'Uh?'
'About last night, man. About the paint-chucking. I've leaned on young Ron Morrow at Gayfield, told him it was a fucking disgrace that it happened on his patch and that Miles Grayson will be asking questions of the chief if nobody's apprehended. So now the boy's taking it very seriously. He's come up with a couple of images on video and still shots and he wants you to look at them.'
I blinked as I took it in. Truth be told, Susie and I were riding on such a high over the success of the event, and over our daughter's delight, young as she was, at seeing her Mum and Dad on the front page of the newspapers, that I at least had got over the incident that preceded it. We certainly hadn't discussed it since Miles had kitted Jay and me out in new jackets and since my hair had dried.
'Well?' Ricky demanded. 'You were the guy that wanted to see the tapes, remember. I've pulled the strings for you, so how's about it?'
'Yes, sure,' I said. 'I can put off my dialogue coach till tomorrow.
When do you want me in Edinburgh?'
There was a laugh on the other end of the line. 'You still don't realise it, do you, Oz. You're a V.I.P now. They want to come to see you.'
Once upon a time, before he met up with me, Ricky Ross had a high-flying police career, a detective superintendent on his way to one of those uniforms with silver braid all over the place, and to the knighthood that goes with it. After it crash-landed he was inclined to blame me for a while, but in truth, if he had kept his fly zipped up, he'd still have had his prospects and maybe his marriage. Those days were behind us, though, and he'd become a pal; he may not be a bosom buddy, but we got on all right. The truth of the matter is that neither loss bothered him all that much. As a security consultant he makes much more money than he ever could have in the police force, even as chief constable, and as for Mrs. Ross, he confessed to me that she had actually thrown him out before he began the ill-judged liaison that landed him on the carpet.
Over time he had ridden out the disgrace of his forced resignation. The old chief had gone, replaced by a younger model who had risen through the ranks under Ricky's patronage, and who had not forgotten it. He was persona grata in Lothian and Borders Police once again, and so I was not in the least surprised that when Detective Sergeant Ron Morrow rolled up our driveway, he was in the passenger seat of Ricky's car, a hairy new S-type Jaguar.
I had met Morrow before, on a few occasions in Edinburgh, most of them formal. He was a good guy, and Ricky rated him, which, given the climate of the time and the fact that Ricky and the new chief constable were regular golf partners, meant that young Ronnie was probably going places.
He shook my hand as I opened the door for him… we never use Ethel as a maid: as if she'd let us. He was toting what I thought at first was a briefcase but realised was a laptop computer. Ricky was carrying something too, a toy for wee Janet, who'd come toddling out of her playroom behind the stairs to inspect the new arrivals. It's funny how people who don't have kids often dote over other people's. I was like that with my nephews, at least until Ellie and her husband split up; after that I felt the need to display a bit of male authority on occasion, at least with Colin, who was one of those kids with nuclear-capable mischief in him.
While Ricky made a fuss of Janet, under the amused eye of Ethel, I took Morrow through to our office conservatory. He didn't say anything as he looked around, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was casting his mind back to our first meeting, in the police station down in Leith, and he was asking himself, 'How the hell did this guy wind up here?' Just as well he didn't ask me: I couldn't have given him a sensible answer.
I nodded towards the laptop, which was still in his hand. 'What's that for?' I asked him.
He held it up, as if I'd never seen one of the things before. I have one which travels everywhere with me; it's my interface to the real world. 'I've had all the video footage from the television and the security cameras copied on to a DVD-Rom disk; the still shots have been scanned in as well. I brought this so you could view them.'
'We won't need it.' I pointed to the partners' desk that we had brought from Glasgow. It really is big. Susie and I each have computers, state of the art high-speed jobs, each with its own dedicated phone line, and with wide-screen LCD monitors that sit back to back. I know of at least one married couple who conduct a significant amount of their communication by e-mail, but we haven't reached that stage yet. Mind you, for a laugh, we once held a video conference across the desk, using our web-cams, seeing ourselves on screen and hearing our voices repeat through the speakers what we had said a few seconds before.
