‘Who gets the reports?’ That was all he asked; we didn’t discuss money, legal parameters, or anything else.
‘Susie: at home, though, not in the office. I’ll be down south for a while.’
I left him to it, and spent what little was left of the trip to the studios in Middlesex on the phone to my bankers, to see how much ready cash I had to play with, and then to my brokers to tell them I was a buyer for any Gantry shares that came on to the market . . . but in small lots. I didn’t want to boost the price too quickly; there might be a profit to be made, at the end of the day.
I did something else too, as soon as I got to the studios. I checked the schedule to see whether Ewan Capperauld was on set that day . . . I knew he wasn’t in any of my scenes . . . and when I found out that he was, sought him out in his dressing room. He was in surprisingly fine form, for a Monday morning. I asked him what had brightened his day, but all I got was a mysterious smile.
The Gantry story hadn’t made the London press . . . they really are insular bastards down there . . . and so I had to fill him in on the details. When I had finished I asked him something, straight out. ‘Are you still seeing Nat Morgan?’
The smile came back. ‘No. As I told you, I’m horizontally occupied in other quarters at the moment.’
‘Rather you than me, mate,’ I thought.
‘You haven’t seen her at all lately?’
‘No, nor spoken to her for at least three months.’
‘When you were on speaking terms, did she ever talk about Susie, and the Gantry Group?’
‘Did she ever not? I’m afraid your wife is something of an obsession with the lovely Nat. She’s a business megalomaniac, you know; it’s something she seems to have inherited from that appalling uncle of hers. She wants to build Torrent into a corporation that stretches from sea to shining sea.’
‘Do you think she’s up to it?’
‘Not a chance, m’ boy. Between you and me she’s better in bed than in the boardroom. Your Susie would have her for breakfast in a business battle.’
‘Did she ever mention having any contacts within the Gantry Group?’
‘Not that I recall. The only things she ever said about it were derogatory, and you don’t really want to hear them.’
‘I sure do.’ In the distance I heard an assistant director call my name, but I ignored him. They’re best left alone anyway.
‘It was personal,’ Ewan said, ‘petty stuff. I ignored it, really. She would say that Susie had inherited her position and that she had no vision of her own. She suspected that she was still taking orders from her father, for all that he was locked away. She said that Lord Provost Gantry and her Uncle James had been men who had understood each other.’
I didn’t know they’d ever met, but Jack Gantry certainly got around. ‘Do you have any idea what she’s up to these days?’
‘Trying to do you down, from the sound of it.’
‘I meant personally.’
‘So did I,’ he laughed, and then was suddenly serious. ‘As for the other, I don’t know. The truth is, Oz, the last time I heard from Natalie, she called me to say she didn’t want to see me any more. Her affections now lie elsewhere, I’m afraid.’
‘Any idea where?’
He shook his head. ‘Not the faintest.’ He grinned again. ‘And now my boy, you really must go. That assistant director is almost hoarse shouting for you.’
Chapter 24
I wasn’t the most popular man on set that morning; my discussion with Ewan had held up shooting, and delays can be more expensive in the movie industry than almost anywhere else in the world. But I made up for it by being flawless.
I had worked on my scenes the day before, and refreshed them on the plane . . . once I’d finished reading the newspaper coverage. Concentrating as hard as I ever have in my life, I was able to put everything and everyone else out of my mind and, literally, become Mathew Fleming from the moment I walked on to the sound stage until the moment the make-up woman took off my dramatic facial scar at the end of the day’s work. Louise Golding was on top form too, and all our scenes were first takes . . . a rare occurrence on a Paul Girone movie, as I’d found out already. By the time we were finished, not only had we made up for my delay, we’d bought time for one of Ewan’s key shots to be wrapped up.
They had booked the cast . . . apart from Ewan and Scott Steele, who both live in London . . . into a hotel in Surrey, a secluded country house just south of Guildford, down the A3. There was still some commuter traffic around when we left Shepperton, and so we didn’t get there to check in until almost eight.
