Alarm Call

by Jardine, Quintin

  She stared at it. ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue; if it’s half a pound of Semtex you can kiss your arse goodbye, for I’m going to open it.’ I was joking about the explosives: Wallinger needed us, or at least he needed Prim, to get the money. Still, I took the package into the bathroom. I undid the bow carefully; it was tied tight and the wrapping was pretty crude, a sure sign that it had been done by a man. (There’s an old Scots saying, ‘Let on you’re daft and you’ll get a hurl for nothing,’ which means, loosely translated and put into context, that if one makes a real bollocks of wrapping a present, one will never have to do it again. It’s a principle I’ve followed all my life, but I’ve never had to feign incompetence.)

  Eventually I just tore the ribbon loose and ripped off the paper, feeling that involuntary pang of regret that is part of my Scots heritage at the knowledge that it couldn’t be reused. It had enclosed a small, square yellow box, around six inches by six by six. I lifted the lid off, cautiously, and saw that it was packed with tissue paper. I removed the top layers, until I came to a red plastic circle with regular upraised dots all the way around: a baby’s teething ring.

  I took it out and saw a small square of paper folded below it. I unfolded it: written in a scrawled hand was, Tom doesn’t need this any more, Mommy. It’s been such a long time.

  I took them through to the bedroom and showed them to Prim. She grabbed the ring with both hands, her eyes moistening. Her mouth twisted into a scowl as she read the note; when she was finished she crumpled it and threw it away. ‘What’s he doing?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases,’ I murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alice in Wonderland. It’s the duchess talking about the sneezing boy.’

  ‘And what did she recommend be done about him?’

  I smiled. ‘She recommended that the crap be beaten out of him, actually.’

  ‘She knew what she was talking about,’ Prim muttered.

  Chapter 24

  We thought about checking out of the Century Wilshire and driving straight to Vegas, where Everett had said my suite was waiting. Prim was all for it, but she wasn’t driving: it would have taken us until midnight and I did not fancy arriving that late.

  Instead we walked back down to the Village and ate in a place called the Napa Valley Grille . . . no, I don’t know where the ‘e’ came from. It was glass-walled so we were pretty visible, but I didn’t care. In fact, I found that I didn’t care about anything much, other than getting to the Bellagio, meeting up with my friends and starting work on their movie.

  I hadn’t forgotten about Susie’s message, or her advice to check my e-mail, but there was a practical difficulty with that. Our hotel had no in-room access, and the one terminal they did possess seemed to have been commandeered permanently by a Japanese salesman.

  Prim was pretty subdued over dinner. I could see that she was wrestling with the decision she had to make. When I considered it again, the teething-ring trick had been quite cute, a piece of psychological pressure applied just at the key moment.

  In fact we hardly spoke to each other, we seemed consumed with our own thoughts, chose automatically from the menu . . . I can’t even remember what we ate, and that’s unusual for me ... and then just picked at our food.

  We were back at the hotel and in our suite when the dam burst. I had just closed the door when I saw her shoulders start to shake; she buried her face in her hands and sat on the edge of the bed closest to her. I let her sob for a while, and then, when it had started to subside, I drew her to her feet and held her to me.

  ‘Oz, I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled into my chest. ‘I should never have got you involved in this. It’s taken you away from home, it’s cost you a packet, and it’s made all sorts of trouble for you. I can, can . . .’ She broke off as a big sob racked her. ‘. . . can tell that you’ve had enough, and that you’d rather be out of it.’

  I’d been thinking just that, in spite of myself, but I could hardly admit it, could I? Besides, we had travelled a long way together, and not just in that week. And there was this too; in the course of our latest journey I had come to feel completely isolated from what I knew as home, and from the person around whom it all revolved. Susie had more or less ordered us both on this mission, and now she was giving me grief.

  So I whispered into Prim’s ear the traditional Scottish words of comfort, ‘Don’t be fuckin’ daft,’ and pressed her even tighter to me. We stayed that way for the rest of the night.

  When I woke next morning, at seven, my right arm was numb, trapped under her head. I eased it out without disturbing her, then peeled off the clothes in which I had fallen asleep, and headed for the shower. When I returned, still trying to dry myself adequately with a towel that was moist from the previous day, she was sitting on the bed we had slept on, with her knees pulled up to her chest, and her newly discarded clothes at her feet. Her face was puffed and blotchy, but she managed a small smile.

  ‘How can you do that?’ she asked. ‘You sleep all night in your clothes, yet ten minutes later you’re looking like a movie star.’

  ‘I am a bloody movie star,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Yes, now, but you’ve always been able to do that.’

  I grinned at her. ‘Well, now’s your chance to do the same ... although you’ve got a bit of work to do.’

  ‘I’d better get to it then.’ She jumped from the bed, only to pause on her way to the bathroom. ‘Do you know what’s sad, though?’ she said. ‘Now you are a movie star, you don’t fancy me a bit.’

  I looked down at her figure; it had been trim before, but now it qualified as voluptuous. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ I told her. ‘I may be a happily married man, but I’m still a man. So, please, get all that out of my sight.’

