‘Oz, I can’t tell you how good it is of you to call on me,’ she exclaimed. She had changed into a lighter, less formal trouser suit than the one she wore to work, but the makeup was still impeccable and the hair immovable.
I watched her as Prim stepped out of the small lift; she’d been standing behind me, so that Mrs Wallinger couldn’t see her face until that moment. If she had seen a photograph, it had either been a very bad one, or acting must run in the Wallinger family, for not a flicker of recognition crossed her face.
‘This is Mrs Blackstone,’ I told her.
Martha took a step towards her, hand outstretched. ‘How lovely to meet you, my dear. It must be wonderful being married to a movie star. I always hoped that my Paul would make it big in the business and that I would get to bask in his glory,’ she smiled, in a way that could have conveyed sadness or disappointment, or both, ‘but it hasn’t happened, not yet at any rate.’
She half turned towards her front door. ‘Come on in, both of you. There’s coffee on the hob.’
She led us into a spacious apartment, a big all-in-one living area with several doors leading off, not unlike Prim’s pad in London, except that it was twice the size and the ceilings were a lot higher. I expected it to be hot, since there was a lot of glass, but it was air-conditioned.
‘Nice place,’ I commented. ‘Have you always lived here, Mrs Wallinger?’ I knew the answer but I wanted to get her conversational. I learned back in the days when I was a private enquiry agent in Edinburgh that once you start people talking sometimes they can’t stop.
‘No, I haven’t, only for the last few years. John, my husband, and I lived in St Paul and we raised our family there, but it was difficult for me after his death, so I bought this place . . . he was well insured . . . and moved across the river. Oh, and Oz, please call me Martha.’ She turned. ‘I didn’t catch your first name, my dear.’
‘It’s Primavera,’ I told her.
‘Primavera! What a lovely name. I’ve never met anyone called Primavera before.’
‘She’s called Prim for short.’
‘How absolutely charming,’ said Martha. ‘Well, Prim, will you have some coffee? I’ve made a fresh pot.’
‘That would be nice.’
‘Oz, you too?’
‘I won’t, thank you, but if you have some mineral water, that would be good.’
‘Of course I have.’
As she went to the kitchen area to pour, I glanced around the place. It was comfortably, but not expensively furnished, there was a big television in the far corner and much of the available wall space was occupied by bookshelves.
‘You’re a big reader, Martha,’ I called across.
‘Sure am, Oz,’ she called across. ‘Mysteries, mostly; I just love ’em. Can’t get enough. You know those Skinner movies you did? I’ve read all those books, and that other Edinboro’ fella too.’
I strolled across to a long sideboard; it looked to be sixties vintage, and I guessed that she might have had it all her domestic life. Several family photographs were displayed on it: a tall, crew-cut man in US military uniform, with a chestful of medals, a graduation photograph starring a young man who looked a bit like me, another showing a second youth, slick, spotless and smiling in a sharp suit, and a fourth of the same man, older and much more casual, with a wholesome all-American blonde and two kids, girl and boy, aged perhaps on either side of ten.
‘My little family,’ said Martha, as she returned with a tray, which she put on a coffee-table in the middle of the sitting area. She gave Prim a mug of Java and me a glass of something fizzy and slightly tinted, then offered us doughnuts from a big plate. Prim took one; I passed.
She looked back towards the photo display. ‘That’s John, my late husband; he was in Vietnam, you know. He won two Silver Stars and many other decorations. Then there’s Paul, but you know him, of course, and then there’s John the Second, my other son, his wife Sheryl, and their children, Lori and John Wallinger the Third.’
I almost said that the kid sounded like a dispossessed Balkan king, but decided that that would not be a good move. Instead I went straight in there. ‘Paul doesn’t have a family, then?’
‘No, I’m afraid he doesn’t. I have to rely on Johnny for the supply of little Wallingers.’
‘Funny. When I met him he told me that he had a thing going with a British girl, and that she had just got pregnant.’
I’ll swear she went pale under the makeup.