I’d been snacking on set, and, frankly, Louise and I had both seen enough of the excitable M. Girone for one day, so I asked for a poached salmon salad to be sent to my room, and went off there straight away, to phone Susie.
‘Good day at the office?’ she asked me, just as the room service waiter wheeled in my salad on a trolley. I bunged him a fiver and he left, nodding and muttering thanks. There was a bottle of Martin Codax, a nice Spanish Albarino white wine, in an ice-bucket; I poured myself a glass as I answered.
‘It was fine, and it just got better; my dinner’s arrived.’ (Scottish people do not have ‘supper’.) I described the plateful on the trolley, and sipped the wine; not bad at all.
‘Lucky you,’ said my wife. ‘I had macaroni with Ethel and Janet.’
At once I felt envious, and homesick, so I forced myself back to the serious stuff. ‘How did it go with the lawyers?’
‘I’ve been told to make no public comment.’
‘Not even to me?’
‘Don’t be daft. Greg McPhillips spoke to his tame QC, and her very firm advice was that we should say absolutely nothing at all to avoid any risk of defaming the purchasers of these houses, who are not, she reminded me, Ravens, Cornwell and Perry, but their wives. She gave the okay to my proposal that we offer to buy them out of the deal, but she insists that any contact must be in print, and that she drafts all our correspondence. That’s where we’re at.’
‘When will she have finished the first letter?’
‘Tomorrow, she hoped.’
‘What’s been the effect of the stories on the New Bearsden project?’
Susie snorted; I could see her frowning as clearly as if I was looking at her across our desk. ‘Just as we expected,’ she replied. ‘Total and utter catastrophe. Sales have been trotting along at nine or ten a day until now. Today we didn’t have a single visitor to the sales office, other than journalists demanding to see the site plan so they could pin-point the three plots in question; I’ve had to tell Des Lancaster to close until further notice. Worse than that, though, we’ve had umpteen phone calls from buyers, straight people who’ve reserved plots, wanting to know whether they’ll be living next door to drug dealers, and we’ve had at least half a dozen formal contacts from solicitors advising that their clients want to cancel, without financial penalty.’
‘How have you dealt with them?’
‘Stalled them, for now. We’ve reserved our position and said that we’ll respond at the beginning of next week.’
‘I don’t suppose we’ve had any contact from the Three Bears?’
‘Funny you should ask that. Mummy Bear Perry called Lancaster and accused him of blackening her good name in the papers. Bizarre, eh?’
‘You said it.’ I forked up some poached salmon. ‘Alongside all that, how’s the Star Chamber going?’
‘What?’ She laughed. ‘Ah, you mean Fisher’s uncompromising, in-depth investigation, as he’s quoted as saying in the Scotsman. So far, it’s achieved the resignation of Des Lancaster’s secretary . . . which she was subsequently persuaded to withdraw, after Des gave her a made-up apology from the chairman for the rudeness of his questioning . . . and it’s prompted one of the New Bearsden site agents to adopt an aggressive attitude. That’s how Sir Graeme described it. The way Gillian Harvey tells it, the guy . . . he’s Irish: Aidan Keane . . . said that anyone who accused him
of deceit or disloyalty would be eating all his meals with a straw for the next six weeks. Other than that, though, there’s been nothing.’
‘How many suspects are there?’
‘As many as might have walked into Des’s office and had a look at the sales list. He’s a bit cavalier about things like that, is our man. Fisher’s already saying he’s got to go. He may be right, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of admitting that straight away. I’ll wait till the smoke’s cleared a bit, then I’ll transfer him to head office, swap him with Brian Shaw, the purchasing manager, job for job.’
‘You really don’t like sacking people, do you?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Des is a nice man, and besides, I’ve met his wife.’
‘You’d better not ever buy a football club, love. You’d make a lousy chairman.’
‘I’ve got much more sense than to buy a football club, ever. I’d be as well chucking pound coins into Loch Lomond.’
‘There is another way. If you bought a club, you could start by taking all the overpriced, overpaid, clapped-out foreign players that are keeping young Scots out of the game, weighing them down and chucking them in. The financial consequences might be the same, but it would be much more satisfying.’
