‘Of course. You’re going to ask me why it didn’t occur to me that she might be a security risk. I can’t answer that properly; all I can say is that I trusted her.’
‘And she let you down.’
The interview was taking a turn I hadn’t expected. I’d assumed that it would have taken her about two minutes to bust me down to village cop in Breich, or to have me sign my goodbye letter. Instead she appeared to be offering me a way out; shop Alice and let them rubber-stamp the official inquiry.
‘No, ma’am,’ I contradicted her, regardless of it. ‘I wouldn’t put it that way. I let her down by being indiscreet, and putting her in a position that’s led to her blowing her career.’
She smiled again. ‘That’s noble of you. But there’s still a question left, the key one as far as I’m concerned. Did you know of her family connection with this man Welsh?’
‘Absolutely not. I knew that Inspector Varley was her uncle, but that’s all. I’ve never met any of her family, and I didn’t know of the Freddy Welsh connection until DI Pye told me. I’d never even heard the man’s name until I was pulled into the Lafayette’s thing.’
‘So you didn’t know that she had a personal connection with him?’
What the hell did she mean by that? My face must have answered her question and asked one of my own.
‘I’ve got to be blunt here,’ she said, gently. ‘Alice was interviewed this morning at Leith, by DCS McGuire and another senior officer. She admitted to them that she had a brief sexual encounter. . a quickie, if you like. . with Welsh at a family celebration about six years ago. Did you know about that?’
And if I had, then I was done for; out on my ear, and that would be at best.
I took a long breath, blew it out and looked her in the eye. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘She told me. .’ I began, then stopped, considering how best to put it. When I saw how, I continued.
‘At the beginning of our sexual relationship, I told Alice all about me, about my marriage, about my family, and about the extent of my relationship with Alex Skinner. I’ve come to believe that it’s best to be frank about these things.’ I didn’t tell her how. ‘Alice told me that she didn’t have a past anything like that. She said that she’d had very few relationships, that she wasn’t promiscuous, and that the worst thing she’d ever done, and I quote, “was banging a married guy at an in-law’s wedding a few years ago, after too many tequila sunrises, and feeling guilty as hell next morning”. She added that she’d hardly been able to speak to the man since. It sounds as if that was Freddy Welsh, but she didn’t put a name to him, not then and not since. In fact we’ve never discussed it again.’
‘Sure?’
‘Certain.’ I held her gaze. ‘Look, ma’am, Alice is not routinely untrustworthy. Yes, she told me she’d been booted out of SB for tipping off her uncle about something, but when she did she was cracking a joke at my expense. Usually she’s tight-lipped about the time she spent in the Branch. You have to be. .’
Detective Chief Inspector Lowell Payne
I came close to saying, ‘No thanks,’ when my boss told me that Bob Skinner needed a senior officer from another force to work on a sensitive investigation, and that he’d asked for me, specifically. I’ve nothing against Bob, but when the chief super went on to say that I’d be working with Bandit Mackenzie, the prospect of a few days in the capital became less attractive.
He used to be one of ours, and I remembered him as an arrogant bastard; he made DI after I did, but he made no secret of the fact that he expected to leave all of us in his wake. When he left to run the drugs squad in Edinburgh, very few people contributed to his going-away present, but we’d all have been happy to chip in for his train fare.
The gaffer read my mind. ‘He’s changed,’ he rushed to tell me. ‘Apparently he’s cleaned his act up. He had some sort of a breakdown, possibly alcohol-related. When he recovered he was a different man. He’s a superintendent now, in uniform, and he’s the exec officer in the command suite through there. It seems that nobody calls him “Bandit” any more.’
‘Mmm,’ I grunted. ‘Have you ever seen a stripy leopard?’
He laughed at that one. ‘Come on, Lowell, forgive and forget. Look, Bob Skinner would not have entrusted this investigation to him if he had any doubts about him. From what the ACC told me, it’s a very delicate situation. You should take it as a compliment that you’re wanted on it. Do it, get a result and. . no promises mind, but it might give you an edge when the next superintendent slot comes up.’
I took that with a pinch of salt. I’d been passed over for promotion three times already, and I was pretty sure that them upstairs had decided I’d reached my ceiling. Not that I was complaining; I’d never expected to make it beyond inspector, but my career surged in my mid-thirties. It started with a move to CID about fifteen years ago, as a DS. I was promoted fairly quickly after that and for the last five years I’ve been a DCI. I’m a year short of fifty and have thirty years’ service, so I’ll be in the happy position of being able to retire on full pension while I’m still young enough to enjoy myself, and with a lump sum that will help Myra, my twelve-year-old, through university if that’s where she wants to go.
One more promotion would be nice, but that wasn’t the carrot that made me say, ‘Okay, sir, I’ll take it on.’ No, when it came to it, it was the prospect of working close to Bob Skinner. It’s not that I’d ever held that ambition, rather that I was curious to find out what sort of a boss he really is, without it being permanent.
I first met Bob at the funeral of his father-in-law, Thornton Graham. Thornie would have been my father-in-law too, but my wife Jean and I weren’t married when he died. I’d heard of Skinner even then, and not just from her. He’d been running the drugs squad in Edinburgh for a few years, he’d had a number of high-profile results, and the grapevine talk had him as a certainty for the top job in Strathclyde one day, since he’d been a Motherwell boy. A few senior officers were said to be afraid of that happening, for he was reputed to be a very hard man with no sense of humour and no time for below-average performance.
Some of that talk must have come from his enemies, for when he and I did meet, he didn’t scare me a bit. Yes, he’d just made detective super at that time, while I was still a sergeant, and yes, since he’s only a couple of years older than me, that did put our careers in perspective straight away. But he didn’t treat me as other ranks. He was polite, pleasant and generally friendly, although I did have the impression that behind it all he was quietly assessing my suitability for Jean, his late wife’s sister.
His daughter Alexis was there too, early teens, a year or two older than my lass is now. I recall that one or two of the senior relations frowned on the way she was dressed, but Jean would have none of it, telling them that Thornie would have wanted her that way. She told me, afterwards, when the funeral sandwiches were finished and everyone had buggered off to get on with their lives, that one of them had also muttered that the kid took after her dead mother, and that it hadn’t been meant as a compliment.
‘They thought our Myra was flighty,’ she said, ‘to put it politely.’ Then she laughed. ‘She was too, and Bob was putty in her hands.’ Another crack in that legendary armour. ‘He’s been a lost soul since my sister died; maybe the one he had with him today will make him happy.’
She did, as it happened, but only for a while: Alison, her name was. When they split, Jean’s take was that it hadn’t worked because she’d been as career-driven as him.
Since that first meeting, I haven’t seen a lot of him, but Alexis has always kept in touch with her aunt and with the younger Myra; she takes a special interest in her cousin, because she was named after her mum. His path and mine did cross, professionally, though, just after the funeral. He had an investigation in progress and a line of inquiry led him to Hamilton, where I was stationed, in the sergeant’s uniform that I thought I’d be wearing for another twenty years. I checked something out for him, informally, but I never did find out if it led anywhere. It wasn’t long afterwards that I hung up the tunic and moved into CID. I did wonder at the time whether he had anything to do with it, but when I asked him, at my wedding reception, he laughed, and said, ‘Do you think your bosses would listen to a single word of mine, Lowell?’