Screen Savers Read online

  He led the way down the wide staircase and back to the dining room, where the rest of the party were waiting for us. The chef was there too, looking more than a bit pissed off. ‘Go get Mr Jones and the waiter,’ Miles ordered. ‘I want them to hear this too.’

  When the full household, minus one, was assembled Miles looked solemnly round the room. ‘What I’m going to tell you doesn’t leave here,’ he said, making eye contact with the three domestics, one by one. ‘Understood?’ All three nodded.

  ‘Those of you who’ve worked with me before will know that Dawn and I can get a bit edgy when we get close to the end of a project. This time it’s been worse than usual; she’s got herself really uptight. We found a note upstairs, saying that she’s gone away for a few days.

  ‘I trust my wife to do what’s best for me and for our project, so I’m going along with that. At the same time, I don’t want any crap in the press. You know what the showbiz writers are like; you show up alone in a McDonald’s and next thing you read, your marriage is on the rocks. So the official line is that Dawn’s got a virus, and that shooting has been suspended for a week.

  ‘Weir, Gerrie, right now I want you to get hold of everyone we hired for the rest of the week and tell them to take a holiday until next Monday. Tell them not to worry, they’re still on salary; but we don’t need them for the rest of the week, that’s all.

  ‘If anyone asks why, just tell them that Dawn’s sick.’

  Kiki Eldon, intervened, tentatively. ‘The press might speculate that she’s pregnant, Miles,’

  Miles looked the PR lady directly in the eye. ‘As a matter of fact, she is.’

  I don’t think that anyone else noticed, but when he said that, my head spun. In that instant, I wasn’t in that plush Surrey dining room, at that time. Instead I was in a restaurant in Barcelona two years earlier, listening to Mike Dylan, but not believing him, as he told me that my world had fallen apart.

  For a few minutes I was ignored as Weir and Gerrie went off to make their phone calls, and as the chef went off to do what he could to rescue dinner. When Miles was free of distractions I buttonholed him.

  ‘I’ve got to tell Prim what’s happening,’ I told him.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he protested. ‘Don’t involve her.’

  ‘Listen man, I need her. And if I keep her in the dark, it won’t be you she kills when she finds out.’

  He gave in, and I went off to my room to call my fiancée on my mobile phone. She was at home, in front of the television when I rang her. She had been expecting to hear from me earlier, as she was quick to tell me.

  ‘I’m sorry love. We’ve had a crisis down here. It’s your kid sister, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh dear. What’s the silly girl done now?’

  I told her.

  There was silence when I had finished, but no gasps of disbelief. Prim knows I don’t play that sort of trick.

  ‘I’m coming down there,’ she declared. I didn’t even consider trying to dissuade her.

  Instead I simply said, ‘Okay. Mark and I’ll pick you up at the airport tomorrow morning. Call me with your flight number.’

  ‘Sod that. I’m coming now. I’d rather drive through the night than lie sleepless here. Tell me how to find your mansion and I’ll be with you for breakfast.’

  Chapter 46

  She came in the Freelander rather than the low-flying missile that was our Z3, but even then she beat breakfast by over two hours. She phoned me, mobile to mobile, from Farnham, not long after four a.m., to warn me that she was close by.

  Mark met her at the end of the driveway and brought her into the house, where Miles and I sat waiting. Like Prim, neither of us had been able to sleep.

  I was comforted by her arrival, and I believe that Miles was too. There’s something very capable about her, something completely unflappable, even - no, especially - in the most difficult situations.

  You may remember the old joke about the bygone Prime Minister visiting a remote part of a last vestige of the Empire in Africa. As she stepped from her transport, the assembled natives cried out together, ‘Magumba! Magumba!’

  ‘What are they saying?’ the PM asked the High Commissioner.

  ‘It’s a traditional greeting, Madam,’ he rumbled.

  ‘Magumba! Magumba!’

  They walked on a few yards until the High Commissioner cried suddenly, ‘Careful, Madam. Mind your feet. Don’t step in the magumba!’

  I sometimes recall that story when I think of Prim. Not because she’s worked in one of the deepest parts of Africa, but because when the magumba hits the fan, there is no one I would rather have next to me than Primavera Phillips.

