"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."
Twenty-Five.
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 duel lists 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 duel lists 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 co-operative 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 referred 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.
"I'm sure you do, but I have to live with these people. I'm on the board of the House-builders' Association, remember."
"You could always resign."
"If I play this wrong, I'll have to."
"You won't: it'll be fine. How's the witch-hunt going?"
"No suspects," she replied, 'but Aidan Keane's resigned. He told me that there wasn't room for him and Fisher in the same company, and that since he'll be easier to replace, he's going."
"Are you going to let him?"
"I'll have to. I can't sack Fisher for conducting a zealous investigation."
"Not even if it's overzealous and fruitless?"
"Not even."
"What about the Keane guy?" I recalled meeting him once at a Group party; I hadn't liked him much. His eyebrows met in the middle and he struck me as aggressive, just as Fisher had found him. "Could he be your mole? Could he be going before he's caught? Could his outrage just be a smokescreen?"
"I don't think so, but I can't be sure," she admitted. "I suppose that if he goes to work for Torrent he'll move to the top of the list."
"Speaking of Torrent," I asked, 'have you heard anything from Ricky Ross?"
"Mmm, yes," she said, with a new urgency in her voice. "Have I ever. I was going to get round to that. He called me an hour ago. Nat Morgan had a very interesting lunch meeting today, in the Atrium Restaurant, in the Saltire Court office block, in Edinburgh."
"Saltire Court? That's full of lawyers, accountants and fund managers, isn't it?"
"So I believe. And there were two of them at Morgan's lunch table.
There was her lawyer, Duncan Kendall, from Kendall McGuire, the top corporate firm, and her accountant, Alan Williams. But not just them," she added, quickly. "There were others; there was Marvin de Luca, a director of Industry Partners, the major league venture capital firm, and Hew Bothwell-Brody, a major league stockbroker who commutes between London and Edinburgh. Then there was Sir Nigel Lanark, the merchant banker."
I could see them in my mind's eye, all those thousand quid suits trying not to ogle the tall, olive-skinned, chocolate-voiced client. "What was the significance of that?" I asked. "It sounds like just another expensive lunch to me."
"No, love, that was no ordinary lunch. If it had just been Kendall and Williams, I'd have thought so, but not with the other three there.
Those guys are all players, financiers, the sort of people you'd want around you if you were planning to go into a takeover battle. I think Nat's getting geared up for action, and I'm in no doubt about what's being planned."
"Do you think one of those guys might be her new man?" I asked.
"I asked Ricky that, but he said there was no sign of it; Natalie arrived and left on her own. He also says that he knows that de Luca, Kendall and Lanark are all married, and that the stockbroker's a poof.
Your friend has quite a database."
Idly, I wondered what it would say about us. "Do you think she'll move straight away?" I asked.
"No," Susie replied, firmly. "Not yet. I haven't told you about the sixth player at the table. It was Angela Rowntree."
"And she is?" I knew that name from somewhere, but I couldn't pin it down.
"Managing director of Sapphire Investment managers."
"Oh shit." I knew that name; Sapphire controlled six of the biggest investment trusts in Scotland, and their total holdings included eighteen per cent of the stock of the Gantry Group. "They were sounding her out?"
"Exactly. But she didn't bite; not yet, at any rate."
"How do you know? Have you spoken to her?"
"No, and I can't, because I don't know about the meeting, do I? I know because our Ricky, clever bastard that he is, had one of his guys at a table across the restaurant, recording the conversation with a very small, but effective, directional mike. He said that Lanark asked her how she would feel about a takeover offer that valued the Gantry shares at significantly above current market price, subject to one hundred per cent acceptance. Angela told him that if it was significantly above the market price as it stood before the bad publicity on Monday, she'd probably expect the board to recommend acceptance, but that if it was simply based on the price as it stands today, she'd hold off to see how I managed the current crisis. She also said that Lanark and de Luca would be crazy if they underwrote a bid based on last week's price, and they had to agree with her."
