‘If only . . .’ she whispered.
‘Me neither.’ I looked at her. ‘Suse, I’m not giving up, but . . . suppose we don’t get lucky before next week? How will you feel if we lose?’
‘Richer,’ she replied, but bitterly. ‘But before that sinks in, I’ll feel humiliated, beaten, a failure, all of that stuff.’ She smiled at me, softly. ‘Oz, love, I’m sorry if I disappoint you. I know you were hoping that when I went on maternity leave I might change, that I might decide to be a full-time mum for a few years, and be content to be non-executive chair, instead of Fisher. That might even have been an attractive proposition, but for all this. There’s a lot to be said for spending the next few years travelling the world with you and the kids, from film location to film location. But if it all ends like this, I’ll be the most miserable travelling companion you could ever imagine. My mind will always be back in Glasgow, thinking of ways to get back at Morgan and whoever her new partner is.’
She looked away from me, up at the ceiling, and I saw a small tear appear in the corner of her right eye and roll down her cheek. ‘I suppose what I’m saying is that if I lose this business, it’ll break my heart.’
I reached across and took her hand. ‘Then that will not happen, my darling.’ I gave it a squeeze. ‘You’ve got my word on that.’
She got up from the table, kissed me on the forehead, ran her fingers through my hair, then, mumbling something about going to see Ethel, hurried out of the room.
I gathered up the newspapers and carried them through to the working conservatory, where I switched on my computer and checked my morning’s e-mailbox. I saw one from ‘ecap’ titled ‘Out, out, damned spot’ and opened it; it was a brief message from Ewan wishing me well, and advising me that he, on the other hand, had a face, as he put it, ‘like a cherry cake’ and felt decidedly poorly.
There was also a message from Paul Girone. It was less colourful, but it confirmed Ewan’s news and advised me that their insurers . . . to hearty sighs of relief from the investors, no doubt . . . had accepted medical advice and would fund a further week’s postponement. He also asked me not to eat too much, since he didn’t want me reporting back noticeably fatter than before the break, but I’m professional enough to have worked that out for myself. In any event, obesity is not a Blackstone family trait.
My final e-mail brought me my first really good news of the day. It was from Roscoe and it advised me that Miles Grayson was about to achieve a lifelong dream by making a cricket movie. It would be about the notorious Bodyline tour of Australia, in the thirties, in which Douglas Jardine, the captain of England, decided that the best way of combating the threat of Donald Bradman was by trying to kill him with continuously short-pitched bowling.
Miles, a good judge of character, wanted me to play Jardine. He would play Bradman, of course. (A challenge for make-up, I thought, since Miles is around twenty years older than Bradman was then, and looks nothing like the dour little man.) Did I fancy a couple of months next winter touring Australia? Too bloody right I did. I sent Roscoe an instant reply. ‘Make a show of being hard to get, then say “yes”.’
I signed out of AOL, and swung round in my chair, picking up the Scotsman, the only newspaper I hadn’t read that morning. I scanned through it until I found the Aidan Keane story. It was there, of course, but buried almost as deep as he would be soon, at the foot of page six. Gangland killings in Glasgow do not figure high on the priority lists of Edinburgh copy-tasters.
It took me less than a minute to read, and then I put it aside and turned my attention to the rest of the paper. Having spent the early part of my adult life in Edinburgh, it was my instinctive paper of choice, even though the issue that was delivered to our home went to bed much earlier than the Herald. As I do about once a week, I resolved that I would cancel the lot and read the on-line editions instead, but since that day’s issue was there, inking up my hands, I delved into it.
For a few days, I had been keeping an eye out for a certain story. That morning, I found it. It was on page three once again, but, although it commanded more space than a floater in the Clyde, since it emanated from the East of Scotland, it was no longer a front-page lead.
It was headed ‘Pig Farm murders: identities confirmed’, and it read:
‘Detectives leading the investigation into the deaths of a couple whose bodies were found last week on a remote Fife pig farm confirmed that they are Walter and Andrea Neiporte of Pittenweem, Fife.
