Poisoned Cherries

Chapter 44

I thought about what Susie had said for the rest of the night. I started thinking about it again, as soon as I was wakened next morning by the sound of the door buzzer.

I checked my watch as I answered; it was five to nine. I’d overslept and Liam Matthews was at the door, ready to begin rehearsals for his big week of being a movie star. Having shot the beginning of the movie the day before, we were scheduled to film one of the climactic scenes, a complicated shoot-out in Edinburgh University’s McEwan Graduating Hall, which had been made available to us for a full week.

As I waited for the lift to come up from the street, I ran through what Susie had said. Could Prim have sent the stalker? Could she have planted that photo herself? She’d had the chance. Sure, if she had she’d put on a terrific act when I’d told her about the baby, but she’d put on some A-LIST performances for me in the past. . not least keeping me totally in the dark about her having it off with Mike Dylan, God rot his bones.

Yes, I told myself, as I listened to the whoosh behind the sliding steel door, she could be behind the man who followed me. I wouldn’t put that past her. But to be behind all of it. .

Then the lift opened, and there he was, the GWA World Heavyweight Champion, a true superstar of wrestling. I half expected him to have the big leather and gold title belt slung over his shoulder but, thankfully, he was out of character for the week.

When I first met Liam, I took an instant dislike to him. He was pushy, arrogant, playing all the stuff in his ring persona in real life, pissing off just about everyone around him, and surviving in his job only because of his exceptional physical gifts, his technical skills. . he was a world championship medallist as an amateur. . and his natural acrobatic talent. Pound for pound, because he’s much smaller than most of his enormous colleagues, Liam is as good a sports entertainer. . wrestler, that is. . as the world has ever seen. Happily, he’s also worked his way though his difficult period, found himself a nice girl, and let the nice guy within him work his way to the surface.

He filled a void in my life when Dylan’s death left me short of a best pal; given what I’d learned in the last twelve hours or so, was I glad to see him right then.

He looked me up and down. ‘Jesus, boy, what have you been up to? You look frazzled. You’ve got eyes on you like piss-holes in the snow.’

‘I’d a few beers last night, then I didn’t sleep very well. I’ve had a disturbing weekend.’ I heard myself give a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘Weekend? Fuck, since I came back to Edinburgh, the whole place has been growing crazier and crazier.’ I dumped Liam’s bag in the spare bedroom off the living area, took him into the kitchen and made him coffee, then led him through to my suite. He sipped quietly as I shaved then showered, and as I told him, stage by stage, about everything that had happened to me over the last few weeks, from Prim’s walk-out in California, to her reappearance on the shoot and her visit to Susie in Glasgow. ‘You think I look frazzled, do you?’ I asked him, as I buckled my belt. ‘Is it any bloody wonder?’

‘No,’ Liam conceded. ‘I don’t suppose it is.’ He looked at me, appraising me once again. ‘You know what’s the most dangerous thing in the sports entertainment business?’ he asked, in his light Dublin brogue.

‘Tell me.’

‘Aggression. It’s when a wrestler goes into the ring in an aggressive frame of mind that someone gets hurt. You’re so full of it right now that if you came across this guy who’s been following you, the good Lord alone knows how far you’d go. What you need, Oz, is to take that aggression out on someone who can absorb it.’

‘Who? You?’

Liam laughed; it was loud and refreshing and I felt a bit better right away. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid. I’d damage you. No, you need to take it out on yourself. What’s our timetable for today?’

‘We meet up for lunch at the rehearsal room in George Street; one o’clock sharp.’

‘Fine. Have you sorted yourself out a gym in this town?’

‘Yes. Not far from here.’

‘Then that’s where you and I are going to spend the morning. We’ll get you healed there.’

