Wearing Purple

Chapter 11

It was late on Tuesday afternoon when Everett loomed on my doorstep again.

We had shot the Sunday matches in Newcastle without further trouble, and the day had been made easier by the news that Liam’s kidney hadn’t been badly damaged, and that he could be back at work in a matter of weeks rather than months.

However, I had no opportunity at all to speak to the big man alone that day, and there was something I had to ask him. So I was pleased when he called me on Tuesday morning and asked if he could come to see me at four-thirty.

I was by myself when he arrived, since Jan, after her discussion over lunch with Susie the day before to talk terms, was spending her first working afternoon at the offices of The Gantry Group plc.

‘Hi Oz,’ he said, on my doorstep. He was in his business suit and spectacles, as before, but I could see at once that his expression was different. The big man was subdued. ‘Thanks for seeing me. I know you got other business to do, but I got a few things to tell you that I can’t handle over the phone.’

‘Come on in,’ I told him. I was prepared this time. There was a pot of coffee on the table, together with two litres of water and a plate of iced doughnuts.

‘Is Liam still on the mend?’ I asked, pouring Everett a glass of water and myself a coffee as he arranged himself on the sofa and reached for a doughnut — no, two doughnuts.

‘Yes. He’s still in pain, from his kidney mostly, but he should be fit to leave hospital come Friday. Diane stayed down there. She’s coming home today, then going back to collect him and bring him home.’ He made the first of the doughnuts disappear.

‘Where does he live?’ As I put the question I realised that I had never pictured any of the GWA team as ordinary people with private, domestic lives, not even Everett and Diane, with whom we had enjoyed a quiet, civilised dinner on the previous Saturday night.

‘He’s got an apartment in Kelvin Court, out in the west of the city.’

I glanced at him in surprise, unable to suppress a smile at the thought of the spangled superstar among the sober occupants of Glasgow’s famous art deco residence. ‘How about you, where do you and Diane live?’

‘Not far from Liam. We have a big old villa in Cleveden Drive.’ He touched the top of his head, with a fleeting grin. ‘It has high ceilings and doorways, so it suits. When we came here I thought we’d have to build something to suit my size, but we found plenty of property that was okay.’ He looked around our living room. ‘This would be okay too. . if the doors were a little higher.’ The second doughnut vanished.

I sat facing him and picked up my coffee. ‘So? What’s happened since Sunday? Have you tackled the people who made the barrier?’

He frowned. ‘Damn right I have, first thing yesterday morning. They put their technical director on the first plane up from Birmingham, knowing the depth of the shit they were in. He went over the thing with a magnifying glass, checked every weld and every strut, including those that were taken out of Matthews in the hospital.

‘He did all that, then he showed me that every second strut had been cut halfway through, then painted over with silver nail enamel so it wouldn’t show. Someone turned that barrier into a death trap, Oz. I guess they figured that if Liam had been killed, we’d have been forced off the air.’

Everett looked at me, Daze eyes; hard behind his soft framed spectacles. ‘Whoever’s out to get me is raising the stakes.’

‘How would they know to fix that particular barrier?’ I asked him.

‘They didn’t. We checked: found they fixed all the goddamned barriers. It must have been done after the guys had finished their practice.’

‘So it must have been someone in the very heart of the team,’ I muttered, voicing a thought.

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Because whoever doctored the barriers must have known that they had finished practising, and that they wouldn’t try another before the show.’ He considered the point and nodded, slowly.

‘Everett, who else knows about this?’

‘No one.’

‘And who knows the real reason why I’m in the team?’

‘No one. Absolutely no one; not even Greg McPhillips. I spun him a story about theft of cash and products.’

‘Tell me this, then. Within the organisation, who do you trust completely?’

He answered at once; clearly, it was something he had been over many times before. ‘Jerry. That’s it. But even he doesn’t know about the barriers, or about you.’

I moved on to dangerous ground. ‘So why don’t you trust your wife? How come she thinks I’m an actor, like everyone else? You can’t believe that Diane is Tony Reilly’s saboteur.’

