transmitter. A few moments later, before my transport had even come to rest, the double doors opened and a man emerged. He wore a dark suit and a heavy gold chain round his neck, and I am not talking about the type they sell at H. Samuel.
When my driver opened the door, and I stepped out on to the pavement, the Lord Provost’s face registered complete confusion. Glasgow’s first citizen glared at the gun-toting blackshirt who’d summoned him.
‘I thought you said the First Minister was arriving,’ he snapped.
‘Sorry I can’t oblige,’ I told him, wearing my finest arch smile, ‘but don’t I rate a polite welcome too? I’m accompanying Ms de Marco to the event, and she’ll probably be First Minister again by this time next year.’
The civic dignitary recovered his ground, and his composure. ‘Of course, madam,’ he murmured, schmoozing forward with hand outstretched. ‘So nice to see you. In fact our Aileen’s arrived already; let me take you to her.’
He escorted me inside. As we approached a wide flight of stairs, I had a moment of confusion. I thought I’d caught the briefest glimpse of Maggie Steele disappearing from sight round a corner, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it as my official greeter led me up and into some sort of anteroom, where the usual pre-concert champagne reception was under way.
Aileen seemed to be its main attraction. She was in the middle of a crowd of people, but she spotted me just as I saw her, and excused herself from them. She stared at me, and I had to laugh again. So had she. Instead of red, she was wearing a dress of shimmering green satin. And there was I, in my black satin trouser suit.
‘You too?’ she chuckled. ‘I decided we’d better not look like twin pillar boxes, so I dug this out. It’s from my pre-Bob era and it sends out all the wrong signals to half of Glasgow, but what the hell? I haven’t worn it for a while and I want to get back to being the woman I once was.’
Did I detect an underlying message there? Yes, sure, and hadn’t I just seen Maggie Steele downstairs when she was for certain back home in Edinburgh fussing over her daughter.
I put both those misconceptions out of my mind. ‘I’m sorry, Aileen,’ I said. ‘After you called, I remembered I had this thing in my wardrobe, and that it still fits, just about. I should have phoned you back to let you know.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she assured me. ‘We both look fantastic. Let’s revel in it. Front row seats, two along from Clive Graham and his partner for the night, whoever she is. Let them all look on our works and despair.’
‘Sounds fine to me, Ozymandias,’ I agreed, taking an orange juice from a tray that a young blonde waitress offered me. According to her badge her name was Katya, one of the loyal Poles who had stuck with Scotland through the recession, I imagined. Quite a few of them work for me.
A tall, dark-haired, drop-dead good-looking guy came walking towards us. He was wearing a white tux and trousers with a shiny strip down the side; he looked a million dollars and he knew it. I was sure I had seen him somewhere before.
‘Joey,’ Aileen exclaimed, ‘great to see you again.’ They embraced and she kissed him on the cheek, for maybe half a second longer than was necessary. ‘Paula, this is Joey Morocco, Glaswegian made good, and our MC for the evening; Joey, Paula Viareggio.’
God, and I barely recognised him; showing your age, lady. Joey Morocco is an actor who started his career on a dodgy Scottish soap, then went upmarket very quickly, into network television productions, and most recently into movies. Hollywood has called and there are whispers that he’s going to be the next James Bond.
‘Hi, Paula,’ he said, ‘great to meet you.’ He sprinkled a little stardust on me, but not as much as he’d given Aileen, I noticed. ‘Ladies,’ he murmured. ‘As well as being host tonight I’m the guy who has to ask everyone to switch off their mobiles. Can you do that. . if you’re carrying, that is?’
‘Joey,’ I replied, glancing down at my bump, ‘if you can’t see that I’m carrying, someone needs to have a talk with you. As for my mobile, if I switch it off in this condition my husband will go radio rentals. He might even take it out on you, and you’d hate that. But as long as you’re prepared to handle the flak, I’ll do that for you.’
‘Fantastic,’ he beamed, then moved off on a wave of over-statement, after a little squeeze of Aileen’s hand.
