Blackstone's pursuits

In which secrets are revealed, there is a chance meeting, and deeply held principles are discussed

Back at the loft, Prim’s soft sleeping sounds sounded as if they might go on for a while, but they had been joined by the scrabbling of an irritated iguana. Wallace had his own version of ‘Don’t fence me in’. He looked at me with a cold imperious eye as I released him.

There were no phone messages, but two faxes from solicitors giving me interview commissions on a non-urgent basis. I switched on my Performa and sat down to type up my notes of the afternoon’s interviews. I had almost finished the second, when there was a shout behind me, choked off, followed a few seconds later by a long exhalation.

‘Christ, Oz, I was having a dream there about waking up in bed beside that wee man, then I did wake up, beside a bloody lizard!’

‘Dinosaur!’ I said sternly. I stood up and jumped up on to the sleeping area. Prim was propped up on her right elbow. Her left breast had rolled out over the edge of the Downie, but she hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care. I sneaked the briefest of glances. It fulfilled earlier promise, bigger than a handful, but not so large that it was heading rapidly south. I perched myself on the edge of the bed as she sat up, pulling the Downie right under her chin and in the process dislodging Wallace. He shot her a look filled with bale, and reached for the first wooden rung of the ladder to the belvedere.

‘Feel better for that?’ I asked. I reached out and touched her hand, tentatively. She took mine and gave it a quick squeeze. ‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘The “yes” part is that you’re still the guy I thought you were before I went to sleep, if you know what I mean.’ I thought I did, and the hamster who lives in my stomach at such moments did another quick lap of the track. ‘What’s the “no” bit?’ I asked.

‘That what happened this morning isn’t a movie any more. I have to start treating it as real, and I can’t go on blanking Dawn from my mind.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Prim, it’s after six. I’ve got some work to finish off, then I have to get it on the fax. While I do that, why don’t you get dressed, then we’ll go out somewhere. A drink and a pizza maybe. In the process, partner, we can talk about Dawn, I’ll tell you about Archer, and we can decide what we’re going to do next.’

She dragged herself along the bed on her bum, until she was right alongside me, the Downie still up to her chin. Then she leaned over and kissed me, on the lips again, and not quite so chastely this time. ‘You’ve just said the magic words, Osbert. I have spent most of the last twelve months dreaming about a drink and a pizza. Now here I am, back home, about to make it all come true, and with a bloke I quite fancy at that.

‘I warn you now though: never on the first date, and I mean never!’

I didn’t know what to say, so she said it for me. ‘Sometimes you meet someone and you’re attracted right away,’ She grinned. ‘Like you’re attracted to me. So far you’re winning: it cuts both ways. Just remember! First date? Never!’

I took a hell of a chance. I kissed her, on the lips. ‘You know the trouble with women?’

‘Whssat?’

‘You just assume that all us guys are easy lays! I have to go out at least twice with a girl before I decide whether she’s worthy of my body!’

She dipped her shoulder and shoved me off the bed. ‘Go!’ she demanded. ‘Finish your work, while I turn myself into a human being again.’ I did as I was told. Behind me I heard the riffling sound of the Downie being shaken up and spread over the bed. Then Prim’s feet sounded lightly on the staircase.

I refocused myself on my reports and finished them off, neat and tidy, set out in question and answer form, with a summary attached. I fed each into the fax then slipped confirmatory copies into envelopes. Quick, experienced and thorough, that’s Oz Blackstone, Prince among Private Enquiry Agents, the man most wanted by Edinburgh’s legal community, even if much of his work does bore him out of his scone.

I pride myself that on each day of my life I try to learn something new. ‘So what’s today’s lesson, Blackstone?’ I asked myself, out loud, as I stamped the two envelopes.

‘Stick to the boring stuff,’ I answered, ‘and forget the Philip Marlowe dreams. Dead people don’t look attractive close up, even if the money is good, and the work’s exciting.’

‘That’s good, Oz; now what’s the bonus lesson?’

‘That’s easy. Don’t give up believing in miracles. Most people find at least one in a lifetime.’

I turned around, and there she was, Primavera, Springtime in Spanish, standing beside the bed, fastening a single string of pearls around her neck. The jeans and tee-shirt had gone, to be replaced by a close-fitting grey skirt and a sleeveless white blouse. Her sun-bleached hair had been teased into order, carefully but casually, and she was made up with blue eye shadow, a touch of blusher and a vivid red lipstick which sat on her perfect mouth like country wine on a summer evening. She was so beautiful that she made me breathless.

