Thursday legends

'Nah. Fact is, we haven't got a bloody clue. All those folk in North Berwick, but no-one saw a damn thing. They don't, you see; most of the time, people just don't notice other people. They only register them as part of the background, and that can make life very difficult for us.' He glanced at the bedside clock. 'Here, we'd better get ready.'

She chuckled; deep and wicked. 'You don't think I'm finished with you yet, do you?'

If Juliet Lewis had noticed her daughter's absence, or marked the fact that Andy was over an hour late for the barbecue, she said not a word about it, only, 'Welcome,' and 'You shouldn't have,' as he handed over two thick fillet steaks, bought in Struth's of North Berwick and wrapped in greaseproof paper, and a bottle of reserve claret from the delicatessen in Gullane. She was beautifully dressed, in a close-fitting skirt and a long-sleeved blouse, in stark contrast to many of her younger guests.

Rhian had gone upstairs after showing him through to the garden. Just as her mother was handing Martin a goblet of red wine she reappeared, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, and with her hair tied back in a pony-tail. She picked up a bottle of Belgian beer from the serving table, took his hand and drew him towards his fellow guests, who were gathered on the lawn.

'Come on, let me introduce you around.' As he had expected, most of them were young, around Margot's age. She pointed to a group gathered around the younger Lewis daughter, a tall dark girl, in a light blue dress. 'You know the guest of honour, of course.' Actually, he had never exchanged a word with her. From what he had seen she was a serious type, who looked, as did Rhian, a year or two older than she really was. He gave her a smile and a wave. She responded, almost shyly, sneaking a quick look at her sister. For an instant, he detected a hint of a smirk on her face, and wondered.

'These are the serious people, though.' she led him over to a group of half a dozen men and women, older than the rest and standing a little apart. 'Hi everybody,' she called out.

One of the men, who had been looking down on to the dark, slow-moving Water of Leith, glanced over his shoulder. 'Ah, it's herself,' he said, turning. 'I wondered where the hell you'd got to.' He grinned at Martin. 'Can I guess?'

'I've been changing,' Rhian answered.

'That'll be the day, honey. You'll never bloody change.' There was a familiarity in the exchange; two people comfortable with each other. Andy eyed the other man appraisingly, remembering Rhian's remark about older lovers, trying to guess his age. He was small but trim, with dark, grey-flecked hair which was thinning on top; well-preserved, but probably in his early forties.

She brought him back by squeezing his hand. 'Don't listen to this so-and-so. Have you two met before? Andy, this is Spike Thomson, Edinburgh's oldest teenager and a legend in his own mind. Spike, this is Andy Martin; he lives next door.'

The man's eyebrows rose. 'Ah. I've heard of you. You're Bob Skinner's pal, aren't you?'

The detective looked at the other man warily, although he was not certain why. 'You know Bob?'

'Of course. I'm one of the Thursday mob.'

Spike Thomson. Get the brain in gear, Andy boy. How many Spike Thomsons can there be? 'The disc jockey? Fair footballer too, according to Bob.'

'That's kind of him. How come we've never seen you on a Thursday night?'

The detective grinned down at his new acquaintance. 'I've been asked, but football's definitely not my game. I used to play rugby.'

'Me too. I played scrum-half for North Berwick High, then for the rugby club for a while. What was your position?' He took a pace backwards and looked Martin up and down, noting the thickness of his neck, the breadth of his shoulder. 'Prop?'

'For a while, at school, but I played all my senior stuff as a flanker.'

'Ah. That explains why you're not a football man. Bloody lethal on the football field are flankers, to a man. Who'd you play for?'

'West of Scotland.'

'Any good?'

The policeman smiled at the directness of the question, sportsman to sportsman. 'Some folk thought so. I played for Glasgow District a few times; got as far as an international trial, but that was it. I joined the force and packed it in.'

'Why, for God's sake? Couldn't you have carried on playing as a policeman? Others do.'

'Maybe, but working shifts in Edinburgh meant that I couldn't guarantee to make training in Glasgow. I could have played for Edinburgh Accie Firsts at one point, but I decided against it. I took the view that, since the force was going to be my career, I'd better devote myself to it full-time if I was going to make a success of it.'

'You've done all right so far, haven't you?'

'I'm more than pleased with where I am now, yes.'

'Where do you want to wind up?'

'In a Chief Constable's chair.'

Thomson looked up at him. 'Won't that mean leap-frogging Bob?'

Martin shook his head. 'No, it doesn't mean that at all… although there is a hell of a lot of leap-frogging in the police. No, there are other forces. I'll have to leave Edinburgh sometime if I want to carry on up the ladder, I know that.'

He might have said also that he would have to leave to move out of the Deputy Chief Constable's shadow, but that was a thought which he had voiced to only one man, Bob Skinner himself.

He looked over his shoulder at Rhian, but she had moved away to join another group. Turning back to Spike Thomson, he realised that he had been quizzed gently by a professional interviewer. He had his own skills in that department.

'How about you?' he asked. 'What was your career path?'

The little man smiled. 'A lot less conventional than yours. I went to Heriot-Watt University and did a Chemistry degree, then went to work in a path lab. On the way through Uni, I did discos at weekends to make a few extra quid; eventually I realised that I was far more interested in that than in my day job. This was back in the seventies, when commercial radio was in its infancy — the pirates had just come on shore, so to speak — so I sent in a tape to the managing director of Radio Forth, just for fun.

'To my great surprise, he liked it… no taste, that man. He gave me an audition and hired me on a short contract, to present the weekend breakfast programme. Twenty years or so on, I'm still there.'

'You've been at Forth all that time?'

'More or less. About fifteen years ago, I was lured away to the flesh-pots — Glasgow — but it didn't feel right so, after a year, when Forth asked me to come back and be the station's Head of Music, I haggled for about half a minute, then agreed.'

'Have you never fancied the BBC?' Martin asked.

Spike Thomson drained the last of his red wine. 'I was approached, a while back, by Radio One. They offered me a bigger salary and the chance to increase my ancillary earnings about ten-fold. But I'd have had no control over anything, I'd have had to start by doing a through-the-night show for six months, and it would have been another short-term contract.

'Didn't fancy it. I like my local audience, I like the instant feedback we get from our listeners, and I like the feel of what I do. This might sound pompous, but I believe that local radio is socially important. We talk to a lot of people, and we have the ability to change the way they think.'

'Why don't you work more closely with my Drugs Squad then?'

'Because as soon as we start to sound like a mouthpiece for the police — or anyone else for that matter — we're dead. We're independent local radio, remember; the word means something. Don't worry, Andy, we get the drugs message across, all of us, but through the attitude of our presenters, not through propaganda.'

The disc-jockey paused. 'Come in and watch us at work sometime. You can sit in with me in the studio.' He grinned. 'You can bring Rhian if you like, although she's been already.'

He caught Martin's look. 'Some girl, that. Twenty-one going on forty; you watch yourself there. She can be a real heart-breaker.'