A Rush of Blood

Fifty-one

‘Should we be doing this?’ Aileen asked.

Bob shrugged, and frowned, quizzically. The gesture emphasised the scar on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. It was shaped like a slash mark in a web address, and was one of several in his body, although the rest were hidden from sight. Occasionally, a stranger would ask him about it, and he would fob them off with one of a range of stories of childhood falls, or freak sporting injuries. His closest colleagues knew the truth. . Mackie and McGuire had been there the night he had acquired it. . but they kept it to themselves. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he told her. ‘This might be the senior officers’ dining room and I’m at the top table, but it’s just another staff canteen. We pay for our meals, and for our guests. Parliament doesn’t sit on Fridays, but you’re still busy nearly all the time. This is the first chance we’ve had in weeks to have lunch together, just you and me, no kids. Plus, I’m going to the Torphichen Place do tonight, so we won’t be eating together then.’

‘But what would the tabloids make of it if they knew?’

‘Bugger the tabloids. Anyway, there’s nothing for them to make. This facility isn’t subsidised.’

‘Are you certain?’

He laughed. ‘I run this place, don’t I? I’ve made damn sure that all the overhead costs are factored into the prices, including the energy and Maisie’s wages. We are not leeching off the council tax payer, I promise you.’

‘If you say so.’ She shifted in her chair.

‘You don’t approve of this, do you?’ he challenged. ‘Go on, admit it; your socialist conscience makes you feel uncomfortable eating in a place that isn’t open to everybody.’

She smiled, awkwardly. ‘Well. .’

‘Do you think the same thought hasn’t occurred to me?’ he asked her, quietly. ‘It did, years ago, when I reached the rank that opened it to me. I wondered then whether this sort of privilege belonged in the modern police force. Well, now I’ve reached the position where I could, if I chose, close it down and send all the chief officers and superintendents down to the main canteen, where they can queue up like everybody else and pay a lot less for their grub. . which they can do anyway, if they choose.’ He glanced around. ‘I don’t see Neil and Mario here; that’s probably where they are. But am I going to shut it? No, of course I’m not. This isn’t Mao’s Red Army; we have a rank structure, and if rank has its privileges, then they’re a pretty good incentive to aspiring cops. We all worked our way in here, everybody in this room. One or two unworthy people might have been slipped the key in the past, but those days went even before Jimmy Proud’s time.’

‘You actually have keys to here?’ she exclaimed.

‘Don’t be daft; that was figurative. There’s another thing about this place. There’s more shop talked here than there is football. It’s a good environment for senior people to discuss policing issues, in private.’

Aileen surveyed their fellow diners. There were a dozen other people in the room, in groups of three and four, all male apart from the only other twosome, Maggie Steele and Mary Chambers, who sat at a table in the furthest corner.

Bob seemed to read her mind. ‘And yes,’ he said, ‘there will be more women here in future, on merit. By the time I leave this post, your gender might be in the majority. Then again they might not, but my point is that there’ll be nothing holding them back. We have no glass ceilings; they’re all shattered. If you’re good enough you’ll have the chance to get here; part of my job is talent spotting and when I look at someone all I see is a cop. I’m not concerned with how you urinate, or with your skin tone, or which team you bat for; I’m looking at ability, that’s all. Jeez, look at Mary over there; she’s a gay woman from Glasgow and here she is at the top table in the Edinburgh force. When I joined, she wouldn’t have got within a mile of this place on at least two of those grounds, and maybe all three.’

‘How is she, after her escape?’ There was a sticking plaster over the wound on the superintendent’s neck. ‘I didn’t expect to see her today.’

‘She had the option, I promise you. I spoke to her myself and told her that she could take a week off to recover, longer if she needed it. She told me that a couple of large measures of eighteen-year-old Auchentoshan had done the job.’

‘That’s good.’ She paused, as Maisie set a chicken supreme before her and served Bob his braised beef. ‘I’ll have a word with her when we’ve had this.’

‘You do that.’

