Stay of Execution

74

Skinner called his office as soon as he stepped from the plane on to the air bridge at Edinburgh. As he expected, Jack McGurk was still there. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘Mr Rossi called,’ the sergeant replied, ‘to say the information you requested will be with you first thing tomorrow. DI McIlhenney phoned. He says he needs to see you tonight; he asked me to call him back to confirm as soon as your plane touched down. DCS Pringle rang as well. He said that Stevie Steele’s got an investigation under way that might need your personal involvement, some time soon.’

‘That’s all I need, Jack.’ He groaned. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’

‘No, sir; he said it was essential, that’s all.’

‘If he said that, it is. Is there a car waiting for me outside the airport?’

‘There better be. I ordered it.’

‘Okay. Tell Neil six o’clock.’

He ended the call then dialled Aileen de Marco’s number. ‘Hello,’ she exclaimed breezily. ‘You are calling to tell me you’re going to make it this time, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, it’s okay. I’ll pick you up at seven fifteen as arranged, yes?’

‘No, just go straight to the club. I’ll be ready to leave in half an hour so I’ll take a taxi, and wait for you there, away from the phones.’

‘Fine. See you there.’

Two constables and a Traffic car were waiting outside as he walked through the main door into the cold November evening. They came to something approaching attention as they saw him. He waved them into the car and slid into the back seat, then checked the time: five thirty-five. ‘Blue-light it if you have to,’ he said. ‘I must be in my office before six.’

He made it to Fettes with ten minutes to spare, and was in his chair, looking out of the window, as Neil McIlhenney’s car rolled up the driveway. His eyebrows rose slightly when he saw that there was a man in the passenger seat.

He was waiting in the corridor when McIlhenney led the crew-cut stranger upstairs; as he ushered them into his room, he asked the inspector, quietly, ‘Do we need anyone else?’

‘Absolutely not,’ his friend replied.

Leaving his visitors for a moment, Skinner went along to his assistant’s office and told him that he could go home. When he returned to his office McIlhenney and the other man were standing in front of his desk.

‘Boss,’ the DI began, ‘this is Lieutenant Eli Huggins, from NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau. He’s got a story that nobody else needs to hear.’

The DCC looked at him; he seemed wound up tight. He smiled at him then reached out and shook his hand. ‘You can tell it sitting down, then, Eli. How long have you been in Scotland?’

‘Since eight thirty, sir.’

‘And in all that time has anyone offered you a beer?’

‘No, sir, they have not.’

‘Bloody disgraceful,’ Skinner muttered. He stepped round to his fridge and took out a bottle of Becks and two Cokes, all uncapped. ‘I’m driving, so I won’t. Neil used to be a fat bastard, so he won’t. But you get outside that, and tell me all about it.’

Huggins’s bottle was empty half-way through his story: the DCC stopped him and fetched him another, then listened until he was finished.

‘Let me be clear on this,’ he asked. ‘Your police commissioner wants me to close down this inquiry to avoid opening a can of worms and having them crawl all over his office. Is that it?’

‘I’m not allowed to ask you to do that, sir. My instruction is to explain the situation to you, to try to make you see how much damage might be done to the reputation of NYPD, and then to ask how far your discretion extends.’

Skinner looked at him. ‘I can see the problem,’ he said. ‘If all our skeletons came out the cupboard we’d all be fucked. However, my problem is that a murder has been committed on my patch, and I am legally bound to pursue it to a conclusion. I’m also under media scrutiny, and that is something which, clearly, you understand.’

Huggins nodded, grim-faced; he looked ready to empty Skinner’s fridge.

‘So this is what I’ll do. You’ve given me information that tells me who Colin Mawhinney’s murderers may have been. Do you have recent photographs of these people?’

‘I have them with me, sir.’

‘Then please let Neil have them. The game is easier if we’re looking for a hired Land Rover; there are damn few of them around. We will show these photographs around the rental companies and the airports. If we can identify Salvona and Falcone, and show definitely that they were here, and had such a vehicle, then even if we never discover where Mawhinney was killed, we’ll have a basis for prosecution.’

