Screen Savers

by Quintin Jardine

  The man poured the Guinness first and left it on the crowded bar to settle. As he was pouring the lager, I turned and called to David, who had found a small table. ‘Crisps, nuts?’

  ‘God no,’ he answered. ‘We’ll be expected to eat when we get back.’

  I paid for the drinks and carried them across. ‘Cheers,’ said Prim’s Dad, eyeing Ireland’s national drink with anticipation. He picked it up and took a gulp. ‘Mmm, bitter. But the first one usually is. The next three or four are usually fine.’

  ‘Hold on there. I’ve got to drive home tonight.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not much of a soak. One more after this and we’re off; the walk back and a couple of Elanore’s scones should see you all right to drive.’

  ‘I’ll maybe wait for an hour after that,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever.’ He drained his glass. I had only shifted a couple of inches of mine. He stood up. ‘Same again.’

  ‘Make mine a half-pint, please, David. I’m not in your class.’

  He smiled. ‘Sorry. I’ve been looking forward to this since we left the house, that’s all.’

  ‘I can see that, all right.’

  We polished off the second round at a more reasonable pace, and left it at that. As we walked back, David was silent at first but as we drew closer to Semple House, he broke out into a fit of coughing. ‘Fuck!’ he said, as he struggled to suppress it. I’d never heard him swear before, so I looked at him in surprise.

  ‘You and Miles,’ he said suddenly, as we turned into his driveway. ‘You think I’m a dry old stick, don’t you. Old David, as dull as the wood he carves. That’s it, isn’t it.’

  His outburst took me well aback. ‘No,’ I protested. ‘That’s not true at all. We respect you, both of us, and as for your work, your carving, you’ve got the rare gift of taking dead wood and giving it a richer, more colourful life than it ever had before. There’s nothing dull about that, mate. I wish I was as creative as you.’

  ‘Don’t fucking patronise me, son,’ he growled. ‘I know what you think.’

  He had me annoyed now. ‘No one’s being fucking patronising here, expect you, maybe. You’re a talented guy and you know it.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, dull old David, that’s me. David, never Dave, always David. Do you know?’ he shouted, suddenly. ‘No one’s ever called me Dave in my whole fucking life! I’ve always wanted to be a Dave!’

  There were tears in his eyes as he fumbled for his Yale key. Out of the blue, he looked stooped, old and sad.

  As he groped in the pocket of his jacket the big door swung open. ‘What’s all the noise about, David?’ boomed Elanore. ‘I could hear you in the kitchen.’

  ‘Dave!’ he shouted. ‘That’s fucking Dave to you!’

  She frowned at me like a good-sized thunderstorm. ‘Is he drunk?’

  ‘No I’m fucking not,’ he bellowed. ‘This is the new Dave. I’m goin’ to be like these lads - an intellectual. You know what I mean; shaggin’ actresses and all that stuff!’

  She took him by the elbow and drew him into the house. He struggled, but he seemed to have no strength to resist her as she frogmarched him into the sitting room and pushed him down into his armchair.

  ‘Oz, coffee!’ she ordered.

  ‘Listen, Elanore, he’s only had a couple of pints.’

  ‘I can smell them!’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ David shouted. His voice sounded triumphant. ‘I’m going to carve myself. No more toy soldiers, no more fucking chess men. From now on everything I do’s going to be Dave: Super Dave, Action Dave. How about that, Oz?

  ‘And fuckin’ dragons. S’all right dear, not you; I mean real fucking dragons. Well not real, but lifelike. Got to be money in fucking dragons.’

  ‘It’d be a terrific circus act,’ I retorted, trying somehow, to humour him. ‘But how will you get them to stay still while you fuck them?’ Beside me, Elanore snorted.

  ‘Wrestlers!’ he bellowed, I could carve your . . .’ In mid-sentence he started to cough again, until it turned into a choking fit. ‘Water,’ he gasped suddenly. ‘Throat’s dry.’ I grabbed his shoulders and looked at him, his eyes were wide, the pupils dilated and fixed.

  ‘Elanore,’ I said quietly, glancing over my shoulder. I could have shouted, like David; he was in a world of his own. ‘He isn’t drunk. He’s ill. I don’t know what it is, a stroke, possibly. Whatever it is, you’d better call a doctor, quick.’

