Head Shot

1

The skull's empty eye-sockets seemed to be looking up at him from the white card, which the cabin attendant had given him. 'Welcome to Malaysia,' he murmured.
A significant part of Bob Skinner's police career had been spent pursuing the drug dealers who had threatened the social fabric of Edinburgh, the city that lay at the heart of his force's territory. The bigger they were, the more he hated them, with his strongest venom being reserved for those who peddled the most addictive substances in the most vulnerable areas, the places where the poverty trap was at its tightest, and where the perceived respite offered by spoon, flame and needle was, for some, an irresistible lure.
The heavier the sentences the Scottish High Court had handed down to those convicted, the wider had been his smile. But even he thought that the Pacific countries were going too far in imposing the ultimate penalty on the peddlers. At the same time, he recognised that much of the global supply of hard drugs originated in the area, and that at least the regional governments were showing the rest of the world that they took the problem seriously.
His difficulty with their policy was that, invariably, the people who fell through the trapdoor were the couriers, the mules, the foot soldiers, but never the generals. In any war, the great majority of the casualties come from the Other Ranks; in the global battle against narcotics the story was just the same.
The Deputy Chief Constable planned to say as much in his speech to the plenary session of the international conference at which he was representing the police service in Scotland. He knew that his view would not be popular with his Malaysian hosts, but that would not deter him from putting it forward.
'They spell it out, sir, don't they,' said Detective Chief Inspector Mary Chambers. 'A red skull and crossbones and "Death penalty for drug trafficking", stamped on your landing card. That's a bit unnecessary, heading in this direction, do you not think? There can't be a hell of a lot of smack smuggled from Heathrow to the Far East.'
Skinner glanced sideways at her, taking in the plain, square face, the forehead defined by close-cut dark hair which offered not a hint of personal vanity. 'She looks more like a copper than any bloke I've ever seen,' Andy Martin had said after her interview, and, the DCC had conceded, he had been right.
'Maybe not,' he agreed, 'but a lot of the traffic into Kuala Lumpur stops over at other airports in the region where consignments might be loaded.'
'I hadn't thought of that, I suppose.' The woman spoke with a pronounced Glasgow twang, a voice with muscles in it; her accent was not unlike Skinner's Lanarkshire dialect, but it was rawer, not dimmed as his had been by twenty years of East of Scotland life.
'I understand that,' he said. 'You've worked at the sharp end of the business until now, just as I did, once upon a time. Operating in Strathclyde you haven't had the bloody time to consider the global aspects of the trade; you've been too busy dealing with the problems on the streets. But believe me, it helps to have that broader understanding. The supply chains are long, but always they're interlinked, from the poppy to the needle. The more of us who share our knowledge and experience, the better chance we have of tracing each one right back to source and shutting it down for good.'
'Is that why you brought me with you on this trip? Not to learn; just to tell tales about pinching pushers in Paisley?'
He looked at her, laughing at her boldness. 'Why I brought you? It's why I recruited you in the first place. Did you think I brought you through to Edinburgh just on Willie Haggerty's say-so? Hell, no. I've been watching you since well before he was appointed to our command corridor.'
'Is that so?' She looked surprised. 'I just assumed that ACC Haggerty had put a word in for me.'
'Oh, don't get me wrong,' said Skinner, quickly, 'he did. But only after I asked him about you.'
Chambers frowned. 'And it was as easy as that, was it?' she mused.
'What? You asking if Strathclyde were happy to let you go?'
'Well . . .'
'Not a bit of it, Mary, I promise you. Your chief was pissed off; make no mistake about that. But I'm not without clout, and I'm playing a long game just now.'
'What do you mean?' she asked.
'You'll find out, when it's time,' he answered, intriguingly. 'But not just yet.'
'Cabin crew, seats for landing.' The captain's instruction through the small loudspeaker above their heads seemed to emphasise that all discussion was at an end.

