For The Death Of Me

2

We were twenty minutes behind schedule when we set out for the Hotel de Paris, and even then, Susie’s hair was still damp. She had included herself in the meeting because she had read the book and enjoyed it and, as she put it, because there was no way in this lifetime that I was going to lunch in the H de P without her.

We’d only have been fifteen minutes late if the phone hadn’t rung, and if Audrey Kent hadn’t been in the toilet. But it did, and she was, so I picked it up.

‘Oz, it’s you.’

I knew that voice; by God, did I know it. ‘Last time I looked in the mirror it was,’ I told Primavera. ‘Which of your diverse personalities is on the other end of the line, and where the hell are you?’

‘I’m me,’ she replied. ‘The concerned mother missing her son.’

‘Not the devious tramp on a mission to ruin my life?’

‘Not this time.’

Prim and I had had a little difficulty a year or so before. She had been a very silly girl, and had paid various penalties, including a six-month prison term, and loss of custody of our son. I knew which had hurt her the most.

I had seen her once since she’d been inside, when we’d been at Loch Lomond and she’d come to visit Tom. Susie would have been behaving reasonably if she’d raised hell about that, since she’d been as much a potential victim of Prim’s failed scam as I had, but she’s as generous a woman as I’ve ever known, and she’d forgiven her. Guilt came into it, maybe: the early stage of our relationship, Susie’s and mine, was more than a little adulterous.

‘So, I repeat,’ I went on, ‘where the fuckaya? We’re short for time here.’

‘I’m in Monte Carlo.’ Why was I not surprised by that? Because I knew Prim too well, that’s why: she’d lost her ability to set me off balance. ‘I’ve checked into the Columbus, and I’d like to see Tom.’

‘A little notice would have been nice.’

‘Yes, I know, and I’m sorry.’

Bollocks, I thought. Prim and ‘sorry’ were strangers to each other.

‘They only gave me my passport back three days ago, after I finished my probation period. I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain that they would, and I didn’t want to make an arrangement and then have to disappoint him.’

‘I can accept that,’ I told her. ‘But you can’t just sweep in unannounced. We agreed that he has to be prepared for each visit. Susie and I are already late for a lunch date; I can’t deal with it right now. Tomorrow morning, fine, but not today.’

‘Okay,’ she conceded, slightly grumpily. ‘But what am I going to do in the meantime?’

I glanced at Susie; she shrugged her tanned shoulders. ‘Get in a taxi and come to the Hotel de Paris, Le Grill on the roof. You can have lunch with us, make up a foursome. You might even be amused by it.’

‘I can’t just drop everything and come.’

‘Everything, as in what exactly? You were ready to bomb up here and see Tom. Just get your ass’ (Gone Hollywood: can’t help it) ‘in a taxi and don’t argue.’ I hung up on her.

Conrad was waiting at the front door in the Mercedes. We have two in Monaco, an S-class for posh stuff like being driven to the Hotel de Paris, and an M-class, which Susie uses for the supermarket trips. (I’ve never understood the need for off-road capability in the Intermarche car park, but I’m no expert in such matters.) The Merc is the people’s car in the principality. You don’t see many BMWs there; someone I know told me that it’s because they’re seen to have Mafia connotations, but I wouldn’t know about that.

He’s a smooth driver, the boy, as skilled behind the wheel as he is in everything else he does for us. Conrad (woe betide anyone who ever calls him Connie) doesn’t have a job description. Some people think he’s my minder, but he isn’t, not first and foremost at any rate. I can handle such stuff myself and, besides, it doesn’t look good for someone like me to have a well-suited heavy on his shoulder all the time. It takes the gloss off the smile, if you understand me. No, he’s there to make sure that the intruder protection systems on all our properties are working, all the time, but first and foremost to look after Susie and the kids. Is he good at that? Well, all I’ll say is that when we moved to Monaco and Janet and Tom started nursery school, we had a paparazzi problem, guys following them right up to the gate and even inside. We don’t, not any more. I don’t know how he solved it, because I never asked, but he did.

The traffic was a little bit hairy, so it took fifteen minutes to reach Casino Square. With a clear run you can cross the principality in five. As we pulled up in front of the hotel, its impressive commissionaire stepped forward, ignoring the taxi that followed us as he seized the door handle. He bowed as we stepped out, greeting us by name. . we weren’t regulars, but such courtesies come with the uniform. I bunged him the usual, took Susie’s arm and was about to lead her inside when I heard a call from behind.

