For The Death Of Me ob-9

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘You can trust this girl,’ it said. ‘You can trust her with your life.’

  I turned and looked towards the plane. The other three were on board, and Scott was standing at the top of the steps. ‘Go on without me,’ I shouted to him. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’ll drive the hire car back to New York.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ he called back, then stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  A few seconds later the plane began its taxi. As it pulled away, the last thing I saw was Prim’s face, framed in a small round window. I could see mischief in her eyes; I could almost hear her chuckle.

  47

  I drove us back to the hotel and checked in again. If the desk clerk was surprised, he didn’t say so, even when I checked in under a different false name than the one I’d used before. I suppose that in Trenton, New Jersey, they see many things.

  Marie began to undress as soon as I closed the door. I watched her as she slipped her shoulders out of the silk dress and let it fall to the floor. I watched her as she slipped off her thong with her thumbs.

  And then it was my turn.

  I made love to her slowly, very gently, taking my time, as I sensed she wanted. She winced a little when I entered her, and I realised she was a virgin, only the second I’d ever been with. I held nothing back; I gave her the best I could. Maybe here I should lie to you, and say that it was magical: yes, maybe I should, but it wasn’t. It was just all right, for me at least, although she wouldn’t have known if it had been cannon-fire, she’d nothing to set me against.

  I told her it had been wonderful, though; well, you do, don’t you, if there’s anything of the gentleman about you? After a while, we did it again, and this time, Marie contributed more, although I could tell that she was making it up as she went along, trying to please me as best she could.

  About ten minutes before ten, she got up. ‘I have to go downstairs,’ she said, as she headed for the bathroom. ‘I need things for morning. There’s a pharmacy across the street.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I volunteered. ‘You stay here.’

  She smiled at me. ‘Don’t be silly. You can’t shop for what woman needs.’

  I watched her again, as she dressed this time. It didn’t take long. When she was ready she picked up her bag and stepped through the door, closing it behind her.

  I lay there for a while, still naked, wondering what the hell I’d done, and where it was going, if anywhere. I think I began to feel ashamed, but as it turned out I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  To divert my thoughts, I picked up the television remote and switched it on. The hotel menu popped up on screen; I pushed a number at random and found myself watching more bloody baseball. I moved on to the next channel.

  ‘Blackstone.’ My name came out at me; I was watching the local CBS station and they were talking about me. ‘I repeat,’ said the announcer, ‘our breaking news story. English movie star Oz Blackstone is believed to have died tonight when a private jet crashed in a New Jersey swamp, en route for Newark Airport.

  ‘He was one of four passengers on the chartered Gulfstream when it came down. Emergency services report that so far five bodies have been recovered, those of the two pilots, the flight attendant, a woman as yet unnamed, and the promising New York mystery writer, Mr Benedict Luker. Police and fire-fighters are still searching for the remains of Mr Blackstone and of his former wife, Mrs Primavera Blackstone, the sister of Oscar-nominated Dawn Phillips, wife of Miles Grayson. More news and pictures on this story as it develops.’

  48

  I suppose I knew then that Marie wasn’t coming back. In fact, I guess I knew everything, although it was quite a while before I was able to lie down, quietly and with something approaching rationality, and put all of the pieces together.

  At that moment, though, I was struck down, numb with grief. Primavera was dead. I could have stayed behind for another night in Trenton with her, rather than with Marie. I had been thinking about that in the State Capitol building, and so had she. If either of us had come out with it, said what we were thinking, given voice to our unquenchable lust for each other, then Marie would have been catching the plane back to her father, and Prim would be alive today.

  And Maddy was dead: I’d gone to all that trouble to save her life, I’d thought I’d triumphed, but after all my efforts to save her from the gangsters she was still stone dead, crisped in a swamp in New Jersey that had been a Mafia dumping ground for decades. That’s a fine irony for you, Blackstone, is it not?

  Dylan? Yes, he was dead too, but he’d been fucking dead for years.

