‘After that,’ he continued, ‘life intervened. I had my troubles with my brother, then when they were sorted I met your mother, went to university, graduated, joined the police . . . disappointing my father by rejecting his law firm, although he never said so . . . then had you, my career and, eventually, another family.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alex murmured drily, ‘you’ve had a lot of distractions, haven’t you.’

  ‘Hey,’ he protested, ‘you were never a distraction, kid, you were the light of my life. But it was a very busy life, until a few months ago, when most of it came to a sudden stop.

  ‘When that happened, like it or not I had leisure time. I don’t know when I remembered the portrait, but at some point I did, and I remembered my visit to the farm with Grandpa Fleming, how he reacted when he saw it and what he said about it being a long story.’

  Skinner grinned. ‘I switched into detective mode,’ he said, ‘and went looking for it. I could have done the obvious, just called Johnny, asked him if he still had the painting and if he knew who the hell it was, but I fancied a challenge, so I bought myself some credits on the Scotland’s People website and went to work. I concentrated on the Fleming side of the family and worked my way back. I found Grandpa very quickly: Walter Weir Fleming, born in Saltcoats Road, Carluke, in eighteen ninety. His parents were Matthew Fleming, occupation saddler, and Jane Grey, no occupation given.’

  ‘What about David?’

  ‘David McGill Fleming, born at the same address in nineteen hundred and three, but to a different mother. Her name was Sheila O’Flanagan.’

  ‘So you and Johnny . . .’ Alex began. She was hooked, her work schedule forgotten.

  ‘. . . have different great-grandmothers, which makes us half-cousins in whatever degree of cousinship we are. Mine, your great-great-granny, Jane Grey, died of appendicitis in eighteen ninety-six.’

  She winced. ‘Ouch! That must have been horrible.’

  ‘Indeed: we don’t appreciate the age we live in. Anyway, move on: I found great-grandfather’s . . . Matthew Fleming’s . . . birth date from the detail in his marriage certificate . . . the first one, that is, and worked back from there. That’s where it started to get interesting. He was born in eighteen fifty-one in Home Farm, Waterloo, Lanarkshire, and his parents were Marshall Weir Fleming and Jean McGill, thus, my great-great-grandparents.’

  ‘Was he the man in the portrait? Marshall?’

  ‘That’s what I wondered,’ Bob admitted. ‘So I Googled him; but nothing came up. That didn’t rule out the possibility, but . . . then I remembered something I should have been on to from the start.

  ‘I have a box of old family mementos, and among them is an envelope that must have come to my mother when Grandpa died. It’s full of photographs and the oldest is one that was taken in eighteen ninety-five, of a family group. I know that date because Grandpa had annotated it on the back. There were six people in it. He was there, aged five, and there was another child, Mary Fleming, aged three. “My sister”, Grandpa had noted. She was news to me, but there was a note saying that she died of scarlet fever in March eighteen ninety-seven.’

  ‘Maybe that’s where Johnny’s sister’s name came from,’ Alex suggested.

  ‘Maybe,’ he agreed, ‘but that’s not relevant. Matthew and Jane were front and centre, obviously, but there was an older couple beside them, white haired and very well dressed, described as “My grandparents, Marshall and Jean Fleming”. The image of the man was perfectly clear and there was no scar.’

  ‘Couldn’t have been him, then,’ she observed.

  ‘Nope,’ he agreed, ‘so I went in search of his, Marshall’s, parents. They weren’t so easy to find, as I was relying on old parish records by then, but I made an assumption and concentrated on Lanarkshire. I got lucky and found them both, born within a few weeks of each other and baptised on the same day by the parish minister in Carluke, one John Barclay.

  ‘The entry was detailed; Marshall’s full name was Marshall Weir Fleming, and his parents were listed as Mathew Fleming, spelled with one “t”, and Elizabeth Weir. She was listed as “deceased, of childbed fever”, in the same register.’

  ‘That means your great-great-great-grandmother died giving birth to your great-great-grandfather.’

