Blackstone's pursuits

In which we find another stiff in Prim’s bed, a sort of justice is done and there is a twist in the tale

We made it back to Edinburgh on Sunday, via Portsmouth and points north, including Peter’s hotel in Middleton-One-Row, where the three of us got completely stupid drunk, and, as I recall, Prim and I did something even stupider involving the absence of condoms.

The last few hours of the weekend, we spent tidying up the loft, before we enjoyed the unimaginable luxury of making love and sleeping together in our own bed, even if we did have a clearly contented iguana for company.

Next morning I phoned Archer, got through to him personally and in the most solemn voice I could manage, made an appointment to see him at three-thirty. Then I called Jan, and, putting aside my aversion to pubs at lunchtime, arranged to meet her, and Ellen, and the kids, who were all still at her place, in Whighams at one o’clock. That gave us some time to kill.

‘Oz,’ said Prim, as we lay in bed, under the light from the belvedere, ‘sooner rather than later, I’ve got to go back to my flat, to pick up the rest of my things.’ I didn’t want to go back there, and neither did she, but she was right. It had to be done.

It felt strange parking in Ebeneezer Street. It was the place where I’d met Prim, yet I felt uncomfortable, still a stranger. It was her turf, not ours.

She must have read my mind. ‘Oz, love,’ she said as we climbed the dusty stair. ‘Would you mind if I sold this place? Or would you think I was rushing things?’

I looked over solemnly. ‘Maybe you should hold off,’ I said, and then I kissed her. ‘Until tomorrow. We’ve got a few things to do today.’

She unlocked the door and went to step inside, but I held her back. ‘Hold on,’ I said, laughing. ‘Let me check the bed. Just in case there’s a body in there.’ She grinned as I looked round the bedroom door.

There was a body in the bed. It was Miles Grayson. But it was a brand new bed, and fortunately, he was very much alive. Dawn lay on his far side, hunched down as if she was trying to hide. I don’t know which of us went pinker faster. ‘I see you took our advice,’ I said to her.

‘Oz!’ said Miles, the sound of his voice bringing Prim bursting into the room. ‘Where the hell have you two been? Dawn’s been worried about you.’

‘So I see,’ said Prim, archly, but with a smile.

‘We just nipped over to France for a few days. To sort of, get to know each other, like.’ A sudden thought struck me. ‘Here, while we were away, we had this terrific idea for a film script. Come for dinner tonight and we’ll tell you about it. We owe you a beer anyway.’

‘Yes,’ said Prim to her sister. ‘And bring the rest of my clothes while you’re at it.’

I flipped a card from the breast pocket of my Savoy Tailors’ Guild suit on to the bed. ‘That’s where we live. See you tonight. You be bad now!’

The whole team was gathered in Whighams when we got there, filling one of the low alcoves. There was a glass of draught Coke waiting for me, and a glass of white wine for Primavera. She jammed herself into a corner, on the far side of Jan. I sat down between my nephews and my sister and gave them all hugs. ‘Everything all right, Ellie?’

She smiled at me. ‘We’ll see, Oz. We’ll see. I’m going to stay at Dad’s for a while, to see if I can get something of my old shape back and to see if Allan comes for me. If he does, I’ll decide then whether I’ll go back or not. The bugger’s got to want me though.’

She whispered in my ear. ‘Is this it then? Are you happy?’

‘Ecstatic.’ I whispered back.

‘Good. Jan isn’t, though.’

‘Eh?’

‘You don’t have a clue about women, do you, son?’

That was too deep for me. I finished my Coke and went up to the bar for another round. As the barman was filling the tray, an Armani suit appeared by my elbow.

‘Did you hear about Ricky Ross?’ said Dylan, looking uncharacteristically solemn.

I looked at him, puzzled. ‘I’ve been away. What about him?’

‘Suspended. See your murder in Ebeneezer Street? It turned out that Ricky was screwing the victim’s wife. Now she’s been charged with the murder.

‘We checked every detail about Ebeneezer Street that night. We found out that our traffic boys handed out a ticket to a car parked on a double yellow line there, just about the time that Kane was killed. It turned out that it belonged to his wife. She admits that she was there, but she swears he was alive when she left. I don’t believe her though. We’ll see whether the jury does.

‘After we pulled her in she screamed bloody murder and shouted for Ricky. When he said he couldn’t do anything she told us everything about him and her. He said that he’d encouraged her to leave the wee chap, and that he’d been blazing when she said she wanted him back. She even suggested that he might have done the murder.

‘There’s nothing to substantiate that, but being implicated in a murder inquiry’s enough. He’s out, and that’s for sure.

‘I’ll tell you something, Blackstone, just between you and me. If you ever repeat it, I’ll deny it all. Ricky really fancied you for it. He thought that you and the actress girl had set it up between you.’

His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You had a break-in at your flat, aye?’

I nodded, wondering. ‘That was Ricky,’ he said. ‘I nearly shit myself when he told me he’d done that.’

‘Nice of him. I don’t feel sorry for him now. Here, I hope we’re in the clear now. Ricky’s theory was pure mince, you know.’

