Screen Savers Read online

  ‘Make it twelve-thirty,’ I said, knowing that Prim would not be back before then. I didn’t want to keep a secret from her if I could avoid it. ‘What’s the problem anyway?’

  ‘Not over the phone.’ He hung up.

  It isn’t far from my office to the Horseshoe Bar. My curiosity was well pumped-up, so I was bang on time; even so, Mike was there before me; almost twitching with tension, it struck me. He was so agitated he even bought me lunch without a single hint being dropped.

  ‘What’s the story, Detective Inspector?’ I asked at last, as we set our pies, beans and beer down on a small round table.

  ‘I need a favour, Oz.’

  I shrugged. ‘I owe you a couple, that’s for sure. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Someone’s after Susie.’

  ‘You’re kidding. What d’you mean after her?’

  ‘She’s had threatening letters.’

  ‘How threatening?’

  He looked around to make sure no one was watching us, then reached into the pocket of his light-weight summer jacket and produced a brown envelope. I glanced at it and saw that it was addressed to Ms Susan Gantry, at her office address.

  ‘Is it all right to touch this?’ I asked.

  Dylan frowned. ‘Of course!’ he snapped.

  ‘Okay, keep your Ralph Lauren on. I thought it might have been evidence; fingerprints and all that, basic police procedures. Christ, I was only in the force for a few months but even I remember that.’

  I took the letter from the envelope, unfolded it and read it quickly. It was brief, and to the point. ‘Bitch from Hell. You are going to die with your world in ashes all around you.’ It wasn’t signed, but it ended, ‘A Well-wisher . . . not!’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I’d say this was threatening all right. There have been others?’

  He took two smaller envelopes from another pocket; they were numbered ‘1’ and ‘2’. The first letter read simply, ‘Your number is up, Ms Gantry.’ The second went into more detail. ‘You choose your associates very badly, Susie. Now you’re going to pay.’ Unconsciously, I read it aloud; my voice was barely above a whisper but still, Mike glared at me furiously. ‘Shurrup, for fuck’s sake,’ he hissed.

  ‘Sorry.’ I paused and glanced across at him. ‘Why didn’t you mention this the other night?’

  ‘I didn’t like to, not with Miles and Dawn around. The third letter didn’t arrive till yesterday anyway; that was the one that really shook us both up.’

  ‘Any idea who this bugger might be?’

  ‘Not the faintest. It’s weird, Oz. All three letters were posted in different British cities: Dundee, Birmingham, then London. All three look as if they’ve been typed on a PC then printed on the same machine. It’s the same typeface every time and if you look at it through a magnifying glass you can see the pixels.’

  ‘You don’t believe in them, do you?’ Dylan stared at me blankly; I decided that this was not a time for humour.

  ‘Mike,’ I went on, quickly, picking up the eating irons to attack my pie and beans. (The Horseshoe pies are the best in Glasgow. It doesn’t do to let them get cold.) ‘Why are you showing me these, old son? Surely this is a police job, all the way.’

  He threw me another sour look. ‘You try telling Susie that: Christ knows, I’ve tried. But she says that if word got out that she was under threat, it could undo all the work she’s done to rescue the Gantry Group over the last couple of years.

  ‘After what happened to her old man, she had to sell off a big chunk of the business at a loss. She’s heavily committed to a couple of projects, but she’s going to have to borrow big if she’s going to see them through. She’s worried that if word got out that she was under threat, her bankers might get cold feet. If that happened, it could bloody near wipe her out.

  ‘She’s refused point-blank to let me open a police investigation. She says, and she’s right, unfortunately, that there are people in the police who make a few quid passing on juicy tips to the tabloids.’

  ‘Er,’ I asked, ‘haven’t you got a duty as a copper to investigate if you know that a crime’s been committed?’

  ‘Aye sure, but you know I’ve overlooked that once or twice in the past. And this is my girlfriend who’s involved.’

  I frowned and stopped a forkful of pie halfway to my mouth. ‘But if this is serious, if it isn’t just a nutter . . .’