‘I’ll still pass. You buy it instead.’
‘I might, but I’m fully committed, buying in Gantry shares.’ I’d checked with my broker on the way to the hotel; I’d acquired another fifteen and a half thousand shares in the course of the day. That had pleased me; it was a relatively small number, so it meant there hadn’t been a stampede to sell.
I heard Susie wince. ‘Are you sure about doing that?’
‘Dead certain.’ I filled her in on the result of my day’s trading, and that seemed to cheer her up.
She changed the subject, slightly. ‘Did you speak to Ricky?’ she asked.
‘Yup. He’s on-side. He’ll report to you as soon as he has something. I did some detecting on that front myself, though.’ I told her what Ewan had admitted, about the end of his liaison with Nat Morgan.
‘She’s got a new man?’ Susie exclaimed, surprised. ‘Now there’s a thing.’
‘It happens: look at us, for example.’
‘Maybe, but this must be some guy.’
‘Why?’
There was a long silence on the other end of the line; the longer it lasted the more puzzled I grew. Then Susie broke it, with an incredulous vengeance. ‘You’re an actor,’ she exclaimed, ‘and you ask me that? Remind me: which character are you playing in this project, Dumb or Dumber? He must be some guy because, whoever he is, she’s chucked Ewan Capperauld, no less, for him.’
Chapter 25
The more I think about it, the more I believe that Susie’s success in business is due not just to her judgement and her ability to make big financial decisions without flinching, but to the breadth of her vision. Sticking to gender stereotypes . . . politically incorrect, I know, but it’s purely for illustrative purposes . . . she acts like a man, but thinks like a woman. Expressing it more acceptably, if I can, she has a degree of foresight that I certainly don’t possess, nor do any other guys I know.
The only person in my life who’s come close to matching it was Jan, but in my eyes, Jan’s on course for canonisation, so I suppose I should stop using her as a comparison.
I broached the Natalie subject again with Ewan later in the week, over a steak sandwich in the cafeteria during a break between scenes. He was in Sir Gregor mode, and was pretty grumpy, so I didn’t press it too hard, but it was pretty clear to me that his ego had been bruised by the ending of the relationship.
‘You really don’t know who the new guy is?’
‘Not a clue,’ he said, bitterly. ‘She didn’t say. I suppose she thought that I might have acted in current character and challenged the chap to a duel.’
‘Pistols at dawn, and that?’ I laughed. ‘Ewan, you’re a fucking brilliant actor, but can you shoot straight?’
‘I won the rifle shooting cup in the cadet force at school,’ he said, archly.
‘And did the targets shoot back?’
He scowled at me.
‘If I ever hear who he is,’ I asked him, ‘do you want me to tell you?’
‘I wouldn’t be in the slightest interested,’ he replied, then a faint, out-of-character smile flickered across his face. ‘Unless he happened to be extremely short-sighted, in which event I might just consider a duel.’
‘You’d still want to load both guns yourself, though.’
‘Absolutely. No point in taking unnecessary risks.’
‘In fact, on the day it might be advisable to use a stunt double.’
He beamed. ‘You are getting the hang of this business.’ He paused, looking at me slightly sideways. ‘Tell me, Oz, are you one of nature’s duellists? Would you defend your honour with your life?’
I laughed at him. ‘I’m in your camp. I might defend it with yours, but I’d be a bit more careful with mine. I’ll define my attitude for you, if I can. A lawyer I know once told me that at its heart, his business is about kicking the other guy in the balls as hard as you can. That’s how I see it. I think of duellists as outrageously stupid. The notion of giving someone a sporting chance, an even break, is anathema to me. In such circumstances I would use every advantage I had. Like my lawyer pal, if I was properly prepared and the chance arose, I would put the boot in in a micro-second and the other guy would not get up.’
Ewan frowned. ‘Why do I get the impression that you are not speaking hypothetically here?’ he murmured.
‘I am, I am,’ I assured him, even though he was close to the mark.
