Thursday legends - Skinner 10

headline

Copyright © Quintin Jardine 2000

The right of Quintin Jardine to be identified as the Author
of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2000 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

First published in paperback in 2001 by HEADLINE BOOK
PUBLISHING

109
8
7
65

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 0 7472 5668 3

Typeset by Avon Dataset Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warks

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives
pic

HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING A division of Hodder Headline 338 Euston
Road London NW1 3BH

www.headline.co.uk
www.hodderheadline.com

My
thanks go to:

Professor
Sir James Armour Scott Wilson and David Johnston, Radio Forth, Edinburgh Jack
Arrundale, for a flash of inspiration

 1

'Dammit,
Diddler, you were a bit late there!'

He
glowered up from the floor for a second or two, then grasped the outstretched
arm and pulled himself to his feet.

'Sorry,
Neil,' the sweating man acknowledged, gasping for breath. 'I guess I'm just not
as quick as I used to be, only my brain doesn't know it yet.'

'Hmph!
From what I've heard you never were as quick as you used to be. Ah, 'scuse me.'
Mcllhenney shoved him to one side and lunged towards the yellow football as it
flew towards him, trapping it close to the wall of the sports hall, and holding
off the recovered Diddler easily, as he looked inside.

'Right,
son!' The call came from Andrew John, surging towards goal at a rate just
slightly above his normal walking pace. He rolled the ball into the path of the
bearded banker, whose side-footed shot beat the token efforts of Mitchell
Laidlaw, taking a breather in goal.

The
sturdy lawyer restarted the game quickly, throwing the ball out to the halfway
line. The hall was big enough to accommodate full-sized tennis and basketball
courts -although it was rarely used for either of those sports - with a raised
spectator gallery along one side and two glazed panels set in the other,
allowing a view from the Centre's cafeteria.

'Pick
him up, Neil,' John called out, as Benny Crossley cut towards the wing. As
Mcllhenney sprinted across the court, it occurred to him that his team-mate was
at least five yards
closer to their opponent, but
he let it pass. Benny was no flying winger and was usually predictable, and so
he knew that he would turn back on to his right foot for a strike. His block
was timed almost perfectly; he won possession as he surged through the tackle,
sending the other man spinning, and headed back towards Mitch Laidlaw.

As
he moved past the wall panels, he was aware of his son, Spencer watching him,
his face almost pressed to the glass.

'Get
stuck in, man!' In spite of his exertion, he smiled at the bellow, knowing that
it was directed at the unfortunate Crossley, rather than at him. Stewart Rees
appointed himself captain of every team in which he played, laying down the law
to his colleagues at a volume which rose steadily as the hour progressed; to be
fair to him, he did his waning best to set an example. As Rees rushed towards
him, Neil played the ball to himself off the wall, avoided his lunge, then set
himself to shoot.

For
a moment he thought that he had been hit by a car. As Benny Crossley had found
a few moments earlier, so the fabric-covered ball seemed to become an immovable
object as his right foot slammed against it. His momentum sent him flying
forwards, off his feet, twisting instinctively in mid-air to land safely on the
hard floor.

There
was no apology from Bob Skinner, only the sight, for Mcllhenney, of a
retreating back, a long pass being rolled wide of Grant Rock into the path of a
grateful Diddler, and an awkward mishit poke which eluded the flapping left
hand of David McPhail, the duty goal-keeper.

He
picked himself up, moved down, unmarked, to the halfway line and signalled to
McPhail to throw the ball out quickly, but just as his team-mate saw his waving
gesture, the heavyglazed door to the hall swung open; their equivalent of the
referee's whistle. Full-time: the Diddler's goal had been the winner.

Bob
Skinner came towards him, smiling, hand outstretched. Edinburgh's Deputy Chief
Constable was wearing a Motherwell Football Club replica shirt; he was
perspiring, but not as heavily as the others, and his breathing was steady. 'We
did you at the end there, fella, did we not?' he chuckled, as Mcllhenney
accepted the handshake.

'Maybe,
but what a goal to win by. A bloody toe-poke, and sclaffed at that.'

Skinner
beamed at him. 'For the Diddler, that was the equivalent of a thirty-yarder
into the top corner. All we can do here is our best - whatever that might be.'

2

'Just
one, as usual, then I'll need to get the kids home.' Mcllhenney dropped a
five-pound note into the kitty jar, a half-pint tumbler which sat on the bar.
'Make it a pint of lime and soda, please, Lesley, and a couple of Cokes for
Lauren and Spence.'

'I
don't remember ever seeing you have a beer in here,' the bar stewardess ventured
as she filled a tumbler from the dispenser. 'Don't you drink at all?'

He
shook his head. 'Not any more, other than the odd glass of wine with a meal.
That's a luxury I can't afford, not with those two.' He carried the Cokes, and
two packets of Cheese and Owen crisps across to a table in a big bay window,
where his two children were seated, playing a board game.

'I
won't be long,' he said.

Lauren
looked up at him; her brown hair was still damp from her swim in the Sports
Centre pool. 'No,' she agreed, severely. 'Spence mustn't be up too late.'

He
was frowning as he joined his football friends. Bob Skinner had noticed the
exchange. 'She giving you a hard time?' he asked; quietly, so that none of the
others could overhear.

'Not
really. She thinks of herself as a sort of surrogate mother sometimes, that's
all.'

'Aye,
well. She would, wouldn't she, the poor wee lass. She's cut out for the role
though.'

Neil
looked up at the ceiling and laughed. 'Indeed she is; but what a teacher she
had.' And then the lump was in his throat again. Still, it came without
warning; usually when he was alone, but sometimes, in the company of very close
friends, people who had known them both. At first it had overwhelmed him; there
had been a couple of occasions on which he, big, hard, Detective Sergeant
Mcllhenney, had shocked his companions, by dissolving, quietly and without
warning, into tears. Now though, he was able to master it, to control the
sudden surge of grief before it got to the stage of public embarrassment.

Skinner,
having been down that road himself, knew when to say nothing. Eventually his
companion dragged his gaze away from the ceiling and looked around the bar of
the small North Berwick hotel. The usual Thursday-night banter was picking up
pace; the evening's game was being replayed, notably by the Diddler, who was
well into the second talk-through of his winning goal.

'Bloody
toe-poke!' Mcllhenney grunted.

'Skilfully
guided away from the keeper, I'd put it,' the scorer insisted.

'Aye,
you would. Now move a couple of your bellies along that bench and give me a bit
more space.'

More
seat-room materialised for the big policeman; he leaned back and let the chat
continue, listening as it widened out, from the Diddler's never-ending store of
gossip about the lives of Edinburgh's elite to take in the week's televised
sport, which had highlighted the closely fought conclusion of the battle for
the English Premiership.

He
looked around his new friends, realising again that he, still in his thirties,
was the youngest member by several years:

Stewart
Rees: as quiet and friendly in the bar as he was loud and hectoring during
their game, a chemical engineer and head of production in one of Scotland's
smaller breweries.

Andrew
John: an assistant general manager with the Bank of Scotland, possessed of a
laconic sense of humour, and excellent footballing skills, even if these had
been a shade eroded by ageing joints and an expanding waistline.

Benny
Crossley: one of four squad members from Gullane, a man of few words, but every
one of them weighed and sensible, with the precision of someone who made his
living as a builder of quality houses.