and laid it on the table, then kissed him, flicking her tongue against his teeth, running her long, strong fingers through his hair.
He held her a little away from him and smiled. ‘I hope you’ve washed your hands.’
‘No, I’ve just rubbed them with chillies. Fancy living dangerously?’ She kissed him again. ‘Time for bed, I think.’
‘Yeah, it’s been a hell of a day. I’m shagged out.’
‘Not yet, lover,’ she said smokily. ‘Not yet.’
He stood, picking her up in the same movement with his great strength, and carried her through to their bedroom. The curtains were open, but the house stood high on the side of the hill, and they were completely private, with the panorama of the twilit sea spread out before them.
They undressed each other slowly, deliberately, as they had done so often before, enjoying the moments, prolonging them, until finally they slid, naked, under the duvet in its fawn satin cover. He bent his head down to kiss her nipples, sucking them gently, until he felt her shiver and heard her gasp. His hand moved over her belly, but she stopped him, pushing him back and rolling on top of him. Almost before he realised it he was inside her, and she was moving on top of him like a writhing snake, flexing, thrusting, squeezing him with strong hidden muscles. He raised himself up, offering all that he possessed, which she accepted, with hunger in her wild eyes.
Her hair fell over his face. She whispered in his ear, urging, entreating with ever greater intensity and excitement in her voice. He felt the sudden, hot rush as she threw her head back and cried out, he felt the pulsing as it rushed through him, bathing every nerve-end in warm oil. His hands clamped on her clenched buttocks, holding her tight against him as she gripped, released, gripped again, until he heard himself, a voice outside his body, moaning as his orgasm mingled with hers.
When it was over, they lay there for at least ten minutes, Sarah still mounted on him, recovering their breath and their senses, smiles of contentment on their faces.
‘When you come to the end of a perfect day,’ he whispered in her ear, at last.
She raised herself up, her forearms resting on his chest and her fingers interlocked. ‘That’s not what I heard,’ she said. ‘Alex called me earlier, just before she and Andy went to the movies. She was worried about you. She thought you were getting depressed.’
Bob smiled. ‘I suppose I must have sounded that way to Andy this evening. This learning to delegate isn’t as easy as you seem to think it is, my darling. Nor is acquiring patience in your mid forties, when it’s a virtue you haven’t possessed before.
‘Different people are cut out for different things. I’m not sure that I’m cut out to be a Chief Constable, that’s all.’
She leaned down and kissed his forehead. ‘Who’d suspect it?’ she murmured. ‘Skinner the insecure, Skinner the self-doubting.’ She grinned, then gasped with pleasure as he traced the tip of his index finger down her backbone. ‘Just do two things for me. Trust in the people . . . like me and the kids, like Andy and Alex, like Jimmy . . . who know what you are and believe in you. And remember, when the doubts do surface, that I’ll always be here to drive them away.’
Slowly he smiled, then wrapped his arms around her and rolled her over, powerfully, on to her back.
‘Relaxation therapy, doctor, is that it?’ He pressed his lips to hers, and she felt him begin to stir once more. ‘I’ll come to your clinic, I promise; as often as you like.’
40
Deacon Brodie left his mark on the world in ways which not even he could have imagined: in the continuing legends of his escape from the gallows . . . of his own design . . . upon which he was publicly hanged, through Stevenson’s compelling tale of Jekyll and Hyde, for which he was said to have been the model, and in the tavern on the Royal Mile which still bears his name, and upon the wall of which his story is written, to intrigue passers-by and to lure them within.
In the wake of the sensational publicity which had followed the revelation of the circumstances of the deaths of the two judges, Colin Maxwell had been less than keen on being seen in conversation in Parliament House with Mario McGuire and Neil McIlhenney, Instead, he had suggested, ‘a jar across the road, lads. lunchtime, eh?’
Like many Edinburghers in their age group, both of the policemen were traditionalists. They disliked instinctively the plasticised, made-over bars, selling designer beer rather than draught, which had proliferated in the city for a time. Instead they sought out places like Deacon Brodie’s, traditional pubs with a mature atmosphere, and with unfailingly good ale.
McGuire settled back into the bench seat, watching McIlhenney as he made his way from the bar, three pints of brown, white-crested heavy beer nestling securely in his big hands. He laid them on the table then took three rounds of polythene-wrapped sandwiches from the capacious pockets of his double-breasted jacket.
‘Chicken Tikka?’ said the Inspector. ‘They’re all bloody Chicken Tikka.’
‘Very true,’ the bulky sergeant retorted. ‘I like Chicken Tikka and I’m buying. Sling them over here if you don’t fancy them.’
With a muted growl, the swarthy, piratical McGuire ripped his pack open, leaning forward as he did and turning towards the little court officer, who sat quietly, tasting his beer. ‘Aye,’ he mused. ‘The best pint in these parts, this is. Cheers, lads.’
‘Cheers.’ McIlhenney looked at him, over the top of his glass. ‘How’s the Court today then? Any judges left?’
Maxwell grunted, his eyebrows coming together. ‘Mine’s bloody twitchy, I can tell you. He fairly rattled through the witnesses this morning. He kept looking down at the accused too, as if he was saying “Why don’t you plead guilty, you bastard, and let me out of here.” The boy’s getting the message, I think. I wouldn’t be surprised if the trial folds this afternoon.’
‘Colin,’ said McGuire, pushing the crust of his first Chicken Tikka sandwich back into the plastic casing, ‘we were very interested in what you had to tell us about Lord Archergait’s attitude to his son. From what we can gather, Norman King didn’t like his father much either.’
The little man’s face clouded. ‘That’s true enough. I’ve heard those stories too, about what a bloody awful father he was, but I take as I find, and I liked the old boy.’
‘What about Barnfather? Did you know much about him?’
Maxwell took a long swallow of beer. ‘Old Walter? Nobody ever knew too much about him. There were stories, though.’
‘What kind of stories?’
‘The kind that get the Bench a bad name.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
The little man leaned forward. ‘Boys,’ he whispered.
‘You mean he was a paedophile?’ asked McIlhenney.
‘No, no. I don’t mean children. I mean young men: above the age of consent, although I’ve never heard of one carrying a birth certificate.’
‘What’s the big deal though? There are gay advocates these days. There are gays in just about every walk of life.’
‘Aye, but a gay judge is something else. The tabloids have a field day with that sort of thing. There’s gays and gays, too. The rumour about old Walter was that he liked them young, and so he went with male prostitutes; the rough trade down in Leith. Know what I mean?’
‘Did you ever hear of him having a special friend?’
Maxwell shifted in his seat. As the policemen watched him, he ate a sandwich in silence. ‘There was a story,’ he said at last, ‘about him and old Archergait. But that’s all it was, only a story. They were good friends, I know that . . . They came to the Bar at around the same time . . . but I’m sure there was never any of that stuff.’ His face twisted into an expression of distaste.
‘Do you know of any connection between them other than just friendship?’ McGuire asked.
The Court officer frowned again, and launched an attack upon his second sandwich. When he was finished he crumpled up the packaging, turned for a moment as if looking for a wastebin, then, finding none, laid it back on the
