Poisoned Cherries

by Quintin Jardine

  Ewan nodded. “The way things are headed we’ll all be working there soon.”

  “No. They don’t do beaches.”

  “They do everything. It’s a big place.”

  One of the catering staff who had taken over my kitchen passed by and offered us more champagne. As she was filling our glasses, another came up with a tray full of savouries. I grabbed a couple with my free hand.

  “I read in the Scotsman that you’re an old acquaintance of the woman who’s been charged with doing for my late cousin,” my new friend murmured, as they moved on to the next group.

  “Alison? Yes. We had a relationship a few years back.”

  “Poor lass.” He chuckled. “Not on that score, I rush to say. No, I meant, poor lass that she was mixed up with our David. Do you think she did it?”

  “She’s going to plead guilty to culpable homicide, as we call manslaughter in Scotland. It’s on that understanding she’s been charged with that and not murder.”

  “Mmm, “copping a plea” as the Americans say. I hope the court goes easy on her, then. You seem to know a bit about it.”

  I nodded. “I do. I’ve been trying to help her; she’s afraid that her business will go down the tubes, even if she doesn’t go to jail. I’ve been trying to set it up so that it doesn’t, even if she does.”

  “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, you only have to ask.”

  I looked at him. “You serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, if you’d agree to perform the opening ceremony at James Torrent’s new corporate headquarters, you’d be helping her big-time.”

  “Torrent? The office equipment man?” He frowned, furrowing his brow, thinking something over. “Yes, I’ll do that for her.”

  I was slightly stunned. “Will you? That’s great. I’m seeing her this evening; I’ll tell her. It’ll brighten what’s been a pretty traumatic day’

  “You’re seeing her? In prison?”

  “No, at her office; she appeared in court this morning, and the sheriff let her out on bail.”

  “That’s good. I hope it goes well with her.”

  His concern seemed genuine. “Alison told me you didn’t like your cousin. She wasn’t kidding, was she?”

  “No, she was not. The little bastard made a pass at my wife, once, about ten years ago, at a family gathering. I caught him at it and I thumped him. He told his parents, my aunt and uncle, a pack of lies; he accused me of touching up his girlfriend, would you believe. My uncle tackled me about it, and I told him that his son was a lying little shit, and left it at that.

  “I’d forgotten about it inside a week, but not David, though; he kept the bad feeling going. His father and my father have been at odds over it ever since. When he and Alison started in business, I thought it was a chance to heal the breach, so I called him, and offered to support them, financially and with contacts. He told me to fuck off.” He laughed and shook his head. “What an idiot.”

  He paused. “Why did she do it, do they reckon?”

  “He two-timed her, then broke off their engagement. He put the screws on her over the business after that; he was trying to force her to buy his shares for more than they were worth. At least, that’s what they’re saying.”

  “That’s typical of the little bastard. I’ve never met the girl, you know, but she didn’t deserve him. No one did.” He frowned again, then nodded as if another decision had been made. “I’ll tell you what; when you see her, would you put a proposition to her? I’d like to renew my offer of help; if the business is saveable, and if my unlamented cousin’s shares are still available, I’ll buy them at an independent valuation. Obviously, I won’t be actively involved, but I’ll let her keep the Capperauld name above the door.”

  He looked at me. “Do you think she’d consider that?”

  I whistled. “I think she’ll jump at it, Ewan; it’ll be great news for her.” I couldn’t help thinking that it would be great news for Susie as well. I looked him in the eye. A quarter of an hour before I’d been ready to deck him; now he’d turned out to be not such a bad guy after all.

  “I’ll tell her tonight. Assuming she agrees, I’ll arrange for you to meet.”

  “You do that. Why don’t you make it here, at eight tomorrow morning?”

  “That early?”

  “Of course.” He chuckled. “It wouldn’t do for us to be late for Miles’s bloody rehearsals.”

  Twenty-Nine.

  Alison’s office was one stair up, in an undistinguished terrace on the south side of York Place, but I guessed that with its city centre location, it was costing her a packet in rent.

