Blackstone's Pursuits (7 page)

‘You mean they don’t pursue you?’

She finished her lager. ‘Two for the road?’ she asked, gladdening my heart still more. A woman who buys her round! I nodded, and she eased her way through to the bar, fishing a tenner from her purse as she went. I watched, anxiously, to make sure that not even one half of the fiver slipped out.

She was back in a couple of minutes, carrying a pint in each hand. ‘On the subject of women ...’ she began. I guessed what was coming. ‘... what about Jan? If your Dad and her Mum are friends, how about you two?’

‘Jan’s great. We grew up together. Same class at school and all that. She’s someone’s dream woman, no doubt about it, but not mine. We tried the getting serious bit, went on holiday together a couple of times, but we agreed early on it wouldn’t work long-term. We know that we’re best off being pals. I haven’t had a real steady since Thingummy left a few years back. Jan, on the other hand, if she felt like it, could pull blokes as easy as picking her nose. She’s just got her own tastes, that’s all.’

She looked at me over the top of her glass, teasing. ‘And you haven’t?’

For once I was ready. ‘Oh contrayre, Madame. Fussiest of the fussy, that’s Oz Blackstone. Look at the company I keep.’

She smiled, and I wasn’t sure that under the blusher, she wasn’t blushing. I slipped my arms around her waist and drew her against me. We smiled at each other, saying nothing, but exchanging secrets and making promises for the not-too-distant future. Yet I could tell that underneath it all her sexual self-confidence was something of an act. Every so often she would break off eye contact, only to look up again into my face, with a half-grin that said, ‘Be kind to me, that’s all I ask.’

‘Of course I will,’ I said, and she understood. I felt the air begin to sizzle between us.
‘It’s kissing time in Whighams,’
I thought. We leaned closer to each other.

‘Hey there, you two!’ The voice was unmistakable. We separated and looked across the crowded bar, guiltily I expect, at the gallus figure of Mike Dylan. As he pushed his way over to us, another man followed behind him. Dylan’s introduction was unnecessary; I knew this one well enough. He even knew me. ‘This is my boss,’ said Dylan, ‘Detective Superintendent Richard Ross, area head of CID. I was just filling him in on this morning’s events.

‘These are the poor people who found the body. Miss Phillips and Mr Blackstone.’ He looked at me, with just a trace of truculence. I could read his mind.
‘Tough shit, Dylan,’
I wanted to say,
‘she’s taken.’

Ricky Ross was a different sort of copper to the DI. For a start he really
was
a Clever Bastard. He was a big, athletic bloke, good-looking, his dark hair flecked with grey; a man of substance in every way, unlike his sidekick, who had nothing behind the Armani suit but brass neck and ambition. In his younger days, he’d been quite a sportsman, with about a dozen rugby caps for Scotland as a flank forward. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘Oxgangs, a few years back. You were a probationer, but you took our training into the PI line. I forgave you, though, when you stitched up those two bastards Banks and McHugh. They needed taking care of. So how’s business?’

I gave him the obligatory shrug. ‘I’m doing all right. Not as well as you, though. You seem never to be out of the bloody papers.’

It was his turn to shrug. ‘People keep committing crimes, we keep clearing them up. It’s the law of supply and demand in reverse. The public demands action, my lot supply it, and I take the credit.’

He glanced at me with a grin I didn’t like. ‘You must have had a scare this morning. Christ, I remember you on a turnout once. It was a drugs overdose, but CID got involved. You were the greenest probationer I’d ever seen, greener even than Michael here at his first murder.’

He looked down at Prim. ‘And how about you, Miss Phillips? Are you okay now?’

‘Fine thanks,’ said Prim. ‘I’m just glad that Oz was with me, otherwise I’d have been scared to death.’

‘Mmm,’ said Ross, with a half-smile. ‘Just as well. Tell me, have you made contact with your sister yet?’

She looked up at him, sharply. ‘I haven’t a clue where my sister is, any more than I know which of her friends had the key to my flat. Believe me, when I find out...’

Ross nodded. ‘Aye, sure. Just let us know when you do.’

I decided to chance my arm. ‘Have you identified the body yet?’

‘Naw,’ said Ross. ‘Not a notion. We were thinking about circulating a description of his cock. That’s probably our best chance of a response.’

