Unfortunately for Mike, the only direction in which he hadn’t looked was immediately behind him, where Jack Gantry was standing.
‘Indeed, Inspector,’ the Lord Provost grated. ‘I wasn’t aware that you were an expert in antiquities. In fact from what my daughter’s been saying, I wasn’t aware that you were an expert in anything.’
Dylan turned three different colours in as many seconds. ‘Just a joke, sir,’ he offered, lamely, his grin turning cheesy.
‘No it wasn’t, son. It was an insult. An old insult, long buried, but dug up again.’ Jack Gantry’s voice dropped to a whisper, but it was probably the most menacing whisper I had ever heard. ‘There’s enough damned comedians here tonight, Michael. Okay?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. .’ The detective’s apology faded away as the Lord Provost turned on his heel and stalked off.
He looked down at Susie. ‘Thanks for your support,’ he moaned.
The wee firebrand looked up at him angrily. For a moment I thought she was going to explode too. ‘Don’t mention it,’ she snapped. ‘I thought you knew by now that my dad loves this city more than anything. . even me.’
‘Okay, but-’
She cut him off. ‘But nothing. He’s Glasgow’s First Citizen in every respect. Daft he may be, but it’s the cultural capital of his universe. My dad may be a hard man from the Gorbals, but he’s no Philistine. This city’s art galleries, museums, theatres, concert halls are his pride and joy. He loves opera, the theatre and music. He’s an art collector. When I take you to his house on Saturday, you’ll see half a million quid’s worth of pictures hanging on his walls.
‘As far as this place is concerned, he believes that Glasgow has done a great job for the nation in displaying the Burrell Collection; and by Glasgow he means the Council. When you mock this, you’re mocking him.’
I thought it was time to lighten things up a bit. ‘Eh Susie,’ I ventured. ‘Tell me what football team he supports, so I don’t put my foot in it.’
She was still glaring as she looked round at me, until she caught my eye, and began to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, people,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair to involve you in our wee domestic.’ She glanced up at Mike once more. ‘You know Dylan, I must love you or something. It’s the only reason I can think of for the fact that you’re still standing.’ He looked at her gratefully, like a big soft dog that’s just been given a biscuit.
‘As for football, Oz,’ Susie continued. ‘You’re on safe ground there. The Lord Provost is an atheist in that respect. In private he actually believes that football’s harmful to Glasgow’s good name.’
‘Judging by what I’ve seen of it lately,’ I told her, ‘I think he’s right.’
She laughed again, then took my wife by the arm. ‘How’s things going?’ she asked quietly. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t in the office this afternoon. I was looking forward to catching up with you.’
‘I’m getting through it,’ Jan replied. ‘But it’s not easy. The construction and development side of the group is okay, that’s quite certain. It’s very profitable. The expected return on investment from the housing portfolio is very clearly defined too, and you’re achieving it.
‘The retail arm, the pubs and so on, that’s not so certain. I’m having to analyse their performance one by one. It’s relatively easy to bleed cash out of businesses like that, and it can be very hard to detect too. Once I’ve looked at individual profitability, I’ll be able to see which managers are operating at one hundred per cent efficiency, and whether any are out of line.’
‘What if they are?’
‘If it’s incompetence, that could show up easily. If not, that will be more difficult to nail down.’
‘How do we go about it?’ Susie paused. ‘There are so many potential fiddles in the pub trade.’
‘I know, but the most common is the one where the staff sell their own drink across the bar, in among the legitimate sales, but don’t ring it up, so that it doesn’t go through stock control. If we think that could be happening, we need to set traps.’
‘Such as?’
‘Put people in among the punters to watch and spot it. That’s one way. Have spot raids by stock control teams to check the bar codes of all products on display for sale. That’s another.’ Jan smiled, grimly. ‘Sack everyone on the staff. That’s a third.’
‘And maybe the easiest,’ Susie retorted.
