Screen Savers

Chapter 11

There aren’t all that many people in Scotland named Donn, not in comparison with the Smiths or the Macs or the Blacks or even the Patels. But there are enough of them to make finding Stephen Donn and his mother seem like a difficult task.

To cut a few corners, I phoned an Edinburgh pal who worked for Telecom. He did for us what he had done on occasion in the past, but for a few more quid this time — he had heard on the grapevine of our being in the money — and ran a check of telephone subscribers.

He came up with five Stephen Donns, two in Glasgow, one in Falkirk, one in Brechin and one in Dundee. Very quietly, Dylan ran police checks on all of them, but none fitted the profile of old Joe’s nephew. We checked the Thomas Donns as well; many widows can’t bring themselves to remove their late husbands’ names from the phone book. There were three of those, all very much alive.

Another Monday morning had come around when my pal Eddie came back with his trawl of the M. Donns; first initials only, since women’s forenames are never listed in the directory. They hold them on computer, though. ‘Sorry, Oz,’ our informant said. ‘Two Marys and a couple of Margarets, but no Myra Donns. The closest I can get is a Meera.’

‘What?’

‘Aye, it’s spelled M-I-R-A. My mother knows someone in Manchester with that name.’

‘M-I-R-A,’ I repeated. ‘You could pronounce that Myra, couldn’t you?’

‘There’s nae law against it, Oz;’ said my cheerful chum.

‘Okay, let’s try her. Where does she live?’ He read out an address in Barassie, in Ayrshire.

As soon as I had hung up, Prim called Joe Donn to check the spelling of his sister-in-law’s name, but there was no reply, other than a message inviting us to leave a message. She looked across at Lulu. ‘Fancy doing that interview for McPhillips this afternoon?’ Keen as mustard, our newly promoted executive nodded.

‘That’s good,’ Prim smiled. ‘I fancy a trip to the seaside.’

We thought phoning Mrs Donn and asking her straight out if she had a son called Stephen, and if she knew where he was. Sure, it was the obvious thing to do, but we decided that if she was the woman we were after, and was concerned for her son, it would be too easy for her just to say ‘no’, and stop us in our tracks. Eyeball to eyeball was surer, and anyway, I fancied a walk on the beach too.

Barassie is no more than a village to the north of the town of Troon, on the Ayrshire coast. Even without our street atlas we would have had no trouble finding the address Eddie had given, or rather sold us, in a newish block of flats set in immaculate grounds in a small crescent just behind Beach Road.

We had the afternoon in front of us, and it was a beautiful day, so we decided to take a walk on the sands before getting down to business. I had something in mind; as it turned out, so had Prim.

‘If the weather was always like this in Scotland,’ said she, as we stood, holding hands and looking across the wide, calm Firth of Clyde at the spectacular and wholly unexpected skyline of the Island of Arran, ‘we’d never think of going anywhere else.’

‘Maybe, but it ain’t,’ I pointed out. ‘In a month or two on this very spot we won’t be able to stand up straight for the wind and the rain.’

‘So what, if we’ve got each other?’

‘So it’s just as good to have each other in Spain, or in Barbados, or in California, or in Singapore, or in Sydney, or in any other place where the rain doesn’t hit you horizontally. What d’you say to the idea of leaving Lulu to run the business, once she’s got a bit more experience, and taking a sabbatical this winter, a couple of months maybe?’

She looked at me, curious. ‘I’d say it sounds like a great idea, but what’s brought it on?’

‘Ach I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the old Oz trying to get out. What with the business, the GWA gig, the Sly Burr stuff, and now Miles’ and Dawn’s movie, I’m feeling more than a bit hemmed in. Just when I should be more in control of my life than ever before, it’s all gone crazy; I’m not in charge any more. This thing we’re doing for Dylan’s a welcome break, I tell you. . yet we don’t need to be doing any of it, neither of us.’

‘It isn’t Glasgow that’s difficult for you, is it? The flat, and all its hard memories. .’ She was frowning now, concerned.

‘No, love. I can handle all that, honest.’

‘It’s not me, is it?’

Her big brown eyes were wrinkled as I looked down at her. The sun glinted on the natural highlights; the skin of her tanned shoulders glowed with health. I put my arms around her and kissed her.

‘Oh, no, my love,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not you. If not for you, I really would be crazy. I’d have come apart, back then, if you hadn’t been around to hold me together. I don’t know what to call what you and I have between us; there’s nothing conventional about it, that’s for sure.’

‘No, there isn’t; is there.’ She put her head on my chest. ‘I should have hated you when you left me there in Spain. When we talked it through, I was very rational, trying to be as mature and considerate as I could, laying my own sins alongside yours, and agreeing that what we were doing was right for both of us. But all the time I was trying my best to hate you, trying to find the anger I felt should be there.

‘I couldn’t though, because I realised that you couldn’t help what you were doing. So after you left, I went back to real work, built up a new circle of friends, slept with a bloke just for the hell of it, and got on with my life.

‘Then you showed up in Barcelona, and there was the awful coincidence of me being there when you heard about. .’ She paused for a second or two.

‘I didn’t know what to do; whether to be around for you if you needed me, or whether to steer clear for good, in case you thought I was trying to step back in there. Then you asked me for help; in the circumstances you might have been seen as cruel and insensitive, but, my dear, you’ve never struck me as either of those things.’

‘And now?’ I asked her. ‘How do you feel now? Are you really happy, or just enjoying yourself like we did the first time?’

‘Both. There’s just one worm that gnaws at me from time to time, but I can live with it.’

‘What’s that?’ She shook her head. ‘Come on,’ I insisted.

‘Okay. It’s the notion of being second best.’

‘You’re not. You’re different; you’re you. There are no degrees. My first life is over. You’re my life now, and I love you.’