‘Mr Neiporte (37) is an American citizen, although he was officially resident in Scotland, and worked at St Andrews University. His wife (29), an executive with a hotel in North East Fife, is originally from Orpington in Kent.
‘The identifications were confirmed after the completion of DNA tests on the bodies and on samples from relatives in America and England.
‘Police last night released further details of what is now officially a double murder hunt. Detective Inspector Tom Reekie, in charge of the investigation, confirmed that police were searching in the vicinity of the farm for the murder weapon, a shotgun.
‘He revealed also that police suspect that the crime may be drug-related, after a significant quantity of ecstasy tablets were found in an inch-by-inch search of the couple’s cottage.
‘Inspector Reekie said that he believed that the couple were killed on the evening of May 23, the date and time recorded on Mr Neiporte’s wristwatch, which had been found on the body, smashed by a shotgun pellet.’
I blinked when I saw the date. Laying the paper down, I turned back to my computer terminal and opened my electronic diary. It confirmed my first thought; the Neiportes had been killed on the day before I had sent Jay to Fife to deal with them. After all that anxiety, and yes, I confess it now, after all those bad dreams, it turned out to have been just another drug-land execution.
I breathed a single huge sigh of relief. It had barely faded before a question rose up in my mind. ‘Why was Jay so secretive?’
But when I thought about it, it took me about three seconds to convince myself that it was simply a sign of his absolute discretion. It was one worry out of the way, but, God knew, there were plenty left. Of these, I realised suddenly, the greatest was that I had made a promise to my wife; but how was I to keep it?
Chapter 35
The problem I faced was a simple one. In the fight against our opposition, I had run out of bullets. Ricky and I were making all the obvious moves to try and find evidence that would tie Natalie Morgan to the Three Bears. The only other things we needed were luck and patience. As I’ve said, I have more than my fair share of the former, but it’s not a weapon that can be called upon at will.
As for patience, I find that the older I get the less I have.
So what could I do, I asked myself, to make things happen? Turning once again to my one-man army, Jay Yuille, was not an option. I was sure he would help, but I could never be sure how, given his ‘no questions’ policy.
After a day of thought, some of it spent working out in my gym, some spent swimming, and some spent hitting increasingly erratic golf shots, I had decided what to do. It would be chancy, and it might even be risky, given the people involved, but it was all I had, my only weapon. I didn’t know how it would work out, but I did know that it would require the performance of my life.
I called Ricky on my mobile, just before six. ‘Where’s Morgan?’ I asked him.
‘Homeward bound,’ he replied. ‘There’s nothing on the other three, though, Oz. It’s just another day at the offices for all of them.’
‘Hang in there,’ I said, then hung up.
I found Susie in Janet’s playroom; she looked as glum as she had in the morning. ‘I have to go out,’ I told her.
‘Where?’
I pinched a few words from my favourite poem, and recited them in my best Ewan Capperauld accent. ‘I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.’
She sniffed. ‘Be mysterious then. Just don’t wake me when you come in, that’s a
ll.’
I took the Lotus; it’s my favourite toy when I’m alone. I didn’t burn rubber or anything like that, but I made Edinburgh in an hour and a half, and from where we live, that’s reasonable. I was glad that Natalie hadn’t moved, for it meant that I knew exactly where I was headed. As I cleared the Barnton roundabout, I called Ricky again. ‘Is she still at home?’ I asked.
‘Yes, and all alone.’
‘Good. Tell your operative to be ready for action.’
‘When?’
‘Soon, I hope.’
Less than five minutes later, I pulled into the private car park attached to Natalie’s block. There were several spaces in the visitors’ area: I picked one, locked on my steering wheel immobiliser . . . Scotland’s capital city hates to admit it, but there are car thieves in Edinburgh too . . . and wandered over to the entrance door. I knew that Ricky’s operative would be watching me, but that didn’t matter. I was paying his tab, and if things went pear-shaped in any way, and it became necessary, I would have been the Invisible Man. Not that I thought it would. I had rehearsed my performance time and time again. It was going to be good.
