Deadly Business

Two

Duncan. That was a name that I thought had been consigned to the past. There’s a significant difference between Susie and me in the way we’ve dealt with life after Oz. It may have had something to do with the fact that while I was around halfway through the journey between forty and fifty, Susie had seven years fewer on the clock than I did, but as single women, I’ve always found that I managed perfectly well without a man in my bed, while Susie usually had an ‘escort’ somewhere or other in her vicinity.

I’m still fertile, although the menopause can’t be far away, but I was having trouble remembering the last time I looked at a bloke and thought, ‘I’d really like to fuck you.’ No, sorry, I lie. It was eight years in the past, the man in question was Oz, and I did, regardless of the small detail that he was married to Susie at the time. Biter bit, and all that.

Susie’s Duncan had been around for longer than most of her consorts, almost two years from start to what she had told me was the finish. His surname was Culshaw, and he was the nephew of her managing director. They were introduced at a company meeting in Glasgow, and before long, he was making regular visits to Monaco. He was a few years younger than her, but not so many that he could be classed as a toy boy. I’d met him a couple of times on visits to Monaco during his ‘tenure of office’, so to speak.

He was a good-looking bastard, I’ll give him that, not tall for a man, about my height when I’m in high heels, taller than Susie without towering over her, with fairish hair that wasn’t quite blond, pale blue eyes and a narrow waist. He scrubbed up well enough, and I’ll admit he looked not bad in swim gear around the pool, although he was a bit on the bony side and had unsightly clumps of hair on his back. When Susie asked me what I thought of him, I pointed this out. She couldn’t argue otherwise, but she assured me that his best feature was hidden from view. I didn’t ask for specifics, but I wasn’t sure I believed that; my scepticism was based on several years’ nursing experience, when I saw a lot of skinny guys … or a little, as was mostly the case.

I did ask about his profession, though, over dinner one night at her place when the kids had gone to bed and Duncan wasn’t in residence. ‘He’s a writer,’ she told me.

‘What does he write?’

‘Newspaper articles, magazine articles, that sort of stuff.’

There was a vagueness about her answer that was very un-Susie-like. ‘Who pays him to do this?’ I murmured.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Were you born cynical?’

‘I’m not cynical,’ I insisted. ‘But I don’t take a single fucking thing for granted either, least of all when it comes to men.’

‘That’s why you don’t have one,’ she chuckled.

‘Maybe … but I prefer to believe that since my boy’s going to start shaving in a couple of years, I don’t want him to have to compete for the bathroom mirror. So,’ I went on, ‘who does your guy work for?’

She laughed. ‘Your boy has an en-suite bathroom, so don’t give me that one. Duncan’s freelance,’ she continued. ‘He gets stuff in the Scottish papers, mostly their weekend magazines, but he says that his best clients are airlines. You know, those flight mags that you read then forget as soon as you step on to the air bridge.’

‘Your wild weekend in Shagaluf? Great European stag night venues? That sort of stuff?’

She nodded. ‘You’ve got it. Pays well, he says. He does other stuff, though; corporate. For example he’s going to write the text for the Gantry Group’s next annual report.’

‘How about books?’

‘He says he’s working on a manuscript. He won’t let me read it yet, but he says it’s a thriller. He’s looking for an agent just now. He says you can’t get published without one.’

‘How about Oz’s old agent? What was his name again?’

‘Roscoe Brown?’ She shook her head. ‘No, Primavera, he’s Hollywood; that’s not what he does.’

‘I could always send it to my brother-in-law,’ I suggested. ‘He’d read it if I asked him.’

‘Miles Grayson? I thought he’d retired.’

‘From acting, yes, but he still produces and directs. Although he has so many business interests these days, he insists that films are still his main focus. Everything else is just a sideline.’

‘Including the wine business?’

‘Very much so. It’s only a small part of his portfolio.’

A couple of years ago Miles and my sister visited me in St Martí. I introduced him to some of the better wines from our region and he was so impressed that he bought one of the producers. I’ve been a director for the last two years and it’s doing all right.

‘Well,’ Susie ventured, cautiously, ‘if you think he would read it, I’ll tell Duncan, and ask him to give you a call.’

Tom and I went back home next morning, and I thought no more about it, until last autumn, over a year later, my phone rang, and it was Duncan Culshaw, calling out of the blue. He’d booked himself into the Nieves Mar Hotel, in L’Escala, and he told me that he’d like to see me.

‘You came all this way on spec?’ I asked.

‘Susie said you’d be here,’ he said. ‘She told me that you might be prepared to show my book to your brother-in-law.’

‘I might, that’s true, but you don’t need to throw yourself at my feet for it to happen. If I do it, it’ll be as a favour to Susie, pure and simple.’

