Alarm Call

Chapter 9

The trouble with the grand statement was that I had no idea how I was going to make it happen. I knew one thing for sure, though: I wanted to meet Paul Wallinger. Arguably, the guy had a right to his own kid, but the money that he’d stolen from Prim had once been mine too, and I took a seriously dim view of that.

Actually, the financial side of it begged a lot of questions, but I decided to put them on hold for a while. Prim was strung out, no doubt about that, but she was also drinking way too much. When we were a couple, we’d been what I’d call normal thirty-something users of alcohol. We took it socially, and while often enough it would end the day, it never, ever began it; it worried me that my former wife had turned into someone who looked as if she put Bacardi on her corn flakes.

When I glanced at my watch and said that I’d fix dinner, Susie read my mind. She took Prim off to her room and talked her into sleeping off her latest cargo for a couple of hours.

I was in Ready, Steady, Cook mode, so I didn’t spend too much time in the kitchen. I chopped some Chinese leaves into strips and mixed them with feta cheese, olives and red chillies, seeded, as a salad starter, then blended tomatoes and some coconut cream, and added a few mushrooms, baby corn, and whatever spices my hand fell upon, to create Oz Blackstone’s celebrated impromptu pasta sauce. I set it simmering, cut some monkfish and salmon fillets into cubes, to be added later, and went back to the office. No, I did one other thing before that. I checked that we had plenty of bottled water, still and sparkling, in the fridge: there was going to be no more booze on offer that evening.

Back at my desk, I switched on my computer. Right at the top of my box was an e-mail from Roscoe, reporting progress on my three deals. I sent him an instant message asking if he was available for a face to face; a few seconds later a box popped up on my screen inviting me to switch on my web-cam.

It’s my favourite means of communicating with my agent, other than across the desk: with both of us on high-speed broadband, the quality of both sound and vision is pretty good. I could see from the view through the window behind Roscoe that the LA weather was as usual. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, and in the background I could hear the sound of air-conditioning at full hum.

‘One of the offers we turned down,’ I began, ‘was from the Global Wrestling Alliance. Right?’

‘Yes, it was, but the money was insufficient and there was no guarantee of distribution. They need you more than you need them, I’d say. It wouldn’t have advanced your career, Oz.’

‘Would it do it any harm, though?’

‘The script itself read pretty well, and I rate Santiago Temple, the director. Liam Matthews has done well in the Skinner movies he’s made with you. It would be okay if all other things were equal, but to be honest, they’re offering way below your market value, and they don’t have the financial flexibility to meet it.’

‘I’m not worried about the money, Roscoe; Everett Davis is a very good friend; you must know that.’

‘I do, but sometimes part of my job is to protect you from your friends.’

‘I appreciate that, but I owe him, and this time I feel I have to do it. He wants me in Vegas in ten days. I’d like you to get back to him, cut the nicest deal you can without screwing him financially, but make it work.’

I could see him think. ‘How would it be,’ he said slowly, ‘if we did it for no fee but a sizeable percentage of the gross, say five points? With your name on the marquee, Mr Davis will be guaranteed a distribution deal, so you wouldn’t be robbing him.’

‘Whatever it takes, make it happen for me, and tell him I want the top suite in the Bellagio.’

He grinned. ‘They tell me New York New York is pretty good.’

‘I prefer the real version. See you.’ I closed the program and he disappeared.

I opened my contacts file and began to scroll down; I stopped at ‘K’ and dialled a number.

There’s this guy I know called Mark Kravitz. I met him a few years ago through Miles Grayson, who hired him as my ‘personal assistant’ on my first movie project. Actually he was my bodyguard, but that’s another story. I don’t know exactly where he comes from, or what his background is, but I’ve made some guesses that I reckon are close to the mark. Whatever he was in the past, he’s heavy duty now, and has connections all over the place; I don’t use him as a minder any more, I use him to find them. He recruited Jay Yuille for me, then helped Jay find Conrad and Audrey and, in each case, did a damn fine job. He provides other services, though.

He was at home when I called. ‘Hi, boss!’ (He still calls me that sometimes.) ‘What’s up? Nothing’s gone wrong with Connie and his missus, I hope.’

‘No, they’re great. But something’s happened and it’s just a bit outside Conrad’s job description. There’s an American guy by the name of Paul Wallinger. .’ I spelled it out for him. ‘. . who’s in my bad books.’

‘What’s he done?’

I gave him a quick rundown.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Anything there is; whether he’s got any previous form for openers. I’d like to know whether the FBI might want to speak to him. I’d like to know whether he’s still in the Minneapolis area. I’d like to know whether Wallinger’s his real name.’