  ‘Add on another generation and yours too,’ he pointed out, then continued. ‘Jean, great-great-granny’s parents, were named as David McGill, estate clerk, and Elizabeth Marshall.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Marshall having the same name as the woman who became his mother-in-law?’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but it explains Uncle David’s middle name.’

  ‘What about Mathew with one t?’

  ‘He’s described in the birth record as a factory owner.’

  She smiled. ‘We do come from wealthy stock.’

  ‘Yes but he didn’t.’ His eyes were gleaming. ‘I dug deeper,’ he went on, ‘and found his birth registration; he was born in seventeen ninety-three, in Carluke also. His father, Robert Fleming, was a carter and his mother, Hannah Russell, was a seamstress.’

  ‘A self-made man, then.’

  ‘Was he ever. I went looking for the date of his death and found it: eighteen fifty-five, aged sixty-two. On the certificate he was Sir Mathew Fleming, Knight Commander.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Alex gasped.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ her father declared. ‘The cause of death,’ he continued, ‘was given as liver failure, with the qualification that it was a consequence of war wounds.’

  ‘War wounds!’ she repeated. ‘Then he must have been the scarred man in the portrait, surely!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, indeed, and that portrait, it turns out, is a copy of one painted by the artist Alexander Geddes, one of his last works. I traced it; the original’s in the collection of the Palace of Westminster. I viewed it online and it’s absolutely the same as I saw when I was five.

  ‘From there I got all sorts,’ he chuckled, ‘the whole story. When Sir Mathew snuffed it, there were obituaries in the Scotsman , the Glasgow Herald and The Times . They confirmed that he was the son of a carter, and said that he’d been an enlisted man in the Napoleonic War, a sergeant in the Cameron Highlanders; they were a fearsome crew, by reputation. They said he was severely wounded at Waterloo and then again three years later, also in Flanders, when he lost his eye.’

  He pressed on. ‘His life changed when he came home, after his discharge. He made his first fortune by patenting a lightweight saddle, and even more dough as an iron founder, in the early years of rail travel, making parts for locomotives.’ He smiled. ‘Then he gave most of it away, to charitable foundations. He was a member of the House of Commons for eight years and a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Lanarkshire for more than twenty. The man was a bloody legend in his lifetime.’

  ‘Did he remarry?’

  ‘Yes. He married Jean McGill’s by then widowed mother, and they had a child together, a girl, Hannah. She married a man called Graham, and believe it or not she’s an ancestor of yours through your mother. You’ve got a double dose of Mathew’s blood in your veins.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ She laughed. ‘What happened to David McGill? Did Mathew kill him in a duel?’

  He grinned. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t gone there yet, but I will. When I’m ready . . . I’ve spent enough time in the past for the moment.’

  His tale told, his daughter resumed her work, and Skinner headed back to his own office in the building owned by the InterMedia Group, where he settled down to earn some more of the lavish salary that company paid him for his input.

  He found a message awaiting his attention: June Crampsey, the managing editor of the Saltire , wanted to see him, urgently.

  She had a crisis. One of her less experienced reporters, a young man named Shafik Rasul, had been arrested in Aberdeen and charged with offering a bribe to an off-duty prison officer, in return for access to a prisoner, in the guise of a family member. Their conversation had been recorded by undercover police officers who had the warder under surveillance.

  ‘How should I play it, Bob?’ she asked. ‘The lad’s panicking. He says that the man solicited the bribe and suggested the ploy. He agreed to it just to string him along, he says.’

  ‘How did he come to contact the warder in the first place?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘That was the story he was after. He’d had a tip from a source that he won’t reveal even to me, that the man had been a messenger for the con . . . his name’s Harry Brady, a Glasgow gang lord . . . for years. He was suspected of facilitating the murder of one of Brady’s enemies, by carrying an order to a hit man.’

  Skinner smiled grimly. ‘I know Brady,’ he said. ‘I didn’t bang him up myself, but I had to put the fear of God in him fifteen years back, when I’d been told that he was trying to move his drugs and protection rackets into Edinburgh.