  I’ve seen her in a crisis - like the time she saved our skins in Geneva, or the night she saved Jerry Gradi’s life in Barcelona - and on each occasion there was a calmness and an inner certainty about her that made me know that everything was going to be all right. That morning, as she settled herself beside me into the big soft couch in the mansion’s sitting room, clutching a mug of coffee, I had the same feeling.

  ‘Right boys,’ she began. ‘What have you done so far?’

  ‘We’ve talked all night,’ said Miles. ‘About Dawn, and about who might have taken her; but other than that we’ve done nothing.’ I showed her the note which Miles had found in the safe.

  ‘No police or he’ll know!’ she snorted. ‘Arrogant bastard! How will he know, exactly? He must think he’s the only person who ever kidnapped anyone. Doesn’t he realise that there are specialist teams set up to handle this sort of situation? You have called them, I take it?’

  Miles shook his head. ‘I’m not taking that risk, Prim.’

  ‘The risk is in not calling them, man,’ she protested.

  ‘Look, this man tried to kill Oz’s nephew, your father, Susie and Mike. Now he’s got Dawn. Yet we still don’t know anything about him. For all we know this guy could be a cop himself.’

  ‘Miles, that’s paranoid.’

  I put a hand on her thigh. ‘Maybe so, love, but it’s my enemy who’s induced it. He’s shown us how dangerous he is. Maybe that’s what all these attacks have been about; to establish that he is very serious, and to make us all very afraid of him.

  ‘Mark’s reading is right. This person has been very close to us all along. He chose the ideal moment to abduct Dawn, when Miles and I were away playing squash with Mark minding us. He had sussed the place out and knew how to do it. Up the fire escape, take Dawn quickly and quietly, leave the note, then out the same way, van at the back gate, and off. We reckon that he’s had at least two hours’ start on us, before we even knew Dawn was missing. He could have been in the Channel Tunnel within that time.’

  ‘But wasn’t it still a big risk for him to take? Weren’t there other people in the house?’

  ‘Only the staff, and none of them saw or heard her leave. One of the hired cars brought her home first. Nelson Reed and the rest of them waited and squeezed into Geraldine Baker’s car.’

  ‘What about the driver?’

  ‘From a car hire firm in Guildford. Miles called them to cancel tomorrow’s pick-up and in the process he found out that the car and the driver reported back in on time. So no way was it him. No, it’s someone who was watching the studio and took his chance.’

  ‘Or someone who was in the studio all along. What do you know about the production crew?’

  ‘They’re all pros,’ Miles answered. ‘Most of them, apart from the key people, who’re full-time, are specialists hired on a daily or weekly basis. They’ve all got industry track records, or they come from reputable agencies.’

  ‘Will they all be at the studio tomorrow?’

  ‘No. I’ve stood them down for the rest of the week.’

  Prim glowered at him. ‘That’s a damn shame,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If you hadn’t, we could have seen who turned up . . . and who didn’t.’

  Her coffee was untouched, the mug cooling in her hands. ‘Call t
he police, Miles.’

  ‘I can’t, Prim . . . not yet, anyway. Not until the guy’s made contact and told us what he wants.’

  ‘Why don’t you just read your script?’ she murmured.

  ‘What d’ you mean?’

  ‘You guys are making a movie about a kidnapping, aren’t you?’

  Both of us looked at her, our sleep-deprived eyes suddenly wide. ‘So?’ I heard myself croak.

  ‘So in the script, the leading lady, my sister, is snatched from a country house. That’s a coincidence, is it not?’

  She was right; it was such a bloody obvious coincidence that we had been staring obliviously past it all night.

  ‘So what does the script say that the kidnapper wants?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten million pounds lodged in a private bank in Lugano, accessible by code and transferable anywhere in the world.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that the kidnapper is given the code and can make a call at once, moving the funds to another bank of his own choice, anywhere in the world. After that he’s free and clear.’

  ‘Okay,’ Prim said, ‘let’s wait for his call. Don’t tell the police yet, if you really feel that’s the way to play this. But if I were you I’d start getting ten million together right now.’

