Grievous Angel

One

‘Why were we created to suffer and die?’

‘Why the hell not?’

I stared at her, fork halfway to my half-open mouth. I’m closer to my older daughter, my first child, than anyone else in the world, even Aileen… that’s how it is, in truth… yet she’s always had the capacity to surprise me. I gasped, not just at the bluntness of her reply, but because she’d nailed down the answer to my metaphysical question, one hundred per cent.

‘You…’ I began, and then the phone rang. ‘Bugger,’ I grunted. She frowned. ‘Not you,’ I added, quickly.

When? It must have been fifteen years ago that I read a spoof sci-fi story about a space wanderer who travelled the universe, looking for its Maker, so that he could put to Him/Her the Primal Question.

Yes, that’s right, it was fifteen years ago, for Alexis Skinner was at that unmercifully awkward stage, not quite a woman, I thought, but on the other hand definitely not Pops’ wee girl any more. The attitude that’s characterised her ever since was in its formative stage, with all of the sharp edges that time would smooth away, still, then, at their most abrasive.

We were having our evening meal, she and I, the two-person family unit that we’d been for almost a decade, since Myra had died in a tangle of metal. Daisy Mears had gone home for the night. She’d been a part of our lives for the previous eight of those years. More than a part: in truth, she’d been the saviour of mine, professionally.

Daisy lived in Gullane, in a cottage, as we did; hers was on the other side of the main street from Goose Green, in Templar Lane. She was five years older than me, just past forty, divorced, childless, and with no intention of ever getting involved with another man in any way, other than business. She was an artist, and a pretty good one at that; her landscapes, and stormy, brooding seascapes, sold for upwards of a grand a time through an Edinburgh gallery, and for not quite as much to collectors who approached her directly. She hadn’t always done that well, though. When she’d become Alex’s day-carer… my daughter did not care for the term ‘childminder’ and corrected anyone who was foolish enough to use it… the money had come in handy, in the wake of her acrimonious split from the heavy-handed skinflint she’d made the mistake of marrying.

She’d joined us after a succession of short-term failures. At first Myra’s mother insisted on helping me out, but after only a year she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and went back to Lanarkshire to die. After her came a series of women who’d promised that my unpredictable working hours would be no problem, only to discover that they were. At that time, I was still in my twenties, widowed, with a five-year-old kid who was the centre of my world. It might not always have been apparent… indeed, today I have an ex-wife who’d take issue with the assertion… but through my life my career has come second to my family.

With the resignation of the most recent ‘carer’, I had a problem, but I had an option open to me, one which I almost took up. When Daisy answered the ad that I’d placed, in desperation rather than hope, in the East Lothian Courier, I was probably within three months of leaving the police force and moving back to Motherwell, to add a law qualification to my arts degree and join my father’s firm.

She was made for us. Her creative hours were completely flexible, and could be shaped to meet our needs. She’d come in every morning, to get Alex ready and take her to school, then pick her up at the end of the day and bring her home, or if I was working late, take her to her place until I called for her. On the odd occasion when an investigation turned into a crisis, she’d look after her overnight, always at Templar Lane, for Daisy and I agreed early on that she would never sleep over at Goose Green. Villages are villages, even the nicest of them; we knew there would be talk as it was, without our feeding it.

I thought about letting the answer-machine handle the incoming call, but only for a fraction of a second. I’ve never been able to do that. If the phone rings more than three times, in my home or in my office, it means that I’m not there, unless I’m sound asleep or locked away taking care of private matters. Even then, I once ruined a perfectly good mobile by answering it while taking a piss and letting it slip from my grasp. I stood up from the table, and snatched the handset from its cradle on the sideboard.

‘Three two nine one,’ I answered. My phone number. That’s my way. I never give my name when taking a call at home. My life is about having an edge; I’ve always liked to know who’s calling before giving anything of myself away.

‘DCI Skinner?’ Male voice, deep, young, just on the confident side of arrogant.

‘Who’s this?’

‘PC McGuire, St Leonards.’

I frowned. The name meant nothing to me. ‘This is Skinner,’ I conceded. ‘It’s quarter past seven, and I finished a ten-hour working day just over an hour ago. So why are you interrupting my dinner, Constable?’

‘Because my boss told me to, sir.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘Detective Superintendent Jay.’

Greg Jay; arrogant prick. I didn’t like him, and I wasn’t alone. ‘I thought you said you were a PC,’ I snapped. ‘Why are you gophering for a CID officer?’

‘I was nearest the door; got seconded.’

