Gallery Whispers

45

'I don't believe it.' Sarah gasped. 'I know I said you could do what you liked, but… you took a toddler on a surveillance operation?'

'Sure,' Bob grunted. 'I've done it before. With this one here.' He nodded towards Alex, who stood beside the table, carrying her halfbrother on her hip. Jazz was hungry; he was beginning to wriggle, restively.

'It's true,' his daughter confirmed. 'I was a bit older than James Andrew, maybe, but sometimes Pops would take me out with him if he was working on a stake-out at weekends. Of course he only ever did it if he was certain that there wouldn't be any action.'

'But today there was action,' said her stepmother.

'No, no,' said Bob, mollifying her. 'Not action. Stevie and I just decided we'd better talk to the guy, just in case he moved on. As luck would have it, we were just round the corner from Alex's temporary digs, so I raised her on the mobile and got her to come round and baby-sit.'

'In a car! In the middle of Stockbridge!' Sarah shook her head, and took the baby from Alex. 'You're a bigger kid than he is in some ways.' The three older children, sat on a row on the far side of the Bar Roma table, gazed at her, reassured by her gentle, reproving laughter.

Bob signalled to the waiters to set an extra place at their table; when it was ready he sat, between his wife and his daughter. Jazz sat in a high chair, next to his mother.

'So,' she asked, quietly, as Alex began to quiz the three youngsters about their morning at the pool. 'Are you going to tell me about my son's first day on the job? What the hell was it, anyway.'

'There could have been a connection with Gaynor Weston,' he answered. 'Some diamorphine vanished from one of the hospitals, just before her death. Stevie and I did a bit of extra-curricular work, trying to trace the doctor who was suspected of taking it.

'I didn't really think we would find him, but we did. We trailed his mother from his flat to another place in Comely Bank. We had to go in, Sarah, you must appreciate that.'

She grinned. 'I suppose I do. At least you didn't have Jazz watching the back door.'

Bob whistled. 'Hey, I never thought of that.'

She punched him on the shoulder, playfully. 'And was there a connection with Gaynor?' she asked.

He glanced at the children, to make sure that they were engrossed in their conversation with Alex. 'No. We found something we didn't expect at all.' Suddenly his expression changed; the cleft above his nose deepened, with his frown.

'What?'

'Dr Gopal's younger sister,' he said, his voice almost at a whisper.

'The kid went off the rails a while back, started mixing with altogether the wrong crowd, and got herself hooked on smack. When he found out, her father, who's a real old-timer, a disciplinarian, chucked her out, into the street — literally. He forbade the mother, and Surinder, to have anything to do with her.

'Mrs Gopal, poor woman, almost went crazy. Eventually, Surinder decided that for her sake, he would help, even if his father never spoke to him again; he would try to rescue the girl. So he rented the flat in Comely Bank, short term. Then he went round all her haunts until he found out where she was living. It was a squat, a real dive of a place, down in Muirhouse.

'One morning about ten days ago, he turned up there, out of the blue, battered her boyfriend — a real smackhead, by the way — and took her out of there. The bugger had got her hooked; he even had her on the game to fund his habit as well as hers. Gopal's had her under lock and key ever since, weaning her off her habit. That's why he needed the diamorphine.'

'Was she that bad?' asked Sarah.

'Apparently so. Surinder was afraid that if he cut her off cold, the shock might kill her. So he's been giving her decreasing doses, lengthening the intervals between each one.'

'How's she doing?'

Skinner grimaced. 'She wasn't too well when Stevie and I saw her, but her brother said that she was actually a hell of a lot better than she had been. He's almost ready to take her off altogether.'

He broke off as the waiter arrived with the menus, ordering soft drinks for the children, a glass of white wine for Alex, and mineral water for Sarah and for himself.

'So what are you going to do about it?' she whispered.

'Nothing at all. The girl was well enough to confirm her brother's story, and to say that she agreed with what he was doing.'

'But what about the stolen diamorphine?'

'Ah,' Bob countered. 'But was it stolen? Surinder's a doctor; he could say that he prescribed it in an emergency situation. Okay, he broke all the hospital regulations, but that's between him and his managers and they haven't reported anything to us.'

'Couldn't he have taken the kid to a rehab unit?'

'He considered that, but he was afraid she'd have been dead by the time they got round to treating her. No, Sarah, in the absence of a formal complaint from the hospital, I'm satisfied that the police have got no locus in this situation other than to find that boyfriend and put him out of business. Stevie'll start the ball rolling.on that on Monday.'

She looked at him, doubtfully. 'I don't know-' she began.

He stopped her. 'Well, I do. I've seen the situation, and as far as I'm concerned that man is a hero. I'll make no trouble for him.'

She shrugged. 'It's your call, I suppose. So where does that leave you as far as the Weston investigation is concerned?'

'Up the creek, sans paddle,' he said, ruefully. 'It's a mystery, and that could well be how it stays.'

Sarah sighed. 'Maybe, like with your young doctor, no action could be the best outcome.'

Bob nodded. 'Could be. I'll think about that over the weekend.' He reached across the table and tapped Mark on the shoulder. 'So young man,' he asked. 'Did you go down that big slide after all?'