Wearing Purple (Oz Blackstone Mystery)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘A miserable bloody penny!’ I retorted. ‘My thoughts do not come cheap, I’ll have you know.’ There was nothing sensual about me as I stripped the top layer off my skate wing: I was just pacing myself, so that we finished at more or less the same time. I learned to do that when I was a kid. Ellie and I played this very serious game, where the winner was the one who had the last mouthful.

  ‘Okay, fifty pence.’

  ‘Throw in index-linked increases for future transactions and you’re on. I was just thinking that Glasgow’s a real goldfish bowl. Through here it’s as if everyone’s looking at you all the time, whereas in Edinburgh, everyone averts their eyes.’

  She nodded, stopping her fork halfway to her mouth. ‘You and I adapted right away then. We live in a bloody goldfish bowl. Fortunately it’s too high up for anyone to look in on us.’ The fork moved on, then stopped again. ‘I know what you mean though. You’re no one in this city if you’re not famous.’

  We ate in silence for a while. The meal was expensive enough to deserve our complete attention. ‘That was excellent,’ said Jan, when she was finished. ‘I’m glad you gave Jerry our table at the other place.’

  ‘Yeah, although that’s very good as well. It’s quieter though, and maybe better suited for the purpose of - how will I put it? - sexual negotiation.’ I glanced around. ‘Everyone in here knows exactly where they’re going afterwards. ’

  ‘So that’s what Jerry’s doing, is it,’ my wife whispered, with a smile.

  ‘Christ no. It’ll be Sally who does the negotiating. The big guy’s so terrified I’m not sure that they’ll sign the treaty, though.’

  ‘What’s he scared of?’

  ‘Her. The Behemoth is in love.’

  Jan’s smile disappeared. ‘I hope she lets him down easy. Jerry’s such a nice guy; he was so good with Colin last week.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I got the impression that she was quite keen too.’ I took a sip of the Rawson’s Reserve. ‘I don’t know what Jerry’s small talk will be like though. I just hope he doesn’t say anything he shouldn’t.’

  ‘About Tommy what’s-his-name, you mean?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. The whole crew knew that Rockette hit Daze with a real guitar as soon as they saw the way it broke. They saw the way the guy went down too. Jeez, you should have seen it. I bumped into him just as I was leaving the hall: he’s got a lump as big as a golf ball on his forehead.

  ‘No. I meant that I hope Jerry doesn’t say anything about the sabotage, or about me.’

  ‘Why not? Is Sally a suspect?’

  ‘I don’t see it. She’s relatively new to the game. I don’t see the man Reilly recruiting her. But I got involved in this thing on the basis that only the immediate circle, by which I meant Everett and Diane - who still doesn’t know about me, by the way - were in on the operation. Suppose word got around that I was a plant; Christ, I might become a target myself!’

  Jan stared at me. ‘I hadn’t thought of that one. I agree, let’s hope they don’t get down to pillow talk.’

  She fell silent as the waiter arrived to hand us the sweet menu, and to clear away the empty dishes. ‘How much longer are you going on with this, Oz?’ she asked me, as he left.

  ‘I’ll give it another couple of weeks,’ I told her. ‘I’ve been doing some constructive thinking about this, at last, and I’ve come up with an angle we can investigate positively. If Tony Reilly of CWI has recruited a saboteur, it’s likely to be a Yank. Apart from Everett, Diane and Jerry, there are six other Americans on the payroll.

  ‘Of those, two were back in the States on holiday when the barrier was fixed. Barbara, the marketing girl, was in Europe doing advance work for future events. Dave Manson is a victim, and his cousin Chris was involved by accident in his injury, so he’s ruled out. That leaves Sonny Leonard, the foreman roadie. Everett thinks that he’s okay, but he’d say that about every member of the team, except Liam, if you put it to him. So he’s agreed that we concentrate on him.

  ‘Leonard has one of the company’s mobile phones, which he uses all the time. On Monday, that being his day off, I’m going to GWA to look with Everett at the itemised bills for that number. We’ll see if that throws up anything.’

  ‘If it doesn’t, are you still going to Barcelona?’

  I smiled at her. ‘I have to. I’m the star ring announcer, remember.’

