Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (23 page)

'Have
you heard of LEEL?' she asked suddenly.

'Vaguely'

She
laughed. 'That's what most respondents say. Maybe I can interview you after
you've interviewed me. Ahh, but you're not a small businessman, are you?'

'No,'
Steele grinned, put at ease by her style, 'I'm a large policeman.'

'And
you're here to talk to me about another one. I thought the Chief Constable's
visit was purely of the condolence variety; so I've been half-expecting someone
else. What do you want to ask me? Whether I killed him or not?'

'I
was assuming that you didn't; according to the Chief you and your partner were
out with friends last Friday evening. We've checked that already.'

Bridget
Smith raised her eyebrows. 'Did he indeed? His interview technique must be
better than I thought. I don't even remember him asking me that, far less
telling him.'

'That's
how he got to be Chief Constable.' Steele took a sip from his mug. 'There are a
few things about your husband, Mrs Smith, that we're still trying to get a grip
of. Although he was a police officer for over thirty years, there's still a lot
about him that we don't know. He was a very private man in the office - an
asset, maybe, given the job he did
...'

'He
was a very private man at home too, Sergeant. What job did he do?'

'You
mean he never talked to you about it?'

'Never.
I knew what rank he was, that he was a detective
and
where he worked, but he never talked about his work. I was never allowed to
phone him at the office either. When his father died, nine years ago, I had to
go through the main switchboard to find him, and they had him call me back.'

Her
voice lowered, and suddenly she seemed less vibrant, more vulnerable. 'Alec
never talked to me at all, Mr Steele
...
well,
hardly ever. It wasn't so bad in the early years, when we were going out
together, when the kids were young, but as his career progressed he became more
and more remote. He didn't speak about the house; to me, or John, or Susan even
...
and if he had a favourite, it was
her. He didn't want to do things; for five years before I left we did not do a
single thing together, go out for dinner, go to the theatre, go to parties. I
used to get invitations; Alec always turned them down. As for him
...
I've heard that policemen do have
balls, but I never heard about them from Alec. Never once did he offer to take
me to a police social function; we were at a formal event once, but that was
all.' She looked down quickly into her lap, her voice faltering for the first
time. 'For the last six years of our marriage we didn't have sex: not at all.

'The
only thing he ever did that wasn't work-related was his Thursday night football
thing
...
a group of ageing men
having a kick-about. He said that that man Skinner invited him along. Alec
probably interpreted that as an order. He did that for a while, then stopped.
When I asked him why, he told me that he had knee trouble.'

'Wasn't
he interested in photography, Mrs Smith?'

The
woman frowned in surprise. 'Not that I was aware of. Of the few family
snapshots I have, Alec is in every one. I don't remember him ever taking a
single picture himself

'Oh
he did,' said Steele, 'he did. We found a pile of photographs among his
effects, and we believe there may be more; possibly records too, that we
haven't found. We found some keys that we can't account for. I don't suppose
you know if he had anywhere he might have kept stuff
...
a small office maybe?'

'Not
a clue. There was nothing extraordinary around the house, that's for sure, or
I'd have found it. I do clean occasionally. As for an office, I never knew of
one, but then there was so much I didn't know.'

'Did
you know about the secret drawer in his desk?

'What
secret drawer? In that big old desk of his, you mean? No, I didn't know - and
Alec, being Alec, never mentioned it.'

'He
never mentioned people, did he? For example did he ever let slip any hint that
he might have been afraid of someone?'

'Alec
was afraid of no-one
...'
She
frowned.
'...
except. I remember
once, about ten years ago. The television news was on, and Bob Skinner
appeared, being interviewed about some crime or other. He wasn't as
high-ranking then obviously, or as well known, but I remember Alec saying, not
to me, really, more a whisper to himself, "There's something about that
man that scares me shitless." That was all; it surprised me at the time,
but I'd forgotten about it until now. But Bob Skinner hardly killed him, did
he?'

'Hardly,'
Steele agreed. 'What made you leave him, finally?'

'I
just couldn't take being a non-person any more. After John died
...'
She stopped as she saw the Sergeant's
reaction. 'You didn't know?'

'No.
Not at all.'

'Our
son, John,' she continued, her voice very small at that moment, 'died five
years ago. I never really needed Alec before, but I needed him then, only he
withdrew completely into himself. He wouldn't talk to me at all after it
happened. I just couldn't go on like that; I started to go out with
girlfriends, and with a couple of the women who work for me.

'One
night I met Stan Greenwood: he was fun, he was friendly, he was free, and he
fancied me. He didn't give a damn that I'm ten years older than him, or posh,
as he calls me. He didn't give a damn that my son died of AIDS. He asked me to
come and live with him, and I said, "Yes." I didn't even think about
it.'

The
young sergeant took a deep breath; he felt his pulse hammering. The extent to
which Alec Smith, even as a serving policeman, had guarded his privacy, had
kept his two lives from touching each other
...
it was astounding.

'Your
son died of AIDS,' he repeated, slowly.

'Yes.
John was gay, Sergeant. He knew it from an early age. He had sexual partners
when he was still at school. Eventually as a student he formed a solid
relationship - with a nice man, a lawyer, a few years older than him, but still
in his twenties. Some might have said that John was promiscuous until then, but
I prefer to see it as experimentation.