  She seemed cheered up by that dismissal; she spent about half an hour in the bathroom, but after she was done and dressed for the journey, everything was restored to normal. We ate a very light breakfast in the hotel courtyard, then checked out and set off on our journey.

  I’d never driven from LA to Las Vegas before, but technology’s a wonderful thing. I switched on the GSP and did what I was told. All I had to do was steer the thing. It took us out of Westwood on Interstate 405, then on to I-10, through the mass of Los Angeles itself and out to San Bernadino, where it took the I-15 and headed for Nevada, across mostly open country, much of it desert. I put the Jaguar into cruise control and leaned back with not much more than a finger on the wheel, to enjoy the view from the almost empty highway.

  Eventually, in the distance, Las Vegas loomed up before us; it’s one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, that fantastic skyline rising from the flat, arid landscape. The effect was as if we were standing still and it was coming up from the very ground itself to engulf us. It reminded me of the great scene in Spielberg’s Close Encounters, when the mother ship appears for the first time, and you’re stunned by the sheer size of the thing.

  And engulf us it did, although the navigation system did its job to the end. It guided us along the Strip, past the steel and concrete wonderlands, until it told me to turn off and into the driveway of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino.

  I left the valet to park the Jaguar, and to tell Hertz they could come and collect it, then I allowed a porter to wheel our luggage inside. The Bellagio’s reception area turned out to be around the same size as the whole of the Century Wilshire, if not slightly larger; at least, that was how it seemed.

  There wasn’t just one clerk at Reception, there was a team, and they all knew who I was. They gave us the royal treatment, and within a minute we were being escorted to the lift. The suite that awaited us was bloody enormous. It was on the top floor with a view up and down the Strip. There were two bedrooms, each with his and hers bathrooms, and a living area the size of a driving range. I looked at Prim. She looked at me. I was used to luxury accommodation when I was working, but this left me as gob-smacked a
s she was.

  There was a bottle of champagne in an ice-bucket on the dining-table with a note attached. It was from Everett and it read, Welcome to the City of Dreams, Daze. I’m in suite eleven. I called him straight away to tell him I’d arrived, but Reception had already done that.

  ‘Hi, buddy,’ he greeted me. ‘When did your flight get in?’

  ‘I drove.’

  He gave a great booming laugh. ‘From San Francisco?’ He had seen the telly news as well.

  ‘From the City of the Angels.’

  ‘Why the hell were you there? Are your wife and kids with you?’

  ‘One of my wives is, no kids; the extra room will be used, don’t worry. It’s a long story; I’ll explain when I see you.’

  ‘I can’t wait. Get yourselves settled in, then come along to my suite for lunch. Say around two.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but I’ll be on my own. Primavera’s expecting a phone call.’

  ‘Primavera? The lady we met in Barcelona? I thought you got divorced a few years back.’

  ‘We did, and we still are. That’s part of the long story.’

  I left him wondering and picked up Prim’s case from the foyer . . . the suite actually had a foyer . . . where the bellboy had left it. I carried it through to the bedroom to the left of the living area. ‘This is yours,’ I told her. ‘I’ll be away over there.’

  She grinned at me. ‘We might as well be in separate hotels,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe we should have been all along,’ I muttered. I took my suitcase to the other bedroom and unpacked it. I found a laundry bag and crammed all my used stuff into it, then called Housekeeping and asked them to pick it up straight way. I went to tell Prim she should do the same, to find her opening the champagne.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘The ice is melting.’

  ‘Can’t let that happen,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll do that; you go and bag up your noxious knickers and all your other stuff. The Seventh Cavalry laundry service is on its way to the rescue.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  When she returned I handed her a glass; we walked across to the window and looked out, taking in the amazing view. They say that all great cities are a collection of villages that have gradually evolved into a single mass, while retaining some of their own distinctive colour and characteristics. Las Vegas isn’t like that, not one bit, although for my money it’s a great city too. It’s a collection of extraordinary visions and follies, all of which have swum together to create a fairyland nobody could ever have imagined had they looked out across what was then desert, sixty years ago. It’s said that the place in which we stood cost a billion dollars, and it’s just one among many, and not even the biggest. God knows how much dough’s been sunk into the Strip, all of it dedicated to separating Mr and Mrs America from theirs.

  Susie doesn’t know what she’s missed, I thought to myself.

  That thought extended to the message left on my cell-phone, and to my e-mail. Whatever was on it, I knew it would be grief of some sort; I really didn’t need any more at that point, but I knew that I had to get it over with. So I fetched my laptop, booted it up and plugged the modem lead into the dedicated jack-point in the suite’s office area.

  I went straight to my AOL box; it had been a couple of days since I checked it, so there were quite a few messages waiting, including one from Ellie and one from Jonny. They were in touch all the time, and I was pretty sure they would be routine, so I left them unopened and concentrated on the two that were of interest, new mails from Paul Wallinger and from Susie, hers despatched more recently, judging by its place in the queue.

  I went to Wallinger’s first; as soon as it appeared on screen I saw that it was addressed to both Susie and me. There was no heading and no message, just an attachment labelled ‘Untitled 2.1 zip’. I hit the download button and watched as a series of images was displayed in a strip at the foot of the screen. After the week I’d just had, nothing should have shocked me, but these did.

