'Let it play out.'
He laid her down on the bed, and began to undress. 'Yes, I found Balliol,' he said quietly. 'No, he didn't tell me, because he doesn't know either. Salmon's been fired, into the bargain.'
'That's good news, at least.'
Skinner shrugged his shoulders as he stripped off his polo shirt, all in a single supple movement. 'Christ,' he said, 'I hum, what with the golf and the journey. Think I'l take a shower.' He stepped out of his slacks and briefs. 'Salmon was just a commodity to Bal iol,' he went on. 'Something to be bought and traded in once it was used up.'
As he headed for the bathroom she rose to fol ow. 'Incidental y,' he called over his shoulder, his voice loaded with irony. 'Everard sends his regrets for your personal embarrassment. I told him it'd make your day. Over dinner, I told him you were stil thinking about suing. Made your mind up yet?'
She nodded, as she watched him step into the bath and twist the shower control, standing back for a few seconds till it reached the set temperature. 'I'm not going to. I just don't need the extra embarrassment it would bring. Even if they settled, the press would still get hold of it.'
He looked at her as the water began to play on his chest. 'We'd be talking serious money, here. From what Balliol said, I suspect he's already told his solicitors to deal if you press it.'
'Stil,' replied Pam. 'I want to bring no more embarrassment into your life, or rather into our life… because that's the way I want it.'
Skinner frowned, just as he plunged his head into the spray.
'Bob,' she went on, over the splashing of the water. 'I wasn't going to tell you this until morning, but I can't keep it in. Alex cal ed. She said that Andy had gone out, on purpose, so that she could phone.'
'Eh?'
'He's been forbidden to have contact with you on a personal basis.'
'What? Why?' He stepped back, out of the spray.
'Because Cheshire and Ericson searched your office. They found the receipt, taped underneath one of your desk drawers.'
Breath hissed out of Skinner. 'Jesus. Hidden in my bloody desk?
And I said to Andy, that if I had hidden it, I'd have put it where I felt most secure. That smart bastard Cheshire must have thought along the same lines.'
He smiled grimly at Pam, completely without humour. 'Commandment number five, Sergeant: thou shalt not underestimate your adversary. I'm always breaking that one. If only I'd had the sense to search my fucking office before he did!
'The bastard who set me up must have broken into Fettes right enough. I tell you, when this is over, I'm going to have such a security blitz on that office!' He snorted. 'Except that if I don't come up with something pretty fast, when this is over I'm going to be the subject of some pretty tight security myself He stepped back into the shower.
'I think I'll ask to be sent to Shotts Prison. My friend Big Lenny Plenderleith and I would make quite a team. We'd be running the place inside a week.'
'Don't say that,' Pam cried. She stepped into the shower beside him, rubbing her face in the wet hair of his chest. 'None of that will happen. You wil come up with something; you're invincible. Don't think about it. Think about this instead.'
She picked up a hot, wet sponge, ran it up the inside of his thigh, and began to massage him. He grinned down at her. 'You're a bit optimistic, aren't you? Not even I have that good a mental isolator switch. Besides, I've covered most of Scotland today, and back again.'
He switched off the shower and reached for two towels.
The smile vanished and the glower was back. 'Be patient. Maybe, after a couple of years they'll allow us a conjugal visit.'
64
Skinner was familiar with Parliament House and with the Advocates Library, headquarters of the Scottish Bar. So was Alex, from student visits, and from occasional visits as a teenager, to watch her father give evidence as a police witness in a significant trial.
But neither had ever been inside the Lord Reid Building, the advocates' consultation centre, until they arrived in its small courtyard off the Royal Mile. Number 142 High Street, in New Assembly Close, was built in 1814 by James Gillespie Graham as the Commercial Bank. Much later, before its acquisition by the Faculty of Advocates, it housed the popular Edinburgh Wax Museum. Skinner guessed that currently far fewer people passed through its doors every year than during its time as a tourist attraction, but that in income terms, its turnover was far greater.
'Consultation with Miss Christabel Innes Dawson, QC,' Mitchel Laidlaw announced to the uniformed Faculty Officer at the smal desk in the reception hal.
'Very good, sir,' said the man. 'If your party wil please go into the waiting room.' He pointed them towards a large, leather-upholstered waiting room, its walls hung with works of art from the Faculty's extensive collection, and with a large fireplace similar in size and style to that in the formal drawing room in Bute House, and which Skinner guessed at once was original. The policeman in him thought of the profitable trade in stolen antiquities and of the signs posted on several disused Georgian and Victorian offices in and around Edinburgh's Golden Mile which advised potential burglars that al fireplaces had been removed. 'If they ever find out where the store is…' he had said once to Andy Martin.
Normally an advocate will arrive to greet solicitors and clients and to take them to their consultation rooms. But Christabel Innes Dawson QC was far too senior and venerable to do her own fetching.
After a few minutes, the attendant reappeared. 'If you will follow me, gentlemen, madam… Miss Dawson will receive you in Room Five.'
The trio followed him, latterly in single file because of the narrowness of the corridor which led to the rear of the building, until they reached a flight of four steps, with a varnished door at the top.
The attendant knocked, opened it and announced them: 'Mr Laidlaw and party, Miss Dawson.'
Christabel Innes Dawson QC did not rise as her instructing solicitor led her client into the room. She was seated at a very ordinary round table, in a very ordinary room, a far cry from that in which they had awaited her pleasure. She surveyed them as they entered one by one, the attendant retreating and closing the door.
Final y she nodded to the solicitor. 'Well, Mr Laidlaw.' The words seemed to roll from her tongue. 'I had begun to despair that you would ever instruct me in a case. I know al about you, mind. When Ken, my clerk, told me you wanted me in this matter, I asked three senior members of Faculty about you. Two of them described you as the best litigation solicitor in Scotland. The third said you were a shark in a lagoon fil ed with holiday-making children. I think he was saying the same thing as the other two, only in a different way.
'Sit down, sit down please. You're all so tall.'
She turned her attention to Skinner. 'Well, Chief Inspector… or what is it now?… this is a sad surprise. I never imagined for one instant that when the great Mr Laidlaw finally called on me it would be to represent you in a criminal cause.
'Last time our paths crossed, literally, was in Aberlady, I think, a couple of weeks ago. Your informal salute was appreciated. So few people pay respects these days to a funeral cortege. There was a time when gentlemen always removed their hats as a hearse passed by. So few gentlemen left now,' she mused.
'Maybe just fewer with hats, Miss Dawson,' said Skinner, gently.
'Maybe, maybe.' Her eyes flashed suddenly, with a cunning gleam.
'If memory serves, you were in your car with the young lady I've been reading about. Well, I certainly won't be the one to criticise you for such a relationship.' She frowned for an instant. 'I'd tell her she's a bloody fool though.'
Beside her father Alex gasped, but Miss Dawson ignored her presence. She guessed that with her apprenticeship completed and two or three years' experience at the Bar, she might merit a nod.