‘Nonetheless, I shall make a mental note not to cross you. As for Miss Morgan,’ he continued, ‘she and her new paramour are no longer of any concern to me. Nor, incidentally, is Miss Rhona Waitrose.’
‘Don’t tell me she’s chucked you too?’ I spoke without thinking, although if I had thought I’d probably have said the same thing. I like Ewan, but it’s my mission in life to keep his ego in check.
For a moment he became Sir Gregor again. ‘As if,’ he exclaimed. ‘No, I found the lady a little young, and to be frank a little overeager. As it happens, I terminated that relationship.’
‘And now?’ I asked, for I sensed there was something else coming.
Ewan said nothing, but glanced across the cafeteria towards Louise Golding. I heard myself gasp. ‘My Lizzie, you swine? My childhood sweetheart? If I had a glove on me I’d strike you across the face. Pistols at dawn it shall be.’
‘Much better than a kick in the balls,’ he exclaimed, loudly enough for Louise and her hairdresser to look up from their coffee and across at our table.
I left it at that; clearly Ewan knew nothing about his successor as Nat Morgan’s love interest, nor, personal pique aside, did he seem to care. I wouldn’t have cared either in his shoes; Louise Golding is built like a Greek goddess, even if her breath isn’t all it should be for the morning close-ups.
For the rest of the week I was a model professional. I take my job seriously, and I’ve learned already that the more conscientious you are, and the more cooperative you are with directors, the more work you’ll be offered. That’s certainly proved true in my case, so far at least. Scott Steele told me once that in his first three years as an actor, he worked for a total of four months. Any inactivity I’ve had up to now is of my own choosing, or to be more accurate, mine and Susie’s.
As the days went by the crisis in the Gantry group seemed to get no worse. The share price improved, if only a little, but no more shares came to the market. It was Wednesday before Greg McPhillips’ tame QC came up with her letters to the lawyers acting for each of our three problem buyers. Susie didn’t trust the fax for the purpose, so instead she sent me an e-mail file, which I downloaded on to my laptop.
The draft seemed flawless to me, given my incomplete knowledge of Scottish legalese. It was for Greg McPhillips’ signature as company secretary and it refe
rred to recent publicity in the tabloid press. While not commenting on, it said, far less concurring with the descriptions of the business activities of each of the buyers’ husbands, it was a regrettable fact that the stories were having an adverse effect on the trading of the Gantry Group.
It went on to ask whether in the circumstances the solicitors’ clients would be prepared to withdraw from the missives agreed for the purchase of the houses in question. The Gantry Group recognised that this would involve each buyer having incurred abortive expenses through no fault of their own. It was prepared to meet these costs in full and to offer an additional payment of five thousand pounds to each of the three.
I called her as soon as I’d read it. ‘Seems fine to me,’ I said.
‘What do you think of the compensation offer?’
‘Sensible. It’s not so big that it’ll encourage them to see it as a precedent.’
‘Mmm,’ Susie murmured. ‘That’s what I thought, but I don’t know if it’ll work. Greg’s spoken to the Perrys’ solicitor. He hinted that we’d be making them that sort of an offer to go away, but he got a dusty answer. The guy was non-committal at best: apparently he muttered something about damage to his clients’ reputation.’
‘That’s a fucking laugh,’ I commented, ‘considering that Jock Perry has a reputation as one of the biggest crooks in Glasgow.’
‘Maybe so, but Greg’s reading is that they’ll see they’ve got us by the shorts, and that they’ll be looking for more than five grand.’
‘Will you go up? Did the QC have a view on that?’
‘She feels that ten grand would be safe, but that if we went much higher it would begin to look like bribery, and would set the sort of precedent we discussed . . . not just for ourselves, but for other builders. She’s right about that one too; I’ve had a couple of my rivals on the phone already. On the face of it they’ve been expressing their sympathy, but really they’re shitting themselves about how we handle it, and how it might affect them.’
I thought of some of Susie’s rivals: it seemed to me that most of them cared about nothing more than the number of units they could build to the acre. As for the quality of their product, they were all in our wake. ‘It’ll affect them badly, I hope,’ I told her.
Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries) Page 14