A Coffin For Two ob-2

by Quintin Jardine

The flight was fine, with a mercifully brief stop-over in Schiphol Airport, just long enough to buy aftershave for my Dad, perfume for Ellie, alcohol for Jan, chocolate for Auntie Mary and toys for the kids. Oh yes, and long enough also to make one phone call.

  Jan was waiting right at the international arrivals doorway in Scotland’s capital airport, as I emerged with my hold-all slung over my shoulder and my duty free clinking in its bag. She stood there, looking more like Jane Russell than ever in black slacks and white shirt, her shoulder-length hair swept back off her forehead.

  I laid my burdens down on the concourse and we hugged for all we were worth. ‘Hello darlin’,’ she said quietly. ’By God, but you look brown. Are you that colour all over?’

  I grinned. ‘What’s the point in having a completely secluded terrace if you don’t get your arse sun-tanned?’

  We kissed hello. A big wet one; none of this both cheeks stuff. This was Jan and me.

  ‘You sure it’s okay, you two putting me up for the night like you said?’

  She shook her head, as I picked up my luggage. ‘Change of plan. You don’t have long at home, so we’re going across the river. Mac and Mary are expecting us for supper. I said we’d be there for nine-thirty.’

  My stomach growled in anticipation of the prospect of Auntie Mary’s cooking. ‘Is Noosh coming?’

  ‘To my mum’s? You must be kidding.’ I didn’t press the point. Although Jan and her mum were reconciled, Anoushka had never been welcome in Anstruther.

  Jan led me out to the unexpected cold of the evening, to the red Fiesta that I knew so well, and we were off, heading towards the Forth Bridge and Fife, and towards our parents.

  The kids were still up when we arrived there, twenty minutes ahead of schedule, thanks to Jan’s flat out driving. On the way I had told her about St Marti, how we had found it, and how we had settled into the community. It was a monologue, interrupted only by the occasional glance at Jan as she drove across country, at the beautifully straight profile with which once I had been so familiar.

  I repeated the story over supper at Auntie Mary’s almost word for word, only this time I produced the photographs to back it up … having extracted all the snaps of Prim with her shirt off. Eventually, Ellie took Jonathan and Colin off to bed, promising to wait up herself for me for a longer blether.

  After they had gone, we sat around Auntie Mary’s fire, she and Dad, and Jan and me — plus Wallace, my faithful iguana, moved in, it seemed, along with my dad, and sleeping serenely on the window seat — talking about a Christmas wedding. ‘Now remember, you two,’ my father lectured us. ‘When it happens, we want it kept quiet. Just a registry office ceremony and that’s it. The four of us, plus Prim, Ellie and the kids will go for lunch afterwards, but that will be the extent of the reception.’

  ‘Fair enough, Dad,’ I said. ‘Aye, sure, that’ll be right,’ I thought, glancing across at Jan, and knowing from the look in her eyes that she was thinking exactly the same as me. We would discuss this between ourselves at a later date.

  Mac the Dentist looked across at the two of us. He opened his mouth as if to say something profound, then thought better of it.

  ‘Time I went home,’ I said, seizing the moment. ‘I want a chat with my sister.’ I kissed Auntie Mary and Jan goodnight, patted my dad on his bald spot, then lugged my bag round to the big house looking out to sea.

  I took a good look at Ellie as she opened the door for me. Dad was right. The fat wee wifie I had found in France was gone. My sister, with her waist back and her new haircut, looked better than she had since she was twenty-one. And there was a gleam in her eye that I couldn’t remember ever seeing there.

  ‘You’re doing great, Our Ellie,’ I said, at last, as I settled into dad’s armchair clutching a coffee which she had brought me. ‘It does my eyes good to look at you.’

  ‘Not just your eyes, brother,’ she said. ‘I am having an affair.’

  You could have knocked me down with a Lightbody’s celebration cake. ‘You’re what?’ I couldn’t help it. I laughed. ‘Who with?’

  ‘Grammar, Osbert. With whom, please. With a guy at the school where I’m teaching part-time. He’s separated, like me. He’s one of your chauvinist types. I reckon he thinks he’s using me. The truth is that it’s the other way round. I am feasting on his body, but when I’ve finished all the white meat, he’ll be getting the push, believe you me.’

