Autographs in the Rain

1

Christmas comes early in London. So does closing time.
The couple stood on the edge of the pavement and looked along Oxford Street; it was just over an hour before midnight, the lights were shining, their tableaux stretching all the way along towards Marble Arch. Buses and taxis flowed along Regent Street towards the Circus, business picking up again as the pubs began to empty.
'Jeez,' the tall man murmured. 'It's a shallow and inhospitable place, this. Damn near two months to Christmas and the fairy lights are on show already. Yet try and get a drink after eleven and you've no chance. To paraphrase an old Frankie song, London by night is a God awful sight. .. even on a Friday.'
'Come on now,' his companion laughed. In her high heels she stood only three or four inches shorter than his six feet two. She was golden- haired, stunningly beautiful in classic contrast to his rugged, life-formed features, and her pale blue eyes seemed to reflect the sparkle of the pageant light. Her voice was full and mellow, that of a contralto in her prime, refined and with the faintest trace, if one listened closely enough, of a Scottish accent. 'Glasgow was just the same when we were youngsters,' she said, 'but without the bright lights.'
'I never cared, when you were around.'
'No,' she countered quickly, a chuckle in her throat, 'nor when the other one was, either. You made your choice; and from the way you were talking about your daughter tonight, you've never regretted it.'
Suddenly, for the first time that evening, he was sombre. He hunched his broad shoulders inside his Harbour jacket, his sigh expelling a great cloud of breath into the frosty night. 'Regret is your enemy,' he said. 'If you give in to it, it can destroy you. It's a waste of time anyway; you can't change the past.'
'But would you, if you could?' she asked him.
'Why? Would you? The way you say that makes it sound as if I dumped you, yet I've always understood that our breaking up was ajoint decision.'
She reached up and adjusted his tie, looking at the knot, rather than into his eyes. 'Then, sir, that just shows you how good I am at my job. Oh, I didn't make a fuss when it happened. I was a big girl; I put on my mature face and agreed with all the common sense you talked.' She put a fingertip between her breasts. 'But in here, my little heart was breaking.'
'I'm sorry. I really am,' he replied sincerely, 'but I still think it was for the best.'
'So do I, now; no doubt about it. But back while it was happening. ..' She smiled up at him, with a flash of mischief in her eye. 'Did you love me, then?'
He nodded, his steely hair glinting under the street lights. 'Yup.'
She opened her mouth to respond but broke off as a pedestrian paused, and turned to stare at her. The man seemed to hesitate, then carried on his way. She looked back at him, the interruption over. 'But not as much as you loved her?' It was a statement as much as a question.
'It wasn't just that. I loved her, sure. ..although to be absolutely truthful, I liked you more. Ahhh ...' He paused for a few seconds, gazing up at the night. 'Look, Lou, I don't care about religion or any of that stuff, just about what's right and what's wrong. My first personal commandment is loyalty. I've broken it twice in my life, and found that I hated myself for it, on both occasions.
'The way I came to see it back then was that I made a promise when I got engaged. If I had broken it off, I couldn't have hacked the guilt, and sooner or later, I'd have blamed it on you.'
'And I'd have hated that, for sure,' she conceded. She chuckled again, deep and warm, at his frown. 'Don't worry, I haven't spent the last twenty- five years pining for my lost love. I've found a few since then: two marriages, three serious affairs. ..not bad for a wee girl from Bearsden. I've never felt a pang of guilt, either. We're totally different personalities, you see: yours is set in concrete and mine's tossing about on life's restless ocean.
'I'd have left you by the time I was twenty-one. For sure.'
She paused as a red bus roared by, close to the kerb. 'When was your other fall from grace?' she asked him.
'A couple of years back,' he answered. 'My second wife and I had a major fall-out; she went back to the States, and I got involved with someone else. We got over it, though. We found out that we mattered too much to each other to let go.'
She smiled again. 'So there's no point in my asking you back to my place for a night-cap?'
He raised an eyebrow at her question, and glanced away, out into the street. 'That would depe ...'
In mid-sentence, he stopped, threw his left arm round her waist and flung himself sideways, pulling her with him as he dived behind an abandoned newspaper stand. They heard the blast behind them before they hit the ground, and the scream of tyres as a dark coloured saloon accelerated away down Regent Street.
He was on his feet again in a second. 'Wait here,' he told the woman, then ran off down the street after the car, trying to catch a clear view of its number-plate, only to see it disappear round the curve in the broad street, heading for Piccadilly Circus. She too was standing once again as he returned to their safe haven. No one had come to her aid; indeed, none of the few people who had been passing at the time were anywhere to be seen.
