As he neared the two squat stone cottages, he saw two cars parked in
front, both off-roaders. He recognised one, a blue Suzuki jeep, from his
earlier visit, but the other, a massive Toyota Land Cruiser, was new to him.
Its vivid green metallic finish seemed to shine through the mud which caked
its sides.
As he looked at it a voice called out. 'Hey there. What dae ye want?' A
deep, rough-hewn voice, that of a man given to asking only simple questions.
Pringle fixed him with a policeman's glare. The man looked to be in his
late fifties, strong, with a labourer's build. He held a black sack in his left
hand and in the other, a dead trout.
'I want the manager,' the detective barked, his answer as aggressive as
the question.
The worker backed down. 'Over there, sir,' he said, at once as threatening
as his trout. 'Thae cottages.'
Pringle was about to knock on the door of the first of the twin houses,
when it opened, leaving him with his knuckles poised in mid-air, descending
towards nothing. 'Good morning, Superintendent,' said Bill Gates, the young
manager of the Mellerkirk Trout Farm. 'Sorry about old Harry's welcome.
He's a bit narked; he thinks he's going to be laid off because of this.'
Gates was fair-haired, slightly built inside his waxed cotton jacket... a
Marks and Spencer job, Pringle noticed, rather than the more famous brand
... and wore a harassed expression. 'Come on into the office. We've been
watching you coming up the track,' he added. 'That was a long walk you
left yourself.'
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AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN
'A nice morning for it, though, Mr Gates.' The police officer stepped
inside and looked around. The first of the buildings, which had once housed
labourers of the land, served as the office of the fish farm in the new era. The
other was still a dwelling, occupied by the farm manager, a single man.
On the other side of the room, a door opened and a third man stepped
through; tall, straight-backed, silver-haired, with a long, patrician nose and
small sharp blue eyes. 'Detective Inspector Pringle,' Gates announced, 'this
is Sir Adrian Watson, Baronet, the owner of the farm, and of the Mellerkirk
Estate.'
The newcomer offered no handshake; nothing but a curt nod. 'Good
day, Superintendent,' he barked. 'You're the new fellow, are you;
McGrigor's successor.' He looked Pringle up and down, as if he was
inspecting livestock. 'Less of a stereotype than him, I must say.'
'Wish I could say the same for you,' the detective thought as he gazed
back at the landowner.
'Big John's a good man to follow, sir. He ran a tight ship down here.'
'In that case, you're not living up to it very well, are you, man?'
It seemed to Dan Pringle as if all the good of his morning walk had been
undone in an instant, as he felt his blood pressure soar. 'Would you like to
expand on that, Sir Adrian?' he asked coldly.
'I may expand on it to Sir James Proud, the next time I see him in the
New Club.'
'You do that very thing, sir. But right here, right now, I'd like you to
explain to me what you meant by that remark.'
The baronet looked at the policeman, taken aback slightly by his bristling
aggression. We, you bastard,' Pringle thought. 7 haven't gone completely
native, not yet, anyway.'
'Where are my damn fish then?' the estate owner snapped, trying to
bluster his way out of what had become suddenly an uncomfortable corner.
'You don't look as if you've come to tell me you've caught these damn
thieves.'
'No, I haven't.'
'Well, what are you doing here? Go away and get on with it, man.'
'Listen, Sir Adrian,' said the detective, 'it's time you came to terms with
the facts.
'Fact one: I've got officers all over Scotland and beyond involved in the
search for your stock. We're checking every possible processing centre we
can find. We're checking every supermarket chain in the country to see if
they've been offered any surprise consignments of trout. We're interviewing
every resident in this area to see if anyone saw a large vehicle enter or
leave your farm on the night of the theft.
'You know what? They're all wasting their fucking time.
'Fact two: we've got little or no chance of recovering your fish. By now
they're probably killed and frozen down, and in a store that we've got no
chance of finding. In a few months' time they'll start showing up in the sort
of street corner mini-market where you have to check the sell-by date on
every can of beer, the sort of place where the owner won't ask questions if
he's offered some bargain stock.
'Either that or they'll be disposed of in bulk through a cash-and-carry
somewhere down south, or possibly in France or Spain.
'But suppose we do catch some joker trying to flog some frozen trout?
He's going to spin us a story about having netted them. What are we going
to do then? Stick the fucking things in a line-up and ask you and Mr Gates
to identify them?'