  The nameplates on the street entrance and outside her glass-panelled door must have been pricey items too. I suggested as much when she let me in. “Yes,” she said, mournfully. “I suppose I’ll have to change them now.”

  “Not necessarily,” I replied. “How did it go in court?”

  She shuddered. “It was scary. They led me up into the dock, I said “yes” when the clerk asked me if I was who I was, and again, when the sheriff asked me if I understood the charge. Otherwise, that was it; Mr. Badenoch made a short speech about my unblemished character, then he asked for bail. The fiscal didn’t oppose and that was it; I’m back again in six weeks, when I’ll be asked to plead. I’ve had to surrender my passport, but there were no other conditions. I don’t have to sleep with Ricky,” she snorted, ‘or anything like that.”

  “I don’t recall that being a condition the last time,” I reminded her. “The way I heard it, that was all your idea.”

  “Well, it was a bad one,” she sniffed. “Even if it did prick his conscience into trying to help me.”

  “That prick has no conscience.”

  “You can talk. Anyway, I suppose he’s not that bad.” She poured me a mug of coffee from her filter, added milk, without asking, and handed it to me. “He was here half an hour ago,” she said, smoothing out her long straight skirt. She looked not half bad, in that and a sleeveless blouse.

  “He told me what he’d found out about the key at David’s flat, and about the fingerprints he lifted from it. It was real private eye stuff. Did you use to do that, Oz, when you were in that business?”

  “You know damn well I was never in that business; I just worked for lawyers, that’s all.”

  “Sure. I believed that, too, until Ricky told me different. He said that you were mixed up in a murder, after you and I split up, and that for a while he thought you might have had a hand in it.”

  “I think he still half believes that, but he’s wrong.”

  “You’re mixed up in one now.”

  “No. You are; he is; I’m not. I’m not involved. What else did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. He asked for a list of David’s friends, that was all.”

  “Was it much of a list?”

  She gave a short, brittle laugh, and shook her head. “Not really. I gave him three, no, four names to be going on with, but the only really close friend among them was Don Kennedy.” She looked at me as if she expected me to know him. I looked back at her, blankly.

  “Which Don Kennedy?”

  “You know; the golfer.”

  “Oh, that Don Kennedy.” I’d heard of him, right enough. He’d won quite a few events in Europe, and one in the States. He was a Ryder Cup player, but he wasn’t exactly a household name … at least not in any household I’d ever had. The thought of households took me back to Susie, and our conversation that morning.

  By coincidence, Alison arrived in the same vicinity at the same time. “What did you mean earlier,” she asked, ‘when you said I wouldn’t necessarily have to change the nameplates?”

  “I meant,” I told her, ‘that you have the most unlikely fairy godfather you could ever have imagined… except that I wouldn’t really say he’s a fairy, just a bit arch from time to time.”

  I told her all about my encounter with Ewan Capperauld, in detail, piece by piece. When I got to where
he agreed without a murmur to open James Torrent’s building, she gasped with surprise, shouted “Yes!” and jumped up and down. When I got to the end, and his offer to buy his cousin’s stake in the business, and put his own name behind it, she looked at me in total amazement for a few seconds then threw herself at me and kissed me. She’d never done it like that in the old days. This was a real tongue-tickling-tonsils job. She didn’t stop there either; there wasn’t an interesting piece of her that wasn’t pressed and writhing against me.

  Eventually I peeled her off… not too soon though, for I was enjoying it, a fact of which she must have been aware. “You are the most surprising, wonderful man,” she whispered. “Make love to me.”

  I held her away from me. “Come on, now,” I told her. “If you want to tuck someone to celebrate, fuck Ewan. It’s only right; he’s the guy making the offer.”

  She smiled at me; very definitely Alison Mark Two. “Yes, but he’s not here.” She began to unbutton her blouse. Something made me stop her; Susie’s face in my mind’s eye … or maybe it was a subconscious image of her and Ricky Ross.

  “Thanks again, but no thanks.”