My friend was as good as his word. We headed down to the Edinburgh Club, where Liam put me through his own training routine. While he’s small for a wrestler, around my height, he’s maybe fifteen pounds heavier than my one-ninety-five, and fast and exceptionally strong with it. He worked each piece of apparatus flat out and he made me keep up his pace all the way. He made me press weights I’d never even attempted before, with my arms and legs, until I screamed out loud with the effort. When we were done with that, he made me put on the gloves and held the heavy punch-bag while I hit it, harder and harder, combinations at first, then single punches, big booming shots, every one of them aimed at a bearded guy, wearing shades. Finally, I nailed the red leather bag with a huge right-hander that broke Liam’s grip on it and sent him rolling over backwards. ‘Jesus,’ he grinned as he got to his feet, ‘I’m glad that was between me and you.’

To wind up, he took me on the judo mat and showed me some new moves, and other stuff he had been working on himself, not necessarily for use in the ring, more the type of throws and holds that had won him his world championship medal. When we were done with that, he sat down in the middle of the mat, and told me to do the same.

‘Close your eyes,’ he instructed, ‘cleanse your mind of all but the most peaceful thoughts. Take the biggest lungful of air you can, and release it slowly, then breathe shallow, quietly, so you can’t even feel it. Then find what’s dearest to your heart and focus on that alone.’

I did as he said. As I exhaled I had a vision, behind my closed eyes, of Jan, my dead soul-mate. She’d come to me before in times of need and she did so again, wordlessly this time. I could hear nothing but the sound of my own heart, its beat slow and steady. As I concentrated on the picture in my mind I seemed to close in on its centre on something within her. It grew and became clearer until two figures formed; Susie and the baby.

I sat there motionless for I know not how long, looking at my child and her mother, aware only of them and of the violence draining out of me. I’d probably have stayed in my trance all day, had not Liam broken it by touching me gently on the shoulder.

‘Okay, boy,’ he said. ‘Time to be moving.’

As I took my second shower of the day, I felt cleansed in every sense. As I towelled myself dry and dressed, I realised just how strung out I had been, and how close to the edge I’d come. I took a look in the mirror, and couldn’t see a trace of the guy who’d been there a few hours before.

‘You have to master yourself, Oz,’ Liam said to me, quietly, as I drove back to the apartment on the Mound. ‘There’s something dangerous about you; it needs to be driven out and kept out. What we did this morning should be your standard work-out from now on, but the most important part of it is the part at the end. If you can’t do anything else, none of the physical stuff, at the very least you should commune with the peaceful side of your nature every day in life.’

Since then, I’ve taken that advice to heart and followed it, religiously; it works, most of the time. I still find it strange to think of the GWA champion as a man wholly cleansed of aggression, but I understand completely why that has to be. These people are trained professionals, kids; don’t try their stuff at home.

We were dropping our gym gear at home. . straight into the washing machine. . when my hard-won serenity was put to its first test. I had missed my morning check of my e-mail, so in the few minutes that were left before we had to head for George Street, I switched on my laptop, plugged in my modem, and set up an AOL flash-session.

Even if there’s mail, normally it takes seconds to run, unless there’s an attachment to download; this time there was, an untitled JPEG file. It took just under a minute until it was complete and Joanna’s voice said ‘Goodbye’. I opened my off-line filing cabinet and looked at the ‘incoming’ folder. There were two new messages; one was a cheery ‘hello’ from Susie, saying sorry that she’d given me a hard time the night before, and assuring me that everything was okay in Glasgow.

The second was from a source I didn’t recognise; it was on Hotmail, untitled, and the sender address was no more than a jumble of letters, ‘mzrimnmeal92’. I opened it, thinking that it was junk mail, expecting someone to be offering me free insurance, promising me a bride from St Petersburg, or trying to sell me a magic pill that would make my dick three inches longer. . I’ve had all of those and more in my mailbox in my time.

This one was different, though; the message was two words, that’s all. ‘Hello, Oz.’ At the foot of the screen, an icon indicated an attachment.

