Thursday legends

'I can't predict what he'll be like when he comes round. What happened to him? How did he get like this? I haven't been told, but he was in a hell of a mess. He reminded me of a soldier I saw once who was too close to a colleague when he stepped on a mine. But this man

… God, his teeth… the time it took to clean them alone.'

'Don't ask, Doctor,' said the DCC quietly. 'I want to be here when he comes round, okay?'

'Of course. If you're a friend, seeing you should be good for him.'

The MO left the room. Skinner pulled a chair up to the bedside and sat, looking at his friend's sleeping face, and wondering what his dreams were like, hoping that he had none. He tried to imagine the scene in the Pentlands, and Andy's fight for his life. Jesus, what must Scotland have felt like having this mad, desperate, bull of a man coming at him. What a way to kill someone. He imagined being in the same situation himself, then remembered that he had been; that man was in an unmarked grave too. There are no rules in a fight for survival.

He sat for over an hour, waiting, not thinking of McGuire and Arrow in the corridor outside, thinking only of Andy, and of what he would say when he awoke.

At last he began to stir on the bed. He whispered something. One word, very softly, but Skinner caught it; 'Karen.'

His right shoulder twitched; his head made a butting movement, then began to roll from side to side. His jaws clamped tight working, working. His eyes flickered, closed again, flickered, then suddenly, opened wide. He sat bolt upright in bed with an expression on his face unlike any that Skinner had ever seen — a mixture of terror and sheer animal ferocity.

The big DCC jumped to his feet and held him, using all his own great strength to counter Andy's and press him back down on to the bed. 'Okay, son, it's okay.'

Martin's face cleared at last. 'Bob?' he said, in a dazed croak. 'Where am I? Have I been in an accident? Or shot, or something?

'Bloody hell, that was some nightmare I was having.' He looked at Skinner, read his face, and fell silent again. That unnatural look came back, but this time it was pure terror, and that alone, as everything came flooding back.

"That was no nightmare, was it?' he asked, at last. 'No, Andy boy. No, it wasn't.' 'Scotland. How's he?'

'How do you think? He's dead; you ripped his throat open.'

'Good!' For a second, the DCC was shocked by the intensity of the malice in his best friend's eyes, but then he remembered his own emotions at a similar time.

'I told the rat-fucker I would kill him. He should have believed me.'

'It's just as well he didn't. He wouldn't have played his bloody game if he had; he'd have shot you straight off.' 'You worked it all out then?'

'Mario did. So it was Scotland after all, Scotland who did Alec?'

'I suppose so. Even though it took him years to pluck up the courage; but he had to play his game too. He had to get someone up there.'

'Why in Christ's name did you go for him on your own, Andy?' Skinner asked. 'A man with a history like that.'

'I guess I have to call it an error of judgement. Between you and me, I've got a few distractions in my private life right now. I've done smarter things in my time, right enough.'

He paused. 'On the other hand, if I had taken Sammy Pye with me, one of us would have been dead now. Probably both of us.'

'Aye, well. You can hold an inquiry into yourself, later. You're alive, so fuck the recriminations.'

'What happens now?' Martin asked. 'Report to the Fiscal?'

'Hell no. Nothing happens. It's all taken care of; you're in Army hands at the moment. Adam Arrow's involved and he's made everything go away, including what's left of Scotland.'

The younger man looked up at him. 'You've done that?'

'Too fucking right. Not just for you, for the force. I don't want any of the Alec Smith story to come out.'

'I told Scotland that too. But the guy was only into talking, not listening.' He pulled himself up into a sitting position.

'When can I get out of here?' he asked. 'There's someone I have to see/

'You can get out of here now, but you're coming home with me. No arguments; you're either under Sarah's care, or I'll leave you here with the Army doctor. We'll see how you're feeling tomorrow. Meantime, I've told everyone who needs to know that you're all right.'

Bob stood, and moved towards the door. 'I don't think you're going to want to see your clothes again, but I'll have the Army fix you up with some uniform stuff. Then you and I are going for a nice helicopter ride out to Gullane.'

46

The nine Legends sat around the table in the Golf Hotel bar, stunned and subdued. As a group they were rarely lost for a word but, after the bombshell which Skinner had dropped, not one of them had anything to say.

It was David McPhail who broke the seance-like silence with a blunt question. 'How come it took so long to identify him, Bob? I mean, a whole week…'

The DCC was stung by the implied criticism of Dan Pringle's team. 'Look, nobody reported him missing. Edith and the family were away, and his colleagues didn't want to make their client base nervous.'

He looked across at McPhail and added tersely, 'The fact that he didn't have a fucking face wasn't a big help to us either. My wife did the post-mortem; she knew the Diddler well — he lived just up the road from us, remember — and she didn't know who it was.'

'What happened to him?' Grant Rock looked a wholly different man when he was being serious; this occurred so infrequently that the policeman felt almost as if he was facing a stranger.

'I don't like to talk about it, and I only tell you guys on the basis that it doesn't leave this room. He was tied to the bed at his son's place, then beaten to death with a baseball bat. We only made a positive identification from blood samples.'

'Tied to the bed,' Stewart Rees mused. 'Was the Diddler diddling again?'

'Let's not speculate about that.' 'Has Edith been told?'

Skinner held up his empty glass and nodded to the Friday barmaid, prompting a rush of refills.

'I called France this afternoon,' he said, when everyone was settled again. 'They have a friend down there, a Scots guy; I met him once. I called him and had him go along to break the news to Edith. Always better face to face; it's harder to believe a voice on the telephone.

'She called me just before we came along here. Poor woman. She's flying home tomorrow morning with Victoria, Air France from Nice through Charles de Gaulle; I've said I'll meet them at the airport.'

'What are you going to do about your car?' Mcllhenney asked, casually. 'It's still up at Fettes, remember.'

'I'll pull rank. I'll have a patrol car pick me up in the morning and take me to collect it. Andy too, if Sarah says he can go home.'

The Inspector leaned back against the window and whispered, so that no-one else could hear. 'You going to tell me what happened today?'

Skinner shook his head.

'Never?'

Skinner nodded his head.

'Fair enough then,' Mcllhenney murmured. 'I won't ask again.'

'Bob,' said Mitch Laidlaw from across the table, 'it can't have escaped anyone's attention that two of our number have met violent deaths very close to each other.' He seemed to send a shiver round the table.

'It hasn't escaped mine, Mitch, that's for bloody sure. That's the other reason I called us all together… I mean, apart from believing it appropriate to give you all the bad news in person. You can forget the idea that there is any sort of a vendetta against our honoured group. There's no-one out there who wants our Thursday time at the Sports Centre so badly that he's prepared to bump us off one by one to get it.