‘Becky Stallings, probably,’ she said, gloomily.
I laughed. ‘Becky? She thinks Edinburgh’s the countryside. No way will she get a rural job.’
She looked at me over her reading glasses, doubtfully. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Certain of it, so brighten up.’
‘Okay, if you say so.’ She paused. ‘How’s life anyway, if I’m allowed to ask?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t; you probably read my vetting report anyway.’ Her eyes flickered and I knew she had. ‘How’s yours?’
‘Private life?’ I nodded. ‘Crap, since you ask. My man got bumped by his bank and left town for a job in Hong Kong, without as much as a goodbye dinner. Four years down the pan. Some pair, aren’t we?’
‘At least we’re not security risks. Come on, brief me on the job and I’ll buy you a drink when we’re done.’
By the end of the afternoon she had brought me up to speed on the dark and mysterious ways of the Branch, which turned out to be more routine than anything else. There were no major crises, and the threat level was officially ‘substantial’, mid-point in the five grades. ‘It’s hardly ever below that these days,’ she said. She also gave me a list of contacts in SB offices in other forces, and in the security services. These were locked in a wall safe; she showed me how to change the combination, then turned her back as I did so.
She turned down the drink afterwards; I was quietly pleased about that, as I’d regretted the offer as soon as I’d made it. Instead we arranged to meet the next morning at Dalkeith, to go through the same process in the other direction.
I broke the news to Lisa McDermid, in a bizarre cross-purposes discussion. . when I asked her to come into my room, she got the wrong idea. . as soon as I got back to Dalkeith, and so she was gone when I got there next morning, to brief Shannon. Fred Leggat wasn’t, though. He was in his office and his face was tripping him, as I’d half expected. He was cruising and hadn’t planned on breaking in a new support team in his last few months in office, but I managed to persuade him that Dottie would hit the ground running.
I got back to Fettes by mid-morning, to find Lisa and Tarvil in conversation in the outer office, and a summons from the chief waiting for me on my new desk.
‘Did Shannon brief you on the Varley situation?’ he asked, as soon as I was through his door.
‘Yes, sir, she did.’
‘Did it come as a surprise?’
Skinner is good at bouncing the unexpected at his colleagues. I suppose the time it takes them to respond tells them how sure they are of their answers. ‘Not as much as it might have,’ I replied, quickly. I’d asked myself the same question the afternoon before. ‘I was in the same office as Jock about eight years ago. I don’t know why, but I didn’t take to him. He struck me as a guy who always wanted to know more than he’d let on.’
‘Yeah,’ he murmured. ‘Have you ever heard of Freddy Welsh?’
‘I know nothing about him,’ I confessed, ‘other than he’s a general builder and contractor, in quite a big way.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘and now we need to know more. Dottie and Tarvil had a look at him yesterday, but only to check out his background and contacts. I’d like you to go a bit deeper. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t see a well-set-up guy like Welsh being personally involved in something as small time as fag smuggling. That said, he wasn’t going to meet Kenny Bass for a tip on the three-thirty at Lingfield. So what was it about? Put McDermid on to it; she isn’t known around town. See if she picks up any hints.’
‘Yes, sir. What about Bass?’ I asked. ‘Is he saying anything?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Take a guess?’
‘How about, “Who’s Freddy Welsh?” Is that close?’
‘Right on the money, George, right on the money.’
‘Sauce’ Haddock
Most of the time, when someone begins a sentence with ‘I have to say. .’ what it really means is, ‘I’m going to say. . whether you like it or not.’
I probably shouldn’t say that I was beginning to get very fond of the chief constable’s ex-wife, but I will. . regardless. I don’t mean that I fancied her. If I did I would definitely keep that to myself. No, I liked her, pure and simple. I could tell that Jack had reservations about her but I found her bold and provocative, things I like in a person, and I could detect no side to her, none of the aloof superiority that cops, and particularly young ones like me, often encounter in our dealings with those my mum calls ‘members of the professions’. She was friendly and had treated me as an equal in every encounter we’d had.
‘What are those?’ I asked her after she’d finished describing Mortonhall Man’s last meal.
‘Classic kosher dishes,’ she replied. ‘Jewish food, as approved by ritual and the local rabbi. One of the few things I miss about New York City are the delis.’
‘Are there any of those in Edinburgh?’
‘There’s the Viareggio chain,’ she pointed out, ‘but they’re Italian. There are no kosher ones that I know of, but they’re not places I’ve ever looked for over here.’
‘His last meal,’ I continued. ‘Would it have been homemade?’
‘Possibly,’ she conceded. ‘If you can trace kosher-approved suppliers in the area, you might get a lead to him.’
‘How about kosher restaurants? Are there many in Edinburgh?’
‘From memory,’ she murmured, ‘I think there’s only one. . and it’s entirely vegetarian, so you wouldn’t get chicken broth there, or stuffed fish either.’
‘What about the matzoh balls?’
‘Nor them; there’s egg in the recipe. Hey,’ she laughed, ‘did you hear about the blonde who thought the matzoh was an endangered species?’
I was still grinning when I put the phone down.
‘Who’s made your day?’ the boss called to me.
‘Dr Grace, the pathologist.’
‘What were you talking about?’
‘Circumcision.’
Even Jack reacted to that. ‘You what?’ he exclaimed. ‘With the chief’s ex?’
‘I’m not kidding,’ I told him. ‘She gave me a lecture on the subject: not how it’s done, but who has it. Are you circumcised?’ I asked him.
‘Mind your own fucking business. What are you asking me that for?’
‘Call it a statistical survey. More people are than you’d imagine.’
‘Ray is,’ Becky volunteered.
McGurk actually started to turn pink. ‘Can we leave DI Wilding’s tackle out of this, please,’ he moaned. ‘If you must know, yes I am.’
‘And you’re not Jewish.’
‘Of course not. You don’t have to. .’
‘I know,’ I said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. ‘That’s what Sarah explained.’ I paused, for a little effect. ‘That’s before she said firmly that our man was.’
‘Come again?’ the DI murmured, dryly. ‘Did the rabbi who did it put his initials on his work?’
‘Hardly,’ I replied, slightly narked by her sarcasm. I shook my head and repeated what Sarah had told me. . leaving out only the line about the blonde and the matzohs.
Her reaction was the same as if I’d shaken her awake. She blinked, once, twice then focused on me. If Becky Stallings has a fault as a team leader, it’s her occasional tendency to slip into cruise mode, rather than driving full on at the task in hand. When she snaps out of it, though, she’s a formidable operator. Half an hour earlier she’d begun to echo Jack, chuntering on about her team having been stuck with a job that uniform should be doing, putting a name to the dead man from the evening before, when we should have been tasked with putting the screws on Kenny Bass. That disappeared in an instant as she started to gnaw on the bone I’d given her.
‘She’s a hundred per cent certain about that?’ she exclaimed.
‘As near as damn it. “That’s the way to bet,” is what she said.’
‘How much do you know about the Edinburgh Jewish community? How big is it?’
‘I’ve got no idea,’ I admitted.
‘Then find out.’
Half an hour later, after some intensive research, followed by a few phone calls, I was up to speed. ‘There are around eight hundred Jewish families in the Edinburgh area,’ I reported to the DI. ‘They worship in two active congregations but there’s only one full-time rabbi in Edinburgh, Rabbi Hyman. I’ve just spoken to him. He doesn’t know of anyone who’s missing, and he’s certain that if there had been a death among his flock, he’d have been called in. But he’s willing to look at the body, to see if he knows him.’