I blinked as I took it in. Truth be told, Susie and I were riding on such a high over the success of the event, and over our daughter’s delight, young as she was, at seeing her Mum and Dad on the front page of the newspapers, that I at least had got over the incident that preceded it. We certainly hadn’t discussed it since Miles had kitted Jay and me out in new jackets and since my hair had dried.
‘Well?’ Ricky demanded. ‘You were the guy that wanted to see the tapes, remember. I’ve pulled the strings for you, so how’s about it?’
‘Yes, sure,’ I said. ‘I can put off my dialogue coach till tomorrow. When do you want me in Edinburgh?’
There was a laugh on the other end of the line. ‘You still don’t realise it, do you, Oz. You’re a VIP now. They want to come to see you.’
Once upon a time, before he met up with me, Ricky Ross had a high-flying police career, a detective superintendent on his way to one of those uniforms with silver braid all over the place, and to the knighthood that goes with it. After it crash-landed he was inclined to blame me for a while, but in truth, if he had kept his fly zipped up, he’d still have had his prospects and maybe his marriage. Those days were behind us, though, and he’d become a pal; he may not be a bosom buddy, but we got on all right. The truth of the matter is that neither loss bothered him all that much. As a security consultant he makes much more money than he ever could have in the police force, even as chief constable, and as for Mrs Ross, he confessed to me that she had actually thrown him out before he began the ill-judged liaison that landed him on the carpet.
Over time he had ridden out the disgrace of his forced resignation. The old chief had gone, replaced by a younger model who had risen through the ranks under Ricky’s patronage, and who had not forgotten it. He was persona grata in Lothian and Borders Police once again, and so I was not in the least surprised that when Detective Sergeant Ron Morrow rolled up our driveway, he was in the passenger seat of Ricky’s car, a hairy new S-type Jaguar.
I had met Morrow before, on a few occasions in Edinburgh, most of them formal. He was a good guy, and Ricky rated him, which, given the climate of the time and the fact that Ricky and the new chief constable were regular golf partners, meant that young Ronnie was probably going places.
He shook my hand as I opened the door for him . . . we never use Ethel as a maid: as if she’d let us. He was toting what I thought at first was a briefcase but realised was a laptop computer. Ricky was carrying something too, a toy for wee Janet, who’d come toddling out of her playroom behind the stairs to inspect the new arrivals. It’s funny how people who don’t have kids often dote over other people’s. I was like that with my nephews, at least until Ellie and her husband split up; after that I felt the need to display a bit of male authority on occasion, at least with Colin, who was one of those kids with nuclear-capable mischief in him.
While Ricky made a fuss of Janet, under the amused eye of Ethel, I took Morrow through to our office conservatory. He didn’t say anything as he looked around, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was casting his mind back to our first meeting, in the police station down in Leith, and he was asking himself, ‘How the hell did this guy wind up here?’ Just as well he didn’t ask me: I couldn’t have given him a sensible answer.
I nodded towards the laptop, which was still in his hand. ‘What’s that for?’ I asked him.
He held it up, as if I’d never seen one of the things before. I have one which travels everywhere with me; it’s my interface to the real world. ‘I’ve had all the video footage from the television and the security cameras copied on to a DVD-Rom disk; the still shots have been scanned in as well. I brought this so you could view them.’
‘We won’t need it.’ I pointed to the partners’ desk that we had brought from Glasgow. It really is big. Susie and I each have computers, state of the art high-speed jobs, each with its own dedicated phone line, and with wide-screen LCD monitors that sit back to back. I know of at least one married couple who conduct a significant amount of their communication by e-mail, but we haven’t reached that stage yet. Mind you, for a laugh, we once held a video conference across the desk, using our web-cams, seeing ourselves on screen and hearing our voices repeat through the speakers what we had said a few seconds before.
When I’m away, I use that facility as often as I can, from my laptop, or from internet cafés or hotels, or just from whatever’s available, for the sheer pleasure of seeing Susie’s face and hearing her voice. I had tried to get my Dad to set himself up with the same facility, but he had always resolutely claimed computer illiteracy. All his appointment books and practice records are kept as they’ve always been, manually.