I thought about this. As I saw it, Susie had breathing space; a few days at least, and if she could manage to buy off the Three Bears, she should put herself in the clear. I said as much.
"Yes," she agreed, 'provided that we don't have any more unforeseen disasters lurking in the undergrowth. I'm still uncomfortable, though;
I'm more than half expecting one of those disasters, but I haven't a bloody clue where it's coming from." She sighed, un-Susie-like. "Oz, don't get big-headed about this or anything but I wish you were here."
"Friday afternoon," I promised her. "I've seen the schedule for the rest of the week, and with a bit of luck I should be able to catch a flight around lunchtime."
"Good," she murmured. "It's not just all this crap, you know. Even without it, I'd be missing you anyway."
As it turned out I was able to keep my promise to my wife… but not before fate had lobbed an even bigger grenade in my direction.
Twenty-Six.
The shooting schedule worked out, and with the blessing of Paul Girone, I left Shepperton in the limo at midday, heading for Heathrow and the first Glasgow shuttle of the afternoon. I called Susie from the car; the letters to the three gangsters' lawyers had gone out from Greg McPhillips' office the night before through the legal mail network, but she told me that none of them had responded.
"Okay," I told her. "Maybe you'll get a reaction this afternoon. If you do you can tell me when you get home tonight. I'll be there before you, assuming that British Airways doesn't mess me about."
For once, the world's favourite airline didn't; the shuttles were running to time, and I was able to check in, grab a sandwich and a Coke, then walk straight on to the plane. The complimentary newspapers were running low at the foot of the air-bridge. All the Herald?" had been snaffled by the earlier flights, but since we were heading for Glasgow there were still a few copies of the Scotsman to be had. I picked one up as I boarded.
I had had an early start on set. I belted myself into my window seat, leaned my head back, and fell asleep almost at once. When I awoke, we were on the climb, passing through the first layers of wispy cloud, looking down on Windsor Castle. As far as I could see there were no standards flying; Her Majesty must have be
en at one of her other palaces that day. I thought to myself that maybe it was time for Susie and I to buy a second home. For all that we lived on a pretty large property by British standards, we had a simple lifestyle for a movie star and a millionairess.
I was contemplating the alternative charms of France and Florida when the guy in the aisle seat leaned across the empty middle berth, on which he had dumped a jacket, a palm-top computer and a thick briefcase. "Excuse me," he began. "But you are Oz Blackstone, aren't you?"
I glanced at him; he was in his thirties, podgy around the face, though not grossly overweight, and from the look of the sweat marks under the arms of his blue and white striped shirt, he had run to catch the plane. He was clean-shaven, and his dark hair was controlled by some sort of gel, from which a single bead of sweat had escaped and was running down his left cheek. I'd have taken him for a salesman… of palm-top computers perhaps, for I've never met anyone who actually uses one of the fiddly wee things… only he was wearing braces. In my experience only lawyers hold up their trousers with braces these days;
I guess it's born of the extreme caution for which their profession is famous.
"A bleary-eyed and half-asleep Oz Blackstone," I told him, 'but yes, that's me."
He chortled. "A hard night on the town was it?" he asked, jovially. (An incredibly rude question to be asking a complete stranger when you think of it, but it comes with the territory I inhabit these days, and I've learned to roll with it.) "You know what it's like for us actors," I told him. "We have to do the round of the nightclubs to keep the children of the paparazzi in their private schools." I caught the look of uncertainty as it came into his eye. "Actually it was a hard morning in a film studio," I went on, 'from which I'm escaping for the weekend to see my wife and daughter. It is actually possible to be in my business yet not be a piss artist." I made myself smile at the guy as I finished. There's no point in snubbing people, even though it's what you'd really like to do.
"I wish it was possible in mine," he exclaimed, full joviality restored. "My name's Wylie Smith, by the way, middle name Henry, which causes the odd laugh among my colleagues these days." I thought about this for a second, then remembered the news agent book shop and CD chain. I remembered also a Hearts goalie who raised a few laughs in his time as well, but they all do if they play long enough. Just ask the big guy with the ponytail.
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