Marcia Topham stared at the silver-haired policeman. This was not kind, benign 'Cal me Jimmy' Proud. This was someone she had never seen before, fierce, bristling, formidable and on battle bent.
For several seconds her mouth formed sounds, but none emerged.
She was beaten to it by a shout from the left. 'I protest, Chair. The Chief Constable's right out of order. He's responsible to this meeting.
He doesn't run it.'
Sir James rounded on Agnes Maley. 'As usual, Councillor, you're mistaken when it comes to police matters. I am not responsible to this Board. It advises me. Now I am advising it that it is not appropriate for the private business of a senior serving officer – any serving officer, for that matter – to be discussed in public session.'
He looked back towards Council or Topham. 'Madam Chair, you may wish to consult your solicitor.'
Grateful for the escape route, Marcia Topham nodded. 'Mr Wanless,' she asked, quickly. 'What's your guidance?'
The solicitor took a deep breath and looked up at her. 'The Chief Constable is quite right: you have the power to order this matter heard in private. However, you do not have an obligation in this case.'
A murmur of satisfaction sped along the benches behind Proud.
'That said,' the solicitor went on, his voice rising in emphasis, 'I am 109 bound to remind you that no form of privilege attaches to this body.
Should anything be said in discussion which was held subsequently to be defamatory of Mr Skinner, or Detective Sergeant Masters, then the Court would undoubtedly find that defamation to have been aggravated by a decision by you to hold the debate in public. This would be in addition to the personal responsibility for such defamation which would probably attach to you.
The decision is yours, Madam Chair.'
Councillor Topham's gaze settled on the lawyer, as if she was trapped by the headlights of an oncoming car. At last she glanced helplessly across towards Councillor Maley. 'Will the press and public please leave,' she said.
Before her, on the members' benches and in the public gallery, cries of protest rang out. However, with council attendants and two police constables acting as ushers, the room was cleared relatively quickly.
'Very good,' said the Chair, as the door closed on the last journalist.
'Now, Councillor Maley, do you wish to proceed?'
'One moment more, please!' Proud's voice boomed out even more loudly. 'Before the lady begins, I have something else to say.'
For a moment. Council or Topham looked as if she would use her gavel to intervene, but the Chief froze her with a glare and a dismissive wave of his hand.
'I want it recorded in the minutes of this meeting that I believe that it is absolutely disgraceful for this motion to be entertained. It relates entirely to matters which are within Mr Skinner's private life, and which are no business of this Board in any way.
'I believe that the proposer and seconder are motivated by malice against the police in general, which has been evident before at meetings of this Board. They have seized on the disgraceful publicity attaching to Mr Skinner's private life as a means of damaging my service, even if it means the further public humiliation of one of its finest officers.
'The days in which personal relationships between serving police officers were forbidden are long gone, as the proposer and seconder, and their supporters, know well. Indeed were I to propose their reintroduction, they would be the first on their feet in protest.'
He turned and looked at the benches behind him. 'On a personal level, rather than professionally, I do not believe that by today's standards Mr Skinner and Miss Masters are wrongdoers. By my own standards perhaps, but the world is changing.' He stared hard at Agnes Maley. 'I am prepared to bet you,' he said, 'that among the members of this Board, there must be at least one who is living in what some might call sin, with a person separated not yet divorced.' The councillor's face flushed beetroot red.
Sir James turned back to the Chair. 'I am no great Bible scholar,' he said, 'but I do remember well the story of the woman taken in adultery.
'I will say just this. Before anyone casts the first stone at Bob Skinner, they should remember that no-one in this room is in a better position than me to know which of you is without sin. And before this matter is put to a vote, Councillor Maley and her friends would do well to bear that in mind.
'Now I wil leave you to your discussions.' He picked up his papers and strode from the chamber.
32
Andy Martin had only one phobia: heights. He also possessed an inherent wil to win which had made him a feared opponent on the rugby field, and which would not al ow him to be overcome by anything, not even mortal terror.
He had tackled his secret enemy head-on by joining a rock-climbing club in his senior year at high school, and had taken this further at university by joining the mountaineering club. It had been hard, al the way through, but he had kept his jaw tight and his hands strong in a domestic climbing career which had taken in some of the finest climbs in the Cuillins, the beautiful mountains of the Island of Skye, and in the spectacular, craggy Lake District.
Yet a true phobia is never banished; it is only overcome moment by moment. And so, as the police helicopter swept over the purple heather of the moorland, Martin, in the co-pilot's seat, stil felt a lurching in his stomach as he looked down, and stil fought to master the panic at the back of his brain.
'Okay, John,' he said to the police pilot through his headset, essential equipment given the booming noise within the cockpit from the engine behind them, and the whirring of the rotors above. 'That's the fifth sector on this map covered, and no sign of any recent activity up here, other than bloody sheep. One more to go: bank south please, down towards Longformacus.'
The pilot nodded in confirmation and swung the craft round. They were flying at a height of around three hundred feet, high enough not to be easily identified from the ground, low enough to allow Martin to scan the area beneath with powerful wide-field binoculars. They flew on for ten minutes, sweeping the sector in swathes, east to west, west to east, as if they were mowing it from a great height.
'There's a bothy down to the right,' Martin cal ed out at last. 'Drop us down a bit and let's take a closer look.' The pilot obeyed, dropping the helicopter by around fifty feet and slowing their steady speed still further.
Martin peered through the glasses. The bothy, a stone-built shelter, was in poor repair. At one corner, its slate roof had col apsed. There had once been glass in its single window, but now its panes were smashed, and its door hung by a single hinge. Al around, the grass 112 stood high, and the narrow worn path which led to the door from the heathery pasture was overgrown and barely discernible.
The Chief Superintendent shook his head. 'No,' he called, into his microphone, 'another dud. There's been no-one there for years by the look of it. Pick it up again.'
The pilot flew on as ordered, through one swathe, then another, until finally they were almost over the village of Longformacus, beyond which the character of the land changed. They were to the west of the tiny community when Martin spotted the caravan. 'What's that doing there?' he asked himself.
It was a touring van, stil shiny and new. Yet it was wel away from the roadway, parked on the bank of a small, fast-flowing stream feeding into a small loch, over which they had just flown. There was no car alongside it, but the grass around it was crushed and torn, as if a vehicle had turned and reversed there, recently and frequently.