  I managed to restrain my laughter this time. ‘Well, just you be careful. Take no chances until you’ve got everything sorted out with Allan. He’s seeing reason right now, but if he finds out that you’re playing away games before the separation agreement’s even drafted, he might change his mind.’

  She nodded. ‘Don’t worry; the same thought occurred to me. I’ve decided to put Ross into cold storage until everything’s taken care of. If he doesn’t like that, well tough on him. Actually,’ she said, ‘I might just leave him in the freezer for good. The truth is I don’t like him that much. It was just that I needed to be made a fuss of, even if I did know all along that he was only doing it to get his end away.’

  I gazed at her in the lamplight, hugging my mug of coffee, not knowing quite what to make of my new, capricious sister. ‘You know, Ellie, after Jan and I decided that we weren’t right for each other, and I was bouncing about like Zebedee in the Magic Roundabout, whispering “Time for bed” in the ears of as many women as I could, I used to lie awake on my many nights alone, and think about you and Allan. You weren’t long married then, and very solid and responsible …’

  ‘And boring, Oz, don’t forget boring.’

  ‘… yes, okay, and boring. But still I used to lie there and wish I could be like you, able to make a single commitment.’

  I smiled at her. ‘Now look at us. We’ve turned almost full circle. I’m settled down with Prim, in the sort of solid relationship I used to dream about, while you’ve cut yourself adrift from all of that. Just be careful of one thing, though, sister. Don’t let yourself become like I used to be.’

  It was her turn to smile. ‘Promiscuous, you mean? Don’t worry, as well as you I’ve got two sons and a father to protect me against that. If I’m indulging myself just now, it’s for the good of my morale, not just because I’ve a need to get properly laid.’

  She paused. ‘Anyway, what about you and Prim? You’ve got that solid relationship, you say. But is it what you want, or is it what you think you should have?’

  ‘Of course it’s what I want. Prim’s a fantastic woman. She changed my life from the day I met her. She’s changed me.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Ellie, looking at me as if she was reading me, ‘she has that. She’s started you thinking again after all these years. And you’re more mature, too. Not so long ago you’d have run a mile rather than get involved between Allan and me. That’s good.’

  I frowned at her. ‘Come on, sis. I’d like to think I’d always have stood up for you.’

  ‘Sure,’ she responded, quickly. ‘But before, you’d have just picked up the telephone, and told Allan he was an arse; or if you were really pumped up, maybe you’d have gone and thumped him. But you wouldn’t have got involved, not like you did. You’ve changed all right, and I’ve got to credit Primavera for that.’

  She sipped her coffee. ‘But tell me something I’ve always wanted to know, Oz, about you and Jan. What happened to the two of you?’

  Taken by surprise, I stared for a while out of the bay window. ‘Time?’ I ventured at last, but without conviction.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Ellen, with a laugh. ‘Do better.’

  I tried again. ‘Okay. I suppose that at some point we decided that with the way we had grown up together, and become a couple, it had all come too easy for us. I suppose that we decided that we were drifting towards marriage because it was expected of us, and maybe because it was the soft option. I suppose we just decided that it was wrong. We never had a great debate about it. It just … worked out that way.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said m
y sister, pressing herself back into the sofa. We sat in silence for two or three minutes, until she looked across at me and whispered, ‘Oz, is that really true?’

  I looked deep into my mug, as if it was a window to the past. ‘No,’ I said, for the first time in my life. ‘The truth isn’t that we decided anything. I did.

  ‘At university, everyone had a steady. That was the way it was, and so there was no pressure on Jan and me. But at some point in my very short police career, I looked around at my contemporaries, and the way they lived. There they were, young guys like me, tear-arseing around in their time off, scoring women like trophies. There was one guy we called Comanche, because every time he made a new conquest, he used to cut off a curl of her hair — and you know what I’m talking about — and bring it to work with him next day.

  ‘I looked at those characters and I told myself, “This is how normal young men live.” And I began to feel abnormal. At that point, Jan was the only girl I’d ever slept with, and I thought to myself, “What if we get married, and at some point I come to regret all that missed experience? What if I start to fancy the grass on the other side of the hill, enough to go grazing?” I was afraid of that, Ellie. Maybe I was afraid of the hurt of losing her, so I ensured that I never would, by pushing her away.’

