She flicked the first button of my shirt with a fingernail. ‘How much time do you have?’ she asked. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t want a quickie; I wanted to be able to dive into her ocean and swim there at my leisure.
‘Not enough,’ I replied. ‘I have to be sharp this afternoon. If all goes well, I’ll be having a very tough conversation with a couple of guys from Newcastle. I won’t be able to make a proper impression on them if I’m thinking of you.’
She smiled. ‘Me too, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to be talking to seventy-five thousand young people and have something inappropriate slip out. So? What happens next?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Could we have dinner one night,’ she suggested, ‘and take it from there? How free are you?’
‘I can make arrangements,’ I said. ‘I have someone who looks after Alex during the day. I can arrange with Daisy for her to stay over at her place.’
‘Then call me when you can fix it.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I promised. We kissed again: just like the first time. I had to force myself to my feet.
‘Go and terrify the bad guys,’ she instructed me, as she walked me to the door.
‘And you go and bewitch a million listeners.’
‘That’s the entire listening audience. We’d have to achieve a hundred per cent penetration for that.’ She giggled, and a hand went to her mouth. ‘But that’s something we can discuss after dinner.’
For all my talk of sharpness, my mind was all over the place as I drove back to Fettes. I was attracted to Mia with a power that I hadn’t experienced since before my fifteenth birthday, and I hadn’t understood it then. I wanted her very badly, but I wanted the moment to be perfect, and the timing to be absolutely right. I began toying with the idea of booking a room, or maybe even a suite, in an upmarket hotel… Gleneagles, say, and damn the expense… for the Friday following. But… I’d left it with Alison that we’d see each other at the weekend. Alison. What about Alison? We’d been straight with each other; it was companionship and sex, nothing more expected or wanted on either side, and surely that carried the possibility that one of us might find someone we really cared about. Fine. And the incident at the Sheraton? I still hadn’t worked that one out, but the one thing I did know for certain, Alison and I had two relationships, personal and professional, and she had to be treated right, on both levels. And then there was my kid. The way I felt at that moment, I had no idea how far a relationship with Mia might go, and Alex had made her feelings pretty clear about another woman… Mia had been right; I had to start thinking of her as such… moving into our house. But looming over it all was the memory of that first, spontaneous kiss.
‘Jesus, Skinner!’ I exclaimed, out loud, as I turned into the police headquarters car park. ‘For once, will you try and think with your brain and not with your prick.’
The first person I saw when I walked into the office was Jeff Adam. Instantly, I had what my very good friend Neil McIlhenney once described, memorably, as ‘a Taggart moment’. They’re rarer these days than they used to be, but when they’re triggered, they’re unstoppable.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Sergeant?’ I shouted. ‘You’re supposed to be in fucking Newcastle picking up fucking Milburn!’
Fortunately, the rock-steady, unflappable Fred Leggat was there to intervene. ‘I told him to hold on, boss,’ he explained. ‘Newcastle CID went to pick him up at our request, but he wasn’t at home, or at work. I didn’t think there was any point in Jeff and McGuire going down there till they had him.’
I felt the hot air escaping from my balloon, fast, but did my best to keep my dignity. ‘Work? What does he do, apart from being a heavy?’
‘He’s a taxi driver. Self-employed. He has a small office in North Shields; he runs a few cabs out of there.’
‘Does he have a wife?’ I asked.
Fred nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t cooperative, at first, not until our Geordie colleagues threatened to arrest her for obstruction and hand her kids to social services. A bluff, but she fell for it. Eventually she admitted that he went out late on Saturday night and hasn’t been home since.’
‘Did NCIS come up with anything on him?’
‘Oh yes. Two convictions for actual bodily harm, one for GBH, several arrests but charges dropped for lack of evidence. He’s said to work for the Newcastle big boss, a man called Winston Church… no hill, just Church. His known associates locally are Barton Leonard and Warren Shackleton who works for him in the taxi firm. Leonard used to, until he was given a nice room to himself in Durham jail, for being the getaway driver in an armed robbery.’
‘I take it…’
‘Yes. The Geordies went looking for Shackleton too; he wasn’t at home either, and he’s been missing for about the same length of time as Milburn.’
‘Okay. Good shout, Fred.’ I was left feeling embarrassed by my telly’tec episode. ‘Sorry I went off at you, Jeff. There was no cause for it. Do something else for me, please. Ask NCIS to go back into their computer and ask it if there are any known links between this man Church and Tony Manson. He says that there aren’t, and I doubt if he would deny something that he knew we could confirm, but let’s check it anyway. I’m not saying he’d admit it either, but he wouldn’t let me catch him in a flat-out lie.’
‘Andy said that Manson couldn’t help you,’ Leggat remarked.
‘He didn’t tell us where to look, but the mere fact that he was worried enough to contact a private security firm and hire a couple of ex-squaddies, that tells me he thinks he’s under threat from someone.’ I headed for my office, motioning the DI to follow. ‘Where have we got in this investigation, Fred?’ I asked as he closed the door.
‘Newcastle,’ he replied, ‘and that’s it.’
‘Manson did make a good point,’ I told him. ‘How did these guys get hold of Marlon, so quietly that we haven’t picked up a trace of it? And where did they pick him up?’
‘Could he have arranged to meet them?’ he wondered.
‘It’s a thought. What’s the last sighting of him?’
Leggat frowned, and scratched his head. ‘When he left his mother’s house last Tuesday?’
‘No, Bella said he came home after that, and then went out again. She didn’t know where, though. Pub, probably. Where did he drink?’
‘Search me, Bob.’
‘Sorry, Fred, I was talking to myself there. But there’s somebody who might be able to tell us.’ I called Bella Watson’s mobile from my desk phone; she answered quickly, as if she’d been expecting a call. ‘Do you still have your babysitter?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ she grunted.
‘Then put him on.’ I waited for the giant. ‘Lennie,’ I said, ‘did you see much of Marlon, in the course of business?’
‘We were in touch,’ he replied. ‘And, of course, he drank in the Vaults.’
‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say. When did you see him last?’
‘Monday. He was in on Monday.’
‘Do you remember anything about him? Was he nervous in any way?’
‘No.’ He paused. ‘Hey, wait a minute, he was in on Tuesday, late afternoon. He brought a licence renewal application for the pub that had come in the boss’s morning mail.’
‘But not in the evening?’
‘No. In fact as he was leaving I heard one of the barmen say to him, “See you later.” But Marlon said no, that he wouldn’t be in. He said he’d somewhere else to go… and he was smiling when he said it, as if it was a hot date.’
‘It sure was, Lennie. Thanks.’ I hung up. ‘Progress,’ I told Leggat. ‘It looks as if Watson went to meet these guys, knowingly or not. How was that meeting arranged, I wonder?’
I picked up the phone again. Manson had two lines in the big house. One was in the directory; the other wasn’t, but it was in my personal collection. I looked it out and dialled it.
‘How the fuck did you get this number?’ he growled, when he realised that I was his mystery caller.
‘Please, Tony. Did you really think I wouldn’t have it?’
