Pray for the Dying by Quintin Jardine

to keep him in for a couple of days. I don’t know how he’ll feel about coming back.’
    ‘Then see if you can find out for me. Go and visit him, this evening if you can. Max is only a few months off the usual retirement age. If he’s up to talking about it, tell him that if he’d like to come back, I’ll be happy to see him, but if he doesn’t, I’ll sign him off for enough sick leave to take him up to his due date.’
    ‘Yes, Chief; I was planning to go and see him anyway. He’s always been good to me.’
    ‘Fine. Now who’s here, in the building now?’
    ‘ACC Thomas is. He said he’d be in his office, and that he’d like to see you as soon as possible. And ACC Gorman’s in as well. She came down from Argyll overnight.’
    ‘Does she want to see me too?’
    ‘No, she said to tell you she was about if you needed her, that’s all.’
    Skinner smiled. ‘Okay then, let’s talk to her; I can spare a few minutes before I have to see Lottie. Ask her to drop in, then give Mr Thomas my apologies, tell him that I’ll fit him in tomorrow morning, and that he’s free to salvage what’s left of his Sunday.’
    As Payne left, he walked over to the desk, tried the swivel chair for height, and found, as he had expected, that it was set far too low. He stayed in it for only a few seconds, then pushed himself out. There was something not right about it, something that made his spine tingle. He knew what it was without any deep analysis. Less than forty-eight hours before, Toni Field had been sitting in it, and at that very moment she was lying in a refrigerated drawer in one of the city’s morgues, unless she was being autopsied by Sarah’s opposite number in the west.
    He knew that he would never feel comfortable in her old seat, and so he wheeled it over to the secretary’s office, and left it in there with a note saying, ‘Replace, please,’ scribbled on a sheet torn from a pad.
    He had just stepped back into his own room when he heard a knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.
    ‘I can’t,’ a female voice shouted back. ‘This door self-locks. It can only be opened with a key or from the inside.’
    He stepped across and admitted his visitor. ACC Bridget Gorman was in civvies, light tan trousers and a check shirt. ‘Afternoon, Chief,’ she said. Her manner was tentative, not that of the Bridie Gorman he knew.
    ‘Hey, Bridie, last week at ACPOS it was Bob,’ he told her. ‘It still is, okay? Come in and have a seat.’ He showed her across to the table and pulled out two of the chairs.
    She glanced across to the desk, taking in the missing swivel but saying nothing. ‘Wouldn’t be right,’ he replied to her unspoken question. ‘I feel bad enough being here.’
    Gorman frowned, and her forehead all but disappeared behind a mop of black but grey-streaked hair. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘It’s just awful. And it could have been Aileen.’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it could, and neither does DI Mann.’ He explained why.
    She nodded. ‘Yes, I can see that. Somebody like them, they’d know exactly who they were shooting, I suppose. But why? Why Toni Field?’
    ‘They didn’t need to know that.’
    ‘But they’d know who wanted it done.’
    ‘Not all the way up the chain, not necessarily.’
    ‘Do you think it was related to something here?’
    ‘Come on, Bridie,’ Skinner murmured, ‘you know the rule: speculation hinders investigation.’
    ‘Aye, I suppose I do. Did you say that Lottie Mann’s involved?’
    ‘She was on duty; she took the shout.’
    ‘Granted, but . . . Lottie can be like a runaway train. Max Allan was always careful how she was deployed.’
    ‘I know that,’ he conceded. ‘But last night was chaos. The hall was full of headless chickens, but she turned up and took charge, even put me in my place. I liked that. It means she’s my kind of cop. What’s her back story? She said she has a family, but that’s all I know about