  As I spoke, Jan looked up and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and found a stocky, balding young man looking down at me. He was wearing a crumpled suit, a sure sign that it was a designer job and very, very expensive. ‘How goes it, Marlowe?’ Greg McPhillips, my lawyer pal, asked. ‘You’ve got Glasgow well sorted, haven’t you.’

  Greg and I were friends at university. Afterwards, as I went briefly and disastrously into the police force, before finding my niche as a Private Enquiry Agent, he joined Glasgow’s leading firm of general solicitors and became a partner at the age of twenty-eight: not surprising since the firm was called McPhillips, and had been founded thirty years earlier by his old man.

  ‘We’re finding our way around. Pull up a chair and have a drink with us.’

  He glanced over his shoulder at the blonde behind him. He had a string of them, every one as designer as his suit. ‘Sorry Oz, we can’t. Poppy’s talked me into going to see a band at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. We’re struggling for time as it is.

  ‘No, I just came over to congratulate you on being such an insinuating bastard.’

  Jan had met Greg before. She didn’t like him: something to do with his attitude to women. ‘Pardon?’ she said, in a tone which indicated that a shot in the mouth could follow shortly.

  He smiled his way out of trouble. ‘No offence Jan,’ he boomed, in his big hearty voice. ‘I just meant that I gave your husband a recommendation to Everett bloody Davis as the very man to sort out his petty cash fiddler, and the next thing I see he’s talked himself into a job as GWA’s ring announcer.

  ‘I’m taping tonight’s show. I take it that you’re on again.’

  ‘Starring role, man, starring role. It’s a great show tonight, as well.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it, then. Must rush now. Goodnight, Jan.’

  We watched him as he headed for the door, dragging Poppy behind him, the girl teetering on her unfeasibly high heels.

  ‘That settles it,’ said my wife, emphatically. ‘You are getting out of this thing as fast as you can. With that idiot shooting his mouth off all over Glasgow, your actor cover’s going to be blown in no time.

  ‘Get this sorted, Oz. A lady in my condition doesn’t need to be worrying about her man.’

  Chapter 21

  I had a brainwave on Monday morning, before I left to meet Everett. I don’t have them very often, but when I do they can be real crackers.

  On the stroke of nine, I called Greg McPhillips at his office. I should have known better; he was a partner in the firm after all. However he had arrived when I called back fifteen minutes later.

  ‘You’re an early bird,’ he said, as he took my call. His voice sounded hoarse and strained.

  ‘Not especially. What’s up with the throat? Got an infection?’

  ‘No,’ he croaked. ‘It was effin’ noisy in King Tut’s. I had to shout at the bird all night to make myself heard.’

  ‘It should have worn off by now.’

  ‘Aye, but I was at the Garage last night as well.’

  ‘Poppy likes the bands, eh.’

  ‘This wasn’t Poppy, it was Hayley.’ A busy boy, is our Greg.

  ‘I did have a chance to watch you on telly, though,’ he went on. ‘Big Everett didn’t half level that bloke at the end, after he gubbed him with the guitar. For a minute I thought it was for real.’

  ‘Daze can be very convincing.’

  ‘I liked your performance too. Am I on a percentage of this?’

  I laughed; I knew Greg well enough to realise that he was half serious. ‘I’ll buy you a big drink; I promise.’


  ‘Champagne would be nice.’

  ‘Christ Greg, but you’re a natural born solicitor, aren’t you. Champagne it is.’

  ‘Krug?’

  ‘Moet.’

  ‘Deal.’

  I paused to let him stop chortling. ‘Speaking of performances, ’ I said, eventually, ‘after you left the Chip on Saturday night, a bloke came over to our table. He introduced himself as the Assistant Secretary of the Law Society of Scotland, and he told us that he had recognised you.’

  There was a grunt from the other end of the line.

  ‘He asked me as a friend, to have a very friendly word with you on his behalf, to say that if Mr Everett bloody Davis, whose name you shouted all over the restaurant, happened to be a client of yours, then you have a duty of confidentiality towards him, which was surely breached by telling the entire dining population of Byres Road that he has a problem in his office involving dishonesty.

