For The Death Of Me ob-9

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘You won’t tell him about me, though,’ said Dylan, quickly, ‘that I’m still alive.’

  ‘Don’t worry, boy, that secret safe with me.’

  ‘Where would she go, Jimmy, from Mersing?’

  ‘You still want to find her? Sound as if this woman don’t need help.’

  ‘I still want to find her,’ I said.

  ‘That you, Oz? You still worried about brother-in-law? ’

  ‘I made him a promise. A judge’s ex being murdered by Triads won’t make nice headlines in Scotland either.’

  ‘Maybe not. Well, she won’t come back to Singapore, that dead fucking sure. So I reckon she have to go to KL. From Mersing she get there by bus or by KTN, the national railway. Hell, she could hire car, or take taxi. Once she in KL, you lost her: there are many ways out of there. And she could be in KL by now.’

  He chuckled. ‘Go home, boys, you done here. Martin, go back be dead. Oz, go back pretend in movies. ’Bye.’ There was a click as he hung up, then a buzz.

  ‘Sounded like good advice to me, Oz,’ Dylan murmured. ‘We’ve got a better chance of finding Nemo than of tracking her down. We’ve lost her.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. The thought of getting back into the Mondeo and driving to KL did flash across my mind, but I let it pass through and out the other side. Still. .

  ‘What about the boy Sammy?’ I said. ‘Weird, him just latching on to us like that.’

  ‘Maybe, but weirdness happens sometimes. Fuck, look at you. Look at me. We’re weird, but we’re real.’

  ‘I need to know about him, though.’

  ‘Don’t look at me. I can’t help you there, not any more.’

  ‘No, but there’s someone who might: your old boss.’ I dug out my mobile and called an Edinburgh number I had stored there.

  ‘Ross,’ a voice answered smoothly.

  ‘Ricky, how goes? It’s Oz here.’

  ‘It goes fine, and so does your estate.’ Ricky’s security firm looks after Loch Lomond for us while we’re away.

  ‘Good, because my dad will be through there soon, to recuperate.’

  ‘Aye, I heard he’d been ill. He’s on the mend?’

  ‘He’s going to be fine. Listen, I’d like you to do me a favour. I’ve run across a Scots guy who says his name is Sammy Grant; claims to have left Maryhill eight years ago, when he’d have been early twenties. Can you check him out?’

  ‘A picture would help.’

  As it happened, I could do that: when we’d all had a few in the Crazy Elephant, I’d taken a couple of snaps with the camera on my mobile. Sammy had been in one of them. ‘I’ll send you what I’ve got through the phone. The quality won’t be great but you’ll be able to do something with it.’

  ‘Okay. Where are you?’

  ‘Singapore.’

  ‘Movie business?’

  ‘No, just a stag trip, scuba-diving with a pal.’

  ‘I didn’t think you had pals like that any more, not since Dylan copped it.’

  I laughed. ‘There was only one Mike Dylan, right enough. Call me on my mobile if you get anything before Wednesday. We’ll be heading back to Monaco tomorrow night.’

  I killed the call: Benny Luker was gazing at me, with a sad look in his eyes. ‘It guts me sometimes,’ he said. ‘I liked Ricky Ross, but I can never see him again, because he’s in Scotland and I can never go back there. Too many people know me. My mum’s still alive, too, and I can’t even send her a fucking birthday card. I can’t send her an anonymous bouquet of roses, for she’d wonder, and tell her friends, and they’d wonder, and soon every fucker in Edinburgh would be wondering. I’d love to go back home, Oz. I’d love to walk into my mum’s kitchen and make myself a coffee and just sit down and wait for her getting back from the shops.’

  ‘And watch her have a heart-attack when she saw you sitting there? Michael’s dead to her: that was part of the deal you made.’

  There were tears in his eyes now. ‘I know. But it’s hard, man, it’s really fucking hard.’

  ‘But you came back to us, to Susie and me.’

  ‘Because you’re not in Scotland, and because you’re the only two people in the world I can trust, other than my mum. . and if she knew, she couldn’t keep it to herself.’

