is.’
‘She never will from me,’ I promised.
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he said. ‘Wait here. I’ll fetch him myself.’
We did as he asked. He had barely closed the door on his way out before Mackenzie looked at me and murmured, ‘Tell me, honestly, ma’am. Don’t you feel like an interloper here? This isn’t our territory. Has the chief lost his marbles?’
I glared at him. ‘You’d better ask him that yourself, Superintendent. Come Monday morning, at his chief officers’ meeting, I’ll make sure you get the chance.’ I waved the warrant in his face. ‘Meantime, this gives me authority, and through me, our force. Your view is noted.’
I’d wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, but that would not have been seemly from an ACC to a superintendent. It might even have led to a complaint to the Superintendents Association, and I did not want to be bothered with any nonsense like that.
Frankly my annoyance with Mackenzie wasn’t due entirely to his disloyalty to the guy who’d saved his career; there was also the fact that his point was one that I’d been trying to ignore. We weren’t in hot pursuit, and technically we should have advised our colleagues in Pitt Street of our intention before we’d arrived.
Then Max Allan returned with Theo Fabrizzi and my reservations started to melt. First, in his black tie and tail coat, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the Go Compare tenor, minus the silly moustache, and I really do hate those telly ads. Second the man had an air about him, that of someone who believes he’s more important than God.
‘What is this?’ he snapped. ‘I very busy man, I’m an artist; I can’t be disturbed so.’
‘You can, Mr Fabrizzi,’ I told him, and showed him my authority. ‘This says so. Can you read English?’
‘Of course,’ he sneered. ‘You take me for a barbarian?’
‘Then please read this.’
He did, slowly; clearly he wasn’t as fluent as he pretended. When he was finished, he looked at me and he laughed. ‘This is preposterous. Is a joke, yes?’
‘No joke. Now come with us please, we have to take you back to Edinburgh with us.’
‘No!’ he shouted.
‘Yes,’ I said calmly.
‘Is conspiracy,’ Fabrizzi exclaimed. ‘Is the Zionists. What this man’s name?’ He peered at the paper again. ‘Cohen. See? Is the focking Jews. This one is dead, you say? Well, soon they all will be, the focking swine. They hate being called that, you know. Focking swine, focking pigs. We wipe them out, you see.’
I smiled. ‘Indeed,’ I murmured, then glanced at Max. ‘What do you make of that, ACC Allan?’
‘I make it inciting racial hatred,’ he replied, ‘contrary to the Public Order Act of 1986. You may consider yourself under arrest twice, Mr Fabrizzi. But you can have first go at him, ACC Steele.’
‘It’s an outrage,’ the Lebanese pianist hissed. ‘You focking Scots, you’re Jews as well.’
‘Some of us are,’ Max told him, ‘and proud of it. Now please shut up, sir, or I’ll handcuff you myself.’
Clyde Houseman
There was a gleam in Mr Skinner’s eyes, and a narrow, wicked smile on his face as he pointed to the Merc that had been reversed into the driveway of the house that faced back down the dead-end street. As I looked at him, I wondered how a man who clearly loved being in the thick of any action that was going had allowed himself to be constrained in a chief constable’s uniform.
‘That’s number seven,’ he said, ‘and I think we might just have come up lucky. Drive on down there,’ he continued, ‘very quietly, and block the exit. Take it easy, though.’
I did as I was told, looking at the house as I approached. It was a villa, with four windows to the front, two up, two down. The curtains were closed on what I took to be a bedroom window on the upper floor, but there was no sign of movement behind any of the others.
There was a second car, some sort of old banger, parked beyond the FJW plate, but the drive was long enough to accommodate a third, so I cruised in there and switched off. ‘Quiet now,’ the chief murmured, as he opened his door and stepped out, closing it behind him, but not fully, to avoid any risk of noise. I checked my weapon, and then I followed him.
‘Back entrance,’ he whispered. There was no doubt about who was in command: I knew my role and I trusted him.
The drive was covered in small white pebbles, so we stepped as lightly as we could. We walked silently along the side of the house, past the two cars. The ground at the rear, which sloped down towards fields beyond, was landscaped, with a small neat lawn surrounded by rose beds and a classic herbaceous border, all of it beautifully tended. Someone in the Varley family had been a gardener. I had a fleeting thought of the contrast with the street where I’d grown up, where any flower that poked its head above the surface was liable to wither and die of embarrassment, that’s if it wasn’t yanked out by a rough and lawless kid like me.
Mr Skinner held out a hand, signalling me to pause. A sound came from somewhere around the corner, a muffled noise of something being dragged. He stepped out beyond the house, into the open, and I followed, my hand inside my blazer, on my gun. There was nothing else to do.
The villa had been extended at the back; it was a proper two-storey construction, not one of those glass box things that the double-glazing guys, and Kenny Bass, call conservatories. Beneath, as Bass had said, there was what appeared to be a cellar, or storeroom. It was windowless, for its door was a little ajar and we could see that it was lit within, on a summer evening. I checked behind me to make sure that no neighbour could overlook and see us, then drew my pistol.
‘I go first,’ I murmured to the chief, my only show of insubordination.
‘You’ve got the fucking gun,’ he replied, his voice as quiet as mine, ‘so fair enough.’ He was smiling again.
We crossed quickly to the entrance and I stepped through it. The space was not what I expected, a single room; instead it was divided into two. The side into which I’d stepped was full of gardening equipment, nothing more, but on my left there was a second doorway, in which a large, heavyset man was framed. Even as I saw him he was in the act of throwing something at me, a box; it was aimed straight at my head, and travelling. Instinctively I threw my arm up to protect myself; it caught me on the wrist and sent my weapon flying. And then he was on me, knocking me aside with brute strength as he headed for the exit. . into the path of Bob Skinner.
The chief hit him, not with his fist, but with the heel of his hand, right in the middle of the forehead, as hard a blow as I’ve ever seen. It halted Freddy Welsh, big and all as he was, in mid-stride, lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing on to his back, spark out.
‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed. My first thought was that he’d killed the guy.
‘I used to do karate,’ he offered, almost apologetically. ‘I’m out of practice. A few years back, he’d never have got that close to me.’
I didn’t bother to ask him what belt he’d attained; that was obvious.
Stretched out on the cement floor, Welsh proved that he was still alive by making a snorting noise. The chief leaned over him, seized the waistband of his trousers and started to drag him into the other chamber, from which he had come. ‘There’s a tap over there,’ he grunted. ‘Fill a bucket, or anything like it you can find. Then close the outer door and come in here.’
I reclaimed my pistol and did as he had said. As it happened there was a bucket just beside the tap.
‘Close that door too,’ he told me, as I joined him and handed him the bucket. I did. ‘This might get a bit noisy,’ he added, as if in explanation. I looked around me as he spoke. The room was bigger than the other; it wasn’t full, or near it, but there were four crates in the middle of the floor, tea chests, the sort that furniture removers use, and a box with the lid removed.
Welsh was beginning to regain consciousness; Mr Skinner helped him by pouring half of the bucket’s contents over his face, slowly.
‘Moving the stock, are we, Freddy?’ he asked, as the man came to, spluttering and choking.
As he did that I was looking through the chests; they were full of boxes, and most of them bore a
