‘Aye, Colin, I’m afraid he is. It looks like some sort of a seizure.’
The little man shook his sleekly groomed head sadly, and stood, for almost a minute, looking down at the body. ‘What a damn shame,’ he whispered at last, recovering his composure. ‘I liked old Billy. A bloody good judge he was, and a bloody good advocate before that.’
He nodded, almost imperceptibly, but grimly, towards the well of the Court, where Richard Kilmarnock, QC, sat, sorting through his papers. ‘That one’ll think it’s good news though,’ he growled. ‘He’s next on the seniority list for a red jacket.’
Mackie’s eyebrows rose. ‘They won’t make him a judge, will they?’ he muttered quietly.
The Court officer grunted. ‘Not a hope in hell. Fortunately, it goes on more than seniority.’ He paused. ‘It’s a bugger for you though. They’ll have to start the trial all over again, with a new judge and a new jury. Damn quick too, if the boy Bennett’s getting near the hundred-and-ten-day limit, so they don’t have to release him. I hope you don’t have any holidays planned.’
Mackie shook his head. Like many policemen, he believed secretly that the strict Scottish limitation on the time for which a person could be held in custody before trial leant too far towards the accused. ‘Not till November.’ As he spoke, he realized that his mouth had gone absolutely dry, something he had experienced before in moments of tension. Without thinking, he picked up the water carafe from the bench, and raised it to his lips. He was about to take a sip, when his companion put a hand on his sleeve.
‘I wouldn’t, if I were you.’
The policeman looked at him, with a puzzled frown.
‘You’ll get more than you bargain for there,’ said Colin. ‘The Senators of the College of Justice have their own wee ways, you might say. Old Billy there, I doubt if he ever drank straight water in his life. He always liked a measure of gin and a wee bit of lime mixed into his jug.
‘Just to give him a taste, like.’
Mackie looked down at the crumpled figure in the chair. ‘He wasn’t rat-arsed on the Bench, was he?’
‘Christ no! It’d take more than one wee gin to put Lord Archergait away. Still,’ the little man added sadly, ‘it seems that something has. Where is the bloody doctor anyway? There’s always a doctor about here somewhere, when the Court’s in session.’
He shuffled his feet, and looked up at Detective Superintendent Mackie. ‘By the way, I meant to ask you,’ he began, ‘how’s Big Bob getting on?’
‘DCC Skinner?’ said the policeman, surprised. ‘You know him?’
‘Everyone about here knows Bob,’ his companion replied. ‘Some man him. I’ve seen him give evidence here a right few times. That one down there — ’ he nodded towards Kilmarnock once more — ‘I saw him try to come the smart-arse wi’ Bob one day. The big man left him in ribbons, so he did.’
‘I heard that he and his wife had patched it up. That right?’
Mackie nodded. ‘Yes, Sarah’s back.’ He smiled. ‘I suppose you know her too?’
‘Aye, of course. I’ve seen her in the witness box too. Lovely lass she is, and right clever with it. I don’t know what the big fella was thinking of, getting involved with yon other woman. Pictures in the papers and everything.’
The officer looked towards the door. ‘Speaking of doctors, where is the bugger?’
His question was answered almost at once, as the courtroom door swung open.
2
The tall man stretched his lean, tanned body along the length of the white plastic lounger beside the family-sized swimming pool which took up much of the garden of his Spanish villa. His grey hair was wet and slicked back against his head, as the sun glistened on it, and on the droplets of water which still clung to him.
‘Have I told you lately, honey,’ he said, in his rugged Lanarkshire accent, ‘that the day I met you was the best day of my life?’
The woman, on another sun-bed a couple of feet away from his, propped herself up on her elbows and looked him in the eye. She was as tanned as he was. Her auburn hair hung down over her shoulders, and her long naked back shone with a mixture of lotion and perspiration.
She smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she drawled. ‘You’ve told me. Like every day of the twelve we’ve been here in L’Escala.’
His face grew serious. ‘Och, Sarah love, it’s just that I can’t tell you often enough. Just like I can’t say sorry often enough for being a complete arse, and for driving you away, like I did last year.’
The sturdy child who sat between them looked up at him and smiled from beneath his wide-brimmed sun hat. His features, as they developed, promised to take on the characteristics of both parents; his father’s dominant nose and chin, his mother’s wide hazel eyes, and her open grin. ‘Arse,’ he said, beaming.
‘Jazz! No!’ his mother called out, turning the boy’s face towards her and shaking her head in disapproval. ‘Don’t copy everything Daddy says.
‘And you,’ she said, grinning at her husband, ‘how often do I have to tell you? His ears are like blotting paper, soaking up everything we say, so that he can perfect the sounds he likes best.’
Bob Skinner looked suitably reproved. ‘Okay,’ he acknowledged. ‘I’ll swear in Spanish in future.’
‘Not even in Spanish.’
Beside Sarah, James Andrew Skinner pushed himself to his feet. ‘Mark,’ he called out loudly, half walking, half running, carefully and deliberately, on his solid toddler’s legs between the sun-beds, towards the pool where another child swam.
As his mother sat up and caught his arm, reaching for two flotation bands, he eyed her full breasts, hunger stirring a memory of infancy. Meanwhile Bob rose once more and dived into the pool, making only a small splash. He surfaced beside the blond-haired boy, who wore armbands also, and who was swimming laborious breadths.
‘Hey, Mark,’ he said, putting a hand under the child’s chest and lifting him to the side of the pool, where he clung to the tiled edge, ‘your swimming’s come on a power in the time we’ve been here. But don’t overdo it. You don’t want to fall asleep over your pizza tonight, do you?’
‘Pizza!’ the boy yelled. ‘In the pink place by the beach?’
Bob Skinner nodded, pleased hugely by his foster-son’s juvenile delight. Although he was only seven, young Mark’s life had been so scarred by tragedy, with the separate violent deaths of both his parents, that the policeman had feared that he would never be a child again.
His offer to adopt the boy after his mother’s murder had been welcomed by all three of his surviving grand-parents, each of whom recognised their inability to raise a child to manhood. Even more vitally, it had been welcomed by Mark, who had come to know the Deputy Chief Constable well through his adventures.
Skinner grinned as he remembered their earnest conversation, on the beach, back at their other home in Gullane.
‘So, wee man, you’ll come to live with Sarah and me, as our adopted son, and as James Andrew’s big brother?’
‘Yes please. My daddy promised me a wee brother. But then he died.’
‘Well you’ll have one now, ready made, and he’ll be a handful, I’ll tell you. Now, is there anything you want to ask me?’
‘Will I call you Daddy and Mummy?’
‘No, I don’t think so.You should always honour your natural daddy and mummy. Uncle Bob and Auntie Sarah would be better, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I think so.Will I be called Mark Skinner?’
‘What would be right, do you think? When we adopt you, legally you’ll be our son, Auntie Sarah’s and mine. But that doesn’t mean that you have to change your name.Your mummy and your daddy were both very special people, and you can still carry their name if you want to. Do you?’
‘Yes, I think I do.’