‘And Jay gave you my ex-directory number, just like that?’

‘I didn’t know it was X-D, sir. He just told me to call it.’

‘And?’

‘And to ask you to meet him at Infirmary Street Baths, as soon as possible.’

‘That’s how he put it?’

The PC hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘Actually, sir, he said, “Tell him to get his arse along to Infirmary Street Baths, now.” Those were his exact words.’

I cut off my retort, just before it left my mouth. Alex was watching me, with a frown on her face. ‘In that case, Constable McGuire,’ I replied instead, ‘… what’s your first name?’

‘Mario, sir.’

‘Now there’s an odd mixture.’

‘Father Irish, mother Italian.’

‘Indeed? Well, Mario, please give Detective Superintendent Jay my compliments and tell him that my arse is going nowhere until he calls me himself and gives me a good reason why it should.’

‘Will do, sir.’ Something in the lad’s tone hinted that he would enjoy it too.

‘And one other thing,’ I added.

‘I know, sir. Forget the number I just called.’

My daughter looked at me, a little anxiously, as I came back to my seat. ‘Can you do that?’ she asked. ‘He’s a superintendent and you’re only a chief inspector.’

‘Nobody’s “only” a chief inspector, love,’ I told her. ‘Nobody’s “only” anything. “Only” isn’t a word I like to tag on to people.’ That said, I could have added that if you made chief inspector at thirty-three… I’d held the rank for three years by that time.. . then somebody who’d taken twelve years longer to make super would know that at some point down the road he’d be calling you ‘sir’, and thus wouldn’t be taking too many liberties.

I didn’t say it, though; instead I concentrated on finishing my lasagne before the phone rang again. I felt myself grin as I wondered whether that young constable had the stones to deliver my message verbatim, suspecting that he did.

It didn’t take Jay too long. I was in the kitchen when he called; Alex picked up in the dining room, before I could stop her. She answered in the same way I did, number only, as I’d taught her.

‘Yes, my father is at home,’ I heard her say. ‘Who’s calling, please?’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued, switching into young woman mode and sounding frighteningly like her mother. ‘Either you tell me who you are or I hang up. That’s what my father says I should do with anonymous callers.’ She waited, taking the phone away from her ear slightly, as if she was getting ready to put it down. ‘Thank you,’ she said, eventually, then turned to look at me. ‘Dad, it’s Detective Superintendent Jay.’

‘How soon can we start her on our switchboard?’ he drawled, as soon as I took the phone.

‘We’ll be minding hers before she’s done,’ I told him.

‘You finished your tea then, Bob?’ The sarcasm in Jay’s tone was only one of the reasons for my dislike of him.

‘And done the dishes.’

‘You ready to obey orders now?’

I didn’t want to upset Alex, so all I did was grin, when I really wanted to bite his ear off. ‘Since when were you my line manager?’ I asked him, quietly. ‘You’re at St Leonards, CID; I’m drugs squad commander. So please stop puffing out your chest and tell me exactly what the hell it is you want.’

‘Listen…’ he growled.

‘I’m listening.’

I heard a deep breath being drawn. ‘I’ve got a crime scene,’ he continued, eventually.

‘Infirmary Street Baths,’ I said. In the Victorian era Edinburgh’s civic leaders built several public swimming pools to combat the scourge of cholera. When I was young, my father took me to see his grandfather’s grave in a cemetery in Wishaw, Motherwell’s neighbouring town; as we approached it he pointed out a green area, without memorial stones, and told me that it was the site of a mass grave for victims of a cholera epidemic.

‘That’s right,’ Jay confirmed, brusquely.

‘I thought they were closed.’ A hundred years on, we weren’t so bothered about Biblical plagues.

‘They are. They were shut down about a year ago; they’ve been mothballed while the council tries to find a new use for the building, or for the site, if it comes to that. There are jannies going in every so often, to check the place out, make sure that everything’s all right.’

‘But today something wasn’t?’

‘That’s right. They found a guy in the pool.’

‘What stroke was he doing?’

‘Very funny. There’s no water supply to the building, but even if there had been, this one wasn’t swimming. He was at the deep end; right under the high diving board. His neck was broken.’

‘He took the plunge, eh?’

The superintendent allowed himself a grim chuckle. ‘That’s how it looks. But we don’t know for certain whether he dived off it or whether he was chucked off.’

‘What makes you think I can tell you?’ I asked.

