Alarm Call

Chapter 16

The second thing that I saw when I woke was Primavera, sitting up in her bed with her back against a pillow, reading the Michael Jecks. It was called The Mad Monk of Gidleigh. I thought to myself that the man went in for colourful titles, and wondered how much trouble he had getting them past the marketing department.

‘What time is it?’ I mumbled.

‘Twenty past eight. I’ve been awake for a couple of hours, listening to you snore.’

‘I’ve told you before, I don’t snore.’

‘Do you ever ask Susie about that?’

‘She tells lies as well.’

‘Aye, sure.’ She saved her page with one of the markers Jeff had given us, and put down the book. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘First? You’re going to stop being naked, then I will.’ Under the duvet I was like a rock, but then I often am when I waken. ‘Then we’ll have some breakfast; then we’ll go and find your boyfriend’s mother, and put the thumbscrews on her till she tells us where her fucking son is.’

‘As easy as that, eh?’ she said, but a little gloomily.

‘Let’s hope so, till we know otherwise.’

‘Will we go straight to the address that man gave you?’

‘I thought we should check out HHH Asset first, in case she’s still working there. It’s not far from here, according to the map.’

‘Mmm,’ she conceded. ‘Good idea.’ She jumped out of bed; as she headed for the bathroom, I couldn’t help noticing that she’d kept up a healthy tan, and also that whatever had happened to the top deck, her bum was still pretty firm. I turned, looked over my shoulder at Susie’s smiling photo and mouthed a quick ‘Sorry.’

I shook my head, as if to clear the cobwebs, but also to shake some sense into myself and to make myself bring this quest back under my control. I picked up the bedside phone, pushed the button for an outside line and dialled Susie’s mobile number, using that rather than the landline, since I couldn’t be sure where she’d be in the middle of the afternoon.

‘Hi,’ she answered, bright and breezy, ‘you up and about yet?’

‘Just about. Everything okay?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be? How was the flight?’

‘No problem.’

‘And the hotel?’

‘Posh. Very high tech, big telly on the wall and all that stuff; there’s another one in the bathroom, so you don’t have to miss any of The West Wing while you’re sat on the crapper. I tell you, Janet would love it. I’ve even managed to sleep off most of the jet-lag.’

‘It’s good that you were able to. I’ve been having visions of them buggering up the booking and putting you in the same room.’

I laughed, then swung myself out of bed and walked through to the sitting area, getting as far away from the bathroom as possible, in case the phone was sensitive enough to pick up the sound of the shower.

‘Have you made any progress yet,’ Susie asked, ‘or haven’t you had time?’

I told her about our accidental meeting with Jeff, and of his confirmation that Wallinger’s mother was still alive and in town. ‘We’re going to run her to ground this morning.’

‘How will you play it?’

‘I’ve still got to work that one out,’ I admitted. ‘I’ll call you later, and tell you how it went.’

‘Do that. What’s Minneapolis like?’

‘Lots of glass. I’ll take some photos, once I’ve had breakfast.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Okay. Hey!’

‘What?’

‘I love you.’

‘Don’t you forget it either!’

I should have felt better for the call, but I didn’t, only more uncomfortable. At some point I’d tell Susie what had happened, but not over the phone, that was for sure.

By the time both Prim and I were groomed to face the day it was gone nine o’clock. We had a buffet breakfast downstairs, then she blagged a street map from the reception desk, to try to work out where we were going. ‘Marquette Avenue,’ I reminded her, as she peered at the guide.

‘We’re in luck,’ she said. ‘It’s only two blocks away.’ We didn’t know how the numbers ran, but when we asked the duty manager, he told us that we were looking for a building on the corner of Marquette and Eighth Street.

The hotel led more or less directly on to the Skyway system. Charles the chauffeur had told us about it, explaining that it links most of the office blocks and malls in downtown Minneapolis by a network of walkways one floor above street level, so that people can get around in comfort all year round, in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter.

With a couple of weeks in Las Vegas coming up, I wasn’t bothered about the heat, but Prim, ever the explorer, insisted that we take it. On the map it looked simple, but it wasn’t as easy as all that; we took a couple of wrong turns and found ourselves first in the Wells Fargo Museum, and then in the local version of Saks Fifth Avenue, before finally we reached our destination. There was a big sign over the entrance, which read, ‘The IDS Building’. ‘Look at that!’ I said. ‘In Britain they can barely remember his name; here they’ve named an office block after him.’

We studied the business directory and found HHH Asset, listed alphabetically. As we looked at the board, Prim asked the same question Susie had. ‘How are we going to play this?’