‘I appreciate that,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself with him by sending something blind.’ He paused. ‘Have dinner with me tonight, and I’ll give you a copy.’

‘I can’t do that,’ I replied, ‘unless you fancy feeding my son as well. But lunch tomorrow would be okay.’

He had his manuscript with him when we met in the hotel restaurant, not in printed form but on a four gigabyte memory stick. ‘It’s not quite finished,’ he told me. ‘I have a couple of rough edges that I need to smooth out.’ He handed it to me. ‘Read it please, and we’ll meet again, possibly for coffee tomorrow morning. I’ll call you to arrange something.’

‘That’s a tight timescale,’ I observed, ‘for a whole manuscript.’

‘You’ll finish it, I promise you. It’s a page-turner.’

I took the stick from him. ‘Obviously not literally,’ I pointed out, ‘but I’ll do it.’

We had a pleasant enough lunch; most of our conversation was about the Emporda region, its front-line tourist pitches and some of the spots off the beaten track. ‘That was very useful,’ he told me as he signed the bill. ‘I have a piece to write for one of my airline clients; you’ve given me just about everything I need.’

‘That’s handy,’ I remarked. ‘You’ll be able to put me down as a business expense.’

I had a flash of concern that I might have sounded waspish, or been ‘a nippy sweetie’, as my Glaswegian Granny Phillips would have put it, but far from being wounded, Duncan nodded, beamed, and replied, ‘Yes, indeed, Primavera; the whole damn trip in fact, with free air travel and car hire.’

My only reaction was a smile, but I felt that for the first time I’d had a flash of the real Duncan Culshaw.

I drove straight home, dug out the rarely used MacBook laptop that I keep as a back-up for my computer, took it out on to the terrace, with Charlie, our Labrador, for company, and plugged the stick into one of the USB sockets. There was only one document on it, a large PDF file, titled The Mask. When I clicked on it, a box came up on the screen advising me that it was read only and that I would not be able to copy or edit it. ‘Fine,’ I muttered, and clicked the button to proceed.

There was no foreword, only the title, author’s name and a copyright declaration. I turned to the first page and started to read.

‘My wee brother?’ she began, then paused, as if she was framing every word in her eventual reply.

‘He was like a loch on a fine summer’s day. Not a mark, not a ripple on his surface. You looked at him and you thought, he’s one of the fairest things I’ve ever seen. And he was, the boy I grew up with.

‘But then life took a hold of him and the water was disturbed, choppy at first, and then rougher, till it was storm-tossed, white-crested. He was still beautiful, but in a different way, darker, ominous, and you knew that not far below that surface there was another man, someone different, someone dangerous, like the monsters of legend given form.’

As she spoke, Lady Doreen March’s plain but strong face seemed to change, to weaken, to crumple, and her voice began to crack. And as she finished, there were tears running down her cheeks, cutting ravines in her make-up.

I sat bolt upright in my chair. ‘What the fuck is this?’ I shouted, loud enough for Charlie to bark, his fur rippling, readying himself to defend me from attack, even though he couldn’t see the threat.

‘Doreen March?’ I said, more quietly. ‘Ellie?’

He’d changed a name, but only by a couple of months. ‘My wee brother’ was always how Lady Ellen January referred to Oz. Lady January, wife of a Scottish Supreme Court judge, formerly Ellen Sinclair, born Ellen Blackstone, is my Tom’s aunt, and she remains my good friend.

That surname surely had to be an alias for her, but as for the rest, Ellie is the most down-to-earth woman I’ve ever met. She’s never spoken like that in all the time I’ve known her; moreover, she never wears any make-up to speak of, and the Stone of Destiny is more likely to shed a tear than she is.

I realised that I was shaking, and that my heart and respiration rates were way above normal. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and waited until I had restored myself to a state of calm. When I opened them again, I saw Charlie, looking up at me. If a dog can frown and show concern, that’s what he was doing.

I had slammed the MacBook closed, as if I was running away from its contents, putting it to sleep in the process. I waited for it to come back to life, then read the second chapter.

‘My son?’ Frail old Michael Greystock sighed. ‘He broke my fucking heart. All I ever wanted was for him to be a teacher like me, but no, not him.’

If Doreen was Ellie, then Michael Greystock had to equal Macintosh Blackstone, a dentist, not a teacher, who had threatened both his kids with fire and brimstone if they ever entertained the idea of following him into his profession. As for frail, the guy’s had a heart-valve replacement but he’s still capable of two rounds of golf a day.

‘No, he had to go off to be something he never really was. First to Edinburgh, with his silly country notions of fame and fortune on gold-paved streets, then to bloody Spain, then to Glasgow, chasing that stupid dream. And him being him, eventually he caught up with it. He did have a gold star set in some fucking pavement in Los Angeles. As far as I know it’s still there, but he isn’t. It turned out to be a shooting star and, like they all do, it burned itself out.’