Skinner smiled. ‘What we won’t have are Salvona and Falcone locked up. Extradition of a non-US citizen from the States to this country is pretty easy. Extradition of a US citizen is not. So if we get to that point, to save our public purse the cost of long-drawn out hearings. . which would be reported and which might prove prejudicial to an eventual Scottish trial. . just to get them over here, I’d be prepared to recommend to our prosecutors that they turn the evidence over to you. In other words, Eli, if those circumstances arose, I’d be prepared to pass the buck. There would be one proviso: if your DA did pluck up the courage to put them on trial, there could be no death sentence. We couldn’t have that. Does that sound like a deal?’

A smile of pure relief spread over the lieutenant’s face. ‘It does, sir.’

‘That’s good,’ said Skinner. ‘I want to help, but it’s as far as I could go.’ He laughed as he rose to his feet. ‘Of course, if it turns out that Bonnie and fucking Clyde were in Florida after all, you will let us know, won’t you?’

‘That’s a deal also, sir.’

The DCC walked them to the door and, as it closed behind them, glanced at his watch. It showed five minutes to seven. He ran his hand over his stubbled chin, then, decision made, went through to his bathroom. Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed in the last of the supply of fresh clothes that he always kept in the office, he headed downstairs to his car.

The worst of the evening traffic was over; there were no hold-ups on his way to the West End, and when he had made the complicated turn past the Caledonian Hotel, he found a parking space without difficulty. He was standing in the hallway of the Scottish Arts Club, an unostentatious terraced house on the north side of the quiet, leafy Rutland Square, when he realised that he had not called Sarah since the night before. He was reaching into his pocket, when Aileen de Marco, blonde hair immaculate, her white blouse looking as fresh as his shirt, came through a doorway to his left. He withdrew his hand and shook hers instead.

‘Almost right on time, Bob,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Only twenty-four hours late.’

As she led him into the club’s sitting room, he felt a strange flutter; he paused for a few moments, wondering if his pacemaker was kicking into action, but it passed and he followed her to a table near the window, with armchairs on either side, and a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket sitting on it. Two long-stemmed glasses stood beside it; one was half-full.

As he sat, she picked the bottle up and filled the second glass. ‘Chardonnay,’ she said. ‘Call me a prole if you want, but I like it.’

‘Me too,’ he confessed. ‘But I’d better keep an eye on it. I have a car outside. So,’ he asked, ‘how are you finding your new job?’

‘Much like my old one as deputy minister; but the salary’s better, the car’s a bit flashier and. .’ She flashed him a quick twinkling smile. ‘. . I get access to all the secrets. Imagine!’

‘That’s good. It means you’ve passed your vetting.’

She looked surprised. ‘I was never vetted for the job.’

Skinner laughed. ‘You don’t know all the secrets, then.’

The minister whistled quietly. ‘Me too? I’m beginning to get an idea, though.’

‘You’ve only just begun. How did your lunch with my friend Mitch go on Monday?’

‘It was excellent. I learned more about the law in those two hours than in all my life up to then. Tell me, Bob, why isn’t he a judge?’

‘Because he’s a solicitor, and always has been; he prepares cases and instructs counsel but he doesn’t plead the case in court. Received wisdom is that to be a judge you have to have done that.’

‘You don’t go along with that?’

‘Not all the way. Mitch has only ever lost one action in his life, and that would have been overturned had the pursuer not died before it got to the Appeal Court. I agree with you: he’d make a fine senator. . if he wanted the job.’

‘I must have a chat with the Lord Advocate, in that case. Maybe we can put his name before the Judicial Appointments Board.’ Skinner raised an eyebrow, and she caught its meaning. ‘Do I take it that you’re not a fan of the board?’ she asked. ‘We think it’s one of our finest achievements.’

‘I’m a great supporter of the Scottish Parliament, and the Executive,’ he told her, ‘except when it does something bloody stupid. The old system worked; it didn’t need fixing.’

‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘Judges appointing judges?’

‘That’s not how it was, and you should know that. Politicians always made the appointments, on the basis of independent recommendations by people who were capable of assessing the fitness of the candidates for office.’

‘Come on, it was Buggins’s turn, and you know it.’

‘I do not,’ he countered. ‘I could name you umpteen brilliant lawyers who did not make the Bench, because their appointments would have been dangerous, and maybe disastrous. Your system, a board that’s made up of half lay members, who are not experts in the subject, and a minority of practising lawyers, who are, will let some of these people through. What’s the next step? Telephone voting by the punters?’

‘We won’t go that far, I promise.’ She threw him a mock frown. ‘Here, this is my baby you’re calling ugly.’

