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  Gallery Whispers by QUINTIN JARDINE.

  A Bob Skinner Mystery.

  Book Jacket.

  With his boss still recovering from a heart attack, Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner is filling his shoes - and that means more time than he'd like sitting behind a desk. But death - sudden and violent, or slow and insidious - is about to provide him with more drama than he could ever want.

  Intelligence reports suggest that one of the world's most ruthless freelance terrorists is on his way to Scotland - and he can only have one thing on his mind: the forthcoming special meeting of world Heads of Government in Edinburgh. If Skinner doesn't pick up his trail fast, he could have a global disaster in his backyard.

  And while all eyes are focused on the terrorist threat, a terminally ill woman is found dead - an apparent suicide. But a sharp-eyed policewoman sees the subtle marks of an assisted death - and therefore, according to the law, murder. A murder that soon appears to be part of an ominous pattern.

  For Skinner, the desperate race to find a heartless terrorist mixes uneasily with the search for a mercy killer - a search which takes on a poignant personal significance. One thing's for sure, Skinner will soon be staring death straight in the eye...

  Quintin Jardine was a journalist before joining the Government Information Service where he spent nine years as an advisor to Ministers and Civil Servants. Later he moved into political PR, until in 1986 he 'privatised' himself, to become an independent public relations consultant and writer.

  Praise for the previous Skinner novels

  SKINNER'S RULES

  'Remarkably assured...a tour de force'

  New York Times

  SKINNER'S FESTIVAL

  'Robustly entertaining'

  Irish Times

  SKINNER'S TRAIL

  'Engrossing, believable characters...captures Edinburgh beautifully...It all adds up to a very good read' Edinburgh Evening News

  SKINNER'S ROUND

  'The Skinner series grows in authority and should be a natural for television' Time Out

  SKINNER'S ORDEAL

  'Quintin Jardine has created the toughest Scottish cop since Taggart' Peterborough Evening Telegraph

  SKINNER'S MISSION

  'Once again Jardine serves up a thriller full of action, gritty realism and sharp patter' Darlington Northern Echo

  SKINNER'S GHOSS

  'More twists and turns than TV's Taggart at its best' Stirling Observer

  MURMURING THE JUDGES

  'A hair-trigger thriller...quality crime reading'

  Peterborough Evening Telegraph

  Also by Quintin Jardine and available from Headline.

  Skinner's Rules

  Skinner's Festival

  Skinner's Trail

  Skinner's Round

  Skinner's Ordeal

  Skinner's Mission

  Skinner's Ghosts

  Murmuring the Judges

  the Oz Blackstone Series

  Blackstone's Pursuits

  A Coffin For Two

  Wearing Purple.

  GALLERY WHISPERS.

  Quintin Jardine.

  HEADLINE.

  Copyright Quintin Jardine 1999

  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 1999

  by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  10987654321

  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.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Jardine, Quintin

  Gallery whispers - A Bob Skinner mystery

  1. Skinner, Bob Fictitious character - Fiction

  2. Police - Fiction 3. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14F

  ISBN 0 7472 1946 X hardback

  ISBN 0 7472 6442 2 trade paperback

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

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Clays Ltd, St Ives pie

  HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  A division of Hodder Headline PLC

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hodderheadline.com

  This is for Eileen, who shines her light into dark places.

  1

  'How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?'

  She looked at him across the dinner table, with a light, indulgent

  smile. 'Okay,' she said, quietly. "Let's have it.'

  He beamed, in his small triumph. 'One.' He barked the word out,

  and in that instant his heavy eyebrows seemed to slam together in a

  frown. '. .. and that's not funny!'

  Olive shook her head. 'You're not wrong there.'

  Lauren, seated on his right, looked up at her father. 'I don't get

  that, Dad.'

  He grinned. 'No, I suppose you're still a couple of years short of

  getting it.'

  'Oh,' said the child. 'Do you have to be twelve before you can be a

  feminist?'

  Neil gazed down at her, bland innocence written on her small

  round face, and realised yet again that if ever there was a mother's

  daughter it was Lauren Barbara Mcllhenney.

  A small hand tugged at his shirt-sleeve. 'Daddy, Daddy!' Spencer

  shouted, eagerly. 'Did you hear the one about the Hearts supporter

  who went into a pub with an alligator?'

  He laughed as he ruffled his son's thick fair hair. 'Aye, I did,

  Spence, often. The first time I heard it, it was a Celtic supporter that

  had the alligator. Don't you go telling that sort of joke outside, though.

  You could get into real trouble if the wrong lad heard you.'

  'And you could get into real trouble if the wrong woman heard you

  tell that other one,' Olive countered. 'Wherever did you pick it up

  anyway?'