‘Hold on!’

We turned, and there was Prim. She’d had no time to posh up, so I suppose she’d been planning to visit Tom in a close-fitting green satin dress that looked as if it had been cut to make the most of her maternal bosom, and in chosen-to-match shoes with three-inch heels. I suppose the poor wee chap might not have recognised her if she hadn’t been wearing a touch of blusher and deep red lipstick. She’d looked a bit scrawny when we’d seen her last, but she’d replaced the few pounds she’d lost in the nick, and the lines around her eyes had vanished.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought taxis came on demand here, I had to wait almost ten minutes.’ She and Susie embraced, briefly, although I could still read a little tension in my wife’s body-language. I gave her a small nod, then stood aside for them to lead the way into the hotel’s spectacular foyer.

‘Who’s the fourth member?’ Prim asked, as we waited for the lift.

I filled her in quickly on Benedict Luker, his book and the bold and zany approach that had led to our lunch date.

‘So you’ve never met the guy?’

‘No,’ I agreed, as the elevator arrived and we stepped inside.

‘You know how old he is?’

‘No. His biog on the book jacket describes him as “an international man of mystery”, and that’s all.’

‘Or what he looks like?’

‘There’s no photo on the jacket.’

‘So how will you know who he is?’

‘Well,’ I told her as we stepped out and walked towards Le Grill, ‘first of all, it’s more than likely that he knows what I look like. But if by some tiny chance he doesn’t, the fact that he’ll be sitting at my table, probably into his third or fourth cocktail by now, should give me a clue.’

His back was towards us as the head waiter led us through the crowded restaurant to the table; the sod had grabbed the best place, facing the sea. He wore a Hawaiian shirt that declared the area to be a taste-free zone, and a cowboy hat. . yes, a bloody Stetson. . sat on his head at a jaunty angle. A copy of USA Today lay discarded on the floor beside him. As we drew close he heard us, turned and. .

. . and that’s when the shit hit the fan as spectacularly as I have ever seen, in one of the most prestigious venues in Europe. . no, make that the world.

Susie let out a scream; her hands flew to her mouth, her knees buckled and she’d have fallen if I hadn’t reacted quickly enough to catch her and pull her to me. I let Prim look after her own equilibrium. Fortunately she was up to it. She didn’t scream, just stood there staring, like me, and like him. The four of us, indeed probably the whole restaurant, seemed frozen. We had become a diorama, a tableau, a paused DVD, creatures trapped in amber, or any other metaphor that may come to your mind and please you.

I don’t know how long we were like that, before Prim broke the spell with a cry of ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

The Archbishop of Monaco was seated at the second table along. I caught the look of outraged horror that crossed his face. At another time I might have apologised for my guest’s behaviour, but at that moment, all I cared about was my wife. Plus, Prim had beaten me to the exclamatory punch by about half a second.

Susie was trembling in the crook of my arm, still staring, pop-eyed. I couldn’t say anything: I had to let her take it in, let her come to believe what her eyes were telling her, and work out how I was going to tell her what I knew I’d have to.

‘Mike?’ she said at last. It wasn’t at full scream volume, but it wasn’t far short of it.

The so-called Benedict Luker stared back at her; as he did, the cowboy hat slid slowly off the back of his head and landed on the floor. He looked to be in his mid forties, although I knew he was younger. He had a lean, weathered face, it had been around the block a few times. One of its more recent features was a scar that started on his right cheek and disappeared into a light, stubbly beard, which, like his hair, was greying. His eyes were the same, though. They’ll always give you away.

‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ said Prim, ‘somewhere private.’

‘No,’ I replied, almost before she had finished. ‘If we do that I’ll probably kill this bastard again, for real this time. Sit down, both of you.’

As I eased my wife into a chair, my guest started to rise from his. Maybe it was courtesy, maybe it was flight; I don’t know which and I didn’t care. I grabbed hold of his shoulder, doing my best to crush it, and slammed him back down. As I took the seat facing him, my back to the view, his face was twisted in pain, because I really am very strong. I wanted to hurt him more, but with the archbishop still watching it wouldn’t have been the thing to do, so I released him.

Susie seemed to have retreated from the edge of hysteria, but she was still stunned; her mouth hung open slightly. Prim had recovered her self-control. ‘It really is you, Dylan,’ she murmured, ‘isn’t it?’

