Wearing Purple (Oz Blackstone Mystery)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘But looking at that overall picture, the profitability, the return on resources utilised, is well below reasonable expectations. I’m nearly done now. I’ve only got one place left to look, the health care division, as they call it, but that’s going to be the most difficult of all, because it’s the most complex and labour intensive of all the group businesses.’

  ‘You’re loving it, though, aren’t you.’

  She smiled, her long, slow, intimate smile. ‘Yeah, I’m loving it. Who says accountancy can’t be fun?’

  I looked at the steaks on my griddle, at the chips in the electric fryer, and at the eggs which I had cracked into a skillet. ‘Well, put it to one side for tonight,’ I told her, ‘and prepare to enjoy your last good fry-up till the end of September. I doubt if you’ll find too much of this lot on the pregnant ladies’ diet sheet.’

  Chapter 18

  Where the SECC had been only moderately full on rehearsal day, mostly with business people attending trade exhibitions in two of its smaller halls, the Global Wrestling Alliance Saturday BattleGround brought the crowds flocking in.

  There were signs of the throng to come even as I arrived at midday by taxi, carrying my suit-bag. A small group of fans was gathered near the arena entrance. They were teenagers mostly, some of them carrying hand-painted signs supporting their favourite superstars, to wave at the cameras during the show. I had almost reached the entrance to the main hall when I was stopped by two of them.

  ‘Hey Mister! You’re the announcer, urn’t yeez? Ah saw youse last week, when Liam goat hurtit.’ I looked at the girl, and at her pal. They were both around twelve or thirteen years old, with heavy black eye make-up and the beginnings of figures showing under their boob tubes and tight trousers: harmless now, but in a couple of years they’d be real jail-bait.

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed.

  ‘Gie’s yer autograph, then.’ Both of them thrust thick-bound books in my face; the girl who spoke offered me a pen as well.

  The only people who’d ever asked for my signature before were creditors. But as I looked down at the girls, I managed to hide my astonishment, I kept my cool. ‘Of course,’ I said, as casually as I could.

  There was a table beside me. I took the books from them and leaned on it to scrawl my signature.

  ‘Will Liam be wrestling this week?’ the other one asked. She seemed less pushy than her pal. ‘We love Liam. He’s oor fav’rite.’

  Well just you stay away from him, I thought, or you could all get into big trouble.

  ‘No, he’s not here today,’ I said. ‘You were watching last week, you said you saw that he was hurt.’

  ‘What, he really did get hurt!’

  ‘Quite badly. He’ll be out for a few weeks.’ The girl’s face fell, and tears came to her eyes. ‘He will be back though,’ I reassured her, ‘don’t worry about that. He’s just got some healing to do.’

  ‘Whit aboot the Black Angel?’ the first girl demanded. ‘We love him too.’

  ‘Dar . . . The Angel is okay. He’s not on today either though. We’ve got Scarletto against Manson, the Rattlers in a tag-team match, Sally Crockett and a few others, and Daze in the main event.’

  That seemed to cheer the quieter one up. She smiled as she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, smearing her damp make-up. ‘Who’s he fightin’?’ she asked.

  ‘Tommy Rockette.’

  ‘Rockette!’ said her pal, scornfully. ‘He’s a fuckin’ tosser!’

  Maybe I should have given her a lecture on the standards of language and decorum which gentlemen expect of young ladies, but I didn’t fancy being harangued in a public place by a pre-teen. Anyway, her assessment of Rutherford, while a little harsh, was not entirely unfounded. So I simply wished her, and her tear-streaked chum, a good afternoon and went into the hall, with a quick hello to Gary O’Rourke, who was on security duty at the door.

  The road crew had done their work as well as ever. The battleground was decked out in full military colours, light and lasers in place and thunderflashes - checked personally by Everett - primed to go off at the opening of the show and at the entrances of the main players. The dressing room was well decked-out too, full of performers; the entire male cast, in fact, apart from Daze. I found a space next to Tommy Rockette.

  ‘Ready for your short flight?’ I asked him.

