Wearing Purple

Chapter 12

My client, and seven out of the ten doughnuts, had gone by the time Jan got home at six forty-five. She found me at work in the kitchen with my old friend Mr Wok.

‘Have you finished work for the day?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Boss. I did three interviews this morning, and transcribed them this afternoon, with a visit from Daze in between. My time sheets are all made up too.’ Jan and I had made a deal when we married and set up home. She did all my invoicing, but on condition that I maintained a meticulous record of my work activity, on an hourly basis. Until then I had always operated on the basis of a fixed charge for a job; my wife, like the first-class accountant she was, made me change to a time basis, with expenses on top.

‘What did Everett have to say? Is Matthews still on the mend?’

I tossed strips of white fish into the wok, adding them to the mix of yellow pepper, red onion, mushrooms and bean sprouts which I had fried until they were soft, and turning them quickly as they seared in the hot oil. Jan peered over my shoulder and nodded, approvingly. A few strands of her long brown hair flicked across my lips, and her breath warmed my cheek. God, how good she made me feel. God, how much I loved her.

‘The luck of the Irish, indeed,’ I answered. ‘The boy Liam will be released from the RVI on Friday, into the tender care of Mrs Diane Davis, with whom, so big Daze suspects, he is having an affair.’

‘Ah,’ she murmured, as she chose a bottle of full-bodied Fat Bastard Chardonnay from our wine rack. ‘That’s why he exploded on Friday night. I thought at the time that he looked as if he’d like to kill the guy. And here was me, thinking that he was saving you from a doing, or defending my honour, or both.’

‘Is she, do you think?’

‘What? Having it away with that Irish ego-maniac? Not a chance. Diane’s a classy lady: I can’t imagine her being into rough trade, and he certainly fits that category.’ She paused as she levered out the cork with our waiter’s friend. ‘Mind you,’ she mused, ‘I could see him thinking she was. The way he was all over her at dinner on Saturday shows that he’s insecure with her. And that Liam does make a play for every woman he sees.’

She watched me as I spooned the stir-fry, and its dark, oily liquor, into two bowls. ‘Is that all he wanted, then: a shoulder to cry on?’

‘Oh no, far from it,’ I told her, setting our supper on the table. ‘He came to tell me that the barrier which caused the accident didn’t just break. It was sabotaged. Somebody was after killing Matthews, or at least wouldn’t have minded if he’d been killed.’

Jan whistled. ‘Wow! Is he sure?’

‘Certain. At the start of this thing I thought that Everett was maybe just a bit paranoid, and that the empty tape cassettes, plus the guy Manson having his head cracked, could have been unrelated accidents. Not this time, though, no way. The big bloke’s right: someone’s after the GWA.’

‘That’s three tries to put them off the air and three failures,’ Jan pondered.

‘Aye, and each one more extreme than the one before. God knows what Everett’s enemy will try next.’

She frowned at me. ‘I’m not sure I want you to be around to find out.’

‘I promised him, love. . and the money’s good.’

‘Stuff that for an excuse. I earn good money too, but safely. Anyway, shouldn’t the police be involved? This sounds like attempted murder to me.’

‘I did try to suggest that to him, but he wasn’t having any of it. He’s afraid the publicity would scare the crowds away, and even worse, that it might frighten off his television networks. I said I’d go along with him for another couple of weeks. My best hope is that whoever’s behind all this will give it up as a bad job.

‘Come on now,’ I told her, to end the discussion. ‘I’ve been slaving for hours over this meal, and monkfish costs a bloody fortune. Give it some attention.’

She nodded and bent to worship my kitchen skills. When the devotions were over I asked Jan about her day. ‘What does The Gantry Group look like from the inside?’

‘It looks profitable,’ she said. ‘Susie thinks it should be more profitable than it is, in fact, and that’s the problem. She reckons that there’s either been incompetence or dishonesty. She’s asked me to find out which.’

‘Who owns the business?’ I asked her.

‘Lord Provost Gantry and Susie,’ she replied. ‘Lock, stock and barrel through a family trust which holds all the shares. They have in-house book-keeping and accounts staff, but until now, the Finance Director has been a man called Joseph Donn, the old pal of the Lord Provost’s that I mentioned the other night.’ She wrinkled her nose in a classic Jan gesture of disapproval. ‘He’s a part qualified accountant, not a member of the Institute, but he’s looked after the books since the earliest days of the group, when it was just a small building firm on the South Side.

‘Naturally when Susie fired him, Mr Donn didn’t take it too well: he even appealed to her father, but Susie told the LP that if he tried to interfere, he’d better be ready to run the business again, because she’d be off.’

I grinned. I know I’d only met Susie Gantry once, but I could see her facing down Mr Glasgow.

‘In time, the group will probably take on a new Finance Director, full-time. Before that happens, I’ve been called in to do a forensic job, finding out where any slippages may have happened.’

‘Does Susie think that Mr Donn was bent?’

Jan chuckled; a deep throaty sound that she used to make even as a wee lass in primary school. Even in those days, it made my heart skip a beat. ‘No, her assessment is that he’s just stupid. She doesn’t reckon he has the brains to be bent. She thinks that someone in the business may have been at it, though, and that Donn just lacked the skill to spot it.

‘If she’s underestimating him, I’ll find out.’

‘What does the group do?’ I asked. ‘Construction, is it?’

‘That’s the core business, alongside property and land holdings. Gantry Developments did this place, as a matter of fact, among many others. The group’s well diversified now. It owns a portfolio of housing stock which it built for economic rent with public agency support. It has a dozen pubs in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, and a chain of ten private nursing homes. On top of all that it developed a major retail park on the east side of Glasgow and has another on the drawing board out in Barlanark.

‘There’s a lot to it, so I’m going to have to spend quite a bit of time there over the next couple of weeks. It’ll mean I have to work weekends, so you’ll be going to Barcelona on your own.’ She topped up her wine glass, and mine. ‘In net asset terms, the business is probably worth about thirty million. Across the group, Jack Gantry must employ, full-time and equivalents, upwards of a thousand people.’

‘Jesus!’ I whispered. ‘The guy can afford to buy his own gold chain. He didn’t need the city to give him one.’

‘He did buy it, in a way. For the quick look I’ve had at the books, I saw that they show him as a major donor to the Labour Party in Scotland. I don’t think that’s where his influence comes from, though. He’s been a councillor for over thirty years, Chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland, and president of the local authorities’ convention.

‘At civic level, he’s the most powerful man in Scotland.’

‘Why isn’t he in Parliament?’ I wondered.

‘I asked Susie that very question. He doesn’t want to be, apparently. He’s interested in Glasgow, and he feels that he can do more for the city by staying in street level politics.’

‘Quite a guy, is Mr Gantry,’ I said. ‘And we’re in his good books too.’

Jan looked at me, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

I reached across, picked up a big white envelope which had been lying on the sideboard, and handed it to her. ‘This arrived today,’ I told her.

She opened it and withdrew a heavy card, bearing Glasgow’s coat of arms, and with an inscription in rich gold leaf. She frowned slightly as she read it. ‘The City Arts Awards. .’ she began.

‘That’s right, my darling. You and I are invited to a night out with the luvvies, courtesy of Jack Gantry himself.’