I laughed out loud. This was supposed to be Mac, Tom’s rock-solid Grandpa Mac coming out with all this fanciful shite?

‘But it wasn’t his fault,’ I read on, aloud. ‘It was that woman. She came into his life and she beguiled him. She cast her spell on him, like a witch, and the poor guy hadn’t a fucking chance after that. It was that Phyllis woman; the first time he ever brought her to my house, I had a premonition not just that she would take him from me, and from all the other people who loved him, but that she would be the end of him. If I could play that scene again, that first meeting, I’d stab her through the heart, and take the consequences. They’d be worth it.’

‘Phyllis?’ I yelled. ‘Fucking Phyllis?’

‘Gobsmacked’ didn’t come close to how I felt. No, it didn’t. I tried to define my reaction at that moment, and could only come up with one analogy. I felt raped.

My mobile was in my hand without any conscious thought, and I was about to hit the button on Mac’s speed dial entry, when I stopped myself. ‘No,’ I told myself ‘let’s read it all.’

And I did. Chapter three quoted someone called Sheila.

‘He was damaged when I met him,’ the widow said. ‘He was still bereaved, but she hadn’t given him time or space to grieve properly over the loss of his precious soul mate. Some people, and by that I mean the odd obsessive fan, but mostly Phyllis’s famous politician sister and brother-in-law, still blame me for taking him from her, but I don’t give a shit about them, for what I was really doing was trying to save his life. She had her claws in him, as deep as she could sink them. I tried, but to be honest I never really could prise them loose.

‘I don’t know what happened to his first wife. “A tragic accident in the home”; that was how the papers described it, but I’m not so sure. There was a continuing state of warfare between his two women. At that time, Maureen was on top, but she’d only won a battle. The war ended with her death, the only way it ever could have. Accident? If that’s what “they” say, I’ll have to accept it, but really, “they” have no idea what Phyllis is capable of: she’s done time, for Christ’s sake. That’s why we retreated to Italy, to a house that I insisted should be made as secure as possible. I wasn’t afraid for my children while I had him, although that’s what I let him think. Truth is, I was afraid for myself, afraid of her.

‘When they told me he was dead, the first thing I felt wasn’t shock. Before that there was an instant when I felt relief, because finally I’d be free of Phyllis. Afterwards …

‘I was furious when I heard that he’d been cremated. They told me it had been necessary because of the heat in Guatemala, where he’d been making a video for his new album when it happened. The unit had a doctor with it; he certified that a congenital heart defect had been the cause of death, and I have no grounds to doubt that, and yet …’

I had to break off then; I was so angry that I could barely see the words on the screen, far less concentrate on them. I closed the laptop and kept it shut, until our evening had run its course, and Tom had gone to bed. Not for the first time, no, not by a long way, I was glad my boy was there to keep me on an even keel, and possibly to keep me from taking Charlie along to the Nieves Mar and setting him on the son-of-a-bitch Culshaw, although my distraction must have shown through, for he asked me a couple of times whether everything was okay. Although I assured him it was, I reckon he knew it wasn’t, but trusted me to tell him if and when I needed to.

I rarely drink spirits, but I mixed myself a gin and tonic and took it up to the terrace, back to the manuscript. I scrolled through it before getting down to the detail, and I saw quickly that after the three opening ‘testimonials’, the book became more conventional. When I did start to read again, it was clear that it was a mock biography, the life and times of someone called ‘Al Greystock’, rock star and tragic hero … or rather, anti-hero.

The book wasn’t warts and all; it was plain fucking warts, pure and simple. Culshaw had done his research on Oz, that was for sure. The story proper began with what purported to be a news article in the Saltire, a fictitious Scottish daily newspaper. It said that workmen dismantling an outbuilding on the Perthshire property that Al and Sheila Greystock had owned had found a shotgun encased in the foundations. To the police its origins were a mystery, and they could trace no record of its registration anywhere in Britain.

That got my attention, for Oz and Susie had lived beside Loch Lomond, and indeed a shotgun had been found there when the next owner had demolished the playground they’d built for the kids. I knew this because Susie had told me about it, after the police asked her, politely, if she had any idea where it had come from. She hadn’t, but Oz had. I knew because he told me.

Culshaw offered no theories in the early part of his story; instead he went back and gave a brief account of the so-called Al’s early life in Newport on Tay, highlighted by a story told by one of his classmates, about him going mental and beating the shit out of two guys in his year because of a casual schoolboy remark about Maureen, his childhood sweetheart. That wasn’t fantasy either; that happened, not in Newport, but in Anstruther, where Oz was raised. He told me about that too, very early in our relationship; eventually he told me everything.

