Thursday legends

14

Detective Inspector Mario McGuire wore a broad grin. 'Welcome to the shadowy, glamorous world of Special Branch, Sergeant,' he boomed. 'Welcome to the centre of this spider's web of intrigue. Exciting, isn't it?'

Stevie Steele leaned back in his hard chair and looked around the drab room, with its bare, magnolia-painted walls, and its single small window. 'Wow,' he said.

'This is the reality of the job, Steve. We're the true crime-prevention department; we keep an eye on potential trouble and even more important, on potential trouble-makers. That's the way it's always been. Back in the fifties and sixties, we used to keep an eye on the local communists and fellow-travellers: trade-union guys, left-wing Labour Party guys and acknowledged CP members. Now terrorism, more than anything else, is the perceived enemy.

'Back in the old days we had help, of course — local journalists who'd go along to meetings and report back to us for a few quid. We could trust the local newspaper hacks, they were poorly paid and always needed the money. But there were journos on the other side too. The NUJ had a communist as its president back in the sixties: wherever he travelled, all over the country, he had a Special Branch escort.

'The boys in Glasgow, they had a permanent bug in the offices of the Daily Worker, but of course the hacks there knew it, so there was never anyone in their bloody office.

They used to do all their business in pubs and send their copy to London from phone boxes. Everything we did, of course, was to ensure that guys like them couldn't deliver this great democracy of ours into the slavering Soviet maw.'

'It worked, then,' said Steele, dryly.

'Not really. Like I said, SB priorities changed in the early seventies when Ireland blew up. We had to stop playing with the wild-eyed Left to a great extent and concentrate on the real danger. It's been a different game since then, with a constant IRA and Loyalist threat for thirty years and, at the same time, the growth of international terrorism. We haven't always been successful in preventing attacks, but for every one that's succeeded there have been a right few others that we've headed off.'

'Isn't it quieter now than it was?'

'No it ain't. Sergeant. There will always be fanatics with a mission to destroy, quote, unquote, our decadent Judea/ Christian Western society, and there will be idiots among us who admire and support them. The Special Branch task has never really altered; the enemy just changes every so often, that's all.'

'Have you always liked politics, Inspector?'

'It's Mario in here and in the pub — and I've never liked politics. That's why I'm in the job. In fact I hate politics. It doesn't matter whether they are the politics of state, religion, race, gender, or just wealth, they are inherently fucking dangerous and they can get you killed. There used to be a famous copper in the West of Scotland who argued that all crime was related to the theft of non-ferrous metals. I disagree; I believe that all crime is related to politics of one sort or another. They got me shot, for a start.

'I tell you, Stevie, politics can be hazardous to your health. Most of the people who practise them are well meaning, well-educated fools, but a minority of them, usually those who make it to the very top, are bloody dangerous.

'That's why we're the key players in the Alec Smith investigation. Alec moved in this world and he was good at it — the best, I'm told. He was an apolitical guy, just like me, like Brian Mackie, like Andy Martin, tasked with keeping an eye on politicians of all sorts.'

'Tasked by whom?'

McGuire's laugh was a bellow. 'By politicians, of course; to keep an eye on their enemies. But from the start, SB has taken the view that there can always be an enemy within.'

'So what are we looking for here?' Steele asked.

'We're looking for all the enemies Alec might have made in his time. We'll do it by sifting through the files for the period in which he was in my job, and through the private papers which I've brought here from his house.'

'And where do we begin?'

'We begin by interviewing the Deputy Chief Constable, who might be the only bloke here who can tell us anything about Alec Smith as a man, as well as a police officer.'

Steele gulped, involuntarily, as McGuire pushed himself up from his chair, and stepped out from behind his desk. 'Come on; he'll be waiting for us now'

The Inspector led the way out of the Special Branch suite. They marched briskly out of the high-rise section of the Fettes headquarters complex and along the link which led to the Command Corridor, above the main entrance, where the chief officers were based.

McGuire leaned into a small room, off to the right. Ruth

McConnell smiled up at him. Gorgeous as always, he thought. 'The Boss in?' he asked.

'Yes. He said to send you along when you arrived. Go on, and I'll buzz him.'

'Thanks.' Beckoning Steele to follow, he walked a few yards to Skinner's door, knocked and led the way inside.

