50
The suntanned doorman was decent enough to let me go off and find Malky, which I did, at a corner of the bar well away from the dance floor in a group that consisted of Joey Di Rollo and his charming girlfriend, three other inadequately clothed females and an older man wearing an ensemble not entirely dissimilar to my own intended attire until Malky had insisted I put on a suit.
‘We’ll need to bounce,’ I yelled at Malky over the music. ‘Something’s come up.’
‘Bounce? Are you kidding? The party’s just getting started.’ He gripped the back of my neck and turned me to face his companions. ‘Everybody, this is my wee brother Robbie.’
Everybody shouted hi.
‘What do you think of the place?’ the man in jeans and jumper asked. I noticed he had a single diamond earring. This had to be Dave. He could dress like a scruff because it was his club. I glanced around at the fixtures and fittings. My mind had been so firmly on other things I’d scarcely had time to check out my surroundings. The floor was black marble embedded with flecks of crystal that caught and reflected every ray of light from the laser display. The bar was a long strip of chrome. There were no barstools, no tables or chairs, instead Perspex columns stretched from ceiling to floor with circles of chrome at waist height on which to rest drinks. The dance floor, a distance away, was heaving with beautiful people gyrating in a strobing sea of colour.
‘I like it,’ I said, my voice raised. I could hardly tell my host anything else. ‘It’s very . . . uncluttered. Must help pack them in. Not much good if you want a seat, though.’
That was Joey’s cue to butt in. He lunged forward, stepping on Diamond Dave’s toes in the process. ‘Who wants to sit down?’ he shouted. ‘You don’t come to a place like this to sit on your arse. This is what it’s about. Me and Dave use the same interior designer. I’ve done out all my clubs like this. It’s called new-age min . . . minim . . . ’ He made several attempts before his girlfriend helped him out.
‘Minimalism,’ she said.
I cupped a hand to her ear, so as to be heard over the music. ‘Tell Joey I love minimalism. I can’t get enough of it.’
She laughed. I’d spent an entire car journey trying to chat her up and she’d never cracked a light. Tonight I was Captain Hilarious.
‘What are you two laughing about?’ Joey roared at us.
The gorgeous one flapped a hand at him, still giggling.
‘Listen,’ I said to her. ‘I hate to leave, but . . . ’ I tilted my head at the doorman who was standing waiting patiently for me a few paces away, ‘I am. It’s just a case of me picking a window.’
I called out to Malky that I was going, but he was too busy rolling a cocktail olive down the forehead of one of the three unknown girls and seeing if she could catch it in her mouth.
My former chauffeur put a hand on my arm. ‘If you’re having to leave because of what happened earlier outside, that was all Joey’s fault. I can speak to Ursula and—’
Joey lunged forward, reached out, pulled her back by the shoulder, crunching another Diamond toe. ‘What do you think you two are doing?’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I was just saying to . . . ’ I realised that I didn’t know the gorgeous one’s name.
‘Ellie,’ she said.
‘I was just telling Ellie I was leaving.’
For the second time that evening Joey pushed his face at me.
‘Hey, Joey!’ Malky took time off from rolling olives down the faces of young ladies to come over. He put a hand on Joey’s shoulder. ‘Leave it, will you?’
Joey shrugged Malky off. His forehead touched mine, pushing hard.
I’d seen Joey Di Rollo play many times. He was a doughty, mid-field-battler, a man without so much as a creative metatarsal, whose job it was to win the ball and give it to the skilful players. A water-carrier. Every team needed one, so they said. What they didn’t need was a narky, complaining moaner who wanted to argue every decision with the ref. Joey had seen more cards held up than a conjuror’s assistant and been given his marching orders more often than Napoleon’s army. If chatting up a supermodel had been at the top of the Robbie Munro to-do list, giving Joey Di Rollo a slap wasn’t far behind. Opportunities like this didn’t come along every day, and hell, I was about to be ejected anyway.
Joey’s forehead pressed harder. He snarled. Someone grabbed my clenched fist. It was Ellie. She stepped in between us, facing me, pushing me backwards. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. Joey wasn’t having any of it. He grabbed her by the wrist and wrenched. Ellie stumbled backwards, spinning around off balance. Joey gripped her delicate jawline between thumb and index finger, squashing her cheeks and shoving his face into hers. ‘You’re going nowhere.’