2

PC Charlie Johnston hated this sort of night-shift work; sure, his colleagues told him he was daft, complaining about the cushiest job of them all, but he couldn't help it. He knew his limitations as a copper, yet he was never happy unless he was in a position to explore them. In his case that meant crowd control at football matches; being on patrol in shopping malls to deter and when necessary pursue thieves, or to come down on the occasional wee toe-rags who thought it was funny to harass and alarm respectable folks.
What he did not like was being sat on his arse in a decrepit sub-office like Oxgangs for hours on end, catching calls, which in practice rarely came in, dealing with theoretical evil-doers who were, in practice, tucked up in bed. It was not unusual for night-watch guys to spend their entire shift reading the Evening News, and listening to the insomniacs' programmes on Radio Forth, envying the disc-jockeys for the fact that at least they had someone to talk to, envying the guys and girls in their panda cars, just for the fact that they were out there. No, what Charlie did not like was sheer bloody boredom.
Yet, when the phone rang, at first he failed to hear it. He was on the verge of solving a tricky clue in the Sunday Express crossword . . . or, at least, he thought he was. It sounded four times before it made its way through to his consciousness. He scowled, and picked it up. 'Oxgangs police office,' he barked.
'Hello there,' said a female voice. 'Sorry to wake you.'
'That's okay, dear,' he responded, his weariness in contrast with her chirpiness. 'I was away for a hit and a miss.'
'Lucky it wasn't a day and a night. Listen, this is Nicola Ford; I'm a paramedic, and I'm at the doctor's surgery just down the road from your station. There's a dead man here.'
Johnston frowned. 'Aye, well, that happens. Doesn't it?'
'Not in places like this, in the middle of the night, it doesn't. Surgeries are usually closed at two in the morning. Our night time call-outs are either to houses, pub fights or road accidents. This man's had a heart attack, here at the doctor's.'
'So? What do you want us to do about it?'
'I want your lot to attend.'
'What for? Is there no' a doctor there?'
'Yes, but this is an unusual case. Dr Amritraj says the man called him at home, bypassing the normal emergency service. He was complaining of mild chest pains. The doctor says that he offered to call an ambulance right away, but the man refused. He wanted a home visit. Normally, Dr Amritraj would have referred him to the night service, but he says that he knew him quite well, so he went round to see him.'
Charlie Johnston stifled a yawn. 'Aye, so? How did he get to the surgery?'
'I was getting to that. The doctor says he was a bit concerned by his symptoms. He wanted to take him to A&E at the Royal, but the patient became agitated at the suggestion. He said that he had a phobia about hospitals and he refused point-blank to go there. The doctor has an ECG machine in his surgery, so he decided that he would take him there for a proper check-up, and that if he was having a heart attack, he'd sedate him, put him under, like, then call us.
'The patient agreed to that and they came here, but before Dr Amritraj even got him hooked up to the ECG, he took a cardiac arrest. The doctor tried to resuscitate him; he shocked him, gave him atropine, all the usual procedures, but it was no use. So he called us to take him to the mortuary.'
'That's fine, hen, but what do you need us for? There was a doctor in attendance when the man died, so we don't need to be informed.'
'That's what Dr Amritraj said, but there's the next of kin,' the paramedic answered, a little less chirpily than before. 'The man lived alone. The surgery has no other family members on its books, and no clue as to where they might be. It's your job to trace them, not ours. We can't stay here all night; we've got to shift him.'
'Aye, all right,' said Charlie. 'I'll get a panda round as soon as I can. Haud on a minute.' He laid the phone on the counter of the office, and turned to the radio transmitter. 'Any car in the Oxgangs area, come in please,' he said, into the microphone.
There was a crackling sound. 'Aye, Charlie?' a male voice answered.
'Need an attendance at the doctor's surgery in Oxgangs Road. There's a body there, and next-of-kin needin' advised.'
'Cannae do it, man. We've got a domestic here. Bloke's thumped his wife; we're having tae arrest him.'
