Lethal Intent

Twenty-nine

'What's up?' Lena McElhone blurted out the question as she stood with her hands in the sink, washing the pan in which she had cooked the spaghetti that she and Aileen de Marco had shared.

'What makes you think that anything is?' her boss, friend and tenant replied.

'I know you well enough by now to read the signs. You hardly spoke last night, and just now it was like eating in a public library: no talking, please. Did something happen to upset you when you stayed in Glasgow on Monday?'

'Yes and no. But my problem is, Lena, that I can't talk to you about it. In fact, I think I might have to move out.'

The other woman gasped and her face went chalk white. 'But why? What's happened?' she demanded.

Aileen looked down at the tiled floor, then turned and led the way through to the flat's small living room. She had hoped to avoid a confrontation, but finally she recognised that it had to be. 'This arrangement of ours,' she began, 'my living here: it's unique, as far as I know, for a minister and her private secretary to share accommodation. A few of my colleagues, and yours too, I guess, think it's weird, that there's something improper about it.'

'You mean they think we're gay?'

'Some probably do, but that doesn't matter. The point is that my sharing your flat is convenient for us both, and it works, because it's built on trust.' She looked Lena in the eye. 'I have to ask you something. Have you been talking about me?'

'You mean have I been gossiping about you? Absolutely not! Do you actually think I would?'

'No, that's not what I mean, not at all. Have you been asked about me professionally? Have you been asked about my movements, for example, and my meetings with Bob Skinner?'

The private secretary's face went from pale to crimson in a matter of seconds. 'Oh, no,' she whispered; her shoulders shook and she began to weep. 'He couldn't have.'

'He could,' Aileen replied, gently. 'Calm down and tell me about it.'

She waited until Lena's sobs had subsided. 'It was last Friday,' she began, when she could. 'When you were in the Parliament, I was asked to go to see a man in an office on the fourth floor. He told me he was the First Minister's security adviser, that his name was Mr Jay and that he needed to talk to me. When I got there, I found that he wanted to talk about you.'

She gulped. 'He said that part of his job was to vet all new members of the Cabinet, and that since you had been promoted only recently, you had to be put through the process. He told me it was routine, nothing to worry about, it happened to everybody, even the First Minister.' Aileen choked off a retort. 'I told him that I didn't think it was right for me to discuss your business, but he said the whole thing was totally confidential, and that nobody would know. When I said that I was still reluctant, he got a bit nasty and said it wasn't a request it was an order, and that if I liked I could have it from the First Minister himself, but if it came to that it would have an "adverse effect", as he put it, on my career.'

'So he blackmailed you?'

'I suppose you could put it that way.' The civil servant looked at her plaintively. 'I'm sorry, Aileen. He promised me it would be okay.'

'I'm sure he did. Go on.'

'I showed him your diary,' said Lena. 'I went and got it from the office. But he wanted to know more than that. There was a note in it about your first meeting with Mr Skinner, when you took him to dinner at the Arts Club. He asked me if that was the only time you'd met. I told him it wasn't, that you'd seen him here, and in his office, and that he'd returned your hospitality with lunch at the Open Arms. He asked me about your meeting with Mr Laidlaw, and I told him about that. Then he asked me more personal stuff about you, whether you had a steady boyfriend, whether you ever brought men back to the flat. I said you hadn't, and that if you had that sort of a private life you conducted it well away from me.' She drew another deep breath. 'And that was it. He was very nice after that. He laughed and said it all sounded very respectable and very responsible, and that there was nothing untoward. He told me I should discuss our meeting with nobody, and that I should forget it. Aileen, I'm so sorry,' she protested. 'I trusted the man when he said you'd never even know about it, that it was a purely routine piece of security. How did you find out?'

'It's been used against me,' the Justice Minister replied. 'And not just against me.'

She picked up her mobile phone from the sideboard, and selected Bob Skinner's number. When he answered, she could hear the sound of children in the background, and felt a sort of regret that there was a part of his life she might never know. 'Hi', she murmured, her back turned to McElhone so that she could not hear. 'It's me.'

'Yeah,' he drawled, 'so my clever phone told me.' He sounded tired, as if the jet-lag was giving him another jolt. 'What's up? Do you want company?'

'That would be nice, but we can't. I want to ask you something. You told me that you did the security-adviser job for a while, didn't you?'

'Yes,' he replied, 'until the Secretary of State of the day got so far up my nose that I had to blow him out. Jock Govan took over after that.'

'When you were in post, did your duties include the vetting of ministers, interviewing their staff about their public and private lives?'

'Of course not; that's all tosh. Why?'

'Because that's the story Jay spun Lena to find out about you and me.'

'Bastard,' Skinner hissed. 'That goes on his tab as well.'

She read meaning in his tone. 'Bob, are you up to something?' she asked.

'Me?' He managed to sound offended. 'Did I promise you I'd keep my head down?'

'Yes,' she admitted.

'Trust me, then.'

'Sorry.'

'Forgiven. I've got some good news for you, by the way. Your flat's clean as a whistle, certified bug-free by Strathclyde Special Branch, so no one'll be playing us any doctored tapes.'

'I'm glad to hear it, but how can I be sure that it'll stay clean?'

'I asked them to leave a scanning device in your top kitchen drawer.'

'That was thoughtful. Do you plan on coming to test it?' The question was out before she could stop herself.

'Maybe, but not for a while and certainly not this weekend. My rambunctious younger son has threatened to head-butt my kneecaps if I don't take him to Tynecastle on Saturday, and then on Sunday we're going to look at some sharks. But I would like to think that a return trip to Glasgow might happen some time.'

'I hope so too.' She moved further away from Lena. 'I think I may have to go back through there full-time.'

'Is that wholly necessary?'

'Not completely. I'm sure that Lena really was conned, or coerced.'

'Then think before you jump. If you move out, Jay will know, and he'll guess why. You won't be doing the girl any favours.'

'I see what you mean,' she mused. 'She and I were just about to discuss that, in fact'

'Do it, then. Good night, Minister.'

'You too, Deputy Chief Constable.' She ended the call, and turned back to Lena. 'Okay,' she said. 'Here's what we're going to do about Mr Jay.'