Fifty-Three
‘Are you going to work in Glasgow for good, Dad?’ Skinner’s elder son asked, ranging over three octaves in that single sentence.
Mark McGrath, the boy Skinner and Sarah had adopted as an orphan, was at the outset of adolescence, and the breaking of his voice was not passing over easily or quickly. James Andrew, his younger brother, laughed at his lack of control, until he was silenced by a frown from his mother.
‘I dunno, mate,’ Bob confessed. ‘Last week I’d never have imagined being there. On Sunday, when I agreed to take over, the answer would still have been no. But with every day that passes, I’m just a little less certain. But remember, even if I did apply for the job, so would other people. There’s no saying I’d be chosen.’
Both of his sons looked at him as if he had told them Motherwell would win the Champions League.
‘No kidding,’ he insisted. ‘There are many very good cops out there, and most of them are younger than me. I won’t see fifty again, lads.’
‘You’ll get it, Dad.’ James Andrew spoke with certainty, his father’s certainty, Sarah realised, as she heard him. ‘Will we have to move to Glasgow?’
‘Never!’ The reply was instant, and vehement.
‘Come on, guys,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘It’s past nine, time you headed upstairs. And don’t disturb your sister if she’s asleep.’
‘She won’t be,’ Mark squeaked. ‘She’ll be practising her reading.’
‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration surely,’ Bob chuckled. ‘She might be looking at the pictures.’
‘No, Dad. She’s learning words as well; I’ve been teaching her. There’s a computer program and I’ve been using it.’
Skinner watched them as they left, and was still gazing at the door long after it was closed. Sarah settled down beside him on the sofa, tugging his arm to claim his attention. ‘Hey,’ she murmured, ‘come back from wherever you are. Whassup, anyway?’
‘Ach, I was just thinking what a crap dad I’ve been. I should be teaching my daughter to read, not subcontracting the job to Mark. Last week I was all motivated, pumped up to do that and more. We had a great morning on the beach on Saturday, the kids and I, then I had a phone call, the shit hit the fan and I had to go rushing off, didn’t I, and get it splattered all over me. Now I’m thinking seriously about taking on the biggest job in Scotland, when I’ve already got a job that’s far more important than that.’
She turned his face to her, and kissed him. ‘Bob,’ she said, ‘I love you, and it’s good to see you taking your kids so seriously. But you always have done. You’ve been great with the boys all along, and you’ve never neglected Seonaid. It’s taken you a while to realise that she isn’t a baby any more, that’s all. Me living in America didn’t help, since that meant you missed a big chunk of her infancy, but I’m back now, and we can help her grow together.’ She put a hand on his chest. ‘That does not mean I expect you to become a house husband, because you couldn’t. There’s too much happening, too much at stake just now, and if you don’t get involved in it, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
‘You can’t walk away anyway, it’s not in your nature. This thing tomorrow, this high-stakes meeting at MI5 that you’re so worked up about, even if you’re not saying so, you don’t have to go there, do you? But you want to, you feel you have to. Isn’t that right?’
‘I set it up,’ he admitted. ‘Yes, it is a bit of a fishing trip, and there are other ways I could have played it. For example, I could just write a report, a straight factual account of the things that we know, and suggest certain possibilities. Then I could give that report to the Lord Advocate, who’s my ultimate boss as a criminal investigator in Scotland, with a copy to the First Minister.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Because they’d burn it. If I told them what I know to be fact and what I see as a possibility, they’d be scared stiff. If they acted on it, it could provoke a major conflict between them and the Westminster government. All in all, it’s best that I keep it from them, and that I go and have a full and frank discussion with Amanda.’
‘Bob,’ Sarah ventured, ‘are you suggesting that MI5 had something to do with Toni Field’s murder?’
‘No, I’m not, because the evidence doesn’t take me there. Even if I thought they were capable of doing that, I can’t see why they would. But I do know that they created the conditions for it to happen, and that they’ve been doing what they can to cover up. There’s a piece of that I still don’t understand, but I never will because they’ve been too good at it.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here’s what I think you should do. See this thing through to its conclusion, and let it go, however unsatisfactory the conclusion may be. Then apply for the Strathclyde job. You’ll get it; even the boys know that. And once you’re there, be everything you can be. Build your support staff so that you can delegate and not have to change every light bulb. Work the hours a normal man does, and be the father that a normal man is expected to be.’
He grinned. ‘And the husband?’
‘Nah,’ she laughed in return. ‘You were always lousy at that; we’re fine as we are.’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll go with that.’
‘Would you like a drink? I put some Corona in the fridge for you. I take it it’s still your favourite beer.’
‘Absolutely, but I’ll give it a miss tonight. Early start tomorrow. Hey,’ he added, ‘you realise that from now on I’ll be able to tell whether you’ve got another bloke just by checking the fridge?’
‘Yes, but how will you know I don’t have another fridge somewhere, one with a combination lock just in case you do find it?’
Her joke triggered a memory. ‘Bugger,’ he exclaimed. ‘I finally got into my own safe this afternoon, in the office. I haven’t had a chance to check the papers that were in it. They’re in my briefcase; mind if I go through them now?’
‘No,’ she replied, jumping to her feet, ‘you do that, and I’ll check that Madam Seonaid isn’t halfway through War and Peace by torchlight under the duvet.’
As she left the room, he reached for his attaché case and opened it. He had brought the remnants of his in-tray with him, to be worked on during his flight to London, but the contents of Toni Field’s safe were in a separate folder. He took it out and set the rest aside.
His dead predecessor’s papers were contained in a series of large envelopes. He picked up the first; the word ‘Receipts’ was scrawled on the outside. He shook out the contents and saw a pile of payment slips, two from restaurants, three from petrol stations, five for train tickets, two for books on criminology bought from Amazon, another from a hotel in Guildford, double room, breakfast for two, he noted, recalling a policing conference in the Surrey town two months earlier that he had declined to attend. Maybe she took Marina, he thought.
Or possibly not. Might Toni have been capable of taking the so-called Don Sturgeon along for the ride, and slipping him on to her expenses?
He stuffed the slips back into the envelope and picked up the next. His eyebrows rose when he saw his own name written on the front. He was about to open it when he found a second envelope attached, stuck to it by the gum on its unsealed flap. He prised them apart and read another name, ‘P. Friedman’. He looked inside, but it was empty, and so he laid it aside and slid out the contents of his own.
He found himself looking at two photographs of himself. From the background he saw that they had been taken surreptitiously at ACPOS, probably by Toni, with a mobile phone while his attention had been elsewhere. They were clipped on to a series of handwritten notes.
As he read them he saw that they were summaries of every meeting they had ever attended together, and one that had been just the two of them, when he had paid a courtesy call on her in Pitt Street in the week she had taken up office. That note was the most interesting.