He glared at Watson. 'Fact three: you are not only the victim here, sir.
You are also a contributory factor to the crime.
'You're running a business here with a multi-million-pound turnover.
You've got a massive investment in stock, in rearing tanks, in sterile
conditions for harvesting, handling, killing and distribution. Yet you grudged
the relatively small investment it would have taken to protect you against
the possibility of a theft like this.
'Fact four: John McGrigor visited you personally a couple of years ago,
and another time before that, and he advised you to install perimeter alarms
linked to the nearest fully manned police office, plus a video system with
cameras on inaccessible steel poles linked to a recorder off-site.
'The cost of all that would have been a relatively small addition to your
total capital investment here. You could have written it off against tax in
the usual way, and reduced your insurance premiums significantly.
'Did you do that? Did you fuck! You told him that the fact that the
manager lived on site was security enough. You were dead bloody wrong,
of course, and that's why the three of us are standing here today.'
Pringle turned towards the door. 'That's what I came here to tell you this
morning. Those fish have bolted now, of course, but it's not too late to bar
the gate against a repeat performance.'
He grasped the round brass handle, then paused and took a deep breath.
'Oh aye, there's one more thing.
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AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN
'Fact five: if you ever try to threaten me again, or try to dismiss me in
that way, then do not from that time on drink as much as a thimbleful of
whisky and get into your car, or park on a yellow line, or give a sweetie to
a kid in the street, or do anything else you could be had up for, or, believe
me, you will be.
'If you want to tell all that to Sir James Proud, in the New Club, in his
office, or anywhere fucking else, be my guest. But tip me off when you're
going to do it, because I'd like to be there.'
The heavy door cras
hed shut behind the detective. As he began the long
walk back to his car, down the rough track, feeling the recuperative power
of the morning country air, there was a broad smile on his face.
Ruth McConnell made a soft sound as Pye pulled his car into his space in
the park behind police headquarters, directly alongside a sleek red MGF
sports car.
'What's up?' Sammy asked.
'I was just thinking about your boss's pride and joy, parked next to us.
That'll be going down the road soon. Karen won't be able to get into it in a
couple of months, and once she has the baby ...'
'Don't you believe it. Andy Martin and that motor are joined at the hip.
But it's not a problem; they've got another car, a new Ford Focus. They got
it after they sold Karen's flat.
'Anyhow, just for a minute there I thought you were pissed off at me, or
She reached out and touched his cheek. 'And why would I? Sammy, you
were really great last night, really understanding. I was just so stressed out
that if we had, it would have been awful, disastrous even. Having you there
beside me ... I really needed you; but I have never been less in the mood.'
He glanced at her mournfully. 'I've never been more in the mood.'
She laughed again brightly. 'I could see that. Very impressive, even under
cover.'
She laid her hand on his thigh. 'Once the boss gets back, I'm sure all the
strain will be off, but until it is, until I know for sure, I'm still in this
nightmare.
'Once it is over ... Would you like to move in with me? Or would you
like me to move in with you? Or do you prefer it the way it is?'
He sighed, and smiled. 'You know what I want. Your place is bigger
than mine; your bathroom's nicer, your kitchen's better equipped. I'll move
in with you; after a while we can look for something together.
'I won't be in this job forever. Who knows, Mr Martin might post me
down to the Borders, beside Dan Pringle.'
'No danger; Jack McGurk's there already, remember. You're going back
56
AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN
east, eventually, to Brian Mackie's division. Stevie Steele's going to team
up with Maggie Rose again, once a certain DS in her team retires.'
'How do you know all that?'
'I just do. Now please forget I said it. We'll have to be careful with the
pillow-talk, you and I.'
'I'm just looking forward to starting it.'
The too,' said Ruth. 'But now we'd better get inside. My big boss might
be away for the morning, but the other one's probably been in for an hour
already.'
Detective Inspector David Mackenzie stepped into his office, closed the
door behind him, then stared in astonishment at the man sitting behind his
desk. His mouth hung open as the visitor pushed himself out of his chair
and walked round toward him.
The blow was faster than anything he had ever seen; the tips of three
stiff straight fingers stabbed into the pit of his stomach at the top of the
inverted V-shape below his rib-cage. A bolt of pain, worse than anything
he had ever known, flooded through him and stayed. His legs gave, and his
bladder almost followed, but despite the agony he managed to keep it under
control.
