She smiled at me, across the table. ‘I’m an American, remember? We’re an egalitarian people.’ She paused, for a second or two. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she resumed, ‘I assumed that it would be offered, now that you’ve been confirmed as Chief Constable of Strathclyde. It kinda goes with the job, doesn’t it?’
And then she hesitated again, as a frown gathered. ‘Here, you didn’t turn it down because of me, did you? To save any social awkwardness, with you having to explain why I wasn’t Her Ladyship.’
I stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’ I chuckled. ‘You’re Professor Sarah Grace, or you’re about to be; that’s much more impressive, and more significant than being Lady Skinner, any day of the week. No, I turned it down because I didn’t like the people who offered it to me, as simple as that.’
‘You mean Clive Graham, the First Minister? I thought you and he were. .’
My nod stopped her mid-sentence. ‘We are: in spite of him railroading through the legislation to create the new single Scottish police force, Clive and I are fine. No, the knighthood nomination came from Downing Street. If that lot offered me a damn Snickers bar, I’d turn it down.’
‘You lie, Skinner! You’re addicted to those damn Snickers bars.’
‘Okay.’ I couldn’t deny it. ‘I’d take it, but I’d insist on paying for it.’
‘Aren’t you worried,’ she asked, ‘that if you’re not knighted, people will think you’ve been snubbed, and maybe even that there’s a skeleton in your cupboard?’
My laugh was so sudden and so loud that the couple two tables away, our nearest neighbours on the restaurant’s wooden terrace, turned to frown at me.
‘My cupboard’s full of bloody skeletons,’ I retorted, not caring whether they heard or not. ‘You know that, better than anyone. Put an ear to the door and you’ll hear the dry bones rattling around in there. Yours, on the other hand,’ I raised my voice for the benefit of the eavesdropping frowners, ‘yours is full of fresh corpses, still with some flesh on them, like the one you had to finish your day on Friday, before we left.’
She winced at the memory; that was unusual for Sarah. ‘Hey,’ she murmured, ‘I’m on holiday. I don’t want to be reminded about her, poor creature.’
I took her hand. ‘You know, life isn’t fair. You deserve to be Lady Grace in your own right. You could be too. They have honorary awards. Isn’t Steven Spielberg a knight?’
‘Is he? I don’t know. Anyway, I’m only interested in you. Couldn’t you take another honour instead of a knighthood? A CBE maybe?’
‘I don’t think you can negotiate with the Honours system,’ I told her. ‘Besides, if I did that, took something less than a K, it really would be seen as a snub by a lot of people, and hell, I couldn’t have that; my great big ego wouldn’t allow it.
‘Nah, Sarah love, the fact is, I don’t really approve of gongs being handed out to people simply because of the job they do, whether they’re good at it or not. I believe they should be earned. It took Jimmy Proud’ (my predecessor as chief in Edinburgh), ‘more than a decade in post before he got his. I’m hardly through the chief’s office door; I haven’t done my time.
‘And,’ I pointed out, ‘I won’t get to do it in Strathclyde either, seeing as my new post will disappear in a few months, when the new unified Police Scotland service comes in.’
‘A service which you will head,’ Sarah countered. ‘I checked before we came away,’ she told me. ‘The bookies aren’t taking bets on the appointment, not now that it’s out officially that you’re a candidate.’
‘They know something I don’t, do they?’
‘The bookies always know things the rest of us don’t.’
‘Not quite. The job’s open for applications from across the UK. There are some serious candidates in for it.’
‘Name one,’ she challenged.
‘Andy Martin.’
She didn’t expect that one. Her wine glass almost slipped from her grasp and into the dregs of her Crema Catalana dessert. ‘Andy’s applying?’ she gasped.
I nodded.
‘But why, in heaven’s name? What’s he doing that for? The whole world knows that Andy’s your protégé, but it also knows that his feet aren’t big enough to fill your boots, not yet.’
‘Then the whole world is underrating him,’ I insisted. ‘If I wasn’t in the running, let’s say I was the guy filling the post rather than pursuing it, Andy’s the person I’d appoint. He’s the Director of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and that more than qualifies him.
‘Sure, he’s been my sidekick for much of his career, so I know him better than most. However I also know the other likely runners, as members of the Chief Constables’ Association, and through having worked with some of them. Being as objective as I can, I rate him ahead of any of them.’
She frowned. ‘He’s also your daughter’s partner. Your acting son-in-law, they call him.’
‘So what? That shouldn’t bar him from applying for a job he could do, and I told him so.’
‘You did?’
‘Of course I did. I told him that he had to apply. I insisted that he did. I told him that if I dropped dead the day before the interviews, and he wasn’t on the candidates’ list, he’d be doing himself. . and the whole bloody nation. . a disservice.’
‘How does Alex feel about it?’
‘My daughter agrees with me.’ My smile was involuntary; for a second I was somewhere else. ‘She actually said that in some ways Andy would be a better choice than me.’
Sarah’s mouth fell open; she closed it again firmly. ‘Now I know you’re kidding me.’
‘I’m not. She did. She’s read the enabling Act for the new force; so have I, but it took her, as a lawyer, to point out that they’ve made a Horlicks of it, that there’s an organisational clash between the new chief constable and the new Police Authority, just waiting to happen. Diplomacy not being my strong suit, she thinks that. .’ I didn’t have to spell it out.
‘Yes, I see those storm clouds,’ she agreed. ‘And what do you think?’
‘I think that should I wind up in the job, as soon as my arse is in that chair, I’ll write my own ticket. No fucking quango’s going to cross me. If I have to, I’ll get Clive Graham to amend the legislation.’
‘Will he do that?’
‘If I ask him nicely. If that doesn’t work, I’ll ask him again.’ My smile may have looked a little evil.
‘Meaning you’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse?’ she grinned.
‘Something like that,’ I murmured.
Sarah’s good at reading me. ‘Are you suggesting that you’ve got something on our First Minister?’
‘Not any more; I did have, but I destroyed it. The very fact that I did that means he owes me one. Shit,’ I chuckled, ‘he owes me half a dozen and counting.’
‘Sounds mysterious. You didn’t catch him with his kilt lifted, did you?’
‘Not personally, but someone did.’
‘My God!’ she gasped. ‘He’s supposed to be Scotland’s Mr Clean. It wasn’t rent boys, I hope.’
‘No, it was heterosexual, and the footage wasn’t graphic, no bouncing buttocks or any of that stuff, but it was enough to have finished him.’
‘Wow! You’ll be telling me next that he was having it off with the leader of the Scottish Opposition herself.’
I turned my head slightly, and gazed out across the marina, so that I could admire the outline of the mountains against the deep pink sunset. ‘No comment,’ I murmured.
My partner stared at me. ‘Clive Graham and Aileen de Marco? He was bonking your ex-wife?’ Our near neighbours twitched again at her raised voice. Fortunately by that time I’d gathered from their conversation and his cigarettes that they were French, and so would have no idea who either the bonker or bonkee were.
‘Just the once,’ I replied, ‘if I’m to believe what Aileen told me. . and I think I do. There was drink involved, on both sides. I couldn’t bring the man down over a booze-driven and probably unsatisfactory shag. Besides, he wasn’t her only one; everyone knows that.’
‘Then it’s as well,’ Sarah said, severely, ‘that she’s gone from Scottish politics, and that you’ve cut all ties with her.’