than that on my Merc: old steel versus modern plastic, I imagined. There was a scratch along the side, the kind a vandal might leave with a key or a nail, but it was the rear end that had been most affected by the shunt. A light cluster was smashed, and the boot was distorted, its catch shaken loose.
I took out my handkerchief again, wrapping it round my fingers before giving the metal a firm push. But the lock didn’t take; instead the lid swung slowly upwards, opening fully and revealing what was inside.
In the moment that I saw it, I jumped backwards, my reactive scream muffling itself in my throat.
A child stared up at me, a little girl. She looked to be around the same age as my younger daughter, Seonaid. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open too, as if she was as startled by me as I was by the sight of her. She was dressed in a tartan skirt and a blue quilted jacket. Beneath, she wore a sweatshirt with a cartoon penguin on the front, the type of garment that has taken the place of a blazer in many schools.
I reached into her place of containment and touched her cheek, as gently as I touch Seonaid’s sometimes, when she’s asleep, but I didn’t need to feel the coldness against my fingertips to know that the poor little innocent was dead.
I couldn’t put a number to the crime scenes I’ve visited over a thirty-year police career, or to the number of victims of violence I’ve stood over.
Latterly, I was involved in a couple of really bad ones; they got to me in a way that others hadn’t, and made me vow to walk away, to leave the bloody aftermath to others while I could still feel some compassion for the dead, before I became as dehumanised as they were.
I never quite managed that as a serving officer, not even as a chief constable, but as a civilian, that day in that car park, I did something I’d never done before. I buried my face in my hands, so that nobody could see my tears.
That’s how I was standing when the cops arrived.
Two
I suppose that an objective observer looking at my career might say I did all right for myself, but I see it differently. I was okay until a few years ago, and then it all went south.
My problem was that I found myself in a job for which I was totally unprepared, and temperamentally unsuited. Most of my police service, from detective sergeant up, was spent in major criminal investigation. I was a specialist, not an all-rounder.
In my final years I was in a position to take myself out of that; as chief constable of my force, and before that as deputy chief, I could have positioned myself well away from CID.
Sir James Proud, my predecessor in the top office in Edinburgh, was a career administrator. I could have followed in his footsteps and played it his way; if I’d been any good at the job, I would have done that very thing.
But I’m not Jimmy, nor could I ever have been like him. I had no background in the things that he did well, nor any aptitude for them, and that was a problem, for those were the skills that had made him such an outstanding chief police officer.
In my heart, I’d known this. I had resisted, until the very last minute, the pressure that was put upon me to follow in Sir James’s footsteps, pressure applied subtly by the man himself, more overtly by friends and colleagues, and most forcefully of all by she who was my wife at the time.
They meant well, all but one of them. I didn’t know it then, but out of all my boosters only one person had her own interests at heart, rather than mine. That’s one of a few reasons why Aileen de Marco and I aren’t married any more.
My ego won over my common sense; in truth that was never a contest. When Jimmy announced his impending retirement, I put my name forward and I was anointed, as Chief Constable Robert Morgan Skinner, QPM.
So there I was, sat in the big chair, I had all that silvery braid on the uniform that I’d always hated wearing, and I had all the power in my hands, with a few thousand people, cops and civilians, under my command. And most of it bored me bloody