‘I’d bet that it is.’

‘Why so sure?’

‘Work it out: he went to Grosvenor Square to have the child added to his passport; he’d hardly have done that if it was a phoney. That probably tells you that he isn’t on anyone’s wanted list either. But leave it with me: someone who pulls a con like this is not a beginner, believe me. I’ll get something on him.’

‘Soonest?’

‘Soon as I can. What are you planning to do?’

‘I’m planning to help Prim get her money back, and her kid, if I can.’

‘By any means necessary?’

‘What does that imply?’

‘This guy’s outside the law, Oz. He’s hardly in a position to complain to the police if, let’s say, someone used basic methods to persuade him to cough up the child and the cash.’

‘Much as I would like to give him a going-over, Mark, I can’t go anywhere near there. I’ve got my reputation to take care of, and my family’s well-being.’

He laughed. ‘Since when did you get cautious?’

‘It comes with age, kids and money.’

‘I can’t knock that. Wallinger probably wouldn’t be too easy to crack, anyway. From what you’re saying to me, he’s been working on this for three years. He probably targeted your ex; that meeting in Gleneagles wasn’t spur-of-the-moment, no chance of that.’

‘Wee Tom wasn’t in his plans, surely.’

‘I don’t imagine so, but …’

I cut across him. ‘That’s what I don’t understand, Mark. Why did he take the kid?’

‘He’s his father; maybe he loves him and couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing him again.’

‘Yeah, and maybe I really did play cricket for England.’

‘In that case, there’s only one answer: he’s going to sell him.’

‘Sell him? On fucking e-Bay, you mean?’

‘It would probably be legal, in some states at least: he could offer him up for adoption and invite bids. But I wasn’t thinking of anything as downmarket as that. Remember who Tom is. He’s not just your ex’s son, he’s Miles Grayson’s nephew. Wallinger may have cleaned your wife out, but Miles is one of the richest blokes in Hollywood. Are you going to bet me that at some point, maybe quite soon, he doesn’t offer to return the kid to Primavera in return for, let’s say, the money he’s embezzled already, plus another couple of million sterling?’

‘That would be blackmail, man.’

‘Bollocks, boss. He’s the child’s father, and he has de facto custody. If Prim agreed to the deal and Miles put up the extra cash, it would all be above board. . more or less. It strikes me, boss, that friend Paul’s been thinking on his feet. Are you sure you don’t want him taken out? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper.’ He chuckled, but I know Mark: he was being dead serious.

‘No, mate,’ I told him. ‘Potentially it would be a hell of a lot more costly, so let’s forget you ever asked me that.’

‘The answer’s no, then?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Fair enough; I like to be totally clear about things like that. I’ll get digging straight away and report as soon as I can.’

I hung up, and walked through the house to the leisure wing, as we sometimes called it when we were being flash. Susie was there, feeding wee Jonathan. . from a bottle: the real stuff had gone with the cutting of the teeth. . and watching Janet as she played with a toy in the far corner, well away from the pool.

‘What do you think?’ I asked her.

She bridled at once. ‘I think it’s bloody disgraceful!’ she exclaimed. ‘When they get this, this … this swine back, I hope they throw the whole bloody set of encyclopaedias at him, never mind the book. Theft, child kidnap, he’s got a lot to answer for.’

‘Not as much as you might think; for openers, in the absence of a court order against him, a father can’t kidnap his own kid. As for the money … Prim let him manage it, remember. It might not be as easy as you think to persuade an American court to extradite him.’

I called across to my daughter. ‘Hey, Janet, want to come and help me finish making the grown-ups’ dinner?’ It was a rhetorical question; she came running.

Actually there wasn’t much to do; Ethel would have raised hell if I’d let her get fish all over her hands so I gave her the kitchen scales, sat her on a stool and let her weigh out three portions of the gluten-free pasta that Susie and I prefer, a hundred grams each for the women and a hundred and fifty for Daddy, but don’t tell them, eh, wee Jan.

She did it very carefully, picking up every piece she dropped on to the work surface and putting it back into the packet. I let her have a Coke for her trouble; when Ethel came to fetch her at bedtime she saw it and treated me to her best nanny glower, but what the hell? My dad let Ellie and me drink the stuff, and he’s a bloody dentist.

When Prim came down for dinner, she seemed to be back on an even keel. She saw the fizzy water on the table, and smiled softly. ‘Very tactful, Oz,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want any more to drink for a while, so don’t let me put you two off having wine.’

‘All for one and one for all, d’Artagnan,’ I replied.

