I had slammed the MacBook closed, as if I was running away from its contents, putting it to sleep in the process. I waited for it to come back to life, then read the second chapter.
‘My son?’ Frail old Michael Greystock sighed. ‘He broke my fucking heart. All I ever wanted was for him to be a teacher like me, but no, not him.’
If Doreen was Ellie, then Michael Greystock had to equal Macintosh Blackstone, a dentist, not a teacher, who had threatened both his kids with fire and brimstone if they ever entertained the idea of following him into his profession. As for frail, the guy’s had a heart-valve replacement but he’s still capable of two rounds of golf a day.
‘No, he had to go off to be something he never really was. First to Edinburgh, with his silly country notions of fame and fortune on gold-paved streets, then to bloody Spain, then to Glasgow, chasing that stupid dream. And him being him, eventually he caught up with it. He did have a gold star set in some fucking pavement in Los Angeles. As far as I know it’s still there, but he isn’t. It turned out to be a shooting star and, like they all do, it burned itself out.’
I laughed out loud. This was supposed to be Mac, Tom’s rock-solid Grandpa Mac coming out with all this fanciful shite?
‘But it wasn’t his fault,’ I read on, aloud. ‘It was that woman. She came into his life and she beguiled him. She cast her spell on him, like a witch, and the poor guy hadn’t a fucking chance after that. It was that Phyllis woman; the first time he ever brought her to my house, I had a premonition not just that she would take him from me, and from all the other people who loved him, but that she would be the end of him. If I could play that scene again, that first meeting, I’d stab her through the heart, and take the consequences. They’d be worth it.’
‘Phyllis?’ I yelled. ‘Fucking Phyllis?’
‘Gobsmacked’ didn’t come close to how I felt. No, it didn’t. I tried to define my reaction at that moment, and could only come up with one analogy. I felt raped.
My mobile was in my hand without any conscious thought, and I was about to hit the button on Mac’s speed dial entry, when I stopped myself. ‘No,’ I told myself ‘let’s read it all.’
And I did. Chapter three quoted someone called Sheila.
‘He was damaged when I met him,’ the widow said. ‘He was still bereaved, but she hadn’t given him time or space to grieve properly over the loss of his precious soul mate. Some people, and by that I mean the odd obsessive fan, but mostly Phyllis’s famous politician sister and brother-in-law, still blame me for taking him from her, but I don’t give a shit about them, for what I was really doing was trying to save his life. She had her claws in him, as deep as she could sink them. I tried, but to be honest I never really could prise them loose.
‘I don’t know what happened to his first wife. “A tragic accident in the home”; that was how the papers described it, but I’m not so sure. There was a continuing state of warfare between his two women. At that time, Maureen was on top, but she’d only won a battle. The war ended with her death, the only way it ever could have. Accident? If that’s what “they” say, I’ll have to accept it, but really, “they” have no idea what Phyllis is capable of: she’s done time, for Christ’s sake. That’s why we retreated to Italy, to a house that I insisted should be made as secure as possible. I wasn’t afraid for my children while I had him, although that’s what I let him think. Truth is, I was afraid for myself, afraid of her.
‘When they told me he was dead, the first thing I felt wasn’t shock. Before that there was an instant when I felt relief, because finally I’d be free of Phyllis. Afterwards …
‘I was furious when I heard that he’d been cremated. They told me it had been necessary because of the heat in Guatemala, where he’d been making a video for his new album when it happened. The unit had a doctor with it; he certified that a congenital heart defect had been the cause of death, and I have no grounds to doubt that, and yet …’
I had to break off then; I was so angry that I could barely see the words on the screen, far less concentrate on them. I closed the laptop and kept it shut, until our evening had run its course, and Tom had gone to bed. Not for the first time, no, not by a long way, I was glad my boy was there to keep me on an even keel, and possibly to keep me from taking Charlie along to the Nieves Mar and setting him on the son-of-a-bitch Culshaw, although my distraction must have shown through, for he asked me a couple of times whether everything was okay. Although I assured him it was, I reckon he knew it wasn’t, but trusted me to tell him if and when I needed to.