I stood there, dumbstruck for a while, until the inevitable nonsense sprang to my tongue. ‘Springtime,’ I said, holding out a hand in invitation, ‘would you care to join me in my garden?’

My loft opens out on to a tiny terrace, on which a few geraniums and a woebegone palm struggle for survival in the heart of my Scottish city. I threw open the double doors, and held out my hand for her as she approached across the big room, passing through a beam of light from one of the four Vellux windows set on each side of the sloping ceiling.

If I was an aesthete I would say that sunlit May evenings are my favourite time of the year in Edinburgh. Those few days, as the year shakes off the dying grip of winter, can be sublime. They are moments not to be missed, yet all too fleeting, before the Scottish summer asserts itself in all its wet, windy drabness.

As Prim stepped out on to my south-facing terrace, I felt suddenly full up, and it came to me that this was one of those times in my life that I’ll remember on my dying day.

My fifth birthday, when my Mum baked a cake, I had a party, and my Dad gave me my first set of real football boots. My first day at primary school. My first Hearts-Hibs game. My first day at secondary school. Sneaking in among my sister’s crowd one night to watch a bootleg video of The Exorcist, and being chucked out for laughing at the bit where Linda Blair’s head spins all the way round. My first, and last, cigarette. My first fumbling, incompetent but affectionate shag with Jan at a party in her house while her folks were away. My Mother’s death. A weekend my Dad and I spent walking in Derbyshire, eating wholesome food and drinking a different beer every night, as part of his emergence from our bereavement.

Seminal moments all of them; now here she was, this woman I had met in the most bizarre circumstances a few hours earlier, taking her place, perhaps at the head of them all.

She looked out across the southern aspect of Edinburgh, across Arthur’s Seat, up the ragged line of the Old Town’s rooftops, up to the craggy Castle on its flat-topped hill. She breathed deeply of the evening air. She took my arm, and squeezing it, leaned against me, laying her head on my shoulder. ‘It’s good to be back, partner,’ she said, softly and musically. ‘If only for now.’

There was nothing I could say to add to the moment, and so, for once in my life, I said nothing. Instead, I eased her gently into one of the two green wooden folding chairs on the balcony. I stepped back into the house and trotted down to the kitchen, re-emerging from the loft a couple of minutes later with two glasses and my prize bottle of reasonably good champagne. It had been a present from a lawyer client, and had been languishing in my fridge since Christmas, awaiting an appropriate moment. I balanced the glass on the balcony’s broad wooden rail and filled them carefully. Handing one to Prim I raised the other in a toast. ‘You’re back; so welcome,’ I said. ‘I hope that it’s for good.’

She looked at me for a long time, the glass pressed to her lips. ‘We’ll see,’ she said at last. ‘When I left a year ago, it was because I didn’t have anything to stay for. For now though, as I say, I’m glad I’m back.’ She sipped the champagne and nodded in polite approval. We drank in silence, looking out over the park, watching the joggers on the Radical Road, until the sun slipped round the comer of the loft, and the balcony, and my shivering palm tree, fell into shade.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go on a pizza hunt. D’you fancy a walk first? Along Princes Street?’ She nodded. I left her outside for a minute or two while I changed into my pub-going gear, then, locking up everything but Wallace’s cage, we headed out and up towards the old High Street. ’You got that fiver?’ I asked as we left.

‘Too damn right!’

‘Well look after it. Don’t spend it, or anything daft like that.’

She gave me a woman’s smile which made it clear that there was no chance of that happening.

It was Thursday, and so, although it was evening, the city was bustling with shoppers. We walked arm-in-arm, up towards St Giles, turning on to the Mound and down the long flight of steps which led down to the National Gallery and to Princes Street beyond. The pavement outside the record shops and bookstores towards the West End was thick with people and so we turned up Castle Street and along Rose Street, until it opened out into Charlotte Square.

‘Drink first?’

She nodded. ‘I could slaughter a pint.’ ‘Oh Jesus,’ I thought, ‘this woman gets better and better!’

We walked along the square’s south side and down the few steps to Whigham’s. As usual it was thronged. I excused my way up to the high counter and ordered a pint of lager for the lady, bartender if you please, and the same of the day’s guest beer, Old Throgmorton’s Embalming Fluid or something similar, for me. We found elbow space at a shelf beside the bar. Prim closed her eyes and took a deep swallow. ‘Not the same as champagne, but not too damn bad either,’ she said. ‘Okay, Osbert. Out with it. Tell me about your life.’

