Thursday legends - Skinner 10 (38 page)

substituted
it for Puff Daddy. 'There're other things too,' he went on. 'The computer
hasn't seen our research; it doesn't know that if you play three female artists
in succession, your audience starts to switch off.' He saw Martin's surprise.
'Don't ask me why, but that is true. Doesn't matter who they are, either, and
it doesn't work the other way around.'

Thomson
made a few more adjustments, then said, 'Fine. That's tomorrow's breakfast show
done. I'll print it out now, and Madge, our production assistant, will put it
on the presenter's desk.'

He
stood. 'Come on. We're on air in five minutes; we'd better get down to the
studio.' He led the detective back down the stairs and past the entrance hall,
to the basement nerve-centre of the building. As they walked, he explained the
format of their on-air discussion. 'I'll play three music tracks at the top of
the programme, past the news and traffic, go to commercials, then I'll
introduce you.

'We'll
talk about police work in general; the overall role of the force; about five
minutes of that then I'll play another three tracks, more commercials, then
back to discussion of the role of the CID. No live cases - I'll make that point
on air -just general. How a typical investigation runs.

'Our
discussion will split into three segments, and after about forty minutes, we'll
be finished, and I'll cue you out.'

'Fine,'
said Martin. 'Do I have to keep my mouth shut in there, other than when I'm
speaking?'

'Hell
no,' said Thomson. 'It's not like that any more. Nothing is as it was any
more.' He stopped at a solid wooden door with a single small glass panel and
punched in a code on a small keyboard.

'You
should change the code. Three, one, four, two.'

The
presenter looked at his guest, puzzled. 'How could you see? I had my hand over
the panel.'

'First
four digits of the decimal form of pi. Most common office-security code in the
business.'

Spike
gasped. 'Hey. I wonder if I can work that into the discussion?'

It
was Andy's turn to gasp as they stepped into the Radio Forth studio. He looked
around for turntables and CD players, but saw none. 'Where's the gear?' he
asked, as his host waved farewell to the out-going presenter, and pulled a
second chair up to the beechwood console in front of the yellow-covered
microphone which hung from the ceiling. There was a production booth on the
other side of a thick glass panel but it was empty. The full complement of the
Drive-Time
show
was them, and a programme assistant. 'This is Audrey,' said Spike. Martin
smiled at the woman across the console as he sat down.

A
jingle sounded from the big speakers, followed by a woman's voice. 'I'm Lesley
Davis and this is Forth News.'

The
broadcaster pointed to a video-display screen, bigger than the computer screen
in his office. It seemed to be an integral part of the console. 'That's it. All
of it. This studio is state-of-the-art; everything's on digital audio tape now
and the whole show, other than the live voices, are on that touch-sensitive
screen.

'No
more cueing up vinyl. Now, I just do this.' His fingers flashed in a complex
demonstration of the screen's functions. As Martin looked he saw that it was
all there; the whole programme, set out in different sections, all of it timed
to the second. He watched as the news-segment indicator counted down to zero.

And
in that instant the man beside him changed; the quiet, chatty figure turned
into the broadcast version of Spike Thomson; right out there and in the
listener's face. 'Hi and welcome to
Drive-Time,
on Forth AM. Three hours of the
music, news, conversation and traffic that means the most to east Central Scotland.

'A
little later, I'll introduce today's special guest, the man in my hot-seat. But
first ...' He touched a corner of the screen, and the sounds of Gloria
Estefan's brass section rang out.

He
leaned back in his chair. 'That's us for nine minutes twenty, then ads. Relax.
At least we can; I know of at least one FM station where they don't allow the
presenters chairs. They like to keep them on their toes, literally. Seriously,
though; you feeling comfortable?'

Martin
nodded. 'I'm fine,' he said. 'I'm just gob-smacked by all this stuff.'

i
love it,' said Spike. 'I'm real a tech-head. This is like Toy Town for me.' On
the desk a phone flashed, without ringing; he picked it up and spoke to the
caller for several minutes. 'Okay, if that's your advice,' he said at last,
'sell the Royal Bank shares and buy Barclays.'

He
hung up, with a quick glance at the screen. 'You saw the light as far as Rhian
was concerned, I hear,' he murmured, casually.

'Yeah,'
said Martin. 'She made me see a lot of things; I owe her that.'

'You're
well shot of her, though. I didn't like to say at the time, but she's a
man-eater. She tried for me, you know; I'm sleeping with her mother and she
tried for me.'

'She
and her sister will have had a bet about it. That's how it was with me. I
should have seen it but I was thinking with my dick at the time.'

'Her
sister?' Spike mused. 'Her big butch sister? You reckon?'

'Yup.
You still keen on Juliet?'

'Oh
sure. I've asked her to move in with me; she's thinking about it. Not the
bloody parrot though,' he laughed. 'That stays.'

He
looked at Martin. 'Rhian'11 grow out of it one day,' he said. 'She's not a bad
girl; just a bit screwed up over her father.'

'What,
about him running off you mean?'

'That's
what she told you. It's what Juliet told me too. 'S not true, though. Lesley
Davis, the queen of our newsroom, spread the real story all around the office
when she heard we were seeing each other; hell of a bloody gossip, Lesley, like
all journos. She told the whole damn place that Juliet's husband committed
suicide; it was hushed up at the time by the media, as these things often are.'