The scene changed to Edinburgh and Al’s early life there, first as a trainee fireman, and later as a self-employed journalist, as he was said to style himself, who made extra money singing with an up-and-coming rock band.

That was the point at which I made my first appearance. ‘Phyllis’ turned up at one of his gigs, and sank her hooks in him straight away.

‘The boy Al was okay until he met her,’ a guy called Saeed Nawaz was quoted as saying. Saeed had to equal Ali Patel, the neighbourhood grocer in Edinburgh, and Oz’s pal.

‘Him and Maureen, his bird from when he was a kid in Fife, they were fine, an item, although they didnae live together. Then she turned up, that Phyllis. She was in bother of some sort or other, he helped her out, and she helped herself. They went off together on some business trip that she’d lined up, only for a week like, but when they came back everything was different. They went off again, but for a while this time, then just when I thought he was gone for good, he came back, out the blue, and things were all right wi’ him and Maureen again. They got married, he selt me the flat and they moved tae Glasgow.’

True, all of it, and he’d got Ali’s accent right as well; but then it drifted into pure fiction.

‘Al made it big in the music business; he got lucky, ken, became a big star overnight. A wee bit later, Phyllis came back. Ah don’t know how, but she’d missed all that. I was in one night, there was a ring at the doorbell and it was her. She looked at me, surprised like, and asked where Al was. Ah telt her he didnae live there any more, that him and Maureen had got married and moved tae the Wild West. The look she gave me scared me shitless. Then she turned on her heel and went off. A wee bit later, Ah heard that Maureen was dead, that she’d been electrocuted by a dodgy washing machine or something. Accident? Maybe so, but the timing was a bit funny.’

Another outright lie soldered on to some truth; that doorstep exchange never happened. The truth was that when Jan died, I was in Spain, and Oz was with me. We’d met up completely by accident, and there were people around who could prove it.

I read on, into the night as the story moved on. In some ways it was a pretty accurate account of Oz’s life, with only the names, geography and occupations changed. There was a chapter that was based on an incident when Oz was making a movie, and a real-life drama developed, involving the kidnapping of my sister Dawn … an actress, of course, not a politician. He had some of that story right on the button, but not all of it; my guess was that his source had been Susie, and that she’d held back a part that related to her. But ‘Sheila’ came into the narrative, right on cue, paying a visit to Al and Phyllis in St Tropez, where they had bought a mansion and were starting out on married life.

‘Al was pathetic then,’ her ‘account’ read. ‘I think he realised that he’d been drawn into something that he didn’t really want, a relationship in which he had no control. He made a pass at me, one night when Phyllis was away … fucking up somebody else’s head, no doubt. It seemed to me like a plea for help more than anything else. In normal circumstances, I’d have told him to get lost, but he was so wasted … I suppose I took pity on him.’

‘Hah!’ I snorted when I’d finished that section. ‘The poor little innocent had her knickers in her handbag from the moment she stepped through our door.’ For Al and Phyllis, read Oz and me and for St Tropez, read L’Escala, in the house where Tom was made … and Janet too, as it happened.

The last time Oz and I were alone together, in the Algonquin Hotel in New York, he spent a good chunk of the night filling in all of those parts of his life to which I hadn’t actually been a witness. His confession: that’s all I could call it, made to the only person he knew would keep all his secrets, since some of them were mine too. His account of that get-together was rather different from the fictionalised version in Culshaw’s manuscript, and much later Susie had pretty much confirmed it to me.

I went back to the ‘book’ and continued until, as I knew it would, it came back to that shotgun. Then it really did go into wonderland. The premise of the story was that Sheila’s family steel stockholding business was under attack by Glasgow gangsters, who were looking to drive down the share price so they could take it over, and that with Phyllis urging him on in the background, no longer part of his family, but still part of the scene, Al had taken matters into his own hands … with the shotgun.

Of course, that was nonsense. Culshaw had missed the point. ‘Al’ might have done that, but no way Oz would. No, he’d have paid someone else to take the guys out. As for my alleged involvement … I was too busy living on my own in London and looking after a two-year-old at the time.

I pushed a keyboard button to move on, but there was no more. The story came to an abrupt end; nothing about Al’s life after that, or his death, or even about Phyllis, the Wicked Witch of the West.

I checked my watch; it showed 2.30 a.m. I was on the point of calling Susie regardless, but her illness had manifested itself by that time, and she was on medication. It would have been cruel to waken her, and probably pointless, as her head would have been like mush.

But I wanted to be cruel to Culshaw, as cruel as I could; waking him in the middle of the night was pretty tame, I know, but it was a start. I called the hotel. The night porter must have been catnapping, for it took him a minute or so to answer. I recognised his sleepy voice as one of the long-term staff members who’d drawn the short straw.