I rarely drink spirits, but I mixed myself a gin and tonic and took it up to the terrace, back to the manuscript. I scrolled through it before getting down to the detail, and I saw quickly that after the three opening ‘testimonials’, the book became more conventional. When I did start to read again, it was clear that it was a mock biography, the life and times of someone called ‘Al Greystock’, rock star and tragic hero … or rather, anti-hero.
The book wasn’t warts and all; it was plain fucking warts, pure and simple. Culshaw had done his research on Oz, that was for sure. The story proper began with what purported to be a news article in the Saltire, a fictitious Scottish daily newspaper. It said that workmen dismantling an outbuilding on the Perthshire property that Al and Sheila Greystock had owned had found a shotgun encased in the foundations. To the police its origins were a mystery, and they could trace no record of its registration anywhere in Britain.
That got my attention, for Oz and Susie had lived beside Loch Lomond, and indeed a shotgun had been found there when the next owner had demolished the playground they’d built for the kids. I knew this because Susie had told me about it, after the police asked her, politely, if she had any idea where it had come from. She hadn’t, but Oz had. I knew because he told me.
Culshaw offered no theories in the early part of his story; instead he went back and gave a brief account of the so-called Al’s early life in Newport on Tay, highlighted by a story told by one of his classmates, about him going mental and beating the shit out of two guys in his year because of a casual schoolboy remark about Maureen, his childhood sweetheart. That wasn’t fantasy either; that happened, not in Newport, but in Anstruther, where Oz was raised. He told me about that too, very early in our relationship; eventually he told me everything.
The scene changed to Edinburgh and Al’s early life there, first as a trainee fireman, and later as a self-employed journalist, as he was said to style himself, who made extra money singing with an up-and-coming rock band.
That was the point at which I made my first appearance. ‘Phyllis’ turned up at one of his gigs, and sank her hooks in him straight away.
‘The boy Al was okay until he met her,’ a guy called Saeed Nawaz was quoted as saying. Saeed had to equal Ali Patel, the neighbourhood grocer in Edinburgh, and Oz’s pal.
‘Him and Maureen, his bird from when he was a kid in Fife, they were fine, an item, although they didnae live together. Then she turned up, that Phyllis. She was in bother of some sort or other, he helped her out, and she helped herself. They went off together on some business trip that she’d lined up, only for a week like, but when they came back everything was different. They went off again, but for a while this time, then just when I thought he was gone for good, he came back, out the blue, and things were all right wi’ him and Maureen again. They got married, he selt me the flat and they moved tae Glasgow.’
True, all of it, and he’d got Ali’s accent right as well; but then it drifted into pure fiction.
‘Al made it big in the music business; he got lucky, ken, became a big star overnight. A wee bit later, Phyllis came back. Ah don’t know how, but she’d missed all that. I was in one night, there was a ring at the doorbell and it was her. She looked at me, surprised like, and asked where Al was. Ah telt her he didnae live there any more, that him and Maureen had got married and moved tae the Wild West. The look she gave me scared me shitless. Then she turned on her heel and went off. A wee bit
later, Ah heard that Maureen was dead, that she’d been electrocuted by a dodgy washing machine or something. Accident? Maybe so, but the timing was a bit funny.’
Another outright lie soldered on to some truth; that doorstep exchange never happened. The truth was that when Jan died, I was in Spain, and Oz was with me. We’d met up completely by accident, and there were people around who could prove it.
I read on, into the night as the story moved on. In some ways it was a pretty accurate account of Oz’s life, with only the names, geography and occupations changed. There was a chapter that was based on an incident when Oz was making a movie, and a real-life drama developed, involving the kidnapping of my sister Dawn … an actress, of course, not a politician. He had some of that story right on the button, but not all of it; my guess was that his source had been Susie, and that she’d held back a part that related to her. But ‘Sheila’ came into the narrative, right on cue, paying a visit to Al and Phyllis in St Tropez, where they had bought a mansion and were starting out on married life.