  ‘Who are the investigating officers?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the editor replied. ‘The fiscal in Aberdeen wouldn’t tell me; she wouldn’t even listen to me. How should I play this, Bob? Any advice? I don’t want to lose this kid. He’s really bright.’

  ‘You could threaten to run the story,’ he suggested.

  She frowned. ‘How would that help?’

  ‘The fiscal would shit herself.’

  ‘I’d be bluffing. Shafik’s been up in the Sheriff Court already, in private. The case is sub judice .’

  ‘So what?’ he countered. ‘You don’t need to name him. Look, this is an undercover operation, and your lad got in the way. He’s been charged because he was a nuisance, that’s all; it’ll never get to court, I promise you. Has the prison officer been arrested?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘No,’ he repeated firmly. ‘He hasn’t because the investigation is still open. The story of the Brady hit goes back a year and more; I was aware of it when I was in Strathclyde. The police aren’t just after the warden, they want Brady himself, for conspiracy to murder. If we make the slightest wave, the charges against your kid will be dropped, on condition that he shuts up and stays away. Do you want me to have a word?’

  ‘Would you?’

  He smiled. ‘Sure. I’m having lunch with the new chief constable in half an hour, as it happens. I think she wants to make me an offer I’m going to refuse.’

  He left Crampsey calmer than she had been and went back to his own office, two doors along the corridor.

  On reflection he decided not to spoil his lunch with the chief constable by asking her for a favour; instead he phoned Woodrow Butcher, the Lord Advocate, and called one in. The two were regular golf partners at Gullane.

  ‘Remember three weeks ago?’ he began.

  ‘Anything in particular?’ Scotland’s senior law officer replied, cautiously.

  ‘The time when I carried you on my shoulders to a win in a dinner match, money involved.’

  ‘Oh. That. Do I sense that it might be payback time?’

  ‘It could be.’ He explained Shafik Rasul’s predicament.

  ‘You can vouch for the young man?’ Butcher asked.

  ‘June Crampsey can,’ Skinner assured him.

  ‘That’s enough for me. I’ll keep the charge open to ensure the laddie’s silence, but when the police are ready to move on Brady and his stooge, it’ll be dropped.’ He laughed. ‘You just can’t keep your hands off, Bob,’ he said. ‘Can you?’

  ‘I could, Woodrow,’ the reluctant civilian replied, ‘but they seem to be magnetic . . . magnetic for trouble.’

  Three

  ‘Was it worth it?’ Chief Constable Maggie Rose Steele asked the man who had been her mentor, as the waiter left with their lunch orders, leaving them in a quiet corner of the restaurant.

  Bob Skinner smiled. ‘Expand on each “it”, Mags,’ he invited.

  ‘You know what I mean. Do you regret your decision to leave the police service, and are you enjoying your new life? You’d have had the position I now hold, beyond question, but you walked away. Sure, I know,’ she added. ‘You were opposed to a unified Scottish police service, as were most serving cops. But when it was forced upon us by the politicians, most of us decided to stick around.’

  ‘Most of you didn’t have a choice,’ he countered. ‘You had families to support.’

  ‘So have you,’ she pointed out. She winked. ‘A family that’s expanding year by year.’

  ‘I had other opportunities. I was able to make the move without putting them at risk. Mags, if I had stayed, it would have stopped being a calling and become just a job . . . and I’d have been crap at it. My police career didn’t prepare me for running a force of any size, let alone the juggernaut that is the Scottish National Police. I was a detective, Maggie, I caught thieves and murderers; but I was never an administrator. You know that; you were a witness.’

  ‘You were a leader, Bob,’ she exclaimed. ‘We’d have followed you into cannon fire. Okay, you might have been a better delegator on the CID side, but you never turned up at a crime scene just to check on the work of others. You always contributed and you never undermined the senior investigating officer. The other aspects of policing you did leave to people who knew what they were doing and supervised those from a distance.’

