Fatal Last Words

Forty-nine

Bob pulled into the driveway, coming to a halt a few feet short of the garage door, which was closed, as usual. He glanced in the rear-view mirror to ensure that the gate had closed properly behind him, in response to his remote signal, then eased himself from behind the driver’s seat and retrieved his jacket from its hook in the back.

He frowned, wondering why for a few seconds, until he realised that his usual welcoming committee was conspicuous by its absence. Normally, when the children were at home, at least one of them would be in the doorway to greet him before the car had stopped moving. And if not them, Aileen, whose high office carried with it chauffeur-driven travel to and from the Parliament, and who usually made it home before he did.

He opened the door and stepped into the hall, but still there was no rush of feet, nor the sound of any presence. He turned to his right and looked into the kitchen, but that too was empty. ‘On the beach, I guess,’ he murmured, feeling a tinge of disappointment. He transferred his mobile to a trouser pocket, slung his jacket as usual over the post at the foot of the banister, and headed for the garden room.

It was full, of his family: Aileen, the children, Trish the nanny and Alex.

‘What the hell’s this?’ he asked, with a huge smile.

‘Let me give you a clue,’ Aileen replied, as she took a bottle from the ice bucket and began to pour. ‘This is not Asti Spumante, this is the Widow Cliquot.’ She handed him a glass, rose up on her toes to kiss him, and whispered, ‘Congratulations, my darling,’ in his ear.

‘Congratulations,’ five voices echoed, although Seonaid’s version, screamed above the rest, was missing at least one syllable.

He took his glass and acknowledged the toast, noting that while the two younger children were waving glasses of cola, Mark had been allowed a small amount of champagne, then slipped an arm around his partner’s waist. ‘That’s me kept my side of the bargain,’ he told her. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

‘A deal’s a deal.’ She nodded. ‘October suit you, in the next parliamentary recess?’

‘You set the date, and I’ll be there.’

‘Who’ll be your best man?’ asked Alex.

He was surprised by the question, and paused, for he had not considered it. But he looked her in the eye and said, ‘I’m not having one. I’m having a best person, and you’re it.’

‘Pass!’ she exclaimed.

‘Refusal is not an option. No embarrassing speeches, though.’ He caught Mark looking at him, a little quizzically. ‘Don’t worry, kid,’ he laughed, ‘that doesn’t mean that you and the Jazzer have to be bridesmaids.’

‘Or pageboys,’ the boy begged. ‘Please not, Dad.’

‘You can be ushers,’ Aileen announced, ‘not that there’ll be many people to ush,’ she added. ‘And the wee one can be a flower girl.’

Alex picked up her sister. ‘If she’s trainable,’ she chuckled as the child wriggled, and a small amount of cola spilled on to the floor.

Two thoughts occurred to Bob. ‘How did you know?’ he asked.

‘Jimmy called me this afternoon,’ his fiancée replied.

‘And where have you hidden your car, daughter? I had no notion that you were here when I came in.’

‘It’s in the garage; the last place you’d be likely to look.’ She set Seonaid back on her feet and herded the children in the direction of the kitchen, where their evening meal had been set out for them by the nanny.

As they left, Bob dropped into his armchair. ‘You realise this is premature?’ he murmured. ‘The Board doesn’t meet until tomorrow. The recommendation could be overturned.’

‘There is no chance of that,’ Aileen declared firmly. ‘No chance at all. It will be endorsed unanimously. If I had enemies within the Labour group, then there might be some sort of stunt, but I don’t. My reach is long, when I choose, and I made damn sure there were no rebels appointed. I wouldn’t give anyone the chance to attack you to get at me.’ She smiled. ‘But I agree, we should keep the celebrations in-house till it’s all official. That’s why we’re having dinner in La Potinière tomorrow, rather than tonight.’

‘We are? Just the two of us? Or have you asked Jimmy and Chrissie too?’

‘I did, but they send their apologies; they’re going somewhere else. Brian and Sheila Mackie are coming, Neil and Louise, and Alex, of course. Andy and Karen too, if you’d like and they can get a sitter.’

‘Veto the last,’ said Bob quickly. ‘If word got out, that might be seen as a public endorsement. Brian’s a close colleague; he’s different, I can live with that. Jimmy would tell you the same thing.’

Aileen gazed at him, intrigued. ‘Since when did you bother about things like that?’ she asked. ‘Not that I’m arguing with you, but I’m surprised.’

He met her eyes with his. ‘I’m glad I can still do that. . surprise you, that is. Since this afternoon, I reckon. Until now, everything’s been hypothetical, but now it’s about to become real. . maybe I’m kidding myself, but I feel my thinking starting to change. It occurred to me as I was speaking to Jimmy about my possible successor; I found myself taking new factors into account, that wouldn’t have occurred to me before.’

‘Welcome to the club. You’ve just described how I felt when I became First Minister. All of a sudden, I had all the responsibility, no filters, nobody to hide behind when it came to the difficult decisions. It was scary until I accepted that, in truth, it was what I’d wanted from the day I entered public life.’

