Three
I dropped Martin at the St Leonards police office, where Jay’s team were based. I looked into the CID suite, but its detective superintendent was long gone, and the place would have been empty, save for a young woman PC who was covering the phones, Martin’s job, I guessed, if I hadn’t snaffled him.
‘When do you finish?’ I asked her. She looked at me, severely, as if I was going to ask her on a date. ‘Just curious,’ I added.
‘Officially I haven’t started yet,’ she replied. ‘I’m night shift, ten to six, but I got here twenty minutes early and DS Bryce borrowed me from the front desk.’ She was an attractive girl, in the same age bracket as Martin. Her hair was as distinctively red as his was blond.
‘Coke and Mars bars,’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Stock up with Coca-Cola and Mars bars. There’s instant energy in both. They’re murder on your teeth, but when you need them they help you make it through the night.’
She threw me a sideways look; I guessed that she gave away her smiles reluctantly. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Mr… Sorry, I don’t know who you are.’
‘Bob Skinner, DCI, until tomorrow morning, then it’s detective super. I work out of Fettes.’
‘Drugs squad, I assume,’ she added, solemnly. ‘That explains why you know a lot about stimulants.’
‘Most are legal, PC…?’
‘Rose. Margaret Rose.’
‘Have a good night, PC Rose. When you feel your eyelids begin to droop, remember what I told you.’
I told Martin to be at headquarters for half past eight next morning, and to be prepared to witness a post-mortem. ‘Have you been to one before?’ I asked, cautiously. I’d learned the hard way to stand well clear of inexperienced colleagues while watching Joe Hutchinson at work.
He nodded. ‘A couple, with DI Higgins.’
‘See you tomorrow, then.’ I’d noticed before, the guy had vivid green eyes, unusual in itself, but these were really different.
I must have been staring at him. ‘I wear contacts,’ he said. ‘They’re slightly tinted, for the sun.’
It was pushing ten thirty by the time I got home, but barely dark, for high summer was approaching. Alison’s car was parked on Goose Green alongside my Land Rover, opposite the cottage. The curtains were drawn in the living room, but a silver sliver showed through a gap. There was no light, though, in the attic dormer, Alex’s room.
I tapped my watch as I walked in. ‘What’s this?’
As a teenager, my daughter set her own hours, within limits, but she tended to begin the process of bedding down for the night around ten o’clock. ‘I couldn’t let Alison sit on her own, could I?’ she declared.
‘Maybe not, but she’s not on her own now.’
‘Okay.’ She jumped out of my armchair. ‘Goodnight, Alison, goodnight, Pops.’ She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then headed for the stairs.
‘Thanks,’ I said, as soon as the living-room door closed, ‘a million thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ Alison replied. ‘I should be thanking you.’
‘Why?’
‘You could have sent me to see the bereaved mother, instead of doing it yourself.’
‘If I’d done that, I’d have had to second you to Serious Crimes.’
She was holding a mug in both hands; she raised it and took a sip. ‘But you’re not going to?’
‘No, I’ve got a DI there already; besides, I’ve already made up my mind to take young Martin from your squad. If I said I wanted you as well, Jay would scream bloody murder.’
‘You were hard on my boss tonight,’ she murmured.
‘Your boss is a double-dyed, chromium-plated shite, and you know it. If he ever gets to be head of CID, we’re all fucked.’
‘Do you think he might?’
I grinned, and winked at her. ‘Not a chance.’ I walked into the kitchen; Alison rose from her seat and followed me. I took two bottles of Becks from the fridge, popped the caps and handed one to her.
She smiled as she laid down the mug and took it from me ‘You know, Bob, you can be really devious, when you set your mind to it.’
‘Now what does that mean?’
‘Cunning, crafty, wily, Machiavellian; I could go on.’
‘I know what the bloody word means, woman; I’m asking why you’re hanging it round my neck.’
‘Because you’re an operator. You make things happen without people knowing that your hand’s behind them… at least you don’t think they know. You’re driven by ambition, and you won’t let anyone stand in your way. I’ll bet you’ve got your whole career planned out.’
I took her hand and led her back through to the living room, sat on the sofa and drew her down beside me. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t. But Alf Stein and the chief have; they spelled it out for me yesterday. I do two years in this new job, then I make chief super. I go back into uniform for a year, or do a secondment somewhere… James Proud has contacts that you would not believe… then Alf retires and I succeed him. After that… they did not elaborate.’ I put an arm around her shoulders, and she settled in against me. ‘But honest to Christ, Alison, it’s their plan, not mine. I don’t suffer fools, and I cut corners when I have to, but I’d never stand on anyone to get to the top.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘I didn’t mean that you would. I was talking about me. You got me off the drugs squad, didn’t you? My move back into mainstream CID, you told me it was routine, career development, but it wasn’t, was it? You guys in specialist units, you can do what you bloody like; I’ve seen you. You had me moved.’
She had me there. ‘Yes, I did,’ I admitted. ‘Confession time; I fixed it up. But you know why. I don’t have to spell that out for you, do I?’
‘Maybe not, but Bob, I’ve hardly seen you since. I know it’s difficult for you domestically, but…’
‘You were the one who told me it wasn’t going anywhere,’ I reminded her. ‘I distinctly remember you saying that, one lunchtime at your place.’
‘Maybe so, but… Bloody men! I didn’t mean you to take me so literally. Whoever said that I wanted it to go anywhere beyond where it was. I don’t want to marry you, Bob, don’t worry about that, but the way it was between us, it suited me. Now I feel as if you’ve dropped me.’
I ran my fingers through her hair; it was dark, but with blond highlights. ‘Don’t think that, Ali, not for a minute. Look, you see the way I am here; you see the way Alex and I are. I’ve always tried to keep my life with her separate from everything else, and I’ve succeeded. I wouldn’t have brought her with me tonight if I’d had any other option. Well, maybe I did, maybe I could have told Jay to fuck off, that I’d look at his body in the morning.’
‘No, you couldn’t,’ she contradicted me. ‘It’s against your nature.’
‘Be that as it may, one side effect of us being in different offices… our thing started out of proximity, and that way it was easy to maintain, but…’
Her gaze dropped to her lap. ‘I get it. You only want low-maintenance women.’
‘No! Fuck, I’m tripping over myself here. What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, and now you think I’ve dumped you, but I haven’t. You want proof, yes, I could have told you and Martin to go and see Bella yourselves, but I didn’t. I wanted you to be here when I got back.’ I nudged her. ‘See, you’re right; I am a devious bastard.’
‘Well, you got what you wanted. Now I must be going.’ She made as if to rise, but I held on to her.
‘You’re not going.’ I tapped the empty bottle in her hand. ‘We both knew that, when you took that beer.’
‘But Alex…’
‘Sleep in the spare room if you like, but as you drop off think on this: my daughter tried to pair me off with her auntie earlier on tonight because she couldn’t think of anyone else suitable. If you’re still here in the morning, you’ll see those blue eyes of hers light up.’
Four
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A nd did they ever, when she came into the kitchen in her dressing gown and saw Alison cramming a slice of toast into her face, as she slipped on her jacket. No, she hadn’t slept in the spare room, but she had gone in there, crumpled the sheets and punched a head-sized hole in one of the pillows. She was gone by seven thirty; I spent the next fifteen minutes before Daisy arrived waiting for the cross-examination, but it didn’t happen. It was only when I was leaving myself that Alex whispered, ‘She’s nice.’