Wearing Purple (Oz Blackstone Mystery) Page 10

  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.’

  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.’

  Chapter 13

  I nudged Jan as we stood in the cloakroom queue. ‘D’you think Dylan really fancies Susie, or is it just a career move?’ I whispered in her ear. The Detective Inspector and the Lady Provost stood five couples ahead of us, he with his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘He has to be on the level,’ she murmured. ‘Susie’d have seen through him in two minutes if he was on the make. And if it was a matter of her being into coppers, she could have someone higher up the tree than Mike.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I quite like him. He may be a poser, but he’s a friendly chap, and there’s no harm in him.’

  I grunted at that one, as old memories came back. ‘There is if he thinks he can fit you up for something.’ As I spoke, he and Susie handed in their coats and moved on towards the main hall of the Gallery where the reception was being held.

  The Burrell Collection is the treasure of which the City of Glasgow is most proud . . . although for the life of me I cannot see why. It was left to the people donkey’s years ago by one of its millionaires, as a sort of personal memorial. However the will wasn’t straightforward. Sir William Burrell specified that his valuables should be put on show together, in a Gallery built by the council with money bequeathed for the purpose.

  Since City Fathers tend to be childish on the whole, it took them a few decades
to decide on a site and a design, by which time the bequest had dwindled in value and the public purse had to make up the shortfall. But as soon as it was up and opened, on a green field site in the Pollok Estate, the Burrell Collection became the showpiece that its founder had intended. For a brief period it was even trumpeted as the most-visited tourist site in Scotland, until someone realised that the smoking ban within the building meant that every time visitors nipped out for a fag they were counted as new entrants.

  In our time in Glasgow, Jan and I had never visited the Burrell Gallery before. As I looked up at the great vaulted glass ceiling and took in the spacious design, I realised why Jack Gantry liked it as a venue.

  The Lord Provost had been as good as his word. We had been picked up at the appointed time by a civic limo which we found we were sharing with the Convener of the Transport Committee and his wife. He was a pleasant, earnest, youngish man, with big glasses and a slightly awkward air, which was explained when he told us that he always felt guilty when using the Council Daimler rather than a bus. Jan and I, and the Convener’s wife, said nothing. We were enjoying the ride.

  Our travelling companions chummed us across to the bar. The event was being sponsored by a drinks company; I guessed that was why there were spirits available as well as the usual wine.

  ‘What do you think of the new People’s Palace then, folks?’ There was a suppressed giggle in the woman’s voice which came from behind me as I handed Jan her gin and tonic and picked up my own. Susie Gantry’s red hair still had its electric frizz, but she seemed more relaxed than on our first meeting. I wondered whether behind her confident façade lived someone who was inherently shy with strangers.