‘Not yours.’

‘I’m its guardian at least. Maybe I should appoint you to the next vacancy.’

‘You’d have to wait a long time for that, till after I retire, and even then, if there was a remote possibility that I might be interested, I’d need to be chairman.’

‘You’re a passionate man, aren’t you?’ said the minister. ‘I’d never have suspected that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re iron-clad.’

‘I’m passionate about justice,’ said Skinner, ‘and in particular about its impartiality. My father was a family solicitor, but he was a bit of a constitutional lawyer too. If he was alive, although he voted for your party all his life, he’d be dead against anything that eroded the essential distinction between the people who enact legislation. . that’s you lot. . and the people who interpret it. . that’s the Bench.’

‘Where do you fit in?’

‘In the middle; we enforce it. . the parts that relate to crime and public order.’

‘And should you be independent of government too?’

‘I think we should be removable by government, as ultimately we are, but I do not think you should have day-to-day supervision over us. Who investigates you?’

‘Nobody, if we don’t want it to happen. Isn’t that the case?’

He smiled. ‘So how come you didn’t know you’d been vetted?’

She shivered. ‘Spooky.’

‘Listen,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘However liberal a society may be, if it is to be safe, there have to be dark areas. All countries operate that way. Because of who I am and what I do, there are few doors if any that are locked to me in Britain. But this morning, in another European country, one was slammed right in my face.’

Aileen de Marco’s eyes widened. ‘Do tell!’ she exclaimed.

‘I might. . since you’ve been vetted. . but I thought you mentioned something about dinner. I had about a quarter of a fairly inedible salad eight hours ago; I am seriously hungry.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘God, you’re right; we should be upstairs.’ She stood, smoothing her grey skirt, picked up its matching jacket, and led him once more, this time up a flight of stairs to the club’s dining room. ‘I’ve kept the menu plain and simple. Tomato soup, grilled sole, and ice cream.’

A waiter showed them to their table, left for a few moments, then reappeared with their ice bucket and glasses. Skinner glanced across the room; there was a party of two couples at a table in the furthest corner. He recognised both men: one was an actuary and the other was chief executive of an insurance company.

‘When I changed the booking I was told we’d have company,’ Aileen said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ he replied, giving the group a nod of acknowledgement. ‘If they were lawyers it would be all over town in twenty-four hours, but the only things actuaries ever tell people have numbers in them.’

They sat in silence as the waiter served their first course; home-made, he noted. ‘So,’ the minister whispered as soon as he had left, ‘what was your sudden trip all about?’

‘Dead Belgians. I wanted some information, and I thought their government would be helpful.’

‘But they weren’t?’

‘They treated my colleague and me to dinner in the best hotel in town. Then this morning they gave us the bum’s rush.’

‘I can’t imagine anybody giving you the bum’s rush.’

‘It isn’t over. I will find out what they’re covering up.’

‘Who’s going to tell you?’

‘That I can’t say, not at this stage, anyway.’ He picked up his spoon.

They did justice to dinner for the next half-hour, talking trivia about movies and music, discovering that they were both Lord of the Rings devotees, and Skinner admitting that his off-duty reading consisted mostly of crime fiction.

‘Can’t get away from it?’ Aileen asked.

‘What did you read last?’ he asked her.

‘First Among Equals,’ she confessed. ‘Okay, I know it’s about politics, and I know it was written by a Tory, but it’s still a first-class read.’

The coffee was poured and cooling before the minister steered the discussion back to business. ‘The First Minister came by my office this morning,’ she said. ‘He asked me if I’d heard anything about that poor American policeman.’

Skinner frowned. ‘Aileen,’ he murmured, ‘I’m happy to talk to you all night about policing, but I’m uncomfortable when you get into active investigations. . especially when Tommy Murtagh’s name’s mentioned.’

‘You really don’t like the First Minister, do you?’

‘Not a lot. I told you, when it comes to my view of politicians, you’re one of the few exceptions to the rule. I don’t trust them, and you should learn to do the same. Do you think Murtagh knew you were seeing me tonight?’

‘It never occurred to me.’

‘Well, it’s the first bloody thing that occurred to me. As it happens we’ve got a strong lead in that investigation, but I don’t want you telling him so. If he wants to know anything of that nature, he should be asking the Lord Advocate, not you, and he’s well aware of that fact. He’s testing you, just to see how compliant you are; watch him.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’d certainly never be compliant for him,’ she murmured, with a smile. There was a movement in the doorway behind her. ‘Bob,’ she said, ‘I think they want to close up.’