  She swung her feet off the couch and stood up. ‘If that’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. You should, too. Where’s our room, Oz?’

  She was right. There was no longer any sense in staying awake; our chains were being pulled hard enough as it was. We said good night - or good morning - to Miles, picked up Prim’s bag from the hall and went upstairs.

  I was in bed, watching my fiancée undress, when a memory came back to me from the weekend. ‘Hey,’ I asked her, ‘what did Joe Donn want?’

  She gasped, then grinned. ‘I’d forgotten all about that. He had something to tell me. I’m too tired, it’s not relevant and it’s too heavy to go into. But what he really, really wanted was to show off.

  ‘He’s been doing a bit of detective work - something that you should have thought of, actually. Remember that girl Myrtle, who had a fling with his nephew while her boyfriend was in the slammer?’

  ‘Sure, I remember her.’

  ‘Well, old Joe went to see her. She used to work for him, after all. He reminded her of an office outing, one they had all gone to during the brief time when Stephen was at Gantry’s, and he asked her if he was right in thinking that she had a camera with her.

  ‘Clever old guy.’ She chuckled. She shrugged her bra on to the floor, stepped out of her knickers, then reached into her bag and took out a stiffened envelope. As she slipped into bed she handed it to me. ‘She did, and when she dug out the photos she had taken, there was one of the boy Stephen. Joe had it blown up and gave it to me.

  ‘It doesn’t mean a thing now, but I decided to bring it down anyway. The original’s there too.’

  I took it from her and shook out the two photos. One was a group shot, typical office party stuff; I barely glanced at that before picking up the enlargement and gazing at it sleepily . . . then I woke up, abruptly.

  I knew the guy. Oh, sure I knew him. But not as Stephen Donn, occasional book-keeper. I knew him as Stu Queen the spark, our movie electrician.

  I was halfway down the corridor to Miles’ room when Geraldine Baker opened her bedroom door, and I remembered that I didn’t have a stitch on.

  Chapter 47

  ‘Look, love, I know you’re Dawn’s sister, but he’s her husband; that puts him in the driving seat as far as I’m concerned. So if Miles says no police, I’m not going over his head.’

  She frowned at me in the mirror as she ran a brush through her hair. ‘Maybe you’re not, but I don’t like sitting on my bum with Dawn’s life in danger. It’s not just Miles who cares about her, and you and me. There’s Mum and Dad, and thousands, maybe millions, of other people who’ve seen her on the screen and feel part of her.

  ‘Those of us who are here don’t just have a duty to Dawn to get this right; we owe it to all of them too.’

  I pulled my belt tight, fastening it in the sixth hole; two years earlier, before I started working out with the wrestlers, I could only manage the fourth. ‘Fuck all them,’ I said, bluntly. ‘It’s Dawn I care about. If I thought you were right, then sure, I’d force Miles to call the Old Bill. But Mark Kravitz is our hired gun; he’s the security expert, and he has a personal and professional reputation to protect. I don’t hear him demanding that we bring in the coppers.’

  She put down the hairbrush and looked at me, evenly. ‘To borrow your expression, fuck Mark Kravitz.’

  ‘Don’t do that, please. Not so close to our wedding.’

  Not even a trace of a smile crossed her face. ‘Don’t give me reassurance, Oz. I want action; we have to do something.’

  I know when to give in to Primavera. It’s one of the secrets of our sucess as a couple. ‘Okay,’ I told her. ‘Let’s talk to Miles.’

  We found him alone in the dining room, looking at breakfast with little or no interest. ‘Where is everyone?’ Prim asked.

  ‘I’ve sent everyone home, or in Kiki Eldon’s case, back to her office. I don’t want any of them around; just you two.’

  ‘What about Mark?’

  ‘He’s gone too. We don’t need protection any more; it’s happened already. We know who Oz’s stalker is now, but there’s not a Goddamned thing we can do about it. It’s like a chess game, and he’s captured our Queen.’

  I didn’t like his mood; he seemed to be beaten, and all of a sudden I was on Prim’s side of the argument, one hundred per cent.

