Blackstone's Pursuits (5 page)

Jan smiled again, with a glint in her eye, but there was nothing malicious in it. ‘Must be a big problem, for you to wind up here. Watch out for Wallace, darlin’. That bloody iguana was right up my kilt this morning.’

She turned back to me. ‘Oz, your books are done. Your VAT slip’s ready to go. I’ve written cheques for that and all your other bills, and I’ve written one for me too.’

‘Fine,’ I said. I picked up my chequebook, signed the second cheque, tore it out and handed it to her. I didn’t even check the amount. Jan hadn’t given herself a rise in four years. Mind you, she’d given me a few.

‘Thanks. Right, I’m off. See you next month, or whenever.’

I saw her to the door. ‘Look, Jan, you’d never believe ...’

She turned in the doorway, but she was smiling. ‘Don’t “look” me, Oz. I’d believe anything about you. Our rule is ask no questions, and I’m not going to break it now. Good luck.’ She gave my balls a friendly squeeze and closed the door behind her.

I went back upstairs to Prim. She had carried her smaller bag up to the raised area, but had left the monster for me. I looked up and saw her feet disappearing up the ladder to Wallace’s sun-room. ‘Hey, this is terrific,’ her voice echoed down. ‘You can see a lot from up here.’

‘That’s why Wallace likes it,’ I shouted back. ‘Incidentally, Jan was only kidding about him being up her skirt.’ I grabbed the sullen iguana and shoved him into the cage which was his bedchamber, hoping that I was right. The eaves space in the loft was lined with cupboards, where most of my possessions were stored. I dived into one and pulled out a towel. As Prim climbed down the ladder, I threw it to her. ‘There. The shower’s electric. Instant hot water. You’ll find my dressing gown behind the door. Fancy something to eat?’

She thought about it for a few seconds. ‘Which takeaway is it at lunchtime? McDonalds?’

I put on a hurt look. ‘I do cook sometimes. For example, I do an ace tuna sandwich.’

‘That’d be great.’ She invaded the vast bag once more and emerged with a bottle of shampoo, and some other stuff. ‘Meantime, I have earned this shower. I’ve come a long way for it. I’m going to enjoy it. Hope your lecky bill can stand it. I may be some time!’

Leaving her to undress, I jumped down to the kitchen. A quick glance at the green things in the bread basket persuaded me that I should take her at her word about lunch. As soon as I heard the bathroom door close, I slipped out of the flat, sprinted down the stairs, out of the building and along the narrow wynd which led to the High Street.

Fortunately there hadn’t been a run on Ali’s ace tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise rolls. I grabbed a handful, added a couple of yoghurts for luck and a quart of milk to replace the yellow stuff in the fridge, and paid my be-turbanned pal. Ali shot me a questioning look, one that said
‘Surely not at lunchtime?’
but said nothing. I gave him the expected knowing wink and bolted back the way I had come.

By the time Prim emerged from her shower, I was in my chef’s apron, with the woman’s naked body turned to the inside and chaste blue stripes on show. Lunch was laid out neatly on plates - the paper bag and wrappers out of sight in the wastebin - and the cafetière was full and steaming. I depressed its plunger with a flourish, and offered her a stool at the breakfast bar, facing mine.

‘I’m impressed,’ she said. My dressing gown, rarely worn in any event, had never looked better. It clung to her body, doing things for her that Marks & Spencer could use to great effect in their advertising. My towel looked pretty cool too, wound round her head like an outsize version of my pal Ali’s turban. She suited it better than he did.

‘Thank you ma’am,’ I said. Score a point for the boy.

‘I didn’t think you were that quick on your feet. I forgot my toothbrush, so I had to run back upstairs. Either you were up in the belvedere or the place was empty.’

‘Milk,’ I said, assertively. ‘Needed some more.’

She bit a huge chunk from a tuna roll. ‘Mmm,’ she said, as she chewed. ‘Pity you didn’t get some fresh rolls as well. These are a day or so older than they should be.’

I tried one for myself. ‘Nonsense,’ I said eventually, relieved to discover that she had been pulling my chain. ‘They were fresh this morning.’

