something else, though. She was there the night I met Olive: I was dead scared she’d come over and do her trick with me. She did once or twice, you know.’
‘What trick?’
Mario looked at his friend’s wife. ‘The same as she did with the Spanish girl. She’d walk up to me, just as I was about to seal the deal, and speak to me in Italian. If it was Neil, she’d take him aside and whisper in his ear in English. Everywhere we went, she claimed to know the personal history of just about every woman in the place, and she’d relate it in some detail. I always tried to ignore her, but she was really good at it: she always said enough to put me off the woman.’
‘She was only looking out for you, Mario.’
‘No, I wasn’t, Lou,’ said Paula, ‘not entirely. I have to confess that I fancied him myself, even then, but I was too wrapped up in my shawl of Italian guilt about kissing cousins and all that to come out and tell him. When I did get round to it, I found that he had the same hang-ups. Then he went and married someone else. It’s taken us half a lifetime to get together.’
‘And now you are, you’re happy.’
‘Blissfully. We will never marry, we will never have children, we will carry on as we are for the rest of our lives. That’s how we see it,’ she winked at Mario, ‘isn’t it?’
He smiled back at her and nodded his head.
‘Will you live together?’
‘We’ll always have two homes,’ Mario replied. ‘But in the future one might be in Edinburgh and another somewhere else.’
‘Like Bob and Sarah,’ said Louise. ‘They have property all over the place, between them. I was going to call Sarah to invite them to join us tonight . . . Bob’s the man who gave us the reason for this promotion celebration, after all . . . but Oloroso only had a table for four left at this notice.’ She saw a change in her husband’s expression. ‘No? Why not?’
Neil said nothing, but drew his right index finger across his throat.
‘You mean they’re . . . ?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, they are, but I don’t want to talk about it here.’
‘Does it have anything to do with . . . ?’
‘It has nothing to do with anyone else: it’s been brewing for a while. I’m sure he’ll tell you about it himself when he’s ready, after he gets back from London.’
‘What a shame.’ Louise sighed. ‘London,’ she said. ‘That’s something else I have to thank him for: the fact that you don’t have to go there.’
‘Me too, I suppose. Although when he told me, I thought that O’Malley had advised him to bench me.’
‘He did,’ said Mario. ‘The boss told me that after you and Dottie Shannon had left this afternoon. He was right, too. When you’re involved in something like you were, you need a recovery period, whoever you are . . . even Bob Skinner, although there’s nobody brave enough to tell him that, now that Andy Martin’s gone. There’s Alex, maybe, but she thinks he’s immortal.’
‘Sarah tried.’
‘Then she should have known better. This London job: what’s it all about anyway?’
‘I can’t talk about it.’
‘You’re right: this isn’t the place.’
‘No, I can’t talk about it at all, even though you are my new gaffer.’
Mario picked the last
Ten
For all his years in office, Sir James Proud still found a way to travel around his city relatively incognito. He was seen so often in uniform that when he discarded it in favour of grey trousers and a Daks sports jacket, with a grey fedora in place of his silver-braided cap, he could have been any middle-aged man on a Saturday shopping expedition.
In fact, he was: Lady Proud’s birthday was only a week away, with Christmas not long after that. He was pleased with the cashmere stole and leather handbag that he had found in Jenners, so pleased that he was still smiling as he walked towards the Balmoral Hotel, on the stroke of midday.
The doorman was one of the few who would recognise him in any guise, but he was also discreet and confined his greeting to a murmured ‘Good morning, sir,’ as he ushered him into the foyer.
The chief constable nodded acknowledgement and strode through the Victorian hallway to the Palm Court, which lay beyond. Not unexpectedly on a Saturday, it was full: equally predictably, almost all of the customers were ladies, many of them with Jenners bags like his own.
‘Mrs Friend’s table, please,’ he asked the young waitress, who approached him as he stood in the doorway.
‘Certainly, sir. She’s over there in the corner.’
As Proud followed her pointing finger, he saw that he had been spotted. Trudi Friend was on her feet, looking towards him, smiling, a little uncertainly. He judged her to be around fifty; she was tall, tanned and attractive, if a little busty, in her close-fitting jacket. He thanked the girl and made his way across between the busy tables, hardly drawing a glance.
‘Sir James?’
‘Yes, sit down, please, Mrs Friend.’ A lock of lustrous brown hair fell across her forehead as they shook hands. She smoothed it carefully back into place as she resumed her seat. As he looked at her, he realised that her skin tone was natural, rather than acquired on a Caribbean holiday or on a sunbed. The waitress had followed him over. ‘Have you ordered?’ he asked.
‘No, but I was only going to have coffee.’
He tried to pinpoint her accent, but failed. ‘That will be fine for me too,’ he told the server, ‘and some shortbread as well, I think.’
‘That’s automatic, sir,’ she replied, then turned and headed for the kitchen doorway, next to the bar.
‘It’s very good of you to see me,’ said Trudi Friend.
‘I’m intrigued,’ he told her. ‘You’ve pushed a curiosity button that I’d forgotten I had. People who phone me normally want me to approve things. They rarely ask me things, and they never bring me mysteries.’
She frowned. ‘It’s just that, I’m afraid . . . a bit of a mystery.’
‘You haven’t seen your mother for forty-one years, you told me.’
‘Longer than that, I’m afraid; I’ve never seen her, not that I could possibly remember, at any rate. I was a Barnardo’s baby, Sir James. My mother had me when she was nineteen, and she christened me Gertrude. She was unmarried, and my father’s name doesn’t appear on my birth certificate. The only thing I know about him is that he was Mauritian. That’s what she told the Barnardo’s people, when she gave me up for adoption.’
‘What do you know about her?’
‘I know that her name was Annabelle Gentle; she’ll be seventy years old now.’
‘If she’s still alive,’ said Proud, softly.
‘I believe that she is. I’ve done some genealogical research; that is I paid someone to do it for me. She was born in Inverurie. My grandfather, John Gentle, was a railwayman and my grandmother, Rosina Bell, was a seamstress. They’re both dead, as you’d probably expect.’
The chief constable waited while the fresh-faced young waitress placed their coffee and shortbread biscuits on the table. ‘When was this research done?’ he asked.
‘Within the last month.’
‘Then the obvious question is why have you waited so long to go searching for your mother?’
‘For a number of reasons. I’ve been away from Scotland for some time. When I was five years old, I was adopted by a couple from Peebles, George and Mary Strait. When I was little, I was darker than I am now, and, people being what they are, or rather, what they were in the 1950s, it took that length of time to place me. My mum and dad are saints, they really are. They’re still both hale and hearty: I’m staying at their place while I’m in