  ‘But there was something else too, Oz, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes.’ It came out in a hoarse whisper. ‘I really did want to graze, from the start. I just couldn’t suppress it. Sex with Jan was good, but it was rarely great, and never all that it might have been. Both of us knew that. But then how could it have been? We only had experience of each other.’

  I gazed across at her. ‘I did it very gradually, disengaging myself, until it was how it was and she had settled for being best friends. Of course, I never told her what I’ve just told you. I’ve never admitted that to anyone before … not even me.’

  ‘What about love, Oz? How did you make yourself stop loving her?’

  ‘I never even tried. I never did stop. I’ll always love Jan, but in a way that’s different from anyone else. I’ll always be there for her, except for …’

  ‘Except for the times when she might need you the most. When was the last time you slept with Jan?’ asked Ellie suddenly.

  ‘Last March, before I met Prim. We had a sort of arrangement.’

  ‘Yes, I know about it. Jan and I had a girlie night. She had a few drinks and told me about it. Occasional grazing rights on each other, to use your analogy. Only now you’ve closed the pasture. So don’t tell me you’ll always be there for her, brother, although I know you’d like to mean it. How can you be, when you’re living in Spain, in love with another woman?’

  She looked at me, with a very straight face. ‘Oz, if you want to do what’s best for Jan, you should cut her out of your life completely. Maybe both of you should have done that years ago.’

  She paused. ‘Let me ask you something? Just suppose that instead of Jan More it had been Primavera Phillips that you grew up with, and drifted towards marriage with. Would things have been different then?’

  ‘Stop!’ For a second I was afraid my shout might have wakened the boys. ‘You’re doing my head in. Things are as they are, and that’s it. As for cutting Jan off, no way could I do that. But if that’s what she wants, it’s open to her.

  ‘As for you, get back into your glass house, with your fancy man, and stop throwing stones!’

  14

  I took my nephews to St Andrews next morning, in the back of my dad’s beloved and exceptionally low mileage old Jag, with Jonathan on a booster seat and Colin in his car seat attachment. I called Auntie Mary’s to ask if Jan wanted to come too, but she said that the supermarket was at the top of their agenda.

  I took them into the castle, and showed them the bottle dungeon, and the mine and counter-mine, telling them the same tales of John Knox and the wars of the reformation that Mac the Dentist had told their mother and me, but leaving out any mention of the Cardinal’s body hanging in the great window, or of burning martyrs down yonder on the Scores.

  We wandered down towards the old course. There, on a whim, I took Jonathan into Auchterlonie’s and bought him his first golf clubs, a junior three wood, seven iron and putter, smiling at the realisation of the pestering they would cause my dad after I was gone.

  Finally, having shown them the ruin of the cathedral, told them more spooky stories, and treated them to multi-coloured ice creams from Janetta’s, we headed back over the hill to Anstruther, leaving enough time for Colin to be sick before lunch.

  ‘You’ll keep Christmas free then,’ said my dad quietly as I said goodbye, to him and to Wallace, at Auntie Mary’s front door, with Jan waiting outside in the Fiesta.

  ‘Sure I will.’

  He gave me a hug. ‘No fuss, remember. Good luck with the new business.’

  ‘Did you get the renewed message from Mac about quiet weddings?’ Jan asked, as we headed out of town. ‘I did from Mum.’

  I nodded.

  ‘What are we going to do, then?’

  ‘What else? I’ve told Ellie to book the village hall for the afternoon as soon as we know the date.’

  Jan beamed across at me. ‘That’s my boy. Who do they think they’re messing with, eh!’

  As we skirted Kirkcaldy it started to rain. ‘First I’ve seen in four weeks,’ I said. I tilted up the glass roof, and breathed deeply to enjoy the smell of the moistened dust by the roadside, and of the dampening fields.

  ‘D’you miss it?’

  ‘I’ve made a point of not thinking in terms of missing. Thanks for arranging last night, though. I really enjoyed it.’

  ‘Did you and Ellie sit up late?’