I jammed my knuckles against my forehead. ‘Where shall I begin?

‘It’s pretty dull really. I’m twenty-nine years old, staring the big Three-Oh in the face. I was born in Cupar. My Dad’s a dentist and my Mum was a teacher, so I’m a real middle-class boy. When I was four, we moved to Anstruther, and my Dad lives there still. I meant it about my Mother being dead. That happened nine years ago. Dad was doing her teeth one Saturday morning, and he took an X-ray He found a shadow on her jawbone. From being perfectly well that day, she was gone in seven months.’ I tried to tell her that part of the story as casually as I could, but that’s a trick I’ve never mastered. I tried to hide it with a swallow of Old Throgmorton’s, but Prim saw through me. She touched my cheek, lightly. ‘Poor thing,’ she said.

‘Who? Me or my Mum?’

‘All of you. It must have been dreadful for your Dad.’

‘Yeah, it was. He was chewed up with guilt. He saw her through to the end, and then he started on a course of serious therapeutic drinking. He’d always liked a bevvy — as I said, he’s a dentist — but this was something he was doing as a punishment. Ellen was at home at the time, I was at university. Eventually she called me about it.

‘I went up to Anstruther for a weekend, and watched him at it. He did his regular Saturday morning surgery, as usual, then started into the Bacardi and Coke for lunch. After a while I

sat him down at the table and I said, ‘For fuck’s sake, Dad, this has got to stop. That Coke is murder on the teeth.’ He looked at me and he laughed. Then he began to cry. He cried all day, and all through Sunday. Monday was a holiday, so he and I played golf. Then we went to the cemetery and said hello to Mum. We both sensed the same thing, that she was pleased to see us. He was all right after that. We visit each other a lot now. He comes down here, I go up to Anstruther. He sees a bit of Jan’s mother. She teaches in the same school my Mum did. She’s divorced and they live near each other.

‘Ellen’s my sister, by the way. She’s three years older than me. She’s nice, our Ellen, but she’s married to a real chuckie. He’s in Marketing with an oil company. They moved out to France last year. He works in Lyon, and they live a bit outside it, quite close to the Swiss border. It’s funny, when we were kids I thought Ellen was a real tough cookie. No, scratch that, Ellen was a real tough cookie. Now she’s a housewife, with a teaching qualification and no job, waiting on her man and, as far as I can gather being ignored by him most of the time.’

I looked at her. ‘Bored?’

‘No, fascinated. Go on.’

I sloshed some more of the old T down my neck. ‘Where was I? Grew up in Anstruther, played for the school team, kept myself physically intact by being the fastest thing on two feet in the whole school. Buggery was a playground sport in our place, but none of the guys with low foreheads and trailing knuckles could catch me!

‘I left school at eighteen and came to Edinburgh to do an Arts degree. I’ve been here ever since. I came out with a two-two in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I had dreams of getting a job as a researcher for the Labour Party, but I discovered that those jobs were filled by firsts or two-ones, and more often than not by Americans. I also discovered that my Mum’s death had left me feeling that politics isn’t worth a monkey’s anyway. So I joined the police.

‘I hated it from Day One, but after I’d been in a few months, I met a pal from university. He was working for an Investigation Agency, and he said that they’d a vacancy. So I hung up my truncheon and went to work for them.’

‘I thought you were self-employed?’

I tilted my head back and sent the last of the Old Throggies on the start of the long journey to the sea. ‘I am. The guys we worked for were a pair of real rat bastards. They were ex-RAF Military Policemen, and they’d taken their talents for persecution into the private sector. They came from the time when there were big bucks to be made from matrimonial work, and they were never happier than when they were photographing a misbehaving couple on the job, or pounding on hotel room doors, shouting “Come out, come out, the game’s a bogey!” I could see that these plonkers were living in the past, and I couldn’t see why they should be doing so on the strength of our honest toil.

‘So I hung in there for a year, until the clients got to know me. Then my pal Jimmy and I went round them all, offered them the same service for less money than Fagin and Bill Sykes were charging, and signed the lot up. We ran it as a partnership until three years ago, when Jimmy’s Dad retired and he went off to run his pub. Since then I’ve been on my own, although Jimmy still helps me out when I’m on holiday, or over-booked.

‘When I’m not working, I play golf with my Dad, go to the movies, listen to an eclectic collection of music, and pursue women.’