I’d been considering that all the way there, which was maybe why we got lost so often. ‘I think you should stay out of sight,’ I told her, ‘at first at any rate. We don’t want to spook this woman. Paul might well have warned her that you’re likely to show up looking for him, so if you go crashing in there, she might just clam up. Let me go up on my own, and see how I get on.’

‘What will you say to her?’

‘I’ll come up with something, don’t worry.’

She was reluctant to miss the moment, but she saw the sense in what I was saying, so I parked her in a Starbucks … How did people survive without them and McDonald’s? … and took the elevator.

HHH Asset seemed to occupy all of one floor; I walked through the glass double doors and into the reception area, where a very well-dressed Chinese girl welcomed me with a dazzling smile. A badge on her jacket said that her name was Mai Lee, and I guessed that she was trained to treat everybody who came through the door as a potential investor.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she said, in a voice that would have brightened anyone’s day, ‘and how can HHH be of service?’

‘I’m looking for a lady I was told works here.’ I have this thing that when I talk to Americans I sort of pick up their inflection. ‘Her name is Martha Wallinger.’

‘That would be me.’

I turned. An older woman, working at a big desk against a window, had risen and was approaching me. She was stocky, almost square built, heavily made-up and with jet-black hair that looked to be lacquered stiff. If her son looked like me, he must have taken after his father, for she didn’t look a bit like my mother.

She didn’t look hostile, though; in fact, she looked anything but.

‘Mrs Wallinger,’ I began, ‘I’m. .’

‘I know who you are,’ she drawled. ‘You’re an actor: I saw you in a movie last week. It was called Red Leather, wasn’t it? If you give me a minute I’ll recall your name.’

That was me put in my place, but I extended the hand of friendship nonetheless. ‘Oz Blackstone,’ I announced.

‘Of course, how silly of me not to know straight away. What brings you to Minneapolis, Mr Blackstone?’

‘Call me Oz, please. In five words: Mrs Blackstone, Mall of America.’

She laughed. That seems to answer everything in the twin cities. Mai Lee smiled too, even more sunnily than before. She really was very pretty; I glanced at her left hand. No jewellery: an unattached movie star might have had a chance there.

‘And what,’ Mrs Wallinger went on, ‘brings you to see me?’

‘A promise,’ I told her, and then switched back into lying mode. ‘I made it to your son Paul, two or three years back, when I met him in Los Angeles. We were working on different projects on the same sound-stage, and someone said that we looked a little alike, so we got talking. I told him a little about me, and he told me about himself, and how he’d got started in the business, through the University of Minnesota and everything. I told him that I’d never been there, and he said that if I ever went, I had to be sure to look up his mom. In my world, a promise is a promise, so here I am.’

She beamed, nearly as wide as Mai. ‘How very gallant.’ And then she paused. ‘The problem is, Oz, that we have a rule at HHH that employees do not have personal visits in working hours, and since I’m the office manager, I can’t be seen to break it.’

Oh, bugger, I thought. That’s cut me off short.

‘However,’ she continued, ‘I only work half the day on Wednesdays.’ She smirked. ‘I’m older than I look, you see. So I’ll be free from lunchtime.’

If she was angling for an invitation that wasn’t quite what I’d planned either. I wanted some time alone, no witnesses. ‘Damn it,’ I exclaimed. ‘I’d love to take you to lunch, but I have to meet Mrs Blackstone.’ I couldn’t make myself say, ‘my wife’.

Once again, Mrs W bailed me out. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘why don’t you just call on me? If you have the time, that is. It’s not every day that a friend of my rascal son looks me up. In fact, it’s not any day. Now my other son, his friends pop in to see me all the time.’

She grabbed a pen and a pad from the reception desk. I watched her scribble down the same address that Jeff in the bookstore had given me, and took it from her. ‘That’s where I live. It’s not far from here, down in the Warehouse District.’

‘Okay, that would be fine. Would three o’clock be okay?’

‘Three o’clock would be perfect: and you must bring Mrs Blackstone. I insist.’

The two women smiled me out of the door and into the elevator. When I went back to the Starbucks where I’d left Prim, she wasn’t there, but that didn’t worry me. In all the time I’ve known her, she’s been incapable of sitting on her arse for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch. That’s something else that made her holing herself up in that flat of hers all the more out of character.

I allowed myself my one and only coffee of the day and waited for her. In ten minutes she was back, carrying a Saks bag. She showed me what was inside: a pair of pyjamas, men’s, XL. ‘A present for you,’ she announced, ‘to preserve your modesty.’

‘What did you get for yourself?’