‘Hello, Andoni,’ I said, in Castellano, for he’s from Asturia and doesn’t speak the local tongue. ‘It’s Primavera. I’d like you to put me through to Mr Culshaw’s room, please.’

‘But Madam,’ he exclaimed, ‘Primavera, it’s very late. He’ll be asleep. He was in the bar till midnight; he’d had a few drinks by the time he asked for his key.’

‘Nevertheless, he’ll be expecting me to call. Connect me, please.’

I had another wait, but not so long this time. ‘Mmmm.’ The voice that came on the line could only grunt, at first. ‘I thought you’d wait till morning.’

‘Duncan,’ I told him, ‘if the version of me that you portray was real, you wouldn’t have had a morning. My friend the night porter downstairs would have gone conveniently absent, leaving me free to come up and cut your throat while you slept. By the way,’ I added, after a pause, ‘don’t be too sure that won’t happen. Enjoy the rest of the night, and if you do waken up, I’ll see you for coffee in L’Escala, at ten, in a café called El Centre, next to the church.’

In the morning, I kept him waiting. I had some sleep to catch up on. My lovely son helped me do that; even at eleven, as he was then, he could be a self-starter, and he wakened me with a mug of tea and a bowl of cereal around eight, having fed himself properly, taken Charlie for a trot and got ready for school. Slut of a mother, you’re thinking, but it’s wonderfully liberating when your child gets to that stage. It gives you just a little extra freedom, and takes a little of the constant pressure away.

I had another call to make before I met Culshaw, and that delayed me for a few minutes, and so it was pushing quarter past ten when I arrived at the café. He was seated at one of the outside tables, almost in the shade of the huge palm tree that stands between the church and the town hall, as if it’s keeping them apart.

I’d hardly sat down before a waiter appeared. I ordered a cortado, a short coffee with milk, and a bottle of Vichy Catalan sparkling water.

I put my bag on the table, and laid my phone beside it as I settled carefully into my plastic chair: sometimes their legs can be a little wobbly, and it would have spoiled the moment if I’d landed on my arse. I looked at Duncan; he was neatly dressed in white trousers, a pale blue T-shirt and a tan cotton jacket, but his eyes were a little baggy, and I guessed that he hadn’t slept too well after my call. First points to Primavera. That said, he didn’t seem nervous; the opposite, in fact. He had a faint smile on his face, and those baggy eyes said that he was rather pleased with himself.

He gazed at me, as if he was waiting for me to open the batting, but I wasn’t going to play his game. I waited him out, until finally he said, ‘Well? What did you think of it?’

‘It’s not going to win the Booker Prize,’ I replied drily.

‘That won’t worry me,’ he laughed. ‘They’re famous for not selling. My book will be a blockbuster.’

‘It’s a heap of shit, Duncan. It’s a hatchet job on Oz, thinly disguised as a novel. Most of it’s fabricated into the bargain.’

‘Hey,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s a work of fiction, so by definition it’s fabricated. How big an advance do you reckon I’ll get for it?’

‘Fuck all,’ I snapped.

‘That’s not what my new literary agent says. He has three publishers fighting for it, and that’s just on the basis of a synopsis. We’re up to six figures and the bids are still rising.’

‘Then you’re going to have a major delivery problem,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not finished.’

‘It could be if I wanted it to be. I could wrap it up where it is now, go straight to Al’s death and have Phyllis in the vicinity, only for Sheila to join all the dots, and kill her in a big bloody finale.’ He paused. ‘But you are right. It could be better than that, and that’s why I need your help.’

‘You what?’ I gasped. ‘You need my help? Are you completely out of your tree?’

‘No,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s a gap in my knowledge, and only you can fill it. Susie certainly can’t.’

‘Susie doesn’t know about this travesty, does she?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘But you have been pumping her for information.’

He had the nerve to wink at me. ‘I’ve been pumping her in all sorts of ways, my dear,’ he murmured. I wanted to punch his lights out, as I think I could have, given our relative sizes, but I mastered my anger as he continued. ‘But I haven’t been interrogating her, if that’s what you mean. I’ve simply encouraged her to talk about her past and made notes as she’s gone along.’

‘What about Mac and Ellie, and Ali Patel? Did you talk to them or was that pure imagination too?’

‘Oh yes, I spoke to them all, and to Oz’s school chum, one of the two he beat up. I told them I was a journalist researching a magazine feature about Oz. None of them were very helpful, apart from the victim of his violence.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘you’re lucky he’s not around, because I hate to think what he’d do to you.’

‘That is rather the point of the novel. It’s about the decline of the central character into darkness, even as he grew rich and famous. And through it all there’s this character in the background, this duplicitous manipulative woman, Phyllis, dragging him down. And that’s not all that far from the truth, is it, Primavera? Go on, be honest, admit it.’