He nodded, then looked across at me, into my eyes. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen, Oz. You never said you’d bring either of them. If I’d known that. .’

I’ve rarely been lost for words.

‘You’re dead,’ said Prim. ‘See the man in the red cloak two tables away? We should get him over here to pronounce a fucking miracle. You were a Special Branch cop, you went rogue, and you were shot dead in Amsterdam about six years ago. It was on the telly and everything.’

‘True,’ he whispered. ‘I was shot, but not dead. Everyone thought I was, Oz included. His was the last face I saw before I passed out. But I recovered. They could have let me die, but I had a lot of stuff in my head that they wanted, so they brought me back. Once they’d got it all out, they put me to work. .’

‘Who are they?’

‘The drug police, international: a combination of Interpol and the DEA, very serious people. I worked underground for them for a while and helped them bust a very big chain in South East Asia. For that they gave me a new identity, a pay-off, and cut me loose.’

‘Benedict Luker was the new identity?’ I asked.

‘No. I became him a year ago. I wrote the book for fun while I was doing odd jobs in Portugal. I took the pen name off a CD cover. When I sold it, I decided to make another identity change. I pulled a favour from a friend in the DEA, and now Benedict Luker is my official name, although most people call me Benny. Hey, imagine me being called after the Pope, eh?’

‘Why didn’t you contact me, Your Holiness?’ Susie’s voice was laced with anger and bitterness. ‘We were supposed to be engaged. We were living together.’

He looked at her, and I saw real pain in his eyes once again. ‘It was over, Susie, or at least it was on its last legs. I knew it, and so did you.’

‘Did I?’

‘You didn’t say as much, but you did. Remember the time I asked you to set a date for the wedding? You didn’t just stall me: you ignored me. You changed the subject. That was a pretty clear message to me. Anyway, I couldn’t handle it any more, you rolling in it and me on a copper’s pay.’

‘So your answer was to turn crook and leave me?’

He winced. ‘An opportunity came up; it seemed like a good idea at the time.’

‘And if it had worked, if you’d got away with your big score, would I ever have heard from you again?’

‘That wasn’t my plan.’

‘You bastard!’ Susie hissed.

I held up a hand, calling a kind of truce. I needed to bring the situation under control, and not just because we were in a public place. I was as shocked as the girls by the reappearance of Michael Dylan. He had always been one for popping up dramatically, but I hadn’t expected him to do it again, not because I thought he was dead. . I’d found out the truth a few years before. . but because I’d thought he was gone from my life for good. I’d known Dylan for about ten years, since he was a detective inspector in Edinburgh. He’d seen himself as a bit of a high flyer then, but his boss (of whom more later) had left the force under a cloud, and Mike had jumped ship to Glasgow, in the interests of his career. There we had met up again, and he had met up with Susie. The rest of it, Prim had summed up pretty well: he’d gone rogue, and taken a hard, hard fall.

I glanced around: the head waiter had reappeared and was standing behind Prim, looking more uncertain, I suspect, than he’d ever been in his life. I told him to bring us four lobster cocktails, and four medium fillet steaks, with a bottle of 1996 Torres Mas La Plana and some sparkling water. He winced slightly at my choice of a Spanish wine, but gave a tiny bow and disappeared, grateful, I reckoned, that a potential embarrassment seemed to be defusing itself.

‘I’m not saying I wouldn’t have contacted you,’ Dylan resumed, ‘if only to let you know I wasn’t dead. But then I found out about you and Oz, and the baby, and I reckoned you didn’t need that kind of news at that time.’

‘And if I hadn’t tagged along for lunch, would I ever have been any the wiser?’ Susie glared at me. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

‘That he was Benedict Luker? No way did I know, or I’d have burned his fucking book.’

‘But you knew he was alive. Prim and I almost died ourselves when we saw him, but you were only angry. If you were astonished, it was only because he was here. Admit it: you knew and you didn’t tell me.’

She had me. ‘Yes, I knew, and I kept it from you. But I’m not going to apologise for it. He turned up in Edinburgh just after Janet was born. Did I ever say I thought we might have a stalker? We did, and it was him. I met him, and I told him death became him, and that as far as you were concerned, he should stay that way.’ I fixed my eyes on him. ‘Incidentally, Benny, I still believe that.’

‘But I’m not dead, Oz, and now that Susie and Prim know it, we can’t go back there.’

He was kidding himself. I know a man in London, name of Mark Kravitz: if I’d made a single phone call to him and given him instructions. .