She stared at him, bewildered, but apparently not in the least frightened. 'You swept me off my feet once before,' she exclaimed, 'but never like that. What was that about?'
He glared back down Regent Street. 'When someone shoots at me,' he said, tersely, '1 tend to get out of the way!'
Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes seemed to flash as they widened. 'Someone shot at you?'
'It's happened before,' he told her dryly. 'Didn't you see the gun?'
'I heard a bang, but that was all. What was it?'
'The guy in that car had a shotgun. I just happened to be looking that way as he stuck it out the window and took a bead on me.'
'But who would want to shoot you?'
His mouth twisted in a grimace as he unfastened a pocket of his jacket and took out a hand-phone. 'More people than you could shake a stick at, my dear,' he murmured as he punched in the police emergency number.

2

'Do you ever get enraged about anything, Sammy?'
'What?'
'Enraged, I said. As in, really steamed up with anger.'
He looked at her as she stood there, all lips and legs. 'Enraged? No, not so's you'd notice, anyway. Now if you'd said engorged. ..'
'But I didn't. ..' Ruth frowned at him severely.
He grinned back. 'Why d'you ask, anyway? Am I beginning to bore you, Ms McConnell?'
She shook her head, making her long, glossy hair ripple like a shampoo commercial. 'Not yet, Sergeant, not yet. All the same, you are getting predictable. You're the easiest going man I've ever been out with.'
'A typical copper, in other words.'
'Absolutely a-typical as far as I've seen. Where I work it's like a madhouse at times; I've never seen so many stressed-out people.'
He looked at her with a touch of scepticism in his eyes. 'Such as? I know the Big Man can go a bit stratospheric from time to time, but the Chief's an even-tempered sort, and DI McIlhenney's okay too, isn't he?'
'Up to a point.' She hesitated. 'I shouldn't tell tales out of school, but. ..' She frowned. 'No, better not.'
'Aw, come on, Ruthie,' he exclaimed. 'You can't do that to me. Honest to Christ, I don't know. You seem to be making a career out of leading me on then slamming the bloody door in my face.'
'What do you mean by that?' She raised an eyebrow, provoking him even further.
'You know bloody well what I mean.'
'No. Spell it out?'
'You know.'
'No. Tell me.'
'Okay, we've been going out for. ..how long? ...six months now, yet , we've never...'
'So?' she asked, archly.
'So most people, most couples. ..'
'Shag on their first date?'
'No, I wouldn't go that far ...'
'Well neither would I.'
He drew the car to a halt in a lay-by and switched off the engine. 'Fine,' he murmured, turning to her, 'but after this long, I'd have thought that our relationship might have. ..moved up a gear, shall we say.'
'You can say it if you like, Detective Sergeant Pye. But can you tell me why it should? Do you think you're God's gift or something?'
'No,' he protested, 'but it's not as if you ...' He stopped himself short, and bit his lip. Fortunately, she laughed.
'...as if I haven't been round the block a few times? Was that it?'
'No! I wouldn't be that crude, Ruthie. But you've had other relationships, okay: that's all I was going to say.'
'I didn't jump into bed with any of them either, no one long-term, at least. Sammy, the first time I screwed someone on a first date I was nineteen. Two days later I realised that I didn't really fancy him that much, but it took me six months and a lot of hassle to get shot of him. Ever since then, I've been careful to distinguish between short- and long-term things.
'There was a time when I had the hots for Andy Martin; given the chance I'd have shagged his brains out, but that's all he'd have wanted anyway. If I'd slept with you right at the start, then most probably it would have been all over by now. The fact that I'm still making up my mind; well, that's got to be good hasn't it? Unless, of course you're only after a quick legover yourself?'
'Which I'm not, as you well know.'
'In that case, trust me for a bit longer; being friends is more important than the other, believe me.'
'I know that,' he conceded. 'Karen and I were only ever pals, for all that half the force seemed to think.'
She laughed. 'Which is maybe just as well, given that you work for DCS Martin and that she's Mrs Martin now.'
He capitulated. 'Okay, I apologise,' he said. 'You are not a tease, and you have our best interests at heart ...but you still led me on with that remark back there about stress in the Command corridor. Come on; I'm no security risk. Has Big Bob got another crisis on?'
