‘Your sister doesn’t “bear up”,’ Pears chided him. ‘She commands, she overcomes, she triumphs.’
‘And how is she “triumphing” tonight?’
Pears smiled into his glass. ‘This is just the sort of thing she’s been needing. Otherwise it’s all meetings and number-crunching.’
Watson nodded. ‘I know the feeling.’
Fox was staring at the ice cubes in his drink.
‘You all right there?’ Pears asked.
‘Fine, yes.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’ But something made Fox change his mind. ‘My dad’s in hospital. Just happened this afternoon.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Pears said, while Watson made a grunting sound that could have passed for commiseration. ‘Shouldn’t you be there? Alison can make a bit of space in her diary tomorrow.’
Fox gave a shrug. ‘I’m here now.’
Pears nodded, keeping his eyes on Fox. ‘Something serious?’ he enquired.
‘They’re doing tests…’
Pears smiled. ‘I meant your business with Alison. She’s been a bit cagey, hasn’t she, Andy?’
‘A bit.’
‘It was that Scotland Yard bloke who mentioned you’re Lothian and Borders…’
‘DCI Jackson?’ Fox guessed.
‘Left here half an hour ago,’ Pears stated. ‘I think he was keen to stick around.’
The Justice Minister was loosening his tie, undoing the top button of his shirt. ‘He said you’ve got some case in Fife.’
Fox nodded slowly. ‘Started off pretty straightforwardly,’ he admitted. ‘Then it got complicated.’
‘The opposite of my business,’ Pears commented, getting up to refill his glass. He offered to do the same for Watson, but Watson shook his head. ‘I like taking complex things and turning them into something that’s simple to understand and communicate. That way you sell it to people. Problem with the way finance was going the past ten or so years, nobody could grasp any of it, so nobody questioned it. Back to basics, that’s my motto.’
Watson looked as if he had heard this speech many times. He did everything short of roll his eyes. When the financier was seated again, he leaned forward towards Fox.
‘Is it anything you can talk about?’ Pears asked. ‘I swear I won’t breathe a word, though I can’t vouch for the Justice Minister…’
‘There was a CID officer, misusing his position,’ Fox began. He felt a crushing tiredness all of a sudden, and had to grip the tumbler for fear he would drop it. ‘Then his uncle died – looked like suicide, but it wasn’t. CID seem to have the nephew in the frame for it…’
‘But?’ Fox had Pears’s full attention.
‘The nephew’s dead now too. Someone chased him into the sea and he drowned.’
Pears sat back in his chair as if to think this through. Watson, however, was checking his phone for messages, apparently uninterested.
‘The uncle was doing some research into the death of an SNP activist called Francis Vernal,’ Fox went on.
Watson stopped what he was doing. Now he was interested. ‘I know that name,’ he said. ‘He was in the news around the time I joined the party.’
‘I thought you were still in a Babygro when you took the pledge,’ Pears teased his brother-in-law.
‘Not quite – I was in high school. One of our teachers was an SNP councillor.’
‘You underwent the indoctrination process?’ Pears swallowed some more whisky.
Watson grew prickly. ‘We all know your politics, Stephen.’
‘I don’t,’ Fox countered.
Watson looked at him. ‘Take a wild guess. I’m even hearing rumblings of a peerage, now the Tories are in power down south. Cameron’s stuffing them into the House of Lords like there’s no tomorrow.’
Pears laughed and shook his head, while still seeming gratified. ‘I’ll bet you fifty quid your boss’ll end up in the same place eventually – maybe when he gets a drubbing at the next election.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘With the lead Labour have got?’
‘We’ll pick up votes from the Lib Dems – they hate what your lot have done to their party in Westminster.’
Pears seemed to think about this, then turned back to Fox. ‘What’s your opinion, Inspector? Are you a political animal?’
‘I try to keep my head down, sir.’
‘One way of avoiding the shrapnel,’ Pears conceded. ‘But you’ve got me intrigued now – what has all this stuff about drownings and activists got to do with my wife?’
‘She was a student at St Andrews at the time Mr Vernal died. There’s a theory she may have known him.’
‘St Andrews?’ Watson was shaking his head. ‘Two years at Aberdeen, then she jacked it in and joined your lot instead.’
Pears was nodding. ‘Someone’s fed you a line, Inspector.’
Watson was holding his phone to his ear, having punched in a number. ‘Rory?’ he asked. ‘What time’s the car picking me up?’ He listened, checking his watch. ‘Fine,’ he said, ending the call.
‘Such a busy life,’ Pears said, feigning sympathy. ‘All of it paid for by the Inspector and me.’
‘And worth every bloody penny,’ Watson muttered. He glanced towards the sweeping staircase. ‘Is she ever coming down? Maybe I should go up…’
‘Finish your drink, man.’ Pears found to his surprise that he’d finished his own – again. He rose to his feet, and this time Fox needed his own tumbler refilling. ‘One more,’ Pears stated, ‘and I’ll call it a night.’
Watson pursed his lips, telling Fox that this might not necessarily be the case. There was the sound of a door closing upstairs. Alison Pears made an exasperated sound as she descended the staircase, phone in hand.
‘Do I need to be there every minute of every day?’ she complained. Then, to Fox: ‘Hello again.’
‘The inspector has been telling us what he’s working on,’ Pears said, handing her a gin and tonic. ‘All very mysterious, but also a wasted trip – got you mixed up with someone who was a student at St Andrews.’
The Chief Constable toasted the room with her drink and took a slug, exhaling afterwards.
‘Better?’ her husband asked.
‘Better,’ she confirmed. Then, to Fox: ‘Let’s go into the study and clear this up.’
Her brother got to his feet. ‘I need a word first, Ali – when my boss asks, what can I tell him about these bloody bombers?’
‘Nothing so far to indicate they won’t be charged,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘The house they were renting is a gold mine – material, blueprints and manuals, even a list of targets.’
‘Glasgow Airport again?’ her husband guessed.
‘RAF Leuchars,’ she corrected him. ‘And the naval dockyard. And our ex-prime minister.’
‘Whoever caught them should get a medal,’ Pears said, staring with purpose at the Justice Minister.
‘They might at that,’ Watson conceded.
‘Come on then,’ Alison Pears said to Fox. ‘Let’s hear this story of yours – might take my mind off things.’
‘Be gentle with the inspector,’ her husband suggested. ‘He’s had some bad news…’
She led him to a door in the corner of the room. It opened on to a study with wood-panelled walls and a fake bookcase. A small brass telescope stood on a tripod by the window. There was a two-seater brown hide sofa, and a swivel chair in front of the desk. Pears took the chair and signalled that Fox should take the sofa. The leather creaked as he settled.
She was dressed casually – baggy pink T-shirt, black joggers, Nike trainers. Fox wondered if there was a gym somewhere on the property.
‘Bad news?’ she said, echoing her husband’s words. Fox shrugged the question aside, ready with one of his own.
‘He doesn’t know?’
She considered the range of answers and evasions open to her.
‘Know what?’
Fox gave her a look that said: let’s not do this. ‘Neither of them do?’ he persisted, bringing out the matriculation photographs. ‘Wonder what they’ll say when I show them these. You’ve changed, but not quite enough to be unrecognisable.’
She studied the photos, saying nothing for a moment. ‘Andy knows I did some undercover work in my early years on the force,’ she eventually conceded.
‘But not that you posed as a St Andrews University student for two years?’