  Dylan shook his head. ‘I’ve taken steps to protect her. I’ve hired a guy as a day-time bodyguard. Officially he’s on the Group payroll as an office manager, but he’s ex-SAS, supplied by a personal security firm in London. With him around during the day, and me at night, she’s pretty safe.’

  I had my doubts about him as a minder, but I kept them to myself. ‘So how can I help? D’you want me to fix up a couple of the GWA boys as back-up for your hired gun?’

  For the first time that day, he smiled. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. My man doesn’t need back-up, believe me. Anyway your wrestlers tend to be a bit conspicuous . . . apart from that girl Sally Crockett.’

  ‘You can’t have her; she’s on maternity leave.’

  ‘Lucky somebody. No, Oz, I’d like you to help me find the bastard behind these letters. For all that Susie’s a tough wee cookie, this has her rattled, and I hate to see it. Chances are this is just a disgruntled former employee with a nasty streak and a vivid imagination, but whatever, I want him stopped.’

  I hesitated. ‘I can’t help but recall, Mike, that in the past you’ve tended to take the piss out of my efforts as an investigator.’

  He smiled again; a broad grin this time. ‘Aye well, you’re the best I’ve got. Also, you might be a complete bloody amateur, but you’ve got the detective’s greatest attribute on your side.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘You’re a jammy bastard. Somehow or other, whenever you take on one of these half-arsed investigation jobs you always seem to get a result.’

  ‘That’s true, but Michael, in the past I’ve known where to begin. Where the hell do I start here?’

  He reached into a third pocket of his designer jacket and handed over yet another envelope. ‘That’s a list of former employees of the Gantry Group who’ve been asked to leave or been fired; a bit more than a dozen of them. The name at the top is Joe Donn, the Finance Director Susie had all that trouble with a couple of years back. I’ve run a quiet PNC check on them all. Two are currently in the slammer, so they’re out of the frame. Another three have convictions for minor offences; assault, breach of the peace and possession of marijuana. The rest look like choirboys.’

  ‘All men?’ I asked, without looking at the list.

  ‘All but two of them. One of them was a junior, into the petty cash. The other was Joe Donn’s secretary; she resigned after Susie caught her smuggling copies of documents out to her old boss. He was trying to make trouble for her by feeding information to a freelance journalist, but a pal of hers on the Herald business desk tipped her off.’

  ‘Is he still trying?’

  ‘No. The Gantry Group lawyer put a scare into him. When Donn left for the second and final time, his severance agreement included a standard confidentiality clause. The solicitor wrote to him making it clear that if he broke the agreement again, Susie would sue him for punitive damages.’

  ‘So you think that these letters might be another way of getting his own back . . . by throwing a scare into the wee one?’

  Dylan frowned. ‘Put it this way. If this was a police investigation, old Uncle Joe would be the first bloke in for interview.’

  ‘Thanks for that insight. Since you lot never get it right first time, I’ll probably start somewhere else.’

  ‘Cheeky bastard. You can start wherever you like, as long as you get a result.’

  I thought about that as he spoke. I had never met old Joe Donn, but from everything I had heard, he struck me as something of a dinosaur. Not the sort of man who would have written poison pen letters on a personal computer, then printed them out on
a laser. No, old Joe would have cut words out of the Daily Record and pasted them on to a page from a school jotter, just like he’d seen them do in the movies.

  I didn’t share this with the detective inspector, though; it would have made me sound too much of a smart-arse.

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Mike,’ I said modestly. ‘There’s just one thing, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You sure you can afford my fee?’

  Chapter 5

  After a spot of haggling, I settled for my lunch as a retainer, and another couple of pints on a successful conclusion. Not that I expected to collect them.

  I had some hope that we might have lifted matching prints from the three envelopes, but Dylan knocked that on the head right away. He told me that he had them all dusted by a close-mouthed pal in the Strathclyde forensic department, and had come up blank. There were plenty of prints on the envelopes, naturally enough since the things had been through the Royal Mail system, but the only ones common to all three belonged to Susie herself.

  I took them all back to the office anyway, with their contents and with Mike’s list of possible suspects. It was time to confess all to Primavera.

