Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries)

by Quintin Jardine

  Jay joined us for dinner at Ellie’s that night. If, when we returned to the estate, he was surprised to find that work on the tree-house ‘for gardens that don’t have trees’ had progressed in his absence, he said nothing about it. However, as it turned out he had indeed found himself a nice co-ed on that Saturday night in St Andrews, the daughter of a US senator. He left me to join her in the States a few months later, and has since found a job with the American Secret Service, which is, of course, not secret at all.

  Life for me has gone on as what passes for normal ever since. Mathew’s Tale was completed, and I’m told will win me a BAFTA. I may have to come back from Australia to get it, though, for that’s where I’m heading now, with Susie, Ethel, Janet and her new brother, wee Jonathan. The Gantry Group is in the capable hands of Phil Culshaw, still acting chief executive, and Wylie Smith is taking the chair in my absence. Natalie Morgan has renewed her relationship with Ewan Capperauld, who’s always been a sucker for olive-skinned women with big eyes. Duncan Kendall? He’s in jail. I’m not sure why.

  I still remember that time at Ellie’s. When the evening was over, and Susie and I had retired to our room, I was undressing when she said to me, ‘You know, Oz, one of the things I love about you?’

  I grinned at her, over my shoulder, as I do. ‘Whassat?’

  ‘You get things done. I have to say, in that respect, there’s a bit of the Jack Gantry in you.’

  I looked into the mirror, smiling that all-gathering smile of mine, into bright eyes that deep down, I saw, were as hard as the stone that builds a city, and I said to her, ‘Nobody’s perfect. Still, I’ve always thought of myself as a nice guy at heart.’

  I have come to believe that we are all governed by the spirits that live within us. Some, like my nephew Jonathan’s, my wife Susie’s, and, I hope, my children’s, are pure and good. Some, like my poor old father’s, are fundamentally weak, and have within them the inevitable downfall of their bearer. Some, like Jack Gantry’s, are wholly and irredeemably evil from the start.

  Mine? The jury’s still out on that.