  ‘He said I should tell you that if anyone made a complaint to the Law Society about behaviour of that sort, it would be liable to come down on you like a ton of bricks. He gave me a list of the things it could do to you, but I expect you know them all. He didn’t mention thumbscrews specifically, but the hint was there.’

  I let my words sink in for a few seconds. ‘To tell you the truth, Greg, I wasn’t too happy myself. Glasgow’s a great big village, and word spreads.’

  ‘All right, all right, all right.’ The last ‘all right’ was distorted beyond recognition into a strange, wheezing squeak. ‘Thanks for the tip, Oz. I was a bit pissed, as you’d have realised. I just hope the guy doesn’t phone my old man.’

  ‘I asked him not to, and he said that he wouldn’t this time, if I passed the word on.’

  ‘Maybe I should phone him.’

  Here, Blackstone, a voice whispered in my head. You really should have been an actor. ‘No,’ I said, emphatically. ‘The best thing you can do is keep your mouth tight shut about the whole business from now on.’

  ‘Aye, maybe so,’ Greg agreed, painfully.

  ‘How did you land that job anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘I was in the right place at the right time, that’s all. It’s great fun. We’re off to Barcelona this weekend.’

  ‘Lucky bastard! And how about the pilfering? Have you sorted that out yet?’

  ‘We’re on to someone. This very morning, in fact. Keep that to yourself, mind.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he croaked. ‘I will.’

  Chapter 22

  ‘I try to run this company on a tight budget,’ said Everett, almost mournfully, as we sat in his office looking at a pile of mobile phone bills. We were virtually alone in the headquarters unit. Monday was a day of rest for most of the crew.

  ‘If there was an alternative to these goddamned expensive things, I would take it. They just eat up money, especially when the guys use them around Europe.’

  ‘Do they all have company phones?’ I asked him.

  ‘Diane and I share a hand phone, and I have one wired into my car,’ he replied. ‘Jerry has one that fits into an adaptor in the BattleBus. Barbara has one because she travels a lot, I gave one to Darius, because his father is sick in Germany and likes to be able to talk to him, and to Liam, because he found out that Darius had one. Then there’s Sonny’s.

  ‘Those are just the company phones of course. Quite a few of the roster have their own. I’ve seen Sally Crockett using one, for example.’ He paused. ‘Say, what’s with her? She’s a happy kid normally, but yesterday I thought she was going to burst into song.’

  ‘Sounds to me like there’s a man involved,’ I said. What I didn’t say was that when the cast had gathered at the SECC twenty-four hours earlier to shoot the action for the Monday night programme, I had seen Sally and Jerry arriving together in the BattleBus. They looked as if they had enjoyed their first date.

  Everett frowned. ‘As long as he doesn’t take her mind off the job. I’ve never seen a woman worker who gets as big a pop from the crowd as she does.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a chance in hell of that happening. I’ve been talking to Sally; she’s one hundred per cent committed to the GWA.’

  I pointed to the pile of papers on the desk. ‘What have we got here?’

  ‘These are the itemised mobile accounts for the last six months. I pulled everyone’s account; Sonny Leonard’s bills are in here somewhere. His number’s 0735 951775.’

  I picked up the invoices and began to go through them; they were all in the name of the company and differentiated only by the line number. I sorted through them and separated them out into seven lots, six bills to each, and handed one to Everett. ‘These are Sonny Leonard’s.’

  We each pulled up chairs and sat on the visitor side of the CEO’s glass-topped table. I felt as if I was Gulliver, in that place he went to after Lilliput. Everett gave me back three of the invoices. ‘You go through these; I’ll look at the rest. Let’s see what we get.’

  I took out a pen and looked at the first invoice. In the course of the month Leonard had made around fifty calls. Most were to the GWA number, from different locations around Europe according to the dial codes shown.

  ‘Where’s CWI based?’ I asked.

  ‘Philadelphia, PA, City of Brotherly Love. The city code is 215.’

  There was one call to the US shown on the first bill, to number 00 1 314 732 6578. ‘Everett,’ I said. ‘Can you remember where Leonard comes from?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s from St Louis, Missouri. I believe his mom still lives there.’ I reached across, picked up the telephone directory which was lying on the glass table, and flicked my way to the international codes section. The city code for St Louis Missouri, showed as 314.