‘You mean they don’t pursue you?’

She finished her lager. ‘Two for the road?’ she asked, gladdening my heart still more. A woman who buys her round! I nodded, and she eased her way through to the bar, fishing a tenner from her purse as she went. I watched, anxiously, to make sure that not even one half of the fiver slipped out.

She was back in a couple of minutes, carrying a pint in each hand. ‘On the subject of women …’ she began. I guessed what was coming. ‘… what about Jan? If your Dad and her Mum are friends, how about you two?’

‘Jan’s great. We grew up together. Same class at school and all that. She’s someone’s dream woman, no doubt about it, but not mine. We tried the getting serious bit, went on holiday together a couple of times, but we agreed early on it wouldn’t work long-term. We know that we’re best off being pals. I haven’t had a real steady since Thingummy left a few years back. Jan, on the other hand, if she felt like it, could pull blokes as easy as picking her nose. She’s just got her own tastes, that’s all.’

She looked at me over the top of her glass, teasing. ‘And you haven’t?’

For once I was ready. ‘Oh contrayre, Madame. Fussiest of the fussy, that’s Oz Blackstone. Look at the company I keep.’

She smiled, and I wasn’t sure that under the blusher, she wasn’t blushing. I slipped my arms around her waist and drew her against me. We smiled at each other, saying nothing, but exchanging secrets and making promises for the not-too-distant future. Yet I could tell that underneath it all her sexual self-confidence was something of an act. Every so often she would break off eye contact, only to look up again into my face, with a half-grin that said, ‘Be kind to me, that’s all I ask.’

‘Of course I will,’ I said, and she understood. I felt the air begin to sizzle between us. ‘It’s kissing time in Whighams,’ I thought. We leaned closer to each other.

‘Hey there, you two!’ The voice was unmistakable. We separated and looked across the crowded bar, guiltily I expect, at the gallus figure of Mike Dylan. As he pushed his way over to us, another man followed behind him. Dylan’s introduction was unnecessary; I knew this one well enough. He even knew me. ‘This is my boss,’ said Dylan, ‘Detective Superintendent Richard Ross, area head of CID. I was just filling him in on this morning’s events.

‘These are the poor people who found the body. Miss Phillips and Mr Blackstone.’ He looked at me, with just a trace of truculence. I could read his mind. ‘Tough shit, Dylan,’ I wanted to say, ‘she’s taken.’

Ricky Ross was a different sort of copper to the DI. For a start he really was a Clever Bastard. He was a big, athletic bloke, good-looking, his dark hair flecked with grey; a man of substance in every way, unlike his sidekick, who had nothing behind the Armani suit but brass neck and ambition. In his younger days, he’d been quite a sportsman, with about a dozen rugby caps for Scotland as a flank forward. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘Oxgangs, a few years back. You were a probationer, but you took our training into the PI line. I forgave you, though, when you stitched up those two bastards Banks and McHugh. They needed taking care of. So how’s business?’

I gave him the obligatory shrug. ‘I’m doing all right. Not as well as you, though. You seem never to be out of the bloody papers.’

It was his turn to shrug. ‘People keep committing crimes, we keep clearing them up. It’s the law of supply and demand in reverse. The public demands action, my lot supply it, and I take the credit.’

He glanced at me with a grin I didn’t like. ‘You must have had a scare this morning. Christ, I remember you on a turnout once. It was a drugs overdose, but CID got involved. You were the greenest probationer I’d ever seen, greener even than Michael here at his first murder.’

He looked down at Prim. ‘And how about you, Miss Phillips? Are you okay now?’

‘Fine thanks,’ said Prim. ‘I’m just glad that Oz was with me, otherwise I’d have been scared to death.’

‘Mmm,’ said Ross, with a half-smile. ‘Just as well. Tell me, have you made contact with your sister yet?’

She looked up at him, sharply. ‘I haven’t a clue where my sister is, any more than I know which of her friends had the key to my flat. Believe me, when I find out…’

Ross nodded. ‘Aye, sure. Just let us know when you do.’

I decided to chance my arm. ‘Have you identified the body yet?’

‘Naw,’ said Ross. ‘Not a notion. We were thinking about circulating a description of his cock. That’s probably our best chance of a response.’

Prim frowned at him. She has a rare talent for making men feel ill at ease, but Ricky Ross was beyond her reach. He simply ignored her, continuing to smile at me. ‘Nae use to him now though, Blackstone, is it? Wonder if he’s left it to anyone in his will?’