When I'm away, I use that facility as often as I can, from my laptop, or from internet cafes or hotels, or just from whatever's available, for the sheer pleasure of seeing Susie's face and hearing her voice. I had tried to get my Dad to set himself up with the same facility, but he had always resolutely claimed computer illiteracy. All his appointment books and practice records are kept as they've always been, manually.
I switched my PC on and waited for it to boot up: it didn't take long.
'Let's see your disk,' I said as we waited. Morrow handed it over, in its clear plastic case, just as Ricky Ross joined us.
'I told you he'd have all this gear, Ron. He's a boy for his toys, is our Oz.'
'This is no toy, sunshine,' I told him. I sat down at my keyboard, opened an internet search engine and keyed in three words: 'Richard Ross Security.' Inside five seconds a list of websites flashed up on screen, the first in a list of several hundred thousand. Ricky's consultancy firm was at the top of the list. Next, I keyed in my own name; there were just over thirty thousand hits, my own website, set up in the US by Roscoe Brown, at the top of the list.
'Happily,' I said, 'you can also watch movies on it. Let's look at some of mine.'
I took Morrow's disk from its container, reached down and slipped it into the drive of my computer tower, in the foot well of the desk. A window opened up, showing a list of files and a folder called 'stills'.
I clicked on it and a second list appeared, files with the suffix 'jpeg'. I hit the first one on the list and it opened, a photograph filling half of the screen.
This was not a reaction shot. Whoever the photographer was, he had hit his motor drive and been lucky; the paint was in mid-air, heading for Jay and me, as I put myself in Susie's way, and my minder put himself in mine. I looked at the crowd; there was a glimpse of an outstretched arm emerging from a throng of people, some of whose mouths were beginning to drop open as they realised what was happening.
'That one's no use,' said Ronnie. 'This is the only really clear one.'
He reached over, took my mouse and clicked on an icon half-way down the list; a new image formed on screen in an instant. This time a face could be seen behind the outstretched arm, but the photograph seemed to have been blown up so much that it was grainy and unrecognisable.
I peered at it, but it told me only one thing. 'It's a woman, isn't it?'
'Correct,' Detective Sergeant Morrow concurred. 'Any ideas?'
I looked back at him, over my shoulder. 'You must be joking. That could be my sister and I still wouldn't recognise her from that. Can't we look at it from a shorter perspective?'
'That's the best we can do with it. It was taken on a telephoto lens.'
He moved the mouse again. 'Let's look at the video clips.'
We had to wait for a few more seconds for the Windows Media Player software to open and load up. 'This is BBC,' Ronnie murmured, as the clip began to run. A ribbon at the foot of the screen within my screen told me that it was twenty seconds' worth. I looked and there we were, Susie and Oz, she sparkling in her designer dress, he smiling and waving to the crowd. We moved sedately along the red carpet, Jay Yuille a pace behind, and then it happened. I saw myself react as the paint was chucked, turning instinctively to cover Susie. I saw Jay do his job by putting himself in the way of the threat. I had the feeling that if it had been a bullet, or flying acid, he would have done exactly the same thing.
I was so busy looking at myself that I didn't pay any attention to the crowd. So I stopped the clip, reset it, and started again. This time I did as I was supposed to; this time I was staring intently at the people lined behind the barrier as the paint began to fly. As it did, I clicked on the pause sign and froze the image. The camera angle gave me a good view of the spectators, I looked at their faces one by one, but saw only shock begin to register in their expressions as they began to realise what was happening. Then I saw the arm again, outstretched as it had been in the still shot. I looked for the face behind it, but it was hidden from my sight by those in front. I hit the play button again and let the clip run on to its conclusion. The arm had been withdrawing. It disappeared into the throng, there was movement and then the clip ended.
I went to the ribbon and scrolled back, letting it run again, but looking at the timer and stopping it once more,
