Pray for the Dying

Thirty

Anger writhed within Assistant Chief Constable Michael Thomas like a snake trapped in a jar. He had seen enough of Bob Skinner, and the way he dominated ACPOS meetings, to know that he did not like the man.

He was ruthless, he was inflexible, he was politically connected and in Thomas’s mind he had an agenda: Skinner was out to mould the Scottish police service in his own image, planting his clones and protégés in key roles until they came to dominate it.

He had done it with the stolid Willie Haggerty in Dumfries and Galloway, with quick-witted Andy Martin in the Serious Crimes and Drug Enforcement Agency, and most recently in Tayside, with Brian Mackie, ‘The Automaton’, as some of his colleagues had nicknamed him.

When Antonia Field had been appointed chief constable of Strathclyde and he had taken her measure, he had been immensely pleased. Finally there was someone on the scene with the rank, the gravitas and the balls to tackle his enemy head on. The truth, that he was afraid to do so himself, had never crossed his mind.

She had identified him from the beginning as her one true supporter among the command ranks in Pitt Street, and he had demonstrated that at every opportunity. She had been in post for less than a month when she took him to dinner, and laid out her vision of the future.

‘Unification is coming, Michael,’ she began. ‘My sources among the movers and shakers tell me that the Scottish government is going to create a single police force, as soon as it deems the moment to be right. I will make no bones about it; I want to be its first chief.

‘As head of Strathclyde I should be the obvious choice, but we both know there’s a big obstacle in my way. I need allies if I’m going to overcome him, and in particular I need you. You’re the only forward-thinking policeman in the place. Theakston, Allan, Gorman, they’re all old-school thinkers; they’re not going to be around long. Back me and you’ll be my deputy inside a year, and again when the new service comes into play. Are you up for that?’

‘Of course, Toni, of course.’

After dinner she had taken him to bed, to seal their alliance, she said, although there were times later, after he felt the rough edge of her tongue, as everyone did, when he wondered whether it had been to give her an even greater hold over him, insurance against his ambition growing as great as hers. It had been a one-off and when it was over she had more or less patted him on the bum and sent him home to his wife. There had been no hint of intimacy from then on; he wondered whether there was a new guy in the background, but that was one secret she did not share with him.

For all that, she had been as good as her word and he had been almost there: DCC Theakston gone to enforced early retirement, and Max Allan with his sixty-fifth birthday and compulsory departure only four months in the future. Within a few weeks he would have been deputy. And beyond that?

She had been right about the new force. It had come up in ACPOS, and while Skinner had won the first battle, by a hair’s breadth, the next round would be theirs, and the First Minister would be able to claim chief officer support as he moved the legislation. The enemy would be marginalised and unable to go forward as a candidate for commissioner, having fought so hard and publicly against the creation of the job.

Toni had promised him that she had no ambition to grow old, or even middle-aged, in Scotland. She was bound for London, back to the Met when its commissioner fell out with the Mayor, as all of them seemed to do. ‘I have levers, Michael, and I will use them, when the time comes. When I go, the floor will be yours.’

Three shots, inside two seconds, that was all it had taken to put the skids under his entire career. He had been doing a spot of evening fishing with his son near Hazelbank when the call had come through. ‘An incident reported at the concert hall, sir,’ the divisional commander had told him. ‘A shooting, with one reported casualty.’

He had known that Toni would be at the hall that night. . for the previous fortnight she had been full of her ‘date’ with the First Minister. . and so he had almost stayed on the river, but a moment’s reflection had convinced him that the smart thing would be to tear himself away and rush to the scene. He had arrived to discover that Toni was the reported casualty, and that Max Allan was another, having suffered some sort of collapse, suspected heart attack, they were saying. Her body was still there, with crime scene technicians working all around it in their paper suits and bootees. He had tried to take charge of the shambles, and that was when DCI Lowell bloody Payne had told him about Skinner being there.

He hadn’t believed the man, until Dom Hanlon had told him Skinner had taken command, and that he would have to live with it, even though the guy had no semblance of authority. Outrageous, bloody outrageous. Then next day, to cap it all, they’d gone and appointed him acting chief.

That was when the grief had set in, for his own foiled prospects as much as for his fallen leader. He knew where he stood with Skinner, a fact confirmed when he had chosen Bridie Gorman, whom Toni had sidelined almost completely, as acting deputy. He had been considering resignation, quite seriously, when he had been called to the chief constable’s office, urgently. Twenty-four bloody hours and suddenly it was urgent.

There he had been, Toni Field’s arch-enemy behind Toni Field’s desk. God, it had been hard to take.

He hadn’t expected subtlety and there had been none. ‘Michael,’ Skinner had begun, ‘you don’t like me, and I don’t like you much either. But that’s irrelevant; if everyone in an organisation this size were bosom buddies it would get sloppy very quickly. Far better that some of us are watching out for each other, and that there are some rivalries in play.

