One of the jobs that I’d been offered by Clive Graham, Scotland’s First Minister, in an attempt to keep me in the service, was as head of a Major Incident Agency, a body that would operate not as part of but alongside the national police force. The idea was that I would form a team of elite detective officers that would provide an added investigative resource in the most serious crimes.
I’d turned it down, because it was a recipe for conflict with Andy Martin from day one, but right at that moment, I wished that I’d accepted.
More than anything else, as I left that shopping mall I wanted to drive back to Gullane, go into the primary school and give my daughter a hug, but that would have raised too many eyebrows, Seonaid’s among them.
Instead I went to my office in Fountainbridge, and turned on the journalistic instincts that I’d developed since I’d taken the InterMedia job. I went to see June Crampsey, and I told her what had happened and how the child’s body had come to be found, without saying that I was the one who’d done the finding.
The other details I omitted were the car’s registration number and its owner’s name and address. That was privileged information; plus I didn’t want her crime reporter getting in the way of the crucial early stages of a murder inquiry.
That done, I sat behind my desk for an hour, doing my best to pass the time usefully, until I was ready to take a taxi to my lunch date with Higgins, a blast from my past, to use his own words.
‘Your boat?’ I echoed, feeling an involuntary frown knot my eyebrows, and a sudden flash of anxiety grip my stomach.
He started to turn, as if to face me, then seemed to think better of it. Resuming his inspection of the grey February morning, he nodded. ‘Yes. It was taken from its mooring in the Gareloch.’
‘Run that past me again,’ I said. ‘We’ve just come through the worst spell of winter weather since God was a boy. Who in their right mind would steal a yacht in all that? Are you sure it didn’t just sink?’
‘No, no; it’s been missing for a while, since early last October. The police have been looking for it ever since, but now it seems they’ve given it up as a bad job. I had a visit from a senior bod a couple of weeks ago. She gave me the pro forma chat about priorities, budgets and all that crap,’ he snapped, his tone full of anger, ‘then she told me that they’ve closed the active investigation.’
‘That’s too bad,’ I responded. I understood his frustration and did my best to sound sympathetic, although it was a judgement call that I’d probably have backed, if it had been referred to me . . . as it might have been, for I was in my last few days as Strathclyde chief constable.
‘What about your insurers?’ I asked.
Finally he did step away from the window, limping over to a tub chair at the coffee table where I was seated, and slumping into it. ‘My bloody insurers?’ he moaned. ‘Given the value of the vessel, I’d have expected them to employ their own investigators, but no, they said that there is no recognised independent expert in pursuing this type of theft, so they elected to leave it in the hands of the police.
‘However, they did appoint a maritime lawyer to look into the circumstances of the theft. He looked at the boathouse, interviewed me and then reported back to the insurance company.
‘On the basis of what he said, they’ve now offered me a fraction of its value in settlement, only one million against the insured value of five million sterling. They’re claiming negligence on my part, saying that the alarm system wasn’t adequate. I could fight them, of course, and my legal advice is that I’d get some sort of a result, but that’s not the point! I want the damn thing back!’
‘Look,’ I began, then paused, trying to work out how best to explain to him that if the investigation had been thorough and the combined police and marine services, nationally and possibly internationally as well, hadn’t been able to find his missing vessel, then he’d better get ready to sue that insurance company.
I was about to tell him as much, when a memory broke in and overrode everything.
‘Hold on!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve seen it. I know where it was taken!’
Five
Yes, there is indeed history between Eden Higgins and me. It stretches back twenty years or so, to the days when I was the newly promoted Detective Superintendent Skinner, heading up Edinburgh’s Serious Crimes Unit, to the years when I was a single parent, widowed and doing my best to raise my adolescent daughter Alexis on my own.
That said, I wasn’t always alone: between Myra’s death and my meeting Sarah, my second wife, there were a few ladies in my life, and of those the most serious was Alison Higgins. She was a cop like me, a detective sergeant, then detective inspector, and she matched me in most ways, not least in ambition.
We were a natural couple; we liked each other, we were good together, vertically and horizontally, and our tastes were similar. Alex approved of her too; that was a prerequisite of any relationship, and Alison passed that test from the start. Although we never formally lived together, she was the only woman who had clothes hanging in my wardrobe, and whose toothbrush stood alongside mine in the mug, until Sarah came into my life.
She didn’t talk about her family much, not at the beginning. Looking back, I recognise that may have been because in those days, I never talked about mine. I was still hurting too much over Myra, and my childhood was an absolute no-go area. Thus, it was a complete surprise when she invited Alex and me to go sailing with her one weekend, on her brother’s yacht.
Anyone who watched commercial television in those days had to be aware of Dene Furnishing; it was one of the nation’s biggest retailers, with a huge turnover and an advertising budget to match. When Myra and I set up house as a very young couple, most of our furniture came from its Bathgate store; indeed, I still have some of it.
I knew all about Dene, but I had no idea that it was owned and had been built, from the ground up, by Eden Higgins, Alison’s older brother. She’d mentioned him to me, but only vaguely. On the other hand, he knew all about me. Once we met, on board his schooner, it didn’t take me long to realise that he’d had me checked out.
I didn’t hold that against him. He was a very wealthy man, and if he was on his guard against fortune hunters, it was understandable. Indeed, I felt the same way: Alex was my fortune and I knew that in a few years’ time I’d be vetting her potential suitors. (Not very effectively, as it transpired.)
That sailing weekend was a landmark event in my life, but it was never repeated. The offer of another trip was made, more than once, but conflicting diaries, or weather, contrived to ensure that I never returned to the Palacio de Ginebra, Eden’s casually named Gin Palace.
The vessel didn’t live up, or maybe down, to its name; it was a sleek, speedy, no-frills racing yacht, and when we berthed in the Inverkip marina, after our cruise to Campbeltown, I had a couple of blisters to prove that I wasn’t as hard handed as I’d believed.
Eden and I met up again at a few social events over the next couple of years, until Alison decided that being with me was a hindrance to her career. Jimmy Proud, our chief constable, knew of our relationship; he had always kept us apart professionally, and Alison came to believe that had ruled her out of the running for a couple of jobs she’d fancied. She may have been right . . . honestly, I do not know, and there’s no point in asking Jimmy now . . . but in any event, the truth was that our thing had run out of steam by then.
The split was easy and amicable, not least because we’d never moved in together. Afterwards, when she did come into my police orbit, we kept it formal . . . at her insistence, not mine, for I was never precious about rank. At work I was ‘Sir’ to her, and she was ‘Inspector’ to me, then ‘Chief Inspector’ and finally ‘Superintendent’.