The first time I had entered the building, I had done so . . . informally; this time I pressed the button with the name ‘Morgan’ beside it.
She must have been near the intercom phone for she answered almost straight away. ‘Hello?’
‘Natalie? It’s Oz Blackstone.’
‘Oz! What the hell do you want?’
‘A chat. We need to talk, you and I. I have news that may interest you.’
‘Indeed.’ She sounded uncertain. ‘You’d better come up then.’ The door buzzed: I pushed it and it swung open. Last time I had used the stairs. This time I took the lift, all the way to the top.
She was waiting for me as I stepped out, framed in her doorway, her long legs disappearing into a pair of very brief shorts, her high breasts encased in a matching halter top. ‘Sorry to be overdressed,’ she murmured, ‘but I wasn’t expecting you.’
The lift door hissed shut behind me as she stood aside, letting me into her sanctum. I looked around. ‘You’ve refurnished,’ I said. The place looked a lot more spacious, somehow, than when I’d seen it before.
‘Totally,’ she replied. ‘I had interior decorators give the place a make-over. Then I hired a feng shui consultant. Remember the Fosters ad on the telly? Well, I actually did it.’
I laughed. ‘There’s one born every minute, Nat, but I never thought you were one of them.’
‘Nor I you.’ She moved in on me, standing close, gazing up into my eyes. ‘So what brings you this way. What do you have to tell me that’ll interest me? Got a part for me in your next movie?’
‘Sorry. Glenn Close does Cruella De Vil.’
She chuckled. ‘Ouch. What can it be then? Is it that you’ve realised that you fancy me, and that you’ve decided to trade little Susie in for a winner? If so . . .’ She reached up and tugged at the cord securing her top, but I put a hand up and stopped her.
‘Sorry, but I’ve seen a lot better than those at work . . . and at home for that matter. Once upon a time, Natalie, I’d have fucked your brains out before I put the boot in. Not any more, though. That wouldn’t be right and proper, so I’ll get straight to it.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘How gallant of you to spare my feelings.’
‘I don’t give a bugger about your feelings. It’s my wife I’m thinking about. I wouldn’t want to take anything from you back to her.’
‘Okay.’ She was definitely out of seductress mode. ‘Say what you have to say, then go.’
I fixed her with my coldest stare. ‘Gladly,’ I hissed at her. ‘It’s this. You will stop this vindictive nonsense towards Susie, and you will announce tomorrow that you are no longer interested in acquiring the Gantry Group.’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because you wouldn’t last a week in Cornton Vale Prison. You’d hardly be in there before you’d a brush handle up you. We’ve got you, Nat, Ricky Ross and I. We know you set up the New Bearsden plot, we know how you did it and why. When I called you a couple of nights ago, I dropped the name Aidan Keane, a little on purpose; let’s call it bait. You swallowed it and no mistake; as soon as my call was over . . . I taped it, by the way . . . you went straight through to Glasgow to see one of your associates, Mr Ravens, we assume, since he was going to be Mr Keane’s new boss. Twenty-four hours later, what happens? The poor guy’s found in the Clyde, with so many bullets in him it’s a fucking miracle he can still float. What that makes you, Nat, is an accessory to murder, and legally as guilty of Keane’s death as the guys who pulled the trigger.’
I paused to let that sink in, and to study her face; it was a mixture of anger, uncertainty and fear. ‘Offering Keane a job with Mark Ravens if he got found out was a bloody silly thing to do, by the way. But I don’t suppose you expected that he would be found out, or that dear old Graeme would provoke him into resigning, or that he would let slip to a mate where his future employment prospects lay.’
‘You can’t prove any of this,’ Natalie shouted, thrusting out her chin and her chest at the same time, in an odd show of hard-nippled defiance.
‘Not without corroboration, we couldn’t. It’s too bad that one of the Three Bears has realised the risk he’s been taking, and has given a full statement to Ricky Ross, so that Ricky can cut a deal with the SDEA that’ll keep him out of jail while the rest of you go down. I’m not going to tell you which one; but even if I did, I wouldn’t recommend that you have a go at him. He’ll be expecting you.’
