Skinner's ghosts

21

Ruth McConnell was at her desk when Skinner arrived at 8.20 a.m. on Monday, for his first morning in the office since the Spotlight story had broken.

'Good morning, sir,' she said, with exactly the same friendly smile to which he had become accustomed.

The DCC glanced at his watch. 'Jeez, but you're early, Ruthie,' he said.

'I thought it might be a good idea,' she replied, standing up from her typist's swivel chair, elegant as ever, the slimness of her long legs accentuated by her tight skirt and her high heels. She picked up a pile of newspapers from her side table. 'There's fresh coffee in your filter machine.'

'I'll need it, when I go through those. Come in and have some with me. I should talk to you anyway.'

'Have you seen any of the papers yet?' asked his secretary, as they crossed the corridor to his office.

The big policeman shook his head. 'No. We left Gullane before mine arrived.' His expression changed for a second as a thought struck him. 'That reminds me. Would you cal my newsagent, please, and cancel them till further notice. He's in the book.

Surname's Hector.'

He took off the jacket of his dark blue suit and draped it round the back of his chair, while Ruth poured coffee into two mugs.

'So,' said Skinner as she sat down, facing him across the rosewood desk. 'What do you think of my new-found notoriety?'

'I think it's absolutely disgraceful, sir,' the woman exploded, her ful lips pouting in her anger. 'I think it's offensive, intrusive, and damned unfair. Even if I've never said it to you, I'm as sorry as everyone else in here about your marriage breaking up, but that's your business.

'To have your private life poked into like that… Well, it's intolerable!'

'I have to tolerate it, Ruthie. No choice. I can roar on about what I'm going to do to the so-and-so who put that wee swine Salmon on my trail, but I just have to bear it.'

'Yes,' she said, 'but it's the double standards that get me. I mean, 79 if it had been Neil Mcllhenney having an affair with Sergeant Masters, he wouldn't have been al over the front page.'

Skinner surprised her, with his sudden laughter. 'Oh yes he would!' he said. 'Because Olive would have kil ed him, stone dead.'

His smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. 'No, you're right.

But that's the way it is. Sergeant and Sergeant; so what? Deputy Chief and Sergeant, and the press eat it up. I'm a daft bastard. I should have known better.'

He looked across the desk. 'Tell me something, Ruthie, had you guessed that something was going on?' To his surprise, she gasped as a mixture of shock and fear flooded her eyes.

'Sir you don't think I…' she began.

He threw up his hands instantly, in horror which matched hers.

'No, no, no!' he insisted. 'Not for one second have I thought that. I trust you absolutely. No, I just want to know how stupid I've been.

Alex guessed, and so did Mcl henney, I think. Did you?'

She dropped her gaze from him. Her long hair fell over the shoulders of her blue business jacket as she nodded. 'As soon as you transferred Pamela out of here, I knew exactly why you were doing it. I remembered those late nights when you were chasing Jackie Charles; that time you were snowed in. I could tell from then that something was cooking.'

'And you never said anything.'

'Of course not. I'm your secretary, not your chaperone.'

The policeman grinned at her once more. 'Maybe that's what you should have been. Seriously, though, I'm sorry I kept you in the dark along with everyone else. You have my confidence in every other area; I should have trusted you with that too. Come to think of it, if I had asked your advice, I probably wouldn't be in this mess now.'

Ruth shook her head. 'You have too much faith, Mr Skinner. I've been living with a separated man for the last month. Mine's a doctor, a country GP. We're the talk of the community too, although on a smaller scale than you.'

He looked at her in surprise. Ruth was in her late twenties, and when it came to men, she had always led him to believe that she sought safety in numbers. 'I wondered why you'd changed your contact number,' he murmured.

'And I didn't tell you,' she countered. 'Which, if you want to look at it that way, puts us both at fault.

'Now, are you ready for what the papers say?'

The Deputy Chief Constable nodded. 'As much as I ever wil be.'

'I've been through them already. I've marked the pages you should look at. The red numbers are the stories about you. The blue ones are about the McGrath investigation.'

Skinner picked up the paper on top of the pile. As always in 80

Ruth's arrangement, it was the Scotsman. His heart sank as he looked at the lower part of the front page, from which his likeness gazed out at him: at once he knew what the tone of the coverage would be.

