Aftershock

Two

Andy Martin had a secret: well, maybe no longer a secret, as he had shared it with Karen, his wife, and with Bob Skinner, his closest friend, but it was definitely something that, with those two exceptions, he kept strictly to himself. The subject had not come up during the interview that had taken him to chief officer rank in the Tayside force. If it had, he doubted that he would be wearing the extra braid on his uniform.

The young Martin had been raised in a Christian family. He had been baptised and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church; its values had been instilled in him throughout his childhood, and carried with him into his adult life. Yet he was in no way a prude. He had played rugby at near international level, and had been as ruthless as the game required. As a single man he had gathered a reputation as something of a swinger, with a succession of partners leading up to an ill-fated engagement to Alexis Skinner, Bob’s daughter. For a while, he had endured his friend’s wrath, but eventually they had been reconciled, and the bond between them renewed. In fact it was stronger than ever, and had survived the acrimonious break-up of that relationship.

Its ending had been due entirely to the influences that had moulded Martin’s character. He had loved Alex, but when she had terminated a pregnancy without consulting him, he had found it unforgivable. His Christianity was founded on the principles of the Ten Commandments, and although he and Alex had laughed about coveted asses, when it came to ‘Thou shalt not kill’, he could find no room for compromise.

They had split and he had drifted into a couple of dangerous liaisons, before finding security with Karen Neville, a serving officer herself at that time. They were happy together, with Danielle, their toddler, and with another on the way, and if a small part deep within him still yearned occasionally for Alex, he managed to keep it suppressed. He felt a warm contentment as he glanced at his wife, sitting beside him at the coffee-table in their conservatory, enjoying a rare Monday together after Andy had spent the weekend supervising the policing of an outdoor music festival.

His secret? No, not that: the world knew he had carried a torch for Alex for a while. No, the elephant hiding in Andy Martin’s briefcase, the truth that might have constrained his career if he had brought it out into the open, had to do with drugs.

For much of his police service in Edinburgh, he had been involved in the suppression of the illegal trade, and in the pursuit and prosecution of users and dealers alike. In his time he had met a few cops who had been known to smoke a wee bit of grass, and he had let it be known quietly that if they ever indulged around him, he would do them, just like any other punter. On his arrival in Dundee, to take over the deputy chief’s post, he had made it just as clear that, however liberal public attitudes had become, any of his serving officers caught with cannabis, or any other proscribed drug, would be sacked.

And yet although he enforced the law on illegal narcotics as stringently as any officer in Scotland, privately Andy Martin did not agree with it. He had searched the teachings of his faith for grounds to justify the control or prohibition of what people might choose to take into their bodies, and had found none. There was nothing in the Ten Commandments that said, even by implication, ‘Thou shalt not take drugs’. And in his view, if there was no moral basis for a law, then that law was flawed.

While he recognised the terrible effects that hard drugs could have on users and their families, he knew that control by prohibition was proving to be globally unsuccessful. His core belief was ‘prescription not proscription’. He felt, instinctively, that legalisation and licensing was the only long-term way to rid the streets of dealers and the world of their brutal suppliers. The US had proved in the Twenties and Thirties that legal prohibition of alcohol, another narcotic, was untenable, and governments around the world continued to draw much of their revenue from the taxation of tobacco. Therefore, as he saw it, if the same was recognised to be true of the narcotics trade, and it was legalised, regulated and taxed, with the resources currently devoted to the pursuit, prosecution and imprisonment of those involved in it being diverted to health education, society could only be improved.

Martin believed, sincerely, this to be true. But he knew with equal certainty that if he ever said so, publicly, he would be putting his career on the line. This had been brought home to him forcefully by Bob Skinner, a natural politician for all that he had said about the breed over the years.

‘Many people would agree with you, Andy,’ he had said, in one of their after-dinner discussions of the subject. ‘To be honest, when you put it like that, it’s difficult to see the counter-argument. The trouble is that many more people would disagree with you, vehemently, because that’s the way they’ve been conditioned to think. The truth is that you and I and the entire Association of Chief Police Officers could stand up and argue the case and it wouldn’t make any difference. Even if we did secure majority support in this country, even if decriminalisation became government policy, even if it became the goal of the entire European Union, it wouldn’t matter a damn. Any about-face of that size would have to be implemented internationally. First and foremost, the Americans would have to be on board, and believe me when I tell you that there is not the slightest chance of that happening. If you want my advice, keep your mouth shut and get on with the job.’