I smiled at her. ‘So this is the deal. It’s open for twenty-four hours, no more. You either drop the bid, or I will drop you.’ I turned on my heel and headed for the door. ‘Oh yes, and tell your partners not even to think about coming after Ricky and me either. He’s got connections with the police that would make that a very bad idea, and I’ve got protection that’s out of their league. They’d never make it back across the river.’
I was back home in time for the ten o’clock news on telly. Susie was sat on the couch, with an anthology of twentieth-century poetry on her lap. ‘So whose woods did you stop by?’ she asked.
‘With a bit of the luck of the Blackstones, you’ll find out soon enough.’
Chapter 36
I had told Ricky to call me any time, but I didn’t expect it to be at two in the morning. He doesn’t sound excited very often, but this time he did, and no mistake.
‘I don’t know what the hell you said,’ he exclaimed, as I rubbed sleep out of my eyes, and as Susie growled beside me, ‘but it worked and no mistake. If you saw a Porsche whistling past you on the M8 it was Natalie Morgan. She went straight to that address she visited before; got there by quarter to ten.’
‘She didn’t overtake me in that case.’
‘Not for the want of trying. My guy had a job keeping her in sight in his poor wee MG. He did, though, trailed her all the way there. This time she stayed longer; till well after midnight, in fact. And while she was there, guess who else turned up?’
‘One of the Bears?’
‘Better than that. All three of the buggers; by the time the last one arrived my people were tripping over each other at the scene. We’ve got film and still photos of them arriving, separately, between half ten and eleven, and of them leaving, together and looking rattled.’
‘What about Natalie?’
‘She left a few minutes after them. She had the makings of a right sore face too: I’d say someone gave her a belting.’
‘Shame. She’s still walking, though?’
‘No thanks to you. How did you kick all that off anyway? What the hell did you tell her?’ I gave him a run-down of my pitch to Natalie, in her apartment. Susie was wide awake now, listening to every word. When I finished, he was laughing. ‘She is definitely not as bright as she thinks she is. Not only did she not twig she’d been followed to Glasgow the first time, she went straight back again.’
‘So who’s
the guy she went to see?’ I asked.
‘That we don’t know yet. We know the flat he was in, because this time we saw which button she pushed. But we won’t be able to find out who he is till tomorrow at least, till the council offices open and we can have a look at the register of electors.’
‘Why not just ring his fucking bell? Right now, in fact.’
‘I think I’ll hold off on that, if you don’t mind. Whoever the guy is, he’s serious enough to be able to call the Three Bears and have every one of them drop what he was doing and come to see him. Ravens, Perry and Cornwell may not be the Kray brothers, but anyone who can make them jump when he whistles must be a very serious player indeed. Before I go thumping on that door, or have any of my people do it, I want to know who’s behind it.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘Like I said, we find out who he is.’
‘But apart from that. What do we do about Morgan to spike this takeover?’
‘Sit on it for a day or so. Let’s find out who’s behind it.’
‘We don’t need to. We’ve got Natalie and the Bears all in the same place at the same time. We could take that to the police.’
‘Alleging what, exactly?’
‘Conspiracy.’
‘There’s no such criminal charge in Scotland.’
‘Extortion.’
‘They never asked you for money. In fact when you offered it, they turned you down. Oz, I’m sure that the Crown Office would come up with a charge, under the Companies Act, maybe, but it would take them a bloody long time to decide what it would be. Let’s get the whole picture. Let’s find out who the man in the apartment is. Then you can decide what you want to do. But you might be better going to the Sunday papers than the police.’
For once, I could see the sense in everything Ricky said.
‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s do it that way. But listen, you and your team have done bloody well tonight. Keep a watch on Natalie, and on the mystery man, but give as many of them as you can some time off. I’ll do the trace on the owner of the apartment; I’ve got time, and I can handle that.’ I found a pen and a notepad in the drawer of my bedside table. ‘Gimme the address,’ I said, and began to scribble down what he said.
Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries) Page 20