  ‘That’s most of the job,’ he reminded her. ‘When I was chief in Edinburgh, my deputies, Brian Mackie and then you, did most of the work. Effectively that’s what you’re saying.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she countered. ‘We implemented policy as you directed; that’s the truth of it. And this is true as well: your decision to leave the service was emotional, it wasn’t rational. There are people . . . in politics and the media, not in the police . . . who are saying you went off in the huff when you didn’t get your own way on unification.’

  Skinner frowned. ‘I can’t argue against that, but even if it’s true, it wasn’t the whole story. I had another reason for withdrawing my application.’

  ‘And I know what it was,’ Maggie said. ‘Your son was in serious trouble.’

  ‘My son was going to jail, possibly for life.’

  ‘Bob, you never knew of Ignacio’s existence until after his crime had been committed. That could never have been held against you.’

  He laughed, bitterly. ‘Maybe not, but it would, by the very people you’ve just mentioned, in politics and the media. The product of a one-night stand with Mia Watson, star of local radio and the daughter of an Edinburgh criminal family, who did a runner after she was duped into setting up her brother to be killed? If the whole story had come out at his trial, they’d have had a fucking field day.’

  ‘You’ve ridden out worse than that.’

  ‘Maybe, but what would the effect have been on Ignacio, and on my other kids, Alex, and James Andrew, and Mark, and Seonaid? The headlines would have followed them for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘Okay,’ the chief constable conceded quietly, ‘but it’s passed over now, and the fact that Ignacio is your son hasn’t become public knowledge. When does he get out?’

  ‘In a couple of months . . . round about the time Sarah’s due. We can double up on the champagne. But when he does, he won’t be a secret any longer. I’d have acknowledged him from the start, if I hadn’t thought it might put him at risk inside. Sure, there will be some tabloid coverage, but Mia and I will be in control of the story. It’ll be a one-day wonder.’

  ‘Once that happens, the cupboard will be empty. I assume,’ she added. ‘No more skeletons?’

  Skinner laughed. ‘With me, who knows?’ he said.

  ‘I think I do,’ she declared. ‘And at that time . . . Bob, we want you back.’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘No chance. All due respect, Maggie, but I couldn’t work for you. I can’t remember the last time I followed an order.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be working for me, not directly. I’d be kept aware of what you were doing, other than in one exceptional circumstance, but you wouldn’t report to me.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he murmured. He thought for a few seconds, then looked her in the eye. ‘If this is the Inspector of Constabulary post, I’ve turned it down already, in a very loud voice.’

  ‘No,’ Steele replied. ‘That’s a public position; this is anything but. I’m talking about . . .’ She stopped in mid-sentence as the waiter arrived with their starters.

  He was barely out of earshot, when Skinner asked, ‘Is it a job that needs doing?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The First Minister and me. We want to set up a semi-formal investigating unit that would be called in on an ad hoc basis, to investigate crimes and other situations that are seen as having special sensitivity.’

  ‘Other than in one situation, you said. What would that be?’

  ‘If you were investigating me,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘That blows it out of the water right way. I know you far too well.’

  ‘We can leave that out . . . not that it would arise.’

  ‘Fine; now answer me this. If not me, who?’

  ‘We haven’t thought that far ahead,’ Steele admitted.

  ‘Andy Martin,’ he suggested, knowing that the very mention of her short-lived predecessor in the Scottish National Police command chair was provocative.

  ‘Not a prayer. Andy turned into a megalomaniac in the job. Nobody anticipated that. I haven’t cleared up all the mess yet. The communications department, for example; the way he set it up, the thing was practically unmanageable. There were places where the road accident stats improved because the local press officer went on sick leave for six weeks and wasn’t covered. Then there was the deputy communications director, a woman called Cant, who bloody well couldn’t, but was allowed to think that she had power of command over senior officers.’

  Skinner smiled. ‘I heard about her. Didn’t Sammy Pye slam a door in her face once?’

  ‘No, he left Sauce Haddock to do it. The bugger is, she’s just walked out with a fat redundancy cheque. It was the only way I could fire her.’