He looked round and saw that the other table was deserted. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise how the time had gone.’ He glanced at her. ‘Aileen, taxis can be hard to find at this hour. Can I run you home?’

She paused, for maybe half a second. ‘Well, since it’s on your way. .’ She stood up and slipped on her jacket. ‘Wait for me downstairs, while I sign the bill and pay a visit.’

‘Where are we going?’ he asked her, as she eased herself into the passenger seat.

‘We’re heading towards Portobello. Lena’s place is just off King’s Road.’

‘Fine.’

Skinner was not given to mixing conversation and driving: he found it too easy to concentrate on neither. As they drew away he switched on his CD player, and let Maria Callas fill the car. Aileen de Marco sighed. ‘Ohhh! I just love her.’

‘Unfortunately Onassis didn’t. So she got fat and died. Silly woman.’

‘Are you always such a cynic?’ she asked.

‘No, I just find it astonishing that someone who gave the world so much more than he ever did should have wound up pining away after he dumped her.’

‘Thank God!’ she exclaimed.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Thank God that you don’t understand everything.’

He let the music take over and drove east. Lena McElhone’s flat was in a modern block in a quiet side-street. He pulled up at the front door and turned down the volume on the great diva. ‘Thanks for dinner,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she replied, ‘for making me realise how much I’ve got to learn, and for helping me shed my political blinkers.’

‘Hah! That’s what I’m doing, is it?’

‘Absolutely. You’re contributing to the better governance of Scotland.’

He shuddered. ‘That’s a horrible Harold Wilson word; you’re from another era. I prefer “administration” myself. It implies more regard for the people.’

‘Why, you’re a closet socialist, Mr Skinner!’

‘Aren’t we all, if we care about people?’

She looked at him. ‘Bob, the coffee was lousy back at the club. Would you like another?’

He glanced at the car clock. It showed ten thirty-six, and he always kept it fast. ‘Yeah, okay. If Lena’s not in her curlers, that is.’

‘Lena’s on a management course in Sunningdale.’

She jumped out of the car and opened the block’s main entrance door with a key. The flat was on the ground floor, to the right; the heating had been on, for it was warm and comfortable. ‘Living room’s there,’ said Aileen, pointing to a door off the hall. ‘Make yourself at home, and I’ll brew up.’

Skinner settled on to the larger of the two couches and leaned back, gazing up at the ceiling, feeling tired, and wondering vaguely what he was doing there. From nowhere, he thought of his children and felt a pang of longing, for peace, quiet and a life undisturbed.

‘Hey,’ her voice came quietly. He realised that he had been dozing.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was meditating.’

‘Do you always meditate with your mouth hanging very slightly open?’ she asked as she laid a mug before him on the glass coffee-table, and settled down beside him on the couch.

‘That means I’m really getting into it.’

‘You don’t let much out, do you, Bob?’

‘Not as a rule,’ he admitted. ‘Discussing my politics with a politician is a real first. Even my wife thinks I could go into the polling station, close my eyes, and my hand would still put the cross in the Tory box.’

‘If we’re into confessions, I’ll give you one. I voted Tory once myself. It didn’t count, mind you. It was in a mock election at school in ’eighty-three.’

‘Everybody voted Tory in ’eighty-three. Would you like to confess something else now?’

She peered at him, over the top of her mug. ‘What?’

‘How did you know that this was on my way home?’

A faint pink flush came to her cheeks. ‘I told you I had access to the secrets,’ she murmured. ‘My department has a file on you; I read it. I know that you live in Gullane, East Lothian, your middle name’s Morgan, you’ve a two-one arts degree in philosophy and politics from Glasgow University, and you hold the Queen’s Police Medal. You had a cardiac incident earlier this year in America. You had a pacemaker implanted as a precaution against a recurrence and you are now one hundred per cent fit. You’ve been married twice; your first wife was killed when you were twenty-eight, your second wife is American, a consultant pathologist. You have one daughter by your first marriage, one of each by your second, and an adopted son. Your adult daughter is an associate with Curle, Anthony and Jarvis, Mitchell Laidlaw’s firm. . but he told me that, it’s not on your file.’

‘Just as bloody well,’ Bob growled.