‘It’s only the bottom half that’s the present. The top’s for me.’

‘Seems fair.’

‘How did you get on?’ she asked impatiently, as if the distraction had upset her.

I told her about our three o’clock appointment.

‘Do you think she knows anything?’

‘Prim, I haven’t a clue. I told her that I promised Paul in LA that I’d look her up, and she bought it. She didn’t say, “Didn’t your ex-wife have my son’s kid?” or anything else that might have tipped her hand.’

‘So will I go with you this afternoon?’

‘She’s expecting you. If Paul’s showed her a photograph of you, she’ll twig right away; that’ll tell us plenty.’

I ditched what was left of my coffee. . frothy gunge, mostly. . we took our joint nightwear back to the hotel, then spent the rest of the morning looking round the very compact city centre, mostly using the Skyway, but coming down to ground level occasionally and out into the relatively modest heat, to look at landmarks like the modest statue of Hubert Humphrey. . before he was a senator, and then Vice President, he was Mayor of Minneapolis, and if his statue is life-size he wasn’t very big. . the Federal Building, and the remarkable Marquette Plaza, all glass front and angled so that when you stand in front and look at it, all you see is a reflection of the sky, a bit scary when a jumbo out of MSP International flies across it.

By the time we’d done that, grabbed a couple of sandwiches, two root beers, then a coffee for Prim in a diner called Ike’s, it was time to head for the Warehouse District.

The map showed us that Mrs Wallinger lived only a few blocks from the Merchant’s, but her address was outside the zone of the Skyway, so we took a cab. The experience couldn’t have been further from London, in every respect. The driver seemed to be on another plane of existence, and I had to guide him street by street until he found the block we were after.

Residentially, downtown Minneapolis is condominium land, but the Warehouse District is different. It is, as its name suggests, a collection of former storehouses most of them now converted into loft apartments. Martha Wallinger’s looked as if it had been done a few years ago, but the refurbished building still looked very smart, as if it was well managed. If I’m ever sentenced to live in Minnesota, I’ll want something like it.

It had a concierge, but each apartment had a buzzer out in the street. I pressed the one for F4/3 and waited. . for about two seconds: she must have been right by the intercom. She was standing by the elevator too, when it opened on to the fourth floor.

‘Oz, I can’t tell you how good it is of you to call on me,’ she exclaimed. She had changed into a lighter, less formal trouser suit than the one she wore to work, but the makeup was still impeccable and the hair immovable.

I watched her as Prim stepped out of the small lift; she’d been standing behind me, so that Mrs Wallinger couldn’t see her face until that moment. If she had seen a photograph, it had either been a very bad one, or acting must run in the Wallinger family, for not a flicker of recognition crossed her face.

‘This is Mrs Blackstone,’ I told her.

Martha took a step towards her, hand outstretched. ‘How lovely to meet you, my dear. It must be wonderful being married to a movie star. I always hoped that my Paul would make it big in the business and that I would get to bask in his glory,’ she smiled, in a way that could have conveyed sadness or disappointment, or both, ‘but it hasn’t happened, not yet at any rate.’

She half turned towards her front door. ‘Come on in, both of you. There’s coffee on the hob.’

She led us into a spacious apartment, a big all-in-one living area with several doors leading off, not unlike Prim’s pad in London, except that it was twice the size and the ceilings were a lot higher. I expected it to be hot, since there was a lot of glass, but it was air-conditioned.

‘Nice place,’ I commented. ‘Have you always lived here, Mrs Wallinger?’ I knew the answer but I wanted to get her conversational. I learned back in the days when I was a private enquiry agent in Edinburgh that once you start people talking sometimes they can’t stop.

‘No, I haven’t, only for the last few years. John, my husband, and I lived in St Paul and we raised our family there, but it was difficult for me after his death, so I bought this place. . he was well insured. . and moved across the river. Oh, and Oz, please call me Martha.’ She turned. ‘I didn’t catch your first name, my dear.’

‘It’s Primavera,’ I told her.

‘Primavera! What a lovely name. I’ve never met anyone called Primavera before.’

‘She’s called Prim for short.’

‘How absolutely charming,’ said Martha. ‘Well, Prim, will you have some coffee? I’ve made a fresh pot.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘Oz, you too?’

‘I won’t, thank you, but if you have some mineral water, that would be good.’

‘Of course I have.’

As she went to the kitchen area to pour, I glanced around the place. It was comfortably, but not expensively furnished, there was a big television in the far corner and much of the available wall space was occupied by bookshelves.

‘You’re a big reader, Martha,’ I called across.