‘Aye,’ I agreed, ‘and even if it was shared out, I can think of a couple of polismen who’d find just half of it an improvement! Present company excepted, of course,’ I added, after a pause. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ I asked, as Prim spluttered beside me.

The phrase ‘Can I get you a drink?’ is a device which is, as far as I know, peculiar to Edinburgh. Its meaning depends entirely on the company in which the enquirer finds himself, and, with the finest inflection, shifts from a wholly sincere, ‘Can I get you a drink?’ to an equally sincere, ‘If that’s all you’ve got to say, why don’t you fuck off and leave us alone?’

Ross read my meaning correctly. ‘No thanks, we’re meeting someone. He’s over there, in fact.’ I turned to follow his gaze and caught the eye of a thin, sallow man, who I seemed to remember was a car dealer with a reputation for supplying MOT’s to fit all price ranges.

‘Oh. Okay, then. We’ll look in tomorrow to give you those statements, Inspector.’

The men in suits made their way round the bar, the pack opening up to let them pass at my deliberately loud mention of Dylan’s rank. As they reached the other side, Ricky Ross shot a look towards us, back across the crowded room, which made me feel suddenly that I might just have taken too big a liberty.

‘I didn’t like him at all!’ said Prim, as they were out of earshot.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Welcome to the club. It’s difficult to underestimate a bloke like Dylan, but Ross is in a different league. He operates at a much higher level of nastiness.’

I reached for my glass, but found that during our conversation with the forces of the law an over-zealous bar steward, or an out and out thief, had removed it, and Prim’s lager, although each had been at least half-full. I started towards the bar, but she tugged my arm. ‘Come on. Forget those, it’s time for that pizza.’

I should have known. It was Thursday and so the Bar Roma was heaving, without a table in sight. Prim looked at me, frustrated beyond belief, until I put yet another Plan B into operation. We commandeered a taxi from the rank outside Fraser’s and headed for the Pizzarama, halfway up Leith Walk, purveyors of the biggest pizza in town. We bought two monsters to go, then grabbed another taxi and went back to the loft and my extensive, if inexpensive, wine cellar.

A great takeaway pizza is always slightly underdone. The Pizzarama giants, covered in tomato, pepperoni, ham, artichokes and God knew what else, fitted into my oven at a squeeze, and by the time we had finished the champagne — if you leave a teaspoon in the neck of an opened bottle of fizz, it keeps its fizziness; not many people know that — and opened a bottle of Safeway Chianti, they were ready.

Watching Prim eat her first pizza for a year was another of those seminal whatnots. She cut the huge thing into segments which she attacked with her fingers, savouring each ripped-off mouthful, smiling all the time, even as she chewed. When she finished, I still had a third of mine to go. She looked across the breakfast bar at me, her eyes huge and appealing. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I give in. Would you like some more, my dear?’

The Chianti was new and strong. As we reached the end of the bottle, I felt relaxed, uninhibited and very, very …

Prim licked the last of the pizza from her fingers and gazed across at me. ‘Remember that poor young policeman today?’

‘Who could forget the poor wee bugger? And that effing troll stood in the doorway trying not to hear him? Why d’you ask?’

‘It’s just that tonight, when you said what you said to Ross, I thought for a second, I was going to do the same thing as the boy did.’

‘I’m almost sorry you didn’t. There have been many firsts in my life today. That would have been yet another.’

She drained her glass, and reached for another bottle from the rack, but I reached out a hand and stopped her.

‘Prim,’ I said, doing my level best to make my eyes outshine anything in the night sky, framed in the kitchen window. ‘I’ve been thinking. How would it be — and this has to be a mutually agreed thing, you understand — if we decided, first of all that our deeply held principles and rules must remain unbroken, but that in all the circumstances, you should regard lunch today as having been our first date, and by the same token, that should regard myself as having been out with you at least twice?’

Our elbows were on the breakfast bar. I slipped my right hand into hers, as if we were about to arm-wrestle, and pulled her gently towards me. I kissed her, on the lips again, on her full red lips, not at all chastely this time. Her mouth opened, and I felt her tongue flick against my teeth.

She tasted of the finest sweet wine, delicious, refreshing, making me long for more.

‘In all the circumstances,’ she whispered, our foreheads touching lightly, ‘and given the duration of our acquaintance I would say that such an agreement is, at this moment in time, absolutely…’