I looked him in the eye. ‘Do you even understand honesty, you little shit? You understand duplicity, that’s for sure, but do you have a straight bone in your body?’

‘This discussion isn’t about my morals, Primavera, it’s about yours. Go on, do you recognise the people I’ve described?’

He leaned back in his chair, drawing me a challenging look. I decided to answer him. ‘To an extent, yes I do. Oz changed over the years, there’s no doubt about that, but the trigger for it had nothing to do with me. He never got over Jan’s death, and that’s the real truth of it, that’s the point you’ve missed by a mile in your concoction of nonsense. As for suggesting that I had something to do with it, I wasn’t even in the same country when it happened.’

‘No, that’s true,’ he agreed. ‘You were here in Spain, with him. And wasn’t that convenient for both of you.’

‘How the hell did you know that?’

‘Susie let it slip, and a friend of Oz’s, Everett Davis, confirmed it.’

That made sense, but I was conceding nothing. ‘So what?’

‘It’s interesting, that’s all, the fact that you were both clear of the scene when the … accident … happened. But what about you anyway? Did my description hit the spot?’

‘Was I angry with Oz? Yes. Twice in my life; first when he chose Jan over me, and then when he two-timed me with Susie. Did I hit back at him? Yes, but I regret it now. Duplicitous, manipulative? Hurt and betrayed sums it up.’

‘Which leads us to that plane crash in the US,’ Culshaw said, ‘the private plane that Oz was supposed to be on. That’s a matter of record, for he was listed as missing, presumed dead, until he showed up in New York. You, on the other hand, were listed as missing too, and you didn’t surface again until after Oz was dead.’

‘That’s true,’ I admitted, ‘but I had my reasons.’

‘I’m sure. But what if I suggest that your “reasons”,’ he smirked, ‘for staying underground were to plot and bring about his death? What if I suggest that you were never on that plane either, that you slipped away first, and that Oz realised this, smelled a rat and got off himself?’

‘Then I would suggest to you that you are crazy.’

The smirk became a beam, a great self-satisfied beam. ‘That’s not how the publishers will see it when I use it as the basis for the completion of my novel, as I intend to do, now that we’ve had this conversation. They’ll buy it and you know it. As I said, I could do a deal today, even without that ending.’

‘And I’ll sue.’

‘On what basis?’

‘That it’s a thinly disguised defamation.’

‘Of whom? Oz is dead, and remember, you can’t libel the dead.’

‘Of me, you idiot. And your book will only be bankable if you can throw out the hint that it’s about Oz and me, without saying as much.’

He shrugged. ‘So go ahead and sue. I’ll defend, and the case will go to trial, with ensuing publicity that will be truly global. Is that what you really want, Primavera?’

‘Fuck you, boy,’ I barked.

‘Come on,’ he persisted. ‘Is that what you really want, your name dragged through the courts, for everyone to read, including your son, your precious boy?’

‘And what if I don’t?’ I asked, tentatively. ‘How can I avoid that?’

He leaned across the table. ‘You could buy the manuscript yourself. Then all your problems would disappear.’

We’d finally got to where I’d known from the start that we were heading. ‘Mmm,’ I murmured. ‘And how much is it going to cost me?’

‘Two million,’ Culshaw answered. ‘Sterling. I know that the time you spent with Oz has left you a wealthy woman, even if you’re not in Susie’s class. You can come up with that; if you’re short, I’m sure your wealthy brother-in-law would chip in. That’s why I thought you might like to show him the manuscript. Otherwise …’

He left the alternative hanging in the air, but he didn’t have to spell it out: otherwise, we’d go to trial in a libel suit and Oz’s real life story, and mine, would be laid out before a jury. Undoubtedly, investigators would be employed to go digging, and there were things that I did not want them to uncover, not least the real story behind that shotgun. If I went to court, that would happen. If I didn’t, the book would publish, I’d be smeared for certain, and my privacy in the nice wee world that I’d built for Tom and me would be shattered for good.

‘Why are you putting the bite on me?’ I asked him. ‘As you say, Susie’s a lot wealthier than I am, in her own right.’

‘Susie’s a peripheral figure in this story.’ He paused. ‘Besides, I have other plans for her.’

‘Such as marriage?’ I guessed.

‘We’ve discussed it.’

‘You publish, she’ll blow you out.’

‘I publish I make a fortune, so I’d get over that.’

I nodded. ‘You’ve got all bases loaded, eh Duncan?’

‘And a pitcher on the mound with a very weak arm.’

‘So it would seem,’ I agreed. ‘But let’s forget the baseball analogies. What you’re really doing is extorting two million pounds from me.’

