Private Investigations by Quintin Jardine Page A

‘Someone told them they sounded like a fish and chip shop menu, and it stuck. They hate it.’
    ‘I can imagine,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve been wondering why I wasn’t called out myself. The thing is, Joe Hutchinson and I had agreed that he would drop out of CID work. He’s close to retirement, and when he does quit he wants a gap, where he isn’t liable to be called in from his hideaway in Portugal as an expert witness in a High Court trial.’
    ‘Not by the Crown, that’s for sure,’ I remarked. ‘There’s much more money in consulting for the defence.’
    ‘Don’t be so cynical.’ she scolded. ‘As I said, we had that deal, but when the call came in this morning, he told me the police wanted him, specifically.’ She paused. ‘Were you behind that, Bob?’
    ‘No,’ I assured her. ‘That’s the truth, I wasn’t. It was Sammy Pye’s call, but I’m sure he was thinking of you when he made it, and I approve, too. I hear what you say about being able to separate professional and private, but sometimes that’s difficult, even for you. Has Joe done the autopsy yet?’
    ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He’s holding off for as long as he can in the hope the girl can be identified.’
    I was surprised. ‘They haven’t done that yet? A child that age, I’d expected her absence to be noted pretty quickly.’
    ‘You’re itching to be part of this, aren’t you?’ Sarah observed.
    ‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m trying not to scratch it. But I am standing here wishing I’d chased the guy; if I’d got lucky and caught him it might all have been wrapped up now.’
    ‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ she said. ‘A couple of minutes ago you said he might have been an opportunistic car thief who didn’t know what was in the boot. And anyway, could you have caught him?’
    ‘Probably not,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m kicking myself for not trying.’
    ‘Suppose you had,’ she asked, ‘and run him down, then found the little girl. How would you have reacted?’
    That was a good question. ‘I can’t say for sure,’ I conceded, ‘but it might not have been pretty.’
    ‘Then it’s as well you didn’t,’ she declared. ‘The Menu . . . I like that; it’s funny . . . will get him, soon enough. Leave it to them, my love, and do your best to put it out of your mind. I’ll see you this evening.’
    Talking to Sarah made me feel better, no doubt about it; she always does. With time on my hands, I decided to build on my positivity, by calling on my other sounding board.
    A guy in my golf club told me a while back that you really start to feel old when your kids turn forty. I disagree: when Alex, my oldest, passed the thirty mark a wee while ago, it hit me harder than it did her.
    She marked the event by doing something completely unexpected, by walking away from a successful and lucrative career as a leading corporate partner in Curle Anthony and Jarvis, Scotland’s biggest legal firm, to set up in practice as a criminal defence lawyer and qualify as a solicitor advocate . . . in other words, ‘The Opposition’, as she put it when I was a cop.
    She’d picked up quite a bit of work in the second tier Sheriff Court, while studying for full rights of audience in the Supreme Court. A week before, she’d passed the Law Society exams, at the first time of asking.
    I didn’t have to go far to talk to her. There is office space for rent in the Saltire building, and I’d managed to fix her up with a suite, two floors above mine. The new sign on her door made me swell up with pride as I read it: ‘Alexis Skinner, LLB, Solicitor Advocate’.
    I was smiling as I stepped inside. ‘She in?’ I asked Constance, her secretary. The woman barely looked up from the papers she was studying, nodding and waving me on.
    ‘She’s busy,’ I remarked as I closed my daughter’s door behind me.
    ‘In the best possible way,’ Alex replied. ‘She’s doing fee notes.’
    ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Plenty of