‘Just as bloody well,’ Bob growled.
‘I could also take you through every step of your career, culminating in your rejection of the command of the Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency, the reasons for this set out in your letter to the former justice minister.’
‘Is there anything you don’t know about me?’ he asked her, when she had finished.
The pale blue eyes seemed to sparkle with her smile. ‘I suspect there’s still a hell of a lot that I don’t know. In fact, I suspect that the really interesting things about you aren’t on that file. Sure it told me where you come from, where you’ve been, how you’ve risen through the police and all that stuff. But it doesn’t tell me why you have so many enemies.’
He frowned. ‘Do I?’
‘You know you do. There are people in my party. . not in the controlling wing, I hasten to say. . and in parties to the left of mine who are dead scared of you. They’d love to see you discredited, brought down, sent packing off to Gullane, or better still taken off the scene altogether.’
‘That’s not news to me,’ he said. ‘They’ve tried to get rid of me from my job already, a couple of times in fact.’
‘You gave them the opportunity, as I understand it.’
‘Maybe. And maybe they’d have succeeded in having me fired too, but they’d neither the brains nor the balls.’
‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘I’d heard that Agnes Maley had both and you saw her off.’
Skinner laughed, softly. ‘Ah, Black Agnes. She gave it a good try, but she’s history.’
‘Mmm. I heard she annoyed you so much you made a movie with her in the starring role.’
Skinner’s grin vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Your boss,’ he said. ‘Mr Tommy Murtagh, the First Miniature. He’s got a loose tongue; because he’s one of only half a dozen people who know about that, and I can vouch for the silence of all the rest. I didn’t make that movie, as it happens, but, luckily, I have more friends than I have enemies. Just in case you’re harbouring any illusions about me, if I had known about it in advance I wouldn’t have stopped it. The only regret I have about Agnes is that I couldn’t do more to her.’
Aileen saw his eyes go harder as he looked towards her, saw the warmth in them turn to ice. ‘You can be scary, you know,’ she murmured.
‘Only to people who need scaring; like Agnes Maley.’
‘You may think that, but it’s not true; you scared me.’
He frowned. ‘When did I do that?’ The moment was gone; she saw only concern in him.
‘Just now, when you looked at me; it was as if you let me see right down inside you. Did you do that on purpose?’
‘No, not knowingly at any rate. If I did, I apologise, but maybe, subconsciously, I wanted to warn you.’
‘Warn me about what?’
‘Never mind.’
She wrinkled her brow. ‘Warn me not to exceed my ministerial brief, you mean? If you did, it didn’t work. I like danger,’ she said quietly, ‘and you, Mr Skinner, are a very dangerous man. But the really scary thing about you is the way that it comes out of nowhere. Just there, when I mentioned Agnes, you went from sunshine to darkness in an instant. That’s not in your file.’
‘Of course it isn’t. We all do things off the record.’
‘We don’t all kill people.’
‘Who says I have?’
‘That much is on your file; you must know that.’
He shrugged. ‘They were terrorists. I was an armed officer.’
‘They mean nothing to you?’
He held her gaze although, to his surprise, he found it difficult. Jim Gainer’s phrase came back to him. ‘I don’t put flowers on their graves,’ he said.
‘Did you kill them in cold blood?’
‘I don’t like talking about it, Aileen.’
‘Please, I want to know. I’m interested in what makes you tick. You’re not frightening me any more.’
‘If you’re that keen it’s like this: I’m a police officer. That means, literally, I’m an agent of the people. When I act I do so on their behalf, in the interests of the society which put me in that position. Emotion doesn’t come into it. I didn’t feel any then, and I don’t now when I’m forced to look back on it, or persuaded to talk about it.’
‘Why can’t I believe that?’
‘Because you’ve read too much crime fiction. You think that because I’m a copper I’ve got to have a tortured soul.’
‘And don’t you?’
‘I did for a while, but I’m getting over it. I won’t say that I’m entirely at peace with myself yet, but I’ve been persuaded that the bad’s outweighed by the good. Most people can say the same about themselves. . you included.’
‘Yet you’re still able to say to me that you could execute someone, just like that, and feel nothing.’
‘Since I’ve told you I don’t feel remorse, are you saying that I enjoyed it?’
‘I hope not. I think I’m wondering whether you carry enough anger within you to make you able to do anything.’
He shook his head in denial. ‘It’s just a dirty job, that’s all. When it’s done I go home to my wife, and my children.’
‘Could you kill me if it was necessary?’
‘Don’t be daft, woman.’
‘Seriously. Could you kill me?
‘If I found you threatening to use lethal force on me or anyone else, I probably could. But that’s academic, because you couldn’t do that.’
‘How can you say that so confidently? You hardly know me.’
An expression that she had not seen before spread across his face; there was mischief in it. She had not thought him capable of that.
‘Sure I know you,’ he told her, in a slow, easy drawl. ‘You’re thirty-six years old, the daughter of a chartered accountant and a nurse. You were educated at Hutcheson’s Grammar School and Strathclyde University: you’ve got an honours degree in civil engineering.’
His smile vanished, and his voice grew serious. ‘When you were twenty-three you went to South America to work on an irrigation project in Surinam. You were caught up in a revolution, and you set up a refugee camp for women and children running from the fighting. You fed, sheltered and saved the lives of hundreds of people. Then a platoon of rebel militia arrived; the government were winning, they were on the retreat, and they were out to scorch some earth. You faced them down, and they left your camp untouched. You weren’t so lucky, though. You were raped by their commander. Luckily for you, he was one of the few men in that group who wasn’t HIV positive, but you didn’t know that until you were tested, after the revolt collapsed completely and the army arrived.’
He paused; Aileen de Marco’s mouth was set in a tight line. ‘After that,’ Skinner continued, ‘you came back to Scotland and you took a job with a firm of consultant engineers. You also became an active member of the Labour Party, where before you had only been a supporter. When you were twenty-six you were elected to Glasgow District Council. By that time you had established a charity which raises funds for the relief of refugees from civil wars, of which there is never any shortage. At the beginning of your second term on the council you were appointed chair of the planning committee. You were instrumental in uncovering a bribery scandal involving contractors, officials and a couple of your fellow councillors. They all got the slammer; as a result you’ve got some enemies yourself. They did their best to stop you getting a seat in the parliament, but they failed. That was their one chance. Now you’ve got power and you’re going to get more in the future. You’ve become a career politician. You don’t run a car, and you live alone in Glasgow, in a flat by the side of the Clyde. You’ve never married, although you had a relationship with another councillor that ended six years ago. Since then your male acquaintances have included a journalist and a musician. Currently unattached.’