back in Scotland.’
She smiled. ‘Okay, but in a few years you’ll be eligible for retirement on a pretty good pension. I could do consultancy and locum work during the school terms and we could spend all of the holidays out here.
‘You could write your memoirs.’
His roar of laughter was so loud that it startled the walkers around them, and made Mark pause on his roller-blades to look over his shoulder. At his back, he felt Jazz stir.
‘That will be right,’ he retorted. ‘The things that would make my memoirs a best-seller are the very things that I couldn’t include in them. If I ever wrote about crime, it would have to be fiction, like that guy we know back in Gullane.
‘Mind you, from what I hear there isn’t too much money in that.’
She looked up at him as they walked. ‘I’m half serious, you know,’ she whispered, in her gentle New York drawl. ‘I just want us to be as happy as we possibly can be.’
‘I know that. And the way to that is for you to be what you are, and for me to be what I am, not for us to deny our natures. I promise you this, though, my darling. As soon as I know I’m past my sell-by date as a copper, I’ll go. I’m not implying that Jimmy’s past it . . . he’s the best Chief Constable in the land, by miles . . . but I’ve got no wish to hang on for the silver uniform and the knighthood.’
Sarah’s arm tightened around his waist. ‘You don’t know how good a Chief Constable you’d be until you’ve tried it. I’ve no doubt that you’d be brilliant. The Strathclyde job’s coming up soon, isn’t it?’
‘Christ,’ he gasped. ‘One minute you want me to retire, the next you want me to go after Jock Govan’s job. I can tell you that is something I definitely will not do. If I become a Chief anywhere, it’ll be in succession to Jimmy. My role with the Secretary of State, even though I’ve chucked it, gave me special eligibility.’
Sarah’s face fell into shadow as they passed under another umbrella of trees on the wide red walkway. ‘Do you regret not staying on in that job, even though you were asked?’
‘Not for one second. I’ve had a bellyful of the duplicity of politicians.’ Then suddenly and conspiratorially, Skinner smiled. ‘But let me tell you a secret. I’ve been asked to keep my links with MI5 and the security service. That’s where the real advantage lies.’
‘You so-and-so! You never said.’
He nodded. ‘That’s true. Mind you, now I have told you, I’ll have to kill you.’
For a split-second, she frowned at his joke. ‘Hey, coming from you, that ain’t so funny.’
‘See what I mean about my memoirs then? Now, change of subject. Where do you want to eat tonight?’
They strolled on together, Bob, Sarah and their boys, along the last kilometre of the walkway, until they reached the headless statue which marked its limit. Directly across the street they climbed the one hundred steps which took them up to Puig Pedro, Mark counting every one out loud. Sarah’s legs were still aching when finally they reached their villa.
Jazz was still asleep in the carrier as Bob eased it from his shoulders. ‘I’ll just put him in his cot,’ he whispered.
‘Yeah,’ said his wife. ‘While he still fits it. I may take a snooze too, if you and Mark want to play in the pool for a bit.’
She kicked off her shoes in the hallway and wandered into their big living area.
Sarah had always objected to mobile phones on holiday. However she had agreed to a fax being installed in the villa. ‘For emergencies only, remember.’
When Bob came into the living room, bare-chested and barefoot, she was standing facing the door. Her hazel eyes were narrowed and the laugh-lines around them showed white against her tan. There was an expression of pain on her face.
Without a word she handed him a single sheet of fax paper, and watched his face grow first shocked, then dark with anger as he read. When he looked up at her, the question was asked and the answer given without a single word being exchanged.
‘I’ll begin packing,’ she said. ‘You explain to Mark.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘We’ll take the Channel Tunnel. That way we can be home in twenty-four hours.’
10
Like many policemen, even of the most senior rank, Sir James Proud was wary of the press.
Dislike was too strong a word to describe his attitude; he was shrewd enough to appreciate the role of newspapers and the electronic media in shaping public perceptions of his force and its effectiveness. For that reason he had always been assiduous in maintaining friendly working relationships with editors and proprietors.
However, facing a mass of hungry hacks across a table was another matter entirely. There was something about their collective attitude which made him feel as if he was in the centre of a pack of predators, every one with his scent in their nostrils, every one waiting to fire questions with teeth in them.
Proud Jimmy could not be described as shy, nor nervous. He feared no man, except, privately, Bob Skinner, when aroused to a rage. But it was in his nature to measure his words, and to weigh his reply to every question put to him. He envied his deputy and his Head of CID their calm assurance in media briefings, knowing that while they always seemed confident and assured, invariably he presented an image of hesitancy and stiffness.
He had once heard himself referred to as Pinocchio in a whispered aside by a journalist after a briefing, and he had never forgotten it.
Nevertheless, there were some situations in which he could not delegate the responsibility of facing the press, and the early evening gathering in Galashiels which he faced now was surely one of them.
The Chief Constable sat alone at the black-covered table, set up in the canteen of the small, country police office, having declined Andy Martin’s offer to accompany him in the briefing. ‘No, son,’ he had said, ‘it wouldn’t be right for me to be seen to be leaning on anyone at a time like this.’
The wall behind him was bare and shabby, but he had refused to allow Alan Royston, the force media relations manager, to erect the portable backdrop which he had brought with him from Edinburgh. ‘No slogans, Alan. Not this time.’
He picked up the statement which he had written half an hour earlier, glanced at his audience, and at the array of microphones on the table before him and began to read.
‘At twelve-thirty-five this afternoon three men entered the Royal Bank of Scotland in Galashiels. They were armed with shotguns and threatened customers and staff, holding them at gunpoint and forcing bank employees to hand over a large sum of money.
‘In the course of the robbery, a bank customer, Mr Harry Riach, grappled with one of the gunmen and was shot. Mr Riach died instantly. As the three men left the bank they encountered an officer of my force, PC Anne Brown. Miss Brown was shot also, and died shortly afterwards in Borders General Hospital.
‘The three men made good their escape, in a car believed to be a grey Ford Escort. The most strenuous efforts to trace them are being made. On behalf of all my officers and staff, I extend sincere condolences to the families of Mr Riach and PC Brown, and promise them that none of us will rest until their killers have been brought to account.’
He sighed, squared the silver-encrusted shoulders of his heavy tunic and laid his statement on the tables. ‘I will take questions, ladies and gentlemen.’
Every one of the eighteen journalists in the room raised a hand simultaneously. The Chief settled on the youngest face in the room, a girl in the front row. She looked barely out of her teens, and she was ghostly pale. ‘Yes, miss,’ he offered, kindly.
‘Alice Collins, sir, from the local paper. Can you tell me how old PC Brown was?’
‘She was twenty-three.’
‘And Mr Riach?’
Sir James glanced at John McGrigor who stood, beside Andy Martin, at the side of the room. ‘Harry was fifty- two, sir,’ the Superintendent replied to the unspoken question.
‘Was PC Brown married?’ Alice Collins asked.
‘No. She was engaged, to a young man from Galashiels, I believe. Mr Riach was married, though. He leaves a
