Quintin Jardine - Lethal Intent

She nodded. 'We could call this official. As well as wanting to see you, I've got news for you about the bill.'

'Tell me he's going to drop it.'

'Fat chance. No, the First Minister has told me that he's giving me the honour of introducing it in the Parliament next Tuesday. The statutory three-week study period will be up on Monday and the Presiding Officer will clear it for presentation and publication. Tommy's decided that it isn't going to be his sponsored legislation but mine, even though I'm opposed to it and had no hand in its preparation. Do you still think I should stay in office?'

Bob whistled. 'He is boxing you in, and no mistake. If you introduce the legislation, then even if you do succeed him at some time in the future, you'll look an idiot if you try to repeal it. Should you quit? If your conscience demands it, I suppose you should.'

She reached out and laid a fingertip on his chest. 'If I do, Tommy's machine will leak the story that you and I are having an affair and that you talked me into it. He told me that, flat out, this afternoon. If I let that happen, how would your wife react to it? She'd be as humiliated as you and me.'

His face twisted into something close to a snarl. 'How the hell did a nasty little bastard like him ever come to lead this country?'

'Or lead my party for that matter,' Aileen added.

He reached out and cupped her face in his big hand. 'I'll make you a promise,' he said. 'I'm going to have him; maybe not before next Tuesday, but before too long. When I bring him down, they'll hear the crash all over Scotland.'

'You be careful,' she warned him.

'I am being careful, so much so that I'm going to chuck you out now. You've walked into the middle of something you're better not knowing about until after it's done.'

He rose, and led her to the door. When he opened it, she saw, waiting outside, a big, heavily built man with black hair and flashing eyes. 'My next meeting,' he said. 'Aileen, let me introduce Detective Superintendent Mario McGuire.'

In his student days, when his world was young and he had dreamed of becoming a broadsheet journalist, uncovering hidden truths and holding them up for the world to see, Sean Green had bridged the gap between malnutrition and comfort by working as a waiter, five nights a week, in an Indian restaurant in Oxford.

There had been a customer, a regular, a bookish man with big thick-lens spectacles that from certain angles made him look like a frog. He had been a good tipper, always cash too, rather than credit card; naturally, the staff had paid him special attention. He was a visiting lecturer, or so the student waiter had come to understand, at Exeter College. Their paths had never crossed outside the restaurant, since Sean was enrolled at Balliol.

And so it came as a surprise when, in the week in which he had completed his final examinations, the man gave him a business card and an invitation to lunch in London a week later.

The 'lecturer' was Rudy Sewell, and two weeks later, to his complete amazement, Sean Green had found himself a member of the Security Service, MI5.

It had come full circle, he reflected, as he laid two bowls of iskembe before a man whose demeanour shouted 'police officer' and a woman who was clearly not his wife, wondering if they knew that they were about to consume a traditional Turkish hangover cure. Ten years on he was carrying plates once more, only this time the pay was much better and the job description much more interesting.

He was aware that Peter Bassam was watching him, but he felt relaxed in the knowledge that it was only his waiting technique that was under scrutiny. He had no worries about not completing his trial successfully, especially when he compared himself with his colleagues, who seemed barely competent. One was Asian, and the other looked like a reincarnation of his old student self.

Already he was able to judge that the Delight's reputation was built on the reliability of its kitchen, rather than front-of-house slickness. Diners did not go to Elbe Street to be astonished by the skills of the waiters: they went for the food, which was consistent if not spectacular. The chef was an evil-tempered man called Sukur, but unlike Bassam he was one hundred per cent Turkish, and seemed very proud of both his nation and his work. He ran his kitchen with a mouth that was as foul as his disposition, but he filled his orders on time.

Green nodded to his boss as he emerged from the kitchen with a plate of orkinos and mercimek, tuna with lentils, and another of sucuk and balka, sausage and beans; Bassam smiled back. 'No worries,' he thought.

He did not expect that his assignment would produce results. He regarded it as a long shot, no more than a line cast into a very large lake in the hope that its one and only fish might bite. So what if Bassam's origins were Albanian? The fact that he had anglicised his forename and chosen to serve Turkish food indicated, if anything, that he was trying very hard to distance himself from his homeland, and from its lawless reputation.

He knew that the man had a wife and family: their photograph was pinned to the wall, beside the till, and they lived in Northfield. He could tell, from one night's work, that the business was profitable. So, he asked himself, would he put it all at risk by harbouring a bunch of gangsters? Not that he had seen any sign of the Albanians during his first hours on the job.

However, he knew that Amanda Dennis would not be interested in his opinions, only in his findings. His thoughts were private and would be kept to himself until he was asked to voice them. In the meantime, he would keep his eyes open and try not to drop any plates.

Thankfully, there was a television set in the Johnny Groat. Bandit Mackenzie smiled when he saw it, even though it was tuned to an English second-division football match.

'What gives me the idea that you would watch anything on the box?' asked McIlhenney.

'I wouldn't,' his colleague replied amiably. 'But it means that I won't have to talk to you all night.' He rapped on the bar and waved to the fat, middle-aged barman, who had seemed to be doing his best to ignore his two new customers as he leaned on the counter in conversation with a blowsy blonde woman. 'Pint of IPA and a pint of lime and soda, when you've a minute,' he called out.

The steward scowled at him, but picked up two glasses and began to pour. 'Four pound twenty,' he announced, curtly, as he placed the drinks in front of them, managing to spill a little of both.

'Jesus,' Mackenzie muttered. 'Bloody dear lime and soda that!'

'This is a pub, pal, no' a cafe,' he retorted, as he took the detective's ten-pound note.

'Are those pies hot?' McIlhenney asked, pointing to a food-display unit at the back of the bar.

'They will be after a few turns in the microwave.'

'Let's have a couple, then. Take them off his tenner.'

'The bridies is better,' the blonde called out. 'The pies is shite.'

'I was hoping they were mutton,' McIlhenney replied. 'Make it bridies instead,' he told the barman, 'and give the lady another of hers.'

'Gin and tonic, thanks.' She slid off her stool and made her way round towards them. 'Havenae seen you two in here before.'

Looking at her, Mackenzie decided that he preferred the view from a distance. 'If you had,' he told her, 'you'd be psychic. We've never been here before.'

'What brings you now here, then?'

'We like drinking in middens.'

She glanced around the shoddy bar. 'Aye,' she agreed, 'it could do with a lick of paint. Still, there's worse; try south of the river.'

'We're not that stupid,' said McIlhenney.

'Are yis workin', like?' she asked.