Free Skinner's Festival by Quintin Jardine Page B

possible to slip virtually unobserved into the George, while entry through the wide doors of the Caledonian or the Balmoral, past their liveried and effusive keepers, is always something of a performance.
Skinner and Martin arrived at the hotel in the BMW just after 5:00 pm, finding a parking place with unusual ease, as the Saturday shopping crush had eased off. Martin, who enjoyed
special relationships with every hotel manager in the city centre, had asked for a private room for their meeting. He carried a briefcase as they walked into the hotel. Six of the seven Festival directors were waiting for them. Only Trevor Golley of the Book Festival had been unavailable. None of the six had been told in advance that the others would be present. As the two policemen entered the room, the low buzz of conversation stopped, and half a dozen faces turned towards them.
    Skinner broke the ice. 'Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I must thank you for coming along here at such short notice, and in response to such a mysterious invitation. We appreciate how busy you must be just now, so we won’t keep you long.’
Three large Thermos jugs lay on three occasional tables in the centre of the room.
'Everyone all right for coffee, before we begin?’ An assortment of grunts and nods came from around the room. 'Right, if you’ll each find a seat, I’ll explain what all this is about.’
The long room had no windows. It was furnished with three deep and comfortable two-seater sofas and two armchairs. The policemen each took a chair, leaving the sofas for their guests. As the directors sat down. Skinner saw that they seemed to sort themselves unconsciously into natural pairings.
    Harriet Nelson, in her second year as director for the 'Official’ Festival, sat on the left-hand sofa, alongside Colonel Archie McPhee, organiser of the Military Tattoo. Even seated, Harriet Nelson was an imposing woman: tall, heavy featured and with flaming red hair. She had won her spurs in the arts in her late twenties, as one of the very few leading female orchestral conductors, and had wielded her baton in concert halls around the world for almost two decades. Her appointment as director of the Edinburgh International Festival had been announced by the governing committee as a major coup, which indeed it was.
    Colonel McPhee, the Military Tattoo director, was in his own way as imposing as his neighbour on the sofa. Before his retirement from active service, five years earlier, he had been a battalion commander in the Parachute Regiment, and had seen bloody combat in the Falklands. He was in his early fifties, with close-cropped, receding hair, a sharp nose and piercing, perceptive eyes. He was dressed in light slacks and a short-sleeved green shirt,
an outfit which emphasised an impression of total physical fitness.
    The director of the Film Festival, Julia Shahor, sat directly facing Skinner and Martin, next to the one person of the six whom Skinner had not met before, whom he knew therefore to be Ray Starkey. head of the television event. Julia Shahor’s shock of very black hair exploded in a natural Afro, framing a small, pale but unforgettably attractive face. She wore a voluminous white robe which covered her from neck to ankles. She was a small woman, the youngest of the six directors by at least seven or eight years, Skinner guessed. She had come to the Film Festival ten months earlier, on a one-year contract, and like Harriet Nelson she had been regarded as a catch for Edinburgh. She was still in her twenties, but already she had built a brilliant career as a screenwriter. It was said that her ambition was to emulate one of her predecessors by using the Festival as the springboard for a career as a movie director in America.
    Ray Starkey wore large, yellow-framed spectacles, with lenses which made his eyes seem huge. He was very fat, and dressed incongruously in a pale blue Armani suit, with a grey shirt, yellow braces, and a tie which seemed to have