'What about Jenny?'
'Her car's down the bypass at a road accident.'
'Aye, okay.' He flicked the mike off, and picked up the phone.
'Listen, hen,' he said. 'All our cars are occupied, so I'll have to come myself. I can do that; I just have to put my phone on divert and let divisional HQ know why. I'll just be a couple of minutes.'
Excited at last by the prospect of escaping from his nocturnal prison, the clerk, dispatcher and occasional jailer made his arrangements, slipped on his uniform tunic, with its utility belt, and made ready to step out into the fresh night air. As an afterthought, he took the office's Polaroid camera from the desk where it was kept.

3

He liked the spring; 'the renewal of God's promise' he called it, even though he had never been devoutly Christian. Few things appalled him more, in fact, than his country's religious right, and their active involvement in the electoral process ensured that he was an ever-present at the polls, voting the straight Democrat ticket whatever the personal failings of its candidates.
Indeed in the previous fall he had been proud to play his part in ensuring that party kept its grip on the New York State senatorial seat, beginning in the process a career which he hoped would lead the new incumbent to the White House in her own right. How the First Gentleman would take that would be something else again, but what the hell, he had had his eight years.
He approved of women in public life. Just as well, Goddammit, he thought, with a smile, with the wife and daughter I've got.
He had been an active politician himself once upon a time, forty-five and more years back, a young man not fresh from law school, but forged thereafter by bloody action in Korea. A short spell in the public defender's office in New York City had been enough to light the spark. He had seen men die in battle and had accepted it as something that came with his birthright. But the sight of one of his clients, a young black boy barely out of his teens, being dragged, screaming, to the electric chair, strapped down and virtually burned to death, had made him physically sick on the spot.
He was elected to the State Senate and served for a total of six years, through the cold dark years when Eisenhower was president, Nixon was scheming to succeed him, and John Foster Dulles, and his spymaster brother, ruled the country. With the rise of Kennedy, friends of his from Massachusetts persuaded him to put his own political career to one side for a while, to work on the young senator's presidential campaign team. There had been a promise of national office at the first electoral opportunity, but in the immediate aftermath of the narrow triumph, his reward had been a post as second assistant attorney general, in Bobby Kennedy's team.
He and the new president's aggressive, ambitious brother were at odds from the start, and relations between them had worsened when he had discovered that the New York senatorial seat, which he had been told would be his in time, was in fact earmarked for Bobby.
And so, a mere six weeks before the fall of the elected King Arthur, he had accepted an offer to become a senior partner in what was then known as McLean and Whyte, the largest legal firm in Buffalo, in his home state. In the same month, he had made an offer of his own, one of marriage to Susannah, a young teacher he had met in Washington.
Yes, he had seen a few springs since then, he mused, as he gazed out through the trees, across the glassy Great Sacandaga Lake, its waters catching the last rays of the evening sun. There had been thirty-eight of them, to be precise, every one memorable in its own way, every one marked by increasing success, professionally and privately. Where once he had dreamed on a national scale, dreamed without limit for a brief period, so caught up had he been in the seductive atmosphere of Camelot, now he reflected on the success he had made of his life, materially and spiritually.
Most of all there had been his daughter, a special girl from the outset. As she had grown, blooming in her intelligence and her beauty, he had looked at her, looked at his wife, and at himself, far more of a golden family than any branch of the doomed Kennedy clan, and he had wondered that he had ever been so weak that he had been seduced by their promises of joy. Why had he ever sought to bask in their glory, when such light had lain within himself, waiting for its moment to shine?
He leaned back in his rocking chair on the wide wooden terrace under the eaves of their log cabin, enjoying the shimmering colours of the lake before him. A brassy piece of Aaron Copland sounded from inside, and he caught the aroma of brewing coffee. 'Couldn't get any more American, could we?' he said aloud, and wondered what his son-in-law would think if he could see him lounging there.
