Wearing Purple

Chapter 24

The GWA logistics manager had done a deal with the airline, booking a block of business class seats on the Manchester-Barcelona flight for the price of economy class. The staging had been sent out three days earlier in trucks, the journey planned so that its arrival would coincide with ours.

I didn’t know at the time whether Everett had fixed it, or whether it was just a coincidence, but when we boarded the flight after a three and a half hour coach trip from Glasgow, I found myself in a window seat next to Sonny Leonard.

All the way down on the bus I had been thinking about Jan; how perfectly we had made love the night before, how beautiful she had looked that morning when I kissed her goodbye, how rich in quality our life had become, and how much we were looking forward to being parents. The reality of her pregnancy was just coming home to us both, and it had a strange effect.

‘What are we going to do, Oz,’ she had asked me, dreamily, as the winter moonlight streamed through our bedroom window, ‘when we don’t have anything else to wish for, because we’ve got everything we’ve ever wanted?’

I remembered how I spread my fingers and placed my hand gently on her warm belly, my thumb in her navel and the end of my little finger in her thick mat of dark hair. I had tried to imagine that I could feel the baby move, although of course it was far too early. I gazed down at her and as I did, I realised that something strange was happening to me; something called growing up.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ I told her. ‘We’ll build a new set of ambitions for this chap, or chapess, in here, and we’ll do our best to make them happen as well. After that’s done. . we’ll still have each other, decrepit old buggers though we may be by then; and who could want for more? Not me.’

I closed my eyes as the bus drove smoothly down the M6: once again, I saw Jan’s beautiful face in the moonlight, heard her throaty laugh, bathed in the warmth of her smile, and sank down once more into her loving arms.

I was still thinking of her as I took my seat beside Sonny Leonard on the aircraft. We had spoken a couple of times in Newcastle and at the SECC, but on a ‘Do this for me, please’, basis rather than personally. I glanced at the American as I fastened my seat belt; he didn’t look to be in a talkative mood, and frankly neither was I.

Show me a man who says that he actually likes travelling by air and I will show you an idiot. Okay, I know that our world has been revolutionised by the invention of the heavier-than-air flying machine, but that doesn’t mean that we can afford to uncross our fingers when we are thirty thousand feet above the ground, our lives depending on an apparatus built and operated by man and subject therefore to human error.

Take-off is the part of the flight I hate most of all. I can cope with landing because the sight of the ground getting closer — not too fast — is comforting in a rocky sort of a way, but I have always loathed the experience of being shoved into the sky by a pair of bloody enormous engines, listening all the way through for the slightest change in their tone which might intimate disaster. It doesn’t do to let it show, though.

I could tell from the whiteness of Sonny Leonard’s knuckles as he gripped the armrests that he felt the same way as me, although he turned his head to look across me and out of the window, as the DC9 broke into the low grey cloud which hung, as predicted, over Manchester. Neither of us spoke, though, until the plane levelled off, and the cabin crew appeared with the bar trolley.

‘Where are the rest of your guys?’ I asked the American, to break the silence. He was a stocky guy in his early forties, with grizzled hair, wide shoulders, a broken nose, and the suggestion of a beer gut.

‘Back in Glasgow,’ he replied. ‘The Spanish are awkward when it comes to foreign labour. They insist on us using local people whenever we can. Don’t know whether it’s their trade unions or their government that’s behind it, but that’s the way it is. I’m essential to the operation, so they accept that I gotta be there, but Gary and all the others are being replaced by locals for this show.’

‘Won’t you have a language problem? As a nation, the Spanish are bloody awful at English.’

Leonard shook his head, then nodded very quickly as an immaculately made up stewardess offered him a small bottle of Freixenet cava. ‘Nah, that’s okay,’ he said. ‘My Spanish is pretty good. It has to be, working in the US. LA and New York are pretty much bilingual.’

He had given me an opening. ‘Have you been with GWA from the start?’

‘Yeah. When Everett first started planning the company he asked me if I’d set up his road crew, and run it for him. He didn’t tell me it would be in Glasgow, though.’

I grinned at him as I took a tin of San Miguel from the stewardess. ‘What’s wrong with our fair city, then?’

‘It’s cold, it’s wet and it’s goddamn miserable — and that’s in the summer. I’m a St Louis boy — I like my summers hot. I tell you, I thank the Lord for this Barcelona gig. I was beginning to freeze to death back in Scotland.’

‘I don’t imagine it’ll be all that hellish warm in Barcelona either at this time of year.’

He pointed towards the ground. ‘Warmer than down there, buddy, bet on it.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said, as I opened my beer.

‘What did you do before GWA?’ I asked him.

‘I was with Triple W. I was number two to the head honcho there.’

‘What’s Triple W like?’