  ‘Look,’ I told him. ‘To quote a famous ex-boxer, we may be just prawns in the game of life, but we’re not quite helpless. Even prawns can topple over-confident kings if there are enough of them. We’ve got a rogue knight on our team too. I’m going to call Mike Dylan; he’s been in on this from the start anyway . . . come to think of it, it was him who started it.’

  ‘No,’ Miles protested, weakly. ‘Queen, or Donn, if that’s his real name, said he’d know if we called the cops.’

  ‘Mike isn’t the cops. He’s Special Branch; he can do things without the rest of the force knowing about it. He has done already. It was him who put me on to the brothers Neames, remember. Stephen Donn was a mystery to us. He was a night person; no one knew anything about him. But now we have an alias, someone else in the same skin. Maybe Dylan can find out something about Stu Queen - like where he lives, for a start.’

  ‘How? I’ve already called the agency who hired him out to us. They don’t have an address, only a mobile phone number.’ He took a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and pushed it across the table.

  ‘Okay, that’s a start,’ I said. ‘Let’s give it to Dylan and see what he can come up with. Look behind most mobile phone numbers and you’ll find a direct debit drawn on a bank account. This isn’t the Pope we’re after, Miles. This bastard’s fallible just like the rest of us. Maybe this number will lead us right to his front door.

  ‘Then there’s the van. We know already that there’s no vehicle registered with the DVLA in Stephen Donn’s name; not this Stephen Donn, anyway. But what about Stu Queen? Maybe he owns a Transit, or a Movano, or something similar, and maybe Mike can trace him through the log book.’

  The movie star looked up at me; only a man now; a weak, vulnerable bloke like the rest of us. No way could he have got away with playing a thirty-something that morning. ‘And if we can, what does he do when Dylan’s stormtroopers batter down his door?

  ‘Oz, Prim. I’ll give this man whatever he wants just to get Dawn back, and our baby.’

  Primavera gasped beside me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hand go to her mouth. I hadn’t told her that Dawn was pregnant; that truth held a special sort of pain for me, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, not even to her. Miles didn’t know that, but Prim did; she squeezed my arm in a way that said
everything.

  ‘I know you will, Miles,’ she said, gently. ‘I wouldn’t put Dawn in danger any more than you would. But she’s in danger already; the more we know about the person who’s holding her, the better we’ll be able to deal with him when the time comes . . . however we go about it. Now; do you agree that we call Mike?’

  Eventually, he nodded, wearily. ‘Do it. But on a mobile phone; if there’s even the slightest chance that Donn has a tap on the line here, you’d better not use it.’

  I agreed with that. As always, I had my cellphone hooked on to my belt. I took it out and keyed in Dylan’s direct line number in Pitt Street. He was there.

  ‘Mike, it’s Oz,’ I began. ‘Listen; is this line secure?’

  ‘Of course it’s fucking secure, you bammer. This is Special Branch.’

  I complimented him on his ever-improving grasp of Glaswegian; and then I told him what had happened. About Dawn’s kidnapping, about the letter, about Stu Queen who was really Stephen Donn, and about his uncle’s part in identifying him.

  ‘I’ve always said,’ he said, when I was finished, ‘that the secret of good detection is luck. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned professional like me, or an inept, stumbling amateur, like you or like old Donn.’

  ‘Luck, mate,’ I told him grimly, unimpressed by his flippancy, ‘will be getting Dawn back alive.’

  ‘Sure, I know. Sorry.’

  ‘Can you help us in this, discreetly? Whatever ransom the guy wants, Miles will pay it, but in the meantime, will you find out anything you can about him?’ I read him the mobile number. ‘We think he has a van too. Medium sized.’

  ‘Big enough to build a hidden compartment inside it? That’s a favourite dodge with kidnappers. There was once a guy who was stopped by the police with a victim inside his Transit. They opened the thing, looked inside, and still they didn’t know.’

  ‘Big enough for that, I guess.’

  ‘Mmm, right.’

  ‘Mike, can you look into this without telling anyone else?’

  ‘Of course I can. I keep having to tell you. I’m Special Branch; I can do what I fucking like. Leave it to Uncle Michael.’ I could almost see his reassuring smile. ‘What are you lot going to do in the meantime?’ he asked.