Martin smiled as he remembered Skinner’s finger jabbing into the table to emphasise every point.

‘What are you grinning at?’ Karen asked.

‘I’m recalling a lecture from my old mentor,’ he told her.

‘Which of the many?’

‘Something to do with this.’ He picked up a large white envelope from the table and handed it across to her, watching as she opened it and read the contents.

‘Director, Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency,’ she said. ‘It’s an application form. Did you send for it?’

‘No. Somebody in the Executive decided to circulate it to all assistant and deputy chief constables.’

‘Including Bob Skinner?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Are you going to go for it?’

‘I dunno. What do you think?’

‘It’s a big job, high profile. A few years in there and you’d be favourite for the Strathclyde chief’s job when it comes up again. . and that’s the biggest of the lot.’

‘That’s if there is a Strathclyde.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Karen, intrigued.

He looked at her. ‘Within these glass walls. . there’s a rumour that the Executive might consider merging all the Scottish forces and creating a single national constabulary.’ He paused. ‘Only it isn’t a rumour; it’s true. Aileen de Marco’s asked Bob to do a feasibility study, highly confidential, her eyes only. That’s how he’s spent a lot of his sabbatical. He’s done a potential command structure already. It stands up. I know because I’ve seen it; Bob’s been taking soundings among those senior colleagues he can trust to keep it to themselves. If it happens, it’ll even swallow the SCDEA; that’s part of the plan. It might still exist as a unit, but there would be no need for it to be a separate agency; its commander would report to the new commissioner.’

‘Commissioner? As in the Metropolitan?’

Andy nodded. ‘Yup. Bob’s thinking is that if this is to happen it’s best if the old structure changes completely. The posts of chief constable, deputy and assistants would disappear, or at least the titles would. There would be a commissioner and a deputy operating nationally, and assistant commissioners at regional level, running uniformed policing and community relations. There would be two criminal investigation units, each headed by another assistant commissioner. One of those would be the SCDEA, and the other would be an amalgamation of existing CID units, with a regional structure, but reporting to a national commander.’

‘All based in Edinburgh, I suppose. The Glaswegians will love that.’

‘No. The central command won’t be in either of the main cities. Bob’s plan is that it should be physically separated from the politicians. He’s proposing that it should be centred in Motherwell.’

‘Motherwell?’ Karen exclaimed.

‘Why not?’ Andy retorted. ‘It’s Bob’s home town.’

‘So there are no prizes for guessing who the first commissioner will be.’

Her husband laughed. ‘You can stop right there,’ he told her. ‘This is a study, that’s all. It works in principle. Greater London’s twice the size of Scotland in population terms, and it has a single force. . if you ignore the City of Westminster force, which is small by any standard, an anomaly, really. Ontario’s another good comparison: bigger than us, but with a single police force. Bob’s done some research over there. But putting it into practice, that’s another thing altogether.’

‘Who’s to stop it?’

‘Aileen de Marco. She’s a tremendously powerful figure just now. She may lead a coalition administration, but what she says goes. If she wants it to happen it will, if not. . forget it.’

‘And where does Bob stand on it?’

‘As far as I know, he’s neutral. He’s done it because Aileen asked him, that’s all.’

‘So,’ Karen continued, ‘while we’re waiting for the revolution, what’s going to happen?’ She picked up the form. ‘Are you going to apply for this? Because I’m damn sure you’d get it.’

‘What about Bob?’

‘Come on, you know there’s no danger of him going after it.’

‘That’s true, so would you like me to?’

‘Your career, your decision. I’ll support you, either way.’

‘In that case. . I won’t bother.’ He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair. ‘It sounds glamorous, but I doubt whether my heart would be in it, for a reason which will remain between you and me.’

‘Ah, Andy’s drugs philosophy, is it? I can see how that might make it difficult. Does that mean you’ve settled for this nice quiet backwater?’

His green eyes drilled into her until his face creased into a smile. ‘That will be the day, my love. No, there’s something in the wind for me, and it might not be too long till it blows to our door. Until then, we’ll both have to be patient and bide our time in leafy Tayside.’