He
held up a hand as the light on top of the console shone red.

'Okay!!!'
Spike Thomson's alter ego reappeared like a genie from a bottle. 'Now, I
promised you a special guest, and here he is
...'

59

'...
so you're saying, Andy, that we should forget all the drama that we see in the
movies and on the telly? You're saying that real detective work is boring?'

Martin
laughed easily. 'Not at all, Spike. CID is only boring to those who are bored
by life itself. At the centre of a major criminal investigation lies a lot of
hard work, gathering information, from scientific analysis of potential
evidence found at crime scenes or, sometimes, revealed by post-mortem, to the
picture of the event painted by witness statements and by wider canvassing
through door-to-door interviews, or occasionally re-enactments to trigger the
memories of people who might have seen something important without realising
it.

"The
skilled detective will sit and look at all this and build what amounts to a
virtual-reality model of the crime. From that he or she - and these days, more
and more women are filling senior CID posts - will draw conclusions and follow
any signs which may lead to the perpetrator.

'Once
everything has fallen into place, an arrest is made and we present a report to
the Procurator Fiscal - whose agents we are under the Scots system - saying,
"This is whodunit and this is our case against him."

'The
public think of the term "forensic science" in a very narrow sense.
The skilled detective who looks analytically at all of the physical facts of an
investigation, and determines what they say about truth or untruth, innocence
or guilt – he
or she is the true forensic
scientist.'

'So
what you're saying is, if you wanna be a detective, you have to have a mix of
analytical skills and patience.'

'That's
right. Although I mustn't miss out the magic ingredient.'

Spike
Thomson seemed caught off guard. 'What's that?' he asked. 'Luck.'

'Nice
one, Andy,' said Maggie Rose as she switched off the car radio. 'What he didn't
say, though,' she murmured to her husband, in the passenger seat beside her,
'is that to get to the very top, you need to be a bloody good communicator as
well - just like him.'

She
swung their car off the Dirleton by-pass as she spoke, entering the village
from the eastward side, then made another quick right turn, following the sign
which read, 'Yellowcraigs 1' and showed a caravan symbol.

'Don't
tell me that Alec Smith's safe house is in the middle of a bloody caravan
site,' Mario exclaimed.

'I
doubt it,' Maggie replied. 'There's a lot of land down there - a hell of a lot.
Some of it's public but most of it's landed estate. The Kinture holding is
relatively small, isolated between the sea and Eilbottle Forest.'

She
drove along the narrow twisting road, until she came to a large parking area
with only a few cars dotted about. As she turned into the entrance, an elderly
attendant approached, only to back off at the sight of her police warrant card.
She drew up as close as she could to the gate which led to Yellowcraigs beach,
switched off and reached into the back seat for her briefcase.

'I've
got a map of the area,' she said. 'Have you got the keys?'

'Of
course. I'm a true forensic scientist; I wouldn't overlook something like
that.'

She
smiled. 'Don't take the piss out of the Head of CID; he might hear you.'

'I
wouldn't be surprised. Tell you, Mags, I'll never underrate that man again.'
He paused, as they walked down the widening path to the beach. 'Which reminds
me. What did you think of this morning's sensation?'

'What
are you talking about?'

'Ah,
of course; you didn't go to the Divisional Heads' meeting this morning. Karen
Neville's gone: resigned the force.'

'Why?'

'Because
she and Andy are getting married. She's moved in with him already.'

'Bloody
hell! I'd heard stories about them, but I never imagined
...
I mean, we all know Andy but
...
Och, good luck to them both. They
deserve it. Still
...
wow.'

'Aye,
last week a sergeant; next month, our next Chief Constable's wife.'

'What?
Andy? To succeed Proud Jimmy? Rather than
...'

'Put
money on it.'

'Time
will tell. Here, do you think there's a message for us in Karen leaving the
force?'

'When
you're Head of CID and I'm a Divisional Commander - or the other way around -
maybe, but not right now. The Boss has kept us a distance apart on purpose,
from the very start.'

'Yet
here we are on the same job,' she pointed out.

'On
a very special job.'

'Very
Special Branch, you mean.'

They
stopped as the path which they were walking ran down to a curved golden beach.
The island of Fidra lay only a few hundred yards offshore, a green hill rising
steeply from the sea and surmounted by a white lighthouse. 'Picture postcard
stuff,' said Mario. 'Where do we go from here?'

She
pointed to her left. 'Eastwards, into that opening in the whins, as far as I
can see. This is shown on the map as a Right of Way, until it hits the Kinture
land, then it skirts round it. Come on.' She led the way forward along the
narrow pathway, cut by ground-care workers through high, prickly gorse bushes;
at once the seascape was obscured from their view, but they could still hear
the slow, languorous sound of waves splashing on the shore.

They
walked on for ten minutes, with the bushes thinning out gradually, and the
tidal sounds becoming fainter. At last, the gorse to the north disappeared
altogether, the path curved and was bounded by a waist-high fence made up of
three strands of barbed wire. The land on the other side was forest, mature
trees, with dark, threatening shadow beneath. Maggie stopped and looked at her
map. 'A bit to go yet,' she murmured. 'We should see it soon.'