  He turned to me, his dyed blond pony tail swinging. ‘You think this is a fucking gaime?’ he snarled, in a thick East London accent. I had never spoken to the man before, so I was taken aback by his hostility.

  ‘I think it’s a very professional operation, and I have great admiration for all you guys,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to take the piss, honest.’

  ‘Just as fucking well for you, mate.’

  I left him to get on with it, and changed into my dress suit and my Newcastle-bought bow tie. When I was ready, I put my discarded clothes, and bag, into a locker. Pocketing the key, I turned and saw Jerry in a corner, his forehead furrowed in a deep frown. I guessed that he was more preoccupied by his date with Sally than with his part in the performance, and I smiled at the thought of him slamming Rutherford onto the ringside mat.

  I was first to leave the dressing room and go outside into the arena. Once there, I did as I had been instructed by Everett: I wandered quietly around the ringside area, kicking the barriers, testing the firmness of the ring posts, glancing under the apron for suspicious packages, walking round the ringside matting, feeling with my feet and looking for any signs that something might have been placed under it.

  My client, still in his street clothes, came over to me as the wrestlers began to emerge from the changing room. ‘Everything look okay to you?’ he asked, quietly.

  ‘It looks clean.’ I wondered for a moment whether to mention Rockette’s sudden aggression, which seemed out of place in the GWA family - especially with Liam Matthews hors de combat - but decided that it would be unfair. Clearly, the guy was concentrating on a risky manoeuvre, and I had rubbed him up the wrong way.

  ‘That’s good. I’ve checked all the pyrotechnic stuff. Let’s do the first rehearsal, then.’ He put his hand to the side of his mouth and yelled. ‘Commentators in position, first match prepare, music ready. We run in five minutes.’

  The rehearsals went as smoothly as they had done seven days before in Newcastle. As the day unfolded, the only thing that was different about the Glasgow experience was the crowd. Where the Newcastle audience had been slightly curious as the Arena began to fill, as soon as the doors opened, the people flooded into the SECC main hall, buzzing with excitement and bedecked with corporate products. Where GWA had been a novelty to the Geordies, it was part of their city as far as its Glaswegian loyalists were concerned. Their cheers were ten decibels louder than their English counterparts: these were committed, knowledgeable Sports Entertainment fans.

  I suppose that was why the stage-fright hit me twice as hard as it had the week before, as I stood up in my spotlight, shouting to make myself heard over the roar which greeted me, even before the lights and the sound-effects started. I realised very quickly that in Glasgow, my job was virtually irrelevant. The crowd cheered or booed, as appropriate, as soon as each signature music began, for they knew them all, by heart. The Rattlers were first out into the spotlight, to a crescendo of jeers as befitting the number one heel tag team. On the other hand, when a chorus of treble voices sounded over the PA, the cheers for their opponents, the Choirboys, almost took the roof off.

  Sally Crockett, wearing a belt of gold and with a body to match, won the biggest response of the afternoon, especially when, after her match, she flattened Joe Anderson, a jobber who had been featured as a heckler who stalked her matches from ringside and who this time had jumped through the ropes to mock her skills into a hand-mike. The crowd went wild as she hit him with a lightning fast stunner, picked up his mike, and yelled at him as he lay on the floor. ‘You want a real fight? Let’s have one!’

  I knew they would, too, at the next pay
-per-view; the GWA’s first ever mixed singles match, the GWA World Ladies’ Champion versus The Heckler.

  They cheered for Johnny King too. He wasn’t as slick as Matthews, but he had much of his charisma, and a good finishing move. There are some very successful wrestlers who don’t have more than two or three moves. Jerry had told me of one world-renowned grappler who, in his words, ‘wouldn’t know a wrist-lock from a wrist-watch’.

  The cheers died when the lights went out. The hall fell, if not silent, then into a single excited whisper. And then the thunderflashes boomed, the lasers speared the sky, and with them a great roar boomed; the ten-thousand-strong crowd cheering with a single voice. Daze was the one superstar in the GWA who was never introduced. He didn’t need it. Not at all.