She shook her head. ‘No, I must be Porthos; he was the piss artist among the Musketeers, wasn’t he?’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Susie assured her. ‘We give our livers a rest quite often.’ That was more tactful than true.

Prim was impressed when she saw the salad, which I’d dressed with balsamic vinegar and chopped herbs. ‘Did you teach him to do this, Susie?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘My mother did; I made it for you several times. You must have been too blootered to remember.’

‘Hey, I didn’t drink that much in those days. What you saw this afternoon has only happened recently; since Paul and Tom disappeared, mostly I’ve hung around the flat, drinking and waiting for the phone to ring.’

‘But it hasn’t?’

‘No.’ She paused. ‘Well, it has done, a couple of times in the last fortnight. The first time, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I thought it had to be him, but it wasn’t, just some bloke looking for him. I told him he didn’t live there any more then hung up. When he called again a few days later, I got really stroppy with him, and told him to eff off. Apart from that, for all that I stared at it, for hours on end, the damn thing’s been silent.’

Her mouth twisted. ‘That’s all going to stop; the fight-back begins as of now.’

‘As of now?’ I quoted back at her. ‘Does that mean that you haven’t told the police about the theft?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Or no; as in no, I haven’t.’

‘Why the hell not?’

She sighed. ‘I don’t know, Oz. The attitude of those two idle unsympathetic bastards who turned up when I did call them didn’t exactly encourage me to ask for their help again. Plus, I had this vision of Paul being arrested in the States and Tom being taken into care. Or maybe my mind was just fuzzed with the drink. I don’t know.’

‘It must have been fuzzed. If the police had put you off, why not call Dawn and Miles? Or why not just try my mobile number, without the elaborate charade to make me call you?’

She put down her fork, and looked me in the eye. ‘Do you remember the last time I saw you guys, when I came to Edinburgh with Nicky Johnson and Miles laid him out. . probably for his own relative safety, for God knows what you would have done to him? He and Dawn let me know what they thought of me, and you, you chose that moment to let me find out that you and Susie had a child together.’

‘Hey, I didn’t choose it on purpose; I honestly thought you must have known.’

‘Whatever! After that I could hardly come crawling back to either of you, drunk and tearful, to tell you that I’d made a complete arse of myself. Well, could I?’

‘As it happens, the answer to that is “Yes”, but all you’d have had to tell either of us was that you were in big trouble and needed help. Dawn and Miles are parents as well, remember.’

She seemed to soften. ‘How is Bruce?’

‘Nearly as big as his dad, last time I saw him, and he’s only just coming up on four. They’re talking about having another. You’ve hurt them, you know, Prim, by cutting them out of your life.’

Her eyes went moist again, my cue to clear away the salad plates.

They were dry when I returned, carrying a big pot filled with Blackstone’s special pasta pescado, as I liked to call it, and three bowls, all on a tray. She and Susie were talking quietly, and carried on until I had f inished dishing up.

‘You never did this for me,’ Prim asserted, when she’d tasted the sauce.

‘I bloody did, when we had that apartment in St Marti, before. .’ I stopped myself, but I should have known she’d carry on.

‘. . before you left me to go back to Jan.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

‘No wonder I don’t remember it, then.’

‘Hey, little Miss Innocent, if we’re casting up, what about. .’

‘Enough!’ Susie shouted. ‘We are not casting up. .’ She grinned. ‘. . or the pasta will either get cold or be thrown all around the room, and it’s too good for that.’

That was one thing we were all agreed on: it was so good that not only did Prim wolf hers down, by the time she’d had seconds there was hardly any left for me.

Dessert was easy; it was Haagen-Dazs time, vanilla chocolate fudge, with some white-chocolate sauce poured over it. Susie made a disapproving face, but she ate hers all the same; we don’t do it often. When she and Prim were finished, they went off to the kitchen with the empties. I moved back to the leisure wing. Being midsummer in Scotland there was still plenty of daylight. I was enjoying it when they returned with two coffees, and what was left in the cafetiere. I don’t drink much of the stuff these days; my way of keeping consumption under control is not to have it at all at home.

‘So,’ said Susie, heavily, after she had she folded herself into an armchair, ‘what are you going to do, Oz? This bastard Wallinger has got to be brought to book, and Prim has to get Tom back, and her money.’

‘I’ve already done something.’ I told them about my call and my instructions to Mark Kravitz.

‘I’ve met him, haven’t I?’ Prim ventured, tentatively.

I nodded. ‘A few years back.’

