Fatal Last Words

Thirty

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Aileen asked.

‘Not this time,’ Bob answered, smiling. ‘But you never know, if it goes well I might invite them back for a bite of supper.’ He felt her eyes on his back as he closed the front door behind him.

It was early evening, but there was still warmth in the day as he walked down Hill Road, flanked on either side by substantial stone dwellings, wondering what their owners would say if they knew where he was headed. Apart from Colonel Rendell, two other concerned neighbours had called him to discuss the travellers’ arrival, and a check with the duty inspector in Haddington had told him that twenty-three other complaints had been made to the police. He had arranged, through Brian Mackie, the assistant chief constable responsible for uniformed operations, that patrol cars should drive by more frequently than was usual, but only as a public relations gesture. No police approach was to be made to the encampment.

He picked up his pace as he turned into Sandy Loan, then cut through Goose Green and across the Main Street. As he passed the parish church and turned the corner, the Mallard Hotel came into view. Fifty yards ahead, he saw two figures, the men he was meeting, Derek Baillie and Asmir Mustafic. The former still wore jeans and T-shirt, but his companion had changed into well-used dark trousers and a shirt that might once have been pristine white. He caught up with them just as they reached the conservatory that served as an entrance to the inn. ‘Gentlemen,’ he called.

Baillie turned, pausing in the act of opening the door. ‘Mr Skinner,’ he exclaimed. ‘Am I pleased to see you; you’ve won me a bet.’

‘How come?’ the DCC asked as they stepped into the glass foyer.

‘Hugo Playfair reckoned you wouldn’t be here. He told us that all you wanted was to get us off the site, away from the rest. He said we’d find guys waiting to lift us when we got here.’

‘How much did you have on it?’

‘A tenner.’

Skinner laughed. ‘In that case he’s buying; that’s enough for three pints. Mine’s Seventy Shilling.’

They made their way inside but, finding the bar filled by day trippers, decided to return to the conservatory. They settled into armchairs, around a coffee table. A red-bearded barman, looking uncomfortably warm in a multicoloured waistcoat, served three pints of beer from a tray.

‘Thanks, Andrew,’ said the police officer as he left. ‘So, guys,’ he continued, ‘how’s the new pitch?’

‘It’s flat, and that’s the main thing,’ Baillie told him.

‘Your first requirement, I guess. Those screens will go up tomorrow, and the sanitary arrangements will begin on Tuesday. . unless you’ve decided to move on by then.’

‘Or been moved? Mr Skinner, I’m neither so stupid nor so provocative that I’d choose to set up camp in front of the deputy chief constable’s house. . or the First Minister’s, for that matter. I’d almost expect to be shifted.’

‘Have you been doing your homework since this morning?’

‘Didn’t have to. Hugo Playfair told us all about you.’

‘Don’t believe too much he says. Mind you, he’s got the basics right. When you speak to me, you also have, informally, let’s say, the ear of our head of government. Now, as for moving you on, that won’t happen, not at this stage at any rate. The policy of my force is to seek civil solutions to the problems your communities cause.’

‘There you are,’ Asmir Mustafic snorted. It was the first time the DCC had heard him speak; his accent was thick, not western European, he guessed. ‘You hear, Derek, we are problem.’

Baillie held up a hand in admonition. ‘Ssh. Hear the man out, Az.’

Skinner looked at the smaller of his companions. ‘But you have to accept that you are just that. You have to realise that whenever you pitch a new camp, you cause real resentment in that neighbourhood. I’m not being judgemental when I say that; I’m stating a fact. I’ve read the statutes that cover camping. Pretty much wherever you go, the locals see you as lawbreakers, and on the face of it, they’re right.’

‘Not Roma law,’ Mustafic muttered.