  She sat in silence as I told her about Susie’s stalker. When I was finished, she turned to our assistant. ‘Go on out for a coffee for half an hour, Lulu,’ she said, quietly. ‘Take a fiver out of petty cash and nip along to Princes Square.’

  She looked at me across her desk as the door closed, leaving us alone, and leaving me wishing I had gone for a coffee too.

  ‘Does that guy know what he’s asking?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Probably not.’

  I tried to appease her, but her temper was still on the up. ‘Oz, what has happened every time you and I have got involved in something like this? Disaster, and you above all know that. The first time, we got away by the skin of our teeth with our very lives—’

  ‘And with a lot of money.’

  Prim shut me up with another look. Best let her get it off her chest, son.

  ‘As for the second time, if we hadn’t got involved with trying to authenticate that bloody picture—’

  ‘You might still be living in Spain with your ancient lover.’ She winced and looked away. I knew I shouldn’t have said it, but sometimes my mouth just goes haywire.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ she said curtly, recovering herself. ‘And as for the third time, if Greg McPhillips hadn’t volunteered you for that escapade, then—’ She stopped abruptly, kinder than I had been, not voicing the truth with which I would have to live forever.

  ‘Mike must know all that, Oz.’

  ‘Not about you.’

  ‘Maybe not, but he was involved last time. He knows what happened, and why. So he must know now what he’s asking you to do.’

  ‘No, I don’t think for a second that’s occurred to him. This is his girlfriend who’s under threat, and he’s worried sick . . . probably even more worried than he was prepared to let on. To tell you the truth, love, I’m really chuffed that he thinks well enough of me to trust me with this.’

  I hesitated. ‘And anyway . . .’ I began.

  She cut me off. ‘. . . and anyway, you enjoy it, all that private detective stuff. It gives you a buzz, gets you hard. Admit it, you’re a sucker for it, and Mike knew that when he called you. He knew you couldn’t turn him down.’

  ‘He knew I couldn’t turn him down, yes, but that’s not why. Two years ago the guy put his job on the line to help me. I owe him; simple as that.’

  She frowned. ‘Is there anything I could say to make you change your mind? Any threat I could make? Any ultimatum I could give you?’

  I sat on the edge of her desk, tilted up her chin and kissed her. ‘Sure there is,’ I whispered. ‘You could tell me you’ll leave me if I take this on. That would work. But you’re not going to do that, are you?’

  She looked me in the eye for upwards of ten seconds; then she shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. Because I don’t believe in jinxes, and because you’re right. Your friends are in trouble, and if you can help them, you have to.’ She smiled, gently. ‘I love you for it, too. Just be careful, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course I will, but don’t get this out of proportion. The chances are that all I’m doing is running down a crank.’

  ‘You’ve got three weeks to do it, then.’

  I frowned at her, puzzled.

  ‘Christ,’ she laughed, ‘have you forgotten already? Your movie career gets under way then.’ She pushed herself out of her chair, and picked up Dylan’s list from my desk. ‘Where are we going to begin, then?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sure. You don’t really think I’d let you handle this on your own, do you? Lulu’s pretty well trained now. It’s time she had a promotion and a rise. We’ll hire an assistant for her, and she can handle more of the interview workload. With one thing and another you’re hardly involved here any more: if I manage the quality of the operation, our clients won’t know the difference.’

  My reassurances about the safety of Dylan’s mission had come back to bite me on the bum, well and truly. They seemed to have convinced Prim, okay; but I wasn’t so sure.

  ‘So come on,’ she insisted. ‘Tell me. Where do we start? With this man Joseph Donn?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Dylan thinks he’s the bookies’ favourite, but he has a recent history of sounding off to the press. This thing has to be done with no publicity, so we’ll have to be careful how we handle him. No, I reckon we should begin with his secretary, Myrtle Higgins. She lost her job for doing him a favour; could be she won’t fancy doing him any more.’

  Chapter 6

  Finding Myrtle Higgins wasn’t as easy as we had assumed it would be. We went out that evening to the address which The Gantry Group had on file, only to be told by a student who answered the door that she had given up her room six months before, to move in with her boyfriend.