‘I could also take you through every step of your career, culminating in your rejection of the command of the Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency, the reasons for this set out in your letter to the former justice minister.’

‘Is there anything you don’t know about me?’ he asked her, when she had finished.

The pale blue eyes seemed to sparkle with her smile. ‘I suspect there’s still a hell of a lot that I don’t know. In fact, I suspect that the really interesting things about you aren’t on that file. Sure it told me where you come from, where you’ve been, how you’ve risen through the police and all that stuff. But it doesn’t tell me why you have so many enemies.’

He frowned. ‘Do I?’

‘You know you do. There are people in my party. . not in the controlling wing, I hasten to say. . and in parties to the left of mine who are dead scared of you. They’d love to see you discredited, brought down, sent packing off to Gullane, or better still taken off the scene altogether.’

‘That’s not news to me,’ he said. ‘They’ve tried to get rid of me from my job already, a couple of times in fact.’

‘You gave them the opportunity, as I understand it.’

‘Maybe. And maybe they’d have succeeded in having me fired too, but they’d neither the brains nor the balls.’

‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘I’d heard that Agnes Maley had both and you saw her off.’

Skinner laughed, softly. ‘Ah, Black Agnes. She gave it a good try, but she’s history.’

‘Mmm. I heard she annoyed you so much you made a movie with her in the starring role.’

Skinner’s grin vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Your boss,’ he said. ‘Mr Tommy Murtagh, the First Miniature. He’s got a loose tongue; because he’s one of only half a dozen people who know about that, and I can vouch for the silence of all the rest. I didn’t make that movie, as it happens, but, luckily, I have more friends than I have enemies. Just in case you’re harbouring any illusions about me, if I had known about it in advance I wouldn’t have stopped it. The only regret I have about Agnes is that I couldn’t do more to her.’

Aileen saw his eyes go harder as he looked towards her, saw the warmth in them turn to ice. ‘You can be scary, you know,’ she murmured.

‘Only to people who need scaring; like Agnes Maley.’

‘You may think that, but it’s not true; you scared me.’

He frowned. ‘When did I do that?’ The moment was gone; she saw only concern in him.

‘Just now, when you looked at me; it was as if you let me see right down inside you. Did you do that on purpose?’

‘No, not knowingly at any rate. If I did, I apologise, but maybe, subconsciously, I wanted to warn you.’

‘Warn me about what?’

‘Never mind.’

She wrinkled her brow. ‘Warn me not to exceed my ministerial brief, you mean? If you did, it didn’t work. I like danger,’ she said quietly, ‘and you, Mr Skinner, are a very dangerous man. But the really scary thing about you is the way that it comes out of nowhere. Just there, when I mentioned Agnes, you went from sunshine to darkness in an instant. That’s not in your file.’

‘Of course it isn’t. We all do things off the record.’

‘We don’t all kill people.’

‘Who says I have?’

‘That much is on your file; you must know that.’

He shrugged. ‘They were terrorists. I was an armed officer.’

‘They mean nothing to you?’

He held her gaze although, to his surprise, he found it difficult. Jim Gainer’s phrase came back to him. ‘I don’t put flowers on their graves,’ he said.

‘Did you kill them in cold blood?’

‘I don’t like talking about it, Aileen.’

‘Please, I want to know. I’m interested in what makes you tick. You’re not frightening me any more.’

‘If you’re that keen it’s like this: I’m a police officer. That means, literally, I’m an agent of the people. When I act I do so on their behalf, in the interests of the society which put me in that position. Emotion doesn’t come into it. I didn’t feel any then, and I don’t now when I’m forced to look back on it, or persuaded to talk about it.’

‘Why can’t I believe that?’

‘Because you’ve read too much crime fiction. You think that because I’m a copper I’ve got to have a tortured soul.’

‘And don’t you?’

‘I did for a while, but I’m getting over it. I won’t say that I’m entirely at peace with myself yet, but I’ve been persuaded that the bad’s outweighed by the good. Most people can say the same about themselves. . you included.’

‘Yet you’re still able to say to me that you could execute someone, just like that, and feel nothing.’

‘Since I’ve told you I don’t feel remorse, are you saying that I enjoyed it?’

‘I hope not. I think I’m wondering whether you carry enough anger within you to make you able to do anything.’

He shook his head in denial. ‘It’s just a dirty job, that’s all. When it’s done I go home to my wife, and my children.’