  ‘But there are others. You’re trusting Prim, and now you’re trusting Miles and Dawn. I haven’t had a chance to tell you: they’re okay with the deal. You can trust me on something too. Your mum gets a birthday card every year, and a Christmas card, and roses. She gets them from me, and every time I’m in Edinburgh, I go to see her; the last time was ten days ago.’

  The tears had escaped, two big, slow rollers. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s fine, man, fit as a fiddle. You know what? Once we announce this deal, once we make the movie, once your book sales shoot up as a result, and you get a chunky advance on the next one, you’ll be able to pluck her out of Edinburgh, if you wish, and have her live with you in the US.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll invite her to our place in Los Angeles. You can take it from there.’

  He frowned at me. ‘For a slightly psychopathic egomaniac who’s risen way above his station and is reaping good fortune far beyond what his talent or behaviour merit, you’re not a bad guy.’

  32

  As summings-up go, that one was pretty near the mark. ‘Doesn’t make you a bad person,’ Rod Steiger once said, in one of the greatest ad-libs ever filmed. That’s how I try to look at my less user-friendly side.

  I got some sleep; not a lot, but enough, I woke at seven thirty and went straight down to the gym, where I ran the treadmill, rowed till it hurt, then slammed a hell of a lot of weight up in the air. I was punishing myself. Why? Because I had a sense of failure, that’s why. I had seen myself going back to Scotland and handing Harvey a slim, if expensive, envelope, then watching while he reduced it to crispy black ashes. Instead I was going back with the news that his former wife. . since he’d married the woman, he must have loved her at some point. . was a killer, out there somewhere, on the run. Or maybe not: maybe she wasn’t running any more, maybe she’d been caught in KL and her pickled head was in some Triad chieftain’s trophy cabinet. If it was at least her hair would look good: the Philip Kingsley Trichological Centre had made sure of that. (You’re a bastard, Blackstone, you really are. No, I’m not; not that bad at any rate. We all have our own ways of dealing with horror when we meet it, that’s all.)

  I was punishing myself for giving up, too. I had met the woman; I had reached an agreement with her. There was a bond between us, a shared obligation. Just because she wasn’t in a position to honour her side, did that absolve me of mine? There was even more to it than that. Maddy January was a chromium-plated bitch, no doubt about that, but when we had met in that steaming hot place, I had seen something in her, buried pretty deep, I’ll grant you, but something I liked. Maybe she showed that to all the guys, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like the idea of someone cutting it off at source. . or at the shoulders.

  I felt better when I’d finished: I went upstairs and rang Lufthansa to get us on to their evening flight, then called Reception and arranged a late check-out. Once I’d done all that and showered, it was nine thirty and I was ready for the day. I called Mike, but he wasn’t, so we agreed to go our separate ways and met up at five thirty, to check out, dump the bags and have a drink in Raffles before we headed for the airport.

  He mumbled something about sightseeing, but there was only one sight in the city that I wanted to see before I left, so I called her. ‘Hiya,’ I said, as she answered her mobile. ‘Are you working today?’

  ‘Reading scripts,’ Marie replied, ‘but I don’t have to. You call to tell me you leaving?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I only have a few hours left in Singapore, and I was hoping I could spend some of them with you.’

  ‘You want to get in my pants now?’ Her voice had a lovely laugh to it.

  In other circumstances I’d have said, ‘
Yes,’ no hesitation. As it was I just went along for the ride, so to speak. ‘And if I did?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe still too soon.’

  ‘Let’s just meet up, then.’

  ‘Okay, let’s go to the zoo. You like animals?’

  Fact is, the animals I like most are those I eat, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I have a hire car, can I pick you up?’

  ‘No, I meet you there. I take a taxi, it’s quicker. I see you ten thirty.’

  I can take or leave zoos, leave them mostly, although I have taken the kids down to San Diego. It’s bigger than Singapore, but probably no better. Marie seemed to know it like the back of her hand. The girl in the ticket booth seemed to know her too, for she smiled at her as I bought the tickets and said something quietly in Chinese.