Primavera looked up at me and smiled. ‘Marry me, then.’

‘Funny you should ask me that,’ I said, reached into my pocket, took out a small box, and pressed it into her hand. In it was a diamond; a very large diamond, set in platinum. She took out the ring and slipped it on to the appropriate finger. Of course, it fitted. Dramatic gestures have to be well planned; I had established very casually that Prim’s third finger left and my pinkie were almost exactly the same size.

The stone caught the sunlight and sparkled, but it was nowhere near as bright as her smile. ‘Too many people about for us to celebrate properly,’ she chuckled. ‘But wait till I get you home.’

‘In that case, let’s go and see Mrs Donn. With any luck she’ll be out, and we can go straight back to Glasgow.’

She wasn’t, though. Within ten seconds of my pressing the buzzer next to her name at the apartments block’s entrance, a voice crackled from the speaker. ‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Donn?’ I asked, my voice raised. It’s a reflex, isn’t it. Standing before one of those things you always feel the need to get as close as you can and shout.

‘Yes. You don’t have to yell. I can hear you.’

‘Sorry. My name’s Blackstone. Your brother-in-law Joseph suggested that I should speak to you. My associate and I are trying to contact your son, Stephen. It has to do with the time he spent working for the Gantry Group.’

‘Has it now,’ said Mrs Donn, metallically. ‘You’d better come up, then. I’m on the top floor.’

The block was as well looked-after inside as out, better than our own, in fact. We climbed two carpeted flights of stairs, to reach the third-storey landing. She was waiting for us at her front door, a slim, well-dressed woman, with close-cropped brown hair and fine angular features. It was difficult to place her, age-wise, but I guessed that she was in her mid-f ifties.

‘I’m Mira Donn,’ she announced, pronouncing the name ‘Meera’. Clearly, she and Joe hadn’t spoken much. ‘Come in and tell me what this is all about.’ I had been expecting her to sound like a Paisley Buddy, but her accent, no longer filtered through the intercom, was smooth and cultured, as if she had really worked on it.

I introduced Prim as she showed us into her living room, which had a small balcony looking out on to the beach. The twin glass doors were open, and a copy of the Herald lay on a folding chair outside. I glanced around the room; it was conventionally furnished, but in the corner opposite the television, there was a small desk with a lap-top computer.

‘I was watching you on the sands,’ she said. ‘You were a picture, you know. And then you walked right up to my door. Not many people out on a Monday, are there, now that the schools are back in. I’m lucky; as a college lecturer I have another week.’

‘What do you teach?’ Prim asked, as we eased ourselves into two more chairs. The small terrace seated three, just.

‘Communication skills. At the local Technical College. Before, I lectured in Glasgow, but I decided to move down here a couple of years ago.’ She smiled, ‘Preparation for retirement.

‘So how is my brother-in-law?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘A strange man, Joseph. Empty, I’ve always thought. Empty of everything, including pride. Imagine, that he could work for the man who stole his wife. I only met Jack Gantry three times; he was hypnotic, I’ll grant you, but even so.’

‘Mr Donn seems very well,’ Prim answered her. ‘He’s retired completely.’

‘He always was. My husband was an accountant too. Unlike his brother, he was fully qualified, yet when he died, he was only a senior manager in his firm. He worked under the most tremendous pressure and eventually it killed him. Joseph, on the other hand, failed his finals and wound up making a small fortune working for Gantry. I’d be bitter if it wasn’t so ironic.

‘Tell me. Did the Gantry daughter ever find out about her mother?’

‘Not as far as we know,’ I said. ‘We’re friends of Susie, so now we’re in a bit of a quandary. We don’t know whether to tell her or not.’

‘I would tell her. It was Jack’s idea to keep it a secret; he bullied Margaret and Joe into agreeing.’

‘Why?’

She looked at me and made a face. ‘Who knows for sure, young man? But Jack always had to be seen in new things. New suits, crisp shirts, the latest model car; and he insisted on the same for Susie when she was a child. I always suspected that he was trying to gloss over the fact that his wife was secondhand.’

‘Does Stephen know that Susie’s mother was his Auntie?’

‘Not from me,’ Mira Donn answered, shaking her head. ‘Since Tom died, I’ve barely even thought of the Gantrys. I had no reason to tell him, and I’m sure Joseph wouldn’t; Jack’s word was law to him.’

‘How can we get in touch with your son?’ Prim asked quietly.

‘Why do you want to?’

‘Because someone’s been sending Susie threatening letters.’

‘Threatening?’

‘Threatening her life.’

‘A lunatic, surely.’

‘Quite possibly, but there are a number of people we need to talk to, just to be on the safe side, and Stephen’s one of them. Can you give us his address, or a phone number?’

‘No, my dear, I can not. Stephen flies in and out of my life like a migrating bird. Right now he’s off with the flock.’

‘What does he do for a living these days?’ I asked her. ‘He worked as a book-keeper at Gantry’s, we understand.’

‘He only did that as a favour to Joseph. Stephen has a book-keeping qualification from FE College, but he never wanted to do that for a living. Instead he chooses what he sees as the glamorous life. He travels the world; every so often I will have a postcard from an exotic place. He tells me that he has interests in nightclubs, and such things, but I never hear any details. One day he will grow up, I’m sure, but there’s no sign of it yet.’

‘When did you hear from him last?’

‘Around two months ago.’

I handed her a business card. ‘Perhaps you’d ask him to call us next time he gets in touch with you.’

‘I’ll do so, but I make no promises. Stephen is a law unto himself.’

‘I hope he can carry on like that, Mrs Donn. So far this isn’t a police matter, but if these letters don’t stop, I can’t see it staying that way.’