I have my computer set up so that all my downloads go straight to my desktop. I clicked three times, and the folder was open. I found it, easily; ‘u’ for ‘untitled’ with the JPEG symbol. I opened it and watched as it unrolled on the screen.

It was another photograph of Susie and the baby from our Saturday outing, this time taken inside the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. So much for my powers of observation; I’d been wise to the man yet he’d still been able to follow us inside and take the second photograph. Stupid, Oz, rushing off to the gents like that to play detective. You could have come out and they could have been gone.

But they weren’t, I answered myself, which means, surely, that the man’s intentions aren’t violent.

Don’t be daft. The next e-mail will ask for money.

‘What’s up?’ Liam asked.

I showed him the screen. ‘The guy’s been playing silly buggers again.’ Inside, I was strangely pleased with myself. I didn’t feel a trace of anger.

I picked up the phone, called Ricky, and told him what had happened. ‘Give me the sender address,’ he said; I read it out letter by letter, number by number. ‘I’ll try it on Mark Kravitz. He has contacts with the thought police. Mind you, given that it’s Hotmail, they might be able to tell you where it was sent from, but as for identifying the sender, there’ll be little or no chance of that.’

‘Maybe he sent it from his home phone?’

‘Nah. He’ll have used a public internet access for sure.’

‘Have faith, Richard,’ I told him, ‘in the inherent stupidity of your fellow man. This guy’s been daft enough to stalk two of the most protected people on the planet. Maybe he’s been daft enough to lead us to him.’

‘He’d have signed his fucking name if he was going to do that.’

‘Maybe so. Anyway, he’s letting us know he’s still there; that’s the main thing.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ross sourly, ‘look on the bright side; make my fucking day.’

‘What’s up with you?’

‘I get like this when I lose a client.’

‘Who?’

‘Torrent. The fat bastard called me into his office this morning and fired me. He blames me for leaving Anna Chin open to attack. I pointed out to him that it was his niece who instituted the Friday evening call-in system for the reps, and that it was the two of them who left her vulnerable by fucking off to Gleneagles for the weekend, when normally at least one of them would still have been there when she finished.

‘Didn’t do any good, though; Ross Security’s contract is terminated from this date for dereliction of duty.’

‘I’m sorry about that, Ricky.’

‘He may be too; I may sue the fat fucker.’

‘You do that. But it won’t help us catch our killer, will it?’

‘Ah, but I’ve made progress on that. I was in there through the night. I made photocopies of all the Health and Safety sign-in sheets. I know everyone who’s been in there since the company moved into that building five months ago. I also took what I could from Anna’s desk.

‘You never know, the killer might have signed his fucking name too.’ He gave a short bitter laugh. ‘Oh, by the way, Torrent’s been really busy this morning. He called your co-director, Alison, in too.’

‘Is she at work?’

‘She insisted. Don’t worry, she’s covered.’

‘Did he fire her too?’

‘No, nothing like that; but he did ask her to draft a letter to Ewan Capperauld, putting his invitation on hold. In the light of Anna’s death, he feels that it wouldn’t be appropriate to proceed at this stage with something that might be seen as a celebration.’

‘That’s unusually sensitive of him.’

‘Maybe, but he’s still postponed it, indefinitely.’

‘He’ll get his reward in heaven.’

‘Soon, I hope. While we’re waiting, I’m off to look at those lists.’

He hung up and I turned back to my computer. ‘Yes, pal,’ I said to the screen, as I reached for the track-pad to begin the close-down process, ‘pity you didn’t sign your name, isn’t it.’ I looked at the address. . and my hand froze.

All at once, I couldn’t see anything but those letters and numbers. . mzrimnmeal92. I focused on them, totally, as if I was back on the mat, meditating. They seemed to swim before my eyes as I rearranged them in my mind. And all of a sudden, I knew who my stalker was. . the stupid bastard really had signed his name.

I just couldn’t make myself believe it, that’s all.