Pray for the Dying

Thirty-Seven

‘I’m sorry that took so long,’ Bob told Sarah as he stepped back into his office, ‘but it had to be done straight away, and by nobody other than my deputy and me.’

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Can you tell me?’

‘In theory no, I can’t, but bugger that. If I don’t I’ll be brooding over it for the rest of the night. Bridie Gorman and I have just found ourselves in the horrible position of having to interview, under caution, the senior investigating officer in the Toni Field murder. Her husband turned up not just as a witness, but as a suspect in the conspiracy. That’s what wee Provan came to tell me, and it must have been bloody tough on him, because the two of them are bloody near father and daughter.’

‘Oh my. How did it go?’

‘We put the question directly to her and she swore that she had no knowledge of her husband’s involvement, and that if she had she would have declared it.’

‘Do you believe her?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, we do. The poor woman’s in a hell of a state. She alternates between being tearful and wanting to rip her old man’s heart out. . and she’s big enough to do that too.’

‘What happens now?’

‘Scott, the husband. . the ex-cop husband,’ he growled, his face twisting suddenly in anger, ‘will be arrested. In fact it’s under way now. Provan’s taking a DC and some uniforms to their house to pick him up. Their son will see that happen, I’m afraid, but there’s no way round that. DC Paterson and the uniforms will take him away and Dan. . he’s the boy’s godfather. . will stay with him till Lottie gets back.’ He chuckled, savagely. ‘She wanted to make the arrest herself! I almost wish that was possible. It’d serve the guy right. No chance, though; she’s out.’

‘You mean she’s suspended?’ Sarah looked as angry as he did.

‘No, of course not.’ He smiled to lighten the moment. ‘Calm down. No need to get the sisterhood wound up. She’s on an unanticipated holiday, that’s all. She can’t continue on the inquiry, because she’s been hopelessly compromised.’

‘Who’ll take over from her?’

‘Dan will,’ Skinner replied, ‘reporting to me, just as she’s been doing. I could parachute in another DI, indeed maybe I should, given his closeness to the family, but Scott was a cop himself and it would be difficult to find someone who had never crossed his path.

‘Anyway, Provan’s forgotten more about detective work than most of the potential candidates will ever learn, and he’s still got enough left in his tank to see him through. He won’t interview Scott, though. Bridie and I will do that, tomorrow morning. Not too early, though, I want him to stew in isolation for a while. Now,’ he declared, ‘let’s you and I get out of here. Change of plan; we’ll take the train, then a taxi to yours. I can’t have PC Davie drive me through to Edinburgh at this time of night.’

They took the lift down to the headquarters car park, where PC Cole was waiting. The chief constable introduced the extra passenger, ‘Doctor Grace, the pathologist, from Edinburgh University,’ then apologised for the delay, a gesture that seemed to take his driver by surprise. His reaction rose to astonishment when Skinner told him that the destination was Queen Street Station.

‘Are you sure, sir?’ he exclaimed.

‘Certain. You can pick me up from there tomorrow as well. I’ll let you know what train I’m on.’

The train was on the platform five minutes from departure as they settled into its only first-class compartment. Sarah grinned. ‘I’m on expenses, or I would be if you hadn’t bought my ticket. What’s your excuse?’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ he confessed, ‘since everything happened very quickly at the weekend, but I think I am too. But the truth is that I prefer first, on the rare occasions that I take the train, simply because there’s less chance of me meeting an old customer, so to speak.’

‘And that would worry you?’ she asked, eyebrow raised. ‘Are you feeling your age?’

‘No to both of those, and not that it’s likely to happen, but I’d rather avoid those situations. I’m not just talking about people I’ve locked up; there’s councillors, journalists, defence lawyers. I don’t like to be cornered by any of them, because I don’t care to be in any situation where I have to watch every word I say.’

‘I can see that,’ she conceded.

No other passengers had joined them by the time the train left the station.

