Pay Off (13 page)

It was a chilly day despite a watery sun, so I made sure his old sheepskin jacket was buttoned up high over his thick red polo-neck sweater before we tramped around the enclosures. David was inexhaustible, running from cage to cage while Sammy and I walked after him, arms linked.

'What's your favourite animal?' I asked her.

'Easy,' she said. 'Polar bears.'

'You'll have to explain that one.'

'Purely visual, I suppose. Big and white and furry, friendly faces. They give the impression you could cuddle up next to them and be safe and warm and protected, but when they move you're left in no doubt about their immense strength and power, muscles rippling under the fur, paws big enough to rip a man's head off. Protective of their mates, gentle with their young, afraid of nothing. I love them. I'd take one home with me if I could.'

'They're killers, you know?'

'I know that, and in a way that's part of the attraction. To be that close to something that could kill if it wanted to, and yet to be safe and comfortable. Do you think I need a father figure?'

'Sammy, that's the last thing I think you need,' I said and she giggled.

'What's your favourite?' she asked.

'I knew as soon as the question left my lips that you'd ask 104 it right back,' I said, and slipped my arm around her waist. 'I'll have to think.'

Together we followed David towards the otter pool. It was just after three pm and it was feeding time. There are some questions that reveal a lot about a person. Sammy's answer had told me something about her, it had shown me a side of her I wouldn't otherwise have seen, and my answer would do the same, unless I lied. But I wouldn't lie, I decided.

'My favourite isn't here either,' I said. 'And I'm glad, I feel uneasy seeing any animal in captivity, but I feel most for the dolphins.'

She was listening closely, head tilted, brushing the hair away from her eyes, watching my face. She didn't have to ask why because she knew I'd explain.

'They're so bright, so intelligent, so perfectly adapted to their environment. Have you ever seen them close up?'

'I went to a dolphinarium once, but it made me feel sad.'

'I know. They do tricks, but at least they're not like sealions. Sealions are clowns, clapping, balancing balls and walking on their flippers, doing tricks for food. Nature's buckers. I hate to see that.'

A keeper was throwing small dead silvery fish to the otters with a minimum of fuss, and once the glossy animals had tired of chasing their food he tipped the contents of his red plastic bucket into the greenish water and walked away, leaving them to eat in peace, nervously eyeing each other as they chewed noisily like dossers in a soup kitchen.

'Dolphins are different,' I continued. 'They are much more intelligent. In the wild they're something else. Friendly, sociable, playful, gentle. They don't interfere with anyone else and they're completely non-aggressive, no claws, no sharp teeth, no spikes. But they'll kill to protect themselves, and they'll band together to fight off an enemy. God help the shark that tries to attack a dolphin.'

We stood together, watching David watching the otters 105 feed until they'd finished. Then he romped over and forced his way between us, holding our hands and bouncing up and down as we walked back to the car. He asked if we could come back and I said yes, of course and he said what about Sammy and I said yes, she'd come too and he said what about Shona and I had to think about that one.

She was waiting for us when we arrived back at Shankland Hall, leaning against her Rover, smiling the smile of the wounded.

'You might have said you'd be taking David out today,' she said, looking Sammy up and down as we got out of the car. She stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek, and then hugged David before wiping saliva off his chin with a handkerchief. 'Hiya, kid,' she said to him and he laughed uncontrollably. The sister came out and David went inside with her, still laughing as he waved goodbye. This time there were no 'don't go's', the parting was easier, and I think that was because Sammy had been there and he knew he had another friend.

The three of us drove to a small country pub three miles from the nursing home, taking the two cars which was a problem because I had to choose but it was no choice really, I had to go with Sammy. Strike that, I wanted to go with Sammy.

The pub was a weathered stone building amid a clump of grey houses, probably the only source of live entertainment for miles around, but it was virtually empty, just a few red-veined locals standing by the bar and downing whisky as if the licensing laws had never been relaxed north of the border.

An untidy tower of roughly-hewn logs burned in a large brick fireplace, filling the room with warmth and smoke. To the left was a small bench seat, in front of it a round knee-high table made from the same dark wood, with two comfortable old chairs on either side. Shona and Sammy each flopped down into one. That left the bench seat for 106 me, and when I'd put the drinks on the table and sat down they were facing me like a pair of temple dogs.