‘Sure am, Oz,’ she called across. ‘Mysteries, mostly; I just love ’em. Can’t get enough. You know those Skinner movies you did? I’ve read all those books, and that other Edinboro’ fella too.’

I strolled across to a long sideboard; it looked to be sixties vintage, and I guessed that she might have had it all her domestic life. Several family photographs were displayed on it: a tall, crew-cut man in US military uniform, with a chestful of medals, a graduation photograph starring a young man who looked a bit like me, another showing a second youth, slick, spotless and smiling in a sharp suit, and a fourth of the same man, older and much more casual, with a wholesome all-American blonde and two kids, girl and boy, aged perhaps on either side of ten.

‘My little family,’ said Martha, as she returned with a tray, which she put on a coffee-table in the middle of the sitting area. She gave Prim a mug of Java and me a glass of something fizzy and slightly tinted, then offered us doughnuts from a big plate. Prim took one; I passed.

She looked back towards the photo display. ‘That’s John, my late husband; he was in Vietnam, you know. He won two Silver Stars and many other decorations. Then there’s Paul, but you know him, of course, and then there’s John the Second, my other son, his wife Sheryl, and their children, Lori and John Wallinger the Third.’

I almost said that the kid sounded like a dispossessed Balkan king, but decided that that would not be a good move. Instead I went straight in there. ‘Paul doesn’t have a family, then?’

‘No, I’m afraid he doesn’t. I have to rely on Johnny for the supply of little Wallingers.’

‘Funny. When I met him he told me that he had a thing going with a British girl, and that she had just got pregnant.’

I’ll swear she went pale under the makeup.

‘Surely not,’ she murmured, her eyes suddenly shifting, as if she had been taken completely off guard.

‘That’s what he told me, I’m sure. He said that he was based in London when he wasn’t working.’

‘When was this?’

‘A couple of years back, in LA, like I said earlier. Actually, maybe it was more recently than that, maybe it was only eighteen months.’ I gave her a west-coast laugh. ‘Yes, it was winter, but in southern California it’s easy to forget, isn’t it?’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yup. You’ve been to LA, haven’t you, Martha?’

She shook her head. ‘No, Oz,’ she replied, quietly, frowning a little. ‘I’ve never been to California.’

‘What? Not even to see where Paul works, much of the time?’ I grinned. ‘Mind you, who the hell am I to talk? My father’s never been there either; he’s been too busy pulling teeth in Scotland, just like you’ve been too busy managing assets in Minneapolis. You should take a trip, Martha, even if it’s only to visit Universal Studios; you could take Lori and John the Third. They’d love it, I promise you. It might not be on the same scale as Disney World, but it’s pretty spectacular.’

She smiled again, as if she was pleased that I’d gone off on another tangent. ‘Maybe I’ll do that; too many of us never leave the Midwest, you know. And I do love my grandchildren.’ She looked at me, then at Prim. ‘You have children, don’t you? I’m sure I read somewhere that you do.’

‘Two,’ I replied. ‘Janet and Jonathan; they’re at home in Scotland with their nanny.’

Prim put a hand on my arm; for a second I thought she was going to say how wonderful they were, but she didn’t. ‘Martha,’ she said instead, ‘do you think I could use your bathroom?’ She grinned at me. ‘That root beer we had at lunchtime; you know the stuff always does this to me.’

‘Me too,’ our hostess agreed. ‘It’s that door straight behind where you’re sitting.’

‘Thanks. Excuse me.’

I guessed that she might be doing a runner to get out of talking about the kids: but then again, maybe she just needed to pee.

As soon as she was gone, Martha’s frown returned. ‘I can hardly believe my son said that to you. He was living with a British girl and she was pregnant? The damn fool.’

‘It happens, Martha; you shouldn’t blame the girl.’

‘No, I mean it, he’s a damn fool. He shouldn’t be telling you things like that.’

‘Come on, it’s a different world we live in, guys like Paul and me.’

‘Oz, you’re not like Paul. My older son is a fantasist; he sails too close to the wind, he talks too much. I’ve always feared that one day he’ll talk himself right into trouble.’

‘Come on, Martha. He’s an actor. What sort of trouble could he talk himself into?’

She looked at the floor, as if she was working up the courage to tell me: and then Prim came back from the bathroom.

‘That’s better,’ she said, with evident relief. ‘Martha, do you think I could have some more coffee now?’

‘Of course, my dear,’ her almost-mother-in-law replied, gratefully, picking up her mug and heading back to the kitchen.

‘Oz,’ Prim whispered, urgently, as soon as she was out of urgent-whisper range, ‘go to the bathroom.’