  Chapter 34

  ‘One of us has got to say it, so it might as well be me.’ I looked grimly at Prim. ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this.’

  She shuddered. ‘Don’t I know it; two hospitals in as many days. How’s Dad?’

  ‘Talking to the fairies, last time I saw him. He’s not going to die, don’t fear that, but the doctor is still trying to work out what’s wrong with him.’

  ‘What did happen?’ she demanded. I had phoned her as soon as the family GP, Dr Cusman, had called for an ambulance to take David to Perth Royal Infirmary, but all I had told her was that her father had been taken ill. I don’t know what the Glasgow to Perth speed record is, but I was willing to bet that the Z3’s engine was sighing with relief out there in the car park, now that the journey was over.

  ‘It was the weirdest thing,’ I said. ‘Your Dad and I were out for a walk, and we stopped off for a drink. He had a couple of pints of Guinness. On the way home he started getting argumentative; by the time we got there he was raving, effing and blinding and everything. Elanore thought he was pished, of course; so did I, until I had a look at his eyes.

  ‘I tell you, my love. I’ve never been more pleased that my father made Ellie and me learn first aid.’

  Prim nodded, emphatically. ‘Me too.’

  I couldn’t hold back a grin. ‘I’ll tell you something else too. For the rest of his life, your Old Man’s going to be called Dave, like he wants. Oh, Christ, but he was funny. “That’s fucking Dave to you”, he shouts at Elanore. Oh, but you should have seen her face!’

  I couldn’t help it; inappropriate or not, I was seized with sudden laughter, so hard that I hugged myself in a vain attempt to contain it, until there was nothing for it but to sit down on one of the hard chairs which lined the ward corridor and wait for it to subside. It was infectious; when Elanore appeared, back from the ladies’, the first thing she saw was the two of us, convulsed with laughter.

  ‘Sorry Mum,’ Prim gasped. ‘Oz was just telling me what happened to poor Dave.’ She corpsed again.

  Even her mother smiled, faintly. ‘It was astonishing,’ she said. ‘I have never heard words like those from your father’s mouth.’

  ‘How much did he have to drink?’ Prim asked me, her self-control regained.

  ‘Two pints of Guinness.’

  ‘He wasn’t drunk then.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Elanore asked her.

  ‘I’ve been chumming Dad to the pub for years,’ she replied. ‘So has Dawn. When we were single, every time either of us came home, he always asked us to go for a walk with him, and it was always the same performance. Up the Main Street and into the pub on the way back. The way he can shift Guinness, you’d think it was about to be made illegal. If he was raving after two pints, he’s ill.’

  Her mother stared at her, astonished. ‘The secret life of David Phillips,’ she gasped. ‘Sorry, Dave.’

  ‘What did Dr Cusman say?’ Prim asked, serious once more.

  ‘He wasn’t sure,’ I said, ‘but he couldn’t rule out some sort of cerebral attack, so he whistled up the ambulance pronto. The admitting doctor here ruled that out right away, but like I said she hasn’t committed herself to a diagnosis yet. All she said was that he was going to be all right.’

  ‘I wish she’d hurry,’ Elanore exclaimed. She had been tearful as we followed the ambulance to Perth Royal Infirmary, but she had calmed down once the doctor had assured her that David was not having a stroke. Still, the waiting was getting to her.

  ‘It’s better that they
do it right than that they do it quickly, Mum. This is Sister Phillips talking to you now.’ There are times when I forget that Prim is a nurse by profession. ‘Oz, describe the symptoms again,’ she said.

  ‘It started with a coughing fit.’ I told her. ‘Then he got aggressive; not physically, but loud and hectoring. He started swearing like a trooper too. By the time we got him into the house he was more or less delirious. Then he started choking, and asking for water. That was when I looked at his eyes and saw that the pupils were dilated. And that was when your Mum called Dr Cusman.’

  She frowned. ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Does that tell you something?’

  ‘Doesn’t it suggest anything to you, with your first aid training?’

