‘Let me be clear on this,’ he asked. ‘Your police commissioner wants me to close down this inquiry to avoid opening a can of worms and having them crawl all over his office. Is that it?’
‘I’m not allowed to ask you to do that, sir. My instruction is to explain the situation to you, to try to make you see how much damage might be done to the reputation of NYPD, and then to ask how far your discretion extends.’
Skinner looked at him. ‘I can see the problem,’ he said. ‘If all our skeletons came out the cupboard we’d all be fucked. However, my problem is that a murder has been committed on my patch, and I am legally bound to pursue it to a conclusion. I’m also under media scrutiny, and that is something which, clearly, you understand.’
Huggins nodded, grim-faced; he looked ready to empty Skinner’s fridge.
‘So this is what I’ll do. You’ve given me information that tells me who Colin Mawhinney’s murderers may have been. Do you have recent photographs of these people?’
‘I have them with me, sir.’
‘Then please let Neil have them. The game is easier if we’re looking for a hired Land Rover; there are damn few of them around. We will show these photographs around the rental companies and the airports. If we can identify Salvona and Falcone, and show definitely that they were here, and had such a vehicle, then even if we never discover where Mawhinney was killed, we’ll have a basis for prosecution.’
Skinner smiled. ‘What we won’t have are Salvona and Falcone locked up. Extradition of a non-US citizen from the States to this country is pretty easy. Extradition of a US citizen is not. So if we get to that point, to save our public purse the cost of long-drawn out hearings. . which would be reported and which might prove prejudicial to an eventual Scottish trial. . just to get them over here, I’d be prepared to recommend to our prosecutors that they turn the evidence over to you. In other words, Eli, if those circumstances arose, I’d be prepared to pass the buck. There would be one proviso: if your DA did pluck up the courage to put them on trial, there could be no death sentence. We couldn’t have that. Does that sound like a deal?’
A smile of pure relief spread over the lieutenant’s face. ‘It does, sir.’
‘That’s good,’ said Skinner. ‘I want to help, but it’s as far as I could go.’ He laughed as he rose to his feet. ‘Of course, if it turns out that Bonnie and fucking Clyde were in Florida after all, you will let us know, won’t you?’
‘That’s a deal also, sir.’
The DCC walked them to the door and, as it closed behind them, glanced at his watch. It showed five minutes to seven. He ran his hand over his stubbled chin, then, decision made, went through to his bathroom. Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed in the last of the supply of fresh clothes that he always kept in the office, he headed downstairs to his car.
The worst of the evening traffic was over; there were no hold-ups on his way to the West End, and when he had made the complicated turn past the Caledonian Hotel, he found a parking space without difficulty. He was standing in the hallway of the Scottish Arts Club, an unostentatious terraced house on the north side of the quiet, leafy Rutland Square, when he realised that he had not called Sarah since the night before. He was reaching into his pocket, when Aileen de Marco, blonde hair immaculate, her white blouse looking as fresh as his shirt, came through a doorway to his left. He withdrew his hand and shook hers instead.
‘Almost right on time, Bob,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Only twenty-four hours late.’
As she led him into the club’s sitting room, he felt a strange flutter; he paused for a few moments, wondering if his pacemaker was kicking into action, but it passed and he followed her to a table near the window, with armchairs on either side, and a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket sitting on it. Two long-stemmed glasses stood beside it; one was half-full.
As he sat, she picked the bottle up and filled the second glass. ‘Chardonnay,’ she said. ‘Call me a prole if you want, but I like it.’
‘Me too,’ he confessed. ‘But I’d better keep an eye on it. I have a car outside. So,’ he asked, ‘how are you finding your new job?’
‘Much like my old one as deputy minister; but the salary’s better, the car’s a bit flashier and. .’ She flashed him a quick twinkling smile. ‘. . I get access to all the secrets. Imagine!’
‘That’s good. It means you’ve passed your vetting.’
She looked surprised. ‘I was never vetted for the job.’
Skinner laughed. ‘You don’t know all the secrets, then.’
The minister whistled quietly. ‘Me too? I’m beginning to get an idea, though.’
‘You’ve only just begun. How did your lunch with my friend Mitch go on Monday?’
‘It was excellent. I learned more about the law in those two hours than in all my life up to then. Tell me, Bob, why isn’t he a judge?’
‘Because he’s a solicitor, and always has been; he prepares cases and instructs counsel but he doesn’t plead the case in court. Received wisdom is that to be a judge you have to have done that.’
‘You don’t go along with that?’
‘Not all the way. Mitch has only ever lost one action in his life, and that would have been overturned had the pursuer not died before it got to the Appeal Court. I agree with you: he’d make a fine senator. . if he wanted the job.’
‘I must have a chat with the Lord Advocate, in that case. Maybe we can put his name before the Judicial Appointments Board.’ Skinner raised an eyebrow, and she caught its meaning. ‘Do I take it that you’re not a fan of the board?’ she asked. ‘We think it’s one of our finest achievements.’
‘I’m a great supporter of the Scottish Parliament, and the Executive,’ he told her, ‘except when it does something bloody stupid. The old system worked; it didn’t need fixing.’
‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘Judges appointing judges?’
‘That’s not how it was, and you should know that. Politicians always made the appointments, on the basis of independent recommendations by people who were capable of assessing the fitness of the candidates for office.’
‘Come on, it was Buggins’s turn, and you know it.’
‘I do not,’ he countered. ‘I could name you umpteen brilliant lawyers who did not make the Bench, because their appointments would have been dangerous, and maybe disastrous. Your system, a board that’s made up of half lay members, who are not experts in the subject, and a minority of practising lawyers, who are, will let some of these people through. What’s the next step? Telephone voting by the punters?’
‘We won’t go that far, I promise.’ She threw him a mock frown. ‘Here, this is my baby you’re calling ugly.’
‘Not yours.’
‘I’m its guardian at least. Maybe I should appoint you to the next vacancy.’
‘You’d have to wait a long time for that, till after I retire, and even then, if there was a remote possibility that I might be interested, I’d need to be chairman.’
‘You’re a passionate man, aren’t you?’ said the minister. ‘I’d never have suspected that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re iron-clad.’
‘I’m passionate about justice,’ said Skinner, ‘and in particular about its impartiality. My father was a family solicitor, but he was a bit of a constitutional lawyer too. If he was alive, although he voted for your party all his life, he’d be dead against anything that eroded the essential distinction between the people who enact legislation. . that’s you lot. . and the people who interpret it. . that’s the Bench.’
‘Where do you fit in?’
‘In the middle; we enforce it. . the parts that relate to crime and public order.’
‘And should you be independent of government too?’
‘I think we should be removable by government, as ultimately we are, but I do not think you should have day-to-day supervision over us. Who investigates you?’
‘Nobody, if we don’t want it to happen. Isn’t that the case?’
He smiled. ‘So how come you didn’t know you’d been vetted?’