Twenty
Bandit Mackenzie had been expecting a phone call from Ray Wilding, updating him on the investigation. What he had not expected was a heavy knock on his front door. He had no doubt that the caller was a police officer, since a civilian would have rung the bell; from the weight of the thump, it was a man.
Cheryl looked at him. ‘Are you not going to answer it?’ she asked.
‘You get it.’
She tutted, but did as he asked: as she left the room he found himself hoping that it was not Mario McGuire who was standing on his doorstep. Neil McIlhenney, he could handle: he was an amiable big bloke, easy to kid, but the new chief superintendent had a touch of the evil about him. He tried not to let his relief show when his wife ushered McIlhenney into the room.
‘How are you feeling, Bandit?’ the superintendent asked, as he took a seat facing him, hearing the door close as Cheryl headed for the kitchen.
‘A bit better now, thanks. I’ve felt the flu coming on for a couple of days: it just seemed to come to a head this morning.’
‘You do look a bit puffy about the eyes, I have to say. I know the feeling.’
‘Yeah. That was probably why I threw up yesterday.’
‘It happens.’
‘You heard about it? Did that bastard Dorward complain? If he did I’ll have him.’
‘No, he didn’t, so forget it. Arthur’s well out of your reach anyway. There were other people there, including uniforms: that’s probably how the tale got passed on.’
‘As long as it was none of my people. Anyway, after that, the way I felt when I woke up I thought I’d be more use to the investigation advising from a distance than cooped up in the van infecting everyone else.’
‘That’s your call to make. However,’ McIlhenney paused, ‘it’s for me to decide whether the investigation can handle your absence, or whether I need to draft in someone else, or even take over myself. So in the unlikely event of you ever needing another sickie at the start of a major inquiry, I’d be grateful if your first phone call is to me. Fair enough?’
Mackenzie nodded. ‘Point taken: sorry, sir.’
‘Are you taking the piss, Bandit? What’s with the “sir”? I was Neil a week ago and I still am.’
‘That’s good to hear. You can never be sure how a friend’s going to handle promotion: I’ve seen some let it go right to their head. So, have you drafted someone in?’
‘Not yet. Will you be fit tomorrow?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘Then I won’t; Ray Wilding’s handled things fine today in your absence. We’re no nearer a solution, but Ray’s got a plan for taking things forward, and I want you to run with it. He’s a good cop. I’m sure the two of you are going to get along.’
‘I’m sure we are,’ said Mackenzie, in not quite the correct tone.
McIlhenney looked at him. ‘Bandit, are you all right? I don’t mean the flu, I mean are you all right about the job just now?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Could you still be thinking about that thing you and I were involved in? I know you’ve had counselling from O’Malley, same as I have, and I know that he gave you a clean bill of psychological health, but that was a pretty hairy night.’
‘And I didn’t cover myself with glory?’ Instantly, Mackenzie seemed to switch into defensive mode. ‘Is that what you’re suggesting?’
‘No, I’m bloody not. If I had to do that again, I’d be just as happy to have you alongside me. But people died there: that can affect the strongest among us, after the event, when we expect it least.’
‘I’m fine, Neil. I’ve had no aftershocks.’
‘There’s something, though.’
The chief inspector shifted in his chair. ‘Okay, if you insist. Maybe I didn’t like being booted off the Drugs Squad.’
‘What makes you think you were booted off? The boss told you what’s happening. There’s a restructuring in CID: we’re trying to create more jobs by reallocating resources; to put it bluntly we’re trying to swap chiefs for Indians. As part of that, the Drugs Squad will now be run by an inspector, and CID offices will be headed by chief inspectors. There’s no slight on you: part of the reason the DCC’s been able to do this is because you’ve done such a good job on drugs in the city.’
‘Thanks, but it hasn’t been good enough. There are still suppliers out there that I don’t know about.’
‘There are always one or two that we don’t know about,’ McIlhenney pointed out. ‘You sent the Irish teams packing when they tried to get in. There were big Brownie points in that.’
‘Yes, but there was one operation that I was trying to pin down. Now . . .’
‘Now Mavis McDougall will handle it. She’s capable, and with your pal Gwen Dell to help her, your excellent work will be carried on.’
‘They’re both good officers, I grant you.’
‘Exactly. Your old unit’s in good hands, and so is your new one, CID in Leith. Get yourself settled in there. Get to know the patch, and your team. You’re a man light at the moment, but that’ll be rectified. I’m thinking about shifting DC Tarvil Singh from Torphichen to your office, as soon as George Regan gets back from compassionate leave. He’s a bright young lad, plus he’s as big as a house. Even today that can come in handy in Leith.’
Twenty-one
Alex Skinner had spent much of her life worrying about her father, but she had never admitted it, not, at least, to a living soul. She never discussed him with anyone outside the family. Indeed, since his estrangement from Sarah had become obvious, the number of people to whom she could speak freely about him had dwindled to just one.
Her mother had been killed when she was a child, but she remained a constant presence in Alex’s life. Her grave was in a small cemetery a mile or two outside Gullane. It was neatly tended: daffodils flowered upon it in the spring, and the granite memorial was flanked by heather. When she was younger, still at school, she would go there often, sometimes on her bike, sometimes on foot. She was still a regular visitor even though she lived in the city: a wreath at Christmas, a bouquet on Myra’s birthday, in remembrance, one on her own, with love, another on the day she died, out of grief. On four or five mile-stone dates every year she would make the pilgrimage to Dirleton Toll, to the lair against the eastern wall; there she would stand, or sit on the grass if it was dry enough, and there she would tell her mum of the events in her life, the good, the bad and, on a couple of occasions, the downright ugly. But her talk would not be of herself alone, for she knew that Myra would want to know of Bob, and of the way his life was developing. As she had grown, she had told her of his years alone, ‘in exile from life’, as she had overheard him say to a friend at her grandfather’s funeral. Occasionally, she had told of female companions, but those had been very short stories, until finally she had been able to describe the arrival of Sarah in his life, the growth of their relationship and its flowering into marriage and new family. As she spoke Alex felt that there was a place inside her head that told her how her mother would have reacted to each new development. She knew that she would have loved the children, as Alex did, although she would have been ambivalent about Sarah from the start as Alex . . . it was the only secret she had ever kept from her father . . . had always been. And she would be worried about Bob now, she told herself.
She had gone to the grave that afternoon. Alone in the cemetery, wrapped in a parka against the winter cold, she had told Myra of the final split, of how he seemed to be taking it, and of the guilt that was lurking just beneath the surface. She had told her of the counterbalance of his friendship with Aileen de Marco; as she did so, she had felt a sudden wave of relief flow through her as if it had come from the ground on which she stood.
But there was something else, she knew it, something lying underneath it all, gnawing at him, something that had happened to him or was going to happen. She had seen it in his eyes the night before as they had dined: he had