  'From Karen Neville.'

  'Neville? Isn't she the new DS in Andy Martin's office?'

  'That's the one. Not so new now, though. She's been there a right

  few weeks now.'

  'Mum, can Spence and me leave the table? It's nearly time for the

  Holiday programme.'

  She turned to her daughter and raised an eyebrow. It was enough.

  'Sorry. May Spence and I leave the table?'

  'That's better. Have both of you finished all your homework?'

  Lauren and Spencer nodded in tandem.

  'Very well; you may.'

  Neil Mcllhenney gazed at his children as they ran from the small

  dining room and across the hall. 'A gentleman's family,' his father-in-

  law, Joe Baxter, had pronounced after Spencer's birth. Son and

  daughter. One of each.

  'I'll get the coffee,' he said, rising from his carver chair. 'You want

  milk in yours, or just black?'

  'Have we any of that Bailey's left?' she asked him. 'If so, I'll take

  some of that in it.' He nodded.

 
; Olive, in her turn, watched her husband as he left the room. Neil

  wasn't exactly fat, but over the thirteen years of their marriage, he had

  gained over two stone. Sure, he had a massive frame to carry it, but

  still, every time she thought of Chic, his father, and remembered the

  sudden awfulness of his death at the party for Spencer's christening,

  she felt a pang of fear for him. Chic had been fifty-four, a big, bulky

  man like his son. And he was only two years short of forty.

  Without warning she felt another type of pang as the cough reflex

  kicked in.

  Neil, in the kitchen, heard the paroxysm, then the quick puff of the

  inhaler as the fit settled down. This wasn't right; it wasn't bloody

  right. Anybody who knew them well would have realised that, simply

  by the fact that he was there making the coffee. Everyone in their

  circle knew that Olive couldn't stand his bloody coffee. Christ, she'd

  told them often enough. He either used too much or not enough, or

  ruined it by putting in too much milk, or made it straight from a

  boiling kettle and damn near scalded her. Now here she was letting

  him make the Kenco without a murmur. Indeed it was not bloody

  right.

  'D'you not think you should go back to the doctor?' he asked, as he

  set a mug, its contents heavily laced with the last of the Irish cream

  liqueur, on the coaster which lay before her on the table.

  She shot him the stare; the full, high-intensity spine-chiller that he

  knew so well, the laser look she could snap on in an instant. 'Olive's

  Silencer', her colleagues called it in the staff-room, in their awe at her

  ability to bring order to the rowdiest class without ever raising her

  voice.

  'No I do not,' she retorted. 'I have asthma. The doctor's told me

  that, and she's given me my inhaler. She warned me that the cough

  would come and go.'

  'It's the "go" part that I'm concerned about, love. Surely she could

  give you something that would settle it a bit quicker.'

  'I'll be all right,' she snapped. 'Now pack it in. Change the subject.

  What sort of a day did you have? What's the news on the Chief?'

  Neil backed off, for that moment at least. 'He's coming on,' he

  said. 'The boss says that he has another appointment with the heart

  specialist in Spain next Tuesday. If that goes okay they'll let him come

  home, provided that they take at least three days for the journey and

  that Lady Proud does most of the driving.'

  'When will he be back at work?'

  'There's no news on that yet. I understand from the boss that one of

  the force examiners will have to pass him fit before he can come

  back. The moment can't come soon enough for Big Bob, I can tell

  you. He hates every day he spends in that office.'

  Olive smiled. 'I'm sure he's just saying that, in case anyone thinks

  he's trying to undermine the Chief. He's probably loving it, really.'

  Her husband shook his head. 'DCC Skinner is many things, but he

  ain't that subtle. He doesn't like being tied to a desk, and he never

  will. I'm his executive assistant. I know this.'

  'What if the Chief doesn't come back?' she asked. 'What would he

  do then?'

  'Ah, but the Chief will be back. It was only a mild heart attack.

  They've put him on light medication and given him a diet.'

  He paused, and she seized her chance. 'Speaking of diets, Neil

  Mcllhenney; you could do with losing some weight.'

  Elbows on the table, shoulders hunched, head bowed, he looked

  across at her; his look this time, out from under his heavy, beetling

  eyebrows with a secret smile that went right into her soul, and told

  her, far more eloquently than the words which now they used to each

  other only occasionally, how much he loved her.

  'Christ,' he rumbled in his slow, deep voice. 'She sits there with

  bloody Bailey's in her coffee, and tells me to lose weight!'

