Screen Savers

Chapter 6

Finding Myrtle Higgins wasn’t as easy as we had assumed it would be. We went out that evening to the address which The Gantry Group had on file, only to be told by a student who answered the door that she had given up her room six months before, to move in with her boyfriend.

‘Do you have her new address?’ Prim asked.

‘Somewhere up in Broomhill,’ the girl answered. ‘She shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

‘Not much,’ I thought. Broomhill was like a rabbit warren; and that wasn’t counting all the people who claim to have a Broomhill address, because they don’t like to admit that they live in Partick. . the opposite of Partick Thistle Football Club, which doesn’t like to admit that its home ground is really in Maryhill.

There was nothing for it but to check next day with the company to which Susie Gantry had written a reference for her former employee. . generously, we thought, given the reason for her leaving. Sure enough, Myrtle Higgins worked there, as the Finance Director’s secretary, her old job with the group: only now she was Mrs Myrtle Campbell.

She wasn’t going to take my call at first, until I told the switchboard that it was to her advantage if she did so. She came on the line all bright and breezy, as if she had won the lottery. I could have told her, that’s not how you react; in the moment of realisation you go rigid with shock.

‘Yes,’ she chirped brightly. ‘How can you help me?’

‘By keeping you out of trouble, perhaps.’ Her tone changed in an instant, to terse and hostile.

‘What is this?’

‘My name’s Oz Blackstone. I’m a private investigator; I need to talk to you about a problem that’s arisen at the Gantry Group.’

‘Nothing to do wi’ me, pal,’ she said. ‘I left there a while back.’

‘Yes, Mrs Campbell, and I know why. Listen, I’m not saying this has anything to do with you, but I need to talk to you all the same. It’s important.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Not just yet,’ I shot back, quickly, before she could hang up. ‘Susie Gantry was okay with you, wasn’t she?’

‘What? Like giving me my cards, d’yae mean?’

‘Like giving you a reference for your new job, when she could have had you bombed out with a word. Now you can return the favour: Susie could be in trouble.’

‘We’re all in trouble, pal, one way or another. I want no more to do wi’ the Gantrys, an’ Ah certainly don’t want you turning up here.’

‘Myrtle,’ I assured her, ‘if I was going to do that I’d be there already. I’d sooner to see you at home, tonight.’

‘Listen, whatever your name is. You don’t know where Ah live, as far as I can tell, but if you do happen to turn up at my door, my husband Malkie will gie you a doin’. He does martial arts, and stuff.’

All of a sudden, I was glad that Prim could only hear my side of the conversation: one phone call into our investigation, and I was being threatened with a kicking. ‘Is that so?’ I said, conversationally. ‘Origami’s my speciality, actually. What’s the address again?’

‘Fuck off.’ This time she did hang up.

A quick call to a pal at the Registrar’s office and a promise of a beer secured me the details of the marriage, four months earlier, of Malcolm Campbell, bachelor, and Myrtle Higgins, spinster, both of an address just off Crow Road. A second, to Mike Dylan, produced the information that Mr Campbell had four convictions for assault, the last of which had earned him six months inside.

A third call fixed me up with a very special insurance policy.