine?'
'Ah,' Bob countered. 'But was it stolen? Surinder's a doctor; he could say that he prescribed it in an emergency situation. Okay, he broke all the hospital regulations, but that's between him and his managers and they haven't reported anything to us.'