Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel Read Online Free

wasn’t?’

    ‘That’s right. They found a guy in the pool.’

    ‘What stroke was he doing?’

    ‘Very funny. There’s no water supply to the building, but even if there had been, this one wasn’t swimming. He was at the deep end; right under the high diving board. His neck was broken.’

    ‘He took the plunge, eh?’

    The superintendent allowed himself a grim chuckle. ‘That’s how it looks. But we don’t know for certain whether he dived off it or whether he was chucked off.’

    ‘What makes you think I can tell you?’ I asked.

    ‘If what Alf Stein says about you is right,’ I could see the sneer on his weasel face, ‘you probably could tell us just by looking at him.’ Detective Chief Superintendent Stein was our head of CID, Jay’s boss and mine. I’d heard myself described, with undisguised jealousy, by someone who didn’t know I was within earshot, as his protégé, but Alf had never told me that I was. ‘But the reason I’d like you to look at him . . .’ he hesitated, ‘. . . this has got drugs overtones to it, Bob. There’s no ID on the body, but Alison Higgins reckons she’s seen this bloke before. She thinks that he’s one of Tony Manson’s crew.’

    I could have said that I’d look at him next morning in the mortuary, but in truth, if Jay had done that to me I’d have been seriously upset. And there was something else: Alison wasn’t wrong too often. I told him to hold, and put my hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. ‘Do you know if Daisy has anything on tonight?’ I asked my daughter.

    She nodded. ‘She’s taking some pictures to show to a private buyer in Haddington.’

    ‘Do you have much homework?’

    ‘I’ve done it.’

    ‘Fancy a quick trip into town?’

    ‘Aw, Dad! Top of the Pops is on in a minute or two.’

    ‘We can record it. I need to do this.’

    ‘New jeans?’

    ‘Are you trying extortion on a police officer?’

    ‘It’s always worked before.’

    ‘Okay.’ I put the phone back to my ear. ‘I’ll be about forty-five minutes, give or take a couple,’ I told Jay.

    ‘Our guest will wait for you,’ he replied.

    I let Alex set the VCR; we had no empty tapes so she and I had a brief argument about which to use. She won in the end, because I wasn’t really interested in catching up on Juventus winning the Champions League on penalties. She didn’t get to choose the music in the car, though. I never could stand R Kelly, and Wyclef’s language on one of the Fugee tracks was . . . well . . . ‘Mista Mista’ had become the anthem of the Edinburgh drugs squad, but it wasn’t for my daughter’s ears. Instead I forced her to listen to ‘Aria’, a strange, contemplative blend of opera and chill-out music by the Cafe del Mar maestro, that a friend had given me in Spain a few weeks before, at Easter.

    Although it was a Thursday, most of the late evening shoppers were heading for home by the time we came into the outskirts of the city. I was thinking about Infirmary Street Baths, and what was waiting for us there. Alexis was thinking about something else; we were on Milton Link when she turned the volume down.

    ‘Dad,’ she said, abruptly, reclaiming my attention. ‘Why don’t we have a dinner party?’

    ‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘Why the hell would we do that?’

    ‘Why shouldn’t we? You never invite friends to the house. It’s as if we’re hermits. You’re a good cook, and I’m not bad at some things. We could manage.’

    ‘Who would we invite?’ As I thought about it, I conceded the point; we did live a secluded existence. Alex wasn’t my life in its entirety, but I didn’t have a legion of friends, not outside the job. Yes, I was invited to parties thrown by people who’d been part of our circle when I was half of a couple, but nobody expected me to take a turn as host myself, not with a kid . . . but she wasn’t any more, was she?

    ‘You could invite the Lloyds,’ she suggested. Jack Lloyd was my usual