‘Maybe, but I don’t think your dad would like it if someone took the group to a tribunal for unfair dismissal. No, if the pub chain is underperforming overall, there’s a fourth option.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Call in all the managers, and give them profit targets to be hit on a quarterly or six-monthly basis. That way, if some of them are on the fiddle, they’ll make damn sure that the group gets its profit before they start taking theirs.’
God, she’s clever, I thought, as she looked at Susie Gantry. ‘In my experience,’ she said, ‘if the staff want to skim a bit for themselves off a retail business — especially a busy pub — it’s bloody difficult to prevent it. All you can do is set a tolerable limit and make sure they stay within it.’
‘You could call us in,’ Dylan suggested, tentatively.
Both women turned and stared at him in disbelief. ‘What would happen to the CID if it was asked to investigate every potential pub fiddle in Glasgow?’ Jan asked him. ‘You don’t have the manpower to investigate small-scale fraud, Mike, and you know it. Your specialists concentrate on the big stuff, and the rest gets left to sort itself out.’
He nodded his head, in reluctant agreement. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’ He grinned at me. ‘Hang in there, Oz,’ he said. ‘There could be some business here for you too.’
‘And what would that be, Mike?’ asked Jack Gantry, jovially, his good temper restored as he stepped past the policeman and up on to the dais to address the City’s guests.
‘Nothing you’d approve of, I doubt, sir,’ replied Dylan. ‘We’re discussing privatisation: in the field of criminal investigation.’
Gantry’s chain gleamed as the light caught it. ‘Don’t sell me short, son. I’m one of the new breed. I’ll privatise anything as long as it’s efficient. . and profitable.’
He drew himself up and beamed at the gathering of celebrities, a star himself in their firmament.
Chapter 14
‘Would you be interested in a bit more undercover work?’
I looked at her incredulously. She lay on her front on top of the duvet, propped up on her elbows, with one foot raised in the air. The summer tan still showed on her body, or at least was pointed up by the whiteness of her round, firm bum. God, she was gorgeous, was my wife.
‘Again?’ I gasped. ‘What do you think I am? The Parish bull?’
Her breasts bounced lightly as she chortled. ‘I know very well what you are, my love.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not expecting the impossible all of a sudden. No, I meant business-type undercover work; the same as you’re doing for Everett. Remember that discussion with Susie last night? We may well have to make plans to put watchers into her pubs.’
I sat upright, and shook my head, as hard as I could. ‘No. Definitely not. That’s not what I do: I am a private enquiry agent, non-matrimonial, and that’s the way I like it. I work for lawyers, not for publicans. The only reason I’m involved with this wrestling carry-on is because Greg McPhillips put me in the frame for it, and because he’s a good client.’
Even when she was a wee girl, Jan’s dismissive laugh was one of her trademarks. I had heard it thousands of times, usually directed at me. ‘Aye sure, that’s the only reason,’ she drawled. ‘Your mother was the only person I ever knew who could make you do anything you didn’t want to. . apart from me, that is.
‘You’re into the cloak and dagger stuff, and you know it. I remember when you and Thingy were off on the trail of that missing money, and on the run from Ricky Ross at the same time. You loved every minute of it. Even at the time I reckone
d. .’
She stopped suddenly; but I knew her as well as she knew me.
‘You reckoned that it was excitement I fell for, as much as Primavera. I guess you were right, too.’
‘No, I’m sorry: I was just being bitchy. I was in a relationship at that time as well, remember. We were ex’s then, you and I, and she brought something different into your life. Prim’s a great girl, and a powerhouse as well. I might have been secretly jealous of her, and secretly afraid that she was taking you away from me for good, but I’ve never disliked her.’
She smiled at me, in an intimate, gleaming way. ‘Mind you, I can afford to be magnanimous, the way it’s all turned out.’
‘Maybe so,’ I said. Since the morning of my return from Spain, Jan and I had never discussed Primavera Phillips, nor my relationship with her. Now that the subject had come up, it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. ‘But you’re still not going to talk me into acting as a snooper in Susie Gantry’s pubs.’
‘Why not? We’ll need someone we can trust.’