‘This preference of yours for privacy,’ Sarah ventured, as it entered the tunnel that ran north out of Queen Street, ‘would it have anything to do with you not wanting to be seen with me?’

‘What?’ He laughed. ‘Don’t be daft.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘There is no woman in the world I would rather be seen with.’

‘Apart from Alex.’

‘Alexis is my daughter, and so is Seonaid, our daughter, yours and mine. We made her and I am very proud of that, even though I was fucking awful at showing it for a while. You are different, you are you, and I love you.’

‘This hasn’t happened too soon, has it?’ she wondered. ‘A week ago, if you’d asked me, I’d never have imagined you and me, here like this, now.’

‘Me neither,’ Bob admitted, ‘but I am mightily pleased that we are. It should never have been any other way. I was stupid, and not for the first time in my life. Feeling my age, you asked. Well, maybe I am, in a way. It’s led me to a point where I’m honest with myself about my weaknesses, and the things I’ve done wrong in the past, and strong enough to be able to promise you that I will never let you down again.’

‘You realise that if you do,’ she whispered, as the train passed out into the open with leafy embankments on either side, ‘I will do your autopsy myself, before they take me away?’

He gave her a big wide-open smile, a rarity from him. ‘Yes, but I don’t need that incentive.’

When the door slid open, they were both taken by surprise. ‘Tickets please.’

The guard’s intervention ended the moment. They were passing through the first station on the route before Sarah broke the silence. ‘When did you eat last?’ she asked.

‘Good question; probably sometime between one and half past; sandwiches with Mann and Provan, my office. They were crap. The bread was turning up at the edges by the time we got round to them.’

‘That sort of a day, uh?’

He nodded. ‘That sort. How about yours?’

She scrunched up her face for a second or two. ‘Usual blood and guts, but pretty run-of-the-mill, as my job goes.’

‘No surprises? No complications?’

‘None, in either case. The two cadavers I’ll be looking at tomorrow. . remind me of their names again? Not that it matters.’

‘Smit and Botha, also known as Mallett and Lightbody.’

‘Well, one thing I can tell you about them right now is that they were very good at their job, and humane too. Neither of their victims had any time to think about it. Mr Brown died on Friday evening. He may have seen the man who was killing him, but he died instantly. He still had a surprised expression on his face.’

‘I know,’ Bob reminded her. ‘I saw him in his second-to-last resting place. And,’ he added, ‘I’ve just seen a recording of him being shot.’

‘Why didn’t they kill the detective inspector’s husband?’

‘Because he never saw them, otherwise, you’re right, poor Lottie would be a widow.’

‘Then too bad for Mr Brown that he did, otherwise his life expectancy would have been pretty good. He was a fit guy.’

‘And how about Toni?’

‘Same with her, as you might expect, given her job. She was killed even more humanely than Brown, if I can use the term. She would not have had the faintest idea of what had happened to her. Well,’ she corrected herself, ‘maybe a few milliseconds, but no more than that. She’d have been brain-dead even before the force of the impact threw her out of her seat. If that’s some small comfort to her family, you might like to tell them.’

‘I have done already. I saw her mother and sister this morning.’

‘How were they?’

‘Very dignified, both of them. I’ve let the fiscal talk herself into releasing the body as soon as she gets your report.’

‘Then I’ll complete it and send it to her before I move on to Smit and Botha.’ She paused. ‘But how about her husband? How about the child?’ she asked. ‘Or is it too young to understand?’

He stared at her, a slight, bewildered smile on his face. ‘Husband?’ he repeated. ‘Child? What child?’

‘Hers of course, Antonia Field’s. I assumed she was married or in a familial relationship.’

‘No, never,’ Bob said. ‘She was never married, and she lived with her sister. What makes you think she had a child?’

‘Hell,’ she exclaimed, ‘I might not be a professor of forensic pathology yet, but I do know a caesarean scar when I see one.’

