I’d been happy with the aftermath of my divorce and with the agreement that Sarah, my ex, and I had reached about the children, in the light of her decision to move back to the USA. I told myself that it was a good thing for them to spend school holidays with their mother, that it would give them an understanding of the wider world, and would spare them from the unreality of being shuffled between parents every weekend. Yes, I was happy with it and I thought that Sarah was too.
I still don’t know for certain what prompted her to change her mind. She didn’t even tell me about it until the decision was made; I found out by accident from Andy Martin, who managed to stay friends with both of us. I have no doubt she’d have kept me in the dark for longer if he hadn’t let it slip. For sure, my ex-wife can hold her cards very close to her shapely chest, but I didn’t find that out until well into our marriage. Indeed, I’m still learning just how close they can be. Yes. . and I smile as I say this. . she is some machine, is Sarah.
Granted, I had not been in the best of humour since her sudden reappearance, but I don’t believe that had anything to do with the explosion with Aileen. Also, a major crisis had erupted within the force that very day, and a long-serving ranking officer had been arrested as a result. However I like to think that I’m good at leaving personnel troubles where they belong, in the office, and I’d done that, although it had been difficult. No, our confrontation would have happened regardless of anything.
I had hit the roof earlier, no two ways about that, when Mario told me what had happened with Inspector Varley. A surveillance blown by the deliberate act of a veteran officer, and with more than a hint of corruption as well, in the man Welsh’s recorded promise to the caller that he’d be ‘weighed in’. I ordered Varley’s arrest, and his niece Alice Cowan’s instant suspension. I came within a couple of words of suspending DC Montell as well, but I cooled down and decided that if pillow-talk was automatically sackable we were all gone, so I put his file in the hands of the tough but fair Maggie and told her to work out what would be best done with him in the circumstances. I had an idea, but I wanted to see whether she came up with the same solution.
That stuff was all over with; it wasn’t done and dusted, but neither was it hanging over the dinner table like a cloud that evening. However, there was one problem that I did bring home in my briefcase, and in my head. My last meeting of the afternoon had been with my fellow Scottish chief officers, a formal gathering of our association, ACPOS, in a committee room in St Andrews House, the big grey government building at the top of Waterloo Place, with Andy Martin in the chair, by rotation.
The only item on the agenda was consideration of a proposal by the Scottish government that all of Scotland’s eight police forces should be merged into one. The debate had been forthright, and fierce at times. Not at all to my surprise, the pro lobby had been led by Toni Field, my recently appointed opposite number in Strathclyde. Since her force covers half of the country as it is, it was predictable that she would want to take in the rest.
I sensed also that being new on the block, having parachuted into Scotland from Birmingham, she was out to assert herself as ‘Scotland’s top cop’, as one of her Daily Mail acolytes, who thought it was all about geography, had described her. Field believed it, for sure. She’d landed the Strathclyde job on the back of a high-profile hands-on career, that had included a spell in SOCA, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the English equivalent of Andy Martin’s outfit. While she was there she’d busted a big drugs cartel with links to both Colombia and Mexico and had used it to catapult herself, over the heads of more experienced candidates, into the chief constable’s office in the West Midlands force.
I’d met her only once before that afternoon and it had taken me five minutes to realise that she had arrived in Scotland with a very simple plan. Support the unified force, then take the top post and use it as a springboard to the ultimate policing job in Britain: Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. Good luck to her, I thought. If she was happy with reporting to a mop-headed clown elected on a populist ticket, then good for her, but she wasn’t going to do it by helping to destroy the force that I knew in Scotland, the one to which I’d dedicated my life. I believe unequivocally in local accountability in policing; maybe that comes from John Wintergreen too.
I wasn’t able to hide my antipathy to the woman, but I was careful not to invite any accusation of either sexism or racism. On Maggie Steele’s advice, I wore my uniform to the meeting, as I knew Field would, and I addressed her formally, by rank; no first-name terms, lest she accuse me of being patronising.
In the debate, the antis had lined up behind me. At the end of the day it had come down to the casting vote of the chair and Andy was opposed, so I won the day, but I knew quite well that Field would ensure it was raised again at our next meeting, at which the chair would pass to Max Allan, the Strathclyde ACC, and it was assumed that he would side with his boss, not because he’s a toady, but because the long-serving Glasgow people are all imperialists at heart.
I wasn’t going to talk about the meeting, but Aileen asked me straight out how it had gone, as soon as I settled into my chair in the garden room. I told her what had happened, and what my prediction was for the future.
‘The First Minister’s trying to railroad ACPOS into backing the proposal,’ I said, ‘even if it’s only by one vote, so he can bang the legislation through before the next election and claim that he has our support. I like Clive Graham, but I’m not letting him get away with this one. I tell you, I’ll fight this in the Association, and in public if I have to, right up to the very end.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ my wife murmured.
I stared at her. ‘You what?’ I gasped. I thought I’d misheard her.
‘I said that I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Eh?’ Yes, I had heard her right, but still I didn’t believe her. ‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because Labour’s going to support the government; we’re going to back the bill.’
‘You’re going to WHAT?’ I roared. I’d never raised my voice to her before; I’d never been angered by her before, and I’d never imagined that I could be. And yet. .
I worried that the children might have heard me, until I remembered that the three of them were at their mother’s place in Edinburgh. Nevertheless I made an effort to rein myself in.
‘How in God’s name,’ I asked her, as quietly as I’d been loud before, ‘can you bring yourself to do that when you know that I’m completely opposed to it? Please tell me you didn’t vote for this within your party group; tell me you were overruled.’
‘I can’t,’ she replied, ‘because I wasn’t; the decision was unanimous. My colleagues and I all believe that it’s the best option on cost grounds.’
‘Cost?’ I hissed. ‘You’re prepared to jeopardise the efficiency of the police service to save a few quid?’
‘It’s more than a few quid, Bob,’ she shot back at me. ‘And how exactly will it affect efficiency?’
‘How exactly?’ I mimicked. ‘The present structure’s bad enough; now you’re going to ask cops in Lerwick to implement policy decisions that are taken in Glasgow, by someone who most certainly won’t have a clue about local conditions.’
‘Then he’ll have to get up there and find out, won’t he? And who says the unified force will be based in Glasgow?’
‘I do,’ I snorted, ‘because that’s the way it will play out. But efficiency’s not the only issue; the big one is the concept of putting policing power in the hands of one man, the First Minister. . or one woman, if you and your lot get back in at the next election. . which you won’t if I have anything to do with it.’
Her eyes flared, angrily, like I’d never seen them do before, and she opened her mouth to rip into me, but I cut her off. ‘Think back,’ I snapped, ‘and not that far back either, to when your predecessor, that crooked little bastard Murtagh, tried to do this very thing and you shot him down in flames. The media will go for you if you turn full circle now. They’ll throw your own words back at you.’