Rather than recycle the Spotlights sensational scoop, the responsible Scotsman had taken as its front-page lead the announcement by five members of the Police Supervisory Board that they intended to raise the Deputy Chief Constable's conduct at the next meeting of the Board on the fol owing Wednesday. The Chair of the Board had agreed to accept an emergency motion of censure for debate.

Skinner scanned the rest of the story. In careful terms, clearly legally approved, it sketched out the allegations about his private life, naming Pamela Masters, and carrying the statements released by his solicitor and the Chief Constable's office. It closed with a footnote directing readers to Page Sixteen.

He leafed through the pages until he arrived at the Editorial column. There were two leader articles. The second was headed

'Morality and the Media'.

The detective scanned it through then read it aloud.

'If it is to be of true value to society, and ultimately to protect its freedom, the media as a collective entity must never be afraid or reluctant to comment critically on one of its own. when condemnation is justified.

'It is with that in mind that we deprecate the conduct of Spotlight magazine in its invasion of the private life of Deputy

Chief Constable Bob Skinner, and in particular the methods which it chose to adopt. This newspaper disapproves thoroughly of the surreptitious photographing of honest citizens within their own homes. That is why we wil not reproduce the photographs which appeared yesterday, although we were offered publication rights, at a price.

'Spotlight is a publication without any perceptible moral standards, driven only by the greed of its owners, and restrained only by the civil law of defamation. Your publishers find it distasteful whenever this newspaper occupies the same shelves in the relatively few outlets where they are sold together.

'Nevertheless, when questionable behaviour comes to light, the fact that its exposers are beneath contempt themselves does not make it any less questionable. Mr Skinner occupies a high-profile position which demands exemplary standards of personal behaviour. We wil not pass judgement on the motion which will be put before the Joint Police Board on Wednesday.

All we will say is that the Deputy Chief Constable, despite his great service to the city, is not above personal censure. On this 81 occasion, if his professional and moral conduct is cal ed into question, then in the circumstances, it seems that he cannot blame the Spotlight, however unprofessional and immoral a rag it might be. He can blame only himself

He folded the paper and laid it aside. 'I can't disagree with much of that,' he said. 'Who could, given that it's so circumspectly written?'

He gave a wry smile. 'Mind you, for all its position on the high moral ground, I can't help noticing that the Scotsman still manages to put my private life on its own front page.

'Is all the rest of it like this?' he asked.

'Yes,' Ruth replied. 'There are no other leaders, and no-one else has used the photos, but al the stories lead on the censure motion.

Everyone's used it. Even the Telegraph.'

'Let me guess. On Page Three?'

'Right first time.'

Skinner picked up the Daily Record and turned to page seven, as Ruth's red number indicated. 'Five Hunt Top Cop!' he read. He waved the newspaper in the air, indicating a row of head-and-shoulder photographs.

'There they are, the Famous Five. Unreconstructed Lefties, all of them; every one of them keen to take any opportunity to put their own party on the spot.'

His secretary looked across at him. 'Wil you go to the meeting on Wednesday?'

'I've thought about that. I'll go only if the Chair guarantees me the right to a personal statement, after the discussion but before the vote.'

'Do you think she will?'

'It won't be her choice. It'l be a group decision. My bet is that she won't be allowed to.'

He rearranged the newspapers into a pile.

'Will you issue any more statements before the meeting?'

Skinner shook his head. 'No. Pam might, though. She's been advised that she has a case for defamation against the Spotlight, since they suggested that she slept with me to get on in the Force. I'm telling her to sue.'

He saw Ruth wince. 'You don't agree?'

'If she was sure they'd settle out of court,' she said, 'yes, I'd agree.

But if it goes to trial, she could be hammered in the witness box. I wouldn't fancy being cross-examined about my sex life.'

'They'l settle, Ruth. Sooner rather than later too. That rag's used to paying off libel suitors.'

He slapped the papers on his desk, in a typical gesture. 'But enough of that,' he said, suddenly grim again. 'Let's see what the press say V about the McGrath case. That's my priority, and the thing that makes me most angry about the Spotlight is the fact that they deflected me from it!'