‘If what Alf Stein says about you is right,’ I could see the sneer on his weasel face, ‘you probably could tell us just by looking at him.’ Detective Chief Superintendent Stein was our head of CID, Jay’s boss and mine. I’d heard myself described, with undisguised jealousy, by someone who didn’t know I was within earshot, as his protege, but Alf had never told me that I was. ‘But the reason I’d like you to look at him…’ he hesitated, ‘… this has got drugs overtones to it, Bob. There’s no ID on the body, but Alison Higgins reckons she’s seen this bloke before. She thinks that he’s one of Tony Manson’s crew.’

I could have said that I’d look at him next morning in the mortuary, but in truth, if Jay had done that to me I’d have been seriously upset. And there was something else: Alison wasn’t wrong too often. I told him to hold, and put my hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. ‘Do you know if Daisy has anything on tonight?’ I asked my daughter.

She nodded. ‘She’s taking some pictures to show to a private buyer in Haddington.’

‘Do you have much homework?’

‘I’ve done it.’

‘Fancy a quick trip into town?’

‘Aw, Dad! Top of the Pops is on in a minute or two.’

‘We can record it. I need to do this.’

‘New jeans?’

‘Are you trying extortion on a police officer?’

‘It’s always worked before.’

‘Okay.’ I put the phone back to my ear. ‘I’ll be about forty-five minutes, give or take a couple,’ I told Jay.

‘Our guest will wait for you,’ he replied.

I let Alex set the VCR; we had no empty tapes so she and I had a brief argument about which to use. She won in the end, because I wasn’t really interested in catching up on Juventus winning the Champions League on penalties. She didn’t get to choose the music in the car, though. I never could stand R Kelly, and Wyclef’s language on one of the Fugee tracks was… well… ‘Mista Mista’ had become the anthem of the Edinburgh drugs squad, but it wasn’t for my daughter’s ears. Instead I forced her to listen to ‘Aria’, a strange, contemplative blend of opera and chill-out music by the Cafe del Mar maestro, that a friend had given me in Spain a few weeks before, at Easter.

Although it was a Thursday, most of the late evening shoppers were heading for home by the time we came into the outskirts of the city. I was thinking about Infirmary Street Baths, and what was waiting for us there. Alexis was thinking about something else; we were on Milton Link when she turned the volume down.

‘Dad,’ she said, abruptly, reclaiming my attention. ‘Why don’t we have a dinner party?’

‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘Why the hell would we do that?’

‘Why shouldn’t we? You never invite friends to the house. It’s as if we’re hermits. You’re a good cook, and I’m not bad at some things. We could manage.’

‘Who would we invite?’ As I thought about it, I conceded the point; we did live a secluded existence. Alex wasn’t my life in its entirety, but I didn’t have a legion of friends, not outside the job. Yes, I was invited to parties thrown by people who’d been part of our circle when I was half of a couple, but nobody expected me to take a turn as host myself, not with a kid… but she wasn’t any more, was she?

‘You could invite the Lloyds,’ she suggested. Jack Lloyd was my usual foursomes partner in the golf club. He and his wife were more than ten years older than me. ‘And Aunt Jean could come.’

I smiled. I must have looked condescending, for she frowned. ‘When you’re a lawyer,’ I told her, ‘and you have an opposition witness on the stand, you’ll need to take your examination more slowly than that, or you’ll have no flexibility left, no wiggle room. It’s the biggest mistake defence counsel make when I’m in the box.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she snapped.

‘Yes you do. You’re matchmaking, and you’re not very good at it.’

Alex and her aunt, her mother’s younger sister, had always got on. So had Jean and I, for that matter. But neither my daughter nor I could stand her husband Cameron, one of the very few men that Myra had ever detested absolutely. Jean had joined our camp a couple of years earlier. She had celebrated her thirtieth birthday by chucking him out, and had called a week before to tell us that her divorce had been finalised.

‘Okay, so what if I am? Dad, it’s been a long time. You’ve got to …’

‘Move on?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alex, I have moved on.’

She looked across at me. ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘You know that I don’t.’

‘I know that you never bring any women home, but that’s all.’

‘Well I don’t.’

‘None at all?’

‘No.’

‘You mean you’ve been celibate since Mum died?’ She pronounced the bombshell word carefully, as if she’d just learned it.

‘Hey!’ I protested, laughing. ‘Jesus, kid, what sort of a question’s that for a thirteen-year-old to be asking her father?’

‘That means you haven’t. If the answer was “yes” you’d have said so. People prevaricate when they have something to hide; that’s what you told me.’

‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ I insisted.