‘Surely not,’ she murmured, her eyes suddenly shifting, as if she had been taken completely off guard.
‘That’s what he told me, I’m sure. He said that he was based in London when he wasn’t working.’
‘When was this?’
‘A couple of years back, in LA, like I said earlier. Actually, maybe it was more recently than that, maybe it was only eighteen months.’ I gave her a west-coast laugh. ‘Yes, it was winter, but in southern California it’s easy to forget, isn’t it?’
‘He told you that?’
‘Yup. You’ve been to LA, haven’t you, Martha?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Oz,’ she replied, quietly, frowning a little. ‘I’ve never been to California.’
‘What? Not even to see where Paul works, much of the time?’ I grinned. ‘Mind you, who the hell am I to talk? My father’s never been there either; he’s been too busy pulling teeth in Scotland, just like you’ve been too busy managing assets in Minneapolis. You should take a trip, Martha, even if it’s only to visit Universal Studios; you could take Lori and John the Third. They’d love it, I promise you. It might not be on the same scale as Disney World, but it’s pretty spectacular.’
She smiled again, as if she was pleased that I’d gone off on another tangent. ‘Maybe I’ll do that; too many of us never leave the Midwest, you know. And I do love my grandchildren.’ She looked at me, then at Prim. ‘You have children, don’t you? I’m sure I read somewhere that you do.’
‘Two,’ I replied. ‘Janet and Jonathan; they’re at home in Scotland with their nanny.’
Prim put a hand on my arm; for a second I thought she was going to say how wonderful they were, but she didn’t. ‘Martha,’ she said instead, ‘do you think I could use your bathroom?’ She grinned at me. ‘That root beer we had at lunchtime; you know the stuff always does this to me.’
‘Me too,’ our hostess agreed. ‘It’s that door straight behind where you’re sitting.’
‘Thanks. Excuse me.’
I guessed that she might be doing a runner to get out of talking about the kids: but then again, maybe she just needed to pee.
As soon as she was gone, Martha’s frown returned. ‘I can hardly believe my son said that to you. He was living with a British girl and she was pregnant? The damn fool.’
‘It happens, Martha; you shouldn’t blame the girl.’
‘No, I mean it, he’s a damn fool. He shouldn’t be telling you things like that.’
‘Come on, it’s a different world we live in, guys like Paul and me.’
‘Oz, you’re not like Paul. My older son is a fantasist; he sails too close to the wind, he talks too much. I’ve always feared that one day he’ll talk himself right into trouble.’
‘Come on, Martha. He’s an actor. What sort of trouble could he talk himself into?’
She looked at the floor, as if she was working up the courage to tell me: and then Prim came back from the bathroom.
‘That’s better,’ she said, with evident relief. ‘Martha, do you think I could have some more coffee now?’
‘Of course, my dear,’ her almost-mother-in-law replied, gratefully, picking up her mug and heading back to the kitchen.
‘Oz,’ Prim whispered, urgently, as soon as she was out of urgent-whisper range, ‘go to the bathroom.’
‘I don’t need to; you’re the one had the second root beer.’
‘Don’t be dense, just do it.’
I followed orders. ‘Martha, do you think I might too?’ I called acros
s the vault.
‘Of course.’ She gave a girlish laugh. ‘Maybe you could autograph the mirror in lipstick, in case my friends don’t believe you were here.’
I got up and went into the bathroom, walking briskly as if I was on an urgent mission. As I closed the door behind me, I looked around. Okay, it was a very nice bathroom, not as nice as the one we had in our hotel room, or any of the five bathrooms I have in my house, but still nice, as American bathrooms, in my experience, tend to be. It was also full of women’s things, all carefully arranged. There was nothing unusual about it, though: bath with shower over it, basin set into a marble top, toilet and bidet. (Suddenly I was reminded of a true story. Once, a few years back, before I was famous, my dad and I were in the golf-club bar with some other blokes, and the conversation got round to which of us actually used a bidet and for what. To my surprise my dad owned up. He said that sometimes, rather than have a full bath, he found it handy for washing his bits and bobs. To which our chief inquisitor replied, ‘Hey, Mac, washing your bits is one thing, but washing Bob’s as well will definitely get you talked about in Anstruther.’)
