Quintin Jardine - Fatal Last Words

‘For a start,’ she replied, with a smile, ‘you’ll look daft walking two spaniels. You’ll keep your temper, promise me.’

‘Of course I will. I won’t lay a finger on them. I’ll ask them nicely, like I promised you. I might even offer them a police escort to the designated site.’

She frowned, unconvinced. ‘I think I’ll come with you.’

‘No,’ he told her firmly. ‘This is a police matter. I won’t let you get involved.’

‘Think you could stop me if I insisted?’ Her tone was light but the challenge was serious.

‘Don’t let’s go there, please,’ he said, deflecting it. ‘Let me do this, and see what comes of it.’

She yielded to him. ‘If you must. Go on then, but step carefully.’

‘Carefully and light as a feather, babe.’ He turned and headed for the door, but before he had taken his third step, the phone rang. He turned and picked up the receiver from the table on his side of the new king-size bed that he had bought when Aileen had moved in with him. ‘Skinner,’ he said.

He had been expecting another outraged citizen; instead, Detective Superintendent Neil McIlhenney spoke into his ear. ‘Sorry to break into your Sunday again, boss,’ he began.

‘Don’t worry, chum,’ he replied. ‘It’s well broken already. What’s up? Nothing trivial, I take it?’

‘I fear it isn’t. I’ve just had a call from young Sammy Pye; he’s at the mortuary. The sudden death at the Book Festival that you looked in on this morning: just as suddenly, it’s got complicated.’ Skinner frowned, but said nothing. ‘Do I take it you’re not totally surprised?’ McIlhenney asked him.

‘I don’t really know why, but I’m not,’ Skinner admitted. ‘You know how you can walk in on an event and somehow it just doesn’t feel the way it looks?’

‘You mean when everybody else is seeing what they expect to see, a run-of-the-mill event, but you’re looking at a crime scene? That’s happened to me maybe three or four times in my career, that’s all.’

‘But not this morning?’

‘I can’t say it did, but I got there after you’d gone, remember. I didn’t see the same as you, literally.’

‘True. So what’s happened to confirm my special insight?’ He listened as the superintendent passed on Pye’s news. ‘Mmm,’ he murmured, when the story was complete. ‘Have you ever heard of that method of doing yourself in?’

‘No, I haven’t. But if I was diabetic, of a mind to end it all and I was looking for a method that was quick and painless, I can see that might be a reasonable proposition. Instead of balancing your sugar levels, shove them over the top, then slip into a coma, and die quietly and painlessly.’

‘So why would he send Randy Mosley a message asking for help? Are you going to tell me he changed his mind after he’d done it?’

‘I’m not going to tell you anything, gaffer, but that would make sense. Plus it’s much more likely than the old prof’s other explanation, an error by Glover’s pharmacist.’

‘I’ll give you that,’ Skinner conceded, ‘but let’s put an end to the speculation and do what needs to be done.’

‘I’m already doing it. Sammy and Ray Wilding are on their way back to Charlotte Square. By now they’ll have asked Dr Mosley to close off the hospitality centre and the author’s quiet room. . That’s what they call the bit where he died. Appropriate, yes?. . and not to let her cleaners take any of yesterday’s rubbish off the site. Earlier on we had no reason to look for the syringe, or the pen, whatever the guy used. Now we do. More than that, we’ll need to interview everyone Glover was seen with last night, including your old friend Bruce Anderson.’

Skinner made a low growling sound at the back of his throat. ‘I’m tempted to sit in on that one, Neil. In fact I would if I didn’t have to sort something out here, then pick up the kids. You keep close to it, and give Sammy a message from me: tell him to rule nothing out as far as Anderson’s concerned.’

‘ Am I going to see you again?’ Alex asked. They were lying naked on her uncovered bed, the duvet on the floor beside them. ‘Or is that it? A quick shag for old time’s sake and so long for another few years.’

‘Jesus, kid, I don’t know,’ Andy Martin replied plaintively. ‘I should, though. Right now I should be saying, like you did earlier, if you recall, that we’re out of our minds to have let this happen. I’ve got a lovely wife and daughter, and another on the way. I don’t need to tell you what they mean to me.’ He stopped and his forehead creased into a frown as he raised himself on an elbow and looked at her, a question in his eyes.

She stopped him from putting it into words. ‘Yes, Andy,’ she said, ‘I’m on the pill. I haven’t been sitting here pining for you. . not all the time. There have been a few guys since we split, but. . never anybody who’s given me a sense of permanence, never anybody I’ve even considered giving a key to the front door.’ She looked up at him. ‘You can’t say that, though, can you? It didn’t take you long to wash me out of your hair and settle down with Karen. What’s with her? What does she have that I don’t? Bigger tits, that’s obvious, from what I remember of her, but what else ties you to her?’

He bridled at her sudden aggression. ‘I love her. Will that do?’

‘You’re just after telling me that you still love me. Was that just bullshit?’

‘No, it wasn’t. I love you, in a different way. Karen’s safe; she’s comfortable; she makes me feel peaceful. You’re different, Alex. You’re exciting; you’re dangerous; you unsettle me. You turn me into a guy I barely know.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘What?’

‘Do you like this guy?’

‘That’s the problem, I do.’

‘Are you sure you don’t know him? He sounds to me like the Andy you used to be. All those things you called me; you were the same. Now? If I’m honest, do you know what I thought when we met up at my dad’s place? I thought, “My God, Andy’s really done it. He’s turned into a boring old fart!” Mind you, you always had that tendency.’ She grinned. ‘A tendency to be boring, that is, not flatulence.’

He held his hand, flat, above her left breast, touching the nipple lightly with his palm as he began to move it slowly in a circle. ‘And do you still think so?’ he asked her.

She shivered, and pouted her lips. ‘Oww! I’ll give you a couple of minutes to stop that. Let’s just say you’ve proved that you haven’t become irredeemably tedious. I’ve seen the old Andy again, and yes, I still love him.’ She slapped his hand away, and pulled herself up into a sitting position. ‘Which brings me back to the question you still haven’t answered: what happens now?’

‘What do you want?’ he shot back. ‘You’re in the pound seats now. The minute I walk out of here you could pick up the phone and call Karen, tell her what’s happened.’

She frowned, and poked him in the chest, hard, with her right index finger. ‘The only reason you’re in my bed right now is because you know I’d never do that. Not because I’d be afraid to, mind you. No, because the day I become the sort of woman who’d do that, I’m lost. What do I want? It’s not something I’ve ever thought about until right now, but I know well enough. I want my career to go on as it has; I’m on course to become one of the youngest partners in my firm’s history, and I don’t plan to give that up. I want to stay childless for the foreseeable future. If that means for ever, I can deal with that. And I want you, on any reasonable terms. I’ll never demand that you leave Karen and the kids. I doubt if I could bear you moping around, perpetually guilt-ridden, and anyway, I’m not sure I’d want my weekends taken up with custodial visits. Selfish, eh?’