‘Which reason would you like? I’m too busy? Or will you settle for the fact that I just don’t like wearing a dirty raincoat?’
She grabbed a handful of my chest hair. ‘Daft bugger.You don’t have a dirty raincoat.You don’t have a raincoat, period.’
And then she paused, and gave me the Look. Although we’d been together for most of our lives, I’d seen it only a few times before: for example, on Jan’s sixteenth birthday when we made love for the first time, on my eighteenth when she gave me a signet ring, one time in Jan’s flat, with our respective partners present but happily unaware, and a few months before, when she said, ‘Okay, I’ll marry you.’
I looked back at her, and I waited. ‘Speaking of periods,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t had one for a while.’
I gulped, so hard that I almost choked. ‘How long?’
‘Seven weeks. I bought a tester kit yesterday. You’re going to be a Daddy, Oz Blackstone.’
Sometimes your brain just cuts out. Know what I mean? I think I might have gulped a few more times, but otherwise I just sprawled there and stared at her. I don’t know why I was surprised; Jan had been off the pill for a couple of months. Mind you over the years, and even when she was living with Noosh, we had taken a few chances, so maybe I had just assumed that making a baby was something we’d have to work at for a while, and hope that we got lucky.
There are times that live for ever, during which everything done and said burns itself into your brain. In such moments, you’d imagine that everyone would choose words which were weighed, meaningful and appropriate to the occasion. Not us Blackstones.
I stared at my amazing, pregnant wife, open-mouthed. ‘Fuck me!’ I whispered.
She beamed, and pulled herself towards me, across the bed. ‘How could I refuse such a generous and spontaneous offer?’ she said.
Chapter 15
‘Cherish every moment, son,’ my dad told me when we phoned Anstruther to break the news. ‘The expectation of your first child is one of life’s great times. It’s exciting and frightening all at the same time.
‘It’s a great test of patience too. Come next September you’ll think she’s been pregnant for ever, and to be able to feel the baby moving about, yet not know what it looks like. . my son, I can’t find the words. You’ll just have to experience it yourself.’
‘Chances are we will know what he or she looks like. Jan will be scanned, I suppose.’
At the other end of the line, Mac the Dentist grunted. ‘Hmph! There are some areas in which medical science has gone too far,’ he growled. ‘I remember when our Ellie was born. Not that I was there, mind you. Our consultant didn’t approve of fathers being involved at any stage of the process, bar one.
‘But the moment when I was allowed in to see your mother and she said to me “Mac, we have a daughter.” Och. .’ He paused, and in that moment my eyes went misty. ‘It was one of the greatest moments of my life, and the revelation was part of it. I don’t think my medical colleagues should deny that to people.
‘If the Lord had meant you to know whether it was going to be a boy or a girl He’d have put a window in there somewhere. Just don’t let the buggers tell you. Mind that now!’
I didn’t realise it, but I was still smiling as I walked into the main arena at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, just before one on Friday afternoon, the designated gathering hour for the first run-through of the weekend’s BattleGround.
‘Hey guy,’ The Behemoth called across, as I turned into the doorway, ‘was it that good?’
I strolled across to join him. He was wearing jogging bottoms, and a grey zipper top which made him look even more like a small mountain.
‘As a matter of fact it was, Jerry. Jan’s having a baby.’
The rugged face cracked into a smile, and a laugh came rumbling up like a volcano. ‘That’s great, Oz. Ain’t it amazing what you can do, even with limited equipment.’
My ‘Cheeky bastard’ response jumped out before I had time to think just who I was calling a cheeky bastard. Happily, Jerry was my firm friend; and in any event he was the sort of honey monster who was as gentle in private as he could be ferocious in public.
‘Hey Everett,’ he called across. I turned and saw Daze behind me, vast in his training gear. ‘Our ring announcer’s gonna be a dad.’
The giant smiled, stretching out his hand as he walked across, but I could detect a look in his eyes that could have been a mixture of pain and jealousy. He kept it out of his voice though. ‘Congratulations, my man. I don’t need to ask whether you’re pleased. Did you plan to have a baby this soon after you got married?’