  ‘What did she say?’ I asked, as we moved off.

  ‘She asked if you are my lover.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I said you were my friend. . for now.’

  ‘Time we saw the zoo,’ I said, and let her lead me to the tram ride.

  We spent three hours there, getting to know every part of the place. There was a sound commentary on the tram, but Marie overrode it, acting as my personal guide. As you’d expect, the orang-utan, a near native, is the star of the show, but there was just about every other species of mammal on display, or so it seemed. The only part I didn’t like was the polar-bear enclosure; as I watched the poor bastard parading back and forward, forward and back, oblivious to the gawpers on the other side of the glass screen, I knew, instinctively and beyond doubt, that it had been driven quite insane.

  When we were done there, I took her for lunch. I expected her to choose a fish restaurant, but she took us to an Italian place called Al Dente, on Boat Quay, where she said they did a killer lasagne. It looked pretty good, but I passed and chose a shark steak, and a nice bottle of well-chilled Frascati to go with it.

  Our table was by the river, shaded by an umbrella but still hot. That was okay by me: too much air-con is bad for you, and probably explains why half the people in Singapore seem to suffer from fairly noisy sinus conditions.

  ‘Are you serious about the film part, Oz?’ she asked, after we had eaten and were staring into a couple of cappuccinos.

  ‘Of course. Why would I not be?’

  Her answer was a smile and a raised eyebrow.

  I replied in kind. ‘And when will you have known me long enough?’ I asked.

  She looked at me with honest open eyes. ‘I don’t know; maybe never. Or maybe this afternoon. I’m a very careful girl. I don’t know how to be impulsive, but maybe I can try.’

  I took her hand, drew her across the small table and kissed her. ‘Marie,’ I told her, ‘you go on being careful. Impulsiveness is for guys like me, not girls like you, and now even I avoid it like the plague. It can get you into a hell of a lot of trouble.’

  I said that, yet I confess that my impulse was to take her back to the hotel and make love to her until it was time to go to the airport. The harder I resisted it, the more I found myself wondering what it would be like. Resist I did, though.

  ‘The movie part is yours,’ I promised, ‘without conditions before or after the event. You give me an address where I can write to you.’

  ‘I have a post-office box,’ she replied. ‘It’s best here.’ She wrote the number on the back of a restaurant card and gave it to me. ‘Thanks, Oz. It’s been wonderful to meet you. I will think about everything, I promise.’

  I parted from her there; she said she wanted to catch the MRT, so I walked her to the Clarke Quay station. We kissed goodbye. . it was meant to be just a friendly peck, but it wound up going on for a little longer than one of those. The last I saw of her, she was waving, as the escalator took her down and out of my sight.

  33

  I was still thinking about Marie when Dylan and I met in the foyer at five thirty, as arranged. I went through the check-out procedures and paid the bill. Then we dumped our cases with the valet, who would look after them till ‘Go to Changi Airport’ time. I’d arranged for Hertz to collect the car.

  We were waiting to cross Bras Basah Road, heading for Raffles, when my mobile sounded. It was Ricky Ross.

  ‘Can you speak?’ he asked, as the green man showed.

  ‘Yes, but it’ll be cooler once I get into the shade.’

  ‘What time is it with you?’

  ‘Tea time.’ I stepped into the shadow of Raffles and leaned against the wall. ‘Do you have something?’

  ‘Too right. This guy you met, his real name’s Sammy Goss and he is well and truly on the run. He did indeed leave Scotland eight years ago, but not from Maryhill. He escaped from custody on his way to a committal hearing; he was due to stand trial on two counts of murder in Glasgow, and after that he was going to London for a third. All three of them were gang-related.’

  ‘Any Chinese connections?’

  ‘Why do you ask that? As it happens, two of the victims were Chinese. The London case was a guy who’d upset some people in Chinatown. When Goss was picked up in Glasgow, the gun he’d used in one of the killings there was matched to that one.’