For a moment, I thought that the mountain flinched. ‘When I met The Princess on the circuit, she worked with CWI. More than that she was Tony Reilly’s girlfriend. She switched to Triple W after the two of us got serious.’

‘Okay, so she made her choice. You’re still together. Why should she betray you to Reilly now?’

As I looked at him a very surprising and distressing thing happened. All of the fire went out of his eyes, and he seemed to shrink. ‘I’m convinced she’s having an affair, man. With Liam Matthews.’

‘Matthews?’ I gasped. ‘Matthews may be a cocky, oversexed braggart, and he may be hooked on danger, like all of you guys seem to be, but I cannot believe that he’d be so stupid that he’d screw your wife. What sort of proof have you got?’

My mind, as it can, raced ahead of itself. After a few seconds, my mouth caught up with it. ‘Everett,’ I said, sharply. ‘I do not touch matrimonial work. Absolutely not!’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to. As for proof, I don’t have any. It’s just a feeling, on top of circumstances: times she hasn’t been where she was supposed to. Times when I’ve been away and she and Liam have been in Glasgow, and I’ve phoned home late and she hasn’t been there, but Liam’s been at his place, not out in the night clubs. . A whole lot of things, all leading to this scenario I have in my head. She shuts me down, gets paid off by CWI, and she delivers Liam Matthews, one of the four hottest properties in sports entertainment today, gift-wrapped to her old lover, Reilly.’

‘Hold on there,’ I protested. ‘A few days ago you told me that the pair of you had plans to start a family.’

He looked at me and his eyes glistened. ‘Those are my plans alone. Diane is not so keen.

‘Dammit Oz, if she is involved with Matthews, I’m not even sure I want to know. I love her and I’d overlook just about anything to hold on to her. I just want you to tell me for certain that she isn’t selling me out to that son-of-a-bitch Reilly.’

I picked up the plate of doughnuts and held it out to him. He took three. ‘Everett, I’m bloody certain I can tell you that now. I saw the look on her face after I thumped Liam on Friday, and after you half-throttled him. If she’d been having it off with the boy, she’d have been scared for him. But she wasn’t; she looked excited, as if she disliked him as much as everyone else and wanted to see him get filled in.’

‘Sure, because he’d just made a pass at Jan!’

‘She probably didn’t realise.’

He grunted in disbelief. ‘What! After you busted his nose? Anyway, on Saturday she jumped into that ambulance without anyone telling her.’

He had me there. ‘Listen man, if you’re as concerned as that, why not have it out with her?’

‘Two reasons. One; I’m afraid I’d be right. And two; if I was wrong she would never forgive me for suspecting her.’

‘Get Matthews out of town then. Once he’s healing, send him and his mum to the Maldives for a month. After that, sell his contract to Triple W.’

Everett the businessman looked at me in mock horror, then laughed. ‘I couldn’t do that, man. He’s too damn good!’

I felt relieved that he had snapped out of his depressive phase.

‘Let’s get back to Jerry,’ I said. ‘Why do you rule him out?’

‘He’s like my brother; my oldest friend in the business.’

‘But wasn’t he around when all three incidents happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘And on Saturday he shouldn’t have been. He turned up from London unexpectedly, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And he was at the Arena before any of us got there in the afternoon?’

‘Yeah, but. . oh shit, Oz, not Jerry.’

I shook my head, to reassure him as much as anything. I didn’t like seeing Daze lay all his weaknesses before me. ‘I don’t think it’s him either. He has a financial stake in the GWA, and he strikes me as a dead honest guy. All I’m saying is that if you want me to do this job, you have to be prepared to consider everything. Christ, you’re just through telling me you think your wife’s behind it.’

Everett sighed, wearily. ‘Okay, I get the picture. I won’t handcuff you, Oz. Treat everyone the same.’ He chuckled. ‘Yeah, even me. Maybe I’ve got more reason than anyone to kill Liam Matthews.’