As I tried to work out why Prim had sent me in there, I found that I actually did need to pee; and so I did. I was washing my hands afterwards, looking in the mirror, when it caught my eye, the one item in the place that looked as if it shouldn’t have been.
I picked it up. It was a duck, a rubber duck, of the kind one floats in the bath, if one is a child, or a very regressed adult. It was a familiar object to me, for my kids have one each; Janet has lost interest in hers, but wee Jonathan thinks his is great. Theirs are plain ducks, though, the usual yellow. This one was different; it had a slightly superior look about it, and it was dressed, or painted, entirely in the colours of the Union Jack. Martha Wallinger definitely did not strike me as a closet (not even a water-closet) anglophile, and the grandchildren in the photograph were, going by their age and their nationality, more likely to be found shooting ducks than floating them in their baths.
I was musing upon this as I rejoined the ladies. There were two ways I could take things: either I could simply let them drift, or I could start spilling the beans about the fantasist son Paul and putting pressure on his mother to tell us where the hell he was. I had a strong suspicion that if I did the first, as I was inclined to, then sooner rather than later, Prim would launch into the second.
So, as I resumed my seat beside her on the comfortable couch, I slipped an arm around her and gave her right buttock a good, firm squeeze. It was meant to say, ‘Yes, I saw it.’ It was meant to say also, ‘Now keep your mouth shut and leave this up to me.’ In days gone by I could express a range of meanings with a squeeze like that, the most common being carnal. I could only hope that she interpreted this one correctly.
‘Martha,’ I said. ‘It’s been really nice being with you. Now I have a confession to make. When I looked you up, it wasn’t just to keep my promise to Paul. I need to get in touch with him.’
Her eyes narrowed and she peered at me with open suspicion. ‘Why would a big star like you want to get in touch with my small-time son?’
‘Because I might have a job for him. Miles Grayson and I are looking at a project: it’s a little off fulfilment yet, but it’ll involve casting an actor who looks reasonably like me in an important supporting role. Paul’s worked with Miles in the past and his name came up in conversation. I’ve undertaken to locate him; my problem is that I can’t find him. His agent, or the woman I thought was his agent, told me that they parted company a while back, and the Screen Actors’ Guild can’t help me either. So I’m keeping my promise and asking you for help at the same time.’
As I spoke to her, I saw her eyes return to their normal size, and the suspicion leave them. You are good, Blackstone, I told myself, seriously fucking good.
Martha deflated me pretty quickly, though. ‘Oz,’ she said, ‘I wish I could help you, but the fact is that I can’t. I haven’t heard from Paul in over four years. He came back here when his father died and then a little later to help finalise the estate. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I wouldn’t know how to go about contacting him; I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time.’
She looked at me with sincerity in her eyes. The trouble was, she wasn’t as good at faking it as I am: I didn’t believe her; or at least I didn’t believe the last part of what she’d said.
I kept up my performance, though. ‘It hasn’t been wasted, Martha.’ I rose, drawing Prim to her feet with me. ‘I’ve kept a promise to a fellow actor. Maybe it was conscience that asked me to look you up. Whatever it was, I’ll make you a promise. When I find him, I will certainly kick his ass.’ I smiled at her as we walked to the door to the hallway, then added, ‘And then I’ll tell him to get in touch with his mother.’
‘That would be appreciated, Oz,’ she said, as she closed the door on us.
Chapter 17
Prim said nothing as the elevator descended to the ground floor and as we walked through the lobby and back out on to Second Street, but I could feel her seething beside me.
The volcano erupted once we had walked far enough along the street to be out of sight of the apartment. ‘She was lying, Oz!’ Her shout startled me with its violence. ‘She was lying in her bloody teeth! She knows where he is: they’ve been there, him and Tom. That was Tom’s duck in the bathroom. I bought it for him myself in Oxford Street.’