  2

  He watched her as she slept. She lay on her right side, and although he

  could not see her face, he knew that her hand would be on the pillow,

  the thumb gently brushing her lips in an unconscious gesture which

  he had always guessed was a relic of a childhood habit. Her dark hair,

  thick and wavy, tousled at the ends from their energetic lovemaking,

  clung to her neck and shoulders.

  Her back was to him as he looked at her, admiring the curve of

  her hip in profile against the street light which shone outside their

  curtained window. He had lain like this often before, sometimes

  unable to keep from touching her, from running a finger-tip softly

  down her spine, knowing what it did to her and that within a few

  minutes she would be awake and they would be locked together

  again.

  Yet on this night her turned back seemed to him to be a rejection,

  for all her commitment in their coupling only a few hours before. It

  had been satisfying for each of them, yet there had been none of the

  sense of spiritual union which they had known at the beginning of

  their partnership. That was one of the things which had set her apart

  from the other women who had lain in his bed, before he had found

  her and she had tamed him. Yet now it was, at best misplaced, or

  worse, he feared, lost.

  'What's the matter?'

  She did not stir as she spoke her question, but her voice was clear,

  and wide-awake.

  'Nothing,' he answered, softly. 'I'm just thinking, that's all.'

  'About what?'

  'Och, just the job. You know.'

  'But the job's been quiet for the last wee while.' She paused. 'Are

  you still having flashbacks to that man with the gun?'

  He shook his head at once. 'No. Absolutely not. That's only

  happened to me that one time, a couple of days after it happened.'

  'Something else then?' She rolled on to her back and looked up at

  him, frowning. 'Not Ariel, surely.'

  He smiled at her concern: a small, sad smile. 'No, no; not her. That

  was a long time ago, and she's dead. She never really existed, in fact.'

  'Ah but she did. And so did her brother. Once or twice ... no, more

  than that . . . I've wakened in the night thinking of him, and had to

  hang on to you, to drive the fright away.'

  'Nonetheless, they're in the past.'

  'So?' she demanded. 'What's bugging you?'

  'Nothing,' he insisted. 'I just can't sleep.'

  No one could snort like Alex. 'Andy Martin,' she exclaimed, as she

  propped herself up on both elbows. 'You are one of the world's great

  sleepers. If you are lying awake in the dark, there is some reason for

  it. Come on, out with it.'

  He reached out his left hand to cup her breast, but she shied away

  from him. 'That won't work. Tell me, what's the problem?'

  He looked into her eyes. 'I think we might be.'

  She frowned, quickly. 'Rubbish,' she said at once, but there was a

  defensiveness in her voice which proved she didn't believe her own

  denial.

  He reached out his hand again, touching her forehead as if to rub

  away the frown lines. 'Alexis Skinner,' he whispered. 'You can tell me

  all night that there's nothing wrong, but you still won't make
either of

  us believe it. I'm afraid ... and I mean that literally, because it does

  scare me ... that you and I are losing our way.

  'When we got together, we had a shared vision of what we wanted:

  each other, above all else. I still feel that way. If I had to I'd give up

  everything I have, and walk away from everything I've achieved, just

  to be with you.

  'But you've changed.'

  'I haven't,' she protested. 'I love you just as much as I always did.

  I want you just as much.'

  'Then why do you keep changing your mind about marrying me?'

  'I haven't. Anyway, that's not the issue.'

  He grunted. 'No, it's not, is it. It's the issue that's the issue.'

  'Ah, now we're getting to it.' She fired back at him, suddenly.

  'You're still on about the baby thing. I thought we'd agreed that we'd

  start thinking about a family in five years.'

  'Aye,' he said, 'but there's a basic principle wrapped up in there,

  isn't there, about levels of commitment to each other.'

  Her frown was back. 'Ah,' she countered. 'Andy says that he'd walk

  away from everything for Alex, so she must say the same thing. Is that

  it?' It was his turn to look defensive. 'That's sentimental, emotional,

  hypothetical crap, and not worthy of you. You've had achievements;

  you've got a successful career that you say you'd give up for love;

  well, good for you, boy. But surely I'm entitled to some professional

  fulfilment of my own? Or are you really and truly saying that you

  expect me to put aside all my ambitions to satisfy your need to extend

  your line?'

  'Hey, hey,' he soothed her. 'I'm not saying that at all. Apart from

  your dad, there's no one who thinks more of your ability and your

  potential than I do. I'm sorry about going back to the baby thing. That

  was a cheap shot. Listen, if you want to become the managing partner

  of Curie Anthony and Jarvis, I'll back you all the way. If you want to

  become a QC, I'm all for that too.

  'I don't begrudge you your ambitions, my darling. But I'm coming

  to believe that as you pursue them, you'll leave me behind; you'll