‘Al was pathetic then,’ her ‘account’ read. ‘I think he realised that he’d been drawn into something that he didn’t really want, a relationship in which he had no control. He made a pass at me, one night when Phyllis was away … fucking up somebody else’s head, no doubt. It seemed to me like a plea for help more than anything else. In normal circumstances, I’d have told him to get lost, but he was so wasted … I suppose I took pity on him.’
‘Hah!’ I snorted when I’d finished that section. ‘The poor little innocent had her knickers in her handbag from the moment she stepped through our door.’ For Al and Phyllis, read Oz and me and for St Tropez, read L’Escala, in the house where Tom was made … and Janet too, as it happened.
The last time Oz and I were alone together, in the Algonquin Hotel in New York, he spent a good chunk of the night filling in all of those parts of his life to which I hadn’t actually been a witness. His confession: that’s all I could call it, made to the only person he knew would keep all his secrets, since some of them were mine too. His account of that get-together was rather different from the fictionalised version in Culshaw’s manuscript, and much later Susie had pretty much confirmed it to me.
I went back to the ‘book’ and continued until, as I knew it would, it came back to that shotgun. Then it really did go into wonderland. The premise of the story was that Sheila’s family steel stockholding business was under attack by Glasgow gangsters, who were looking to drive down the share price so they could take it over, and that with Phyllis urging him on in the background, no longer part of his family, but still part of the scene, Al had taken matters into his own hands … with the shotgun.
Of course, that was nonsense. Culshaw had missed the point. ‘Al’ might have done that, but no way Oz would. No, he’d have paid someone else to take the guys out. As for my alleged involvement … I was too busy living on my own in London and looking after a two-year-old at the time.
I pushed a keyboard button to move on, but there was no more. The story came to an abrupt end; nothing about Al’s life after that, or his death, or even about Phyllis, the Wicked Witch of the West.
I checked my watch; it showed 2.30 a.m. I was on the point of calling Susie regardless, but her illness had manifested itself by that time, and she was on medication. It would have been cruel to waken her, and probably pointless, as her head would have been like mush.
But I wanted to be cruel to Culshaw, as cruel as I could; waking him in the middle of the night was pretty tame, I know, but it was a start. I called the hotel. The night porter must have been catnapping, for it took him a minute or so to answer. I recognised his sleepy voice as one of the long-term staff members who’d drawn the short straw.
‘Hello, Andoni,’ I said, in Castellano, for he’s from Asturia and doesn’t speak the local tongue. ‘It’s Primavera. I’d like you to put me through to Mr Culshaw’s room, please.’
‘But Madam,’ he exclaimed, ‘Primavera, it’s very late. He’ll be asleep. He was in the bar till midnight; he’d had a few drinks by the time he asked for his key.’
‘Nevertheless, he’ll be expecting me to call. Connect me, please.’
I had another wait, but not so long this time. ‘Mmmm.’ The voice that came on the line could only grunt, at first. ‘I thought you’d wait till morning.’
‘Duncan,’ I told him, ‘if the version of me that you portray was real, you wouldn’t have had a morning. My friend the night porter downstairs would have gone conveniently absent, leaving me free to come up and cut your throat while you slept. By the way,’ I added, after a pause, ‘don’t be too sure that won’t happen. Enjoy the rest of the night, and if you do waken up, I’ll see you for coffee in L’Escala, at ten, in a café called El Centre, next to the church.’
In the morning, I kept him waiting. I had some sleep to catch up on. My lovely son helped me do that; even at eleven, as he was then, he could be a self-starter, and he wakened me with a mug of tea and a bowl of cereal around eight, having fed himself properly, taken Charlie for a trot and got ready for school. Slut of a mother, you’re thinking, but it’s wonderfully liberating when your child gets to that stage. It gives you just a little extra freedom, and takes a little of the constant pressure away.
