Blackstone's pursuits

In which Mother offers black pudding, and we take a decision

I don’t know how long she’d been knocking. The sound started as part of a dream, a nice dream of domesticity, in which Prim and I were, I think, in the process of living happily ever after. I tried to dismiss it, but it was persistent, forcing its way from the back of my mind right up to the front.

Eventually it carried me back to the world of the wide-awake. I propped myself up on an elbow, taking care not to disturb the dozing blonde bundle lying beside me, on top of the quilt. One of Africa’s gifts to Primavera is the ability, when she feels secure, to sleep through virtually anything.

‘Morning,’ I called drowsily to the door.

‘Wakey, wakey Oz.’ Mum Phillips sounded bright and breezy. ‘Breakfast in twenty minutes. D’you like black pudding?’ I squeezed my eyes tight to clear them, and looked at my watch on the bedside table. It was ten past eight.

‘Thanks,’ I called. ‘See you there. And, yes, I love black pudding!’

‘Good.’ There was a pause. ‘By the way, you haven’t seen my daughter, have you?’

‘I’ll look under the bed.’

Beside me, Prim was beginning to stir, uncoiling, like a cat, sighing, murmuring, stretching. Eventually she shook her head and looked up at me, puzzled at first, then remembering. She pulled herself up and leaned against the heavy walnut headboard, flinching slightly from the coolness of the wood on her back, even through her nightshirt.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked her. ‘Have I got that job?’

She smiled, rubbing her eyes. ‘I don’t think that this is quite the place for the audition!

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I couldn’t sleep for thinking about what happened last night. So I came in here, thinking you’d be in the same state. You were out like a light.’

‘No imagination,’ I said. ‘That’s my trouble.’

Her right breast hung a few inches away from me. Automatically, as if I had done it a hundred times before, I rubbed my forehead against it, and flicked my tongue across the protuberance of her nipple, through the cotton of her shirt. She shivered, then slid, supply, down the covers once again to lie beside me. I could feel her warm breath on my face as we kissed. Her nightdress, which was no more than a long tee-shirt, had ridden up around her waist. I laid my hand on her naked hip and pulled her closer to me as I kissed her again. Her tongue sought out mine, and her fingers wound through my hair. Suddenly she rolled over on top of me, moving her body against me. I could feel the heat of her through the covers, and her eyes burned into mine.

I smiled, ‘What’s it to be?’ I said. ‘Me, or your Mum’s black pudding?’

She laughed. ‘You lose,’ she said, biting the end of my nose, gently. ‘For now.’ She pushed herself back and sat upright, straddling me. I gasped, and her eyes widened, as her weight bore down on my most critical region. ‘It’s nice to know I can command your attention when I want to,’ she murmured.

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘right now you’re commanding a hell of a lot more than my attention!’

Gymnastically, she raised herself up again and swung her legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. When she turned and looked at me again, the tease was gone from her eyes.

‘Who, Oz?’ she pondered. I had fallen asleep asking myself the same question.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Unless…’ she said.

‘What?’

‘No, forget it.’

‘Come on!’ I grunted. I hate it when someone sets me up and then says, ‘No, forget it.’

‘Well, why would anybody want to kill us?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, why would anyone? Not because of what we know. The only person who knows that we know about the money is Ray Archer, and right now we’re his only chance of getting it back. And not because of what we’ve got This gets complicated, but whoever is after the fiver doesn’t necessarily know that we know what it’s for. And they wouldn’t want to kill us, would they, at least until they’d got it?’

‘So?’

‘So could the driver have been after Dawn?’

‘Aw, come on. Who’d want to kill Dawn?’ as I said it a thought nagged at my brain.

I looked sideways at Prim and shuddered. ‘Ugh! Stop. You’re doing my head in. The main thing is we’re all alive, and Dawn’s safely off to her movie. Now, if you’re still turning down the best offer you’ve had all day, concentrate on breakfast, and on getting your brain into gear. We’ve got some decisions to make.’

The tease was back in her eyes. I pushed myself upright and drew her backwards, pulling her down until her head rested on the pillow. Her nightshirt was drawn up higher this time, and the lower swell of her breasts was in view. She looked up at me: all at once, her right hand was under the covers, feeling, seeking, finding. The smile faded to be replaced by something else. I bent over her and kissed her navel, then flicked my tongue into its cavity, then out, then in then out, then …

‘Ahhh!’ she gasped, holding my head with her free hand, rotating her hips beneath me. I slid the nightshirt up, feeling her lift her arms and raise her head and shoulders to assist me. ‘Oz!’ She hissed, with an edge of hesitancy in her voice, but with overpowering urgency, and without a shred of teasing. The nightshirt stretched taut as it cleared her shoulder, but in a moment her arm was free. I eased myself upright and began to pull back the barrier of linen and blankets which kept us apart. All the while she held on to me, stroking, kneading, until I thought I would burst.

The knock on the door was as vigorous as before. ‘Oz! Five minutes.’