  I had thought that the Black Angel’s entrance was impressive, but it was understated compared to that of the giant. The lights went out again, all of them save the low voltage emergency exit signs; the special effects fell silent, and all we were left with was the smell of cordite in the pitch-dark hall.

  Then suddenly flame spurted from four canisters taped to the top of each ring-post, and he was there, inside the squared circle, having been lowered from the roof on a cable in the darkness. I had been warned to stand in the corner, and I did, but it still startled me as the huge black shape came out of the heavens.

  He went to the four corners of the ring, arms raised, glaring out, milking the applause. Ten seconds after the fourth corner was my cue. I raised my mike. ‘And his opponent . . .’

  Rockette sashayed down the aisle to a chorus of boos, the least popular man in Glasgow at that moment. Dressed in a high-collared, sequinned blue jacket and matching tights, he strummed his heavily varnished acoustic guitar all the way to the ring, until he stepped through the ropes and handed it to me.

  I had seen the battle several times before, so I didn’t wince too often as Tommy Rutherford was battered all around the ring. I didn’t care in fact; after his rudeness in the dressing room I had come to agree totally with the twelve-year-old autograph hunter.

  I had seen Diane before too, and twice that afternoon in costume, but she still gave me a buzz as the light picked her out at the top of the walkway, and as she made her way steadily down towards the ring in her tight-fitting evening dress, her brown skin gleaming through the laced-up side-panel.

  ‘You still strutting your stuff up there, big man?’ her taunt began, as she moved round the ring towards the English language commentary table where Jerry was seated. ‘Bet you wish you could strut it for The Princess, don’cha.’

  Daze dropped Rockette and stepped towards her as if hypnotised. As he did, the Londoner crawled across the ring, beckoning to me. I did a little mime for the crowd and the cameras, to confirm that he wanted the guitar, then passed it to him through the ropes.

  Acting as if he was still half out of it, he hauled himself to his feet and lurched towards his opponent, who stood staring out of the ring. The crowd screamed a warning, but the giant took no notice as Tommy Rutherford took a full swing and crashed his instrument as hard as he could across his shoulders and against the back of his head.

  I had seen one of these spoof guitars in Newcastle the week before; it shattered into a thousand pieces on impact. This one didn’t; instead it broke in two, at the point where the fret-board joined the chamber. There was no sound of splintering, only a ghostly twang as the strings vibrated with the force of the blow.

  Daze stood there, swaying for a moment, then turned, on cue, towards Rockette . . . and hit him, just once, very fast, very hard, with his right fist - a short, boxer’s blow to the middle of the forehead.

  I’m a country boy. I know potatoes; I’ve seen them in sacks, big ones too. That’s what Tommy Rockette looked like as he went down; a great big sack of potatoes. ‘Now that wasn’t in the script,’ I whispered. Fortunately, my mike wasn’t live.

  Daze dropped to one knee and picked Rutherford’s dead weight clean off the canvas. As the crowd, who had no idea what was in the script and what wasn’t, roared its approval, he hoisted him up to shoulder height, as rehearsed, looked at Diane, saw Jerry coming to stand beside her, and threw him.

  Catching an unconscious man must be much more difficult than catching someone who is awake and cooperating, but The Behemoth managed it. He staggered slightly as he made the catch, but he held on. Very quickly though, he laid his burden on the mat, then as he had done twice that afternoon already, rolled under the bottom rope, jumped to his feet and squared up to Daze.

  As the first of the mock blows were thrown, and as the referees rushed into the ring en masse to separate the two, I heard the commentators talk us through the end of the show, and out of recording time. At the same time I looked at Tommy Rockette, still lying on the floor. He wasn’t hearing anything.

  But me; already I could hear Everett backstage, in about five minutes’ time. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Chapter 19

  It took longer than five minutes for him to get round to me, but when he did, he was not pleased.

  ‘Look man, I’ve never held one of those spoof guitars,’ I protested, as he glowered at me in the small office. ‘I’ve never held any sort of a bloody guitar. I’d barely know a Gibson from a glockenspiel.’

  ‘Christ, Oz,’ he bellowed, ‘the prop is made from balsa!’