I had another call to make before I met Culshaw, and that delayed me for a few minutes, and so it was pushing quarter past ten when I arrived at the café. He was seated at one of the outside tables, almost in the shade of the huge palm tree that stands between the church and the town hall, as if it’s keeping them apart.
I’d hardly sat down before a waiter appeared. I ordered a cortado, a short coffee with milk, and a bottle of Vichy Catalan sparkling water.
I put my bag on the table, and laid my phone beside it as I settled carefully into my plastic chair: sometimes their legs can be a little wobbly, and it would have spoiled the moment if I’d landed on my arse. I looked at Duncan; he was neatly dressed in white trousers, a pale blue T-shirt and a tan cotton jacket, but his eyes were a little baggy, and I guessed that he hadn’t slept too well after my call. First points to Primavera. That said, he didn’t seem nervous; the opposite, in fact. He had a faint smile on his face, and those baggy eyes said that he was rather pleased with himself.
He gazed at me, as if he was waiting for me to open the batting, but I wasn’t going to play his game. I waited him out, until finally he said, ‘Well? What did you think of it?’
‘It’s not going to win the Booker Prize,’ I replied drily.
‘That won’t worry me,’ he laughed. ‘They’re famous for not selling. My book will be a blockbuster.’
‘It’s a heap of shit, Duncan. It’s a hatchet job on Oz, thinly disguised as a novel. Most of it’s fabricated into the bargain.’
‘Hey,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s a work of fiction, so by definition it’s fabricated. How big an advance do you reckon I’ll get for it?’
‘Fuck all,’ I snapped.
‘That’s not what my new literary agent says. He has three publishers fighting for it, and that’s just on the basis of a synopsis. We’re up to six figures and the bids are still rising.’
‘Then you’re going to have a major delivery problem,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not finished.’
‘It could be if I wanted it to be. I could wrap it up where it is now, go straight to Al’s death and have Phyllis in the vicinity, only for Sheila to join all the dots, and kill her in a big bloody finale.’ He paused. ‘But you are right. It could be better than that, and that’s why I need your help.’
‘You what?’ I gasped. ‘You need my help? Are you completely out of your tree?’
‘No,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s a gap in my knowledge, and only you can fill it. Susie certainly can’t.’
‘Susie doesn’t know about this travesty, does she?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘But you have been pumping her for information.’
He had the nerve to wink at me. ‘I’ve been pum
ping her in all sorts of ways, my dear,’ he murmured. I wanted to punch his lights out, as I think I could have, given our relative sizes, but I mastered my anger as he continued. ‘But I haven’t been interrogating her, if that’s what you mean. I’ve simply encouraged her to talk about her past and made notes as she’s gone along.’
‘What about Mac and Ellie, and Ali Patel? Did you talk to them or was that pure imagination too?’
‘Oh yes, I spoke to them all, and to Oz’s school chum, one of the two he beat up. I told them I was a journalist researching a magazine feature about Oz. None of them were very helpful, apart from the victim of his violence.’
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘you’re lucky he’s not around, because I hate to think what he’d do to you.’
‘That is rather the point of the novel. It’s about the decline of the central character into darkness, even as he grew rich and famous. And through it all there’s this character in the background, this duplicitous manipulative woman, Phyllis, dragging him down. And that’s not all that far from the truth, is it, Primavera? Go on, be honest, admit it.’
I looked him in the eye. ‘Do you even understand honesty, you little shit? You understand duplicity, that’s for sure, but do you have a straight bone in your body?’
‘This discussion isn’t about my morals, Primavera, it’s about yours. Go on, do you recognise the people I’ve described?’
He leaned back in his chair, drawing me a challenging look. I decided to answer him. ‘To an extent, yes I do. Oz changed over the years, there’s no doubt about that, but the trigger for it had nothing to do with me. He never got over Jan’s death, and that’s the real truth of it, that’s the point you’ve missed by a mile in your concoction of nonsense. As for suggesting that I had something to do with it, I wasn’t even in the same country when it happened.’
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