  “You really are serious about this woman in Glasgow, aren’t you?”

  I was, and it was worrying me. “No, I just want you to be fresh for your meeting with Ewan tomorrow morning; eight o’clock at my place.”

  She was still incredulous. “He wants to meet me?”

  “Of course, if you’re interested in his offer.”

  “If I’m what? Of course I’m interested; I’ll jump at it.”

  “Or for it,” I muttered, but she didn’t pick it up. She was too busy planning ahead.

  “Eight o’clock,” she said. “Mmm, that’s early. Oz, maybe I could stay at your place tonight. That would make sense.”

  “Maybe to you, but it might not sound too sensible to me.”

  She waved a hand at me. “Don’t worry about your virtue; it’ll be safe with me.” I wasn’t sure; I’d been in that situation before, with Susie, and it hadn’t been. “Please,” she whispered. “Last night was awful, really, in that cell. I really don’t fancy being on my own at home, not yet.”

  I gave in. “Okay,” I said. “But I’m warning you, I’ll be locking my bedroom door!” I don’t think she believed me.

  We did a drive-by of her place and picked up some fresh clothes for the morning, plus her toothbrush and cosmetics. I didn’t notice her packing anything that looked like a nightdress, but I let that pass.

  It was going on for nine when we got back to the Mound; when I showed her the spare room and dumped her bag there, Alison smiled in a way that told me she didn’t regard the subject as closed. I still did; I checked my resolve, and found it holding up under the pressure. We were both hungry, but I didn’t fancy cooking that late, so I called the ever reliable Pizza Hut and ordered up a double whopper stuffed crust whatever, no garlic, please, paid by credit card. There were a couple of bottles of Bollinger in the fridge, left over from the afternoon. I opened one, poured two glasses, then settled down to watch some obscure football match on Channel 5, with the sound turned down so that the awful screaming commentator didn’t get on my tits.

  The entry buzzer went ten minutes later. Alison jumped up; I thought she was going to answer it, but instead she headed for her room. I picked up the phone myself, and heard a female voice say, “Pizza,” managing to make even those two syllables sound broad Edinburgh.

  “Top floor,” I grunted, then pressed the buzzer and, as had become my habit, opened the front door, ready for the lift’s arrival. I was looking out of the window as I heard it open, but the voice from behind still took me by surprise. “My, who’s the hungry one then?” Outside, the lift closed again and headed for the street.

  I turned to see Rhona Waitrose, with a Pizza Hut carrier balanced on the tips of the fingers of her right hand, and what looked like a script held in her left. It was remarkable that I noticed these things, for she was wearing a pair of black patent shoes, a shiny raincoat, which hung open, and nothing else.

  “I thought we might do a bit of early rehearsing,” she said, brightly. Then her smile faded as Alison walked back into the room. She was dressed much the same as Rhona, minus the raincoat and the shoes, and she was holding a champagne glass between breasts that did indeed seem to have grown since the last time I’d seen them.

  ‘.. . Only I see you’re auditioning this evening,” the pizza delivery girl finished. “My mistake, sorry.”

  “Hold on,” I said weakly, ‘it’s no mistake.”

  She brightened up. “Ah well,” the actress chuckled. “I’m all for improvisation in my work.” She looked at Alison, who seemed slightly bewildered, but not too bothered by the newcomer. “What do you think, dear? Does one go into two?”

  “We take what we can get,” my ex replied, positively.

  I thought through my options; I didn’t fancy any of them. Well, that’s not true; I fancied both of them, but not in the same room, at the same time. “Can I just settle for the pizza,” I suggested, ‘and let you girls sort things out for yourselves?”

  They both laughed, in a tinkling harmony; then the bells stopped ringing, as the lift opened again.

  “Someone left the street door open,” Susie called out, as she walked in through the open door, carrying her overnight bag. “Surp…”

  I’ve never seen a volcano erupt, but if I ever do, then like the song says, it won’t impress me much. Not after seeing Susie go instantly ballistic. “You bastard,” she screamed, as she dropped the bag, and advanced on me. “You indescribable fucking bastard! I am mug enough to fall for you, and to think that you feel the same way about me. So I come through to bring some joy into your lonely life, and what do I find? You’re waist deep in fucking whores!”