  ‘Late enough. She’s sorted, okay. Has she been talking much to you?’

  Jan laughed. Her rich, deep laugh. ‘Do you mean has she told me about her illicit nookie? Oh, yes. But don’t you worry about it. She’s grazing, darlin’, that’s all. Just grazing.’

  I looked across at her in surprise, but her eyes were on the road.

  ‘So,’ I said at last. ‘Where are we meeting BSI’s first client?’

  ‘At his house. He lives in Milton Bridge, just outside Penicuik. He faxed me a map showing how to get there.’

  ‘Mmm. So what does he do for a living, this Mr Gavin Scott? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of him.’

  Jan shook her dark head. ‘Your clients have been mostly lawyers till now, so that doesn’t surprise me. The header sheet on the fax he sent me came from Soutar’s, the advertising agency in Leith. I’ve got a small agency on my client list, so I was able to check him out.

  ‘Soutar’s is the biggest in the business north of the border, and Gavin Scott is managing director. The chairman is a Tory life peer, but Mr Scott is the main man. He and his wife, also a director, own all the shares. He bought the business for a song ten years ago when it was on its uppers, and he turned it around. He’s in his early forties, very well respected and very rich. According to the Insider magazine top people survey the Scotts drew down?300,000 between them in salary last year, and the same again in dividend.’

  ‘They’re not short of a pound then,’ I muttered. ‘I should have flown first class. Is there any other background on them?’

  ‘Only that he’s a member of the Scottish Arts Council. He was appointed last year.’

  Gavin Scott’s map was clear and accurate. It led us straight up the driveway of Westlands, as the sign at the entrance named the property. The house itself wasn’t all that big, but there was a stable block to the side, and beyond a paddock, in which a woman and a girl, wearing Barbour jackets, were exercising steaming horses in the rain.

  My new client answered the door himself. Jan had been intending to wait in the car, but I insisted that she came with me. Apart from anything else, I had never met this man; a witness might be handy.

  ‘Mr Blackstone, Ms More. Come away in.’ Gavin Scott was a stocky bloke, an inch or two shorter than me but thicker in the chest. He h
ad wiry black hair, flecked with grey at the sides, and eyes that shone with a real intensity. My instant impression was that he made me feel comfortable.

  ‘Bugger of a day, isn’t it,’ he said as he showed us through a panelled hall and into the sitting room. I looked around. As in the hall, much of the wall space was taken up by paintings, a mix of portraits and landscapes, oils and water-colours, all of them looking like originals, and if I was any judge, expensive.

  Scott jerked a thumb towards a window at the end of the room, through which we could see the paddock. ‘You must think my wife and daughter are mad, out riding in the rain, but the horses need the exercise.’

  A thermos jug and three cups lay on a low table. Our host poured the coffee and offered biscuits, which we declined. ‘Thank you for acting so quickly, Mr Blackstone,’ he said, as we settled into the yellow velvet upholstery. ‘Once I’ve decided to do something, I’m the sort of bloke who wants it to happen yesterday. Your ad was a godsend. It came just at the right time.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ I said. ‘Would you like me to tell you a bit about myself, and about my associates?’

  He shook his head and smiled. ‘No need. I’ve checked you out. I have a friend in the police force, DI Michael Dylan. After Ms More explained your background, I asked him. For reasons which will become obvious, I didn’t give him details of why I was asking, but he gave you a glowing report. Two glowing reports, in fact; both on you and on Ms Phillips.’

  I concealed my surprise. I knew Mike Dylan, all right. I thought he was a bampot, and until that moment I had believed that he held the same opinion of me.

  ‘Mike said that Ms Phillips’ sister is involved with Miles Grayson. Is that right?’

  ‘Dawn? Yes. She’s an actress. She and Miles have just finished a movie together. They’re off in the States now, starting work on another.’ I wondered which had impressed Scott more, Dylan’s OK or our vicarious connection with the mega-rich and famous.

  ‘Very good. Now, to business. Take a look at these.’ He stood up and walked around behind the couch on which Jan and I were seated. We turned, watching him. Behind us stood a tall easel, and on it was what we took to be a big landscape-style picture covered by a white dust-sheet.