We demolished our rolls, slurped our yoghurt and drank our coffee with the enthusiasm of the newly reprieved. Prim held her mug in both hands, leaning forward with her elbows on the bar, holding them carefully so that the dressing gown didn’t flop open. I offered her a top-up, but she said, ‘No thanks. I really would like an hour or two’s kip. I’m not jet-lagged or anything. I was in more or less the same time zone. I’m just knackered.’

‘Okay, come on and I’ll change the bed for you.’

‘Er. Oz ... ?’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it. The sofa folds down. That’s where I sleep when my Dad’s here.’

‘I’ll have that, then.’

‘No, because that’ll mean I can’t work at my desk. I’ve got a couple of witnesses to interview this afternoon, and I should go back to see Archer.’

The deal was struck. She helped me change the sheets - I’ll swear I heard them sigh with relief - making no comment on the stains which were a relic of Jan’s last stopover three weeks earlier. As I shook out the Downie, she asked me quietly. ‘What are you going to say to Archer?’

I looked at her. ‘I could tell him about Kane. If I did that he might decide he had to go to the police. They’d find out what I was really doing there, and that we told them porkies. Then we’d both be in the shit. Your sister would be too, right up to her nose. Alternatively, I could tell him that when I turned up the street was crawling with polis, so I did a runner. That’s safer but it leaves us with the problem of what to do about the fiver.’

‘Yes,’ she said, softly. ‘What about the fiver?’

I looked down at her, flexing my sincerity muscles. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if I hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have known what the fiver was all about. You might not even have picked it up.’

She shook her head. ‘My flat, my fiver. I’d have had it all right.’

‘On the other hand, if you hadn’t been there to pull that stunt, I’d never have laid a finger on that note. Archer would have had to go public to get it back. So the way I look at it, Miss Primavera Phillips, we’re partners.’

She looked at me across the bed. The afternoon sunshine spilled down in a column from the belvedere enveloping her in its light. Slowly, she unwound the towel turban and let it fall to the floor. ‘Partners, eh?’ she said. Then she reached across the bed and stretched out her hand. It was a chubby wee hand, but her grip was strong. ‘Okay, Oz, it’s a deal. You know, I didn’t come out of the bathroom to get my toothbrush. I came upstairs to fetch the fiver from my jeans pocket. When I found that you were gone but that it was still there, I felt really guilty. You’ll do, partner.’

She glanced up; the beam of reflected sunlight glinted off her damp hair and shone in her eyes. ‘Let me close the trap door if you’re going to sleep,’ I said.

‘No, leave it. It won’t bother me.

‘So: will you tell Archer that we’ve got the note?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. My gut tells me that the fewer people who know we’ve got it, the better it’ll be for us. You and I have got to face up to some nasty truths about this situation, not least about your sister’s part in it. But not now, eh. I’ve got these people to see, and you’ve got some kipping to do.’

‘Okay.’ She was beginning to sound fuzzy. ‘One thing though, Oz, partner.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Figure out the best way to tell Archer, but five per cent isn’t enough.’

I held up my hands. ‘One step at a time. Let’s just concentrate on getting through today in one piece. Now sleep!’

I turned and jumped down from the sleeping area. I couldn’t help looking back as I hit the lower level, and caught a back view of Prim dropping the dressing gown on the floor and slipping naked into my bed. A quick shudder ran through me from top to toe. I pinched myself hard, but I didn’t waken up. If I went back up those steps she’d still be there.

Instead I went across to my desk and began to prepare for my two interviews. Ten minutes later, as I set the telefax to auto answer and picked up my case, soft sleeping sounds floated down from the upper level. She didn’t snore; she simply breathed and it was like music whispering its way around the room. I thought of other people who had slept in that bed. My Dad, with his stertorous snores; Jan, with her snorts, snuffles and occasional gentle farts.

Suddenly I had a strange feeling that my loft had been invaded by a haunting spirit, and that life there was never going to be the same again.

In which the Daft Laddie does a deal.

My two witnesses, coming after my adventures of the morning, were almost refreshingly normal. One was an air steward, who was taking his former employer to an industrial tribunal to contest his dismissal on grounds of sexual misconduct. His defence was that as an adult male over twenty-one he was entitled to have private relations with another man.

The airline’s case was that the male staff shower room at Heathrow could not be construed as a private place. I could see that the publicity accruing to my lawyer client would be worth far more than his fee.