He laughed, the insolent bastard. ‘No, I’m selling you global rights to a work of fiction. Once you’ve bought it it’ll be up to you whether you exploit it or not.’

‘I’d still call it extortion.’

He held up his hands, palms outwards, as if in surrender. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I concede, it’s extortion. You pay, and you keep your reputation and Oz’s unblemished. So, are you going to come up with the two million or not?’

‘I don’t think I’ll have to.’ I picked up my phone, put it to my ear, and said, in Catalan, ‘Have you got all of that?’

‘Yes,’ a voice replied. ‘It’s all recorded.’

For the first time since I’d joined him, a frown of uncertainty furrowed Duncan Culshaw’s forehead. As he peered at me, he didn’t see two men come out of the café through the door behind him and walk towards us. In fact he didn’t notice them at all until they took the two vacant seats at our table.

‘What the …’ he began.

‘People I asked to join us,’ I explained. ‘This is Alex,’ I nodded sideways, towards the man on my left, then forward towards the other, ‘and this is Marc.’

‘Oh. Really? You’ve brought heavies along? Come on, Primavera, this is a public place, and unless I read it wrong when I arrived here, that’s the police station right behind us.’

Alex nodded. ‘Yes it is,’ he conceded in accented but assured English, ‘but it’s only the town police, and they look in the other direction when they see us.’

Culshaw looked around him, as if he was counting the number of potential witnesses to what might happen next.

‘Senora Blackstone didn’t introduce us properly,’ Alex continued. ‘I am Intendant Guinart and this is Sergeant Sierra. We are officers in the criminal investigation division of the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police force. You have just described what you have just tried to do as extortion. We agree with you, and for that we are arresting you.’ As he spoke, Marc Sierra took Culshaw by the arm, stood, and drew him with him.

‘Senora,’ Alex said, formally, as he rose, ‘you will also need to come with us to make the denuncio …’ he looked at their prisoner, as he had become, and added, in explanation, ‘… the official complaint.’

I nodded. ‘If you say so, Intendant.’

They took him away in the Mossos car that was parked round the corner on Carrer Enric Serra (I’ve no idea who Enric was but he must have been important to have a street named after him, especially the one that runs in front of the church) and I followed in mine.

Traffic flow in L’Escala is quirky and so I arrived at the nick before they did, and was climbing out of my jeep when Marc Sierra pulled in and parked two bays along.

Culshaw was as white as a sheet when Alex helped him out of the car; he had to, because they’d handcuffed him. He glared at me; I looked back at him, my eyes trying to say, ‘You try to do me over in my own town, idiot, and this is what happens.’

I followed as he was led into the building, past the reception counter and through a door behind it. The duty officer made a move as if to stop me, but Alex stopped her instead, with a glance and a brief shake of his head.

We went upstairs, and into a room that was the polar opposite of those drab dirty interview boxes beloved of TV drama, the kind where you can almost smell the sweat. Yes, it had a table with two seats on either side, and a recorder, but it was bright and air-conditioned with a big window looking over the medical centre on the next plot and on to the Mediterranean beyond.

I stood to the side as they sat Duncan on a chair facing the door, then removed the cuffs. He seemed to relax a little in the surroundings, until Sergeant Sierra dropped the venetian blind and shut out the sun and the view, making us completely private.

‘Empty your pockets, please,’ Alex requested.

‘I want a lawyer,’ his guest exclaimed. ‘I want to phone the British Consulate.’

‘I’m sure you do, and in time we may allow that, but first, please put what’s in your pockets on the table.’

‘If you insist.’ He reached into his jacket and produced, from various pockets, a set of Oakley sunglasses, a mobile phone, a wallet, a few coins, a car key with a Hertz fob on the ring, and a British passport.

Alex picked it up, and opened it, turning to the identification page. ‘Señor Duncan William Culshaw,’ he read. ‘Age, let me work it out, thirty-four, born in Kil … Kilmack … I don’t know how to say that.’ He glanced at me. ‘Where is it, Primavera?’

I completed the place name, with correct pronunciation. ‘Kilmacolm; it’s in Scotland.’

‘Mmm. More Scottish, eh. Let’s see where else you’ve been.’ He flicked through the passport, checking the pages. ‘Singapore,’ he read, ‘USA, Ecuador.’ He smiled. ‘You’ve been to Ecuador? That’s unusual. Why did you go there?’

‘I had an airline magazine assignment. All those trips were for airline magazine articles.’

‘So it’s a coincidence that Ecuador is where Senor Oz Blackstone died?’

Culshaw nodded. ‘That’s right; a complete coincidence.’

Alex tossed the passport on the table and picked up the wallet. ‘Money,’ he murmured, ‘Mastercard, American Express, Priority Pass, driving licence …’ he stopped, squeezed a finger into a compartment behind the card slots, and drew something out, something I couldn’t see.

