Gallery Whispers

94

'Hey look at this,' Brian Mackie called down from the bar, nodding towards the door. 'The Bomber is back.' Mario McGuire, Maggie Rose, Karen Neville and Stevie Steele all sitting looked round together to see the Head of CID heading towards them, dressed in a black leather jerkin and black denim jeans.

Neville and Steele looked at each other, puzzled. 'That used to be Andy's standard uniform for a night out in the pub,' Maggie explained.

'Bomber jacket and jeans. Until he went respectable, that is.'

'Mine's lager if you're on the bell, Thin Man,' Martin shouted to Mackie, over the noise of a dozen conversations, as he took one of the two vacant seats at one of the Abbotsford's big, rectangular tables.

'Glad you could all make it,' he said, as he looked around the booth. 'I thought about having a formal team briefing this afternoon, then I said to myself, "Shit, we all know what we've got to do anyway.

We might as well get together in the pub." Thanks, Brian.' He drew his chair over a little to allow the superintendent more room for his long legs.

'You do all know, I take it,' he added quietly. 'Brian, you're top gun with the Secretary of State, along with Stevie. You're on station at the official residence in Charlotte Square at eight-thirty sharp, ready to escort him up to the Centre. The PM's leaving from there as well, by the way.

'Mario, Karen, you're with me in the auditorium as discussed, checking people in then watching the action. The boss will be floating about all over the place, keeping an eye on everything.' He smiled at Rose. 'Maggie, you're lucky. You're out of it.'

He leaned across the table, even though there was no one in earshot.

'I'm not expecting any bother tomorrow, not with all the firepower that's going to be in the hall, but I'm not having us go in naked either, so we'll all be wearing our wee gold eagle badges and carrying a friend inside our jackets.' He looked at Neville and Steele. 'Brian, Mario and I are all experienced cowboys. Are you two all right with that?' Both sergeants nodded, solemnly.

'That's fine, then.' He took a long pull at his pint. 'So if everyone's happy, we can enjoy a night out.' He grinned in Karen's direction. 'For those of you who haven't been near something this big before, let me tell you that the nerves, the tension you're feeling inside, they come with the territory. It doesn't matter how often the three of us have been to the well, we all feel just like you do. This wee get-together is to help us all chill out a bit.

'This is my favourite kind of team building, anyway; we say far more to each other here, when we can all put our ranks to one side, than we do when we're sat in our collars and ties round an office table.

We haven't been doing nearly enough of it lately.'

'True,' Brian Mackie agreed. 'We haven't had a decent party for a while either. Tell you what, Sheila and I plan to have a housewarming, round about New Year time. Make a mental note for now and I'll give you all a date later.'

'Ahh,' said Andy, 'you may be gazumped on that one. I happen to know that a certain grey-templed Deputy Chief Constable and his wife are plotting a similar event at their newish pad out east, round about the same time.'

McGuire whistled. 'We'll need to watch ourselves out there,' he murmured.

'You kidding? Bob could bevvy for Scotland.'

'Naw, I didn't mean that. What I meant was that if you get comatose in their house, then given her new line of work Sarah might have your insides out on the kitchen table.'

'She'd put yours back again very quickly, McGuire,' Maggie murmured.

The inspector, glass in hand, pointed towards the main area of the bar. 'Don't know if you've noticed, guys and gals, but this place is suddenly filling up with journos. I recognise at last half-a-dozen of them from today's session.'

Martin shrugged. 'We can go somewhere else. This is maybe a bit touristy; they won't know about Number Thirty-seven, though.'

'I like it here,' Karen protested.

'Is the Aussie picking you up from here, or what?' asked McGuire.

'No. I'm not seeing him tonight. He has to help Dennis get ready for his big day tomorrow, he said.'

'Hey,' said Andy, softly. 'It's a big day for us all tomorrow. I'll get another round in here, then we can think about moving on for the last one. I want everybody checked in tomorrow at Fettes by quarter to eight, to sign out firearms, so we'd better have a ten o'clock curfew. Yes?' As his five colleagues nodded agreement, he rose to his feet and stepped up to the counter. On impulse, he called back over his shoulder, 'Final word on the party stakes; Friday night, my place, to celebrate this crap being over.'

'Will it be a good party?' a small, dark-haired girl asked him, as he raised an eyebrow to catch the barman's attention. She was leaning on the bar, nursing a pint of Guinness.

He grinned down at her. 'They usually are.'

'You involved with the conference?' She had a clipped accent; southern hemisphere, he thought, but he had difficulty in placing it.

'Catering,' he said, in a voice loud enough to carry to his table.

'You?'

'Indirectly. I'm a journalist but I can't get into the Hall.'

'Why not?'

She wrinkled her nose; not an unattractive nose, he noticed.

'Because some bastard of a copper wouldn't give me accreditation, all because I refused, on principle, to tell him how old I was. As if that bloody mattered. Even though I had a commission from the FT, I wouldn't give in. So now I'm just hanging around the fringes, doing colour pieces for my newspaper in Jo'burg, and hoping for some sort of a scoop.'

The barman turned his attention to Andy, who shouted his order over the hubbub. 'And a pint of Guinness, on top of that,' he added, then gave the little reporter his most dazzling smile. 'What's your name?' he asked.

'Estelle. Estelle Lawrence.'

'I'm Andy. You stick with me, Estelle,' he murmured, 'and you never know what you might come up with.'