‘It’s a damn good operation. It has the top roster of performers in the US right now. A lot of people thought it would take a ratings nose-dive when Everett and Jerry left, but it’s held up pretty good.’

‘What about the other lot, CWI? Have you ever worked for them?’

He looked at me, sideways from his seat. ‘The company line here,’ he said, his voice lowered almost to a whisper, ‘is that CWI sucks, and that Tony Reilly — the guy who runs it — is an asshole. You don’t have to look too far to figure out why that should be.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The Princess was Tony Reilly’s girl, before she met the Boss. Mr Reilly didn’t like it when she left him. The Boss doesn’t like Mr Reilly, ’cause he said a few things about her afterwards. I better say no more than that.’

I chanced my arm. ‘Do I get the impression that you don’t agree with the company line?’

‘Mr Ring Announcer,’ Sonny Leonard drawled, with a smile, ‘I always agree with the company line.’

I didn’t push it any further. Instead I let our discussion drift on to the logistics of the GWA operation, and on the quality of the Spanish workers who were waiting for us at our venue, up on the Olympic hill of Montjuic. They had been recruited by our hosts, who had promised that they would have all the skills the job required. Finally, after our lunch trays had been cleared away we lapsed into silence, and in Leonard’s case, to sleep.

Although I had spent some time in Catalunya, and still owned fifty per cent of a property there having agreed with Prim, my ex-partner, that I would cash in my half only when she chose to sell, I had never been to Barcelona Airport until I touched down with the GWA party. The greater part of it was built for the 1992 Olympics, and was designed to foster the illusion that air travel is a pleasant experience. It works; the place looks more like a shopping mall than an air terminal. Its only downside is a crazy system in the baggage hall which requires a 100 peseta coin before a trolley could be freed from the rack. I wonder if the bright spark who introduced it asked himself how many people disembark from an international flight with the local coinage in their pockets.

We made it through passport control and customs somehow, to the bus which was waiting for us outside. As I was boarding Everett tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the two seats immediately behind the driver. We sat together, silently as Sonny Leonard climbed on board and made his way to the back of the vehicle.

‘Did you get anything out of him during the flight?’ the big man asked as we pulled away from the kerb. So the seating arrangement had been no accident.

‘Maybe,’ I said. As I thought about his question I realised something about myself: I suppose it’s the reason why I’m a very good Private Enquiry Agent but a bloody awful Private Detective. When I’m interviewing someone who knows what the purpose of our conversation is I am completely relaxed, but when I have to resort to any sort of deceit, I am stricken with guilt. ‘I got the impression that Leonard’s a mercenary. He doesn’t care about the rights and wrongs of a situation, he cares about who’s going to give him the best deal. You offered him the chance to be head honcho, as he put it, and I think he was grateful. But I don’t reckon you have his undying loyalty.’

‘So you reckon he could be bought?’

‘I think that as an operative, he’d go to the highest bidder. But whether he’d get involved in sabotage, I could not possibly say. I do know that he doesn’t see Tony Reilly as a monster, though. He was very respectful, in fact. It was Mr Reilly this, Mr Reilly that.’

Everett growled. ‘If he is selling GWA out, he’s gonna learn some respect for me — the hard way.’

Barcelona Airport isn’t very far from the city centre. The bus pulled up outside our hotel in no more than fifteen minutes. The driver waited as we checked in, then drove the team to the BattleGround venue, a big, elegant upturned bowl. If there is a European city with better sports stadia than Barcelona, I’ve still to find it.

The GWA trucks were parked at the side, backed into loading bays. As we approached we saw several young men in overalls, some heading into the tall vehicles, others heading into the stadium, carrying items of equipment and scenery. ‘What the. .’ Sonny Leonard exploded, a few rows behind me. ‘I told these guys not to begin unloading until I got here.’

As the bus drew to a halt he jumped from his seat and tore down the aisle, leaping out onto the tarmac even before the doors were fully open. I heard him swear in heavily Americanised Spanish as he strode towards the labourers.

‘Sure and don’t be bursting a blood vessel, Sonny.’ The familiar, laughing shout came from inside the nearest truck as the rest of us followed on his heels; and a second later, Liam Matthews stepped out, onto the unloading ramp.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Everett boomed. ‘You’re supposed to be convalescing. I told the back office to book you and your mom a holiday, starting next week.’

‘Sure, so you did,’ the Irishman agreed. ‘In the meantime, all my stitches are out, I’m healing fast and my old lady’s giving me no leeway at all, so I decided to come down here with the trucks and give Sonny the benefit of my experience.’ He beamed at the red-faced foreman. ‘Don’t you worry either, fella. We haven’t broken any of your gear. It’s all inside, ready for you to start setting up.’

I looked at Everett, then at Diane. He was frowning, like a huge black cloud. She was grinning, from ear to ear.