He looked up at his colleague, and smiled. ‘Preservativos,’ he chuckled. ‘Con sabor y aroma manzana verde. Condoms,’ he repeated, his eyes returning to their owner, ‘green apple flavour.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re not married, senor, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘I’m in a relationship.’

‘And your lady is in L’Escala?’

‘No, of course not.’ He looked across at me, and smirked. ‘But one takes one’s opportunities as they arise, so it pays to go prepared. And after all, this morning, I was meeting a single mother,’ he drawled, ‘a popular lady by all acc-’

He was stopped in mid-sentence by the back of the cop’s hand, cracking him in the side of the mouth. I’d never seen Alex move so fast; nor had I ever seen him hit anyone before.

‘You’re in enough trouble, mister,’ he growled, ‘without making it worse. Yes, Primavera is a popular lady here, but not in the way that you infer. She is an important member of our community and she is also the godmother of my daughter.’

Alex’s clout had left a vivid red mark on Culshaw’s cheek.

‘Okay,’ the intendant snapped, ‘we get down to business.’ He tapped the recorder on the table. ‘Everything you said this morning, your entire conversation with Senora Blackstone, was transmitted to us through her phone, which was active all the time. It was recorded and we have it here, all of it, including your admission to your attempt at extortion. We’re not here to negotiate, or even to interrogate. The evidence of our ears and of this tape shows that you have committed a serious crime. Under Spanish law that will earn you a minimum of three years in prison, but given the amount of money involved here, it is likely to be much more. What will happen now? Primavera will make a formal complaint against you and you will be held in jail while I report to the public prosecutor. From then on it’ll be in her hands, but I warn you, she’s a very tough lady.’ He looked round at me. ‘Primavera, will you write the denuncio, in Catalan of course, or would you prefer to dictate it?’

‘I’m literate enough to write it myself, Intendant,’ I replied. ‘If you give me a form, I’ll complete it.’ I stepped towards the table.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘The spelling doesn’t have to be one hundred per cent; the meaning has to be clear, that’s all. Marc, would you fetch a denuncio paper, please.’

Finally, as the sergeant left the room, Culshaw seemed to realise that he wasn’t involved in any sort of a game, that the cops were not bluffing and that I wasn’t either. He looked up at me. ‘Primavera, can we talk about this?’

‘We’re done talking, chum,’ I told him.

‘I was joking, only joking,’ he protested, but so weakly that he didn’t even fool himself, for his voice faded as he spoke.

‘Well, we ain’t.’

‘Please.’ He was begging, pure and simple.

As I looked at him, the anger that I’d been nurturing since I’d read the first few pages of his manuscript began to subside. I paused and began to think rationally. Duncan’s entire pitch had been based on the premise that there are things in my past and in Oz’s that might not stand up to detailed examination and that I would not want exposed to the full glare of publicity. He’d been right about that; he’d been a complete bloody idiot in the way he’d tried to exploit it, that’s all.

If I went ahead with a complaint, and it entered the Spanish judicial system, I wouldn’t be able to claw it back. Their courts might work very slowly, but eventually they do work. If Duncan got himself a decent lawyer and sought to defend himself in a trial, then everything would come out. More than that, even if he was locked up in Spain pending trial, bail denied, he’d still be able to do a book deal through his agent. Indeed the thing might become even more valuable.

Shit, the guy was on a winner either way, but he hadn’t realised it. I frowned at him, severely, but I asked Alex, ‘Would you leave us alone for a couple of minutes?’

He agreed; he was reluctant, but he agreed.

‘Okay,’ I said, when we were alone, ‘this is what it will take. You give me a document, which Alex will witness, transferring copyright ownership of your book to me. You do that now. Then you give me the device that holds the original … a laptop? …’ he nodded, ‘so that I can erase the entire hard disk. Then you disappear; you get out of Susie’s life and stay out. It’s that or you spend the next ten years being rogered up the arse by the cellmate of your choice, and I can promise you he won’t be using apple-flavoured condoms. Deal?’

He considered it for all of two seconds, and croaked, ‘Deal.’

‘One other thing,’ I added. ‘Should you stash away a copy and try to use it in the future, or should you even stick your head above the parapet, I can still make the complaint and Alex will still have that recording. That would be if you were lucky. The alternative would be that I would send Conrad Kent after you, with a free hand to do whatever he deems necessary. That’s where your thinking was flawed, Duncan. You should have realised that when you threaten my wellbeing, you threaten my son. If anybody does that, there are no limits to what I would do to protect him. You got that much right about Phyllis, and me.’

We were out of there in fifteen minutes, and he was out of town within an hour, taking with him a laptop with a completely blank hard disk.