Quintin Jardine - Lethal Intent

Skinner shook his head. 'I really do not like the sound of that,' he muttered.

'Neither did the Home Secretary; hence the pressure of his finger on the panic button.'

'Merry Christmas, Scotland. Where did the Dutch trucker drop his passengers and their load?'

'At a car park in a shopping mall to the east of the city.'

'Not in daylight, surely.'

'No. He made some deliveries during the day, with them hidden in the truck, then dropped them off at two in the morning. They were met by a fifth man, driving a Transit van.'

'When did this happen?'

'Just under four weeks ago.'

The big deputy chief constable gazed at Sewell for several long seconds. 'And you didn't think to tell us?' he asked quietly.

'We were ordered not to,' Amanda Dennis replied. 'When our sources gave us this information, we took it to the Home Secretary.'

'The English Home Secretary,' Skinner reminded her, acidly.

'I didn't take you for a rabid nationalist, Bob,' she retorted.

'I'm not, but we do have a devolved government here, although sometimes I wonder whether you people have noticed.'

'Be that as it may,' Sewell intervened, 'we were dealing with a perceived threat to the national security of the UK as whole, and when that happens the Home Secretary is the person we consult. He consulted the Defence Secretary, then gave us direct orders to carry out a covert operation to trace and detain these men, by whatever means we thought necessary. He stressed the word "covert", and said that no other agencies were to be advised or involved, unless it was absolutely necessary.'

'Given all that, how did Jingle Bell and your man here become involved?'

'Amanda and I decided between us that Mr Bell was the necessary means.'

'He's one of my assets,' said Dennis. 'Or he's an agent of ours, if you prefer that term. He has been since the National Crime Squad caught him in Birmingham on the wrong side of a drugs operation in which we were also involved. Bob, it's our experience of these Albanian gangsters that they're incapable of behaving quietly. Wherever they go, they display an irresistible urge to muscle in on the local action. The problem is that, thanks to you and your colleagues, there isn't much local action in Edinburgh. So the DG decided that my section should create some, in the hope of flushing them out. We set Bell up to create a small drugs operation in your friend's club and in other sites around the city that he considered vulnerable. Sean, who is a member of my section, was his handling officer. The mistake the assistant DG and I made, for which we do apologise, was in interpreting the Home Secretary's order too strictly. We should have told you, or DCI McIlhenney, what was going on.'

Skinner stared at her. 'You're telling us that two of your guys were pushing hard drugs on our patch?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'Does your statutory remit cover that sort of activity?'

'That's grey, but it's another reason for our not involving you… to avoid compromising you, so to speak.' She sighed. 'The whole thing was a misjudgement. Again, all I can do is apologise.'

The DCC frowned. 'Apology accepted, as long as there's no blame attached to my people for doing their job properly.'

'None at all; in fact we compliment them on it.'

'Speak for yourself, Mandy,' Sean Green muttered, fingering the plaster on his nose, and breaking the tension with a grin. 'I'm sorry about the blade, by the way. At first I thought your guy might have been an Albanian, but I could tell by the look of him that he wasn't, so I didn't try to stick him, honest. If I had been trying…'

Skinner's eyes fell on him like two blocks of ice. 'You wouldn't be here today, boy,' he said, slowly, in a voice not much above a whisper. He turned back to Dennis. 'They're out of the picture now, you know that. Too many people in the club saw him being filled in and Jingle being lifted.'

'Absolutely. I accept that we can't put them back in. That's why we're here.'

'Cap in bloody hand, eh.'

She nodded, and smiled, wryly. 'I have to accept that description.'

Bandit Mackenzie raised a hand. 'Permission to speak, sir?' he asked.

The DCC chuckled. 'Aye, go on then, as long as it's constructive.'

'It's a question really, sir, for Sean. After you and Bell were done, when we had you in the interview room, why the hell did you keep stringing us along? You must have known that it would all end up at a meeting like this and that I'd find out about you in the end. So why didn't you just switch off the tape and spill it?'

Green looked at him, through his puffy eyes. 'If it had been just you and me, I probably would have, but your sergeant was there. All due respect, but Mandy would have crucified me if I'd talked in front of her.'

'On a barbed-wire cross,' his section head confirmed.

'So,' Skinner exclaimed, 'with your team out of the picture, what are you asking of us?'

'That you take over from them: find the Albanians, determine what it is they're up to, and remove them as a threat.'

'By any means necessary?'

Dennis looked at him, but said nothing. In the silence, Rudolph Sewell leaned forward. 'It may be,' he murmured smoothly, 'that once you have secured them you would prefer to hand them over to us.'

'And it may not,' the big policeman retorted. 'I've just lost a terrorist gang, identified and arrested by my people, to the Americans; that's not going to happen again. Let's cross that one when we reach it, though. Meantime, how much scope do we have?'

'You operate under the same legislation and codes of practice that we do,' Dennis replied.

'What about electronic surveillance? We'll need legal authority for wiretaps.'

'You have it: you'll be our agents in this operation and the Home Secretary has given us blanket authorisation already.'

'How wide is the loop? Has the Home Secretary changed his mind and advised our First Minister, or his own opposite number in Scotland, our Justice Minister?'

'No, and I'm told by my director general that he doesn't plan to.'

Skinner stared across the table, 'I've got to have discretion to do that if I think it's necessary, without reference to you.'

Sewell drew in a deep breath. 'Oh, I don't know about that,' he retorted. 'We're the principals in this operation; I don't think we can delegate to that extent.'

'You weren't listening to me,' the DCC told him. 'I said that I must have that discretion. I'm not negotiating here. You may be his number two, but I know your director general; I have done for longer than you've been in post, and maybe even in the service. I make one phone call, I will get what I need and you will be overruled. Let me tell you, within these walls,' he glanced at his fellow police officers, 'why I must have the ability to widen the loop if I need to. Our First Minister has decided that he's going to take overall control of the police service into his own tight wee grasp. He's persuaded his coalition partners that it's in the public interest to give him the effective power to promote or dismiss every senior copper in Scotland, and the bill to enable that will be published very soon. Already we're coming under closer scrutiny than ever before. Mr Murtagh has appointed a former colleague of ours to be his eyes and ears, and he's making his presence felt. I don't want him blundering in on this operation by accident'

'Would you like us to persuade the Home Office to advise Mr Murtagh and Ms de Marco?' asked Dennis.

'No. Leave it to me to tell them, if I judge it to be necessary.'

She looked at Sewell, who nodded. 'Okay, Bob,' she conceded, 'that's agreed. Do you want anything else?'

'Yes. I want you on the ground here.'

She smiled again. 'So does Rudy, but thank you for inviting me.'

'And I want the ability to call in special forces the moment that we identify an imminent threat'