I confess that that dark thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t dwell on it. The trouble was that Dylan had been my best friend once. When he was engaged to Susie, I’d been engaged to Prim, and we’d been top of the Glasgow glamour list. . if you can get such a concept into your head. At the same time, unknown to Susie and me, Dylan and Prim had been a couple too or, rather, were suspected of having coupled on the odd occasion, but we weren’t bothered about that any more.

‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘You’re still with us, or Benny Luker is. Where’s Benny based now? What happened to Portugal? Weren’t you supposed to be holed up there?’

‘I did my time there, but I moved on when I did the book deal. Nobody watches over me any more. I’m in New York; Benny has an American passport, and a birth certificate.’

‘Won’t you be a bit visible, as an author?’ Prim asked him.

‘I’m going to be the reclusive type. Plus, the book’s only published in the US, so far at least. I won’t have any exposure in Britain. When the movie’s made. . Let’s face it, nobody ever cares about the author, do they? Only the director and stars.’

I heard myself gasp. ‘Excuse me? The movie? You actually think I’m buying the rights now that I know who you are?’

He smiled, and looked at me the way he used to, out from under his eyebrows. In that moment I recalled what a cheeky, chancing bastard he’d always been.

‘Why has it suddenly become a bad deal?’ he asked.

The two women frowned in unison and stiffened in their chairs. ‘Dylan,’ Susie asked, ‘were you brain-damaged when that Dutchman shot you?’

He looked at her as if she was. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What’s the problem? Oz liked the book well enough to set up this meeting. I could have sent a ringer along, pretending to be Benny Luker, and he’d have been none the wiser. But down the line he’d have had to know, so I decided to face him up now.’

He fell silent as the lobster cocktails were served and as I approved the Mas La Plana, proffered by an unsmiling sommelier. . I wondered how he’d have reacted if I’d asked for the mighty Yakima Valley red that had sneaked on to his list when nobody was looking. . but I could tell that it was only a pause.

‘If you’d stayed at home with the kids,’ he told her, ‘and if she,’ he jerked his thumb at Primavera, barely glancing at her, ‘hadn’t turned up. . and by the way, Oz, what the fuck is she doing here anyway?. . your old man would have got over his initial shock and we’d have got down to business without interference. Or isn’t he allowed to? I remember you saying back in the old days that you reckoned Oz’s business brains were hanging behind his cock.’

I couldn’t help it, I shot Susie a sharp glance, and saw her turn a nice off-beetroot shade. I also saw her stifle a grin. ‘If I did say that,’ she shot back, ‘I must have been drunk. I was wrong, that’s for sure, for I appointed him to the board of the Gantry Group, and he was bloody good. In my least sharp management moments, that’s not something I ever dreamed of doing with you.’ She drew breath for a moment. ‘But the old days really are dead, Mike, so let’s not go back there again, ever. Stay at home with the kids, you said. Yes, that’s what I do now, and I’m happier doing that than I’ve ever been in my life. Sure, I was devastated when you went, but you really can’t comprehend how big a favour you did me.’

‘It wasn’t much of a favour for Prim, though.’

I glared at him: that was something that hadn’t needed saying, but I needn’t have worried.

‘Sorry,’ Primavera said, with a bitter laugh. ‘Susie didn’t break Oz and me up. We didn’t need any help: we’d have managed that all on our own, given very little time. As for you and me, well, all I can say is that having had some, I can understand why she got over you so easily. You might have been okay for this and that, Mike, but you were no use at the other.’ Prim never was one to go for a few simple blood vessels when the jugular is exposed.

The discussion, indeed the situation, was in need of direction. ‘That’s enough,’ I decreed. ‘Mike, let’s say that you’re here impersonating Benny Luker. Agreed?’

‘Okay,’ he said hesitantly.

‘In that case, our meeting is postponed. This is now officially a reunion lunch, and you and I will talk business later, somewhere else. Where are you staying?’

‘Nowhere. I flew in to Nice a couple of hours ago and took a taxi along here; I expected to be gone by tonight.’

‘Then stay over for a day or so. Prim, do you mind if I book him into the Columbus?’

She stared at him, disparagingly. ‘As long as you don’t give him my room number.’

‘Right, I’ll call our secretary and have her make the booking.’ I looked at Dylan. ‘Does Benny have a credit card?’

‘Visa and American Express.’

