Head Shot

5

He had almost finished his beef when Martin's mobile rang. The Chief gave a slightly tetchy frown; he had a firm belief that there should be sanctuaries in which the telephone did not ring.

'Sorry, boss,' the Head of CID apologised, but he answered its call nonetheless.

'Andy?' The word was a sob. The voice on the other end of the line was so contorted that it was almost unrecognisable. At first, he supposed 16 it was Karen; the fear of a miscarriage rushed into his mind. Then he looked at the number shown by the phone's LCD display, and he knew who it was.

'Sarah?' A muffled, gasping sound was her only answer.

'What's wrong?'

'Andy.' It seemed to be al she could say.

'Sarah, what is it? Are you ill? Is it one of the kids?'

'No,' she moaned. 'Andy, can you come out here? I need you. I can't get through to Bob.'

'Sure, I'll come. But what is it?'

He heard her sobbing intensify. 'I can't talk about it over the phone,' she whispered, through her tears.

'Okay, okay. I'm on my way.'

He ended the call. Proud and Haggerty were staring at him; and not only them. He realised that the urgency in his voice had brought all conversation in the dining room to a halt.

'What is it?' asked the Chief.

'I don't know,' he answered. 'She couldn't, or wouldn't, say. I'm off out to Gullane; that's where she was calling from.'

He rose from the table and turned towards the door. Before he reached it, it swung open and Detective Inspector Neil Mcl henney came into the room, shock and concern written across his face. 'Andy,' he said, his voice low, 'I've just taken a call from a guy who said he was the county sheriff, in Buffalo, New York. He was looking for the Boss, but the message was about Sarah…'

Detective Superintendent Maggie Rose was still on a high; the phone cal from Mario had come as a complete surprise. She knew that the Special Branch posting usually carried a reward thereafter, but she had not expected that her husband would have jumped straight from his secretive office to the status of divisional CID commander.

'How long have you known?' she had asked him, with more than a hint of suspicion, once the initial delight had subsided.

'I didn't; not until this morning, when the Chief called me in and told me. Honest, love, it's the truth. Do you think I could have kept something like that from you?'

'After all that time in Special Branch? Too bloody right I do. But I'l take your word for it. So what's happening to Dan Pringle? Early retirement?'

He had hesitated for less than a second, but she had picked it up. 'Far from it. He's the new Head of CID.'

Thinking back, she had felt not even a twinge of disappointment; no, her instant reaction had been one of relief. 'Good for Clan. He's earned it.'

'Aye, sure, but…'

'I've told you, Mario. I've gone as far as I want for now. That job's about half a step below executive rank; I don't have the experience for it.

Besides, I've out-ranked you for long enough.'

'You think we'l make the papers? Husband and wife team and al that?'

'Are you kidding?'

'TFR, I'm kidding. The Chief said he wants that aspect played down; the press guy's under orders not to mention it.'

But someone would, she mused, as she stared out of the window of her small office, all but deaf to the bustle of the Haymarket traffic.

Sooner or later, some wag would decide to run a feature on the Nick and Nora Charles of Edinburgh CID, and for al ofAlan Royston's contacts and negotiating skil s, it would happen.

She was brought back to the present by a knock on her door. 'Come,' she cal ed, sharply. It opened, with its familiar squeak, and a fresh-faced probationer constable came into the room. He was carrying a brown folder; she noticed that his hand trembled slightly as he held it out to her.

Christ, she thought, is that how the youngsters think of me?

'Yes, Constable?' she greeted him, deliberately softening her tone and offering a smile.

'I'm sorry, miss… eh, sorry, ma'am, but…'

She interrupted him. 'That's at least one "sorry" too many, son. You're new here, yes?'

'First month, ma'am.'

'What's your name?'

'PC Haddock, ma'am.'

Poor lad, she thought. You 're going to have to be good.

'When they sent you up here, PC Haddock, did the lads tell you that I eat probationers for lunch?'

'More or less, ma'am.'

'They're right.' She paused. '… But not in their first few weeks. I prefer them a bit more seasoned. Now; what have you got for me?'

Pink-cheeked, the tal, gawky young man looked down at her. 'Chief Superintendent English cal ed in, ma'am.' She nodded; English was the senior officer in the division, the top uniform. 'He's been detained up at headquarters; the meeting with Mr Haggerty's going on into the afternoon. So he asked if you'd take a look at the night-shift reports.'

