‘Then get me ACC Allan,’ I retorted, unimpressed by his vocabulary.
‘I’ve tried him; I can’t get in touch with him either.’
Christ! My brain was frazzled; I was fighting to think properly, time flying past while I tried to work out what to do next.
‘Okay,’ I said at last, when I’d decided. ‘Divisional Commander, Glasgow Central. Who’s he?’
‘That would be Chief Superintendent Reardon.’
‘Put me through to him.’
‘I believe he’s on holiday, sir.’
‘Then give me whoever is sitting in his fucking chair,’ I screamed.
‘Very good, sir,’ the communications officer replied stiffly. The waiting hum returned, and stayed with me for another God knew how long. I couldn’t look at the car’s clock.
‘This is Chief Inspector Spencer.’ I’d been hanging on so long I was startled when the woman spoke. ‘I’m the acting divisional commander. Chief Constable Skinner, is it?’
There was something indulgent about her tone that blew the last couple of shreds of my restraint. ‘We’ve established that,’ I yelled at her. ‘I have reason to believe that a terrorist operation is under way at the Royal Concert Hall. You need to get an armed response team there now.’
‘We have armed officers there,’ she protested. ‘We always put on a show of force when there are VIPs. Chief constable’s standing order.’
‘In that case, I’m willing to bet you’ve got two more people on site than you think. I believe you have a two-man hit team there posing as police officers. Are all your guys accounted for?’
‘I assume so.’
‘That doesn’t cut it. .’
‘Mr Skinner,’ Clyde cut in on me. I looked up and realised that we had left the motorway and were heading down Port Dundas Road towards the hall itself.
‘We’re arriving at the site now,’ I told Spencer. ‘No debate; get armed back-up here, now.’
We ran two red lights and swung on to the one-way Killermont Street, against the traffic flow, braking and swerving to avoid an on-coming van. Houseman stopped the car and jumped out, unholstering his pistol.
As I followed I could see why he had. Two uniformed police officers lay on the pavement in front of the entrance doors. They’d been armed, but it hadn’t done them any good. Two other men stood over them, identically dressed, in blue T-shirts and light cotton trousers; the stockier of the pair, a guy with a low forehead and a crew cut, held a silenced pistol in his right hand. As I looked at them, they registered our approach.
The gunman swung round to face us, but he didn’t get his weapon halfway up before Clyde shot him through the head.
By that time his companion was running. I started after him, then something hit me as hard as the other guy’s bullet might have if my young ex-schemie pal hadn’t nailed him. We’d caught them on the way out, not the way in. They’d done what they came to do.
I stopped chasing after the fleeing hit man. Instead I picked up the H and K carbine that one of the fallen officers had been carrying, sighted it on him as I’d done a hundred times before on cardboard targets on our firing range, and on a couple of live ones in other places, and nailed him, twice, right between the shoulder blades. See how fast you can run now, pal.
Clyde was on one knee, checking the cops for pulses. ‘This one’s alive,’ he said. ‘I think the other’s gone.’
Then the door to the hall swung open and ACC Max Allan stepped out into the street. His eyes were all screwed up, and I realised that the interior of the concert hall was without windows other than the glass panes of its doors, and that it was in darkness.
He looked at his fallen men, and he looked at me. ‘Bob,’ he whispered, and I could see he was in shock. ‘Bob, she’s dead.’
Paula McGuire
I had to laugh when I got there. As the government car rolled up at the surprisingly anonymous vehicle entrance to the Royal Concert Hall, I saw one of the pair of armed cops on duty outside say something into a radio transmitter. A few moments later, before my transport had even come to rest, the double doors opened and a man emerged. He wore a dark suit and a heavy gold chain round his neck, and I am not talking about the type they sell at H. Samuel.
When my driver opened the door, and I stepped out on to the pavement, the Lord Provost’s face registered complete confusion. Glasgow’s first citizen glared at the gun-toting blackshirt who’d summoned him.
‘I thought you said the First Minister was arriving,’ he snapped.
‘Sorry I can’t oblige,’ I told him, wearing my finest arch smile, ‘but don’t I rate a polite welcome too? I’m accompanying Ms de Marco to the event, and she’ll probably be First Minister again by this time next year.’
The civic dignitary recovered his ground, and his composure. ‘Of course, madam,’ he murmured, schmoozing forward with hand outstretched. ‘So nice to see you. In fact our Aileen’s arrived already; let me take you to her.’
He escorted me inside. As we approached a wide flight of stairs, I had a moment of confusion. I thought I’d caught the briefest glimpse of Maggie Steele disappearing from sight round a corner, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it as my official greeter led me up and into some sort of anteroom, where the usual pre-concert champagne reception was under way.
Aileen seemed to be its main attraction. She was in the middle of a crowd of people, but she spotted me just as I saw her, and excused herself from them. She stared at me, and I had to laugh again. So had she. Instead of red, she was wearing a dress of shimmering green satin. And there was I, in my black satin trouser suit.
‘You too?’ she chuckled. ‘I decided we’d better not look like twin pillar boxes, so I dug this out. It’s from my pre-Bob era and it sends out all the wrong signals to half of Glasgow, but what the hell? I haven’t worn it for a while and I want to get back to being the woman I once was.’
Did I detect an underlying message there? Yes, sure, and hadn’t I just seen Maggie Steele downstairs when she was for certain back home in Edinburgh fussing over her daughter.
I put both those misconceptions out of my mind. ‘I’m sorry, Aileen,’ I said. ‘After you called, I remembered I had this thing in my wardrobe, and that it still fits, just about. I should have phoned you back to let you know.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she assured me. ‘We both look fantastic. Let’s revel in it. Front row seats, two along from Clive Graham and his partner for the night, whoever she is. Let them all look on our works and despair.’
‘Sounds fine to me, Ozymandias,’ I agreed, taking an orange juice from a tray that a young blonde waitress offered me. According to her badge her name was Katya, one of the loyal Poles who had stuck with Scotland through the recession, I imagined. Quite a few of them work for me.
A tall, dark-haired, drop-dead good-looking guy came walking towards us. He was wearing a white tux and trousers with a shiny strip down the side; he looked a million dollars and he knew it. I was sure I had seen him somewhere before.
‘Joey,’ Aileen exclaimed, ‘great to see you again.’ They embraced and she kissed him on the cheek, for maybe half a second longer than was necessary. ‘Paula, this is Joey Morocco, Glaswegian made good, and our MC for the evening; Joey, Paula Viareggio.’
God, and I barely recognised him; showing your age, lady. Joey Morocco is an actor who started his career on a dodgy Scottish soap, then went upmarket very quickly, into network television productions, and most recently into movies. Hollywood has called and there are whispers that he’s going to be the next James Bond.
‘Hi, Paula,’ he said, ‘great to meet you.’ He sprinkled a little stardust on me, but not as much as he’d given Aileen, I noticed. ‘Ladies,’ he murmured. ‘As well as being host tonight I’m the guy who has to ask everyone to switch off their mobiles. Can you do that. . if you’re carrying, that is?’