‘I don’t need to; you’re the one had the second root beer.’

‘Don’t be dense, just do it.’

I followed orders. ‘Martha, do you think I might too?’ I called across the vault.

‘Of course.’ She gave a girlish laugh. ‘Maybe you could autograph the mirror in lipstick, in case my friends don’t believe you were here.’

I got up and went into the bathroom, walking briskly as if I was on an urgent mission. As I closed the door behind me, I looked around. Okay, it was a very nice bathroom, not as nice as the one we had in our hotel room, or any of the five bathrooms I have in my house, but still nice, as American bathrooms, in my experience, tend to be. It was also full of women’s things, all carefully arranged. There was nothing unusual about it, though: bath with shower over it, basin set into a marble top, toilet and bidet. (Suddenly I was reminded of a true story. Once, a few years back, before I was famous, my dad and I were in the golf-club bar with some other blokes, and the conversation got round to which of us actually used a bidet and for what. To my surprise my dad owned up. He said that sometimes, rather than have a full bath, he found it handy for washing his bits and bobs. To which our chief inquisitor replied, ‘Hey, Mac, washing your bits is one thing, but washing Bob’s as well will definitely get you talked about in Anstruther.’)

As I tried to work out why Prim had sent me in there, I found that I actually did need to pee; and so I did. I was washing my hands afterwards, looking in the mirror, when it caught my eye, the one item in the place that looked as if it shouldn’t have been.

I picked it up. It was a duck, a rubber duck, of the kind one floats in the bath, if one is a child, or a very regressed adult. It was a familiar object to me, for my kids have one each; Janet has lost interest in hers, but wee Jonathan thinks his is great. Theirs are plain ducks, though, the usual yellow. This one was different; it had a slightly superior look about it, and it was dressed, or painted, entirely in the colours of the Union Jack. Martha Wallinger definitely did not strike me as a closet (not even a water-closet) anglophile, and the grandchildren in the photograph were, going by their age and their nationality, more likely to be found shooting ducks than floating them in their baths.

I was musing upon this as I rejoined the ladies. There were two ways I could take things: either I could simply let them drift, or I could start spilling the beans about the fantasist son Paul and putting pressure on his mother to tell us where the hell he was. I had a strong suspicion that if I did the first, as I was inclined to, then sooner rather than later, Prim would launch into the second.

So, as I resumed my seat beside her on the comfortable couch, I slipped an arm around her and gave her right buttock a good, firm squeeze. It was meant to say, ‘Yes, I saw it.’ It was meant to say also, ‘Now keep your mouth shut and leave this up to me.’ In days gone by I could express a range of meanings with a squeeze like that, the most common being carnal. I could only hope that she interpreted this one correctly.

‘Martha,’ I said. ‘It’s been really nice being with you. Now I have a confession to make. When I looked you up, it wasn’t just to keep my promise to Paul. I need to get in touch with him.’

Her eyes narrowed and she peered at me with open suspicion. ‘Why would a big star like you want to get in touch with my small-time son?’

‘Because I might have a job for him. Miles Grayson and I are looking at a project: it’s a little off fulfilment yet, but it’ll involve casting an actor who looks reasonably like me in an important supporting role. Paul’s worked with Miles in the past and his name came up in conversation. I’ve undertaken to locate him; my problem is that I can’t find him. His agent, or the woman I thought was his agent, told me that they parted company a while back, and the Screen Actors’ Guild can’t help me either. So I’m keeping my promise and asking you for help at the same time.’

As I spoke to her, I saw her eyes return to their normal size, and the suspicion leave them. You are good, Blackstone, I told myself, seriously fucking good.

Martha deflated me pretty quickly, though. ‘Oz,’ she said, ‘I wish I could help you, but the fact is that I can’t. I haven’t heard from Paul in over four years. He came back here when his father died and then a little later to help finalise the estate. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I wouldn’t know how to go about contacting him; I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time.’

She looked at me with sincerity in her eyes. The trouble was, she wasn’t as good at faking it as I am: I didn’t believe her; or at least I didn’t believe the last part of what she’d said.

I kept up my performance, though. ‘It hasn’t been wasted, Martha.’ I rose, drawing Prim to her feet with me. ‘I’ve kept a promise to a fellow actor. Maybe it was conscience that asked me to look you up. Whatever it was, I’ll make you a promise. When I find him, I will certainly kick his ass.’ I smiled at her as we walked to the door to the hallway, then added, ‘And then I’ll tell him to get in touch with his mother.’

‘That would be appreciated, Oz,’ she said, as she closed the door on us.