Inwardly, Maggie bristled. Manny English was pushing his luck; the night-shift reports were pure bloody trivia puffed up by the panda patrol ers to make it look as if they had been rushed off their feet. They could have been checked by a sergeant, but the Chief Super was a procedural paragon. In addition, he liked to keep in touch with everything that happened on his patch. Stil, palming off uniformed officers' reports to the CID commander, as the next senior officer, was taking it a bit far.

Outwardly, she smiled again at Haddock, and took the folder from him. 'Of course I wil,' she said. 'Anything for Mr English.' He stood there, uncertain of what to do. 'You can go,' she told him. 'I'l send them down to his office when I'm done.'

'Very good, miss… eh, sorry, ma'am.' The constable left the room much more quickly than he had entered.

Shaking her head as the door closed on him, Maggie opened the folder. By divisional standards, it looked like a light load. A false alarm at a chemist's shop in Fountainbridge, three assorted brawls, two domestic call-outs which turned out to be no more than loud arguments, and one in which a husband had been arrested and charged with assaulting his wife.

'Rubbish,' she muttered, and was on the point of closing the folder when her eye was caught by the last report; there was a photograph clipped to it. She slipped it out and looked at the Polaroid. It had been taken clumsily, and showed only the top half of a man's body, lying flat on a table. He was dressed in a heavy grey wool en jerkin, with a short zip, opened, at the neck. He looked to be in his fifties; he was bald, with a heavy, grizzled beard. Despite his weather-beaten complexion, from the blueness of his lips and cheeks, the Detective Superintendent could tell at once that he was dead.

She picked up PC Charlie Johnston's report and read carefully through his police-speak prose. The man had been identified by Dr Amritraj, who had certified his death, as Magnus Essary, of 46 Leightonstone Grove, Hunter's Tryst, Edinburgh, single, aged forty-nine. Using keys found on the body, Johnston had gained entry to the house and had searched thoroughly for any references to family, or next of kin; thoroughly, the constable insisted, but without success. There was nothing to be found, and the neighbours, delighted. Rose guessed, to have been wakened by a policeman at that hour of the morning, had al described him as a quiet, polite man who kept to himself. The report ended with the simple statement that its author had been unable to trace anyone who could be contacted and asked to take responsibility for the body.

'This is daft,' the Detective Superintendent muttered as she finished the report. 'This man cannot have been a complete loner. He lived at a fairly posh address; he must have had some sort of business life. Even if he didn't have any friends, there must be colleagues. We can't just let the guy lie in the mortuary.'

She picked up the telephone and called Oxgangs office; she was put through at once to the duty inspector, Laurence Gray, an ex-CID colleague. 'Laurie,' she began, 'I've got a report here on a sudden death on your patch in the middle of the night; man cal ed Essary. It was written up by Constable Johnston.'

'Oh aye, our Charlie,' Gray growled, with a faint chuckle. 'I've been half expecting the Chief Super to cal me about that one. Johnston's a book operator… the trouble with him is that he hasnae finished reading the bloody book yet.'

Rose relaxed. 'So you're following it up, not just giving up on it.'

'Come on, Maggie. I was in CID long enough not to be doing that.'

She accepted the reproof. 'Sorry. I should have known better.'

'Indeed, ma'am,' the inspector rumbled. 'As it happens, the thing's sorted. Mr Essary was in the wine importing business, in partnership with a woman called Ella Frances. She called Fettes this morning, and they put her in touch with me; I told her to go up to the Royal. She did; they called to let us know she's confirmed the identification and claimed the body. She's had it uplifted from the mortuary already. File closed.'

'That's good. No thanks to Johnston, though. It's just as well for both of you that the Chief Super was tied up.'

'Ach, don't blame Charlie. He didnae make any mistakes; he just focused a bit too hard on his finishing time, that's al. You know what the night shift's like. Short spells of action mixed in with long periods of near-terminal boredom.'

'You're right there. But you wait till you're in my job. There isn't a minute of your life you can cal your own completely, with no fear that the phone'l ring.'

'It'l be double for you from now on then, wi' your man's promotion.'

Maggie Rose was rarely surprised. 'How did you know about that so soon?'

'Hah! You think e-mail's fast? It's got nothing on the force grapevine.

Be sure to congratulate Mario for me, will you?'

'Of course. Thanks, Laurie.'

She hung up, slipped the report and photograph back into the folder, and leaned back in her chair, musing on the curse that Alexander Graham Bell had visited on mankind.