‘No, Scots law, and like it or not, friend, you’re living under the jurisdiction of the Scottish court. That said, we’re not harsh. We’ll only shift you on the order of that court, if you defy its interdict. As far as I can find out, your group has never done that.’ He picked up his glass and took a mouthful before continuing. ‘So, gentlemen, enlighten me; tell me what I should be saying on your behalf when Mr Angry of Gullane rings my doorbell on a Sunday morning.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Baillie, ‘but let me begin by asking you something. We’re always being directed to the nearest dedicated site for travelling people. It’s not going to happen, but suppose we all wanted to go there, all at once, to be supervised by a local authority manager. Do you know how many you have in the area your force covers?’

‘Three.’

‘Offering how many places?’

‘Just over sixty.’

The traveller nodded. ‘Now it’s you who’s been doing his homework. Sixty serviced lots covering the city of Edinburgh and all the area around it. Across Scotland you’ve got less than five hundred traveller places, and of them, some are seasonal, closed in the winter. Now, do you know how many of our people there are in Scotland?’

‘I can’t say that I do with any certainty. The official figure puts the travelling population at a couple of thousand, but there are charities who reckon it’s much higher. Some even put it at twenty thousand.’

‘I’d doubt it’s that many,’ Baillie conceded, ‘but you can take it that it’s more than the two, Mr Skinner, for there are some of us who just don’t want to be counted. I happen to be one of them. I don’t think that makes me an anti-social person; rather I believe it makes me a free man.’

‘Yes,’ Mustafic declared. ‘Is about freedom.’

‘Freedom to do what?’

‘To live as we choose.’ Baillie looked the DCC in the eye. ‘But leave that aside for now. My point is that suppose every traveller in the country said tomorrow, “OK, we’ll conform, we’ll all live in approved sites, be they run by councils or private people or what,” there would be chaos, for there are nowhere near enough pitches for all of us. For decades, Mr Skinner, we’ve had people in government spouting platitudes about the need for provision, then passing the buck to local authorities without putting any firm obligations on them.’

‘It’s a circle, though, isn’t it? Government doesn’t know for sure how many of you there are so how can it know how many places to provide?’

‘It might start by believing its own figures as a minimum level, and then taking charge of the provision. But if ever it does, one place per family will never be enough. We are travelling people; some of us may live in one spot for a year and more, but eventually we all move on.’

‘So what we need is over-provision?’ Skinner asked. ‘Is that what you’re saying? Estimate one place per caravan, then create a surplus, to allow for your mobile lifestyle.’

‘You’ve got it, sir. But it’s not going to happen, is it?’

‘Given the political will to make it happen, anything’s possible.’

‘Well, that will hasn’t been apparent up to now, and that’s why you found us on your beach car park this morning. Without shifting our families to the other end of Scotland, which we do not want to do, we had nowhere else to go.’

‘There is always somewhere else to go, surely.’

‘Try to find it.’

The DCC smiled. ‘I’m not in a position to do that.’

‘Pah!’ Asmir Mustafic spat. ‘No, you can’t and you won’t. All you can do is come in the night, with your uniforms and your lights and your cars to waken us and our children. I came to Britain to be safe, but it is still the same. Police here no carry guns, but you hate us the same.’ He drained his glass and stood. ‘I sorry, Derek, I had enough of this talk that will go nowhere. I go somewhere else, then back to caravan.’

They watched him as he left. ‘Sorry about that,’ said Baillie as the self-closer pushed the door shut. ‘Az is one of the old school, pure gypsy. He’s been with the group for a couple of years now, but he’s still suspicious of everybody and everything. I keep him close to me, otherwise he’d be isolated, even in our small group,’

‘Where’s he from?’

Baillie smiled. ‘Where are any of us from? That’s the essence of the traveller; he’s a nomad. We may call ourselves different things. I’m a Scottish traveller, Az is Roma, then there are the New Age people, who left settled communities for a life on the road. We’re all different, but we’re all the same. Your question should have been, “Where’s he from, last?” If it had been, I’d have said he came from Bulgaria. Hugo Playfair brought him in.’

‘What’s Hugo? New Age?’