Dylan smiled again. ‘Aye, you’re okay. The Chief sorted him out on that. Your girlfriend’s sister’s in Miles Grayson’s film, isn’t she?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Aye well, Sir James had a phone call last Monday evening, from Grayson. His secretary told me. She said that Grayson sounded really steamed up. The call lasted for about five minutes. When it was over, the Chief called Ricky in and sorted him out.’

I smiled at him. ‘See truth, eh? Stranger than fiction.

‘Here, Mike, did you ever find that fiver? The one that Prim spent.’

He laughed. ‘You bugger! Aye; at least we think we did. We checked everything in town that looked like a grocer, and eventually we found a Bank of Scotland Fiver torn in two and taped back together in a place off Broughton Street. Is that where she spent it?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t with her all the time. What was your problem about that anyway?’

Dylan glowered. ‘The Chief started that panic off too. He did a snap inspection of CID. Some stupid bastard of a DC let slip about your girlfriend picking up the fiver and the old fella tore Ricky up in front of everyone. So when he’d gone, Ricky put the thumbscrews on me. I’ll tell you, if I hadn’t found it, I’d have been back in uniform.’

I shook my head at the poor dupe. He hadn’t even had the wit to take another fiver and cut it in half. I felt sorry for him. ‘Here’s a tip for you, then, to make up for it. Someone tried to kill my girlfriend’s sister the Sunday before last. Hit and run, up in Auchterarder. The trouble is, outside the family the only people who knew that she was there were the film crew, and the police.

‘We didn’t report it, because she’s in the movie and couldn’t stand the publicity. But just for fun, why don’t you check the car-hire companies and see whether anyone hired a medium-sized navy blue or black saloon, maybe a Mondeo, that day, then brought it back damaged, either very late at night or first thing next morning. I’ll bet you’ll find someone did, and that it was Linda Kane. Dig deeper and I think you’ll find that Ricky told her that Dawn was at her folks’ place.’

He looked at me, crest well fallen. ‘Cheers Mike,’ I said, and carried my tray back to the table.

And that was it. When we’d finished our drinks, Jan, Ellen and I had a mass exchange of car keys, then Prim and I went off for a reunion with the Nissan, which Jan had parked on the west side of Charlotte Square, only a hundred yards from the pub.

I was going to walk to Black and Muirton’s but Prim said, ‘No. Not with all that cash.’ So we drove round the square and off along George Street. I ask you, who ever finds a parking space in George Street in the middle of the afternoon? We were all the way down in Heriot Row before I spotted a vacant bay.

‘Right waste of time that was. I’ve got as far to walk back,’ I said, jerking on the handbrake, and reaching into the back seat for the satchel of cash.

It felt cold and hard against my ribs. Gun barrels do, being metal and all. When they’ve a big silencer on them, it’s even worse.

I looked into her eyes, saw myself reflected in them and knew what yet another word looked like. This time it was ‘incredulous’. It’s the look that comes with discovering that, however well you think you know someone, however close you are, you can never know them completely, never get completely inside their head.

‘I’m sorry, Oz,’ she said, quietly, almost tearfully, ‘but I just can’t let you.’

‘Prim.’ It came out as a croak. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, my lover, that you and I are not as alike as you think. I know that not once have you ever thought of the possibility of just holding on to all of that untraceable cash, and using it to shape the rest of our lives.

‘On the other hand, since I put those two bullets into old Rawdon, I’ve thought of nothing else. And even before then, the notion was more than tickling my fancy, it was giving me orgasms.’

I let go of the bag, dropping it back on to the seat. ‘Come on Prim. Isn’t a half-share of ninety thousand enough.’

She shook her head. ‘No it bloody well isn’t. I told you right at the start, five per cent wouldn’t do.’

I looked down at the gun. I don’t know much about safety catches, and I hadn’t a clue whether this one was on or off. I slipped my left hand round her shoulders but she pulled back, digging the silencer in even harder. ‘I mean it Oz. I can’t let you do it. We were nearly killed for that money, and I shot a man because of it. It’s gone past the stage of being someone’s possession. It’s a prize and we’ve won it.’

I looked at her, afraid to ask her just one question. ‘And would you shoot me to keep it?’ I’d seen enough lawyers in action to know that you never put a question to a witness unless you were certain of the answer.

So instead I said. ‘You really mean it?’

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, in a quiet voice.

‘You’re saying you want us to tell Archer that someone beat us to it, then take all of this untraceable money and bugger off somewhere warm for a few years, secure in the knowledge that even if he twigs, he won’t be able to do anything about it other than watch his ship sink or have a whip-round among the boys to cover the loss.

‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes.’ It was barely a whisper now.

I looked at her, long and hard. I was really angry with her, for the first time in my life.

‘In that case,’ I said, slowly and evenly, ‘what the hell d’you need the gun for?’

Her smile, her wonderful smile, flooded across her face. She took the automatic from my ribs, held it up, pulled the magazine from the butt and showed it to me. It was empty.

I glowered at her. ‘There’s just one thing,’ I grunted.

‘What’s that?’ she said leaning forward and kissing me.

‘Wherever we go, Wallace goes with us!’