‘I had two CID guys in Edinburgh who could have been twins, they were so close; indeed, twins they were called, by their mates. Eventually they rose until they were at the head of operations. It didn’t work out; things started to slip through the net, because each one overlooked the other’s weaknesses and mistakes. At least that’s not going to happen with you and me, in the time I’m here.’

‘In that case,’ Thomas had ventured, ‘wouldn’t that make me an excellent deputy?’

The response, a frown. ‘Nice try, but no. In my ideal world, people like you and me would be elected to our post by the people we seek to command, not appointed by those who command us, or by boards of councillors. I’ve been here a day and I’ve worked out already that if we did that, you wouldn’t get too many votes.

‘I don’t doubt your ability as an officer, not for a second, but what I’ve seen in ACPOS and heard since I’ve been here make some believe that you’re not a leader. Forgive me for being frank; it’s the way I’m built.

‘However,’ Skinner had continued, ‘even though I chose ACC Gorman as my deputy when necessary, you are still my assistant and that I respect. So let’s work together, not against each other, for as long as I’m here. I’d like to meet with you and Bridie tomorrow morning, so that you can both brief me on your areas of responsibility. Meantime. . there’s something quite important that I’d be grateful if you could handle. It’s not going to be pleasant, but it needs a senior officer.’

And that was how Michael Thomas had come to be standing, seething with anger, in an autopsy theatre, gowned and masked, looking, not for the first time, at the naked body of Antonia Field. The pathologist had followed him into the room. She was a woman also, a complete contrast to Toni, and not only in the fact that she was alive. She was tall, fair-skinned, and the strands of hair that escaped her sterile headgear were blonde.

‘You’re the duty cop with the short straw in his hand, I take it,’ she said. ‘I’m Dr Grace.’ She turned and nodded towards a young man. From what Thomas could see of his face, his skin tone looked similar to that of Toni. ‘And this is Roshan, who’ll be assisting me.’

He realised, to his surprise, that she was North American, possibly Canadian, possibly US; he had never been able to distinguish the respective accents.

‘ACC Thomas,’ he replied. ‘Given the circumstances, I felt it was appropriate that I come myself.’

‘And I don’t imagine Bob tried to talk you out of it,’ she murmured, through her mask.

He looked at her, puzzled. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Chief Skinner. He’s my ex, my former husband. The older he gets, the more squeamish he gets.’

‘I see.’ The bastard had set him up!

‘That said, he’s been to more than his fair share. How about you?’

‘I’ve spent most of my career in uniform,’ he told her, avoiding a straight answer.

‘Ah, so you’ll have seen mostly suicides and road fatalities. They have a pretty high squeamishness quotient.’

‘Mmm.’

She looked at the man. His eyes told her what the rest of his face was saying. ‘You’ve never been to an autopsy in your life, have you?’

‘No,’ the ACC confessed.

‘So here you are, looking at somebody you knew and worked with, who’s now dead and you’re going to have to watch me cut her open and take her insides out, all in the line of duty?’

Thomas felt his stomach heave, but he mastered it. ‘That sums it up pretty well,’ he conceded. ‘I suppose your ex would say “Welcome to the real world”, or something like that.’

‘That sounds like a Bob quote, I admit. Since he didn’t, I assume you didn’t tell him you’ve never done this duty before.’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, ‘the macho thing. The traditional pissing contest, in yet another form. As a result I’ve got somebody in my workplace who’s liable to faint on me or, worse, choke himself to death by barfing inside a face mask. You should have told him, and he’d have sent someone else, because he knows that’s the last thing I need. And by the way, he isn’t an ogre, either.’

‘Well, I’m here now, Doctor,’ he replied stiffly, ‘so we might as well take the chance. I’ll make sure I don’t land on anything important when I fall over.’

‘Not necessary.’ She peeled off her mask. ‘You’re a legal necessity but in practice don’t have to watch every incision or every organ being removed. This is not going to be a complicated job. Cause of death is massive brain trauma caused by gunshot wounds; we know that before I touch her. But the law needs a full report and that’s what it will get.

‘You can go sit in the corner and read a book, or listen to your iPod. If I find something I believe you need to look at up close, I will tell you and you can look at it. But that’s not going to happen. And from what I’ve seen of our next customer, that’s going to be the case with him as well. He was shot from so close up that some of his chest hairs are melted. So go on, get out of my space.’

He looked at her, gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He started to move away, then paused. ‘Doctor Grace,’ he ventured, ‘this is a silly thing to ask, I know, but Toni and I, well, we were friends as well as colleagues. Be gentle with her, yes?’

‘As if she were an angel,’ Sarah replied, feeling pity for the man, then adding, in case he thought she was being sarcastic, ‘Who knows, by now she may be one.’