I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her to me, to calm her as much as anything else. There weren’t many people about, but I didn’t want attention drawn to us. ‘I know she lied, love, but we’re not in a position to beat the truth out of her, are we?’
‘Maybe they’re still here. Maybe they were in that bloody apartment all the time, in one of the bedrooms.’
‘And maybe Tom kept quiet all that time, hearing people in the living room, maybe even hearing your voice. I don’t think so.’
‘Maybe he was drugged.’
‘Prim. Stop and think; Martha invited us to her place, remember. She insisted that you come. She wouldn’t have done that if they were still hiding out there. She forgot about the duck in the bathroom, that’s all.’ I paused. ‘No, it isn’t. She’d no idea who you were when you stepped out of the lift. When she heard your first name she never even twitched, and she is not that good at pretending, trust me. She may know that Paul is on the run from Britain with his kid, but she doesn’t know about you and she probably doesn’t know about the money either.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ she demanded, as I flagged down a cab. It was as old and as battered as any taxi I’d ever seen, but it was there, and that was what mattered.
‘The Merchant’s,’ I told the driver, as we slid into the cramped back seat.
‘Where’s that, mon?’ he asked, in a slightly spaced voice.
‘You’re on First Avenue,’ I told him. ‘So is the Merchant’s. Just drive straight along it until you get to the intersection with Sixth. Can you do that?’
‘I can do dat, mon.’
He did it very slowly and carefully; I had to tell him where to stop.
In the elevator to the twentieth floor I switched my cell-phone back on; it told me that I had two voice messages. I checked them; one was from DI McLaren, the other from Mark Kravitz, and both wanted calls back.
They had to wait, though: I still had Prim to deal with. ‘What are we doing here?’ she wanted to know. ‘We should be back at Paul’s mother’s place. We could get a car and park across the street, and watch for him.’
‘As in a stake-out, you mean?’
‘Yes. If he’s not there now, he might come back. We could catch him.’
‘And what if we hire a car and all the parking bays are full, like they were when we were there? Even if we found one near enough to Martha’s place to be worth it, we’d stick out like a sore thumb.’
I sat her down on one of the beds and held her hand. ‘Listen to me for a bit.’ Her mouth went into one of its stubborn pouts, and her ey
es glistened. I touched her chin, to make her look up, and, because it seemed like the best way to get rid of the pout and to get her attention, I kissed her, lightly. She blinked in surprise, but she kept looking at me.
‘Listen, now,’ I began. ‘This is what I honestly believe. Paul was there, yes, and he was there with Tom. But he’s been gone for two months, so it could have been weeks ago. He can’t have told Martha anything about you . . . or, at least, not the truth about you, for two reasons. One, she genuinely didn’t recognise your name. Two, if he had told her, she’d have connected you with me straight away.’
‘So maybe he will come back.’
‘Is he that daft? He’s going to be expecting you to come after him, and he’ll assume this will be the first place you’ll look. He touched down here with Tom, yes, and he went to see his mother, yes, but he won’t have pushed his luck by hanging around. Plus, I’m pretty certain that Martha could contact him if she wanted. Maybe she will get word to him that I’m looking for him to offer him a job. You know what he’s going to make of that; he’ll figure out that I’m on his trail. I’m hoping that he’s going to break cover, and run for it.’
‘How will that help us?’
‘If he does, what will he do? Sooner or later? He’ll go to the money, that’s what. Okay, we haven’t been able to con Martha into giving us his address, but if we can trace your dough, we’ll trace him.’
‘But how are we going to do that?’
‘We’re not, but why in God’s name do we employ policemen? McLaren, remember? There’s a message on my phone for me to call him back.’
She’d been full of hope since we’d left. It had gone for a while, but now it returned, coloured by obvious relief that we hadn’t hit a brick wall. She let out a great sigh. I lay down on my side on the bed, drawing her with me. I smiled at her, and stroked her hair. It was like a couple of times in the old days, when we’d been in trouble.
Alarm Call Page 14