‘Give me the Visa details: she’ll need them for the reservation.’ He drew a wallet from a pocket in the unspeakably gaudy shirt and handed me the plastic. ‘Thanks. Once that’s done we’re going to have a nice civilised lunch, then our driver will take you, me and Prim back to the hotel, and Susie back home. Honey, you’ll prepare Tom for a visit from his mum. Prim, you’ll change into something casual, and pack a swimsuit if you like, and Conrad will come back for you.’

‘Can’t I take Tom out?’

‘With Conrad, yes, if you insist. But I’d rather you took all three of them, or Janet at least, for Jonathan can be a bit fractious. We’ve got Tom used to the fact that he’s one of a family of three kids, and I don’t want anything undermining that.’

‘You don’t trust me to take him out on my own, do you?’

‘Not yet,’ I told her, honestly, ‘and not for a while. You kept him from me for three years. Maybe in another three I’ll be sure you won’t run off with him.’

‘I won’t, but have it your way. It’ll be nice taking Janet out for an ice-cream.’

At first Dylan looked puzzled by this conversation, but as it developed, I could see that he was getting the picture.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Now everybody’s as happy as can be expected.’ I made the call to Audrey, then handed the Visa card back to Dylan. ‘Michael,’ I continued, ‘we’re all glad you’re not dead. . okay, that’s arguable, but let’s take it as read for now. Why don’t you tell us about a typical day in the life of Benedict Luker, and how you came to write the book? To be honest, old son, I never gave you credit for having that much imagination.’

He did as I asked, and a strange tale it was, if it was to be believed. It seemed that Rob Willis. . the persona under which he’d settled in Portugal. . had posed as a former police officer, retired on health grounds after an on-the-job injury. Actually this was an approximation of the truth, but the Iberian peninsula is so crowded with retired British coppers that he was hardly going to be a sore thumb.

It had never occurred to me to doubt Dylan’s account of the undercover adventures he had recounted when we had met up in Edinburgh: he’d volunteered it knowing that I had the contacts to check the story out if I chose. Equally, I took this new account at face value.

What he told us was that he had been working in a bar in a town called Tavira when he had been approached by an ex-pat friend of his named Chuck, a retired haulage contractor from the London borough of Walford or somewhere similar. The guy had told him that he had been robbed. His house, a few kilometres in-country, had been burgled while he and his wife had been on the golf course. The thieves had taken the usual, telly, DVD player and all his movies and CDs. Unfortunately, they had also taken his wife’s jewel box, which, on that one day, contained a very special rock that she had neglected to put away in the safe. It was a diamond pendant, a stone with a lustrous blue shine that had come into his family about fifteen years earlier, in circumstances that Dylan’s confidant thought best to leave vague, but which precluded his reporting the matter to the local police. . or any other police for that matter.

Chuck’s plea to Dylan was simple. ‘You were a copper, I know that, but thirty years in the East End sharpens your sense of smell, and I can smell something iffy about you, son. So, how about helping me get my stone back?’

How was he to reward such confidence? By saying no, and maybe start Chuck asking a few questions about his past? No way. So he agreed, and the two of them began their own investigation. Dylan had been a half-decent detective in his time, and the thief had borne no passing resemblance to Raffles, the gentleman burglar, so pretty soon they had a few leads.

‘Are you saying,’ I asked him, ‘that Blue Star Falling is based on the truth?’

‘Got it in one, Oz,’ he replied, with a beam that broke the local smugness record by a mile, and that takes some doing in Monaco. ‘It’s all tricked up, of course. The locations are changed, the names are changed, and of course the ending was nothing like that.’

‘How did it really end, then?’

‘I found the diamond with a fence, I got it back off him. . I threatened him with the police and he believed me. . and I told Chuck who had stolen it. I didn’t want to know any more.’

‘What if Chuck reads the book, and recognises the story?’

‘Chuck’s never read a book in his life, nor has his wife. But even if he did, it’s well disguised. I have this really talented editor. She’s bloody lovely too; I think I may have some standing there.’ He smiled. ‘So that’s how Benedict Luker, novelist, came to be, and how we all came to be sitting round this table.’

I looked at him with a degree of grudging admiration, something I’d never done in my life before. ‘You’re a grade-A fucking nutter, Michael.’

He nodded his silver-streaked head. ‘Anyone who read my CV would be justified in thinking that. And if they were in any doubt, I can always get you to give them a reference.’

‘And me,’ Susie exclaimed.

‘Don’t leave me out,’ said Primavera.