Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

Today I confirmed to my complete satisfaction that all my arrangements are complete. Very soon, you’ll receive items in the US that will put all of this into context. You need have no fear about putting them to use in making what I hope and expect will be a bloody good life for yourself. The other letter I enclose with this is for your mother. I want you to give it to her yourself, when next you see her. I don’t want her getting it through the mail, and didn’t want to leave it for her in the office. It tells her why I’ve done this, how much I love her, what a privilege it has been to spend my adult life with her, and all that sort of stuff. I’ll say the same to you now, son. I wish we could have had a few more years to enjoy each other’s company, but none of us has the privilege, or rather the curse, of knowing the hour of our departure too long before the train is ready to leave the station.

Enjoy your legacy, and yourself. Drive straight and putt even straighter. Goodbye and God speed.

All my love,

Dad.

PS. I trust you’ll have the bloody sense to burn this letter.

To his considerable surprise, Stevie Steele felt a lump in his throat. He blinked, to keep his eyes clear. He folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope and picked up the other. He reached inside and withdrew its contents, an American Express card, holder M. Whetstone, and a green bank book. He opened it and saw that it was the key to an account in a Delaware bank. The amount on deposit was very slightly over one million eight hundred thousand US dollars.

‘You see the name?’ Murphy asked. ‘Bank of Piercetown; that’s “BP”, the initials on Dad’s note to himself. “AM” probably just meant morning.’

The detective looked across the desk at the young man. ‘He was right, you know,’ he told him as he held up the book. ‘We’d never have found this.’

He smiled back at him. ‘You mean I am crazy?’

‘That’s for you to work out. What did bring you here? You could have burned that letter as he says.’

‘I know. I’ve been trying to make sense of it since that lot arrived, Mr Steele. The best conclusion I can come to is that my father did this as one last gesture, just to show that he could, then he left the deciding to me. He wasn’t a flamboyant man, but he was a gamester inside. He taught me most of what I know, but one thing the course didn’t include was how to live my life on the basis of something like this.’ He shrugged the shoulders of his enormous jacket. ‘On top of that, it’s not my money.’

‘That’s the best answer.’

‘What should I do now?’

‘Nothing. Leave all this with me; I’ll give you a receipt.’ He looked through the glass wall of his cubicle, caught DC Singh’s eye and waved him inside. ‘Tarvil,’ he said, ‘I want you to find a typist. . use the chief super’s if you have to; ask her nicely and it’ll be okay. Get me a formal receipt for one letter, an Amex card and a bank book. .’ He read out the bank’s name and the account number. ‘. . handed over by Mr Murphy Whetstone. It’s to be signed by Mr Whetstone and by me with you as a witness signatory.’

The young constable nodded; he returned a few minutes later, bearing two copies of the receipt. All three of them signed beside their printed names.

‘Have you given your mother her letter?’ Steele asked, as he walked Murphy to the top of the stairs.

‘Not yet. Will I have to tell her about the other one?’

‘I hope not. I’ll go and see the acting chief executive at the bank. If he has any sense he’ll just accept the return of the money. You may have to sign some form of legal document, but I hope that’ll be all there is to it. With that done, the fiscal’s file on your father’s death will be closed as a suicide, and your mother need never know the whole story.’

‘If you can do that, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.’

‘No, it’s for me to thank you. Thanks a million, in fact.’

Steele was smiling as he settled back into his chair. . until the phone rang once more.

‘Who was Barry Macgregor?’ Aileen de Marco asked.

‘He was a young detective constable, one of my boys. He was killed on duty, a few years back.’

‘I knew it had to be something like that. Was Chief Superintendent Mackie there when it happened? He seemed a bit emotional for a second, when he mentioned him.’

‘We were both there,’ said Bob quietly. ‘I was holding him when he died; I had his blood all over me. Brian took down the man who did it; picked him right off the back of a motorbike. Best damn shot I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t emotional then.’

‘That quiet man in a uniform? He did that?’

‘Absolutely: didn’t bat an eyelid. Brian’s the finest shot on this force, with any weapon.’ He looked at her across the low coffee-table in his office. ‘That stuff we talked about last night, about killing and everything; no fantasy, it really does happen. The boys and girls that people like your man Godfrey Rennie regard as statistics, they really do put their lives on the line.’

‘I suppose I knew that,’ Aileen admitted. ‘But being there this morning, listening to Mr Mackie explain that although the Pope had asked for no show of weapons, there would be snipers hidden all over the place, and men with wee gold badges in their lapels to signify that they were armed. .’ She shivered. ‘It brings it right on to my doorstep, the whole global-terrorism thing. As a deputy minister, I wasn’t involved with heavy stuff like that.’

He reached across the corner of his table and squeezed her hand. ‘Get used to it, love,’ he told her, ‘because it’s the reality of my job and, from now on, of yours too.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘I have this vision of you, one day, as First Minister of an independent Scotland, as a national head of government. You should start to prepare yourself for that, right now.’

She let out a quiet laugh. ‘God, you’re not a Nat as well, are you?’

‘Nah. I just think it’s inevitable, like night follows day; it has been since they passed the Scotland Act.’

‘That’s not what the people who wrote it intended.’

‘Since when could politicians see beyond the next election?’ he asked her.

‘Is that what you’re trying to do? Make me take the long view?’

‘Exactly. And it’s why I won’t do anything to compromise you. I haven’t known you long, but already I believe in you as much as I believe in myself. You’ve got a destiny, same as I have, only I can see yours more clearly. I won’t let anything or anyone get in the way of it. . especially not me. That’s why the. . encounter. . we had last night has to remain just that.’

Aileen gave the smallest of nods. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m ambitious enough to realise that too. Plus, I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’

‘Or my wife?’ Words once spoken can never be recalled. ‘Sorry, that was a crass thing to come out with.’

‘No, it was honest. Bob, I know enough about married men to tell when they’re only after a leg over on the side. . they’ve got no chance with me, by the way, no chance at all. . and when things are bad at home and they need somewhere to go, even if it’s only to talk. You didn’t have to tell me your marriage was rocky; I’d worked that out for myself. I promise you this, though; I won’t make anything worse.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he told her. ‘You’re not the Fatal Attraction type. But you’re right. Sarah and I have been in trouble for a few months now, and nothing we try seems to make it any better.’

‘Are you going to keep trying, though?’

‘Right now, I really don’t know. If we don’t, can I tell you?’