‘Planning isn’t something Jan and I have ever been too strong on,’ I replied.
Suddenly I felt self-conscious. I hadn’t really wanted to share the news with anyone that soon. It had escaped in an unguarded moment. ‘How’s Liam doing?’ I asked, to change the subject.
‘He’s healing up fine,’ Everett replied. ‘Diane just called me from her car. She expects to deliver him back home within an hour.’
‘She comin’ here for the run-through?’ asked Jerry.
‘Eventually.’ I wondered why the big man was so casual, given the fact of his wife delivering the man he suspected of being her lover back to his pad in Kelvin Court — stitches or not — but he answered me straight away. ‘Liam’s mother is waiting there for them. Diane was given nursing notes by the hospital and she has to go over them with her. She’ll be back here for our rehearsal though.’
‘Are you guys wrestling this week?’ I asked.
‘I am,’ said Daze. ‘Jerry’s still nursing that muscle strain; but we’re going to have a confrontation.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’m fighting Rockette tomorrow.The Princess will distract me again. .’. He grinned suddenly and disarmingly. ‘I’m dumb, see. .
‘While I’m looking at Diane, Tommy will break one of his trick guitars across my back. I’ll lose my cool at last, pick him up by the throat and throw him over the top rope, straight at her.’
Christ, Everett, I thought. I know you suspect her of being Mata Hari, but chucking a seventeen stone wrestler at her might be a bit extreme.
‘However,’ he went on, looking at me as if he was reading my mind, ‘Jerry will be doing colour commentary at ringside. He’ll jump up and catch Rockette in mid-air, then he’ll climb into the ring with Diane behind him. The show will fade just as he and I are starting to get it on.
‘How does that sound, Announcer?’
‘It sounds fine, but what’s it about?’ I knew enough about the GWA by this time to understand that all their ‘confrontations’ fitted within a wider story-line involving the characters.
‘The purpose is to promote bookings for the Edinburgh pay-per-view event, where Jerry and I are in the headline cage match.’
I frowned. ‘What’s a cage match?’
‘Hell on ea
rth,’ Jerry growled. ‘We build a fifteen foot high steel cage all around the ring, so that no one else can get in and so’s the wrestlers can’t get out. The winner is the guy who manages to climb over the top of the cage and land on his feet on the other side. Havin’ the cage there lets you do all sorts of manoeuvres that just ain’t possible in the ring. Only the very top guys can do cage matches. I hate ’em.’
‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘You’re one of the very top guys.’
‘Don’t like heights,’ he mumbled, sheepishly.
‘Oz,’ interrupted Everett, smiling at his friend’s confession, ‘I’ve told Jerry about the barriers. And about you. I know we agreed that it would be our secret, but I couldn’t have stood The Behemoth here finding out and thinking I didn’t trust him.’
Of course, by that time I was convinced of his innocence too. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘What do you think of the situation, Jerry?’
‘I agree with Ev. It has to be that SoB Reilly. He’s gotta have someone on the inside.’ He looked at me, and I saw for the first time the sharp intelligence in his eyes. ‘You see, Oz, the only people who care about our business enough to try to do us harm, or do us good, are other people in our industry.
‘We’re unique. There’s no other branch of sports or entertainment like us.We’ve grown up over the years because we’ve traded on a basic human instinct, lust for violence. A hundred and fifty years ago, folks used to watch executions. Today they come and watch us pretend to kill each other.’ He jerked a thumb towards Daze.
‘We’re like elephants, him and me, and I don’t mean in size. We don’t prey on anyone and we don’t have no one prey on us. The GWA is a new young bull elephant among the herd, and CWI is the old bull. Reilly’s out to do us in before we get too strong for him.’
I tried to push it away, but I couldn’t. A vision of Jerry Gradi servicing a cow elephant came into my mind. I smiled, but managed to stop short of laughing. ‘I see,’ I managed to say, then felt that a slight change of tack was called for.
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