Quintin Jardine: Lethal Intent

He hung up and watched Aileen as she read, his smile widening with her eyes. When she was finished she laid the papers back on his desk. 'Bob, this is amazing. How did you get it all?'

'How can I put that?' he replied. 'Let's just say it was good detective work by some people I can trust when the chips are down. Does it add to that list of options you mentioned earlier?'

'Oh, it does,' she said eagerly. 'Very definitely it does.'

'Honey,' he said, 'that's just the tip of the iceberg. Let me give you a little more background on the man who leads our nation.'

She was awake when he returned home just before eight, in the kitchen making breakfast for herself and the children, while Trish readied them for school. As he came through the door, she thought he looked more tired and dishevelled than she had ever seen him and her heart went out to him. 'Was it bad?' she asked him.

He nodded. 'It was worse than bad, worse than terrible. I'm sorry to be coming in like the cat, but I've been up all night being debriefed.'

'In the circumstances, I won't make the obvious wisecrack. But don't let the kids see you looking like that. Go shave and shower; sleep if you have to.'

'That's a luxury I can't afford today. I don't look that bad, do I?'

'Yes, but that's not what I'm protecting them from. That looks to me like blood on your pants.'

He looked down and saw that she was right. There were dark stains on each of his knees: the blood of Adam Arrow, his dead, anonymous friend, unmourned except by him, and he hoped by a family somewhere, who would be told a discreet lie. He rushed out of the kitchen and upstairs, into his bedroom, where he stripped naked, tearing his clothes off and shoving them into a bag, to be burned in the garden incinerator at the first opportunity.

It was only when he came out of the bathroom in his robe, still towelling his hair dry, that he realised that all of Sarah's familiar things had gone from the dressing-table: her perfumes, her lotions, her potions, and her most personal family photographs, which she had kept there. The bed had not been slept in either: the book that he had tossed on to the duvet after spreading it the morning before was still there, undisturbed. The scene began to answer the questions that had dogged his journey home.

He dressed, casually, and went downstairs: the house was its usual blaze of pre-school activity, with a special excitement because, finally, Mum was home. Yet as soon as he stepped back into the kitchen he realised that there was an edge to it. At the sight of him, Seonaid's eyes lit up, she screamed, 'Daddy!' and rushed over to him as fast as her toddler's legs would carry her.

If Sarah saw the slight, she gave no sign of it, but Bob knew her well enough to realise that the hurt would be there. He snatched up his daughter, and asked her, teasing, 'Have you hugged your mother this morning?' She giggled and tried to bury her face in his shoulder, but he turned her chin gently upwards. 'It's time you did, then. Let's both do it.'

He drew Sarah to him in a clumsy, three-sided embrace, from which he quietly withdrew, leaving her holding her daughter, who threw her arms round her neck and squeezed as hard as she could.

'Have you been teaching her a choke hold?' she asked, but her eyes were grateful nonetheless.

As the boys ate breakfast and Sarah fed Seonaid, Bob made his own, an unhealthy and untypical sausage, black pudding, bacon and eggs. James Andrew watched him jealously: his personal larder was being raided.

Sarah drove them to school. There was still snow on the ground, but it had started to melt, and she was all too aware of the slush-ball havoc that her younger son could cause had the boys been allowed to walk. When she returned, Bob was watching the BBC all-day news channel, seeing, for the first time, how the attack was being reported.

He saw the shots from the night before, and more live from the scene, as the reporter delivered a monologue to camera. He saw Clarence Tallent in the harsh media spotlights, and then Aileen, her name misspelled by the caption writer. He saw the prince, library footage of him in his red student robes. And then he saw himself, the smiling official photograph from the force's annual report, and heard himself described as the hero of the hour.

'Thirty seconds later and it would have been zero, not hero, pal.'

'But it wasn't,' said Sarah, from behind him. 'You came through for him.'

'Took a hell of a risk with his life,' he told her. 'I took a shot in the dark, literally, at one of the guys who was holding him. I got him, but I could just as easily have hit the prince.'

'And if you hadn't taken the risk?'

'They'd have got away, but I suppose the boat might have been intercepted.'

'The boat was destroyed.'

'Was it?' This was news to him, although no surprise.

'They said so earlier; it and the bigger boat that it was meeting. The RAF blew them up; no survivors.'

'Of course not,' he whispered.

'You were well known before,' she said, 'but now you're famous, nationally, internationally.'

'Will it make it more difficult to leave me?' he asked.

'Who said it was ever going to be easy?'

'You will, though; that's what you came back to tell me.'

'Yes, Bob.' She smiled at him, gently. 'Let me guess, you had a hunch?'

'Something like that.'

'I admire you,' she said, 'more than anyone I've ever known, and it would be great to go on being your wife and bask in whatever glory is coming your way. But I can't: because I don't love you, and I don't belong with you. That's the bottom line… and it's mutual, isn't it? Go on, admit it. I'm offering you the easy way out; all you have to do is sit there, silent, and let me be seen as deserting you. But don't, please. Tell me what you feel.'

'Don't worry: I won't let it be that way. I don't love you either, Sarah, not any more.'

'Don't cop out now,' she exclaimed, still smiling. 'You never did. Admit it, officer.'

'Not the way I should have, no. When I met you, I was a flawed, lonely guy.'

She looked at him, sadly. 'Bob, you still are.'

'Maybe, but you took it away for a while.'

'And, in the process, became flawed and lonely myself.'

'How's leaving me going to help that?'

'It'll give me a chance to find someone who does love me, the way it's supposed to be.'

'Mr Right, you mean? Watch out for that bastard: usually Mrs Right's expecting him home by midnight.'

She laughed and sat on the sofa beside him. He switched off the television and turned to look at her. 'What happened last night?' she asked him, quietly.

'You saw on the news. Some Albanians tried to hijack the prince and hold him for ransom; Neil, Mackenzie and I, and four soldiers, stopped them.'

'Yes,' she whispered, 'but what else happened?'

'Isn't that enough?'

'There's more. You're wearing it like a cloak.'

'Two of my soldiers were killed. I sent them to a place where someone was waiting.'

'But you didn't know that.'

'I should have guessed, though. I'll never make a general.'

'You are a general,' Sarah retorted. 'But there's still something you're not telling me.'

'Maybe I don't want to; maybe I can't, for your sake.'

'You've told me things in the past. I'm your doctor as well as your wife, remember: you're suffering from post-traumatic shock, I want to know the cause, and I'm bound to keep it confidential.'

'Okay,' he said abruptly. 'I'll tell you one more dark secret, never to be repeated. That attempted kidnapping last night was actually a plot by some right-wing intelligence officers who shared a paranoid fear of what might happen to this country if that boy becomes king. So they used an MI6 asset called Peter Bassam, who'd worked for them in the Balkans till they had to pull him out. He recruited the Albanians, sheltered them in Edinburgh, and kept them fed and quiet until the time was right to attack. We got on their track and put a man in under cover to find them. He was betrayed, and on Saturday night he was murdered. My two soldiers weren't ambushed by the Albanians, but by one of the plotters, who was in St Andrews to make sure that everything went according to plan. When it didn't, he tried to kill the prince, but I spotted him and I dropped him first. Before he died, he told me most of it. The rest of it we got out of an MI6 operative called Miles Hassett, one of the plotters, who was sent up, right into my very office, to find out how much I knew.' He stopped. 'How's that, Doctor?'