‘Could you kill me if it was necessary?’

‘Don’t be daft, woman.’

‘Seriously. Could you kill me?

‘If I found you threatening to use lethal force on me or anyone else, I probably could. But that’s academic, because you couldn’t do that.’

‘How can you say that so confidently? You hardly know me.’

An expression that she had not seen before spread across his face; there was mischief in it. She had not thought him capable of that.

‘Sure I know you,’ he told her, in a slow, easy drawl. ‘You’re thirty-six years old, the daughter of a chartered accountant and a nurse. You were educated at Hutcheson’s Grammar School and Strathclyde University: you’ve got an honours degree in civil engineering.’

His smile vanished, and his voice grew serious. ‘When you were twenty-three you went to South America to work on an irrigation project in Surinam. You were caught up in a revolution, and you set up a refugee camp for women and children running from the fighting. You fed, sheltered and saved the lives of hundreds of people. Then a platoon of rebel militia arrived; the government were winning, they were on the retreat, and they were out to scorch some earth. You faced them down, and they left your camp untouched. You weren’t so lucky, though. You were raped by their commander. Luckily for you, he was one of the few men in that group who wasn’t HIV positive, but you didn’t know that until you were tested, after the revolt collapsed completely and the army arrived.’

He paused; Aileen de Marco’s mouth was set in a tight line. ‘After that,’ Skinner continued, ‘you came back to Scotland and you took a job with a firm of consultant engineers. You also became an active member of the Labour Party, where before you had only been a supporter. When you were twenty-six you were elected to Glasgow District Council. By that time you had established a charity which raises funds for the relief of refugees from civil wars, of which there is never any shortage. At the beginning of your second term on the council you were appointed chair of the planning committee. You were instrumental in uncovering a bribery scandal involving contractors, officials and a couple of your fellow councillors. They all got the slammer; as a result you’ve got some enemies yourself. They did their best to stop you getting a seat in the parliament, but they failed. That was their one chance. Now you’ve got power and you’re going to get more in the future. You’ve become a career politician. You don’t run a car, and you live alone in Glasgow, in a flat by the side of the Clyde. You’ve never married, although you had a relationship with another councillor that ended six years ago. Since then your male acquaintances have included a journalist and a musician. Currently unattached.’

He paused again. ‘Oh, yes,’ he added. ‘And confirming your attraction to the oppressed and the under-privileged, you’re a Partick Thistle supporter.’ He looked at her. ‘You couldn’t kill anyone, and you couldn’t even threaten it. If you saw someone threatened with death, you would say, “Kill me instead.” And you know what? They probably would, because people who are capable of killing usually do it when they’re challenged to.’

She sat in silence as he finished. ‘That’s me taught, isn’t it?’ she whispered eventually. ‘Does it say on my file that I couldn’t kill anyone?’

He smiled. ‘No, Aileen, I said that. My wife made a forceful point to me a few days ago. There are no angels, she told me.’ He flashed her a quick, wicked glance. ‘But there are some who can call up the Devil when we need him.’

‘And I should be grateful you’re on our side?’

He nodded, and his grin widened. ‘Very.’

She gave a snort of laughter. ‘God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re up front, aren’t you?’

‘Very rarely. You’d be surprised if you knew how few people I’d talk to like I’ve talked to you this evening.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t. You might be surprised too; the normal everyday Aileen de Marco’s as private a person as you are. I guess that having read each other’s files has given us a sort of intimacy.’

‘I suppose.’ He swung round in his chair, then suddenly looked her in the eye. ‘Tell me something. That rebel, the one in Surinam: he didn’t rape you, did he? Not forcibly, that is.’

He saw her cheeks redden. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think that was the deal. It was the price you had to pay to save the people you were looking after. Am I right?’

She nodded, eyes downward. ‘How did you know that?’ she asked quietly.

‘If he’d raped you, taken you by force, I mean, it would have been a violent act. He’d have killed you afterwards and his men would have slaughtered everyone in your camp. You took a chance that he would keep his word.’

‘I couldn’t do anything else.’

‘Of course not. You were lucky that the guy had some sort of honour.’

‘They killed him, you know,’ she murmured. ‘The government troops caught him and shot him, in front of his men. Then they shot the rest of them.’

