Unnatural Justice

Twenty-Four.

I wasn't the most popular man on set that morning; my discussion with Ewan had held up shooting, and delays can be more expensive in the movie industry than almost anywhere else in the world. But I made up for it by being flawless.

I had worked on my scenes the day before, and refreshed them on the plane… once I'd finished reading the newspaper coverage.

Concentrating as hard as I ever have in my life, I was able to put everything and everyone else out of my mind and, literally, become Mathew Fleming from the moment I walked on to the sound stage until the moment the make-up woman took off my dramatic facial scar at the end of the day's work. Louise Golding was on top form too, and all our scenes were first takes… a rare occurrence on a Paul Girone movie, as I'd found out already. By the time we were finished, not only had we made up for my delay, we'd bought time for one of Ewan's key shots to be wrapped up.

They had booked the cast… apart from Ewan and Scott Steele, who both live in London… into a hotel in Surrey, a secluded country house just south of Guildford, down the A3. There was still some commuter traffic around when we left Shepperton, and so we didn't get there to check in until almost eight.

I'd been snacking on set, and, frankly, Louise and I had both seen enough of the excitable M. Girone for one day, so I asked for a poached salmon salad to be sent to my room, and went off there straight away, to phone Susie.

"Good day at the office?" she asked me, just as the room service waiter wheeled in my salad on a trolley. I bunged him a fiver and he left, nodding and muttering thanks. There was a bottle of Martin Codax, a nice Spanish Albarino white wine, in an ice-bucket; I poured myself a glass as I answered.

"It was fine, and it just got better; my dinner's arrived." (Scottish people do not have 'supper'.) I described the plateful on the trolley, and sipped the wine; not bad at all.

"Lucky you," said my wife. "I had macaroni with Ethel and Janet."

At once I felt envious, and homesick, so I forced myself back to the serious stuff. "How did it go with the lawyers?"

"I've been told to make no public comment."

"Not even to me?"

"Don't be daft. Greg McPhillips spoke to his tame QC, and her very firm advice was that we should say absolutely nothing at all to avoid any risk of defaming the purchasers of these houses, who are not, she reminded me, Ravens, Cornwell and Perry, but their wives. She gave the okay to my proposal that we offer to buy them out of the deal, but she insists that any contact must be in print, and that she drafts all our correspondence. That's where we're at."

"When will she have finished the first letter?"

"Tomorrow, she hoped."

"What's been the effect of the stories on the New Bearsden project?"

Susie snorted; I could see her frowning as clearly as if I was looking at her across our desk. "Just as we expected," she replied. "Total and utter catastrophe. Sales have been trotting along at nine or ten a day until now. Today we didn't have a single visitor to the sales office, other than journalists demanding to see the site plan so they could pin-point the three plots in question; I've had to tell Des Lancaster to close until further notice. Worse than that, though, we've had umpteen phone calls from buyers, straight people who've reserved plots, wanting to know whether they'll be living next door to drug dealers, and we've had at least half a dozen formal contacts from solicitors advising that their clients want to cancel, without financial penalty."

"How have you dealt with them?"

"Stalled them, for now. We've reserved our position and said that we'll respond at the beginning of next week."

"I don't suppose we've had any contact from the Three Bears?"

"Funny you should ask that. Mummy Bear Perry called Lancaster and accused him of blackening her good name in the papers. Bizarre, eh?"

"You said it." I forked up some poached salmon. "Alongside all that, how's the Star Chamber going?"

"What?" She laughed. "Ah, you mean Fisher's uncompromising, in-depth investigation, as he's quoted as saying in the Scotsman. So far, it's achieved the resignation of Des Lancaster's secretary… which she was subsequently persuaded to withdraw, after Des gave her a made-up apology from the chairman for the rudeness of his questioning… and it's prompted one of the New Bearsden site agents to adopt an aggressive attitude. That's how Sir Graeme described it. The way Gillian Harvey tells it, the guy… he's Irish: Aidan Keane… said that anyone who accused him of deceit or disloyalty would be eating all his meals with a straw for the next six weeks. Other than that, though, there's been nothing."

"How many suspects are there?"

"As many as might have walked into Des's office and had a look at the sales list. He's a bit cavalier about things like that, is our man.

Fisher's already saying he's got to go. He may be right, but I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of admitting that straight away.

I'll wait till the smoke's cleared a bit, then I'll transfer him to head office, swap him with Brian Shaw, the purchasing manager, job for job."

"You really don't like sacking people, do you?"

"No," she admitted. "Des is a nice man, and besides, I've met his wife."

"You'd better not ever buy a football club, love. You'd make a lousy chairman."

"I've got much more sense than to buy a football club, ever. I'd be as well chucking pound coins into Loch Lomond."

"There is another way. If you bought a club, you could start by taking all the overpriced, overpaid, clapped-out foreign players that are keeping young Scots out of the game, weighing them down and chucking them in. The financial consequences might be the same, but it would be much more satisfying."

"I'll still pass. You buy it instead."

"I might, but I'm fully committed, buying in Gantry shares." I'd checked with my broker on the way to the hotel; I'd acquired another fifteen and a half thousand shares in the course of the day. That had pleased me; it was a relatively small number, so it meant there hadn't been a stampede to sell.

I heard Susie wince. "Are you sure about doing that?"

"Dead certain." I filled her in on the result of my day's trading, and that seemed to cheer her up.

She changed the subject, slightly. "Did you speak to Ricky?" she asked.

' Yup. He's on-side. He'll report to you as soon as he has something.

I did some detecting on that front myself, though." I told her what Ewan had admitted, about the end of his liaison with Nat Morgan.

"She's got a new man?" Susie exclaimed, surprised. "Now there's a thing."

"It happens: look at us, for example."

"Maybe, but this must be some guy."

"Why?"

There was a long silence on the other end of the line; the longer it lasted the more puzzled I grew. Then Susie broke it, with an incredulous vengeance. "You're an actor," she exclaimed, 'and you ask me that? Remind me: which character are you playing in this project, Dumb or Dumber? He must be some guy because, whoever he is, she's chucked Ewan Capperauld, no less, for him."