There was Assistant Chief Constable Brian Mackie, whose meticulous personal grooming could not disguise the fact that outside the office he was an incurable cigar smoker. Chief Inspector David Mackenzie, the new executive officer on the command corridor, had just recovered from an illness that had had as much to do with alcohol as the stress to which it had been publicly attributed. Detective Inspector Dorothy Shannon, who ran Special Branch, had had a fling with the married DS George Regan that had put an end to her relationship with the then single Stevie Steele. Chief Superintendent Margaret Rose Steele, and Bet her sister, had been sexually abused as children by their father. Gerry Crossley, his secretary, suspected by half the force of being gay because he was a man in what was perceived to be a woman’s job, kept a collection of girlie magazines in his desk.
And there was Skinner himself; his strength was his weakness, expressed in an obsession with physical fitness that had become even greater since the fitting of a pacemaker to counter an unpredictable heartbeat, and which was rooted, according to his last psychological profile, in a sense of shame at his own infirmity.
The chief constable’s secret was not as dark as any of those; it was more of an embarrassment.
Proud Jimmy was addicted to The Bill, a twice-weekly police drama that had been running on Scottish Television for almost as long as Coronation Street. He found many of the story lines ludicrous, and barely a week went by without him muttering to Chrissie that ‘any officer on my force who behaved that way would be out the door in two seconds flat’. Nonetheless he watched it whenever he could, as he had done for almost a quarter of a century, back when June, Tony and Reg were rookies, before Carver went on the booze and when Meadows was still on the beat in another part of London.
The week’s first episode was five minutes old when the phone rang. It was six feet away from his chair, but he made no move to answer. Lady Chrissie frowned at him, sighed and went to pick it up.
‘Let it ring,’ he grunted at her. ‘They can leave a message.’
‘They can do no such thing,’ she replied. ‘Press your “pause” button. That’s what you got it for.’
He snatched up the remote and pressed it, freezing DI Manson’s scowl on screen as she picked up the handset from its charging socket. He heard her recite their number, as she always did when she took a call.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he is, but he’s rather busy. Is this urgent? Can it wait till morning, or can he call you back in an hour or so?’ She waited, listening as the caller spoke into her ear. ‘In that case, if you’ll just hold on a second. Jimmy, it’s Mr Dowley, the Crown Agent; he says it’s very important.’ She held the phone out for her husband.
Sir James almost snarled as he took it from her. ‘Proud,’ he said stiffly.
‘Sir James, it’s Joe Dowley, Crown Agent.’
‘So Lady Proud tells me. What’s the crisis?’
‘Crisis it is, Sir James,’ the man replied, his voice rising. ‘I find myself in an impasse with your force and I’m not having it. I’ve been told by your man McIlhenney that I have to conduct an inquiry within the Crown Office into a potential leak of information. That’s bloody outrageous. Information does not leak from the Crown Office; the organisation is tight as a drum when it comes to confidentiality. I’m not having us called into question. I’ve tried to contact Skinner, but your new executive officer insists that he’s incommunicado, so in his absence I’m coming to you.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Dowley?’ Chrissie Proud looked at her husband. When his voice dropped to a level just above a whisper it was a sure sign of a gathering storm. ‘Did I hear you correctly? You couldn’t contact my deputy, so you’re coming to me in his absence?’
‘I think. .’
Proud cut him off. ‘And suppose you had contacted DCC Skinner,’ he said, ‘what would you have said to him?’
‘I’d have demanded that he order McIlhenney to desist. He’s obviously forgotten that in criminal matters the police report to the Crown Office, not the other way around.’
‘Have you expressed this sentiment to Detective Superintendent McIlhenney yourself?’
‘I instructed a colleague to tell him as much.’
‘And did he respond?’
Chrissie Proud read the menace in the chief’s tone. Dowley did not. ‘Yes, he did, in most offensive terms, and that’s something else I want to complain about. I want him disciplined.’
Proud chuckled. ‘What would you like me to do with him?’
‘An official reprimand at the very least.’
‘Mmm. One more question, Mr Dowley. After I’ve told you to fuck off, where do you go next?’ Sir James was oblivious of Lady Proud’s glare.
The Crown Agent spluttered, but the chief continued, ‘You and I disagree profoundly about our relationship, sir. It’s the job of my force, like any other, to investigate crimes and to do what is necessary in pursuit of its enquiries. Once we’re finished, we report to the procurator fiscal, but until we’ve done that, any person who obstructs us wilfully is committing an offence himself. I repeat, any person, wherever he might be. No doors are closed to us. I know about your exchange with McIlhenney; my head of CID told me all about you being on your high horse. I endorse Neil’s position entirely, and I even have some sympathy with his language.’
‘I’m not taking this,’ Dowley hissed.
Finally Proud exploded. ‘For God’s sake, man!’ he roared. ‘If he’d been available Gregor Broughton would have sorted this with a couple of phone calls. Instead you want to start an interdepartmental war. Well, you go ahead. See if you can find somebody who has the authority to tell me to back down.’
He cut the Crown Agent off and tossed the handset back to his wife. ‘If that bloody thing rings again, Chrissie,’ he said, ‘you do not answer it. Understood?’
‘Yes, dear,’ she replied. ‘Not until The Bill’s finished.’
He settled back into his chair, and picked up the digi-box remote, then paused. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough.’
Lady Proud stared at him. ‘Enough of The Bill?’
‘No, love,’ he replied. ‘I’ve had enough of being one of Edinburgh’s bloody institutions. I’ve had enough of our evenings being interrupted by pillocks like him. My time’s up. The truth is, it’s been up for a while now, and I’m the only man on the force who hasn’t seen and acknowledged the same. That guy there just told me I was his court of second resort after Bob Skinner. He didn’t put it in so many words, but that’s what he meant.’
‘Oh, Jimmy, he didn’t.’
‘He did. And the thing is, he’s right. Bob’s where the power lies now. Everybody knows that if he takes a decision I won’t countermand it, and equally they know that I won’t make a major decision myself without talking to him about it. I’m drawing the salary under false pretences. And why? We don’t need the money, that’s for sure. My pension will be the equivalent of Mario McGuire’s salary, give or take.’
‘Yes, but you’re due to go in less than a year anyway.’
‘Too long. I need to go now. Tomorrow I set the retirement wheels in motion, once I’ve spoken to Bob and told him that I’m getting out of his way.’
Chrissie Proud frowned. ‘I know you’ve always wanted him to succeed you. But will he apply for the job?’
‘He has to make up his mind about that, and I’m not delaying the moment for him any longer. It’s bloody well time he did.’
Twenty-three
Bet Rose looked at her sister from the doorway. ‘Are you on that bloody computer already?’ The question was pointless since Maggie was staring at the monitor, with her right hand on the mouse.
She twisted round in her chair. ‘Sorry. Do you need to go on line?’
‘No, that’s all right. I can work on my lap-top and copy stuff across for transfer later. It would help if you had a wireless network, though. Then we could both access the Net at the same time if we needed.’ She paused. ‘But Margaret, it’s not even quarter to nine yet; you’re up, dressed, Steph’s fed and changed, and you’re at it already. This is not what recuperation’s supposed to be like.’ She peered at the screen. ‘What are you doing anyway?’