Quintin Jardine - Hour Of Darkness

‘Oh, he’s all that on the surface, is David,’ I agreed. ‘We could do with him over here.’

Her frown expressed bewilderment.

‘Why?’

‘He might find out what happened to my swimming trunks.’

‘Are we both sure about this?’

Alex Skinner turned her head and gazed evenly at her partner. They were seated on the small balcony of her duplex apartment, with its vistas of the Salisbury Crags, and across the unconventional, and controversial, roof of the Scottish parliament building.

Privately, Andy Martin hated their viewpoint. He would never admit to a fear of heights, but it was there nonetheless, and amplified by the structure of Alex’s terrace, which was no more than a steel frame jutting out from the building, giving him the feeling of hanging over the edge of a cliff.

Whenever his children visited, as they would do over the coming weekend, or Alex’s young half-siblings, the glass door from the living room was always locked, and bolted.

‘We’ve been over this,’ she replied. ‘We’ve had this discussion with my father. It was his suggestion that you should apply for the new chief constable post. I understand his reasoning. . maybe better than you do. . and I agree with him.

‘In fact I agree with him so much, that I’m not going to trust you to post that completed application form. I’m going to take it to work tomorrow and in my lunch break I’m going to take it to the post office and send it off myself, first class, recorded delivery.’

‘It’s a huge step,’ he said.

‘No it’s not. It’s a declaration of intent, if nothing else.’

‘I’m way too young.’

‘Forty-two is not way too young for anything, other than a pension. You’ve got the service, the skills and the seniority. You’re also calm, unflappable, a first-class man-manager, and a natural leader. Christ, my dad doesn’t tick all those boxes. I told him so, but he knew it anyway.’

‘But you want him to get the job.’

‘Of course I do’, she retorted, then realised that she had fallen into the pit he had dug for her. ‘That’s to say. . Andy, you will sit in that office one day, I have no doubt about that, even if I believe that my father deserves to sit in it first, given what he’s done in his career.’

‘I know that, kid. But, go back to what you said earlier on about understanding his reasoning better than me: what did you mean by that?’

‘That he wanted you to apply because you’re a worthy candidate, but more than that, you’ll be his safety net.’

‘Against what? Acts of God and stuff?’

‘Not just that; against his own ambivalence. With your application in place, he’ll be free to walk away if he chooses.’

He looked away from her across to the sunlit Crags, and the Radical Road, where tiny figures walked. ‘No chance,’ he chuckled. ‘I’ve known Bob for more than half your life; he’s a driven man.’

‘You think I don’t know that? He’s been that way since my mum died, and it’s why he’s never been very good at relationships. . until now, that is. Please God, let him and Sarah make a go of it this time.’

He turned his face back towards her, smiling. ‘You might put in a word for us too, while you’re at it.’

‘We don’t need His help,’ she declared. ‘As long as we get the children thing right this time,’ she added.

‘You really don’t want kids, do you?’

‘No. Certainly not now, and I’m not sure I ever will. I’m not full of love, Andy. I’ve only got so much in me to share around.’

‘We’ll see how you feel in a few years. Either way, I’ll be fine about it. I want what you want, end of story. But in a way, it’s interesting that you feel the way you do.

‘You think it was your mother’s death made Bob what he is? I don’t quite see it like that. I believe that his children are his driving forces, starting with you, of course. He wants you all to be proud of him. Even on the occasions when he’s had to put his life on the line, and there may have been more of those than you know about, he’s done it because he couldn’t bear you to think that he was afraid to. When I first met him, you were all he talked about. Even when he was in relationships you were the absolute centre of his universe.’

Alex smiled. ‘I think I knew that. When I was thirteen I actually told him I didn’t fancy another woman in our kitchen full-time. Can you believe that?’

He laughed. ‘Of you, sure I can.’

‘It was when he was with Alison Higgins. . not that I had anything against her, but there was someone else in the picture at that time and I didn’t see her as suitable, not at all.’

‘Was there? I don’t remember that. Mind you, I was a new kid in town then.’

‘Weren’t you just! You and Mario too. I look back and I realise how young you were, the pair of you. I didn’t think so then, though. You were very glamorous to a thirteen year old.’

‘Come on,’ Martin protested, ‘we’re not that old yet.’

‘You’re eternally young, my darling, both of you. Hey,’ she asked, spontaneously, ‘do you think Mario ever had a driving force?’

‘I know he did; he told me once. He joined the police to show both sides of his family that he could succeed at something that had no connection with their businesses.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ve never thought about it, but if I did. . You? My kids?’

‘Never Karen?’

He frowned. ‘No, I’m afraid not. Probably I should never have married her, or she should have known better than to marry me.’

‘That’s not true. It seemed right to you both at the time, so no regrets.’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any. I have two lovely kids to show for it.’

‘Now that is true, and they are.’ Her face became solemn. ‘But Andy,’ she ventured, ‘do you never worry about people saying that you just used Karen as a brood mare, and then came back to me?’

‘Why, does that worry you?’

She pursed her lips, an odd gesture for her. ‘I’m under no illusions about what people think of me, especially women. One, who shall be nameless, called me a disgrace to my gender, right to my face.’

‘Then she’d better remain fucking nameless or I’ll be having words with her.’

‘Don’t worry, I had some myself. I threatened her with a defamation action.’ She winked. ‘Being a lawyer has its advantages sometimes. But if she’d said anything about you, I’d have needed one myself, for I’d have laid her as broad as she was long.’

He reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t you worry yourself. That thing has been said, in fact, that I just used Karen, but to her, not to me, at a women’s gathering up in Perth. She told me about it, and she was spitting nails when she did.’

‘Oh, that’s awful. What tactless bitch did that?’

‘No idea, but I do know she had her tail docked. Karen told her that, if anything, she was the user not me, because she’d wanted children more than I did. She even told the unfortunate lady that she, Karen, that is, was in your debt, because she’d always wanted to resume her career eventually, and as a serving chief constable’s wife, no way could she have done that.’

‘It would be nice if she really believed that,’ Alex murmured.

Andy sighed. ‘Look, you’re never going to be her best pal, but she’s okay about you. If she wasn’t, she’d give me grief about you being around Danielle and Robert, or about us taking them to Bob’s place at Gullane for the weekend. She doesn’t mind, Alex; that’s the honest truth. And also, she really is loving being back at work.’

If Detective Sergeant Karen Neville had put her mind to it, she could have hated Alexis Skinner; not for stealing her husband, but for dumping him when she had and throwing him back into the Edinburgh man pool, just as she herself was rebounding hard from a disastrous relationship.