Quintin Jardine - Skinner's mission

Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, I realise that, but before you went away. .’

‘Before I went away, during the day you went to give your lectures, and I went to the gym, building myself back into something like I was before I was knifed, so I could go back to work as if nothing had ever happened to me. But at night you never talked about your work. Christ, you never talked about anything.’

She shot him a hot look. ‘No, because I knew there was only one thing you really wanted to talk about: my predecessor, Myra, and your newly-discovered obsession with her death, or rather, with your guilt.’

She saw his jawline tense. ‘What do you mean, my-’

‘Don’t. .’ She held up a hand to stop him ‘. . let’s get into this now. Or ever again, even!

‘Okay. You ask me about my job. Fine, I’ll tell you. I hate it. I don’t know why I ever took it on. Ego probably, the idea of having a chair, and being a Professor at my age. The reality is that it chills me to the bone. All those young faces, either thirsting for knowledge, or more likely putting in their specialist lecture time and waiting for the boring cow to finish. I stand up there every day and I feel unreal. I’m a doctor, and a damn good one, yet I’ve allowed myself to be turned into a dictating machine.’

‘What do you mean “turned into”?’ he snapped.

‘Don’t mess with me. I know what happened. The Principal asked Jimmy Proud if he could suggest anyone for the course, and you and he put your heads together and came up with me, because you thought it would give me more holiday time to look after the baby.

‘You manipulated me, Bob.’

He looked at her with pure scorn. ‘Rubbish! Jimmy came to me and asked if I approved of his putting your name forward, and we both came to you and asked you. And you said “Yes”. That’s how it was.’

She shook her head. ‘I did that because the way you looked at me made it quite clear that was what you wanted me to say. Not because it was what I wanted to do.

‘Still,’ she acknowledged, ‘I said “Yes”. As a consequence, during all that time you were recovering, I’d come home every night quivering with frustration. But you never even noticed, because your mind was on something — no, someone — else.’

They were both dimly aware of the staccato, staggering movement at their feet, yet they were staring at each other so fiercely that neither reacted to it, until each felt strong little fingers grip their clothing at the knee.

Only then did they look down, to see Jazz, beaming up at them in his delight at his first steps, which they, in their anger, had missed.

The mountain was still there, waiting to be conquered: the pile of essential papers, reports, proposals, personnel files, correspondence and other assorted documentation, piled high in the in-tray on his big rosewood desk, waiting for his scrutiny and his note of approval or rejection.

On the previous morning, his first full day back at the police headquarters building in Fettes Avenue since his stabbing four months earlier, and since the unwanted American trip for which Chief Constable Sir James Proud, his well-meaning commander and friend, had volunteered him, Skinner had wilfully ignored the heap. Instead he had chosen to pay a surprise visit to Superintendent Dave Donaldson, and his deputy Chief Inspector Maggie Rose, to congratulate each on their promotions.

During the DCC’s absence, but on the basis of his advice to Andy Martin, the two had taken over command of CID in the force’s Eastern Area, a great sprawling land-mass taking in a part of the city of Edinburgh, and all of rural East Lothian and Berwickshire.

He had filled in the day being taken by Rose, his personal assistant until her step up in rank, on a tour of the many CID offices for which Donaldson and she were responsible. In one, at Haddington, he had seen a face from the past, and had made a private note.

There was a gentle knock on the frame of the open door behind him. ‘Good morning, sir.’ He turned with a smile. Ruth McConnell, his secretary, stood there, with the morning’s additions to the paper pile clutched in a folder in her hand. She was devastatingly attractive, with a slight pout to her lips which seemed to add value to an almost permanent smile. Her glossy brown hair hung past her shoulders, and her legs did the job for which they had been designed as well as any Skinner had ever seen. Ruth was one of those women who would never put on a long skirt if there was a shorter one, fresh and pressed, in her wardrobe.

‘Welcome back,’ she said. ‘You are going to stay here today? The Chief’s back from his ACPO meetings, and he was hoping to see you.’

‘He could have been seeing me for the last bloody month,’ Skinner grumbled, but with a half-smile.

He moved behind his desk and pointed towards the coffee filter on a table by the far wall. ‘If that stuff’s hot, pour us a couple of mugs and pull up a seat.’

Ruth nodded. A minute later she was seated before him, rearranging the mountain of work into a series of categorised hills.

‘This is all essential stuff, Ruthie?’

‘Yes sir, I’m afraid so. I filtered out as much as I felt able, the Chief took on a hell of a lot, and Mr Martin helped where he could, but all of this is stuff we all thought you’d want to see.’

‘Fair enough. I wish I’d been able to keep Maggie here till I got back, but that would probably have cost her her promotion. I couldn’t have left Donaldson without a deputy for that long. And of course, I couldn’t break in a new PA in my absence.’

He paused, reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and produced a slip of paper, which he handed across the desk. ‘Now I’m back, the gap will be filled without further delay. I want you to pull that officer’s file for me right away, and to arrange an appointment in this office, for four this afternoon.’ He paused.

‘Now, let me spend half an hour on this lot, and then I’ll go and see the boss. I expect I’ll have to go out with Andy Martin later on this morning, but other than that you can tie me to the desk for the rest of the day.’

She raised her right eyebrow, only for an instant, and very slightly, but it was enough. ‘Get away with you, woman,’ he shouted, with a grin, ‘and let me be about my work!’

As his secretary swept rhythmically out of the room, closing the door behind her, Skinner leaned back in his leather chair and looked around him. As much as he hated paperwork, he enjoyed the room in which he did it. It looked out on to the main driveway up to the headquarters building. He had always liked to be able to see what was happening in the world around him, and to feel a part of the comings and goings of the day. As he looked down at the Chief Officers’ parking area below him, he saw the Chief Constable’s black Vauxhall Omega roll into the space beside his own white BMW. Sir James Proud climbed out laboriously, in uniform as always, his silver braid, and silver hair gleaming against the dull March morning.

Having not seen Proud Jimmy for over a month, it struck Skinner suddenly that his commander, friend and patron was looking older and more tired than he had ever seen him. ‘He was without a deputy for a bloody long time,’ he mused in a whisper to the empty room. ‘Must have been quite a strain.

‘Even dafter then, that he should extend it for an extra month by sending me to something that Willie Haggerty in Strathclyde was bursting to attend.’ He thought back and remembered Sir James’ uncharacteristic insistence that his force should put one over on the much larger West of Scotland constabulary.

Thrusting the thought from his mind, he took a last look around his office before settling down to work. It was comfortably furnished, and well decorated, in slightly old-fashioned hessian. The paintings on the walls, all originals, were his own. His favourites faced his desk. One was a big, blue, arrogant cockerel, painted in oil by Rhoda Hird, an East Lothian painter who lived close by his cottage in Gullane. The other was a colourful, slightly bewildered torero with a lazy right eye, and the expression of someone who carries the certainty that one day, something very bad is going to happen. It was the work of Miguel Morales, a Catalan artist with a burgeoning reputation. Skinner had bought it on a whim, and on a credit card, one night in a bar-cum-gallery in Spain.