‘I was shot,’ he replied, in the same tone he’d have used to tell me he’d nicked it while shaving.
‘Shot?’ I repeated.
He nodded. ‘An armed operation. The subject fired at me before I could incapacitate him. That’s how close it was.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I was a better shot than he was.’
‘Jesus, Jack,’ I whispered.
‘It wasn’t just me. Another officer fired at the same time. We both hit, and the post-mortem called it a draw.’
‘Jesus,’ I repeated, but I was talking to myself, asking myself what sort of a boss I was. I’d worked with the guy for over a year, yet all the stuff he’d told me was news to me.
‘We’re here,’ he said, interrupting my guilt trip as a sign told us we’d arrived at West Linton. ‘According to the map, Welsh’s house should be up the first road on the right.’
He made the turn, into what was more of a leafy lane than a road. Just looking at the bloody place was enough to give me hay fever. Nothing had a number; all the gaffs looked too important for that. Jack drove slowly reading the names on the signs at the entrances to each of the big plots.
‘What’s it called?’ I asked.
‘Carmarthen. It had to be something Welsh. . and there it is.’
He turned into a wide driveway. There was a big double gate but it lay open. I’m not great with areas, but Welsh’s house must have stood on an acre of land, at least. It didn’t look like one he’d built himself; it was too old, too substantial, although there was a conservatory on the right gable that he might have added.
The blacktop road swung round in front of the house. As Jack stopped I saw that we were facing a massive garage, with two wide up and over doors. Both were raised, and two cars were parked beneath them, a red Vauxhall Astra and a silver Laguna estate. Each had a personalised registration, letters FJW in the three-number format that went out of date in the nineteen sixties.
As we stepped out, the front door opened, and a woman appeared. She had a battle face on, but it softened as soon as she realised we were strangers. ‘Can I help you?’ she said. ‘I imagine you’re lost. It happens a lot.’
I put her right. ‘No, Mrs Welsh, we’ve come to the right address. We’re police officers, CID; we’d like to speak to your husband, please.’
As I spoke a kid appeared in the doorway behind her, a lad, no more than eighteen, but heavyset. He wore jogging pants and a vest, and he was sweating. I guessed that the Welsh family had a home gym. ‘What’s up, Mum?’ he began, shaping up as truculent until he realised how big McGurk is, then thinking better of it.
‘They’re police,’ she told him, ‘looking for your father.’
‘So are we,’ the boy said. ‘He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Graham,’ his mother snapped. Too much information, kid.
‘Is that so, Mrs Welsh?’ McGurk asked.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, ‘but my husband often stays in town,’ she added, ‘if he has a business appointment that runs late.’
‘So,’ I chipped in, ‘when do you expect him home? We’re not in a rush. We can wait for him.’
‘No,’ she said, sharply. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I have no idea when he’ll be back.’
‘Did you know he wasn’t coming home, Mrs Welsh?’ I pressed.
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but as I said, that isn’t unusual.’
‘That’s bollocks, Mum,’ the boy Graham shouted, taking us all by surprise. ‘Dad never stays out all night. You know that.’ He was scared, no question.
And maybe he had reason to be. First Varley jumps bail and vanishes, then cousin Freddy goes AWOL; the type of coincidence in which I have never believed.
Bob Skinner
Clyde Houseman. The name had been kicking around in my head since Amanda’s call. I knew it was somewhere in my memory banks, but I couldn’t access the file that held it.
I fixed the kids their lunch as soon as we got home, then asked Trish if she’d keep an eye on them, as I had an unexpected business meeting. Officially it was her day off, but she had nothing planned, and she’s flexible.
Normally, if I know that company’s coming I leave the driveway gate open, but I didn’t want any of my village pals turning up without warning, so I left it closed. My house has always been secure but when the First Minister, as she was then, moved in, it was stepped up. Now I have motion sensors in every area of the garden and video cameras that are so carefully placed that an expert couldn’t find them.
One of them picked up my visitor before he’d even pressed the button on the entryphone. He was tall and dark-haired, wearing razorcreased trousers and a navy blue blazer that was so well cut it was impossible to guess anything about his body shape, although the way he carried himself suggested that he was a fit guy. The clothes, and his grooming, screamed ‘military’.
I opened the single gate to the garden path without even asking him to identify himself. I’ve met enough spooks to know one when I see one, given advance warning. As he approached the house I opened the front door and stepped outside.
‘Mr Houseman.’ I extended a hand. As he shook it I studied his face. Yes, I had met him before; I was certain of it, but just as ignorant of the where or when. Nothing about him offered a clue. He was clean-shaven; his hair was short and looked freshly trimmed. At first glance I thought he was tanned, but at second, I wasn’t so sure. He was paler-skinned than Trish, but probably of mixed race, some Afro-Caribbean genes blended with the white.
‘Come in,’ I said, stepping aside to let him enter. ‘Let’s go in here.’ I showed him into my small private study, off the hall, where I’d watched him approach on the monitor. Normally I take visitors into the garden room, but this one wasn’t run-of-the-mill.
I sat at my desk; he took the chair alongside it. I opened the small beer fridge I keep in there, and offered him a drink. He peered inside and chose an Irn Bru; I chose the same, but I had a hard time resisting the Red Bull that was in there. That would have negated all my selfdenial. I hadn’t had a coffee all day and I was beginning to experience the withdrawal symptoms that Sarah had forecast.
All the time I was thinking, trying to nail him down, and all the time he knew it, as he looked back at me, with a faint, nervous smile on his face, incongruous when set against his bearing.
I don’t like losing at anything, but sometimes you have to admit your failures. ‘Go on,’ I said to him. ‘Tell me.’
He offered not a word in reply. Instead he slipped two fingers into his breast pocket and produced a white business card. I assumed that it was one of his, but as he passed it to me, face down, I could see that it was old, curled at the corners, and had a couple of stains on it.
I took it from him, turned it over. . and saw, beneath the police crest, my own name: ‘Robert M. Skinner, Detective Chief Inspector’.
‘Go back fifteen years,’ he murmured, but I was there already.
A call on the mother of a murder victim, a hard-as-nails cow called Bella Watson, in one of those places in Edinburgh that you will never see on a postcard. I’d taken the wrong car with me, my current BMW rather than the battered old Land Rover that was my usual work vehicle in those days. There had been a bunch of kids on the street, eyeing it up, and I’d singled out the biggest, the obvious leader, and explained to him what would happen to him, personally, if there was a mark on it when I got back. When I did, it was pristine. The lad had expected to be bunged for not touching it; I’d explained to him that if certain people in his street saw him taking money from a cop, it could be fatal. I wasn’t being a cheapskate; that was his world.
I’d seen something in the youngster as I spoke to him, something in his eyes that said that although he was trapped in his environment, he didn’t belong there. Now that I’d found my mental file, I could replay our conversation word for word.