  ‘What did he use in the third?’

  ‘A knife. He was linked to several other hits, but those were the only ones they could proceed on. Are you telling me he’s in Singapore?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Oz, I’ve pulled some strings for this information. The people I’ve talked to want to know why I’m asking.’

  ‘Tell them to cross him off their list. He’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I have the word of a reliable witness,’ I told him. ‘It seems Sammy underestimated somebody and took one in the back of the head.’

  ‘Will the Singapore police confirm this?’

  ‘It happened in Malaysia, not Singapore, but nobody’s going to confirm it, because there isn’t going to be a body.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Oz,’ Ricky gasped, ‘what have you got yourself into?’

  ‘Nothing at all. I’m catching a plane in a few hours and I’m heading back home, clean as a whistle. Did Goss have any family? He told me he had a mother, a sister and two nephews and that he went home every couple of years or so.’

  ‘He was kidding: his father died in a pub fight twenty years ago and his mother boozed herself to death. No sister, only a granny; the police check her out every so often, but he’s never shown up there. Do you know who killed him?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me that; just tell your former colleagues on the quiet that they can stop staking out his granny’s. If they ever see anything of him again, it’ll be in a can of fucking tuna.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to tell me what brand, would you?’

  ‘That’s a hard one. If you like the stuff, I’d build up a big stock now, if I were you, before Sammy’s had time to get into the human food chain.’

  ‘Jesus, Oz. You definitely hung around with Dylan for too long, d’you know that?’

  34

  With the time difference, I made it home to Monaco for a late breakfast on Wednesday. Dylan and I had parted in Frankfurt, since I had done a complicated ticket transfer to see him back home to New York, through Paris.

  If I said that the kids were pleased to see me again, I would be guilty of the sort of understatement that I abhor. They were ecstatic, at least the two older ones were, and wouldn’t let go of me not even after I’d given them the toys I’d bought for them in the Raffles shop and in a place in the Citylink Mall that had just about everything for kids.

  Even with the melatonin I was running on empty, but we spent a couple of hours on the pool, and then I took them to the Cousteau Institute aquarium. . again. . and to the motor museum, of course. I had to tell them about Singapore too; as much as I could, at any rate. By the time I’d finished I’d promised to take them there as soon as their mum said they were old enough to go, although to be honest, after what I’d seen, I was gl
ad that would be a right few years away.

  Susie was pleased to see me too, you understand, although she kept her ecstasy under control better than they did. The fact that I was twenty-four hours late might have helped her in that. In fact, she kept it to herself until they had gone off with Ethel to start the getting-ready-for-bed process.

  Afterwards, as we lay side by side looking out at the blue sea and at the red ball of the sun as it began to dip towards the horizon, she nudged my shoulder with her head. ‘That was pretty good, considering the trip you’ve had, and the time it took you to get back, and the fact that you haven’t been in touch since Sunday. Are you going to tell me now? Did you get Harvey’s pictures? Did you pay the woman off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you get?’

  ‘I got my Siegfried and Roy T-shirt ruined and I nearly got arrested twice.’

  She propped herself on an elbow, eyes wide, ‘What for?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Murder!’

  ‘Don’t shout, for Christ’s sake, the kids will hear you. I didn’t do it, either of them, honest.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘A wee Scots guy called Sammy did the first one: he knifed Maddy’s boyfriend just before I was due to meet him in that bar on Sunday night. Then Maddy killed him. That was self-defence, though: he was going to cut her head off and take it to the Triad chieftain because she’d upset him.’

  She put a hand on my forehead. ‘Oz, are you feeling all right? You haven’t got malaria, have you?’

  ‘It doesn’t take effect that quickly.’

  ‘Has Mike Dylan been trying out his next book on you?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t, and you must be very careful never to call him that again, not where anyone can hear you. There are people out there who would kill him with a blowlamp if they thought he was alive.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re serious?’

  I pointed across the bedroom. ‘See that knapsack on your dressing-table stool?’ She nodded. ‘Go and get it, there’s a girl.’