  The television was still droning on: they had moved on to the day’s death toll in Iraq, but I had my own casualty list to grieve over. I forced myself into action. I got up, showered and dressed. Then a horrible thought struck me. I snatched up my cell-phone and called Susie.

  It was Conrad Kent who answered. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, before I’d had a chance to speak, ‘Mrs Blackstone is not taking calls.’

  The media jackals were gnawing at my corpse already. ‘Shut up,’ I shouted at my assistant. ‘This is Oz. I wasn’t on that fucking plane. Now put me on to my wife.’

  It took me a while to calm Susie down. It took me a minute or so to believe truly that it was me speaking to her. Christ, I was so fucked up in my head that I wasn’t even a hundred per cent sure myself.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, when she could speak properly.

  ‘The plane must have been sabotaged, somehow. It was flying Maddy to safety but the Triads got to it.’

  ‘So they killed her, after all.’

  ‘Yes, but she wasn’t the target,’ I told her, even as the first significant part of the truth hit me, clear and ringing as a bell. ‘Mike was.’

  49

  The rest of it didn’t even begin to come together until I made it back to New York, driving, dangerously, through the fog that seemed to have spread inside my head. Everything was instinctive. I don’t remember anything about the journey. The navigation system was switched off, but I made it on my personal auto-pilot, just heading north and taking signs as they came up.

  I must have been burning rubber for it was just after midnight when I drove out of the Lincoln Tunnel and on to Manhattan. I dumped the car in a Hertz drop-off location somewhere in the Forties, shoved the keys and papers at the receiving clerk without a word, took my bags and almost stumbled into the night. I was headed anywhere but towards the Algonquin: I wanted never to go back there, ever again. Still I don’t, and I won’t.

  I walked across to Broadway, then headed south. It was early Monday morning and the city was as quiet as it ever gets, so quiet that some idiot tried to mug me. He was standing in a doorway just past Thirty-eighth; as I passed he pointed a gun at me and told me to give him my wallet. I looked at him, and considered his options. He didn’t look drug-crazy enough or scared enough to shoot me, so I snatched the pistol from him, pushed him back deeper into the doorway and beat him bloody, then shoved the barrel up his arse. I’m speaking literally here, folks. I told him, although I doubt if he was hearing anything, that if I turned and saw him crawling out on to the street I’d come back and pull the trigger, then I carried on in my aimless way.

  Finally it dawned on me that I’d better get off the street before I killed somebody, so I checked myself into a hotel on West Thirty-second, just past the Empire. It wasn’t much better than a flophouse, and they gave me a room next to the lift-shaft. I don’t even remember now what it was called, but it had four walls and a roof, and that was all I wanted. As I lay there in the dark, the shock began to wear off. I began to come to terms (whatever the hell that actually means) with my grief, and I revisited it with a vengeance.

  I cried for a while, for quite a while, for Primavera and for the times we had shared together, the good, the bad, the thrilling, the exciting, the downright scary. I cried for the love we had made, and for Tom. Soon I was going to have to tell him that he’d never see his mother again, other than in d
reams. I’d try to find the positive side for him, though, when he was old enough, that he’d always see her young and beautiful, and that he wouldn’t have to watch her dynamism fade, and her body weaken and wither with age. I never saw that in my mother. I’d never see it with Jan, and I’d never see it with Prim.

  It’s a terrible curse, being married to me: it’s as if you seal your fate when you sign the contract. I have been married three times and two of my wives have died prematurely, at the cold emotionless hand of Fate. Now I live my life in a constant state of fear for Susie, and with the dread that she might carry it too. I’ve found myself wondering whether I should leave her, for her own good, to try to protect her. But that didn’t do Primavera any good, did it?

  I thought of all these things as I cried myself out, and then I began to think of what had brought them about, and I began to see more of the truth, beyond that first flash that I’d revealed to Susie.

