Quintin Jardine - Lethal Intent

He patted his stomach. 'Why get fat just because it's winter?'

She shuddered. 'God, you self-control freaks! I remember you when you were a porker. You weren't sanctimonious then.'

It was true, he conceded to himself. He and Debbie Wrigley did go that far back, to the days when he had been a beat cop and she had been an assistant manager in the Clydesdale Bank. He had taken a statement from her after a bungled robbery… as most of them were… and they had struck up an instant friendship.

They had both moved on since then, he through the ranks and into the Special Branch office, she to the National Mutual, where she was a general manager with responsibility for the private-client division.

'Did you order us drinks?' he asked her.

She nodded. 'A glass of red wine for me, and a spritzer for you.' She pulled a face. 'A spritzer, for Christ's sake! What happened to the three or four pints of lager? Are you up yourself, or what? Is this what happens when you marry an actress?'

He grinned. 'No. It's what happens when you decide that you'd like to live to see your kids grow up, and maybe even your grandkids.'

As he spoke, their first courses and their drinks arrived at their table.

'So what's the honour?' Debbie asked, as she picked up her fork to attack her calamares Romana. 'It's got to be serious if you're paying.'

'It is,' he said, testing the temperature of his minestrone. 'I'm doing a heavy vetting job on one of your clients. I want to know everything about him without him or anyone else finding out.'

She whistled. 'You don't ask small favours, do you?'

He smiled at her, cheerfully. 'No, I only give them.'

She looked him dead in the eye. 'I take it this is in the national interest.'

'My colleagues and I think it is.'

'So who's the client?'

McIlhenney waited until she had forked a large piece of battered squid into her mouth. 'Tommy Murtagh,' he murmured, then smiled as her eyes bulged and her round face reddened.

'To…' she gasped. 'How did you know that he was a client of ours?'

'Your manager in Dundee was best man at his wedding; call it an educated guess. Will you do it?'

'Are you serious?'

'Never more so.'

'I'd be putting my arse on the line, never mind my career.'

'They'll both be in good hands.'

She looked at him, for a long time. 'Well, you make damn sure you don't drop them,' she said.

Excitement and Willie Haggerty did not go hand in hand, yet as he stood in the DCC's office, the assistant chief constable looked about to burst. Skinner could not keep his amusement from showing. Even Amanda Dennis was smiling.

'It's great when we get a result, Willie, isn't it? I heard an author say once that the best bit about his job comes when something appears on the page as he's writing it that not even he expects. It's the same for us detectives. When we walk into an interview and something happens that we weren't looking for at all, we get a buzz like… Ah, you know what I mean.'

Haggerty beamed. 'It's even better when the guy who gives you your break isn't even in the interview in the first place. If young Bulent hadn't come into the kitchen for the salads when he did, I'd never have known any better.' He paused. 'How do we find out about this Frankie Jakes character?'

'Not through the SDEA, that's for sure,' Skinner replied. 'They'd want to know why we were asking, and since we've agreed to keep them out of it, that could be awkward. I've got a contact in the National Criminal Intelligence Service; I can try her in confidence. If he's a small-change guy, though, they might not know too much. While they're looking, let's ask nearer home.' He picked up a phone on his desk and dialled a number. 'Bandit? You're in, good. This is the DCC; come up to my office, now.'

The three waited. 'I heard about Pringle's girl,' Haggerty said eventually, breaking the silence. 'How is she?' he asked Skinner.

'Gravely ill, and unlikely to get any better. I checked with the hospital just before you got here. The consultant's due to meet with Dan and Elma any time now, to give them a full rundown on her condition.'

There was a rap on the door, and then it opened: Bandit Mackenzie breezed into the room. 'Yes, sir,' he exclaimed, then saw the others. 'Sorry, sirs and ma'am. What can I do for you?'

'Do you still have friends in Glasgow?' Skinner asked. 'By that I mean do you have friends in the CID at street level, that you can trust to be discreet?'

'One or two, boss. Gwennie Dell, my old sergeant in the northern division, works out of Baird Street now. Why?'

'I want background on someone, a bloke who goes by the name of Frankie Jakes. He's a dealer who works around Partick, in and around a pub called the Johnny Groat.'

'Why are we interested in him?'

'Because we've got a confirmed sighting of Samir Bajram in Jakes's company,' said Haggerty, with a hint of pride.

'Where did this come from?'

'You don't need to know that.'

'Do you know Jakes yourself, Bandit?' asked Skinner.

'Never heard of him, sir.'

'Do you know or are you known in the pub I mentioned?'

Mackenzie shook his head. 'I've never worked in Partick, and I sure as hell wouldn't drink there out of choice.'

'Good, because I want you to start now. Use your contact through there to get info on Jakes and known associates, and get her to show you mug-shots if they have them, so you'll recognise them.'

'What do I tell her if she asks why I want this?'

'Tell her more or less the truth, that something's come up in Edinburgh that Jakes is linked into and that it's very hush. What you don't tell her is that you'll be hanging about the Johnny Groat this weekend, waiting for Samir or one or more of the others to show up again.'

'Alone?'

Skinner almost replied, 'No, I'll be with you.' It was on the very tip of his tongue. Then he thought of promises made, of a football match, of Deep Sea World, and he had a vision of a small boy's hurt if they were broken. He frowned. 'Your wives will both hate me for it, but you'd better take Neil with you. I reckon that Mavis might attract too much attention in a boozer like that. Besides, if you do get into bother…'

'He can handle himself, then?'

'You'd better believe it. But he can also shoot straight. We have to assume that the Albanians will be armed, so you guys will be too.'

Bandit grinned. 'If we have to shoot somebody that'll kind of blow our cover, won't it?'

'You let me worry about that. But please, try not to. If Samir shows up, do no more than tail him; if all of them appear, get word to me, or to Amanda, but otherwise do nothing without further orders.'

The DCC saw Haggerty's frown. 'What if they do get rumbled, Bob, and all the team are there?'

'Why should they?'

'I could go too.'

Skinner chuckled. 'Willie, I've seen you at firearms practice. If you fired a warning shot in there you'd miss the ceiling. Besides, your mug's well known in Glasgow; you've probably lifted half the guys in that pub in your time.'

'Could we get a few SAS in there in plain clothes?'

'Maybe we could,' Dennis conceded, 'but do you really want to fill the place full of strangers?'

'Maybe not,' the ACC conceded.

'Plus, it would be overkill,' said Skinner. 'Let's be clear this will be an intelligence-gathering operation, no more. If these guys have jumped to Glasgow, against expectation, the objective is to find out where they're based. Once we know that, we can take them out at a time of our choosing, hopefully when we've identified the fifth guy.'

'Frankie Jakes couldn't have been the fifth guy, could he?' asked Mackenzie.

'Unlikely. If it was him, why did he come to Edinburgh when they could have jumped off the flower truck in Glasgow earlier in the day?'