I switched my PC on and waited for it to boot up: it didn’t take long. ‘Let’s see your disk,’ I said as we waited. Morrow handed it over, in its clear plastic case, just as Ricky Ross joined us.
‘I told you he’d have all this gear, Ron. He’s a boy for his toys, is our Oz.’
‘This is no toy, sunshine,’ I told him. I sat down at my keyboard, opened an internet search engine and keyed in three words: ‘Richard Ross Security.’ Inside five seconds a list of websites flashed up on screen, the first in a list of several hundred thousand. Ricky’s consultancy firm was at the top of the list. Next, I keyed in my own name; there were just over thirty thousand hits, my own website, set up in the US by Roscoe Brown, at the top of the list.
‘Happily,’ I said, ‘you can also watch movies on it. Let’s look at some of mine.’
I took Morrow’s disk from its container, reached down and slipped it into the drive of my computer tower, in the footwell of the desk. A window opened up, showing a list of files and a folder called ‘stills’. I clicked on it and a second list appeared, files with the suffix ‘jpeg’. I hit the first one on the list and it opened, a photograph filling half of the screen.
This was not a reaction shot. Whoever the photographer was, he had hit his motor drive and been lucky; the paint was in mid-air, heading for Jay and me, as I put myself in Susie’s way, and my minder put himself in mine. I looked at the crowd; there was a glimpse of an outstretched arm emerging from a throng of people, some of whose mouths were beginning to drop open as they realised what was happening.
‘That one’s no use,’ said Ronnie. ‘This is the only really clear one.’ He reached over, took my mouse and clicked on an icon half-way down the list; a new image formed on screen in an instant. This time a face could be seen behind the outstretched arm, but the photograph seemed to have been blown up so much that it was grainy and unrecognisable.
I peered at it, but it told me only one thing. ‘It’s a woman, isn’t it?’
‘Correct,’ Detective Sergeant Morrow concurred. ‘Any ideas?’
I looked back at him, over my shoulder. ‘You must be joking. That could be my sister and I still wouldn’t recognise her from that. Can’t we look at it from a shorter perspective?’
‘That’s the best we can do with it. It was taken on a telephoto lens.’ He moved the mouse again. ‘Let’s look at the video clips.’
We had to wait for a few more seconds for the Windows Media Player software to open and load up. ‘This is BBC,’ Ronnie murmured, as the clip began to run. A ribbon at the foot of the screen within my screen told me that it was twenty seconds’ worth. I looked and there we were, Susie and Oz, she sparkling in her designer dress, he smiling and waving to the crowd. We moved sedately along the red carpet, Jay Yuille a pace behind, and then it happened. I saw myself react as the paint was chucked, turning instinctively to cover Susie. I saw Jay do his job by putting himself in the way of the threat. I had the feeling that if it had been a bullet, or flying acid, he would have done exactly the same thing.
I was so busy looking at myself that I didn’t pay any attention to the crowd. So I stopped the clip, reset it, and started again. This time I did as I was supposed to; this time I was staring intently at the people lined behind the barrier as the paint began to fly. As it did, I clicked on the paus
e sign and froze the image. The camera angle gave me a good view of the spectators, I looked at their faces one by one, but saw only shock begin to register in their expressions as they began to realise what was happening. Then I saw the arm again, outstretched as it had been in the still shot. I looked for the face behind it, but it was hidden from my sight by those in front. I hit the play button again and let the clip run on to its conclusion. The arm had been withdrawing. It disappeared into the throng, there was movement and then the clip ended.