I had, of course. Nine months before, I had left Alex in Daisy’s care and gone to Spain for a long weekend, to do some maintenance on the house that I’d bought with part of my father’s estate, and to commission an extension. I’d flown from Glasgow to Barcelona and Jean had come with me. Her suggestion, not mine; nothing had been said in advance about the sleeping arrangements, but I suppose we’d both known what was going to happen. It wasn’t a disaster, but it did feel a little weird. We had some laughs, the sex was good, and I didn’t imagine for a second that Myra would be turning in her grave, but when Jean made it clear at the end of the trip that it would be a oneoff, I felt relieved rather than slighted. She hadn’t been my only fling; there had been other women, a few over the years, but always away games, work as far as Alex was concerned, the truth and nothing but the truth with the understanding Daisy.

‘Tell you what,’ I offered her. ‘No dinner party, but we’ll have a barbie in the garden, one Sunday afternoon. We’ll invite friends from the village, you can ask some of yours from school, if their parents are okay with it, and I might ask some from work. You can invite our Jean if you like, but don’t you be surprised if she wants to bring a man.’

The notion that her aunt was capable of independent thought and action sent her into silent contemplation. ‘You up for that?’ I asked, as I negotiated a troublesome roundabout.

‘We’ll see.’The idea of a joint adult-kids party left her underwhelmed, as I had guessed it would. Negotiations were suspended, and I drove on, letting the music fill the void.

Infirmary Street had been closed at either end as I turned into it off the Cowgate. The uniform on duty waved a ‘get on your way’ gesture at first, but he was looking at Alex rather than at me. He knew me well enough; his name was Charlie Johnston and he wasn’t going anywhere other than towards retirement and a PC’s pension, his objective from the start. He and I were contemporaries. The first thing he’d done on joining up was to learn, off by heart, the book and how to play everything by it without ever risking his head above the parapet. After a closer look, he stepped aside and moved a traffic cone.

Jay was waiting for me on the pavement outside the old building, sucking on a cigarette. Even now, it’s difficult for me to paint a word picture of the man. He came closer than anyone I’ve ever known to being a walking definition of ‘nondescript’. The only feature that stopped him from going all the way was the colour of his eyes, as grey as the stone of the bathhouse behind him.

They flickered as Alex stepped out of the car, and I didn’t like what I saw in them. She was tall for her age, and dressed as she saw fit. That evening her choice had been jeans, ripped at the knee, and a baggy, custom-made, white T-shirt that one of her friends had given her the Christmas before. It had ‘WARNING! CID brat!’ emblazoned on the front.

‘Bob,’ he said, his face twisting into what passed for a smile. ‘Glad you could come. It might help us get a head start.’

‘I know that.’ There was a cop standing in the doorway behind him, a PC in his mid-twenties, around my height, six two. Modern police tunics make some officers look fat, but not this guy; he just looked massive. He had to be McGuire, even if he did look a lot more Italian than Irish. His hair was darker than dark, the purest jet black, and his eyes, a complete contrast to Jay’s limpid puddles, were deep blue pools which twinkled with laughter and excitement. I’d seen him around but hadn’t put a name to him before. He was usually to be found in the company of another young plod, his equal in size if not in temperament.

‘Mario?’ He nodded. ‘You’ve got an important and dangerous job.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Look after my daughter while I’m inside.’

He beamed. ‘She couldn’t be in safer hands, boss.’

‘It’s your safety I’m worrying about.’ I winked at Alex. ‘I won’t be long.’ She shrugged; at that moment she was more interested in her new minder than she was in me.

‘Come on then,’ Jay grunted. He led the way inside, past what had been the ticket booth, and up a few steps into the pool area. There was plenty of natural light, from a window that ran along the full length of the roof, but not enough for the scene of crime people apparently; four big lamps, on stands, had been set up in the drained pool. I took a look around, reacquainting myself with my surroundings. I had been in the baths a couple of years before, as a user. When I had taken over command of the drugs and vice squad it had been based in Gayfield Square, and I had gone there to swim on a few lunch breaks. The pool was flanked by individual changing cubicles, women on one side, men on the other. The designer had left gaps at the top and bottom of the doors, a sign that the building dated back to a time before electric lighting. There was an upper tier, with more cubicles, for individual baths, relics of the days when all there was in many homes was a tin tub in front of the fire.

A ladder had been placed at the deep end, where the tiled floor was flat. A red-haired guy stood at the top, a DS called Arthur Dorward; he was a graduate, as was I, but his degree was in chemistry. He was wearing a scene of crime suit, and handed one to me. ‘What about you?’ I asked Jay, as I put it on.

