‘No?’
‘No. I have a feeling that there’s another possibility, one that might even be more likely.’
‘You love this, don’t you?’ Sarah chuckled. ‘The thrill of the chase, and all.’
‘It’s what I do, honey,’ he replied. ‘It’s the part of the job that I’ve always loved. These days, I don’t have too many chances to be hands on, so I take every one that’s going.’
‘Including interviewing the guy tomorrow morning? Surely you don’t really have to do that. An ACC alone’s pretty heavy duty, isn’t she?’
‘Oh, I have to do it, make no mistake. Not only was he a police officer until a few years ago, his wife still is. I’ve come to rate her in the last couple of days, and to like her a lot too. This bastard’s gone and compromised her career and even put her in a situation where she had to be formally detained for a short while.
‘Tomorrow morning, he’s going to have me across the table, and if he thinks that his obligatory lawyer will prevent me from coming down on him like an avalanche, he’s kidding himself.’
‘It’s a new thing in Scotland, isn’t it, the prisoner’s right to a lawyer?’
Bob nodded. ‘Indeed, but to be frank, I don’t know how we got away with the old system for so long. It doesn’t bother me anyway; I’m at my best when I don’t say a word.’
Sarah grinned, as a gleam came into her eye. ‘You can say that again, buddy,’ she murmured.
Thirty-Eight
‘Where is ma daddy, Uncle Dan?’ Jake Mann asked, not for the first time. His godfather realised that there was no ducking the question.
‘I told ye before, Jakey, it’s all hush-hush, but maybe this’ll explain it. Ye know your daddy used to be a policeman.’
The child nodded, with vigour. ‘M-hm.’
‘Well, it’s like this. They’ve asked him to go back and help them again. Yer mum and I, we’ve been asked no’ tae talk about it, not even tae you.’
‘Wow! Secret squirrels?’
‘That’s right, secret squirrels; undercover.’ He ruffled Jake’s hair. ‘Now away ye go to your bed, like yer mum asked ye to a while back.’
‘Okay.’ He hugged his honorary uncle and ran into the hall, heading for the stairs, as if he was fuelled by excitement.
‘You’re a lovely wee man, Danny Provan,’ Lottie said, from the kitchen doorway. ‘I’d never have thought of that.’ She was carrying two plates, each loaded with fish and chips still in the wrapper. She handed him one and settled into her armchair. ‘It won’t hold up for long, though,’ she sighed. ‘Eventually, this is going to hit the press.’
‘Eventually,’ he conceded, ‘but these are special circumstances. The husband of the SIO bein’ lifted? Okay, it’s bound to leak within a day or two, but Ah’d expect the fiscal tae go to the High Court and get an interdict against publishing Scott’s name, at least until the trial begins, maybe even till he’s convicted.’
‘There’s no doubt he will be, is there?’
‘Ah’d love tae say he’s got a chance, but Ah can’t. We found the wrapping from the parcel in the car. You know as well as I do that the forensic people will find fibres on it and match them to a police uniform.’
‘It’s as well for him he is done,’ she barked. ‘I could bloody kill him, for what he’s done to Jakey; it’ll be hellish for him at school. Ye know what kids are like. I tell you this, even if by some miracle he does get out of this, he and I are done. He’s never coming back here. Never!’
‘Come on, Lottie, Scott wouldnae harm his laddie for a’ the tea in China.’
‘And what about me? Do you think he hasn’t harmed me?’
‘No, Ah don’t,’ the sergeant admitted. ‘I concede that. Ah want you to know, hen,’ he added, ‘that this has been the worst day of my police career. What I had to do this afternoon. .’ His voice trailed away, as if he had run out of words.
‘But you had to do it, Dan,’ she countered. ‘As you say, you had to do it. If you hadn’t, I’d have thought the worse of you, and so would you and all, for the rest of your life. You’ve always been a hero to me, since I was the rawest DC in the team, but never more so than this afternoon.’
Thirty-Nine
‘You’ll be DCS McIlhenney, then,’ Lowell Payne said as he approached the hulking, dark-suited stranger who stood at the entrance to the platform at Victoria Station where the Gatwick Express arrived.
‘How do you work that out?’ the other countered.
‘The boss’s description was enough. That and the fact that you’ve got his warrant card hung around your neck.’
‘Ah. I deduce that you are a detective. DCI Payne?’
They shook hands. ‘That’s me. It’s a pleasure to meet the other half of the Glimmer Twins.’
‘You know my Latino compatriot?’ he asked, surprised. ‘Bob never mentioned that.’
‘Yes, I do. I was involved in the investigation in Edinburgh that led up to the shit that happened at the weekend. That’s how I met Mario. He and I got to the Glasgow concert hall not long after the shooting. Now I find myself right in the middle of the follow-up.’
‘You were there?’ McIlhenney’s eyes flashed. ‘How’s Paula? McGuire says she’s all right, but I couldn’t be quite sure that he wasn’t spinning the truth to keep me off the first plane.’
‘Trust me, he wasn’t,’ Payne assured him. ‘She’s a tough lady. Everything happened so fast that I don’t think she had time to be scared. She was fine when we got there, shaken, but well in control of herself. From what the boss said when he called me last night she still is. Mind you, you can think about booking a flight this weekend, from what I hear. The baby’s expected by the end of the week.’
‘Is that right? That’s terrific.’ He laughed. ‘Mario has no idea how much his life is going to change. He reckoned nothing could ever slow him down, but this will. Who knows? I might even get to overtake him.’
He read the question written on Payne’s face. ‘He’s always been first to every promotion,’ he explained. ‘Then when I get one, he lands another. It’s the same again this time. I come all the way to London to make chief super, he stays in bloody Edinburgh, and gets the ACC post.’ He beamed. ‘There’s a longer ladder here, though; he’ll be struggling from now on. He’s got one more rung left in him, max, while I could have two in the Met.’
‘Good for you guys,’ Payne said. ‘I’m not on a ladder any more. I won’t see fifty again, I’ve reached my level, and I’m happy with it.’
‘Don’t write yourself off,’ McIlhenney murmured, ‘not if you’re working for Bob Skinner.’ He frowned, rubbing his hands together. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘enough career planning. You and I have got a grieving widow to interview.’
‘Does she know she’s a widow yet?’
The chief superintendent checked his watch, as they walked towards the station exit. ‘She should by now. We ran some checks on her and found that she’s not in employment, so we guess that she’s a full-time mum. The family support people were going to call on her at nine thirty, and I’ve had no message to say that she wasn’t in. It’s going on ten now, so hopefully by the time we get there, she’ll have had time to absorb what’s happened.’
‘Or not, as the case may be,’ the visitor countered. ‘It’s the worst possible news they’ll have given her. She might not be capable of talking to anyone.’
‘In that case, we get a doctor, we sedate her and while she’s in the land of nod we search the place, quietly but carefully.’
‘Can we do that?’ Payne wondered. ‘Legally, I mean?’
McIlhenney opened his jacket, displaying an envelope in an inside pocket. ‘I’ve got warrants,’ he said. ‘Everything the Met does these days has to be watertight. We are all book operators now. I hate to think how Bob Skinner would get on down here. He’d do his own thing, because that’s all he knows, and wind up on page one. . just like his bloody wife! That was a shocker; it blew me right out of my seat when I saw those pictures. Some of my brother officers think it’s funny, fools that they are, to see the big man embarrassed like that. How’s it going down in Pitt Street?’