  “Hey wait a minute!” Rhona protested.

  Susie didn’t even turn to look at her; she just threw out a hand behind her with a pointing finger on the end. “You shut your mouth!” she commanded. Rhona obeyed. As for Alison, she just stood there; her mouth was still hanging open, but no sound was coming out.

  “Love,” I pleaded with her, ‘this is not what it seems.” I wondered, idly, whether going down on my knees would help, but I decided that it would only make it easier for her to punch me in the mouth.

  “Well, what the fuck is it then? Which scene in your bloody movie is this?”

  Behind her the door slammed shut. We all looked towards it. The tall, angular figure of Mandy O’Farrell stared back at us. I was hugely relieved to see that she was fully clothed, even if she was as astonished as the rest of us.

  “Jesus Christ,” she boomed in her full, rich contralto. “Is there no security in this bloody building?”

  I took advantage of Susie’s momentary distraction to seize her firmly by the arm and march her towards my bedroom. “Mandy,” I called over my shoulder, ‘get these two out of here, dressed or otherwise.

  “Alison, go home, go to Ross, go wherever you bloody like, but be back here for eight tomorrow morning!

  “And Rhona, leave the fucking pizza!”

  I shoved Susie into my bedroom, closed the door behind us, locked it, and turned back to face her, just in time for a small bare foot to slam into my testicles, and take my mind completely off everything else that had happened that evening.

  Thirty.

  It took me three minutes before I could think of anything but the pain, and another two before I could even begin to croak, let alone speak. Fortunately, I’d fallen backwards against the bedroom door, making it impossible for Susie to get out.

  It took me another fifteen minutes for me to get her to begin to believe me, and the best part of an hour before she was completely convinced. Even then … “But if I hadn’t walked in …”

  “I’d have eaten the pizza, love, honest.”

  “You can have it now, then, if those bitches haven’t nicked it.” She smiled at me. “Afterwards, if you’re really lucky, you can have me.” I do not th
ink I have ever felt more relieved in my life.

  We decided to change the order of events. Later, quite a while later, I went out to check that Mandy had indeed evicted the visitors, and to recover Susie’s bag from the living room. The pizza was intact, if stone cold. I squeezed it into the oven to reheat, then checked the champagne, on the kitchen counter. It was warm and flat, but it was still Bolly, so I poured us a couple of glasses and carried them back into the living room.

  Susie was waiting for me, in a blue silk dressing gown, sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked under her. I handed her a glass; she sampled it and frowned. “Were you wasting this on that cow Alison?”

  “I was being hospitable,” I told her, ‘that was all.”

  “I take it she was the one without the raincoat, the one with the fake knockers.”

  “How do you know they’re fake?”

  She snorted. “At her age, if they were real they’d have started the long sad journey south… like mine.”

  I sat beside her and nuzzled my forehead against them. “They’ve got a long way to go, honey.”

  “You say the nicest things; I might just stay the night.”

  “Stay for good,” I suggested. “We could move Janet and Ethel through here.”

  “A nice idea, but I can’t; I’ve still got a business to run. And anyway, I’d cramp your bloody style.”

  “I don’t have a style to cramp, not any more.” I looked at her. “You scare me shitless, you know,” I told her.

  “Good!” she retorted, with a grin. “That’s the way it should be. Not that I believe it, mind. I know you, Oz Blackstone; I won’t catch you off-guard again.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant that the way I feel about you scares me.”

  “Does it make you happy as well, though? Does it conjure up pictures of a house in the country and two point four kids?”

  “Three point four, actually.”

  “Be brave, then; face up to the prospect of life with me. Think how brave I’m being; I’m taking a chance on a guy who slept with someone else on his honeymoon.”

  “Yeah, but it was you I slept with.”