‘Ah well,’ said Bob, ‘I don’t know that I have accepted that yet. Maybe it isn’t true of me.’

‘Are you feeling self-doubt? If you are, love, then the last thing I’d want is for you to do something that would make you unhappy. It’s not too late to withdraw your application. I can scrap the dinner.’

He savoured his Veuve Cliquot and stared out of the window. ‘And if I did that, how would I feel about myself for the rest of my life? I know we made our deal, honey, I go for chief and you marry me, but both those things were going to happen anyway. I don’t think anyone has ever made me do something I didn’t want to do, or didn’t feel that I should.’ He looked back towards her. ‘No, they can appoint me, and once they have done, we’ll all have to take the consequences of that, until I’m done with it or they’re done with me. So let’s gather in La Potinière, enjoy it, and prepare for the mayhem to come! Are you bringing a partner?’ he asked his daughter as she returned.

‘No,’ she told him.

‘You can if you like,’ Aileen pointed out.

‘Ah.’ Alex eyed her father. ‘But what if I brought Griff Montell?’

He laughed out loud. ‘Now you are being mischievous, kid. Do you think he’d come, even if he wasn’t in South Africa with his gay sister? A detective constable at that table? The guy would run a mile rather than accept that invitation, and you know it. But bring somebody else if you like, someone from the firm, maybe.’

‘No, I’ll come alone.’ She flashed him a sharp glare. ‘You were right, of course: I wouldn’t have dreamt of inviting Griff, and not just because of the company. It would be implying something that isn’t true; we’re not that close.’ She paused. ‘And what’s with the crack about Spring being gay? That’s rubbish.’

Her father shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. I’ve seen Griff’s vetting report; it was done when he applied for a transfer from South Africa. You can imagine why we looked into her. Single guy living with his single sister; I didn’t demand it, but I understand why it was done. That’s what showed up; in fact, it was the main reason for her wanting to leave. She drove the move more than he did. Fine, it means nothing to me, which team she bats for; it doesn’t make her brother a security risk. As it happens, I have gay people on my force right through the ranks, and I’m comfortable with it.’

‘Griff’s not one of them,’ Alex muttered. ‘I can tell you that.’

‘I know; he left an ex-wife and two kids in South Africa.’ Her mouth fell open. Bob nodded. ‘It’s true.’

‘You knew that and you didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t feel that I could tell you at the time, given how I got the information. Plus, the man got you out of a very nasty scrape, you’ll remember, so maybe I made some allowances for him. When I realised you were sleeping with him, I was in a bit of a quandary, but again, I decided that all I could do was let it play itself out.’

‘But he didn’t tell me either.’

‘Yet you still cooled off the relationship. See? Your instincts were right, you sensed something, and you made the right decision. There’s a lesson I learned from the failure of my second marriage, a lesson that Aileen and I have both taken to heart, and it’s this. We know everything about each other, she and I. Why? Because you can’t build on hidden truths; they’d bring the whole fucking house down.’

‘Jesus!’ Alex gasped. ‘And as Chief Constable Bob Skinner you’ll have access to even more secrets, and even more power.’

‘That’s what gets to me, my dear. It’s a hell of a responsibility; now you can see why I was ambivalent about it for a while. This morning, Andy Martin told me about something that had scared him. I could have made the same admission to him; but I’ve got over it.’

‘And has Andy?’ she asked, curious, frowning.

‘Don’t know about that.’

Silence hung between them, until it was broken by the sound of Bob’s ringtone. He put his glass on a side table, fished out his mobile and took the call, from an undeclared number.

‘Piers here,’ he learned. ‘Can you speak?’

‘Yes. I’m just sat here cuddling a Widow, and getting ready for some more of her.’

‘The lives you Jocks lead,’ Frame drawled. ‘I’ve made some inquiries, Bob, and the fact is, your chap was pretty low down the watch list. Indeed, once he was elected to your parliament, surveillance stopped altogether. The thinking was that if we wanted to find out what he was doing about Trident, it would all be on the public record, so the resources involved were reallocated. So I’m assured by MoD that they haven’t done any housekeeping at your chap’s place since his death; neither they nor anyone else we know about, if you get my meaning.’›

So not the CIA either. ‘Yes, I do. Thanks, although that leaves me with a puzzle.’

‘Which I’m sure you’ll solve. Oh, and also, that name you mentioned; not a member of our community, either real or assumed. Bit of a mystery caller, it seems.’

‘Indeed. For his sake he’d better stay that way. Thanks, chum.’ He pondered Frame’s message as he closed the Motorola. Yes, the dead man had been watched for a while, but that had stopped, and no, Coben wasn’t one of theirs. So who was he? Why did he visit Andy to warn him off? How did he even know about the surveillance? Or. . had other eyes been fixed on Ainsley Glover?

He laid the phone on the table, picked up his flute and waved it at Aileen. ‘Since I seem to be the star of the show,’ he began, ‘. . is there any chance of some more of that stuff?’