The young sergeant returned to his desk in the open-plan office, nodding a greeting to the two detective constables who made up the unit’s complement. He was checking through their reports on their inquiries into a series of thefts from cars parked overnight in the residential dockland areas when Pye’s hand fell on his shoulder.
‘The Bandit reacted just as you said he would,’ the DI murmured. ‘We’re on parade at headquarters at twelve o’clock, and he’ll be in front of the cameras.’
‘Brilliant,’ Sauce declared. ‘So when this investigation goes absolutely nowhere, as it probably will, his name will be all over it rather than ours.’
‘Yup. You’re not just a perceptive sod, but devious as well. Just as well I told him the media conference was your idea.’
‘You fucking what???’
Four
‘What’s going on downstairs?’ Chief Constable Margaret Steele asked. ‘I saw the media beginning to gather when I came in from my meeting.’
‘David Mackenzie’s holding a press briefing,’ ACC Mario McGuire replied.
‘Mackenzie is? About what?’
‘The headless body that was found on Friday: they’ve run out of ways to identify her so he’s making a national appeal for help from the public.’
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘He’s claiming credit, and I have no reason to doubt it’.
‘Has Mary Chambers okayed it?’
‘Retrospectively. He called it and then told her about it. She’s not best pleased about that, but she kept her feelings to herself. She didn’t want the two of them to get off on the wrong foot, and besides, she’d likely have approved it even if he had asked for permission.’
‘Why’s he doing the briefing himself? Sammy Pye’s the SIO on the investigation, isn’t he?’
‘Not any more, Mackenzie’s jocked him off.’ The ACC held up a hand, to stall her reaction. ‘Maggie, I don’t like that any more than you, but let’s not get steamed up about it. The guy’s probably out to make a name for himself again in CID, maybe in the hope that Bob’ll move him back to Glasgow when the new force takes over. Good luck to him,’ McGuire grunted, ‘it’s the best place for him. What he’s done might look like poor man-management, but it isn’t going to compromise the investigation. I asked Mary to make damn sure he uses a Freephone contact number for calls from the public, so that our communications centre isn’t swamped. You never know, he might even get a result.’
‘He might,’ Steele agreed. ‘But isn’t there any other means of identifying her?’
‘Nah; all other routes are exhausted. The surgeon who took out her appendix didn’t sign his name so …’
‘Funny bugger.’ She smiled, then paused for a second. ‘Mackenzie’s been set up, of course,’ she added.
‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘Sammy Pye’s played him, to get himself out of the firing line.’
‘Not just Sammy. My former protégé Haddock’s down in Leith now, and I can see his hand all over this. Mark my words, it’s as well you and I have got a good head start on that boy. He’s going to go as far in the force as he wants. He’s another Bob Skinner.’
The big ACC smiled. ‘No, he’s not. There’s a big difference; Bob’s actually gone further in the force than he ever wanted. If he hadn’t had to take the reins in Strathclyde in an emergency, he’d never have gone there, but now he has, he feels that he’s got no choice but to take over as head of the unified Scottish police service. That’s Neil McIlhenney’s reading, and he’s closer to the big man than anyone except Andy Martin. If you want to compare young Sauce Haddock with somebody, make it Andy. He still has plenty of ambition left.’
‘And what about you?’ the chief constable asked.
‘Me? I never thought I’d make assistant chief, so I’m quite happy. I’ll just sit here and see what opportunities the new set-up has to offer. Given the chance, I’ll go back to CID. As for you, you’ve made it to the top of the tree in the outgoing system, and you’ll get one of the ACC posts in the unified force, for sure.’
‘How do you know I wouldn’t rather take the redundancy money? There will be a lot of that on offer, remember.’
‘How do I know?’ he repeated. ‘Mags, we used to be married. I know you.’ He leaned on the last pronoun. ‘You’re a police officer; it’s all you’ve ever wanted to be. Now you’re a mother too, and that’s good, but you’re not going to stay at home until wee Stephanie’s off your hands. Even if you did fancy it, you’re way too young to get a pension, so you’ll carry on. Don’t even begin to try to kid me.’
She looked at him with a gleam in her eye. ‘I never could; it was you that kidded me, remember. How is Paula, by the way, and wee Eamon?’
‘They are both blooming, thanks. Being a mother. .’ his expression took on a glow of reverence, ‘. . it changes women in a way I never appreciated before.’
‘And men,’ his ex-wife chuckled. ‘Go and look at yourself in the mirror.’
‘I will, after I’ve dropped in on Mackenzie’s press briefing.’
‘No,’ Maggie said, quickly. ‘Don’t do that. Let him have his space, Mario.’
‘Let him have enough rope, you mean?’
‘No, I don’t. He might just fool us both by getting it right. If he doesn’t, I don’t want him to have anyone to blame but himself.’
Five
I’m not addicted to television, not by a long way, but someone in my position does have a need to keep up to date with current affairs, and events. That’s why I have UK satellite television in my Spanish place, as most Brits do, whether they’re resident ex-pats or occasional visitors like us.
Not that I was thinking of home.
Sarah and I had just come home from a late breakfast in Casablanca, a café down in the old part of L’Escala, and a couple of hours reclining on the town beach, which it overlooks. Holidays are my time for catching up on my reading list (normally I’m one of those people who take forever to get through a book, since I consume it in ten- or fifteen-minute bursts, in bed, last thing at night, before my eyes go blurry and sleep catches up with me), and that morning I’d finished the latest tale of the recently unretired DI Rebus. . unconventional or not, with his clear-up rate he’d have gone a lot higher in my force, trust me. . and moved on to a novel called As Serious as Death, the latest in a series that’s set in an authentic Spanish village that I can see from our house.
‘You know what?’ I said to her as we settled on our sunbeds beside the pool.
‘What?’ she murmured.
‘I love you.’
‘Nice. I love you too. Now what else were you going to say?’
‘Ach, nothing really, I’ve been thinking all morning about last night at La Clota and what we wound up talking about.’
‘That young waiter?’
‘Who?’ I frowned for a moment; I’d forgotten all about the lad. ‘Ah him,’ I said. ‘No, not him, the job; as always, the bloody job. You know, if the new board in its doubtful wisdom decided that they wanted someone else to do it, I’ve decided that I wouldn’t give a fuck. There are other things in. .’
‘Ahh,’ she said, cutting me off in the wise-woman tone that always brings me down to earth whenever she thinks I might be floating above it. ‘We’re back to buying that boat, are we?’
‘What boat?’
‘You know damn well. Alex told me about it. When she was a kid, you and she went for a weekend’s sailing in the Clyde estuary, with your girlfriend of the time. Before it was over you were all for giving up your career, buying a boat of your own and doing chartered cruises for a living.’
‘Mmm,’ I whispered. ‘That boat.’ That weekend, that warm, lovely woman: poor dead Alison, another cop, who was even more career-driven than me, and might have overtaken me, if she hadn’t got into the wrong car at the wrong time and. .