He frowned as he thought of his son-in-law; now there was an individual who would have given them pause for thought, back in the sixties. There was still time for him to do that, even now. Yes, he had plans for his son-in-law. He had to see him, and soon, for there was something he had to discuss with him, something very serious . . .
The familiar creaking board sounded behind him; Susannah's footfall as she carried out the supper tray to lay upon their table. He made to rise, stiffly as always these days. And then he felt the cold, sharp thing whipping suddenly round his neck, tightening so fast, with a faint, peculiar twanging sound. He had no time to think, only to feel his tongue swell in his mouth and his eyes bulge in their sockets, to hear the roaring in his ears and to see the evening burst for an instant into sudden flaring light, and then go black.
The man held the strangling wire tight for some time after the old man's still-muscular body had gone limp, after his bladder had given forth its own signal. Finally, he released it, letting him slump down into his chair; and then he turned, and went into the isolated, lonely wooden house.

3

'So, Willie, how are you finding the air through here?' Sir James Proud asked his assistant; his deputy in Bob Skinner's absence.
'Pure and clear, gaffer,' Haggerty replied. 'So fuckin' pure that every so often it makes me dizzy.' The Chief Constable's left eyebrow twitched slightly; he realised that the dining room waitress was behind him, and had overheard. 'Excuse my French, Maisie,' he apologised.
'That's a'right, sir,' she said, as she laid a bowl of thick pea soup before him. 'Ah'm frae Glesca myself, originally. Ah know yis are a' linguists through there.'
Still, thought Haggerty, as she laid a salad before Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Martin, this is another king's court I'm in now . . . even if the prime minister is away.
Proud Jimmy scratched his chin. 'You know, gentlemen,' he mused, 'as an Edinburgh man, born and bred, I'm bound to say that I'm beginning to feel like an outsider in my own force. There's Bob, there's you, Andrew, and now you, Willie; west of Scotland men all of you, all my senior team. Mind you, the balance will swing back in my favour in a couple of weeks.'
'Aye,' Haggerty grunted. 'The Tay, the Tay, oh the silvery Tay,' he quoted. 'Long may it flow from Perth to Dundee. You looking forward to it, Andy?'
Martin shrugged his broad shoulders; green eyes flashed. 'Sure. On the whole, I am. It'll be a wrench though; I've been in this city for all of my police career so far.'
'Which is exactly why you had to go for the Tayside job, son,' the Chief interjected. 'It's the way things are; you can't be a one-force man any more, not if you have aspirations to command rank.' He glanced at Haggerty, reading his mind. 'I'm no example to quote either, before you do. I'm the last of the dinosaurs. Yes, I've been here a long time; too damned long, a few of our councillors have been heard to say. They think I'm just hanging on to spite them; I'm not, though.' He smiled, wickedly. 'We've got plans, Bob and I. A couple of years will see them through to fruition, then I'll be off.'
The outgoing Head of CID managed with some difficulty to keep his surprise from showing on his face. He had discussed the future with Bob Skinner, his closest friend as well as his immediate boss, but he had never heard Sir James anticipate his own retirement. He guessed that his imminent departure for assistant chief constable rank in the Tayside force had raised him to another level of confidence.
'So,' Haggerty murmured, pausing in his determined consumption of his soup, 'the balance is swinging back, is it? Is that still a secret?'
Proud Jimmy sat back slightly in his chair. 'It never was, Willie, not from you. I'm sorry, I thought you'd been informed. It was decided before you arrived, but I had to wait for the man at the centre of it to get back from holiday. He did, today, and we told him. Dan Pringle will succeed Andy as head of CID, when he goes in two weeks.'
'Big Dan, eh. He'll be pleased.'
'He's like a dog with two tails, Willie; like a dog with two tails.'
Martin grinned. 'You should have seen him,' he told the ACC. 'Pringle's such a phlegmatic bugger; I don't think I've ever known him to get excited, before this. When he was passed over last time, he thought that was it for him. He thought that Brian Mackie would be appointed, out of all the divisional CID commanders.'