It was Diamond Dave’s turn to intervene. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘She is going nowhere. You, on the other hand . . . ’
Without a word or any noticeable gesture, Dave’s wishes were transmitted to and received by the doorman. The man with the suntan snapped his fingers and before Joey had a chance to protest, his nose was rubbing up against Italian marble as London and Glasgow united to help him make a horizontal departure.
Malky drifted away with his three pretty companions in tow.
‘Are you not going after Joey?’ I asked Ellie.
‘Not this time,’ she said, taking a Martini glass down from the ledge, draining what little was left and leaving behind a spiral of orange peel.
‘What was it? I’ll get you another.’
The doorman materialised at my side. ‘No, sir, you won’t. You’re still leaving.’
And I did leave, but, unlike Joey Di Rollo, I left vertically and with his girlfriend. A gin twist has one hundred and fifty calories. Mineral water with a spiral of orange peel has none. The red sports car was brought around front and we climbed in.
‘Where to?’ Ellie asked.
‘Your place?’
‘Try again.’
A starry night, a beautiful woman, a high-performance motor car – there was really only one place on my mind.
51
There are towns in West Lothian where on the way even the Sat Nav has to stop and ask for directions.
As the crow flew from Glasgow it was thirty-five miles to Barry Munn’s home, situated somewhere on the road between the village of Kirknewton and Dalmahoy Country Club. We didn’t have wings, but then crows don’t have five hundred and sixty horses under the bonnet and a top speed of one hundred and ninety-six miles per hour.
Ellie was a lot more talkative on this trip. The first time we’d met she’d been under instructions from Dame Ursula not to speak to me. Now she was dying to find out what the big secret was. First of all, I wanted to know where she fitted into the Pentecost set-up, and, as she tried and failed to keep the Ferrari within the prevailing speed limits, she provided me with a potted history of herself.
Ellie had excelled at school and was midway through the first year of an English Literature degree when she was spotted by the Pentecosts who were sponsoring a charity fashion show at Bristol University. She’d never looked back. Thirty-two years of age, she’d spent the past dozen or so of those travelling the world with the House of Pentecost as one of its retained stable of elegant clothes horses.
‘You’ll have known La-La Delgado, then,’ I said, as we took a particularly tight corner at a speed it had no right to be taken at.
‘Ah, so that’s what it’s all about. The affair.’
‘Sort of,’ I said.
‘Ancient history, though, isn’t it?’
‘You knew about it?’
‘Of course. And Stephen’s other affairs. Just about everyone did. Except Ursula. Zander made sure of that and, anyway, she’s not the sort of person who takes bad news well. Talk about shooting the messenger? Ursula would have machine-gunned anyone who came to her with tales of Stephen’s infidelity. I knew from the start that La-La was trouble. She wanted Stephen for herself. Worse than that, she wanted the world to know. Big mistake. T
here was no way Zander would let the House of Pentecost collapse over one of Stephen’s little flings.’
‘I heard it was more serious than a fling,’ I said.
‘Perhaps.’ Ellie hurled us into and out of an S-bend. ‘Whatever, the Delgados nearly drove Zander crazy. First of all, La-La’s sister came down to London and threw herself at Stephen . . . ’
‘Are you talking about Estelle?’
‘Yeah. Half as pretty and twice as smart.’
‘What happened?’
‘What always happened when the latest young thing threw herself at Stephen. He caught her. Usually he let them go again pretty soon, but Estelle kept hanging in there and eventually Zander had to step in big time. He was the only person Stephen ever listened to. Together Stephen and Ursula might have been the creative brain behind the House of Pentecost, but Zander was the business head. He sold Estelle’s contract to a model agency abroad and told her that if she so much as dropped Stephen an email she’d never work again.’
‘Dame Ursula told me that Estelle didn’t have what it took to be a model.’
‘She probably thinks that. Zander would have put the idea in her head to explain why he thought they should let Estelle go. Otherwise it would never have happened.’
‘How did La-La feel about her sister being sent away?’
‘Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure it was La-La that alerted Zander to the situation because no sooner was Estelle out of the way than La-La made her own move on Stephen. Creepy, if you ask me.’