‘Mostly he’s a wanker, but yes, that’s the category I’d have to put him in.’›

‘If you don’t like him, why do you let him stay with you?’

‘I couldn’t kick him out if I wanted. You seem to have me marked out as a leader, but I’m not. I’m a spokesman, at most. I don’t command the group. Fact is, the traditionalists like Asmir Mustafic see me as a dangerous radical for speaking to a gorgio like you.’

‘Gorgio?’

‘That’s the old gypsy word for. . everybody else, I suppose.’

‘Is Playfair a gorgio?’

‘Most of our group would say he is. But the fact is, he can be useful from time to time. . at least his charity can. If we need legal advice, Hugo can fix it. If we wanted to challenge your council’s interdict, for example, he’d get us a brief.’ He saw Skinner’s expression darken. ‘Not that we will,’ he added. ‘It would be a waste of his group’s money.’ He grinned. ‘I suppose being a cop you’ve got a down on lawyers.’

‘My father was a lawyer and so is my daughter. Mind you, I’m not sure I’d want her marrying another one.’

‘How about another policeman?’

Skinner frowned. ‘She nearly did once. Fucking disaster. People like me, we’re too autocratic for Alex; we can’t help it, it’s in our nature. And Andy, her guy as was, is just like me.’

‘So Az and Hugo were right; your natural reaction is just to move us on.’

‘It probably is,’ he admitted, ‘or has been up until now. But my duty is not to give in to that instinct, rather to make an informed judgement. The hardest thing for people like me, for gorgios, as your man would say, is to understand you. We see your groups and instantly we have an image in our heads.’

‘Cher.’

‘What?’

‘Cher. Remember that fucking song of hers, “Gypsies, tramps and thieves”? I bet that goes through your mind when you see our camps. Don’t deny it; if you know it, you’ve thought it.’

Skinner nodded, sadly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t deny it.’

‘Fucking disaster for our people, that song. Whatever her intentions, even if they were innocent, it gave voice to a stereotypical image, and it’s been a millstone hanging on us since it was written.’ For the first time, the DCC saw a flash of real anger in the man, but it vanished as quickly as it had flared. ‘Why do we do it, you ask me?’ he continued. ‘Because for most of us it’s our culture, our environment, our tradition, the way we were raised. For generations we’ve travelled, taking our labour and our skills wherever they were needed, wherever we could sell them, whether it be picking potatoes, vegetables, or berries, or if you go back far enough, mending pots and pans. My own specialty is machinery. I’m an engineer, and I service motorised lawnmowers, and even tractors and the like, on small farms. Sure, we’ve had our bad apples down the years, but so has your society and more of them, man for man, than in ours, I’ll bet. My God, sir, they’re what’s kept you in a job, and what’s put you in that fine house up the hill, to be outraged by the likes of us. Your own bad bastards, that is, not ours, for we can take care of our own troublemakers.’ Baillie’s voice was rising, but still he was smiling, challenging.

‘Then there’s the show people,’ he continued, ‘the funfairs, like you had here a couple of weeks ago on the Goose Green for your village games day. You welcome them, as much as you resent us, because your kids like them, yet they’re travellers, just like us. That elderly couple whose dogs you had to walk this morning; chances are they took their grandchildren to the shows, paid them on to the merry-go-rounds and the waltzers, and bought them candyfloss till they had to hose it off them. Did they think anything of it? No. And the irony is that in a different year, for he’s been here with his stall on occasion, my cousin Zak could have been taking their money. Mr Skinner, we are to be used when it suits your community and shunned when it suits you.’

He finished; the DCC sat quiet for almost a minute.

‘Derek,’ he said at last, ‘you’ve given me food for thought. Maybe sometime you’d like to tell the First Minister and her colleagues what you’ve just told me.’

‘I would in a minute. But for now, we’ll still have to move on, again. Once the council has its interdict, you’ll enforce it?’

‘I’m afraid so. I might understand you better now, but that will still be my job.’