My second witness was a punter whose claim for fire damage had been knocked back by his insurance company, and who was suing as a result. The fire had been caused by a faulty gas heater. Neutral though I was, even I could see that his lawyers would have trouble coming up with an answer to the key question. Why had the heater been lit on the afternoon of the hottest day of the year? If the punter’s story, ‘because my greyhound was sick,’ couldn’t convince gullible Oz Blackstone, then I could only guess at the likely reaction of the Court of Session.

Archer was waiting for me in his office when I arrived at 4.20 p.m., twenty minutes late. He was almost on tiptoes with tension as he paced around the room.

‘Did you see him?’

I still didn’t have a clue about what I was going to say to him, so I decided to use the Daft Laddie Gambit as a stalling device. ‘See him?’ I said, wearing what Granny Blackstone used to call my ‘Gowk’ expression.

‘Willie Kane. Kane and his bird. Did you see them, and have you got the two halves of the fiver?’

Maybe the morning had made me paranoid, but there was something about him, an edge of tension that made me afraid to trust the man. After all, someone had rammed that big knife up under Kane’s chin. Someone had searched Prim’s flat, and had failed to find the divided banknote. Someone had taken Kane’s wallet to hold up the identification of the body.

Suddenly I realised that, if I was to draw up a list of suspects, Mr Raymond Archer would be quite near the top. Nine hundred thousand was a strong lure even to a senior partner, especially if the theft could be blamed on the wee man, and the loss to the firm could be recovered from his assets. Support I had been sent along there just to discover the body, and to fill the time-honoured role of fall guy?

I tried to stop my eyes from narrowing as I looked at him. Playing safe, I decided on Plan B: when cornered, lie with total conviction. I shook my head. ‘No. I never got that close. All hell was breaking loose on down there. When I got to Ebeneezer Street, the place was full of blue uniforms, and the entry to the close was guarded. I decided not to announce myself. I didn’t even get out the car, just turned it around and drove off.

‘I picked up a
News
this afternoon.’ I threw the tabloid down on his desk. ‘They found a man’s body at that address. There’s no way of telling which flat it was, but you never know.’

He picked up the paper and scanned the front-page story, which was accompanied by a mugshot of DI Mike Dylan. Either Archer couldn’t conceive of Kane being the victim, or he was a bloody good actor.

‘What do we do now?’ he asked.

‘Wait till they identify the body.’

Archer looked at me. ‘Surely it couldn’t be Willie?’

‘Is he immune to knives, then?’ I bit my tongue for a second until I remembered that the
News
story, quoting Dylan, had referred to stab wounds.

‘But if it is him?’

‘Then we have to wait until the police are well clear of the place, then find an excuse to go back in there to try to find the fiver. Unless that’s what he was killed for.’ That’s it Oz boy, plant as many thoughts in his mind as you can, to steer him away from the thought that you might have it. ‘Even if it isn’t him, we have to let the police get clear before we make contact again.’

Archer thought for a moment. ‘Okay. Play it that way. You still happy to work on a contingency basis?’ It didn’t take me a second to shake my head. ‘Not now. It’s a new game. I need a fee to cover my time, fifty an hour, plus expenses to Switzerland if we do find the fiver. I want a bigger cut too. Ten per cent’s not unreasonable, given the down-side to you if you don’t get that money back.’

Archer took even less time to think than I had. ‘You’re a hard man, Blackstone, but okay. If you pull it off it’ll be worth it.’ He ushered me to the door. ‘Keep in touch.’ I was outside in George Street almost before I knew it.

In which secrets are revealed, there is a chance meeting, and deeply held principles are discussed.

Back at the loft, Prim’s soft sleeping sounds sounded as if they might go on for a while, but they had been joined by the scrabbling of an irritated iguana. Wallace had his own version of ‘Don’t fence me in’. He looked at me with a cold imperious eye as I released him.

There were no phone messages, but two faxes from solicitors giving me interview commissions on a non-urgent basis. I switched on my Performa and sat down to type up my notes of the afternoon’s interviews. I had almost finished the second, when there was a shout behind me, choked off, followed a few seconds later by a long exhalation.

‘Christ, Oz, I was having a dream there about waking up in bed beside that wee man, then I did wake up, beside a bloody lizard!’