‘I’ve seen all I want to see down there,’ he retorted.

I climbed down the ladder, jumping off with a couple of rungs to go. The body was lying as the superintendent had described it; it was that of a young man, a big bloke, white, dressed in black trousers and shirt, with shiny lace-up brogues and patterned socks. It was face down, the limbs were splayed out and the head was at the sort of angle you’d expect from a well-executed hanging. There was a little blood, but no more than a smear.

I looked up, towards the diving platform which jutted out above my head, a solid structure and wide enough to accommodate at least two people and possibly three. It was fifteen or sixteen feet higher than the edge of the pool, add on another couple for the water level then twelve for safe diving depth; yes, the guy could have fallen thirty feet, more than enough to do the job.

Two officers stood beside him. They were both dressed as I was, in one-piece sterile suits with hoods, but I knew them both. Alison Higgins had just made DI; she had been a sergeant on my team until a year before. I had engineered her move, without her ever knowing about it. She had chummed me to Infirmary Street once or twice… on lunchtimes when we weren’t back at her flat in Albert Street, banging each other’s brains out. Our thing had cooled off since then… not that it had ever been red hot… but we were still good friends.

The other suit was a detective constable, new to CID; his name was Martin, Andy Martin. He was from Glasgow, and he was reckoned to be a high-flier, not necessarily by Jay, but by me. He had helped me out on an investigation a few months before, when he was still in uniform, and I had recommended to Alf Stein that he be fast-tracked into CID. Jay thought that he had been favoured because he had a degree of fame as a rugby player, but if that had been so he’d have deserved it. The young Martin had played for Scotland B and had been a certainty to make full international status, until he had made it clear to the head coach that his job came before any squad training session, even in the newly dawned professional era.

‘So you think I might have an interest in this, Alison?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen him before, sir.’ She was always impeccably formal with me, on duty, when there were others around. ‘And I’m sure, too, that it was in my time on the drugs squad.’

‘Has the body been moved?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘So you’ve only seen him in profile, as he is now?’

‘That’s how sure I am,’ she replied, confidently.

‘Has the doctor been yet?’

‘And the pathologist,’ Martin volunteered, ‘and the photographers.’

‘Then turn him over.’

The young DC nodded, squatted down beside the corpse and rolled it on to its back, then straightened the arms and legs. The left side of the face had been smashed by the impact, but it was still recognisably human. And recognisable as…

‘Marlon Watson,’ I said, loud enough for Jay to hear, above us at the poolside. ‘Fucking hell, but that’s one unlucky family.’

‘Marlon?’ Martin echoed.

‘Age twenty-three or twenty-four, born in nineteen seventy-two, when The Godfather was the big film of the year. Mr and Mrs Watson didn’t have a lot of imagination when it came to naming their kids. This one had a brother called Ryan; he was born in nineteen seventy, the year Love Story came out. There was a sister, too, so I’ve been told, older than either of them. Her name’s Mia; spot the movie.’

‘ Rosemary’s Baby.’ Alison was a movie buff.

‘That’s right: a movie about the spawn of Satan, and Bella Watson called her kid after its star.’

‘Why did you say they’re unlucky?’ Jay asked.

I looked up at him. ‘Don’t you remember? Maybe not; it’s a few years back now. I wasn’t long on the force when it happened. This one’s brother was at Maxwell Academy, that hellish school they pulled down a few years ago, and his uncle, a bad bastard called Gavin Spreckley, had him selling heavily cut smack to the other kids, under the protection of the janitor. The Saltire newspaper got on to it and ran the story. We didn’t have enough on Gavin to lift him, but Ryan was arrested and remanded to a secure unit. He disappeared from there; he didn’t break out, though, he was snatched. The staff were careless, or maybe somebody was bribed. Anyway, a day or so later a parcel was delivered to the Saltire newspaper office. It was a box, with two right hands in it, the boy’s and the uncle’s, cut off after they’d been killed. We never found the bodies, but Tommy Partridge… he led the investigation… reckons that he knows what happened to them.’

Jay scowled. ‘That’s not bad luck as far as I’m concerned; it’s good luck for the rest of us.’

‘The boy was fourteen,’ I barked at him. ‘A year older than my daughter is now; he never stood a fucking chance, being brought up in that environment.’

‘Tough shit. I remember the wee swine now; he carried a razor, and cut somebody with it, one of our guys.’