'Well, this is nice,' said Shona. 'Cheers.' It wasn't like her to be so bitchy but she was right, I should have let her know I was going to see David and I shouldn't have sprung Sammy on her like an unfavourable diagnosis.

'Did you enjoy yourselves?' she asked me, and I nodded and told her where we'd been.

'He's a lovely boy,' said Sammy, and Shona smiled at her, the smile of a predator ready to pounce. I'd never have to ask Shona what her favourite animal was, it would have to be the tiger, sleek and beautiful, quick to purr and quick to kill. I'd seen her in action many times, and admired her for it, but this was different. This was Sammy, and Sammy was a friend on unfamiliar territory.

'Yes, he is,' said Shona. 'Have you been to Scotland before?'

'No, this is my first time,' Sammy replied. 'But I love it, the air is so fresh, the hills have a rugged beauty that you simply don't see down south, and the people are so friendly. I'll be back.'

'I'm sure you will,' said Shona. 'I'm sure you will,' she repeated, quietly and thoughtfully. I felt like a sick pigeon being fought over by a couple of alley cats, but I couldn't understand why their claws were out, they weren't a threat to each other and I wasn't playing favourites. Or maybe I was, perhaps that was the problem.

'Sammy's a friend of Tony's,' I said, and Shona raised an eyebrow as if to say, 'I just bet she is.'

'Do you work together?' she asked.

'You mean Tony and I? Yes, sort of. I'm in public relations.' Which was, of course, absolutely true but I still grinned and stopped worrying. She was a big girl and could take care of herself. They fenced for a while but Sammy had the edge because I'd talked to her so often about Shona, and after half an hour or so the conversation eased and they 107 discussed clothes and shops, diverting the rivalry into a friendly argument about the merits of their two cities, a dispute about cultures and not personalities. They parted as almost friends and I knew that next time they met they'd peck cheeks like old school chums but they'd never be close, never have heart-to hearts or cry on each other's shoulders. I could live with that.

'You'll be back soon?' Shona asked me in the pub carpark and I said yes, a couple of weeks at the most, I promise, maybe sooner. We took the same road back to Edinburgh but Shona had her foot hard on the accelerator and she soon left us far behind.

A couple of days after Sammy and I got back from Scotland McKinley fixed up the meeting with Davie Read. To fit in with the cover story, we arranged an appointment at Salisbury House in Finsbury Circus, the London head- quarters of the National Bank of Detroit. One of the biggest blocks in the area, its face of light brown sandstone and window boxes bursting with purple and white flowers looked down on four games of bowls being played by shirt- sleeved office workers on a tiny green in the centre of the Circus gardens.

I waited close to the polished granite steps leading up to the main entrance foyer until I saw McKinley and Read arrive in the Granada, the rear wheels catching the kerb as they turned into the Circus looking for an empty parking meter. I walked quickly up to the reception desk and asked to speak to Mr Kolacowosky and hoped to God they didn't actually have anyone of that name in the building. I kept one eye on the glass doors as the girl behind the desk looked 108 through her internal telephone directory, shaking her head and saying yes, she had heard me say the name but how on earth did you spell it?

As McKinley and Read started up the steps I told her not to bother and that Mr Kolacowosky had obviously moved on to better things and I headed for the door. I met them halfway down and steered Read round, my arm on his shoulder, thanking him for coming and saying to Get-Up that, with the sensitive nature of the arrangements, it might be better if we spoke in the open air and not in my office where we never knew who might be next door with his ear pressed against a glass tumbler.

McKinley nodded and said he understood and Read said what a good idea, and all three of us were nodding like those little dogs you see in the back of resprayed Ford Cortinas with large fluffy dice hanging from the driver's mirror.

I herded them over the road to the Circus gardens like a collie with a couple of wayward sheep, encouraged them past the bicycles chained to the black railings, through the gateway and down the tarmac path which circled the bowling green.