‘Bugger!’ said Primavera and I, in unison.

Prim shook her head in despair. ‘Make it fifteen,’ she called out to the door. ‘Oz has to shave.’ She let me go, then sat up and thrust her arm back into her nightshirt.

‘Told you this was no place for an audition,’ she said, smiling. ‘We found out one thing, though.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked. I felt myself subside, experiencing also the onset of a condition known and dreaded by all men in such a situation.

‘You can command my attention as well!’

Semple House has basins in every bedroom. As soon as I felt confident that my boxers had resumed a normal shape, I vaulted out of bed and turned on the hot tap. The water reached near-boiling point, almost instantly.

She sat on the bed, watching me as I lathered my chin. ‘Before we got distracted, you were talking about decisions,’ she said. ‘What sort d’you mean?’

‘The sort we’ve been avoiding until now. Like, where are we going next? Should we tell Archer we’ve got the fiver? Should we tell the police everything?’

I drew my razor down my cheek, cutting a clean, shiny swathe through the foam.

‘What d’you think?’

I could see her in the mirror, holding her chin as she pondered over my questions. ‘I don’t know. I do know what common sense says. Until now, we’ve put everything to one side to find Dawn. Now we’ve done that, and we know that she’s safe, and didn’t have anything to do with Willie Kane’s murder, then as good honest citizens we should say “Sod the reward, sod Archer and his sordid cover-up”, and tell the whole story to Mike Dylan.

‘And yet …’ Her reflection swung her legs off the bed and stood up, stretching her arms high above her head, clasping her hands together and pulling them backwards, thrusting out her breasts and tensing the muscles of her groin. ‘I don’t know, I’ve got a bad feeling about something.’ As I scraped the last of the lather from my top lip, I saw her cross the room. She stood behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist. ‘What d’you think?’

I disengaged her and turned round, holding her at arm’s length. ‘I think we should be very careful. We’ve found Dawn, she’s all right, she’s got an alibi, and that’s good. But it doesn’t take away the memory of wee Kane dead in your bed, and it doesn’t tell us who killed him. And it doesn’t take away what happened last night.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling too. It comes from Dylan suddenly wanting to know about the fiver, and about the fact that he was so keen to find it that he actually broke into my place to search for it.’

She looked up at me. ‘So, should we give it to him?’

I shook my head. ‘No, that’s the last thing we should do. Dylan didn’t have a clue about it on Thursday morning, yet on Friday he’s turning over Edinburgh, trying to find it. So who told him what it was worth? It’s a cert. that Kane was killed for that note, only whoever did it couldn’t find it. We only have it now because clumsy Mr Plod knocked over your muesli jar. So who knew about it? One, I did; two, Raymond Archer did.

‘So is there a link between him and Dylan, or someone else? God knows, but I think we should try to find out too.’

‘You don’t think Archer could have killed Kane himself?’

‘Nah. I really don’t see that. Why should he involve me if he was going to kill the wee fella?’

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘In that case, who?’

‘Let’s wait and see. Dawn said something yesterday that could give us a clue.’

‘What was that?’

‘All in good time, my dear.’

‘Oz, don’t be mysterious!’ She stepped close against me once more and kissed my chest. Down in the jungle, a natural force began to stir once more. With a huge effort of will, I steered her towards the door.

‘Go, woman,’ I declaimed, ‘and stop trying to seduce me. After breakfast, we’ll work out a game plan. Meantime, I can smell that black pudding.’

Dad and Mum Phillips are creatures of habit. Their days seem to be more organised than anyone’s I’ve ever met. Breakfast is one of their rituals, and that morning, they clearly enjoyed sharing it with their older child, and with the big, tousle-headed cuckoo who sat beside her at the dining table.

The black pudding tasted as good as it smelled. Mrs Phillips dished it up together with scrambled eggs and mushrooms, and thick slices of toast. We made small talk as we ate. Dad asked me some more about my work, my family, where I lived, gently filling in the gaps in his knowledge. He looked impressed when I said my father was a dentist.

Mum muttered that it was a pity that Dawn had rushed off. ‘That’s her all over. Impetuous. One minute she’s going back on Monday morning, next she has to be there for early-morning run-through.’

At five to nine, it was suddenly all over. ‘Right,’ said Mum, standing up abruptly. ‘Dad and I are off to work. The washing up’s all yours. Come, David. We’ll be in the studio; let us know when you’re ready for the road.’

I washed, I dried, and Prim supervised, eventually condescending to stack the plates in the kitchen cupboard. ‘Right,’ she said, when she was finished. ‘Decision time. What do we do now, Oz?’

I reached out a hand for her. You may have noticed that I’m very tactile, as far as Prim is concerned at least. I’m never happier than when I’m touching her.

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ I said. ‘I reckon it’s time for me to treat Ray Archer to another performance of my Daft Laddie act. There are some things we need to know, and I reckon he might be able to help us … as long as he doesn’t know he’s doing it!’