Quintin Jardine - Fallen Gods

"No way". Her and Mario? Is that what they're saying? No, they're cousins, remember."

"They're also Italian." Skinner laughed. "But Mario doesn't run the trust on a day-to-day basis. He's appointed a lawyer to do most of the work for him, so that he's hands-off. He only takes decisions on her advice."

"Her?"

"Alex. My kid's getting on in the world."

"Glad to hear it. How is she?"

"Very well, and before you ask, she isn't behind McGuire's problem with Maggie either. She's still based in London; there's an actor bloke in tow, I believe, but I've still to meet him. Anyway, enough of all that. How about you? How's Karen? How's the baby?"

"Lovely, both of them. Bob, I wish I could ask you and Sarah to be godparents, but I think you have to be Catholics."

"Don't worry about it. I'm the wrong guy to ask anyway; God and I are barely on speaking terms most of the time. There's not much point asking Sarah and me to do something together either, but let's not get into that again. Tell me about the job, how are you liking Tayside?"

Martin smiled. "It's excellent, Bob, it really is. Sure, compared to ours… yours, I should say… it's a pocket-sized force, but I'm coming to think of that as an advantage. The clear-up rates are about as good as they could get, for a start. Graham Morton's a first class chief constable, and so are all his officers. I can say honestly that since I've been there, I haven't come across a single piece of dead wood."

"No Greg Jays, then?"

"None at all," he replied, then realised he had been tricked into a comment. "Greg isn't all that bad, though," he added, quickly. "He's a divisional CID commander after all."

"Aye, but he's past his sell-by date for the job. He's lost his spark, and the new blood, like Rose and McGuire, are showing him up. He's still well short of compulsory retirement though, and unless he chooses to go that gives me a problem. I think I've solved it, though. Willie

Haggerty was all for giving Maggie Manny English's job when he goes next winter, but I'm planning to put Greg in there. It's uniform, it's a nominal promotion and it needs a good book operator, which he is." He paused, and his face darkened. "Mind you, before I can do that, I need to get myself back on the job."

They walked on in silence for a while, until they had left the big bay behind, passed Freshwater Haven and come to another beach, this one deserted, without a soul on its pale golden sands. Skinner pointed to a path that led off inland. "We can take that and get back round the edge of Muirfield," he said, 'or we can go on and have ourselves a real walk."

Andy Martin frowned. "The short route will do me fine," he replied, firmly, 'but before we go any further in any direction, I want to get down to the thing that brought me here."

"Do that, by all means. I'm intrigued."

The younger man stopped, beside the ruins of an old stone cottage, and took a seat on what was left of a wall. Skinner followed his lead and perched alongside him, on his right.

"You'll have heard about the flood we had up in Perth," he began,

'after all that freak snow melted."

"The El Nino thing? Sure, I heard. I still find time to watch the telly, son."

"In that case you can imagine what the place looks like now that the water's gone down."

"A quagmire, I'd guess."

"Right. This morning we began the clear-up operation in the houses that were flooded out. I was warned to expect all sorts in there; cats, dogs, fish and frogs, sheep and even a few deer. I was not warned to expect what we did find. I went with an old lady into her basement, where she came upon the body of a man."

"Shit. Washed away by the flood?"

"Aye, with a mark on his wrist that could have been left by a rope, and a mark on the side of his head that could have been put there before he went in the river. There was enough about it for us to be treating it as a suspicious death."

"Dramatic. You sure he wasn't the old lady's bidey-in?"

"Miss Bonney wouldn't know what a bidey-in is, Bob. She's sweet seventy-six and probably never been kissed."

"Lucky for her. So what do you want from me? If it's advice on the flood patterns of the silvery Tay, I know fuck all about them. If it's the loan of some people to help with your investigation, you'd better talk to Haggerty rather than me."

"That's a "No" to the first. As for the second, we're not at that stage yet, and when we are it'll be my head of CID who does the asking of Dan Pringle."

Martin reached for the back pocket of his jeans, then paused. "Once the photographer and the doc were finished, we went through the man's pockets."

"We?"

He grinned, fleetingly. "Okay, our young DC did. There was no wallet, no driving licence, no old envelope with his name on it." Finally, his hand completed its journey to his pocket. "Only this," he said, drawing out the monochrome photograph, still in its plastic container, and handed it over.

Skinner took it from him; as he looked at it, Martin watched him intently. He had never seen a reaction remotely like it, not from Bob

Skinner, at any rate. His eyes widened, his mouth fell open, he seemed to slip, for a moment, on his stony seat, and he gulped.

His friend sat, listening to the gulls as they broke the silence, waiting as he stared at the photograph. Finally he was able to form a long slow whisper. "Oh my God."

"You see?" said Andy. "That's you as a young man, isn't it?"

It was his turn to be astonished, as Skinner shook his head slowly.

"You can be forgiven for thinking it, my friend; yes, even you. But this is not me. No, this is a photograph of my father."

"Your father?"

"Sure as God made wee green apples." He looked to his left into

Martin's green eyes. "The man in the river: how old was he?"

"Bob, he'd been down there for a week and more, first in water, then half buried in mud."

"I don't want his date of birth, son. Roughly, how old was he?"

Andy frowned, and looked out to sea. "If I have to guess, I'd say he was mid to late fifties."

Skinner stood up, rising off the wall in a single movement. "Come on."

He was heading up the path towards Muirfield Golf Course even as he spoke.

Taken by surprise, Martin had to break into a trot to catch up. "Do you think you know who he is?" he asked.

"I'm coming back up to Perth with you," his long-striding friend announced.

"Fine, but do you think you can identify him?"

"I'm bloody certain of it."

"So?"

"Let me see him first, Andy, and before the pathologist starts to hack him about, too. After that, I'll tell you all about him."

Rufus was asleep when Mario carried him into the house, through the kitchen door. Maggie was waiting there; she looked him up and down.

"Couldn't you have rubbed some of that sand off at the beach," she complained, 'instead of bringing it in here?"

He gave her a broad, innocent smile, straight from the Irish side of his ancestry. "You should see the car," he replied cheerfully. "Don't worry, love. I'll hoover it all up later."

"It'll be well into the carpets by then," she grumbled. "Go on, get him ready for bed and yourself cleaned up. I'll get the vacuum out.

Has Rufus eaten?"

"Yes, we stopped in the Burger King at that Big W place."

"How about you?"

"No."

"That's good. I've got a sitter coming at seven… unless you've got other things to do, that is." She snorted, almost to herself. "Even if you have, I fancy a Saturday night out. If it comes to it I'll go on my own."

She took him by surprise, but he said nothing as he carried Rufus off.

The boy was coming back to a complaining wakefulness as he climbed the stairs. "Come on, chum," he whispered in his ear, 'let's get tidied up. Then you can dream about