'So did I,' Haggerty confessed. 'Either him or Maggie Rose, at any rate.'
'Bob and Andy thought it was too soon for either of them,' the Chief explained. 'Besides, Pringle's done a fine job over the last few months in sharpening up the Borders Division. We all agreed that he deserved it. Actually, the truth is it's very much an interim appointment; Dan's not that far away from retirement.'
'So who's going to the Borders?'
'Mario McGuire,' the DCS told him. 'He's done his Special Branch stint; he's earned a move as well. So he's off on promotion to a divisional CID command, as a detective superintendent just like his wife, and big McIlhenney's going to the SB job.'
'Which leaves a vacancy as Bob's executive officer,' Haggerty mused.
'Indeed it does,' the Chief agreed. 'That'll be decided after Bob gets back from his conference. Incidentally, he and I have been discussing that subject more generally. After all the fuss we had with Ted Chase, we've decided that you should have the opportunity to appoint your own assistant. Sergeant rank: think about it, eh?'
The new ACC leaned back from the table as the waitress took away his soup bowl and laid a plate of braised beef, carrots and chips in its place. 'Can I have Maisie, here?' he joked. 'She's doing a great job so far.'
Proud Jimmy shook his head. 'The needs of the senior officers' dining room supersede yours, William.'
The Glaswegian laughed; yes, the Edinburgh air was different, but it was fresh and it suited him. He had been astonished by Bob Skinner's phone call, asking if he would be interested in the job, in the wake of the appointment of his predecessor, Ted Chase, to the office of the inspector of constabulary. The bluntness of the question had taken his breath away. He had felt himself to be in a rut, his career path at its end, marked down as too rough a diamond for the command floor, an unlikely choice, as a confirmed thief-catcher, to be given charge of uniformed policing.
'Apply for it, Willie,' Skinner had said. 'The job's yours if you do; Jimmy and I'll make sure of that.'
'But why me, for fuck's sake?' he remembered croaking the question.
'I'm having no more Ted Chases in here, pal. It's as simple as that. Aye, we want new blood, but this time I'm going to make sure I know what type it is. You're my choice; and besides, it'll be a damn good career move for you. The Dumfries and Galloway post will be coming up in a few years; that'd be a nice place to command.'
'Jesus wept, you think long-term, don't you?'
'I've got fuck all else to do in this job; other people catch the thieves and murderers now. When Jimmy said he'd make a politician of me, he didn't know the half of it. I don't like the breed, Willie, based on bitter experience. But they exist, so I'll play their game . . . only I'll make up my own rules.'
So he had applied, and Skinner had kept his promise, despite what Haggerty had regarded, privately, as the worst interview of his career.
He glanced around the headquarters dining room, at the heavy silver braid on the uniforms. Yes indeed, he thought. A different air from Glasgow.
He had almost finished his beef when Martin's mobile rang. The Chief gave a slightly tetchy frown; he had a firm belief that there should be sanctuaries in which the telephone did not ring.
'Sorry, boss,' the Head of CID apologised, but he answered its call nonetheless.
'Andy?' The word was a sob. The voice on the other end of the line was so contorted that it was almost unrecognisable. At first, he supposed it was Karen; the fear of a miscarriage rushed into his mind. Then he looked at the number shown by the phone's LCD display, and he knew who it was.
'Sarah?' A muffled, gasping sound was her only answer.
'What's wrong?'
'Andy.' It seemed to be all she could say.
'Sarah, what is it? Are you ill? Is it one of the kids?'
'No,' she moaned. 'Andy, can you come out here? I need you. I can't get through to Bob.'
'Sure, I'll come. But what is it?'
He heard her sobbing intensify. 'I can't talk about it over the phone,' she whispered, through her tears.
'Okay, okay. I'm on my way.'