‘Sure, and you carry a spring-loaded baton in your jacket pocket, Superintendent.’ His face flushed with anger, and I stopped short. I’d been drawn into an argument with the guy in front of his own troops, not a smart thing to do. ‘But the family trouble didn’t end there,’ I went on, cutting across any potential retort. ‘We all remember that,’ I glanced at the DC, ‘apart from you, Martin.’

‘What happened, sir?’ he asked me.

‘Mayhem. Partridge and his team knew who did for the pair of them; there wasn’t much doubt about that. Spreckley was a known dealer; his supplier was a guy called Alasdair Holmes, the younger brother of a man called Perry Holmes. I won’t give you Perry’s life story, but you can take it that he was a man of many business interests, some straight, others criminal on a national scale. Every cop in Scotland wanted him, but none of us could get near him. Anyway, the Holmes brothers knew nothing of what had been going on in the school, and when they found out…’ I felt my eyebrows rise.

‘The belief was that uncle and nephew were killed by Al Holmes and a big German monster who worked for them, called Johann Kraus, and Partridge’s bet was that they were cremated in an incinerator on a smallholding that Perry owned and where Kraus lived. He also believes that they made Gavin’s brother Billy watch the executions. If Gavin was small-time then Billy was tiny, a gopher, no more than that.’

I smiled, but I wasn’t laughing inside. ‘However,’ I continued, ‘there was a wee bit more to him than they thought. It took him a few years to work up the courage, but one day he walked into the Holmes business office just off Lothian Road and shot both the brothers. Alasdair was killed instantly and Perry took four bullets. He should have died, but he didn’t; instead he wound up in a wheelchair, paralysed. As for Billy, Johann Kraus saw him off, then he went berserk himself and killed an innocent bystander. There was a short siege, before one of our snipers blew his brains out.’

‘So what do you think this is?’ Higgins asked. ‘The next round?’

‘Perry Holmes exterminating the Watsons? No, I don’t see that. Perry’s a quadriplegic; from what I’ve heard he’s looked after by a couple of male nurses. He still runs his kosher businesses, but that’s all. The other side of his life ended when that bullet lodged at the base of his brain, where it is to this day. It all seems to have passed over to Tony Manson now.’

‘So is DI Higgins right?’ Jay interrupted. ‘Did this Marlon guy connect to Manson?’

I knew where he was heading, from the tone of his voice. ‘Closely,’ I told him. ‘He was his driver.’

‘So it is one for your drugs squad,’ he exclaimed, beaming at the prospect of spin-passing a tricky investigation to someone else.

‘Maybe yes, maybe no. Tony does other things, as you know very well.’

‘Sure, among them prostitution, which still makes it your baby.’

I sighed, because I knew that one way or another, he was right: but I wasn’t for letting him know it. ‘We’ll let the boss decide that,’ I declared. ‘How did he get in here?’ I asked Alison, to avoid any debate.

‘There’s a door at the side. It’s been jemmied. The building isn’t alarmed, so there was no risk.’

‘Time?’

‘The janitors call in twice a week. The entrances were all checked and secure on Monday. The pathologist is sure he’s been dead for at least thirty-six hours, because rigor mortis is starting to dissipate.’

‘So we’re looking at something that could have happened overnight on Tuesday. There’s a pub across the road, and steady traffic through this street, so we ought to start with the premise that the break-in happened after closing time.’ I gazed up at Jay. ‘Do you know when that boozer closes? Does it have a late licence?’

‘Only at weekends,’ Martin volunteered. ‘It shuts at eleven through the week.’

‘Okay, that indicates a window from around midnight Tuesday onwards.’

‘Maybe he was in the pub before he broke in here,’ the DC suggested. I glanced upwards again; Jay had gone. He was doing his level best to dump the investigation on me, and the way things were going, he was succeeding.

‘That’s a possibility that should be checked,’ I said. ‘Was he? If so, was he alone or did he have company?’ I turned back to DI Higgins. ‘But first things first; you should get Marlon off to the morgue… that won’t take long, since it’s just round the corner… and you need to find out whether anyone knew what he was doing on Tuesday.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but…’ She knew the game that was being played between her boss and me, and she wasn’t having any of it. She needed clear direction, unambiguous; she didn’t need to be caught in the spray of a pissing contest between two guys who might be letting their dislike of each other get in the way of their judgement.

‘Fuck it!’ I hissed. Thing was, I knew something that none of them did: I knew about the announcement that was going to be made the next morning, at 9 a.m., on a force circular and an hour later to the press. ‘Detective Superintendent Jay,’ I shouted.

