Skinner's rules

39

December, normally a month of mounting excitement, was relatively quiet after the uproar of November. Peace returned to Edinburgh: The press follow-up of the Yobatu arrest was deflected by a simple statement that the person interviewed had been eliminated from the enquiry. The officers in the search team were told that Yobatu was hopelessly insane, and that the arrest was not to be discussed with anyone, not even wives or partners. The vigils in the Royal Mile were continued for a time, but were scaled down, and eventually stopped, although a public pretence was maintained that they were still continuing at an appropriate level. ventually, with other, newer stories to entice them, and with no further killings, the media lost interest.

The loss of Yobatu, and the unscratched itch, still rankled with Skinner, but four things happened to make them more bearable for him.

First, Sarah and Alex were joint belles of the annual CID dance — never referred to as a ball. The doctor’s arrival on the ACC’s arm finally allowed the force to discuss in public what it had been discussing in private for weeks.

Second, he became a member of the New Club, and found that the institution, in its bizarre home in Princes Street, was much less stuffy and austere than he had imagined. Quickly, he came to appreciate its value as an information exchange, and as a place where business could be done discreetly, if technically against Club rules.

Third, he noted on a routine report, the pending prosecution of one John Wilson, of Liberton, on a charge of driving with excess alcohol in his bloodstream.

Fourth, the Lord Advocate, Lord Muckhart, resigned suddenly and mysteriously, citing ‘personal reasons’. Later he was forced to admit that he was involved in an adulterous relationship with the wife of a leading Scottish politician, after the Scotsman newspaper, having received information from an anonymous source, broke the story. ‘That,’ Skinner said to Sarah, ‘is what I call getting even!’