‘Would there be some history between you two by any chance?’ I asked her, mischievously.
She smiled as she nodded. ‘A brief encounter or two, when he was still on Scottish telly.’
‘He still fancies you, I’d say.’
‘I know.’ She winked at me. ‘I could tell by the way he squeezed my bum when he hugged me. The question is, do I still fancy him?’
Before I’d had a chance to take that any further, there were sounds of a small commotion behind us. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the car they’d been expecting outside had turned up at last. The First Minister was among us, with the Lord Provost on one side, and on the other a smallish woman with brown skin, copper hair and the most sexually aggressive body I have ever seen, packed into a tight red evening dress.
‘Didn’t we do right,’ I murmured to Aileen, but she wasn’t listening. Instead she was gazing at the new female in our midst with eyes like ice and a wholly insincere smile fixed on her face.
‘Clive,’ she greeted her biggest political opponent as he came towards us. He wore his usual slightly cautious expression. . and his usual silly tartan waistcoat, although his evening’s choice did match his trews, I’ll give him that.
‘My dear,’ he responded. They shook hands, briefly, semi-formally; no cheek-kissing for them, in case someone snapped it on an illicit iPhone and flogged the image to the tabloids. ‘Glad you could come. You couldn’t persuade your husband though?’
‘Don’t go there,’ she said, cutting off that line of questioning. ‘I brought a friend instead, Paula Viareggio, married name McGuire; this could be her last night of freedom, so we’re out to enjoy it.’
‘Be sure you do.’ As Clive Graham spoke, a tall man moved in behind him; his hair was silver, more or less the same shade as the acres of braid on his uniform.
The First Minister’s companion didn’t seem to welcome his presence, but she couldn’t ignore it. She turned to me. ‘Paula this is. .’
I smiled, not at her but at him. ‘I know who it is. Hi, Max,’ I greeted him. ‘You must be fit, to be carrying all that braid on your shoulders.’ Max Allan lives in Lanark, but he and his wife do most of their shopping in Edinburgh. They’ve been among the Viareggio delicatessen chain’s best customers since my grandfather’s time. I knew he was a police officer, but I hadn’t realised that he was that senior.
He beamed back at me. ‘Radiant, Paula,’ he exclaimed, ‘radiant.’ Then he turned serious. ‘First Minister,’ he murmured, ‘can I have a word in private?’
Graham nodded and led the way towards an unoccupied corner, well away from tray waitresses and the savoury tables. His companion went with him.
‘He doesn’t look as though he’s fit for her. Is that really Mrs Graham?’ I asked Aileen.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Mrs Graham’s recovering from what the press office described as varicose vein removal, which is true if you regard piles as a type of varicose vein. That wee red dragon is Toni Field, the new chief constable in Strathclyde.’
‘In which case,’ I murmured, ‘Max has just lit her fire.’ She followed my gaze. Whatever my customer had told them had made her go absolutely rigid with what looked pretty much like fury to me.
‘It can’t be bad enough news as far as I’m concerned,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t stand the bloody woman. Unfortunately I’m told that some of my parliamentary colleagues in London think the sun shines out of her fundament.’
‘What’s she doing with Clive Graham?’
‘One of them is using the other to make a point. I’m not entirely sure which; maybe they both are, but I suspect it’s her. Clive probably knows he’s testing my patience and my loyalty by wearing her on his arm at a do like this, but he doesn’t have the courage to put her in her place.’
She was still sizzling when a warning bell rang, and Joey Morocco asked everyone to make their way into the auditorium, apart from the principal guests and charity patrons. We were among the former category, so we hung back, until eventually we were arranged into a line, by a harassed wee man, who seemed to be in charge of everything. He looked like someone who’d just woken on Boxing Day to discover that he’d slept through Christmas.
When we were ready we filed in; patrons first, then the Lord Provost and Mrs Provost, then the First Minister and his ‘date’, then me and finally Aileen. She’d reversed the order into which the harassed man had put us.
‘Do me a favour,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t have me sit next to that bloody woman Field. She’s a philistine and
