the other suspect.'
'Mags,' he said, testily, 'stop trying to interrogate me, will you? Lawrence Scotland is missing.'
'In that case, I have to find him. He's a potential suspect in my investigation.'
'For fuck's sake,' he shouted, suddenly. 'Leave it!'
She sat straight up on the sofa and stared at him, startled and hurt. His anger vanished in an instant; he took her hand and drew her to him. 'I'm sorry, Mags, I'm sorry.'
'That's the first time you've ever raised your voice to me.'
'And it'll be the last, I promise. Love, I keep having to countermand you these days and I don't like it; not just because of our respective ranks, but because you're my wife and I love you and not least because you're a brilliant detective and I admire you for that reason too.
'But through no fault of your own, you are way over your head in this. The Boss has told me to rein you in on Scotland, very quietly. He told me to tell you that you are still in charge of this investigation and, further, that he couldn't be more impressed by the way you've handled it. Now you have to hold your horses for a day or two.
'Lawrence Scotland is missing, like I said. However there will be no man-hunt. There will be the illusion of one, possibly, probably, but Lawrence Scotland will never be found. The way it's looking now, your investigation will not conclude with the conviction of Alec Smith's killer, but given what he was and did — far less what we know about him now — that was never likely anyway.
'I know this runs against all your training and your personal beliefs, but that's the reality of it and you have to accept it.
'Listen, Dan Pringle and John McGrigor will be going in the foreseeable future. Whichever of those divisional CID commands you want is yours for the asking. But do not shake this particular tree, otherwise what falls out might squash someone very important. If that happened, and you were in any way responsible, you wouldn't be forgiven.'
'What do you mean?' She frowned, drawing back from him again.
'Mags, — when he was in my job, Alec Smith did certain things that he shouldn't have. No-one knew about them then, apart from his side-kick, and no-one outside our very small group must ever know about them; otherwise questions will be asked. Questions like, 'Why was no-one aware of what Smith was doing?' and then, 'Who should have known?'
'Alec's line commander at the time of these incidents was old Alf Stein, the Big Man's predecessor as Head of CID. Once Mr Skinner took over, Smith behaved himself; he knew better than to do otherwise. Stein's dead now, so if any of this shit hits the fan it can only splash on one man — Chief Constable Sir James Proud. If it became public he would be forced to resign; the Chiefs' Association wouldn't be able to protect him. Our zealous new Justice Minister would have him out.
'You know as well as I do that Proud Jimmy is like a father to Bob Skinner. The DCC would do anything to protect him from an ignominious end to his career.'
'Is that what he did today?' Maggie asked, quietly.
He put a finger to her lips. 'No more questions.'
'One more, Mario, one more. This thing you saw today; if it was so horrible you won't tell me about it, what will it do to you? How will you forget it?'
'Darlin',' he said. 'I won't. I will take it to my grave. But in the short term — I'm going to drink another bottle of Amarone, then you and I are going to do what we do best.'
48
A great wall of mist, two hundred feet high, clung to the middle of the Firth of Forth, shrouding part of the main shipping lane. Onshore, the weather was as warm and sunny as it had been for over a week, yet incongruously, the sound of a foghorn boomed across the water.
Bob Skinner sat on a dune, on the beach, looking at the haar, trying to assess whether or not it would sweep in from the sea before it burned off in the morning sun.
'This time last Saturday, eh?'
'Yeah,' Andy Martin, murmured, lying on his back beside him in borrowed shorts and tee-shirt. 'Seems like a long time ago. Fuck, it was a long time ago; I've been dead since then.'
'Want to talk about it? Or not… it's up to you. You'll never have to if you don't want. Boy's in a hole up the Pentlands; story's over.'
'Best place for him.' Martin's voice; hollow, lifeless.
'Man held a gun on me once,' Skinner murmured. 'Bastard shot me, but he made a mistake; gave me a chance. I got the gun. Shot him fucking dead. Someone, not Adam Arrow but like him, cleaned it up because of who he was, what he was. Different circumstances though. That was national security stuff; Scotland had to vanish to keep a lid on our local can of worms.'
'I know, Bob. I know. Don't justify yourself to me; you don't have to. I know why you did it and you were right.'
'I'm glad you killed him, Andy. Glad.'
'He died the way he lived. Alec should have shot him ten years ago, or someone in Ireland should have taken him out.'
'If he'd been on the other side, someone would have. Not all his orders came from the Loyalists; most of them did, but not all. Adam told me that.'
'No great surprise.'
They lay in silence, watching the mist evaporate.
'He pulled the trigger, you know.'
'Jesus. I'd hoped not.'
'Twice. Two bullets second time.'
'Andy…'
'Third would have been curtains. I just bellowed and went for him; went through him like a fucking train.
'I remember it all, Bob, in slow motion. Every single bit of it; the bitter taste of his finger… I think that must have been bone marrow… the blood. I was fucking swimming in it, but I couldn't let go. Could still be dead if I let go, I thought, and I couldn't die. Not there, not then, the time wasn't right.
'So I hung on, till the soldiers arrived, after that even… You know, looking at Alec, I thought, I'll never see anything worse than this… far less that I'd do worse myself.
'What did Scotland look like, Bob? When you saw him?'
'Dead, Andy. Very fucking dead.'
Skinner sighed. 'I didn't know at first, that he'd had you up there. Mario worked it out. Knew at once when he saw the bullets lying around and in the gun.'
He took a can of Irn Bru from his knapsack, opened it and handed it to Martin, then opened another, for himself. 'So it was Scotland, eh?' he murmured. 'A blast from Alec's past, come back as a nightmare.'
'Looks that way. He told me he really wanted to take him back up there, but knew he'd never manage it. I was second best. He knew someone would be for him eventually. Took him ten years to pluck up the courage, or to catch Smith off guard.'
'Where could he have got that animal tranquilliser?' 'He did night security at the zoo. He told me that… deliberately, I suppose.' 'Ahh.'
'He never actually said to me, 'I killed Alec Smith' but…'
'Maybe not, but the overwhelming probability is that he did. If we keep the investigation going, more than likely we'll be chasing an answer we've found already. I've asked Mario to explain to Maggie, without telling her too much.'
'It just goes away then?'
'It dwindles; after a while I'll tell Royston that we have a prime suspect but that he's disappeared, believed out of the country. He can leak that to the press; I might even let him leak the real name. The guy isn't going to turn up anywhere.'