‘But logical,’ I said. ‘Why have the ugly sister when you can have Cinderella?’
Ellie laughed, shifted down a gear and accelerated through the next corner. ‘La-La actually thought it would work, that Stephen would leave Ursula for her. She even tried to force his hand by threatening to go to the press. It was arrogant and stupid. Playing it low-key would have been the smart thing to do.’
‘She was smart enough to have his baby,’ I said.
Ellie braked sharply reducing our speed down from potentially dangerous to unreasonably fast. ‘No way. Really?’
It was a long story to cram into what was fast becoming a short journey. I did what I could to summarise before the Ferrari pulled into the driveway of a new-build bungalow set back from the road and surrounded by a neat, well-kept garden that contrasted sharply with the wildness of the countryside beyond its manicured borders.
I thanked Ellie for the lift, told her that there was no need to wait as I thought I might be some time, and walked to a front door that was already opening as I approached.
‘Robbie Munro in a Ferrari California?’ Barry Munn’s partner, Neil, was the perfect example of how opposites attract, if you ignored the fact that they were both of the same sex. Barry was short, plump and not bonny. Neil was tall, lean and handsome. Barry was a civil lawyer scraping a living from legal aid, Neil was a plasterer and, with the construction business on the rise again, more work on his books than he could shake a trowel at. Holding the door open, he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Hey, Barry! I thought you said crime didn’t pay!’
‘Who is it?’ Barry called back, immediately before Neil dragged me into the house by the front of my shirt and pushed me aside for a better look at Ellie who was fiddling with an eyelash by the glow of an illuminated courtesy mirror.
‘It’s Robbie Munro and . . . ’ He looked out at Ellie for a few more seconds, closed his eyes tight for a few more, opened them again and then looked at me. ‘Get that woman in here this minute,’ he said, placing a hand on my back and shoving me towards the car.
It took some persuasion, but soon Ellie was sitting next to me on a pale-blue leather sofa, while Barry watched a sci-fi film on an enormous plasma screen and Neil ran around plumping cushions and rearranging ornaments.
‘Okay, what do you want?’ Barry asked, eyes still fixed on the TV screen, even though Neil had switched it off.
‘I hope we’re not disturbing your evening,’ Ellie said.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Neil pushed his partner’s feet off the coffee table where they had rested by a bottle of red and an empty wine glass. ‘Ignore Grumpy. Ever since he bought that monstrosity all he does is sit drinking wine and watching aliens or anything with Mark Wahlberg taking his shirt off. These days the buckets go out more than we do.’
‘Alien v Predator is a classic,’ Barry said. ‘And everyone remains fully clothed throughout.’
‘Yeah, unless they’re being eviscerated,’ Neil said. ‘Now, sit up and say hello to the Ellie Swan.’
Barry grunted. ‘Hello, Ellie. Thanks for coming. I mean it. It’s clearly made Neil’s day, if not his year, but, Robbie, if you’ve come here to talk about Toni—’
‘Tina.’
‘Then my office is closed until Monday morning.’
‘I’m not here about Tina,’ I said. ‘I’m here about you.’
Barry leaned forward, reached for the wine glass and sighed. ‘What do you want?’
‘What our guests want is a refreshment,’ Neil said, trying to read my face and the situation. ‘Come on, Ellie. We’ll leave these two alone for a moment, but . . . ’ He fixed Barry with a stare like a laser-sight and tapped the top of the wine bottle with a finger. ‘This better not be about what I think it’s about.’ Taking Ellie’s hands in his, he pulled her up off the sofa. ‘Robbie’s great, isn’t he?’ I heard him say as the two of them left the room. ‘I broke a mirror once and he got me off with only three years bad luck.’
Once they were gone, Barry poured himself a glass of wine. ‘Okay, talk to me.’ He returned his feet to the coffee table. ‘And when Neil comes back I want you to make it very clear that this visit is all about showing off your new girlfriend and nothing to do with me drink-driving. Understand?’
It was nice of Barry to think there was any way I could pull someone like Ellie, and, I suppose, I should have put him right on the subject, but it wouldn’t do my reputation any harm if word got out that I was dating supermodels. There was also the time element to consider. How long would it take Neil to rustle up a beer for me and a mineral water for Ellie, even if he had to peel the skin off an orange?