It was two-thirty pm so most of the lunching office workers had gone back to their desks and computer terminals, but several of the wooden benches were still occupied by men in suits and women in- smart summer dresses eating Marks and Spencer sandwiches, salads from Tupperware containers and doughnuts from brown paper bags as they stretched out their legs and enjoyed the waning warmth of the afternoon sun.

The air buzzed with the sound of traffic and the two-way radios of the motorcycle messengers. Through the trees came the sound of drilling and cutting and hammering from the repair and refurbishment that's always a part of the City background noise, standards and rents leapfrogging each other madly behind miles of dust-covered scaffolding.

Davie Read was about forty years old and a similar build 109 to McKinley - as I walked between them I felt like a slice of corned beef in a roll. He was clean shaven and sweating slightly, either through nervousness or the heat, and in his large brown checked jacket and beige trousers he could have passed for a middle-ranking insurance salesman with a three-bedroomed semi in Ealing and a two-year-old Sierra in the drive. He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and as we walked he pulled out a green handkerchief from his top pocket, mopped his wet forehead and blew his bulbous, slightly red nose. With his nose and girth he could have been a heavy drinker, but his breath smelt fresh so he was either a gin and tonic or vodka man or he was on his best behaviour. Whatever, he was all I had and McKinley said he could be trusted.

We passed four building workers Iying shirtless on the grass, sunning themselves and looking up the skirts of anything aged between twelve and fifty that walked by.

'Get-Up's told you what I'm after?' I asked, as Read returned the damp handkerchief to his pocket, the sweat already reappearing on his mopped brow.

'Cocaine, a quarter of a million pounds' worth. That shouldn't be a problem, but he was a bit vague about why you wanted it - that's one hell of a lot of sniffing.' The glasses slipped slightly down his nose and he looked overthe top of them like an admonishing professor. Hurry up, boy, explain yourself, except if I did this professor would be off like a scalded rabbit. My feet tingled as a Tube train ran through the tunnel below us from Liverpool Street to Moorgate, and the back of my neck tingled because if he didn't believe me I could end up buried beneath the earth at a similar depth to the train.

'I need to make a lot of money, and fast,' I said. 'I represent a group of investors who borrowed heavily to invest in the commodity markets, coffee in particular. We were banking on a heavy frost this year but it never materialised and instead there was a bumper crop and 110 prices fell like a stone. We weren't alone, a lot of people have got their fingers burnt, it took everybody by surprise. Unfortunately we're not in a position to pay back the money we borrowed and we've only got a few weeks to make good the loss.

'We've decided that the most effective use we could make of our remaining capital is to go back into the commodity market, but in a different way. If we import �250,000 of cocaine we can realize it for close to two million pounds and recoup our losses.'

I spoke slowly and clearly, like a marketing director revealing his strategy for the forthcoming financial year and hoping that nobody would spot any flaws. From where we were standing we could just see the top of the National Westminster Tower, rising a head and shoulders above the rest of the City office blocks. If you could find a very large lumberjack with an axe the size of a bus and persuade him to hack away at the base of the tower long and hard, and if he pushed it in our direction and it began to topple then the top two floors would crash down onto the three remaining games of bowls being played on the green. My mind was wandering, tension does that sometimes, and I brought myself back to reality. This was no time to be daydreaming. McKinley had already told Read the tale of woe, how a group of would-be City whim kids had got their fingers burned gambling on the commodities market with other people's money and how those singed digits would be caught firmly in the till when the auditors came a-calling next month. And to make the cheese in the trap look even more tempting he'd told Read that I was so desperate that he'd be able to cut himself a slice of the action.

Read started to nibble. 'How do you plan to get rid of it?' he asked.

Down boy, don't get too greedy. 'That's my problem -you can leave the distribution to me. All I want from you is the stuff wholesale. I suppose I'm not telling you anything 111 you don't already know if I point out that coke is a rich man's drug. It's served up at all the best dinner parties instead of liqueurs, it's used widely in the City, everyone from advertising executives to merchant bankers is trying and enjoying it. And it isn't bought on street corners. The middle classes have their own distribution system and it's very well protected, believe me. It's not heroin, after all.'