He ended the call. Proud and Haggerty were staring at him; and not only them. He realised that the urgency in his voice had brought all conversation in the dining room to a halt.
'What is it?' asked the Chief.
'I don't know,' he answered. 'She couldn't, or wouldn't, say. I'm off out to Gullane; that's where she was calling from.'
He rose from the table and turned towards the door. Before he reached it, it swung open and Detective Inspector Neil McIlhenney came into the room, shock and concern written across his face. 'Andy,' he said, his voice low, 'I've just taken a call from a guy who said he was the county sheriff, in Buffalo, New York. He was looking for the Boss, but the message was about Sarah . . .'

3

Detective Superintendent Maggie Rose was still on a high; the phone call from Mario had come as a complete surprise. She knew that the Special Branch posting usually carried a reward thereafter, but she had not expected that her husband would have jumped straight from his secretive office to the status of divisional CID commander.
'How long have you known?' she had asked him, with more than a hint of suspicion, once the initial delight had subsided.
'I didn't; not until this morning, when the Chief called me in and told me. Honest, love, it's the truth. Do you think I could have kept something like that from you?'
'After all that time in Special Branch? Too bloody right I do. But I'll take your word for it. So what's happening to Dan Pringle? Early retirement?'
He had hesitated for less than a second, but she had picked it up. 'Far from it. He's the new Head of CID.'
Thinking back, she had felt not even a twinge of disappointment; no, her instant reaction had been one of relief. 'Good for Dan. He's earned it.'
'Aye, sure, but . . .'
'I've told you, Mario. I've gone as far as I want for now. That job's about half a step below executive rank; I don't have the experience for it. Besides, I've out-ranked you for long enough.'
'You think we'll make the papers? Husband and wife team and all that?'
'Are you kidding?'
'TFR, I'm kidding. The Chief said he wants that aspect played down; the press guy's under orders not to mention it.'
But someone would, she mused, as she stared out of the window of her small office, all but deaf to the bustle of the Haymarket traffic. Sooner or later, some wag would decide to run a feature on the Nick and Nora Charles of Edinburgh CID, and for all of Alan Royston's contacts and negotiating skills, it would happen.
She was brought back to the present by a knock on her door. 'Come,' she called, sharply. It opened, with its familiar squeak, and a fresh-faced probationer constable came into the room. He was carrying a brown folder; she noticed that his hand trembled slightly as he held it out to her.
Christ, she thought, is that how the youngsters think of me?
'Yes, Constable?' she greeted him, deliberately softening her tone and offering a smile.
'I'm sorry, miss . . . eh, sorry, ma'am, but . . .'
She interrupted him. 'That's at least one "sorry" too many, son. You're new here, yes?'
'First month, ma'am.'
'What's your name?'
'PC Haddock, ma'am.'
Poor lad, she thought. You're going to have to be good.
'When they sent you up here, PC Haddock, did the lads tell you that I eat probationers for lunch?'
'More or less, ma'am.'
'They're right.' She paused. '. . . But not in their first few weeks. I prefer them a bit more seasoned. Now; what have you got for me?'
Pink-cheeked, the tall, gawky young man looked down at her. 'Chief Superintendent English called in, ma'am.' She nodded; English was the senior officer in the division, the top uniform. 'He's been detained up at headquarters; the meeting with Mr Haggerty's going on into the afternoon. So he asked if you'd take a look at the night-shift reports.'
Inwardly, Maggie bristled. Manny English was pushing his luck; the night-shift reports were pure bloody trivia puffed up by the panda patrollers to make it look as if they had been rushed off their feet. They could have been checked by a sergeant, but the Chief Super was a procedural paragon. In addition, he liked to keep in touch with everything that happened on his patch. Still, palming off uniformed officers' reports to the CID commander, as the next senior officer, was taking it a bit far.
Outwardly, she smiled again at Haddock, and took the folder from him. 'Of course I will,' she said. 'Anything for Mr English.' He stood there, uncertain of what to do. 'You can go,' she told him. 'I'll send them down to his office when I'm done.'
