Rose paused. ‘Can you describe the man with Lord Barnfather?’ she asked him.
‘He was in his early middle age . . . perhaps about my own age, forty-two . . . tallish, approaching six feet, with dark hair. I think he was clean-shaven.’
‘Was Donovan with you when you saw him?’
David laughed softly. ‘No, he was off waving his wand at the water for one last time, before we went home. We were having a supper party that evening.’
‘Was there anyone else nearby?’
‘Not that I can recall.’
The red-haired detective looked at him. ‘If we showed you some photographs, could you pick this man out?’
‘I won’t know until I try . . . but I do have a good memory for faces.’
Rose reached into her knapsack and took out her business card. ‘In that case, I’d like you to call in at our headquarters at Fettes Avenue, tomorrow, at around twelve mid-day. Ask for the Head of CID’s Office, show them this and tell them I sent you. Detective Superintendent Mackie will be there will let you see some photographs. Maybe one will be the man you saw.’
49
Even in his home village Bob Skinner was aware of the need to guard his tongue at parties. During the years of his widowhood he had tended to turn down invitations, but since his marriage to Sarah he had been drawn back into the Gullane social circle, among whose number, he had discovered, the consumption of alcohol seemed to have declined with age.
Nevertheless, as he mingled among his friends and neighbours, listening to the inevitable golf chat, he kept a mental note of his own score in cans of Boddington’s Draught.
In a crowd most of whom had been together for twenty years, there were no conversational no-go areas. While he was prepared to discuss his own work in general terms, he had to be careful not to slip into specifics.
Questions were asked and were answered in general terms or the conversation was politely turned into other areas. Therefore Skinner was not surprised, or disturbed, when during a lull in a discussion of the lack of success of Scottish international rugby, one of the newer arrivals in the village . . . it was only nine years since his move from Newcastle . . . leaned forward and said, ‘Who’s doing in the judges, then, Bob?’
He smiled, as the other three men in the kitchen coughed and shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Come on, Philip, I can’t tell you that before I’ve told the Fiscal,’ he chuckled.
‘Of course you can,’ his stocky acquaintance persisted, as he tore the ring-pull from a bright red can of McEwan’s Export. ‘They’re as good as the confessional, are Gullane parties.’
Bob glanced at his watch, and laughed. ‘After midnight, maybe when most people are too pissed to remember anything. Until then at least, I have nothing to confess.’
‘Saw some of your people today,’ Philip persisted, ‘down at the Reserve. One of them even stopped me; asked if I was there last weekend. Even showed me a photo of the old boy what got done in. Since when did you start employing Africans, by the way?’
The policeman ignored the question. ‘And were you there?’ he asked.
‘As a matter of fact I was. I go there most weekends with the dog.’ He chuckled, looked over his shoulder, then leaned into the circle. ‘Golf in the morning, walk the dog in the afternoon. Anywhere but bloody Tesco. D’you know, lads, if I sit on my arse for one second, that bloody wife of mine’s at me to be doing something. DIY, shopping, anything. Can’t bloody stand seeing me enjoy myself, Mary can’t.
‘Think I’ll get a mistress.’ He smiled up at the policeman, conspiratorially. ‘You’ve had some experience there, old lad. D’you recommend it?’
As he spoke, Sarah appeared behind him, framed in the kitchen doorway, holding two empty glasses. The grin froze on her face. Two men on either side of Skinner stiffened involuntarily.
But Bob simply leaned against the worktop at his back, smiling. ‘Not as a general rule, Phil,’ he said, then paused. ‘Mind you, in some cases it can come as a blessed relief to the wife involved.’
The man’s bonhomie was shaken for a second, as he struggled to interpret Skinner’s comment. Finally he gave a forced chuckle. ‘Take that as a compliment, shall I?’
‘Take it any bloody way you like, mate,’ Bob answered, as he leaned over to fill his wife’s two glasses, the second of which was, he guessed, for the long-suffering Mary, with whom he had seen her deep in conversation earlier.
‘Yes,’ the indefatigable Philip said, his voice lower now as Sarah departed, ‘I suppose some of us might be too much for the wife to handle.’
He ploughed on, returning to his original subject. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, it’s quite a novelty, being interviewed by the Old Bill.’
‘You didn’t see Lord Barnfather, I take it.’
‘Wouldn’t know him if I found him in my soup, old son. I never see anyone I know down there. The place is full of odd bods with gaiters and field glasses . . .’ He paused. ‘No. I lie. I did see someone I knew last Sunday: chap I played squash with when I was a member of the Grange Club. Bumped into him . . . literally . . . on the path through the bushes. Didn’t talk to him, though. He just nodded and hurried off.
‘What was his name again? Christ I’m bloody awful at putting names to faces.’ He shook his head.
‘It’s the first sign of dementia, you know, Phil,’ said Bob.
‘What is?’
‘I forget.’
He reached for another Boddington’s and turned to the man next to him. ‘On the links today, Eric?’ he asked, as he ripped the top off.
‘Aye,’ said his neighbour. ‘The usual three-ball. We all played quite well for a change. Were you out?’
‘Yes, Sarah and I played Witches Hill this afternoon.’
‘Did you tame it again, then?’
Bob laughed. ‘No such luck. It took an expensive revenge. I had two in the water.’
‘Got it!’ Phil’s cry of triumph turned every head back towards him.
‘King; that’s his name. Norman King.’
50
‘How are Maggie and Neville getting on at the beach, by the way?’ asked Neil McIlhenney. ‘Are they picking up a tan, then?’
‘They are that,’ McGuire replied. ‘They slogged up and down the beach for a bit, then Karen worked out that if they just got the cossies on and lay on the sand, most of the punters would come up to them. She was right, apparently.’
‘How are Mags and she getting on?’
‘Fine. A lot better than Maggie thought they would in fact, given her reputation. I told her it’d be okay. I said to her that anyone who’d proposition you was more to be pitied than anything else.’
McIlhenney threw the Inspector a look of the deepest disdain. ‘She’s a very nice girl, is Karen, and she has excellent taste. She has all sorts of qualities, in fact,’ he added, slyly.
Mario’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘Here, you didn’t . . . did you?’
The big sergeant looked at him for a long time, in silence, a grin flicking around the corners of his mouth.
‘You didn’t . . .’
‘No,’ said McIlhenney, at last, beaming. ‘But if I’d been as pissed as she was . . .’
‘. . . You’d have regretted it till your dying day.’
‘Which would have been the day that Olive found out. Aye, I know.’
‘So what are these other qualities she has, then, big fella?’