I went to the ribbon and scrolled back, letting it run again, but looking at the timer and stopping it once more, a couple of seconds earlier this time. The view was different: this time the paint was still in the can. The chucker had it held to her shoulder like a shot putter about to release. She was leaning forward and her face was in shot; it was indistinct, but I could see her. I went into the Media Player menu and found zoom, then blew the image up to double size. That still wasn’t definitive, so I went to full screen and rolled the clip again, starting from scratch and pausing at the exact moment I wanted. This time the shot was as big as I could make it, but that was big enough. I could see the face clearly in the crowd, eyes wide and angry as she steadied herself to throw. On the keyboard, I hit Control and ‘P’ simultaneously. The high-speed, high-definition colour printer that Susie and I share made its usual preliminary clicks and hums on its table by the side of the desk, then buzzed as it set to work. Inside half a minute, a photo-quality version of the image on screen was complete.
I picked it up from the tray and handed it to Morrow. ‘There you are,’ I said. ‘That’s as good as you’re going to get.’
‘And?’ he exclaimed, impatiently.
‘And I can’t identify her. Sorry.’
The young sergeant’s face fell. ‘Bugger,’ he muttered.
‘Life is real and life is earnest, Ronnie,’ I told him. ‘It’s very rare that we get a ride for free.’
‘I know,’ he conceded, with a nod to my homespun philosophy. ‘I was just hoping this would be one of those times. Looks like we’ll have to do it the hard way after all.’
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’ Ricky Ross shot back, sharply.
‘You know what I mean. Unless Ron here gets very lucky and gets a print match off the tin . . .’ Morrow shook his head, dolefully ‘. . . or that face turns out to be well known to the police . . .’ The detective looked at the printout and shook his head once again, ‘. . . tracing her is going to be bloody difficult, and costly in terms of manpower and everything else. Is it worth it?’
My friend gave me a strange look. ‘Are you telling me this was a stunt?’ he asked.
‘Of course I’m bloody not! If it was, then I didn’t know about it. Do you fancy asking Miles if he set it up just to make sure that we got on the front pages of the tabloids?’ Ricky didn’t need to answer that one. ‘No. So all that I’m saying is this. If you decide to drop it, Ronnie, Susie and I will understand.’
The young DS shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fair enough. I’ll tell my boss that when I report back. It may well go that way.’
I ejected his disk from the computer and handed it back to him. In doing so I glanced at my watch; it was just after midday. ‘Would you guys like some lunch before you head back?’ I asked. ‘It’s no bother. It’s my turn to make it today. Lucky for you, for one thing they did not teach Jay in the army was how to cook.’
Ricky grinned. ‘Next time I’ll fix you up with someone from the Catering Corps. Thanks for the offer, Oz, but I said I’d get the boy here back for two o’clock. I’m impressed, though. You still actually do your own cooking?’
‘Sure we do. We food-shop on-line at Tesco, but we fix it up ourselves. It gives us the illusion that we’re still real people.’
‘You’ve never been a real person, Blackstone,’ he countered, affably. ‘Since I met you, you’ve been my worst fucking nightmare.’
I glowered at him, then looked over his shoulder. The door was open and Janet had come bouncing into the room. ‘Oops, sorry,’ he murmured.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’d appreciate it if she didn’t pick up the one word she hasn’t learned yet.’ As Morrow picked up his laptop, I scooped my daughter up in my arms and walked our visitors to the door.
‘Have you got a date for Mathew’s Tale yet?’ asked Ricky, as we walked down the steps in front of the house.
‘Three weeks or so, I think. I’m expecting the producer to go firm any day now. Why?’
‘Because we’re doing the security.’
I wasn’t surprised to learn that. He seemed to pick up most of the freelance minding work in Edinburgh. ‘See you around then,’ I told him as he unlocked his Jag with a remote.
‘Goodbye Sergeant,’ I called out as Morrow settled into the front passenger seat. ‘Sorry I couldn’t help you.’
Actually I wasn’t sorry at all. Imagine the can of worms I’d have opened if I’d told him that the paint-chucker was Andrea Neiporte.
Chapter 6
I had plenty to think about as I stuffed some wholemeal pitta breads with pastrami and coleslaw. What to do about Mrs Neiporte? I thought about confiding in Ricky and asking him to sort the problem for me, but came down against that very quickly. There was still a lot of the copper in him, and I reckoned that he’d be more than likely to go down the official route. That was something I still did not want, for my Dad’s sake.