She gave a quick uncertain look. ‘I remember him. He’s sort of … sinister? No, that’s not the word. He’s a bit dangerous, isn’t he?’

‘He can be, but I’ve told him just to find out whatever he can about the guy and not to have anything nasty done to him.’

‘Are you sure he understood you?’ Susie asked.

‘Certain, love.’

‘Could you change that?’ Prim muttered, grimly. ‘I think I’d like him good and dead.’

I looked at her. ‘Let me tell you something: you don’t ever say that to me, or anyone else, especially anyone else, ever again. If you come out with something like that in front of the wrong person, and he thinks you mean it. . you could find yourself in so deep you won’t even see the surface.’

‘What makes you think I don’t mean it?’

‘Unless you tell me you don’t, I won’t lift another finger to help you.’

‘You never used to be quite so scrupulous.’

‘I’m not playing games, Prim.’

‘Okay, I promise, when I find out where Paul is I won’t hire a hit man. Is that okay?’

‘That’ll do.’

‘Good, because I want to rip his balls off personally.’

I remembered what Dawn had said about her. ‘When we get to that stage, there may be a queue. This man didn’t happen upon you by accident, and make it all up as he was going along. There’s a fair chance you’re not the first rich widow or divorcee he’s fleeced. Let me ask you something: when you met him up at Gleneagles, when he was on that golfing holiday, did you ever see his clubs?’

‘He told me he hired them from the pro shop.’

‘But you never thought to check?’

‘Why should I? He was my escape route.’

‘Mug. One quick question and you might have saved yourself a lot of grief: a real golfer doesn’t hire.’

‘Maybe not, but if I had asked that question, I might never have had Tom.’ She had me there; I didn’t take it any further.

‘Oz,’ my wife butted in, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘When are you not, my angel?’

She ignored my idle sally. ‘Everett’s movie,’ she continued. ‘If you agreed to do it, you’d be in the US, and maybe you’d have time to ask a few questions.’

‘It may have escaped your notice, Sooz, but America is one hell of a big place.’

‘I know, but still. If you didn’t ask them yourself, you could hire people over there.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ Best to let it be her idea, I reasoned. ‘But I’ve got something else in mind before that. You need some top-class legal advice, Prim, and I know just where you can get it.’

I took my mobile from its hiding place in the breast pocket of my shirt and called my sister. My nephew Jonny’s voice sounded in my ear. ‘This is the Sinclair residence.’

‘And this is your uncle, kid.’

‘Hello, Uncle Kid,’ he said cheerfully. ‘What can I do for you?’ I was pleased at his flippancy. Jonny had been through a bad time a few months before; I’d been very worried about him for a while, but he was coming through it okay.

‘You can stop being bloody cheeky and put me on to your mother.’

‘I’ll see if she’s available.’

‘Why wouldn’t she be? Is Perry Mason there?’

‘Who?’

‘A fictional lawyer; before your time.’

‘Ach, you mean Harvey? Yes, he is actually.’

‘Well, actually, it’s him I want to talk to.’

‘Hang on, then.’

I waited for a few seconds, then a few seconds more. Finally, the advocate announced himself. ‘Harvey January.’ Jonny couldn’t have told him who was on the line.

‘Hiya, it’s Oz here. You and I are having lunch next Tuesday, yes?’

‘It’s in my diary.’

‘Can we do it tomorrow? There’s something I want to pick your brain about.’

He paused for thought. ‘Yes, I suppose so, if it’s all right with Ellen.’

‘It will be. Where?’

‘Where’s good for you?’

‘How does Gleneagles sound? Bring Ellie and the boys, and their golf clubs, and yours too.’

There was a pause. ‘I don’t play, Oz.’ For a man with prospects of the Bench, that was a surprising admission.

I smiled. ‘Let me suggest something to you, then. If you have any plans for my sister that involve impressing our father, her sons, and me, you might give it a try.’

‘Wouldn’t they like sailing?’

^‘My dad would drown you if you tried to get him into a boat.’

He sighed, but I could hear a quiet laugh there too. ‘Ah, well, if that’s what it takes. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Meet me at midday, for lunch at twelve thirty; we’ll get the brain-picking over with first.’

As I put my mobile away the girls were watching me. ‘Who was that?’ Prim asked.

‘That was a man who wants to make a good impression on me. In the process he might do you some good too.’

‘But why Gleneagles?’

‘One, because it’s where this all started, so it’s as good a place as any. Two, because it’s handy for your parents. The lunch invite doesn’t include you. Once we’ve talked to Harvey, you’re going to see your mum and dad, and you’re going to do something you should have done a while ago: you’re going to tell them about their grandson.’