  I looked at the second bill, which was five months old. Again, most of the calls were to the GWA headquarters, and to other Glasgow numbers. Again, there was one call to the St Louis number. ‘It looks like he calls his folks, once a month, on the company phone.’

  ‘Can’t object to that,’ the big man drawled. ‘I call mine once a week.’

  I looked at the third invoice, a month more recent. The St Louis number was there again. I had almost finished my check when I looked back at one of the numbers. The national exit code, which I had passed by at first, came back to me. ‘Why would Sonny be in Spain four months ago?’

  ‘He did an advance trip to check out the Barcelona venue. Why?’

  ‘Because he made a call from Spain to a US number. 00 1 215 671 4307. What’s the CWI number?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Daze, in a voice like ice. ‘But three months ago he made three calls to that number. Two months ago, he made five. Last month he made seven.’

  He stood, towering above me and walked round to the speaker phone on the desk. I watched him, as he punched in thirteen numbers; 0-0-1-2-1-5-6-7-1-4-3-0-7. As he hit each button a tone sounded from the speaker, each one singing into the silent room. After a few seconds the phone began to ring; one, two, three, four times.

  After the fourth ring, there was a click, and a sunny, ‘Have a nice day’, female voice came on the line. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You’re connected to the offices of Championship Wrestling Incorporated, the world’s premier Sports Entertainment company.We open for business at eight am, Eastern Standard Time, but you can leave a message now, if you wish. Please speak after the tone . . . and have a nice day.’

  Before the message tape could start to run, Everett punched the cut-off button with a huge finger. ‘Son of a bitch!’ he hissed.

  ‘Aye, and a stupid son of a bitch too, not to know that all calls from a mobile are itemised on the bill.’

  ‘Let’s see if someone else is a stupid SoB.’ He leaned across the table, scanned the piles of invoices, then picked up another. I didn’t need to ask; I knew that they were for Liam’s phone.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Everett! You don’t need to do that.’

  He ignored me and went straight to the third invoice from the top. ‘There! Look at that!’ he called out, pointing. �
��November 14, I was in Frankfurt, he called our number from his mobile, seven thirty. I called later from my hotel, Diane wasn’t home; I got that smug woman’s voice on the answer service. I called Liam after that; made up a story about something I had to say to him. He picked up the phone all right. I’ll bet she was with him.’

  I tried to keep an even tone, and not to laugh at him. That wouldn’t have been wise. ‘And I’ll bet that Liam got the answering service too, when he called. Did you ask Diane where she was?’

  ‘Yeah, she said she went to a movie.’

  ‘So believe her. She’s your wife; you owe her that.’

  ‘She’s my wife, but she don’t want my kids.’

  ‘Yet, Everett. From what you’ve told me, she doesn’t want them yet.’

  ‘Why’d the son of a bitch phone her?’

  ‘For some innocent reason, for sure. He wasn’t at home when he called her, or he wouldn’t have used his hand-phone. Maybe he thought she’d like company for dinner. Listen - your conspiracy theory’s gone by the board. Diane can’t be sabotaging the company so that she can deliver Liam and herself to Tony Reilly. Liam’s accident knocked that daft idea on the head.’

  ‘Don’t mean they ain’t having an affair though.’

  Finally I lost patience with the poor, insecure, big sod. ‘No,’ I barked at him, ‘but it doesn’t mean that they are! You’ve got nothing more than unfounded suspicion; no evidence at all. Concentrate on the proof you do have, that Sonny Leonard is in regular contact with CWI head office. What are you going to do about that?’

  Everett slumped into his chair, his chin resting on his chest, and sat silent for a full minute. ‘I’m going to watch the bastard in Barcelona next weekend, like a hawk; and so are you. If he steps one foot out of line, I’m going to break his back and send him home to Tony Reilly in a wheelchair.’

  I looked at him and I was scared. Sure I’d heard him make a physical threat before, after my altercation with Matthews in Newcastle. But that had been said to frighten Liam, and to embarrass him before the team. This time there was a cold anger about him which made me worry that he might do exactly what he said.