'Unfortunately,
somewhere along the line one of those experiments went wrong. When my son was
twenty-one, he found that he was HIV positive. Three years later, in spite of
being on viro-suppressant drugs, he developed full-blown AIDS. It attacked his
brain directly and he died very quickly.'

'When
did Alec learn about him?'

'I
told him when John was twenty.'

'And
how did he react? Was he supportive?'

Bridget
Smith let out a short, snorting, bitter laugh.

'Supportive?
He never spoke to John again; literally. When he was dying, I told Alec. Yet
even in that very short time he had left, he refused to see him. He didn't even
go to his son's funeral. I almost left him there and then.'

'What
about your daughter? How did he feel about her?'

'She
cut Alec off because of his behaviour towards John. By condemning one of his
children he lost both.'

'He
still sent her money, though.'

'Did
he? I wonder if she spent it. I didn't detect any tears when I told her he was
dead. She didn't even ask when the funeral was. When will it be, by the way?
Since Alec and I were still married
...
There'll be no-one else to organise it, will there?' She paused. 'You haven't
found a girlfriend, have you?'

'No.
No girlfriends. If you're prepared to make those arrangements. I'll have the
Fiscal's office contact you as soon as they're ready to release the body. They
may specify burial only, but I don't imagine that they'll take too long now.'

She
sighed. 'I don't suppose that there'll be many people there, other than
colleagues. Will there be many of them, do you think?'

'I
shouldn't think so, Mrs Smith,' he answered, honestly, 'not many.'

'Surprise.'
She glanced across at the young Sergeant. 'What job did he do anyway?'

Steele
grimaced. 'One that I'm not supposed to talk about.'

'Oh
my! He must have been really good at it, then. Even his wife didn't know.'

The
detective smiled at the humour in her tone. 'There is something you can confirm
for me,' he said. 'Your husband made an annual payment to a solicitor of twelve
hundred pounds. He told his bank manager it was money for you. Is that
correct?'

'No.
I never asked him for a penny after I left. He gave me my share of the house in
Pencaitland when he sold it, and I was happy with that.' She laughed again.
'That's typical Alec, I suppose, to leave you with one last mystery.'

Steele
rose to go. 'More than one,' he answered. 'More than one.'

She
walked him to the door. 'That's everything then?'

'Yes.
Except
...'
he stopped, remembering. 'There
was one more thing I was told to ask. Do you know where Alec walked his dog?'

'That's
a good one. You'd be better asking the dog.' She opened the front door
...
and stopped halfway. 'Wait a minute,' she
murmured. 'There was one time: I had made up my mind to leave, and I insisted
on talking to him. But he wouldn't sit down with me. Instead he said, 'You'd
better come with me, then.' I got in the car with him, and the dog, and he
drove us to Yellowcraigs, just past Dirleton.

'He
told me to sit on the beach while he walked the dog. He was away for a while,
but he came back eventually and sat down beside me. I told him about Stan, and
why it had come about. D'you know all he said? He just looked at me, after more
than a quarter of a bloody century and he said, "Aye, right then."

'Nothing
else, just that. Then he stood up, called to the dog, and we all drove back to
Pencaitland. Do you know, that was the last time I ever spoke to my husband.'

30

'He
was a great believer in natural justice, was Alec Smith,' Andy Martin declared.
'But he went way over the top with Gus Morrison and Wendy Forrest.'

'And
did Morrison kill him?' Skinner asked.

'Kevin
O'Malley says absolutely not. He says that he has a persecution complex - which
is not surprising since the poor bastard has been persecuted, wrongfully
imprisoned and had his girl-friend driven to suicide - and that he is
schizophrenic, but he says that he is a talker and not a doer. He says that if
he's charged, he'll give evidence for the defence and he'll do it for nothing.'

The
DCC whistled. 'That's it, then. Let Kevin section him and treat him for a
while, but let's make sure that he gets his job back when he's fit for it.' He
paused. 'And Gavigan?' There was an edge of savagery in the question.

'Like
I said; I had him in last night and put the thumbscrews on him. He confirmed
Gus's story. He said that the
Sunday
Post
sent that anonymous
letter straight to Alec. As soon as he saw it he knew who had done it. He
didn't go apeshit - he never did, apparently - he just said "Better sort
this, Tommy", then told Gavigan how they were going to sort it.

'Everything
that Gus Morrison described to me was exactly as it happened. He and his
girlfriend were no terrorists, just a couple of harmless fools with big
patriotic dreams and big mouths.'

'Poor
guy,' Skinner murmured. 'He sure didn't deserve that. And that lass, to die as
she did, miserable and alone, locked up for nothing.' His eyes narrowed as he
spoke.

'Alec
must have known they were no threat,' Martin continued, 'but their big mistake
was to embarrass him, by penetrating what he liked to think of as his own
special world. From the moment he went into that SB job he was the wrong man
for it, because he was a fanatic who had a narrow, unbending vision of right
and wrong, as it applied to everyone, it seemed, except him.

'What
he did to Gus and Forrest was hellish. Yet the way he dealt with Basra and
Lawrence Scotland
...
it was
effective, at least. Basra never raped and murdered another kid, and Scotland's
been a model citizen ever since.'

'Maybe,'
said the DCC. 'When are you going for him?'