  ‘Cerebral shock, that’s all. Have you got any other ideas?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to second-guess the doctors. Let’s just wait. Where’s the coffee machine? I’m gasping.’

  We spent another twenty minutes in the stuffy corridor before the admitting doctor reappeared. She hadn’t given her name before, but I saw from a plastic tag pinned to her uniform that she was Dr Shula Sharma. Instead of launching into a bulletin on David’s condition, she asked us to follow her. We all thought that she was taking us to see him, so we were surprised when she showed us into a small glass-walled cubicle, where a man waited.

  ‘Mrs Phillips?’ he began, addressing Elanore. ‘My name is Drew Law; I’m the consultant in charge of this unit.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Elanore, clutching her blouse in a gesture of sudden fear. ‘What’s wrong with my husband?’

  ‘Your husband is fine, Mrs Phillips. He’s recovering well. It’s what brought him here that I need to discuss with you.’

  There was something about the man’s tone that I didn’t like; I couldn’t put my finger on it, but somehow he seemed just a touch menacing. I don’t like doctors who think they can bully people. ‘The ambulance was fine,’ I said, ‘and the crew were very professional. Now come to the point, please.’

  ‘Okay,’ he replied, not backing down at all. ‘We’ve treated Mr Phillips for poisoning; we’ve pumped his stomach and flushed his system out generally. I’m waiting for a lab analysis to confirm the substance involved, but I’m pretty certain that it’s atropine. If that’s the case I’m going to report this incident to the police.

  ‘The patient isn’t coherent yet, so maybe you can tell me how he came to consume it? I didn’t find any traces of deadly nightshade in the stomach contents, by the way, so we can rule out the possibility that he’s been chewing the plants at the foot of the garden. That’s the only means I can think of by which one could ingest that chemical by accident.’

  ‘David and I had a drink,’ I told him, ‘just before he was taken ill. All that I can suppose is that it was contaminated.’

  ‘What about food?’

  ‘We all ate the same lunch.’

  ‘That doesn’t rule out the possibility that Mr Phillips’ portion might have been spiked.’

  The colour left Elanore’s face. ‘There is no such possibility,’ Prim snapped at the man. ‘This conversation is over. Where is my father? We insist on seeing him, now.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ I added, taking out my cellphone. ‘By the way, you needn’t bother reporting this to the police. I intend to do that myself, right now.’

  Chapter 35

  ‘Are you going to give me any argument about it now?’ I asked her. ‘Maybe you’re right; maybe I’m paranoid. But that doesn’t mean that they ain’t out to get me.’

  Prim shook her head. ‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘I give in. It is crazy, but you’ve got a stalker all right, Oz. Someone either knows your movements or is following you around; someone with a very sick mind too, to be targeting your friends and family.’

  ‘But not me,’ I pointed out. ‘Not me. Why?’

  ‘What about the London incident? That was aimed at you.’

  ‘The London incident doesn’t fit the pattern. That was a direct attack on me, with nothing subtle about it. Those guys were paid to ambush me and kick my fucking head in.’

  I looked at her, as she sat there, slumped in her Dad’s armchair, back at Semple House It was almost midnight; Elanore was upstairs, having been given a very large brandy as a sedative, after finally cracking up completely at David’s bedside. By the time they finally let us see him, he was much calmer, but he was still dazed and confused, still rambling incoherent nonsense.

  ‘How’s it going, Dave?’ I had said as I sat beside him. He had gazed back at me solemnly, and replied, ‘Rosebud,’ pronouncing the word with great care, so gravely that I wouldn’t have been surprised if a snow-scene had fallen from his limp fingers.

  As I had promised the aggressive consultant, I had indeed called the police. Two detective constables had come to the infirmary and had taken a statement from me. They had tried to interview Dave too.

  ‘Can you tell us what happened, Mr Phillips?’ the older DC had asked.

  ‘The cows are in the broccoli patch,’ the victim had replied.

  ‘Are they now. Maybe we’d better wait till tomorrow, and talk to you then.’

  ‘No, no!’ Dave had shouted. ‘They’ll have eaten all the fucking broccoli by then.’

  In spite of the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory as I looked at Prim. ‘If there’s a good side to this it’s that nobody’s been killed,’ I told her.