A few seconds passed before he reappeared, shoulders hunched in his baggy jacket, a cigarette cupped in his hand. He looked sour, ready for a fight. ‘Yes?’ he murmured, a challenge.

‘I’m taking over this investigation,’ I announced.

‘Just like that?’

Perverse bastard! It was what he wanted, but not how he’d wanted it. His hope was that if he couldn’t order me himself, Alf Stein would, that I’d be put in my place. His mistake was that I knew what that place was, he didn’t.

‘Just like that,’ I echoed. ‘Either I do it tonight with your agreement, or tomorrow morning, with or without it. For the sake of the investigation it’s best that it’s now.’

‘What’s tomorrow got to do with it?’ he snapped.

‘Tomorrow, Greg, I assume command of the Serious Crimes Unit, on promotion to detective superintendent. I’ll be working alongside the Scottish Crime Squad, and my remit will include organised crime. We’ll continue to have a dedicated drugs and vice unit, with Roy Old in charge, but it’ll work hand in hand with my team.’

‘Who defines serious crime?’ Jay was deflated; I’d let some of the air out of his balloon.

‘Within our force area, we do. The Scottish Crime Squad targets on a national basis, but its resources are limited. Our focus is within our own territory; we pass on intelligence when we have it, but we set our own local agenda. Tony Manson is very much part of that, and when we find his driver dead in these circumstances, that’s of interest to us.’

He shrugged. ‘Good luck to you, then. I’ll be off home. Higgins, Martin, you can knock off too.’

Christ, the man’s lifetime mission seemed to be to rile Bob Skinner. ‘Normally, I’d have no objection to any of that,’ I said, ‘but in this case I need a team on the ground, now. So I’m commandeering yours, or some of them, at least. Higgins, Martin, you’re with me, and I’ll have the lad on the door as well.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘Before you ask, yes, I have the power to do it. Call Alf, if you doubt me.’

He could have called the chief constable too. I’d been called to a meeting in his office, that morning, without being given a clue to the subject in advance. It had been James Proud, Alf Stein and me, that was all. The chief had told me of my promotion, and of the reason for the strengthening of my unit. It had existed for a while, and I’d spent some time there as a detective sergeant, but it was being beefed up. ‘I don’t want my force to be marginalised,’ the chief had said, ‘or to see any of its investigative role being handed over to a central crime-fighting unit. One or two of my fellow chiefs would like to see that happen, but it won’t, not while I’m behind this desk.’ There was a school of thought within the force that Proud was more politician than policeman; I was pleased to learn that he was both. ‘For the moment, you’ll have the squad that Tom Partridge built up, but you can add to it, straight away or whenever it suits you.’

I kept on staring up at Jay. ‘I’ll let you know how the investigation goes, Greg,’ I told him. ‘If I need anything else from your division, I’ll let you know.’ I didn’t feel any guilt about putting him down in front of his own officers; that’s what he’d have done to me, if he’d been able.

He sloped off, without another word. Policing is no different from any other profession, or from humanity for that matter. It has those people with that little bit extra, or who exceed their natural ability by their effort and enthusiasm, and it has its great majority, those who do what’s expected of them competently, the people who, in the end, make it all work, life’s Poor Bloody Infantry. Then there are the others, those who want the ride for free, and whose weight is carried by the rest. Occasionally, one of those will climb the ladder through lack of proper scrutiny. Greg Jay wasn’t a typical example, he’d gone higher than most, but he’d been on my radar for a while, and with me having risen to the same rung as him, he knew that his card was marked.

I climbed the ladder out of the pit, beckoning to Higgins and Martin to follow. They’d both stood silent while Jay and I had our gunfight. At the top, I called out to the lead crime scene officer. ‘DS Dorward,’ I said, ‘I know this place must be a fucking mess, with council staff walking all over it twice a week, but I need you to get as much as you can out of it. First off, I need to know how many people were in here with the dead man.’ The SOCO opened his mouth but I cut him off. ‘Yes, I know it’s possible that nobody else was here with him, that he was off his face on something and thought he was Greg Louganis, but I do not believe that. I want everything there is. Start with the door that was jemmied.’

Red hair poking out angrily from under his tunic hood, the man stared at me as if I’d asked him whether he regularly had sex with pigs. ‘That’s the first place we went, sir,’ he retorted. ‘It’s covered in prints. If the victim’s are there, we’ll find them.’

‘Of course you will. Sorry. Give me everything you can, as soon as you can, but without compromising thoroughness.’

‘What does “compromising” mean, sir?’ he drawled. ‘Is that a CID term?’