  First and foremost, I knew for sure that Sammy Goss hadn’t met us by accident: he’d been sent. Someone had noted my arrival in Sing, someone who knew all about Maddy January, and made the connection with me. Once Goss had latched on to me he hadn’t let go.

  Only it had been more complicated than that. Something unexpected had happened. Someone entirely unlooked-for had turned up, and changed some people’s priorities.

  I knew all these things: they followed a logical and inescapable pattern, yet it was all theory, all fucking Sherlock stuff, with no hard evidence, no reinforced concrete proof.

  And yet there was, and I nearly threw it away.

  I forced myself upright at eight fifteen next morning. The water pressure in the shower above my bath, its enamel worn almost through by countless thousands of feet, was so poor that it took me ten minutes to do the job according to my standards. I didn’t bother to shave: I wasn’t ready to look at myself in the mirror.

  Back in the bedroom, I took a fresh shirt from my bag. When I had removed it from its wrapping, I picked up the one I had worn the day before, meaning to stuff it into the polythene and toss it all in the waste. But as I crumpled it in my hand, my fingers closed on the forgotten envelope in the pocket, Maddy January’s parting thank-you card.

  I took it out and opened it. It was inscribed as she had said, but with it there was something else: another tiny square SD disk. ‘As a token of good faith,’ she had added, ‘and maybe a little insurance.’

  50

  As I stared at it, I felt as if someone had switched me back on. I had purpose again; I had things to do.

  The first of those involved breakfast. Somehow I’d managed to skip lunch the day before, and I was starving. I checked out of the dosshouse and took a cab to Seventh and Fifty-fifth. They were between rush-hours in the Carnegie Deli, so I was afforded the luxury of a table on my own. I demolished a Woody Allen (lotsa corned beef, plus lotsa pastrami) and a side order of cinnamon toast, and I was on my second coffee refill when I was aware of a guy peering at me. He wore a white apron; it was too pristine for him to have been a cook, so I guessed that he had to be the owner. ‘Hey,’ he asked hoarsely, ‘ain’t you Oz Blackstone?’

  I ran my hand over my heavy stubble. ‘So the beard didn’t fool you.’

  ‘Buddy, you’re supposed to be dead. It says so in the Daily News.’

  ‘Shit, and I felt fine when I woke up this morning.’

  He chuckled. ‘Yeah, maybe I should be careful what I believe. They ran another story about a guy found semi-conscious on Broadway with a Smith and Wesson up his ass. I didn’t swallow that one, though. No, you maybe don’t look so great, Oz, but I reckon you’re alive. Tell you what, buddy, how about proving it by sending me a picture for the wall?’ (I forgot to mention that the Carnegie is decorated with the autographed photographs of thousands of celebrities who’ve eaten there over the years.)

  ‘I’ll do that,’ I promised.

  ‘Great. When you do, be sure to put today’s date on it.’

  When I’d mopped up the last of the maple syrup with the last of the cinnamon toast, and paid at the counter on the way out, I caught another cab. I’d done some telephone-directory research at the hotel so I was able to ask the driver to take me straight to the British Consulate General, on Third Avenue at East Fifty-first.

  I walked in off the street, and asked to see the Consul General and the Press Officer, in that order. The counter clerk looked at me sceptically until I handed over my passport: that got her attention, big-time. I was shown straight in to see the boss.

  I kept my story simple.

  • I had never been on the plane; I had decided at the last minute to drive the rental back to New York, so I hadn’t been aware of the tragedy until I’d been approached in the Carnegie.

  • I’d thought the guy was joking until I bought a Daily News.

  • I had just bought the rights to Benedict Luker’s novel, and we had been in Trenton to look at a possible location.

  • Primavera had met Luker in Monaco when we had closed the deal, and had subsequently arranged to visit him in New York.

  • Ms January was her friend and, coincidentally, was the ex-wife of my brother-in-law, who had just been appointed a judge by Her Majesty the Queen.

