Pamela shuddered, in Andy Martin's armchair. 'It makes my flesh creep,' she said, 'to know that even as we're sitting here, strangers are searching my home.'
Skinner smiled, glancing across at Martin. 'I suppose it's a sort of justice for a copper. You and I have done the same thing to other people often enough.' He looked round at Pam. 'Maybe you haven't, honey, not yet at least, but it's part of the career you've chosen, part of making a difference, as you put it.
'Perhaps it's only right that we should have a taste of how our subjects feel, not so much the villains we're after, but their families, when we invade their homes and start tearing the most private parts of their lives apart.
'Remember that Japanese bloke, out in Balerno…'
Talking about private parts, you mean?' interjected Martin, from the kitchen door.
Skinner laughed, short and savage, and in that time a gleam came into his eye. Pam started in her chair as she caught a glimpse of a man she did not know, a glimpse, she realised of Bob as he had been before life had cut him so deep. She shivered slightly as she realised also that perhaps it was a man she did not real y want to know.
'Aye, maybe,' he said. 'But I was trying to be serious. I was thinking of his poor bewildered wife, confronted with a team of hard-faced men and women, bursting into her home armed with a warrant. As far as I know she's back in Japan now, picking up her life, but I bet that's one experience she'll never get over.
'We've got it easy, Pammy, compared to her. Our houses are being gone over by a DCC and a Chief Super, not by Tom, Dick and Harriet, or even Neil, Mario and Maggie.'
'But what about yours?' she said. 'Won't they be tearing up the carpets and everything?'
'Nah. They'l be going through the motions. Algernon knows well enough that if I am bent, I've had time and warning enough to hide the evidence where he'll never find it. In a real search, for a single piece of paper, he wouldn't just be under the carpets, he'd be under the floor, and into the ventilation gril es and damp courses.'
'That's right, Pam,' cal ed Martin, in his chef's apron, quartering 197
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a yellow pepper, ready for the food processor. 'Only he doesn't expect to find it, because he doesn't really believe Bob's bent.'
He stepped back into the doorway. 'Where would you hide a piece of paper?' he asked.
Skinner smiled. 'Same place as you, and I'll betAlgie looks there, too.'
Behind him, the living-room door opened. Alex stood there, smiling. 'Al over,' she said. 'Congratulations, you two. Al three houses are clear. They were very thorough. They even looked among Jazz's nappies down in Fairyhouse Avenue. But they cleared everything up too.'
'Too effing right!' said Bob. 'Did they say anything?'
'About the search, no. Salmon has agreed that Mr Laidlaw should sit in on the interview though.' She looked across at Andy, and at the pepper in his hand. 'Is that as far as you've got with dinner? Here, out of the way.'
The kitchen was too smal for four to work together, and so Bob and Pam went out together, to the nearest Oddbins, to choose the wine for the evening.
They took a conscious decision to talk about golf, music, food and drink over dinner – anything. Bob insisted, but work, politics and sex. But eventually, the meal was over; eventually, the dregs of coffee were drying in their cups.
'I've got something else for you, now,' said Andy to Skinner, at last.
'Something that Pam's been involved in. Joe Doherty cal ed today.'
Bob started in his seat. 'Nothing to do with Sarah?' he asked, but his friend stilled his anxiety with a smile and a shake of the head.
'No, no. This is some checking up we asked him to do under the Old Pals' Act, on the ownership of Spotlight. We got a result.
'Remember Everard Balliol?'
Skinner frowned. 'Yank? Golfer? Witches Hill Pro-Am? Bad loser?
Am I getting close?'
'Spot on.' Andy launched into Joe Doherty's account ofBal iol's interests, of his nature, and of his Scottish connections.
'What does that make you wonder?' he asked, when he was finished.
'A hel of a lot, my son,' said Bob. 'A hell of a lot.
'You know, I was wondering what to do with myself tomorrow.
With me having to keep back from the investigations, and away from my own bloody office, I thought that I'd be at a loose end. Not any more. Now my Sunday's laid out for me.'
'How?' asked Alex. 'What will you be doing?'
'I'm surprised you have to ask, daughter. I'll be driving up to Erran Mhor, north of Fort William. Mr Everard Balliol is one bastard that I want to look in the eye!'