I laughed. Dorward’s path and mine hadn’t crossed too often, but every detective in the force knew of his prickliness.

‘Nah,’ I replied, ‘it’s a general term, as in “compromising your promotion chances”. Sarcasm can be good for that.’

He smiled, calmly. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Now will the three of you please fuck off and let me get on with it.’ Dorward was untouchable and he knew it. He was a genius at what he did, and rank meant nothing to him.

We peeled off our sterile gear and stepped back outside, where Alex was waiting with McGuire. ‘Where’s Mr Jay gone?’ she asked, frowning as if she knew.

‘Home. I’ve taken over the investigation.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a suspicious death.’ I was always matter-of-fact about my job when I discussed it with my daughter. I didn’t believe in euphemism… not that she’d let me get away with any since she was five, and she’d forced me to use the ‘D’ word when I tried to explain why her mother wouldn’t be coming back from the hospital. For almost a year after the accident, that’s where I’d said she was, but with kids such deceits don’t survive a week at a village primary school.

‘You mean a murder?’ she persisted.

‘We don’t know yet. Nothing’s ruled out till we can prove it couldn’t have happened.’

‘So what happens now?’ She seemed excited by the situation.

Good question, kid. If I’d been any good at delegation, I could have given my three subordinates orders and taken Alex home; but I’m not, and never have been. I wanted to be the one who did what had to happen next; I wanted to see the expression on Bella Watson’s face when I told her that her second son had died a violent death.

I took a few steps away, nodding to Alison to follow. ‘Would you do me a big favour,’ I whispered, ‘one that’s completely unfair of me to ask a colleague of your rank? And don’t fucking call me “sir” when you answer.’

A faint grin touched the corners of her mouth. ‘Sure, Bob. I’ll do it.’

‘You know what it is?’

‘Of course. You want me to take your daughter home and wait till you get back there.’

‘You don’t mind?’ I said.

‘No, but so what if I did?’ The grin became a wide smile, reminding me of how attractive she could be. ‘You can hardly send her home with a uniformed cop, and I wouldn’t trust my mother’s cat with Andy Martin.’

I didn’t expect Alex to make a fuss when I told her what was happening, but neither did I expect her to be quite as enthusiastic as she was. She’d met Alison once before, by accident, when we were on a clothes shopping expedition in the junior designer section of John Lewis, and for a while after that she’d looked at me curiously.

The two of them headed off towards Alison’s car, which was parked at the top of the street, leaving me with Martin and McGuire. ‘You were in this at the start,’ I told the PC, ‘so you can stay for the ride. You and DC Martin are both seconded to Serious Crimes… temporarily, I stress… so you can lose that uniform for a while.’

The Irish Italian beamed. ‘Yes, boss. What do you want me to do?’

‘What you’re told, and no more. You are not CID yet, so don’t let it go to your head.’ I checked my watch: twenty minutes to nine. ‘There’s a mugshot of Marlon Watson in the drugs squad office at headquarters. Have it faxed to St Leonards, then take it into all the pubs in the area, not just that one across the road. There’s the cellar bar in Chambers Street, the Irish pub along South Bridge, and a couple more; you’ll have time to check them all before last orders. Show it to the staff and any regulars they point you at. Ask whether anyone saw him on Tuesday, or even Monday. We shouldn’t rule that out, he may have died earlier than we think.’

‘What if someone saw him on Wednesday?’ McGuire asked. (He was flippant from the start; it’s one of his strengths, funnily enough, for it encourages people to underestimate him.)

‘Then arrest him, because he fucking killed him! Report to me at headquarters tomorrow morning, in the SCU office. Andy, while Mario’s doing that, you and I are going to find the mother, to break the bad news.’

Martin looked back at me. ‘What about the father?’

‘He hasn’t been around for donkeys. He was a seaman; worked the trawlers, they said. As far as I know he sailed away twenty years ago and never came back. I doubt if he even knows that Ryan’s dead. That’s if he isn’t himself.’

‘Wife?’

‘Marlon? Not that I’ve heard of; last time he was lifted he gave Bella’s address.’

‘Do you know her?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, heavily. ‘When Billy shot the Holmeses, there was a whisper from an informant that it was Bella who bought the gun and told him to do it. DCS Stein, the head of CID, put it to her himself. I was there at the time. She told him to either prove it or fuck off. Perry made one of his rare mistakes there. He should have told his brother to kill all three Spreckleys, not just Gavin. If he’d ever met Bella, maybe he would have.’