'Very good, miss . . . eh, sorry, ma'am.' The constable left the room much more quickly than he had entered.
Shaking her head as the door closed on him, Maggie opened the folder. By divisional standards, it looked like a light load. A false alarm at a chemist's shop in Fountainbridge, three assorted brawls, two domestic call-outs which turned out to be no more than loud arguments, and one in which a husband had been arrested and charged with assaulting his wife.
'Rubbish,' she muttered, and was on the point of closing the folder when her eye was caught by the last report; there was a photograph clipped to it. She slipped it out and looked at the Polaroid. It had been taken clumsily, and showed only the top half of a man's body, lying flat on a table. He was dressed in a heavy grey woollen jerkin, with a short zip, opened, at the neck. He looked to be in his fifties; he was bald, with a heavy, grizzled beard. Despite his weather-beaten complexion, from the blueness of his lips and cheeks, the Detective Superintendent could tell at once that he was dead.
She picked up PC Charlie Johnston's report and read carefully through his police-speak prose. The man had been identified by Dr Amritraj, who had certified his death, as Magnus Essary, of 46 Leightonstone Grove, Hunter's Tryst, Edinburgh, single, aged forty-nine. Using keys found on the body, Johnston had gained entry to the house and had searched thoroughly for any references to family, or next of kin; thoroughly, the constable insisted, but without success. There was nothing to be found, and the neighbours, delighted, Rose guessed, to have been wakened by a policeman at that hour of the morning, had all described him as a quiet, polite man who kept to himself. The report ended with the simple statement that its author had been unable to trace anyone who could be contacted and asked to take responsibility for the body.
'This is daft,' the Detective Superintendent muttered as she finished the report. 'This man cannot have been a complete loner. He lived at a fairly posh address; he must have had some sort of business life. Even if he didn't have any friends, there must be colleagues. We can't just let the guy lie in the mortuary.'
She picked up the telephone and called Oxgangs office; she was put through at once to the duty inspector, Laurence Gray, an ex-CID colleague. 'Laurie,' she began, 'I've got a report here on a sudden death on your patch in the middle of the night; man called Essary. It was written up by Constable Johnston.'
'Oh aye, our Charlie,' Gray growled, with a faint chuckle. 'I've been half expecting the Chief Super to call me about that one. Johnston's a book operator . . . the trouble with him is that he hasnae finished reading the bloody book yet.'
Rose relaxed. 'So you're following it up, not just giving up on it.'
'Come on, Maggie. I was in CID long enough not to be doing that.'
She accepted the reproof. 'Sorry. I should have known better.'
'Indeed, ma'am,' the inspector rumbled. 'As it happens, the thing's sorted. Mr Essary was in the wine importing business, in partnership with a woman called Ella Frances. She called Fettes this morning, and they put her in touch with me; I told her to go up to the Royal. She did; they called to let us know she's confirmed the identification and claimed the body. She's had it uplifted from the mortuary already. File closed.'
'That's good. No thanks to Johnston, though. It's just as well for both of you that the Chief Super was tied up.'
'Ach, don't blame Charlie. He didnae make any mistakes; he just focused a bit too hard on his finishing time, that's all. You know what the night shift's like. Short spells of action mixed in with long periods of near-terminal boredom.'
'You're right there. But you wait till you're in my job. There isn't a minute of your life you can call your own completely, with no fear that the phone'll ring.'
'It'll be double for you from now on then, wi' your man's promotion.'
Maggie Rose was rarely surprised. 'How did you know about that so soon?'
'Hah! You think e-mail's fast? It's got nothing on the force grapevine. Be sure to congratulate Mario for me, will you?'
'Of course. Thanks, Laurie.'
She hung up, slipped the report and photograph back into the folder, and leaned back in her chair, musing on the curse that Alexander Graham Bell had visited on mankind.