  The last part really sealed it; obviously, the cops in New Jersey wanted to talk to me, but the Consul General insisted that they do so on what was legally British soil. An assistant Chief of something and another senior officer came to Third Avenue at half past midday and took a formal statement. They were clued up enough to ask me about Marie; I was ready for that, and told them that I was considering her for a role in the movie of Blue Star Falling (true) and that the meeting had been arranged to suit my schedule (lie, more or less).

  Once they were done, they asked me if I would identify the bodies of Dylan and Maddy. . they still hadn’t found Prim. I was able to do so from photographs they had brought with them: they’d been banged about, obviously, but not too badly burned because of the swamp, so they’d been made recognisable. I nodded, mute, as I was shown each one.

  They asked me who would be handling the funeral arrangements. I told them that Ms January’s mother lived in England but that she had a sister in Princeton, who could be contacted in India through the university. I added that, as far as I knew, Benedict Luker had no next of kin and that I would take care of his needs.

  As soon as they had left, the Consul General authorised the Press Officer to issue a statement announcing my miraculous escape, and recounting most of the story I’d told him and the cops. He offered me lunch, too, but I was still full of Woody Allen and cinnamon toast, so I passed on that. But I did ask him for his secretary’s help in getting me out of the country; within half an hour she had me booked on the six thirty out of JFK, connecting to Nice and getting me home well in time for lunch the next day.

  51

  They gave me the full diplomatic treatment on both sides of the Atlantic. I never saw Customs or Immigration at JFK or ’Eefrow and, better still, I never saw any journalists.

  The evil hour was only postponed, though: there was no protection in Nice, and I have never been happier to be met by a minder. Conrad, ever efficient, had hired extra security; just as well, because the airport staff couldn’t have come close to coping. This was the Cannes Film Festival and Grand Prix week rolled into one and trebled. And all for poor, poor, pitiful me.

  It was easier in Monaco: the Prince had ordered the police to guard my privacy while I recovered from the terrible shock I’d had.

  I had another thing to recover from too. I had to tell Susie exactly why I’d missed the plane. I may be pretty good at manipulating the truth, but not when she’s around. She didn’t take it well. For a while I thought that the curse of being married to Oz had struck again, but eventually she told me that she’d rather have me, in her words, ‘with a stain on your record and by my side than sat spotless up on a cloud playing a fucking harp’.

  She went on to add that there can be very few people in history who could claim that t
heir dick saved their life. Even so, I don’t think that she’s quite forgiven me; maybe she never will.

  The kids didn’t understand any of what had happened, thank JC, and won’t for a while. Tom knows his mother won’t be coming back, and he’s making of that what a four-year-old can. Being brutal about it, he hadn’t seen much of her for a year, so it would have been worse for him if it had been Susie or me who’d been put out to the pasture in the sky.

  A week later, I was back in New York, with Susie. Benedict Luker’s cremation was private; there were only five of us there, the two of us, his publisher, his editor and her secretary. The lovely editor was heartbroken. I reckon old Benny had been right: he might well have been on there.

  The memorial service we held for Prim in Auchterarder, ten days after that, was an altogether different matter. David and Dawn Phillips were the chief mourners, of course, but Tom Blackstone was there too, with his dad, and Bruce Grayson, Prim’s nephew, with his. They tell me that there were four hundred people outside the jam-packed church, listening as the service was relayed on speakers.

  David asked me to do a eulogy for his daughter. I was touched, and agreed, of course. When I considered what I would say, I found myself remembering the last time Prim and I had really talked to each other, in the Algonquin, our favourite hotel in New York. And this is how it turned out.

  ‘If you’re the sort of person who looks at life through rose-coloured spectacles, you’d have seen Primavera Phillips as a conventional angel, clad in white. But if you were to take them off, then paradoxically, you’d have seen her still angelic, but maybe clad in a different colour, for Prim had some of the fallen one in her too, or at least she tried to make it appear so.