  ‘So far,’ she retorted. ‘But that’s more by accident than design. Colin could have broken his neck, Dad could have died, Mike and Susie almost did, and Noosh Turkel almost caught a bullet in the head. We’ve got to warn everyone close to us, Oz. They’re all in danger.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so; not unless I’m actually there with them. That’s been the pattern.’

  ‘Except in London. There you were the target.’

  ‘Yes, and I have to find out why.’ I frowned at her. ‘I have to do it on my own, too. I want you to stay here with your mother. Look after her, and after old David when he gets home. You’ll be safer here too; well away from me.’

  ‘But what about the business?’

  ‘You’ve been saying you reckon Lulu could run it on her own. I guess it’s time to find out if you’re right.’

  Prim sat in silent thought for a minute or two. Finally, she nodded. ‘All right. Mum and Dad could use me here, that’s true. But what are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, tomorrow, I’m going back to Glasgow and I’m going to have a talk with Mike. After that I’m going to find those two guys in London.’

  She looked at me doubtfully. ‘And how exactly are you going to do that?’ she asked.

  At that moment, I didn’t have an answer for that one, so all I could do was smile at her. ‘Maybe I’ll hire a private detective,’ I said.

  She didn’t see the funny side. ‘Maybe you should do just that. Maybe you should even do the same as Susie and hire a bodyguard.’

  ‘Honey, the way things have been happening I’m the only person who doesn’t need one. But maybe I should hire the whole bloody SAS and place them with all my family and friends.’

  Prim screwed up her face, as she has a way of doing when something is really getting to her. ‘Oz,’ she said. ‘Think about this. Who hates you so much that they would do all those things? What man, or woman, has it in for you that badly?’

  ‘Forget women,’ I told her. ‘Assuming that Elanore doesn’t use deadly nightshade as a herb in her steak and kidney pudding, someone doctored your Dad’s drink in that bar - and there were no women in there, none at all.

  ‘Who could my enemy be? It’s a funny old world out there, love; the GWA programming pulls a big television audience. There are bound to be a few nutters among them. It could be that someone out there has taken a deep and pathological dislike to me.’

  ‘Hardly,’ she protested. ‘You’re only the bloody announcer, for Christ’s sake. This has to be someone with a more personal grudge.’<
br />
  ‘But who? I lived a very uneventful life until I met you. I didn’t upset people, and they didn’t upset me; I was just an ordinary twenty-something, enjoying himself. Since then, out of all the things that you and I have done together in the last three years, I can think of three people who might have reason to hate me . . . and you know who I mean.

  ‘Of them, two are dead and the other one has to feed himself with a rubber spoon, when he isn’t whistling, “When I rule the world”, or just plain howling at the moon.’

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ Primavera countered, ‘I know who you mean. But there’s a man you’ve forgotten, isn’t there? Someone that you did think, once, was trying to get you - to get both of us, in fact. If you think about it, he has a far better reason to do you now than he had then.’

  It had been a hard day; I had faced down my future mother-in-law and lived to tell the tale, then rushed her poisoned husband to hospital. After all that it was little wonder that my normally razor-sharp powers of deduction weren’t quite at their sharpest. Otherwise how could I have forgotten Ricky Ross? Once a high-flying detective with his eye on a Chief Constable’s uniform, knighthood and all the rest, his career had ended in disgrace, a turn of events for which he was inclined to blame Osbert Blackstone, Esquire, and no one else.

  Still . . .

  ‘Naw,’ I exclaimed. ‘I know he’s a nasty bastard, but he wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Not so long ago you were prepared to accept that he would. You and I travelled a thousand miles believing all the way that he was on our trail. He wasn’t then, but maybe he is now. Revenge is a dish best served cold, like they say.’

  ‘Naw,’ I repeated; but I knew she had a point. My known enemies currently at liberty made up a very short list: a list of one, in fact, and it was him.

  Chapter 36

  I was still pondering upon the possibility of the persecuting policeman next morning, when my whole view of the situation was stood on its head. I had just showered, and was changing into the clothes which Prim had brought with her on her headlong rush from Glasgow, when Elanore knocked on the bedroom door.