Skinner shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fair enough, in your man’s case. You might pretend to yourself that there was a sort of treaty between you at the time, but in truth he did rape you, as sure as if he’d held a gun to your head.’

‘I suppose you’d have shot him too,’ she challenged.

He looked her in the eye, smiling cheerfully. ‘Only if he was very lucky,’ he replied.

‘God,’ she exclaimed, ‘you mean that too, don’t you? Stop it. Turn off that magnetism.’

‘Hey!’ He touched his chest, just below his left shoulder, where his pacemaker had been implanted. ‘A magnet could do me some serious harm. I’m computer-driven, remember.’

She laughed. ‘You mean that’s your equivalent of a krypton necklace, Superman? That’s a powerful hold you’ve given me over you.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind when they’re putting you through the metal detector. “Look out for magnets!” I’ll warn them.’

‘Me too?’

‘You too.’

‘I don’t think I’ll bother going in that case.’

‘Some chance. Atheist or not, you won’t pass up the chance to meet Gilbert White. Oops, sorry,’ he exclaimed, ‘His Holiness. I haven’t got used to giving him his title yet.’

‘Are you an atheist, Bob?’

He grinned. ‘Are you still trying to find my soul?’

‘Maybe. Are you?’

‘I thought I was, twenty years ago. Now I’ve seen some stuff, and I’d say I’ve slid into agnosticism. Talking with Jim Gainer, and with other clergymen, has given me a new slant on spiritual matters. It’s made me realise that the older I get, I seem to be moving towards defining some sort of belief. Consider this. The New Testament portrays War, Famine, Pestilence and Death as anthropomorphic entities: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They’re all too real in today’s world, the whole fucking quartet, and you and I have no trouble accepting their existence. God’s portrayed as an anthropomorphic entity, too, so why do we have trouble accepting its existence?’

‘We’re shown proof of the existence of the Horsemen every day. Where’s the evidence for God?’

‘By definition, that’s where faith comes in: steadfast belief, in the absence of evidence. That’s my problem, you see. I’m a copper and so I’m trained to require evidence. I’m still searching, though. . and I am searching, believe me. I think I see a little every time I look at my daughters and my sons.’

‘Mmm.’ She mused. ‘Maybe I should too. It can’t do any harm, can it?’

‘Not that I can see, as long as you don’t become a zealot. Converts have a reputation as extremists.’

She smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not that good.’

‘Oh, no? Should I caution you, then?’

‘Maybe you should.’ She hesitated and then looked up at him. ‘You haven’t always gone home to your wife, have you?’

‘Ahh. Back to my file, are we?’

‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No, you shouldn’t.’

‘But since I did. .’ They met each other half-way, not pulling back. She opened her mouth and flicked his tongue with hers, pressing her body, her small, firm, hard-nippled breasts, against him. ‘If you said, “Yes, Minister,” ’ she whispered as they broke off, ‘I wouldn’t laugh this time.’

He leaned back and looked at her. ‘Aileen, when you said you liked danger, you weren’t kidding.’

She bit her lip and looked down, suddenly chastened. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me do that.’

‘I thought we both did it,’ he said. ‘And in my case, I know why. You are a very attractive woman, and I’m flawed and lustful, just like most on my side of the sexual divide. Listen to me! One minute I’m talking of searching for God, and the next I’m wondering whether I might find Him up your skirt.’

Aileen’s chuckle was low and throaty. ‘I’m not that complicated. I’m a single woman who’s just realised it’s been an absolute age since she’s had any. I know, you’re married, and I should be ashamed of myself. Crazy, isn’t it? I now feel ashamed because I don’t feel ashamed. I’m nuts, really.’

Bob shook his head. ‘You’re the most together woman a guy could encounter in a long day’s march. But would you move you brain back up to your head for a minute, please, and consider this? If you and I got involved, and it leaked out. . as you can bet it would. . the tabloids would feed on us like maggots on a corpse. It would finish my rocky marriage, make me a louse in the eyes of my kids, and damage my career. But as bad as all that would be for me, so would the consequences you’d face. You have places to go: you will become First Minister, as everyone is forecasting. That would all be blown out of the water. You’d be lucky to keep your seat in the parliament.’

‘I know.’ She smiled: it was soft, sweet, with an odd mixture of shyness and seduction. ‘But who said anything about getting involved? You’ve lived for years in a world that’s populated by secrets, and now, so do I. So what’s one more between us?’