  ‘Yes, but it’s varnished so that it looks pretty much like the real thing, so if you don’t know what it should weigh . . . Everett, I took the guitar that Tommy handed me, as instructed, and I never let go of it, as instructed, until I handed it back to him. I’m sorry you’ve got a lump on your head, but like they said at Nuremberg, “I was only obeying orders”.’

  My protest of innocence seemed to be working, for his expression softened a little. ‘I take it that Rockette knew it was a real guitar,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Everett muttered. ‘He knew all right.’

  ‘So he’s the saboteur? Did Reilly promise him a deal, or what?’

  He shook his head, frowning. ‘It’s not that easy. The bum has nothing to do with Reilly, and he had nothing to do with the earlier stuff. Once he came round, Jerry had a talk with him, in private. The Behemoth can be very persuasive, and he was in a hurry for some reason he wouldn’t tell me, so he didn’t mess around.

  ‘Tommy realised very quickly that he either ’fessed up there, or wound up in a hospital ward. He told Jerry that this stunt of his was strictly personal. Essentially, the Rockette character is a jobber at the top level, but Mr Rutherford has a big ego. He thinks he should be a mainliner, one of the guys who gets to wear the gold.

  ‘He told Jerry straight out that he should have been going in with the Angel for the Transcontinental belt. And he said that when I gave the shot to Scarletto instead, he didn’t like it at all. He tried to make out that the thing was almost an accident, though. Said to Jerry that he picked up the wrong guitar in the dressing room, and that he was on his way to the ring when he realised it. Said that he almost went back to change it, but he was so pissed at me that he decided to give me a whack with the real thing.

  ‘Of course, I don’t believe that for a minute. He decided right back in the dressing room.’ Everett rubbed the back of his head. ‘Son of a bitch knew exactly which guitar he was picking up.’

  ‘Why did he have a real one anyway?’

  For the first time since, still in his ring gear, he had marched me into the small room and in the process had given me claustrophobia, Everett smiled. ‘The guy can play it for real, and he thinks he can sing. So every so often, like tonight, we let him go outside and warm up the crowds while they’re waiting for the doors to open.’

  ‘That was some shot he caught you with the thing. Are you okay?’

  Daze grinned again. ‘Thing you gotta learn about me, little buddy. I really am as tough as I look.’

  ‘So is that the end of Rockette?’ I asked him. ‘Have you fired him?’

  The big man stretched himself, his head almost t
ouching the ceiling. ‘I can’t afford to, Oz. With Liam out of action, and Dave Manson, the roster’s depleted enough. I need the bum.’ He held up his huge right hand. ‘So I put the fear of God in him with this - and with the threat of another chat with Jerry.’ As he spoke he extended his left hand, palm up. ‘At the same time with this, I gave him an incentive. I told him I’d put him in a tag team with Chris Manson and give them a shot at that title, against the Choirboys.

  ‘But no more guitars. Phoney or real, they’re out from now on.’

  Chapter 20

  The Ubiquitous Chip is a sort of Glaswegian oasis. We’d heard about it not long after we came to the city, and we’d gone there once, for lunch in mid-week when we were feeling flush, but dinner on a Saturday evening was a new experience for us.

  The place has a courtyard style, although it’s watertight. Just as well; it had started to rain just as Jan picked me up from the SECC, and as we sat there we could still hear it battering off the roof. It’s a bit showbiz too. This may be simply because it’s very close to the headquarters of BBC Scotland, but a couple of months as a citizen of Glasgow had given me the distinct impression that the whole place is culture-chic crazy.The Burrell reception had underlined that; not long before we left, Susie, Mike, Jan and I were photographed by a girl who said she was from Hello magazine. My wife and I had been astonished, but the Lady Provost had assured us that it was an everyday occurrence in Gantry-land.

  From our small corner table, I glanced around the lower dining area and was almost relieved to see that - apart from a woman who presented a heavyweight television news programme - I didn’t recognise anyone.

  ‘Penny for ’em,’ drawled Jan as she dissected her thick venison steak. From our youngest days, I had always been impressed by the way she ate; carefully, sensually, regarding her food as a pleasure to be savoured.