  ‘Do you have her new address?’ Prim asked.

  ‘Somewhere up in Broomhill,’ the girl answered. ‘She shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

  ‘Not much,’ I thought. Broomhill was like a rabbit warren; and that wasn’t counting all the people who claim to have a Broomhill address, because they don’t like to admit that they live in Partick . . . the opposite of Partick Thistle Football Club, which doesn’t like to admit that its home ground is really in Maryhill.

  There was nothing for it but to check next day with the company to which Susie Gantry had written a reference for her former employee . . . generously, we thought, given the reason for her leaving. Sure enough, Myrtle Higgins worked there, as the Finance Director’s secretary, her old job with the group: only now she was Mrs Myrtle Campbell.

  She wasn’t going to take my call at first, until I told the switchboard that it was to her advantage if she did so. She came on the line all bright and breezy, as if she had won the lottery. I could have told her, that’s not how you react; in the moment of realisation you go rigid with shock.

  ‘Yes,’ she chirped brightly. ‘How can you help me?’

  ‘By keeping you out of trouble, perhaps.’ Her tone changed in an instant, to terse and hostile.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘My name’s Oz Blackstone. I’m a private investigator; I need to talk to you about a problem that’s arisen at the Gantry Group.’

  ‘Nothing to do wi’ me, pal,’ she said. ‘I left there a while back.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Campbell, and I know why. Listen, I’m not saying this has anything to do with you, but I need to talk to you all the same. It’s important.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ I shot back, quickly, before she could hang up. ‘Susie Gantry was okay with you, wasn’t she?’

  ‘What? Like giving me my cards, d’yae mean?’

  ‘Like giving you a reference for your new job, when she could have had you bombed out with a word. Now you can return the favour: Susie could be in trouble.’

  ‘We’re all in
trouble, pal, one way or another. I want no more to do wi’ the Gantrys, an’ Ah certainly don’t want you turning up here.’

  ‘Myrtle,’ I assured her, ‘if I was going to do that I’d be there already. I’d sooner to see you at home, tonight.’

  ‘Listen, whatever your name is. You don’t know where Ah live, as far as I can tell, but if you do happen to turn up at my door, my husband Malkie will gie you a doin’. He does martial arts, and stuff.’

  All of a sudden, I was glad that Prim could only hear my side of the conversation: one phone call into our investigation, and I was being threatened with a kicking. ‘Is that so?’ I said, conversationally. ‘Origami’s my speciality, actually. What’s the address again?’

  ‘Fuck off.’ This time she did hang up.

  A quick call to a pal at the Registrar’s office and a promise of a beer secured me the details of the marriage, four months earlier, of Malcolm Campbell, bachelor, and Myrtle Higgins, spinster, both of an address just off Crow Road. A second, to Mike Dylan, produced the information that Mr Campbell had four convictions for assault, the last of which had earned him six months inside.

  A third call fixed me up with a very special insurance policy.

  Chapter 7

  Crow Road is one of the nicer parts of the western side of Glasgow. It runs from Anniesland Cross, past the High School, through Jordanhill into Broomhill, and down to Dumbarton Road. You wouldn’t call it posh at any point, nearly all of it is very neat and well-looked after.

  Malcolm and Myrtle Campbell lived on the second floor of a big red sandstone tenement in a street just off Broomhill Cross. I had heard of a ‘wally close’ - or half-tiled common entrance, to non-Glaswegians - but in all my time in the city I had never been in one, until then.

  Even in mid-evening, the stairway was bright and airy, lit from above by a cupola. As I climbed I guessed that Mr Campbell’s time inside hadn’t affected his earning power; the building looked moderately expensive.

  I turned on to the second floor landing and found the Campbell flat immediately on the right. The front door was freshly painted, in royal blue; that tells you a lot in Glasgow. I took a deep breath and pressed the button which was set in the upper panel, looking like a penalty spot. After a few seconds, it opened, wide enough for me to see a short, slim, blonde girl in denims and an Oasis T-shirt.