Pray for the Dying Read Online Free PDF Page B

as is the Scottish Labour leader, Aileen de Marco, who was also present.’
    ‘Joey Morocco says the victim inside the hall was female, and that she was sitting next to the First Minister.’
    ‘Joey Morocco was there. I wasn’t. I’m not going to argue with him.’
    ‘Why isn’t the First Minister here?’
    ‘Because he was advised not to be.’
    ‘By you, sir?’
    ‘By his own protection staff.’
    ‘Does that mean there’s a continuing threat?’
    ‘It means they’re being suitably cautious.’
    ‘There are two men lying in Killermont Street, apparently dead. It’s been suggested that they were the killers. Can you comment?’
    ‘Yes they were, and they are both as dead as they appear to be.’ Skinner had winced inwardly at the brutality of that reply, but nobody had picked up on it. ‘As is the police officer they murdered as they left the hall,’ he had continued. ‘His colleague is in surgery as we speak.’
    ‘Are you looking for anybody else?’
    ‘You’re asking the wrong person. I’m here by accident, remember. That’s a question for Detective Inspector Mann of Strathclyde. She’s the officer in charge of the investigation.’
    Lottie Mann had handled herself well. She had given nothing away, but she had made it clear that the multiple killings at the concert hall would be investigated from origins to aftermath, like any other homicide.
    The one awkward question had been put by a Sun reporter, with whom Mann had history, after arresting him for infiltrating a crime scene.
    ‘Aren’t you rather junior to be running an investigation as important as this one?’
    She had nailed him with a cold stare. ‘That’s for others to decide. I was senior officer on duty tonight and took command at the scene, as I would have in any circumstances.’
    ‘By the way, you did fine in there, Lottie,’ Skinner told her, in the Lord Provost’s small room. ‘You did fine at the scene as well; took command, took no shit from anybody, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.’
    ‘To tell you the truth, sir,’ she confessed, as subdued as he had seen her in their brief acquaintance, ‘I was in a bit of a panic when I heard that ACC Allan had been taken away. I hope he’s all right.’
    ‘He is,’ Payne reassured her, ‘reasonably so. I called the Royal on my way down here. They gave him an ECG in the ambulance, and there’s no sign of a heart attack. They’re going to keep him in, though; apparently his blood pressure’s through the roof and he’s in shock.’
    ‘How about the wounded man?’ the chief asked. ‘What’s his name, by the way?’
    ‘PC Auger. Still in surgery, but the word is that he’ll survive. He was shot in the chest, but the bullet missed his heart and major arteries. It did nick a lung, though, and lodge in his spine.’
    ‘And his colleague?’
    ‘Sergeant Sproule. His body’s been taken to the mortuary.’
    ‘Who’s seeing next of kin?’
    ‘Chief Superintendent Mayfield,’ Payne told him. ‘She’s divisional commander.’
    ‘Okay. And Toni’s next of kin? Was she married? I don’t know,’ Skinner confessed. ‘She and I never got round to discussing our private lives.’
    ‘I don’t know either, sir. Sorry.’
    ‘No reason why you should, but raise the head of Human Resources, wherever he is, and find out. Whoever her nearest and dearest is needs to be told, and fast.’
    ‘Yes, they do,’ Lottie Mann said, ‘because the whole bloody world will soon know she was there if it doesn’t already. Chief Constable Field was a big Twitter fan. She posted every professional thing she did on it. No way she won’t have tweeted that she was chumming the First Minister to a charity gig.’ She scowled. ‘I’d ban that fucking thing if I could.’
    Skinner whistled. ‘Thank God you didn’t say that to the press.’ He smiled. ‘Max Allan would never let either of us forget it. Lowell,’ he continued, ‘do you know where the other ACCs are?’
    ‘Yes,’