Perverse bastard! It was what he wanted, but not how he’d wanted it. His hope was that if he couldn’t order me himself, Alf Stein would, that I’d be put in my place. His mistake was that I knew what that place was, he didn’t.
‘Just like that,’ I echoed. ‘Either I do it tonight with your agreement, or tomorrow morning, with or without it. For the sake of the investigation it’s best that it’s now.’
‘What’s tomorrow got to do with it?’ he snapped.
‘Tomorrow, Greg, I assume command of the Serious Crimes Unit, on promotion to detective superintendent. I’ll be working alongside the Scottish Crime Squad, and my remit will include organised crime. We’ll continue to have a dedicated drugs and vice unit, with Roy Old in charge, but it’ll work hand in hand with my team.’
‘Who defines serious crime?’ Jay was deflated; I’d let some of the air out of his balloon.
‘Within our force area, we do. The Scottish Crime Squad targets on a national basis, but its resources are limited. Our focus is within our own territory; we pass on intelligence when we have it, but we set our own local agenda. Tony Manson is very much part of that, and when we find his driver dead in these circumstances, that’s of interest to us.’
He shrugged. ‘Good luck to you, then. I’ll be off home. Higgins, Martin, you can knock off too.’
Christ, the man’s lifetime mission seemed to be to rile Bob Skinner. ‘Normally, I’d have no objection to any of that,’ I said, ‘but in this case I need a team on the ground, now. So I’m commandeering yours, or some of them, at least. Higgins, Martin, you’re with me, and I’ll have the lad on the door as well.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘Before you ask, yes, I have the power to do it. Call Alf, if you doubt me.’
He could have called the chief constable too. I’d been called to a meeting in his office, that morning, without being given a clue to the subject in advance. It had been James Proud, Alf Stein and me, that was all. The chief had told me of my promotion, and of the reason for the strengthening of my unit. It had existed for a while, and I’d spent some time there as a detective sergeant, but it was being beefed up. ‘I don’t want my force to be marginalised,’ the chief had said, ‘or to see any of its investigative role being handed over to a central crime-fighting unit. One or two of my fellow chiefs would like to see that happen, but it won’t, not while I’m behind this desk.’ There was a school of thought within the force that Proud was more politician than policeman; I was pleased to learn that he was both. ‘For the moment, you’ll have the squad that Tom Partridge built up, but you can add to it, straight away or whenever it suits you.’
I kept on staring up at Jay. ‘I’ll let you know how the investigation goes, Greg,’ I told him. ‘If I need anything else from your division, I’ll let you know.’ I didn’t feel any guilt about putting him down in front of his own officers; that’s what he’d have done to me, if he’d been able.
He sloped off, without another word. Policing is no different from any other profession, or from humanity for that matter. It has those people with that little bit extra, or who exceed their natural ability by their effort and enthusiasm, and it has its great majority, those who do what’s expected of them competently, the people who, in the end, make it all work, life’s Poor Bloody Infantry. Then there are the others, those who want the ride for free, and whose weight is carried by the rest. Occasionally, one of those will climb the ladder through lack of proper scrutiny. Greg Jay wasn’t a typical example, he’d gone higher than most, but he’d been on my radar for a while, and with me having risen to the same rung as him, he knew that his card was marked.
I climbed the ladder out of the pit, beckoning to Higgins and Martin to follow. They’d both stood silent while Jay and I had our gunfight. At the top, I called out to the lead crime scene officer. ‘DS Dorward,’ I said, ‘I know this place must be a fucking mess, with council staff walking all over it twice a week, but I need you to get as much as you can out of it. First off, I need to know how many people were in here with the dead man.’ The SOCO opened his mouth but I cut him off. ‘Yes, I know it’s possible that nobody else was here with him, that he was off his face on something and thought he was Greg Louganis, but I do not believe that. I want everything there is. Start with the door that was jemmied.’
Red hair poking out angrily from under his tunic hood, the man stared at me as if I’d asked him whether he regularly had sex with pigs. ‘That’s the first place we went, sir,’ he retorted. ‘It’s covered in prints. If the victim’s are there, we’ll find them.’
‘Of course you will. Sorry. Give me everything you can, as soon as you can, but without compromising thoroughness.’
‘What does “compromising” mean, sir?’ he drawled. ‘Is that a CID term?’
I laughed. Dorward’s path and mine hadn’t crossed too often, but every detective in the force knew of his prickliness.
‘Nah,’ I replied, ‘it’s a general term, as in “compromising your promotion chances”. Sarcasm can be good for that.’
He smiled, calmly. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Now will the three of you please fuck off and let me get on with it.’ Dorward was untouchable and he knew it. He was a genius at what he did, and rank meant nothing to him.
We peeled off our sterile gear and stepped back outside, where Alex was waiting with McGuire. ‘Where’s Mr Jay gone?’ she asked, frowning as if she knew.
‘Home. I’ve taken over the investigation.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a suspicious death.’ I was always matter-of-fact about my job when I discussed it with my daughter. I didn’t believe in euphemism… not that she’d let me get away with any since she was five, and she’d forced me to use the ‘D’ word when I tried to explain why her mother wouldn’t be coming back from the hospital. For almost a year after the accident, that’s where I’d said she was, but with kids such deceits don’t survive a week at a village primary school.
‘You mean a murder?’ she persisted.
‘We don’t know yet. Nothing’s ruled out till we can prove it couldn’t have happened.’
‘So what happens now?’ She seemed excited by the situation.
Good question, kid. If I’d been any good at delegation, I could have given my three subordinates orders and taken Alex home; but I’m not, and never have been. I wanted to be the one who did what had to happen next; I wanted to see the expression on Bella Watson’s face when I told her that her second son had died a violent death.
I took a few steps away, nodding to Alison to follow. ‘Would you do me a big favour,’ I whispered, ‘one that’s completely unfair of me to ask a colleague of your rank? And don’t fucking call me “sir” when you answer.’
A faint grin touched the corners of her mouth. ‘Sure, Bob. I’ll do it.’
‘You know what it is?’
‘Of course. You want me to take your daughter home and wait till you get back there.’
‘You don’t mind?’ I said.
‘No, but so what if I did?’ The grin became a wide smile, reminding me of how attractive she could be. ‘You can hardly send her home with a uniformed cop, and I wouldn’t trust my mother’s cat with Andy Martin.’
I didn’t expect Alex to make a fuss when I told her what was happening, but neither did I expect her to be quite as enthusiastic as she was. She’d met Alison once before, by accident, when we were on a clothes shopping expedition in the junior designer section of John Lewis, and for a while after that she’d looked at me curiously.
The two of them headed off towards Alison’s car, which was parked at the top of the street, leaving me with Martin and McGuire. ‘You were in this at the start,’ I told the PC, ‘so you can stay for the ride. You and DC Martin are both seconded to Serious Crimes… temporarily, I stress… so you can lose that uniform for a while.’
The Irish Italian beamed. ‘Yes, boss. What do you want me to do?’
‘What you’re told, and no more. You are not CID yet, so don’t let it go to your head.’ I checked my watch: twenty minutes to nine. ‘There’s a mugshot of Marlon Watson in the drugs squad office at headquarters. Have it faxed to St Leonards, then take it into all the pubs in the area, not just that one across the road. There’s the cellar bar in Chambers Street, the Irish pub along South Bridge, and a couple more; you’ll have time to check them all before last orders. Show it to the staff and any regulars they point you at. Ask whether anyone saw him on Tuesday, or even Monday. We shouldn’t rule that out, he may have died earlier than we think.’