‘But it wasn’t,’ she countered. ‘It was somebody else’s baby, not ours, and although we can feel for them in their grief, if we’re honest, we have to admit to relief.’ I heard a small, stifled gasp. ‘Of course,’ she murmured.
‘What?’ I said.
She replied with a question of her own. ‘Who attended the scene from CID?’
‘The Menu,’ I answered. ‘Pye and Haddock. That’s their nickname,’ I explained. ‘Someone told them they sounded like a fish and chip shop menu, and it stuck. They hate it.’
‘I can imagine,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve been wondering why I wasn’t called out myself. The thing is, Joe Hutchinson and I had agreed that he would drop out of CID work. He’s close to retirement, and when he does quit he wants a gap, where he isn’t liable to be called in from his hideaway in Portugal as an expert witness in a High Court trial.’
‘Not by the Crown, that’s for sure,’ I remarked. ‘There’s much more money in consulting for the defence.’
‘Don’t be so cynical.’ she scolded. ‘As I said, we had that deal, but when the call came in this morning, he told me the police wanted him, specifically.’ She paused. ‘Were you behind that, Bob?’
‘No,’ I assured her. ‘That’s the truth, I wasn’t. It was Sammy Pye’s call, but I’m sure he was thinking of you when he made it, and I approve, too. I hear what you say about being able to separate professional and private, but sometimes that’s difficult, even for you. Has Joe done the autopsy yet?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘He’s holding off for as long as he can in the hope the girl can be identified.’
I was surprised. ‘They haven’t done that yet? A child that age, I’d expected her absence to be noted pretty quickly.’
‘You’re itching to be part of this, aren’t you?’ Sarah observed.
‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m trying not to scratch it. But I am standing here wishing I’d chased the guy; if I’d got lucky and caught him it might all have been wrapped up now.’
‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ she said. ‘A couple of minutes ago you said he might have been an opportunistic car thief who didn’t know what was in the boot. And anyway, could you have caught him?’
‘Probably not,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m kicking myself for not trying.’
‘Suppose you had,’ she asked, ‘and run him down, then found the little girl. How would you have reacted?’
That was a good question. ‘I can’t say for sure,’ I conceded, ‘but it might not have been pretty.’
‘Then it’s as well you didn’t,’ she declared. ‘The Menu . . . I like that; it’s funny . . . will get him, soon enough. Leave it to them, my love, and do your best to put it out of your mind. I’ll see you this evening.’
Talking to Sarah made me feel better, no doubt about it; she always does. With time on my hands, I decided to build on my positivity, by calling on my other sounding board.
A guy in my golf club told me a while back that you really start to feel old when your kids turn forty. I disagree: when Alex, my oldest, passed the thirty mark a wee while ago, it hit me harder than it did her.
She marked the event by doing something completely unexpected, by walking away from a successful and lucrative career as a leading corporate partner in Curle Anthony and Jarvis, Scotland’s biggest legal firm, to set up in practice as a criminal defence lawyer and qualify as a solicitor advocate . . . in other words, ‘The Opposition’, as she put it when I was a cop.
She’d picked up quite a bit of work in the second tier Sheriff Court, while studying for full rights of audience in the Supreme Court. A week before, she’d passed the Law Society exams, at the first time of asking.
I didn’t have to go far to talk to her. There is office space for rent in the Saltire building, and I’d managed to fix her up with a suite, two floors above mine. The new sign on her door made me swell up with pride as I read it: ‘Alexis Skinner, LLB, Solicitor Advocate’.
I was smiling as I stepped inside. ‘She in?’ I asked Constance, her secretary. The woman barely looked up from the papers she was studying, nodding and waving me on.
‘She’s busy,’ I remarked as I closed my daughter’s door behind me.
‘In the best possible way,’ Alex replied. ‘She’s doing fee notes.’
‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Plenty of them?’
She responded with a smile. ‘Oh yes. Business is good. I’m glad I took that extra room. I may need to fill it soon. I’ve just been hired for the defence in a corporate fraud case, involving one of my old clients from CAJ. I’m being formally introduced in the Court of Session on Wednesday morning, so I’ll be able to appear at the first High Court hearing.’
‘Are you going to lead?’ I asked.
‘Hell no,’ she exclaimed. ‘This is a complicated, high-stakes trial; I don’t have anywhere near enough experience. I can do a lot of the preparation but I’ve instructed Easson Middleton to lead, with me as his junior.’
My pride indicator went up by at least five points. Easson Middleton is the top QC on the criminal bar, and for Alex even to be sat beside him in court would be a strong marker. ‘How long will it last?’
‘Potentially weeks,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I may need to pass on some Sheriff Court work to an associate. But it’ll all depend on pre-trial negotiations.’
I grinned. ‘Plea bargaining?’
‘Come on, Pops,’ she scolded, ‘you know we don’t call it that. There’s a whole raft of charges in the case; if we can persuade the Crown to drop some in exchange for guilty pleas in others, it will cut down trial time.’
‘Will the trial judge agree?’ I wondered.
‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘There would be no jail time involved in any of the charges we’re looking at. If Lady Broughton gives us the nod that she’ll deal with them with modest fines, it’ll be sorted. And she will. She doesn’t want to be stuck there for three months when it could all be over in one.’
‘Good luck.’ I paused. ‘Hey,’ I chuckled, ‘will you need an investigator?’
She angled her head back and looked at me. ‘Are you kidding? We couldn’t afford you.’
‘Well, somebody can,’ I countered. ‘I’ve just been engaged by a man with a problem. And you’ll never guess who it is.’
‘That’s probably true,’ she agreed, ‘but clearly you’re bursting to tell me, so go ahead.’
‘Eden Higgins,’ I announced, no doubt with a smirk on my face.
‘Alison’s brother?’ Alex exclaimed. ‘The man with the boat that you fell in love with . . . after you fell in love with his sister?’
I nodded. ‘The same. You’re right about the boat,’ I added, ‘but wrong about her. I never did that.’
‘Hmph,’ she snorted. ‘You could have fooled me at the time. What problem could Eden possibly have?’ she asked. ‘He’s so rich he could make any trouble go away.’
‘Not this one,’ I told her; then I filled her in on my lunch date, and on the commission I’d accepted. ‘I’ve asked Mario to give me the police report,’ I added.
She frowned. ‘Will Andy let him do that?’
I shrugged. ‘I hope so. I’m not taking anything for granted, but . . .’
‘As well you don’t,’ she said. ‘From what I’ve been hearing, Chief Constable Sir Andrew Martin isn’t the man that you and I have known for all these years.’
‘Oh yes?’ I murmured. ‘And who’s been telling you that?’
‘Various cops,’ Alex replied. ‘People I’ve encountered in my new line of work, who knew him before. They all say the same; he’s become distant, remote, aloof.’
‘Remember,’ I reminded her, ‘we’re talking about someone who broke up with you not once, but twice. It may be that he never was the man we thought we knew.’
She turned away from me, looking out of her office’s smoked glass wall. ‘Second time around,’ she murmured, ‘I persuaded myself that we had found each other, just as you and Sarah have, at last. Then you pulled out of the running for the top job in the new force, Andy got it instead . . . and he changed, almost overnight. My police friends didn’t have to tell me that, because I knew already; I’d seen it for myself, close up.’