He sat up straight in his high-backed seat. ‘Well, honey, that is news to me, and neither her mother nor her sister. . who wants to come back to work for me. . gave me the slightest hint of its existence.’

‘Then tread carefully if you decide to tackle them about it. Yes, she has a scar, and there were other physical signs of child-bearing. However, there is no way I could guarantee that her baby was delivered alive.’

‘I accept that, but the odds are heavily in favour of that. If a kid goes full-term or almost there. .’

‘That’s true, but Bob, where are you going with this? Suppose she did have a baby and kept quiet about it in case it harmed her career; that’s not a crime.’

‘In certain circumstances it might be. An application for the post of chief constable requires full disclosure.’

‘But honey, she’s dead. Does it really matter?’

‘Probably not at all.’ He grinned. ‘But it’s a mystery and you know how I feel about them. How old was this scar? Can you tell?’

‘I can take a guess. I’d say not less than one year old, and not more than three.’

‘Okay. One year ago she was chief constable of the West Midlands; if she had it then it would have been a bit noticeable. But hold on.’

He raised himself from his seat and took his attaché case down from the luggage rack. He spun the combination wheels and opened it.

‘I’ve got Toni’s HR file in here. Let’s take a look and see what that tells us.’ He removed the thick green folder, then closed the case again, putting it on his knee to use as an impromptu table.

‘Let’s go back three years. Then she was a Met commander, on secondment to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency; she built her legend there knocking over foreign drugs cartels. If she’d taken time out to have a kid, that would have been noticed and recorded. It isn’t, so we can rule it out. So where does that take us?’

As he read, a smile split his face. ‘It takes us to her becoming the chief constable of West Midlands, just over two years ago.’

‘She couldn’t have been there long,’ Sarah remarked.

‘She wasn’t. She barely had time to crease her uniform before the Strathclyde job came up. But, it says here that before she was appointed to Birmingham she took a six-month sabbatical, which ended a week before she was interviewed. That fits like a glove,’ he exclaimed.

‘It does,’ Sarah agreed. ‘But what do you do about it?’

‘I could simply ask her family, but you’re right; there could be sensitivities there. It’s even possible they don’t know about it. Marina gave me a pretty full rundown of her sister’s sex life and didn’t mention her being pregnant. She may have assumed that I knew from her record, but on the other hand, is there any reason why she should? If the child was safely delivered, it could have been put up for adoption. Toni was the sort of woman who wouldn’t have fancied any impediment to her career ambitions.

‘So no,’ he decided, ‘I won’t take it to Sofia or Marina. Instead I’ll do some digging of my own. I have a timeframe, her full name, Antonia Maureen Field, and her date of birth; they’ll be enough for the General Register Office to get me a hit. But I’m not counting on it.’

‘No?’

‘No. I have a feeling that there’s another possibility, one that might even be more likely.’

‘You love this, don’t you?’ Sarah chuckled. ‘The thrill of the chase, and all.’

‘It’s what I do, honey,’ he replied. ‘It’s the part of the job that I’ve always loved. These days, I don’t have too many chances to be hands on, so I take every one that’s going.’

‘Including interviewing the guy tomorrow morning? Surely you don’t really have to do that. An ACC alone’s pretty heavy duty, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, I have to do it, make no mistake. Not only was he a police officer until a few years ago, his wife still is. I’ve come to rate her in the last couple of days, and to like her a lot too. This bastard’s gone and compromised her career and even put her in a situation where she had to be formally detained for a short while.

‘Tomorrow morning, he’s going to have me across the table, and if he thinks that his obligatory lawyer will prevent me from coming down on him like an avalanche, he’s kidding himself.’

‘It’s a new thing in Scotland, isn’t it, the prisoner’s right to a lawyer?’

Bob nodded. ‘Indeed, but to be frank, I don’t know how we got away with the old system for so long. It doesn’t bother me anyway; I’m at my best when I don’t say a word.’

Sarah grinned, as a gleam came into her eye. ‘You can say that again, buddy,’ she murmured.