Instead, I decided to tell Jay about it, or at least tell him as much as he needed to know, namely that my Dad had a nutty patient who had tried to put the black on him, and that my attempt to deal with it apparently hadn’t worked. It was only right that I do that; after all, his job was to protect my family, so if I knew of a threat, he had to know too. I intended to brief him, give him the photograph . . . which I’d kept . . . and leave it to him. I had no idea how he’d go about dealing with the problem, but he was very much my man.
Whatever he did, I was sure it would be effective, and it would be discreet. When I’d interviewed him for the job, I’d noticed that there were sections of his CV . . . like most of the army bits . . . that were only described in broad terms. I didn’t ask him about them, because I didn’t want to make him have to lie to me. So I called a guy I know called Mark Kravitz who’s involved in pretty dark and sensitive areas, and asked him instead. After Mark’s report back, I had no qualms about hiring him. ‘Disincentivising’ is a bit of a buzz word these days, after that Spooks series on telly. It seemed that he had been pretty good at it.
When the pittas were ready . . . Ethel was responsible for feeding Janet, and herself . . . I called him in his cottage and told him to come up. Jay had a nice set-up and he knew it; the gatehouse, a Freelander to run around in, and a salary that was better than he’d have been on with any security firm. Of course he didn’t just sit on his arse all day, waiting for the bad guys to turn up. He had installed geophones . . . movement sensors . . . around the perimeter of the estate, and he was careful to make sure that they were always working. Property maintenance was in his job description too, but mostly on a management basis. He might do the odd small job himself, but mostly he’d hire trades-people, and he supervised old Willie, the full-time gardener we’d inherited when we’d bought the place.
I was waiting for him in the kitchen as he let himself in through the back door. I’d fetched a couple of isotonic drinks from the fridge, and was taking the top off one when the phone rang.
‘Oz.’ It was Susie, and from the way she said my name I knew that something was up. Normally there’s a laugh in her voice when she speaks to me, or to wee Janet. When it isn’t there, it usually means that one of us is in trouble.
My third . . . and final . . . wife knows me better than anyone else in the world, probably better than even Jan did, for all that we grew up together, and certainly better than Primavera . . . she and I barely knew each other as real people at all, or at least until it was too late.
Susie’s never seen me a
s I thought I was, or at least as I wanted people to see me. Even when we were just friends, she’s always been able to see inside, to the bare bones, and to read bits of my mind that even I didn’t really know were there. And I suppose it’s always been true the other way round as well. As well as being different types, we’re opposites as personalities, you see. Susie’s always had this tough front . . . no surprises; it came from growing up as Jack Gantry’s daughter . . . yet I’ve always been able to see the vulnerable wee girl inside. Me? For years I made such an effort to be user-friendly, I even fooled myself for a while, but as I’ve said, not her. She loves me, though, in spite of it, even if she was afraid to say so for a while. And I love her. One of the Sunday colour supplements described us as ‘Scotland’s golden couple’. Can you imagine that?
‘Sorry,’ I replied.
‘What do you mean?’ Susie snapped, not sounding at all golden.
‘Whatever I’ve done, I didn’t mean it.’
‘Och, don’t be daft.’ Her tone changed, but the laugh was still missing; what I heard was that vulnerable wee girl.
‘Come and get me, Oz,’ she said. ‘As fast as you can.’
‘What’s up?’
‘I’ll tell you later. Just get to the office.’
‘Will I bring Jay?’
‘No, leave him with Janet. Just you.’
‘Susie, is this about last night? About that paint thing?’
‘No. Nothing to do with it. Now get the finger out.’
I hung up the kitchen phone and looked at Jay. ‘Sorry mate,’ I told him. ‘I’ve just had an order I can’t refuse. Meantime . . .’ I handed him the photo I had printed out from my computer. ‘Last night’s paint-chucker.’
‘You know her?’
‘Yeah. I’ll tell you later. For now, the only thing that matters is that she doesn’t get anywhere near Susie or Janet. Understood?’
Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries) Page 4