‘I know about your little arrangement with Zander Skene and how you relieved the House of Pentecost of twenty-five grand.’
Barry just managed to stop himself from doing a Jackson Pollock on the ivory carpet with a mouthful of claret. He sat up, set the wine glass down and dabbed at his shirtfront with a tissue.
‘It was kind of you to set Daisy up with Sunnybrae Farm, and I see your fee helped to buy a few little luxuries.’ I nodded at the enormous TV.
Barry composed himself, crumpled the wine-stained tissue and chucked it onto the coffee table. ‘Robbie, Robbie, Robbie. I can tell you’ve been drinking, but drugs too? Tut-tut.’
‘No need to start getting all defensive,’ I said. ‘In fact, well done. Just don’t bother to deny it. I’ve spoken to Zander and everything’s okay, only he and I know about it and your secret is safe with us. All I want you to tell me is—’
‘A bottle of Peroni okay for you, Robbie?’ Neil yelled through from the kitchen, and I shouted back in confirmation.
Meantime Barry had started to shake with laughter. Not the reaction I’d expected.
‘Robbie,’ he tore another tissue from the box and wiped a single tear from the corner of his eye. ‘The plot of Alien v Predator is making more sense than you are. Seriously, what is going on? You turn up in a Ferrari with a smoking-hot girl, obviously drunk or full of drugs, or both and start accusing me of . . . of what, exactly?’
‘Taking advantage of a situation,’ I said. ‘Daisy Adams came to you for an adoption—’
‘Do you even know the legal procedure for an adoption, Robbie?’
Ignorance of the law was no excuse and hadn’t hurt my legal career thus far, so I wasn’t going to be distracted by it. ‘Daisy came to you for an adoption, she told you who Molly’s father was, you knew he was rich and, more importantly, on his deathbed.
You made a deal with the operations manager of the House of Pentecost to rush through the adoption. You were just doing the best for your client.’
Ellie entered the room with a tall glass, sucking some kind of pink liquid through a straw. Neil wasn’t far behind with two bottles of Italian lager. He gave one to me, took a swig of the other and said, ‘All right, you two, that’s enough shop talk for one night.’
‘We’re not talking shop,’ Barry said. ‘Robbie has invited himself here because he wants to accuse me of something.’
‘What’s Barry done now?’ Neil asked. ‘Is he going to get banned again?’
Barry’s face was growing redder by the second. ‘I’ve not done anything!’
Neil ignored his partner’s protests. ‘Robbie?’
‘It’s confidential,’ I said.
A gay man working in the construction business has to develop a certain degree of assertiveness. ‘Nothing he does . . . ’ Neil pointed a finger at Barry and then a thumb at himself, ‘is confidential from me. That is right, isn’t it, Barry?’
Barry shrugged and took a slug of wine.
‘I’m glad that’s settled,’ Neil said. ‘Now, come on, Robbie. Spill.’
‘I’m not sure if it’s something I should talk about in the present company,’ I said, turning away from Neil’s steely gaze to look at Ellie who had once again taken up position on the sofa.
‘Has this got anything to do with La-La and the baby?’ she asked, absently prodding a piece of fruit at the bottom of the pink concoction with her straw. The drink was probably the biggest meal of her day. ‘What you were talking about on the way through? If it is, don’t worry, my lips are sealed.’
Suddenly all eyes were on me and the surrealism of the moment hit home. Here I was dropping in late at night and unannounced to publicly accuse a fellow solicitor of . . . what? Doing his job and making a reasonable, well . . . more than reasonable fee out of it in the process? It was nothing I wouldn’t have done given half a chance. Even if it was true, if Barry had rushed through Molly’s adoption, so what? Daisy wanted to adopt the wee girl and the House of Pentecost wanted the child out of the way for inheritance purposes. Daisy got a daughter, Molly a new mum and they both got a farm to live on with their very own donkeys. For his input, Barry received enough money to buy a whacking great telly and a lifetime subscription to the Sunday Times Wine Club. It was hard to see how it could add up to a motive for murder. But it was the only clue I had to solve the puzzle of Daisy’s untimely death and, like one of my dad’s crosswords puzzles, the clue had to be solved one piece at a time. Nothing made sense until you put the parts together.
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