The Deputy Chief was in uniform, unusually. He caught McGuire's surprised glance as he rose from his swivel chair and stepped across towards the low seating in his reception area, where Neil Mcllhenney was sitting. 'Visitors,' he explained. 'A delegation from the Mossos Esquadra, the Catalan national police force. Then tomorrow, I'm off to a three-day conference in London. Great week, eh?' he grumbled. He pointed to a coffee filter in the corner of the big, bright room with a wall-to-wall window which gave Skinner a view of everything going on outside. 'Help yourselves, if you want. I've had my ration for the morning.'

Steele poured coffee for McGuire and for himself and joined the senior officers around the low table.

'So, Mario,' the DCC began briskly. 'What do you want to know?'

'Everything you know about Alec Smith, sir. We've got nothing out of North Berwick, or out of his widow even. We were told that you and he used to mix socially as well as professionally. I was hoping you might help us get a handle on the man.'

'I thought you might say that. Yes, Alec and I had a common interest away from the office; he was one of the Legends for a while.'

Steele frowned, puzzled.

Skinner explained. 'A bunch of us play five-a-side football — or four, or six, depending on how many turn up — every Thursday night at North Berwick Sports Centre. We've been at it for twenty years and more; we call ourselves the Legends because these days we're all so fucking old.

^ 4 We had a vacancy, oh, maybe ten years ago. I knew Alec had played a bit in his youth, and he lived in East Lothian, so I asked him if he wanted to come along. He was one of us for about five years, till he chucked it. He decided his right knee wasn't up to it any more.

'But that was the extent of our social mixing. The Legends is as much about the get-together in the pub afterwards as it is about the game itself but Alec rarely mixed in with that. More often than not, he'd get dressed, pay his money, say goodnight and go home to Pencaitland. He never came to any of our Christmas Dinners, no matter what time of year we held them… they're never at Christmas.

'On the odd occasion he did come to the pub, he rarely had much to say. He was pleasant enough, you understand; I never heard Alec Smith say a hard or rude word in my life. He was just a very quiet man, that's all.'

He turned to Mcllhenney. 'Neil, you worked with him in SB once. How did you find him?'

'I was just seconded there for a short time, Boss, but I thought he was a magician. He'd allocate jobs and when you reported back to him, it was as if he'd known what you were telling him all along.'

'Who were in his inner circle in SB at that time?' asked McGuire.

'He didn't have one, Mario. He treated everyone in the squad in exactly the same way; told them what they needed to know and that was it.'

Skinner picked up a folder on the desk and gave it to the Inspector. 'I thought you'd want this, so I pulled it from Personnel. It's Alec's service record, from the day he joined up. I worked with him myself, way back, in a serious crimes set-up we had then. He was about ten years older than me; I was a DC and he was a DI so I was a couple of rungs down the ladder from him. But I remember his nickname; the lads called him 'Mysterious Mr X'. To his face, sometimes; he just laughed it off.'

McGuire held the folder up. 'Does this tell us why he chucked it?'

'No, but I can. He told me that he had got to the stage where his pension was so healthy that he would be working for half pay from then on, unless he got promoted, and he knew that wasn't going to happen. Alec's privacy was ideal in an SB boss, but a bar to higher command. So he took the pension and went to work for Guardian Security, as its Chief Operating Officer in Scotland — on the same salary as an ACC, plus a nice company Jag.'

'Yet he chucked it after less than a year,' the DI mused. 'I wonder why?'

'I asked the company that very question this morning, Mario,' Mcllhenney answered. 'I called the Group Human Resources Director, a bloke called Rylance. He told me that a job came up in London and the Managing Director wanted Alec in it. But he refused, point-blank. The problem was that they had already promised his job in Scotland to one of the MD's proteges. So they gave him six months' pay and his car, and that was that.'

'Give me the guy's number, Neil. We'd better look into the work he did while he was there.'

'That's in hand. Mr Rylance is putting together a full report; their courier division will get it to you by close of play tomorrow, at the latest.'

McGuire raised an eyebrow and smiled. 'You after my job, Mcllhenney?'

The big Sergeant gazed at him, poker-faced. 'You're still in it, aren't you?'

The Special Branch Commander rose, clutching the folder, Steele following his lead. 'In that case you and the kids can come to us for lunch next Sunday.' He looked back at Skinner. 'I report to you on this, Boss?'

The DCC shook his head. 'No. This is Maggie's shout; she and Mr Martin will keep me up to speed, I'm sure. Mind you, if you were to turn up any real nasties…'