He had no sooner picked up his cutlery, than his phone rang. ‘I wish I could ban mobiles in here,’ he muttered. ‘Unfortunately, we’re never actually off duty.’ He took it from his jacket pocket, and checked the incoming number. ‘Yes, daughter,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Plenty,’ Alex replied. ‘Have you been leaning on Mitch Laidlaw?’

‘There would be no point,’ he told her. ‘Mitch is so round these days, if I did he’d just roll over and bounce back up again. Why do you ask?’

‘Because I’ve been taken off the Lietuvos account,’ she snapped, ‘and I can’t shake this feeling that you might have had something to do with it.’

‘Well I didn’t,’ he retorted. ‘I haven’t spoken to Mitch for a while. When you say taken off. .’

‘He called me in this morning, and told me that he’d thought things over and decided that he isn’t prepared to have us run the companies indefinitely. He said that if Regine doesn’t feel ready or able to come back and take control herself, she should make a permanent appointment as chief executive. Then he called her, with me still in the room, and told her the same thing. He was tactful about it, of course. He explained that it wasn’t good practice, and that if she came back and didn’t like some of the decisions that had been taken on her behalf it could lead to difficulties, and so on, and so on. He’s given her two weeks to do it; in the meantime he’s going to handle the business himself.’

‘How did she take it?’

‘Well enough, according to Mitch; she said that she expected to have somebody in place by that time, once certain obstacles were removed.’

‘I wonder what she meant by that.’ He frowned as an interpretation struck him. ‘Hey,’ he murmured, ‘when Mitch spoke to her, did he tell her about Valdas and his wife?’

‘That was the very first thing he told her.’

‘How did she take that?’

‘He said she sounded shocked, but not tearful.’

‘And the remark about obstacles came after that?’

‘Yes.’ A small gasp escaped her. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Nothing, really. Since her husband’s suicide my cop’s brain’s been working overtime, looking for things that aren’t there.’ He paused, smiling lightly. ‘You pissed off, kid, yeah?’

‘What do you think? I’ve just made partner, yet I’m being told. . OK, not directly, but by implication. . that I’m not up to the job.’

‘That’s mince and you know it. You want the straight truth? Mitch beat me to the punch. He read the situation right. A director and a senior employee in those companies have met sudden and unnatural ends within days of each other. Nasty coincidences they may be, but we’re now taking a close interest in the other business activities of the two of them, and it’s more than likely that our investigation will wash back on to the Lietuvos businesses. If that were to happen, I wouldn’t want you involved, so yes, I was getting to the point when I’d have been having a frank discussion with your boss.’

‘Behind my back?’ Alex exclaimed.

‘No, I’d have told you, but whether you liked it or not, I can’t hide my feelings. You’re best out of this, so you be a good daughter and thank Mitch for me.’

‘You can bloody well thank him yourself. I’m ending what’s been a great week on a right downer.’

‘There’ll be other, even better weeks.’ Pause. ‘Hey,’ he asked, ‘do you want to end it with a laugh?’

‘That depends,’ she said, cautiously. ‘How?’

‘I’m doing a guest appearance at the Central Division disco tonight, seven thirty for eight, in a hotel along at Haymarket. Aileen’s opting out on political grounds, so would you like to chum your old man? It’s not going to be a late night, not for me at any rate. The troops would be inhibited if I hung around too long, and anyway, these days I can’t be seen to put too many over my neck at these affairs.’

‘Will Griff Montell be there?’

‘I’ve no idea, but it isn’t his division, so. .’

‘Ah, what the hell, suppose he is, he’s history as far as I’m concerned. OK. I’m up for it. We’ll see how it goes; I might even stick around for longer than you.’

He was about to end the call, when she carried on. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said. ‘I checked that thing about Zaliukas’s will. The new codicil he added didn’t replace anything. Before it was added, the holding in Lituania SAFI went to Regine. It seems that he cut her out of that part of her inheritance.’

‘Now that’s interesting,’ her father murmured. ‘I wonder why he did that.’