  ‘Come here and see this,’ I called out to Prim, with an edge to my voice that brought her running to stand behind me, her hands on my shoulders, as she looked at the laptop. I hit the command that says ‘view as a slideshow’, and watched as each picture was displayed, full screen size.

  There were five of them and they had all been taken in our hotel in Minneapolis, from a point high on one wall, on our first night there, when we’d got back to our room after dinner and a few beers in Gluek’s. They showed the living area and a part of one of the beds, beside the screen. All but one of the images featured Prim, almost facing the hidden camera. In the first, she was unbuttoning her shirt, in the second she was stepping out of her jeans, in the third she was letting her bra fall on to the floor, and in the fourth she was naked, back to the camera and heading towards the bedroom. The last of the images showed me; I was in my boxers, thank God, and I’d been going from the bathroom to my bed, but anyone looking at the shot would have thought I was about to get into the one in which Prim could be seen lying.

  We stared at the incriminating photographs, as they ran over and over again before us. Prim’s fingers were digging into my shoulder, harder and harder with each frame. ‘He bugged our room, Oz,’ she gasped. ‘The dirty bastard bugged our room. How could he have done that?’

  ‘Probably quite easily if he was in the room next door,’ I told her.

  ‘But why’s he sent these to you now?’

  ‘For information, you might say. He’s also sent them to Susie.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Her hands left my shoulders; as I killed the slideshow and turned round to face her, I saw that they were pressed to her cheeks. ‘God,’ she gasped, ‘what’s she going to think?’

  ‘What she was meant to think, when he cancelled our second room and set this up.’

  ‘Paul did that?’

  ‘The very boy.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ I looked up at her. ‘Leave me alone for a bit, will you? There’s a message from Susie; I’d better read it.’

  She went back to the window, and I opened Susie’s mail. I winced as I read it.

  So this is the bloody great suite you told me you had. It looks like an ordinary hotel room to me. You lied to me, Oz, and I don’t think I’ll ever believe you again. If you want her, fucking stay with her, but don’t think you’re getting anywhere near the kids.

  I tried to make myself angry with her, but I couldn’t. If that had been her in those photos, with someone else, someone would have had to scrape me off the ceiling. I thought about picking up the phone there and then, but could see only a yelling contest in prospect, so instead I replied to her mail.

  My darling [I wrote], you must believe me when I tell you that nothing’s happened between Prim and me, in Minneapolis or anywhere else. We were set up there by Paul Wallinger; he cancelled our second room by pretending to be on my staff, and he occupied it himself. He bugged our room and took those pictures. We had had a couple of drinks and maybe we were not as decorous as we should have been, but I promise you that it was no more than that. I don’t know why the guy did it, but I expect to catch up with him pretty soon, and when I do, and when Prim has got Tom back, I promise you I will get the truth out of him.

  He’s playing a game with Prim. He’s showed part of his hand, in that he’s given her a draft agreement to sign, swapping Tom for the money she has in Vancouver. He wants to make the trade here in Las Vegas. Whether she does it or not is her call. I’ve still got her with me in the hope that when he contacts her again, I’ll be able to locate the kid while they negotiate, and enforce Harvey’s court order. We need to be close if this is going to work, or she could lose her money and her son. I don’t like this any more than you do, but you sent me, remember. If your trust in me has evaporated, get on a plane and come straight out here. Believe this or not as you will, but I’ve missed you from the moment I stepped out of our front door.

  Love

  Oz.

  I re
-read it, hit the ‘send’ button, then went back over to the window, and Prim. I picked up my abandoned glass and stared out at the city for quite a long time, seeing none of it.

  ‘Is she as steamed up as I’d be in her shoes?’ she asked, at last.

  I shook my head. ‘Compared to Susie, your temper is a breeze beside a hurricane. You have been in her shoes, remember. She’s much more steamed up than you ever were.’

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘I hope so. I love her, Prim, don’t be in any doubt about that,’ I felt grimmer than at any time before in my life as I picked up the bottle and refilled my glass. ‘If I lose her, and Wallinger’s to blame, you can forget anything I’ve said up to now. I’ll make a phone call and he’ll be dead.’

  She looked at me anxiously. ‘Then you’d better not lose her, and drag yourself down in the process.’

  As she spoke I heard a click from the laptop, telling me that I had more mail. I went back across and reopened my box. Susie must have been sitting beside her computer; my message had been answered.

  It was not good news.

  All well and good [she’d written], but if I put detectives on your trail what would they find, in Vancouver, and in San Francisco or in Los Angeles? Give me a straight answer, Yes or No, to this question. Did you and Prim sleep together in the Century Wilshire last night?

  I took a deep breath; I hadn’t told her we were booked into the Century Wilshire. I began hammering on the keyboard.

  I’m not playing, Susie. This is my straight choice for you. You either believe Wallinger’s lies and insinuations or you believe my truth. I am not having an affair with Prim or anyone else.

  I sent the message and stayed by the laptop. The reply came through inside three minutes.