As he started to fall, the man caught him by the lapels of his overcoat,
held him up, then dropped him on to a straight-backed seat. Mackenzie
wanted to shout for help, but he felt as if he had no breath left in his lungs,
only fire. Also, he guessed that there was a fair chance that if he tried, no
sound would be allowed to escape his lips.
'Who?' he croaked eventually.
'You know who I am,' said the intruder icily. 'You know all about me,
Bandit, or so it seems.'
He reached into his pocket, produced a small, palm-sized tape recorder
and pressed a button. The inspector froze as he heard his own voice, tinny
but unmistakable.
'And your man Skinner's never made a mistake about a woman has he ?
I seem to remember he was all over the tabloids not so long ago. Something
to do with him shagging a woman detective sergeant on his staff.
'Does he give you one as well, now and again ?'
'The answer is "no", Mackenzie, although the man who does is a lucky
son-of-a-bitch.
'Mister, you've just committed two of the biggest mistakes any detective
officer can make. The first is stupidity, and the second is underestimating a
suspect. I've been guilty of both myself in my time, but never as crassly as
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AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN
that. Ruth works for me; she's a very intelligent lady, and she's picked up a
'For the purposes of your investigation, I'll tell you this, you arrogant
young bastard. Last night, after your failed attempt at intimidation, Ruth
came straight to see me. She played me that tape, which sealed your fate on
the spot. Then I asked her to think very carefully about all the time she
spent away from Sammy that Saturday afternoon.
'Happily she remembered something. She remembered seeing my
daughter in Jenner's, just before five o'clock. She didn't speak to her, but
she saw her on the other side of the second-floor balcony, in the glassware
department.
'I called Alex, and she confirmed that she was there. And she does have
a date and time stamped credit card slip to prove it; for half-a-dozen whisky
tumblers, as it happens. My Christmas present; she's pissed off because
now she'll have to get me something else.
'So you can forget about Ruthie as a suspect. That was always far too
fucking easy, anyway. I'll grant you that all the circumstances pointed
straight at her, but even at that, you must have been out of your fucking
mind to think that a DCC's secretary would off anyone and let herself be
seen doing it.
'So look somewhere else, Bandit. Your investigation's back to square
one again. Understood?'
Mackenzie nodded, still incapable of coherent speech, still racked with
pain.
'You know, son,' Bob Skinner continued, 'there're two ways a copper
like you can go. He can go to the top or he can go to hell in a handcart.
Make me your enemy and you are on route two: you can be dead certain of
that.'
He held up the recorder for the Strathclyde detective to see. 'I could use
this tape to have you sent to Oban in a uniform by tomorrow morning at the
latest. I've got the power to halt your career in its tracks.
'But I'm not going to, because I asked my pal Willie Haggerty about
you. You remember him? Yes, I thought you would.
'He told me that you're undoubtedly the cockiest, most conceited bastard
he's ever met, and that you have been in need of a really good doing for
some time. But he said also that you've made DI in spite of your weaknesses,
and that with them knocked out of you, you could become a great detective
officer.
'Now you've got the chance to prove him right. Get out there and find
out who killed old John McConnell. And keep me informed of progress
every step of the way. Don't worry about jurisdiction; I'l
l square that with
your gaffers. They owe me a couple of favours, and I've got a personal
interest in this one.'
He looked down through what David 'Bandit' Mackenzie realised were
the coldest blue eyes he had ever seen. 'I'm backing Willie Haggerty's
judgement of you, son. You prove us wrong and I might just come back
here and teach you everything I know about intimidation.'
60
15
As the door of his office swung open, Ted Chase sighed his irritation.
'Inspector Good,' he began, 'I thought I told you to call before...' Then he
looked up and saw a figure, clad in a uniform which was heavy with silver
braid.
He stood up straight behind his desk, almost by reflex. 'I'm sorry, Chief,
I didn't realise.'
'Not at all, not at all,' said Sir James Proud. 'I should apologise. I ought
to have knocked.' He waved some correspondence which he was holding.
'I just thought Bob might have been in here, that was all. There's something
I wanted to ask him about.'
'It wouldn't be the London incident, would it?' Chase ventured.
'As a matter of fact it would. How the hell did you know about that?'