'No,' she answered quietly. 'In both the operational and domestic senses, DCC Skinner is going along relatively quietly at the moment, thanks. But remember. I don't just work for him.'
Sammy Pye's eyebrows rose, as he grasped her meaning. 'Ah, Mr Theodore Chase, our new ACC Ops. Is he stirring things up, then?'
She looked at him. 'Not a word outside this car, mind you, but is he ever. "Come back ACC Elder," that's the word around my office.'
'Why did Jim Elder go in the first place? It was a real shock when he chucked it.'
'I have no idea. He just walked into my room one Monday morning a few months back and told me that he was leaving at the end of that week. No reason, no nothing.'
'Didn't Bob Skinner let anything slip?'
'Not a whisper. And if he wants me to know something he always tells me, so I know better than to ask.'
She sighed. 'Whatever happened, now we've got the new guy! God, he's Supercop, if ever there was such a creature. You know the first thing he did?' Fired up, she answered her own question. 'He appointed Jack Good as his exec., without consulting anyone.'
pye gasped in surprise. 'Eh? He just did it? He pulled him out of his other job just like that?'
'That's right. Jim Elder never had an exec., but that didn't bother Ted Chase. He'd been through the door for no more than a fortnight before he had one. The worst thing of all was that he did it while the Chief was on holiday. Mr Skinner came in one morning and found Jack Good in Neil McIlhenney's office. When he asked him what he was doing there and Good told him, he went straight to the ACC's room. I was there at the time; Mr Skinner asked him what it was all about and Mr Chase as good as told him it was none of his business.
'For a moment the DCC looked as if he was about to explode, but he just turned and walked out. Next day he had Good moved out of Neil's office into a room of his own. ..Neil can't stand Jack Good. ..but it was on the floor below, and Mr Chase complained to the Chief when he came back. So a CID man was moved out to make room for him.'
Pye frowned. 'Remind me. Where did Chase come from?'
'He was an Assistant Chief in Cumbria. The job was advertised throughout Britain and he applied. Between you and me, I was surprised that Mr Martin didn't go for it.'
'I wasn't, but never mind. Jesus, does this guy have any idea who he's taking on, falling out with Bob Skinner?'
Ruth shrugged. 'If he does, he doesn't care. You're not going to believe what the latest is. Chase has written a paper for the police board; no one asked him to do it, he just did. In it, he argues that the executive structure of the force is wrong, and that given the nature of the Chief Constable's duties, his designated deputy from among the officers within the command ranks should be someone with extensive experience across the board.'
'Meaning him?'
'You guessed it. He also pointed out that he's been twice as long in the Chief Officer rank as Mr Skinner has.'
'He's after Big Bob's job?'
'Correct. But I think that ultimately, he's after the Chief's.'
'The man's mad, then. Mind you, who's going to take any notice of him?'
'The Joint Police Board might, for a start. The DCC has his enemies on that body; more than that, he thinks that Mr Chase has a direct route to them. He's found out that he has a cousin back in Cumbria who's a Labour MP at Westminster.'
'What's the Chief saying about it?'
Ruth pursed her lips and glanced at him. 'Nothing,' she said. 'He's playing it by the book; when Mr Chase wrote his paper, he sent it to him formally, with a covering memo asking him to put it to the Board. The Chief replied on paper, asking whether he was sure he wanted to do that. Mr Chase replied and said that he was.
'A couple of days later, the three of them. ..the Chief, Mr Skinner and Mr Chase. ..discussed it in private. Afterwards the Boss told me that the Chief thanked Chase and said that he would consider at some length whether it should go to the Board. It's on the shelf for the moment, as far as I can gather.'
'Has the Big Man said anything to you?'
'Only that if Chase thinks he's taking orders from him he's crazy.' She grinned. 'That wasn't quite what he said; I've left out the adjectives.'
Sammy whistled and restarted the car. 'I see what you meant about stress levels in your corridor. ACC Chase is either very brave, or very stupid.'
'Neither,' Ruth replied at once. 'He's simply ambitious. Possibly the most ambitious man I've ever met; he wants to be a Chief in a major force and to collect the automatic knighthood that goes with it. It's written all over him. As for his wife. ..'
She stopped in mid-sentence, slamming a metaphorical door on the subject. 'Come on, let's get under way again. I want to get to Uncle John's before dark.'
She smiled at him again, then reached out and ruffled his sandy hair. 'This is moving our relationship forward, you know. Quite significantly at that. If I take someone to meet my favourite uncle it's a sort of sign. ..if only you could read it.'