Prim frowned at him. She has a rare talent for making men feel ill at ease, but Ricky Ross was beyond her reach. He simply ignored her, continuing to smile at me. ‘Nae use to him now though, Blackstone, is it? Wonder if he’s left it to anyone in his will?’

‘Aye,’ I agreed, ‘and even if it was shared out, I can think of a couple of polismen who’d find just half of it an improvement! Present company excepted, of course,’ I added, after a pause. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ I asked, as Prim spluttered beside me.

The phrase ‘Can I get you a drink?’ is a device which is, as far as I know, peculiar to Edinburgh. Its meaning depends entirely on the company in which the enquirer finds himself, and, with the finest inflection, shifts from a wholly sincere, ‘Can I get you a drink?’ to an equally sincere, ‘If that’s all you’ve got to say, why don’t you fuck off and leave us alone?’

Ross read my meaning correctly. ‘No thanks, we’re meeting someone. He’s over there, in fact.’ I turned to follow his gaze and caught the eye of a thin, sallow man, who I seemed to remember was a car dealer with a reputation for supplying MOT’s to fit all price ranges.

‘Oh. Okay, then. We’ll look in tomorrow to give you those statements, Inspector.’

The men in suits made their way round the bar, the pack opening up to let them pass at my deliberately loud mention of Dylan’s rank. As they reached the other side, Ricky Ross shot a look towards us, back across the crowded room, which made me feel suddenly that I might just have taken too big a liberty.

‘I didn’t like him at all!’ said Prim, as they were out of earshot.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Welcome to the club. It’s difficult to underestimate a bloke like Dylan, but Ross is in a different league. He operates at a much higher level of nastiness.’

I reached for my glass, but found that during our conversation with the forces of the law an over-zealous bar steward, or an out and out thief, had removed it, and Prim’s lager, although each had been at least half-full. I started towards the bar, but she tugged my arm. ‘Come on. Forget those, it’s time for that pizza.’

 

I should have known. It was Thursday and so the Bar Roma was heaving, without a table in sight. Prim looked at me, frustrated beyond belief, until I put yet another Plan B into operation. We commandeered a taxi from the rank outside Fraser’s and headed for the Pizzarama, halfway up Leith Walk, purveyors of the biggest pizza in town. We bought two monsters to go, then grabbed another taxi and went back to the loft and my extensive, if inexpensive, wine cellar.

A great takeaway pizza is always slightly underdone. The Pizzarama giants, covered in tomato, pepperoni, ham, artichokes and God knew what else, fitted into my oven at a squeeze, and by the time we had finished the champagne - if you leave a teaspoon in the neck of an opened bottle of fizz, it keeps its fizziness; not many people know that - and opened a bottle of Safeway Chianti, they were ready.

Watching Prim eat her first pizza for a year was another of those seminal whatnots. She cut the huge thing into segments which she attacked with her fingers, savouring each ripped-off mouthful, smiling all the time, even as she chewed. When she finished, I still had a third of mine to go. She looked across the breakfast bar at me, her eyes huge and appealing. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I give in. Would you like some more, my dear?’

The Chianti was new and strong. As we reached the end of the bottle, I felt relaxed, uninhibited and very, very ...

Prim licked the last of the pizza from her fingers and gazed across at me. ‘Remember that poor young policeman today?’

‘Who could forget the poor wee bugger? And that effing troll stood in the doorway trying not to hear him? Why d’you ask?’

‘It’s just that tonight, when you said what you said to Ross, I thought for a second, I was going to do the same thing as the boy did.’

‘I’m almost sorry you didn’t. There have been many firsts in my life today. That would have been yet another.’

She drained her glass, and reached for another bottle from the rack, but I reached out a hand and stopped her.

‘Prim,’ I said, doing my level best to make my eyes outshine anything in the night sky, framed in the kitchen window. ‘I’ve been thinking. How would it be - and this has to be a mutually agreed thing, you understand - if we decided, first of all that our deeply held principles and rules must remain unbroken, but that in all the circumstances, you should regard lunch today as having been our first date, and by the same token, that should regard myself as having been out with you at least twice?’

Our elbows were on the breakfast bar. I slipped my right hand into hers, as if we were about to arm-wrestle, and pulled her gently towards me. I kissed her, on the lips again, on her full red lips, not at all chastely this time. Her mouth opened, and I felt her tongue flick against my teeth.

She tasted of the finest sweet wine, delicious, refreshing, making me long for more.

