Giving her a wave and a sign that I hoped she would read as ‘Stay where you are’, I moved towards the Beamer. Its driver, seeing no way forward, started to reverse, but got no further than a couple of yards before slamming hard into a Mini that had come to a halt behind him. He was trapped; no escape route.
We made eye contact as I advanced on him. I saw a thin, sharp, youngish Caucasian face within the hood, eyes narrowed. I guess he saw a tall, angry, grey-haired bloke in a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie.
My view of him lasted for only a couple of seconds, for as long as it took a cloud that had obscured the low winter sun to pass by, and for a ray of light to hit the red car’s windscreen, reflecting into my eyes and blinding me momentarily.
I took a couple of steps to my left to escape it; by the time my vision had cleared the man was out of his car and legging it across the park. I gave a moment’s thought to chasing him, but abandoned the idea, for he was moving like a bat out of hell. I still go out running along the coastline in front of my house, but I never was a sprinter. I knew that he had too big a start, plus he had at least twenty-five years on me.
Instead I walked round to the Mini. Its bonnet had been crunched, and its engine had stopped, probably stalled on impact. The driver was also a lady, but older than the Grand Cherokee’s pilot. She was white haired and in her seventies, I guessed.
She was shocked. She stared straight ahead, heavily veined hands grasping her wheel, so tightly that her knuckles showed bony white.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ a voice demanded. Grand Cherokee woman, a striking redhead in her thirties who could have been modelling her M amp;S clothes, had overcome her initial scare and stood behind me.
‘You know as much as I do,’ I replied. ‘This thing,’ I nodded towards the BMW, ‘hit me, and the driver legged it.’
‘Why would he do that?’ she asked.
‘My best guess,’ I told her, ‘is that this is stolen, probably from this car park. Look, do me a favour,’ I added. ‘Will you take care of the old lady? She’s had a hell of a fright and might need medical assistance. If you do that I’ll call for help and alert site security.’
She nodded and stepped up to the Mini’s driver door, while I dug out my phone. I have the police communications centre number stored. I retrieved it and pressed the onscreen button.
‘This is Bob Skinner, formerly chief constable,’ I told the civilian operator who answered. ‘I’m in the Fort Kinnaird car park, close to T K Maxx and M amp;S. There’s been a traffic incident involving my car and two others. The driver of one of them, registration,’ I glanced at the plate, ‘Charlie Oscar Sierra One Echo, has fled the scene on foot. White male, twenties, slim, medium height, wearing a grey hoodie and blue jeans. I suspect vehicle theft; either that or he’s uninsured, and just panicked. I need police attendance, and paramedics for a third driver, an elderly lady who looks to be in shock, after the so-and-so drove into her vehicle.’
‘Officers and an ambulance will be with you as soon as possible, Mr Skinner,’ the man replied. ‘You’ll need to remain at the scene yourself.’
‘I know that, pal,’ I snapped: my temper was still on a hair trigger. In fact, I couldn’t have gone anywhere even if I’d wanted to, for our little section of roadway was blocked at either end by the redhead’s off-roader and the old dear’s damaged car.
Pocketing my phone, I turned to the BMW once again. The driver’s door was open and the engine was still running. I walked round, leaned inside and turned it off, using a handkerchief to twist the key and touching nothing else. As I did so I could see my own car through the windscreen. As I had expected there was a dent in the corner, but it looked drivable.
Backing out, I took a longer look at the red saloon. The personalised number gave no clue to its age, but from the dullness of its paintwork and its boxy lines, I judged that it had to be at least ten years old. For sure, ‘COSIE’, its personalised plate, was worth more than the car itself.
‘So why steal it?’ I murmured to nobody in particular. ‘Not just for the number surely . . . unless the guy’s a total idiot, for that only has value to the registered owner.’
I moved slowly around the vehicle, inspecting its damage. The collision impact on the front nearside wing was less than that on my Merc: old steel versus modern plastic, I imagined. There was a scratch along the side, the kind a vandal might leave with a key or a nail, but it was the rear end that had been most affected by the shunt. A light cluster was smashed, and the boot was distorted, its catch shaken loose.
I took out my handkerchief again, wrapping it round my fingers before giving the metal a firm push. But the lock didn’t take; instead the lid swung slowly upwards, opening fully and revealing what was inside.
In the moment that I saw it, I jumped backwards, my reactive scream muffling itself in my throat.
A child stared up at me, a little girl. She looked to be around the same age as my younger daughter, Seonaid. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open too, as if she was as startled by me as I was by the sight of her. She was dressed in a tartan skirt and a blue quilted jacket. Beneath, she wore a sweatshirt with a cartoon penguin on the front, the type of garment that has taken the place of a blazer in many schools.
I reached into her place of containment and touched her cheek, as gently as I touch Seonaid’s sometimes, when she’s asleep, but I didn’t need to feel the coldness against my fingertips to know that the poor little innocent was dead.
I couldn’t put a number to the crime scenes I’ve visited over a thirty-year police career, or to the number of victims of violence I’ve stood over.
Latterly, I was involved in a couple of really bad ones; they got to me in a way that others hadn’t, and made me vow to walk away, to leave the bloody aftermath to others while I could still feel some compassion for the dead, before I became as dehumanised as they were.
I never quite managed that as a serving officer, not even as a chief constable, but as a civilian, that day in that car park, I did something I’d never done before. I buried my face in my hands, so that nobody could see my tears.
That’s how I was standing when the cops arrived.
Two
I suppose that an objective observer looking at my career might say I did all right for myself, but I see it differently. I was okay until a few years ago, and then it all went south.
My problem was that I found myself in a job for which I was totally unprepared, and temperamentally unsuited. Most of my police service, from detective sergeant up, was spent in major criminal investigation. I was a specialist, not an all-rounder.
In my final years I was in a position to take myself out of that; as chief constable of my force, and before that as deputy chief, I could have positioned myself well away from CID.
Sir James Proud, my predecessor in the top office in Edinburgh, was a career administrator. I could have followed in his footsteps and played it his way; if I’d been any good at the job, I would have done that very thing.
But I’m not Jimmy, nor could I ever have been like him. I had no background in the things that he did well, nor any aptitude for them, and that was a problem, for those were the skills that had made him such an outstanding chief police officer.
In my heart, I’d known this. I had resisted, until the very last minute, the pressure that was put upon me to follow in Sir James’s footsteps, pressure applied subtly by the man himself, more overtly by friends and colleagues, and most forcefully of all by she who was my wife at the time.
They meant well, all but one of them. I didn’t know it then, but out of all my boosters only one person had her own interests at heart, rather than mine. That’s one of a few reasons why Aileen de Marco and I aren’t married any more.