‘In all the circumstances,’ she whispered, our foreheads touching lightly, ‘and given the duration of our acquaintance I would say that such an agreement is, at this moment in time, absolutely...’

In which the Earth moves.

Primavera, Primavera ...’ I moaned her name in the moonlight which flooded down upon us from the belvedere. She leaned over me, kissing my chest, gently biting my nipples, responding to my touch and moving her self against my hands.

‘Where have you come from?’ I asked, drawing her down upon me, and throwing the quilt to one side so that I could wallow again in the perfection of her body, in her firm, full, big-nippled breasts, in the amazing narrowness of her waist, in the round curve of her hips, in the flatness of her belly, in the thick nest of wiry blonde hair at her centre, shining and sparkling as she moved in the moonbeam.

‘I’ve always been here,’ she said, and she kissed me with her lips of velvet, as I had never been kissed before. ‘I think we’ve both been moving towards each other, all our lives. I believe in destiny. You’re part of mine, I’m part of yours. We were set on a course towards each other.’

‘And will we go on together, Springtime and Oz?’

‘Who knows? That’s the thing about destiny; you believe in it and let it take you where it will. Right now we’re together, and it’s always the now that counts.’

I rolled over with Springtime in my arms, burying my face in her. As I flicked my tongue in and out of her navel, she gasped and arched her back. ‘I want you now. I need you now. Come into me now.’

I placed a finger across her lips. ‘Time enough,’ I said, although she could see that I was more than ready. I bent and kissed the inside of her thighs as she spread them wide, licking my way towards her. She moaned again. ‘Now, Oz, now.’

‘Yes, Primavera, yes!’ I covered her and she took me into herself with a supple movement, the sweetest embrace I had ever known. We lay entwined, barely moving. Her tongue was in my mouth again, her fingers wound through my crinkly hair. She pulled my head back and looked at me with smouldering eyes. ‘This is right!’ she hissed. Then her eyelids flickered and she began to shudder, gripping me tight, inside, tighter than I had ever imagined. Her fingers dug into my back, and she cried out, once, twice, again, again. And then I realised that two voices were calling out and that one of them was mine. I was lost. As I thrust into her and held myself there, we were washed by wave upon wave of sensation, by a feeling that every nerve-ending in our bodies was being bathed in soothing oil. It went on and on until I thought it would never stop, but finally the crest was reached and we started back down the slope towards the world, a world which I knew now, for certain, would never be the same again.

She lay there, eyes closed, with a sheen of sweat on her face. I licked it off; she tasted salty and sublime on my tongue. I felt myself start to subside, but she held me inside her. ‘No, don’t go,’ she sighed. ‘I want to keep you there for ever.’

‘That’s all right with me,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of a better place to be. Primavera ... stop me if you think I’m being daft, but ... Primavera Phillips, you are the most beautiful, wonderful woman I have ever met, and I love you. You’re the dream I’ve had all my life, and now you’re here.

‘I know we’ve still to see our first sun come up together, but say you’ll stay with me.’

She touched my cheek with her soft, strong hand. ‘I’ll stay with you for now, Osbert Blackstone. But you’re crazy; you don’t know me. You never really know another person. Some people, many people, maybe most people don’t even know themselves.’

I smiled, filled up to the brim with more happiness than I had ever imagined I could hold.
‘I
know myself, lover. And whatever you say I know you too. I want you now, and for all the tomorrows I’ve got coming.’

We lay there, in each other’s arms, together. I closed my eyes, as she began to move over my body, sliding, animalistic. Suddenly I felt her nails dig deep into my chest. I don’t mind being submissive on the odd occasion, but I’ve never been too good at masochism.

‘Oww!’ I yelled with the pain ...

... and suddenly I was wide awake, staring into Wallace’s accusatory reptilian eye. His claws were digging sharply into my pecs as he balanced himself upon me.

‘Get off me, you green bastard,’ I hissed, picking him up, carefully to avoid ripping more flesh, and placing him gently on the floor. I had forgotten that the settee was one of Wallace’s favourite night-spots. I lay there, under my lonely blanket, in my bulging boxers, and tried to go back to my dream. But it was no use. Instead, I lay there, listening to the sleep sounds of Primavera Phillips, comparing them with those of Jan, my other night visitor. I decided that they were much the same, except that I hadn’t noticed Prim farting yet.