Poisoned Cherries ob-6

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Sure, and if I do that I’ll start to cry.’

  We might have had a problem there, if I hadn’t saved the day. ‘Hey, Liam,’ I called out, cutting across Miles’s response. ‘Remember that time down in Newcastle when a prop broke and you got a metal shaft through your side?’

  He grimaced. ‘Remember it? Will I ever forget it?’

  ‘Okay, put yourself back there, and just act exactly as you reacted then.’

  He had no trouble after that, none at all; when that incident had happened he had been hurt just as badly as his character was meant to be.

  When we wrapped up for the day, we were all happy with the way things had gone. I was even whistling a wee tune as I walked back to my dressing room to change out of my gear, and to retrieve my watch, wallet and keys from the safe.

  I wasn’t surprised when I saw the parcel on the table. I felt this sense of unreality, sure, but I wasn’t surprised. I let it lie there while I changed into my own clothes, replaced my Andy outfit on its hangers and took it back to the wardrobe caravan.

  I thought about it as I wandered into the cafeteria truck to grab a coffee and chew the fat with Liam, Bill Massey and some of the crew. But I was in no hurry to open it. Somehow I felt that I was in control of the game now. As everyone began to drift away, Liam said that he fancied a Chinese that evening. I told him that was fine by me, but that I had a couple of things to do first, so I gave him the keys to the apartment and headed back to the dressing-room truck.

  The parcel was still there, wrapped in bright blue fancy paper, with wee white horses on it. I looked at it, and smiled; it could wait a bit longer. I took out my cellphone and called Susie, just to say hello.

  ‘How’s your sorting out going?’ she asked me.

  ‘It was interrupted.’ I told her about James Torrent; I was surprised she hadn’t heard about it already.

  ‘Jeez,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve been working all day; I haven’t had the radio or the telly on. There’ll be a long list of candidates for that one, from business rivals, to pissed-off suppliers, to unhappy customers with a big-money grievance. Have the police got any specific leads?’

  ‘They’ve got one that’s going to take them straight to Alison Goodchild.’

  ‘I thought you told me that Ricky Ross was looking after her.’

  ‘He is; the trouble is, he’s on that long list you were talking about.’

  ‘Oh dear. Let me try to summon up some sympathy for them both.’

  I didn’t tell her that I might need some as well. Instead, I said hello to Janet over the phone, listened to her gurgle, then said goodnight to them both.

  Finally, I was ready for the parcel. I guessed that whatever was in it had been wrapped in the shop where it was bought. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that it might be something sinister. There was a nice silver bow on top, and letter-bombs generally don’t come in fancy wrappers.

  I opened it, carefully, again not because I was worried, but because I felt it merited the same care with which it had been put together. (Plus, I’m a Fifer; you never know when you’re going to need a sheet of wrapping paper.)

  The tape adhesive wasn’t exactly superglue; it came away easily and the paper lifted clear in a piece, without tearing. Nice one, Oz.

  Inside was a large packet of Pampers, two Babygros, age six to nine months, one pink, one yellow, and a teething ring. I picked them up, one by one, looking for a card, but I didn’t expect to find one. I sat there for a while, smiling to myself, looking at my daughter’s presents and wondering what to make of them.

  I wasn’t thinking about what I should do next. . I knew that already. . I was just thinking.

  Eventually I stood up, slipped on my red Lacoste wind-cheater, and stepped out of the truck. This time, I locked the door behind me.

  At a leisurely pace, I walked across the car park, crossed the road at the lights and made my way down past the mosque, to the Pear Tree. We were just short of the start of the university year, otherwise the old pub would have been heaving with students, adding to their loan debts. (Ask yourself, as I do, often; what sort of country is it that doesn’t invest in its brightest and best young people?) It wasn’t quiet, but there was space at the bar for me to order a pint of Eighty. . (How do British publicans get away with their attitudes to their customers? Virtually everywhere else in the world, you pay for what you’ve had when you leave. In Britain they’re not far short of seeing your money before you see their watery overpriced product.). . and a spare table in the beer garden for me to sit.

  I sipped my beer and looked around me; some of the production team were gathered around a table in the corner of the garden. I waved to them but didn’t join them; instead I popped open my packet of crisps. . salt and vinegar, I can’t stand any other kind. . and gazed back across the square, taking time to admire the late Victorian grandeur of Atkinson’s McEwan Hall. Parts of Edinburgh are an architectural dream, others, like the St James Shopping Centre and office block, are a nightmare.

  I sat and I wondered and I waited. Eventually I found myself pondering upon the wisdom of two pints of Eighty before a Chinese. It was an easy decision to make; I was on the point of rising to go back to the bar, when, as if by magic, another was placed on the table beside me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, without looking up, or round.

  He set down his lager, then settled on the bench, facing me. There were flecks of grey in his hair, which came down almost to his shoulders, and in his heavy beard. The sun was long gone, but he still wore his shades. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew that he was staring at me, wondering, maybe, why I hadn’t shit myself.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, evenly. Then I reached across the table, almost lazily, and punched him in the mouth. A girl at the next table looked across and gasped, then looked away again, quickly.

  His sunglasses went skew-wiff; he put them back in place then wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. ‘What was that for?’ he asked.

  ‘You know fucking well what it was for. Glasgow. . not last weekend; a while back.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see. You found out.’ He took a drink, swilled it around in his mouth as if he was washing away more blood, and swallowed. ‘You were expecting me?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I was expecting you; I was meant to. Fucking stupid e-mail address.’

  ‘I thought it was quite clever,’ he said, his crest a little fallen.

  ‘It was too clever by half; just typical of you. . mzrimnmeal92.’ I mumbled the jumble, as if the Eighty had got to me already. ‘An anagram of Zimmerman; give me a bit of credit, I’d have got that eventually. But to add in the numbers as well; I was almost insulted by that.

  ‘Zimmerman is Dylan’s real name; now I might be fucking famous these days, but I can’t imagine Mystic Bob wanting to get in touch with me. Apart from him, and the dead poet, I only know of one Dylan.’

  ‘You’re forgetting Bob Willis.’

  ‘You’re right; I’m forgetting him. Who is he?’

  ‘The cricketer; he took Dylan as his middle name.’

  ‘Big deal. Anyway, even from the anagram I’d have got the link, but you had to put the icing on it by adding the numbers; another anagram, of the day and month Mike Dylan was shot in Amsterdam.’

  ‘How did you know for sure it was me and not someone pretending?’

  ‘Two reasons. The first and most obvious was that you knew my e-mail address. The second was the gifts you left for Janet. An impostor wouldn’t have done that.’

  He tilted his head back; I could just see that behind the shades his eyes were closed. ‘How did I know that’s what the two of you would call her?’ he murmured.

  ‘Because,’ I hissed, ‘you’re a clever bastard. . too clever by half, remember. So fucking clever it got you killed. . remember? You’re dead, Mike. I know you’re dead, because I was there. I saw you get shot, I saw you die.’

  He shook his head. ‘You saw me cough up a lot of blood and start to choke,
then you saw me pass out. Then they got you the hell out of there. What you didn’t see was when they whipped me out of there to the emergency room.

  ‘If the man they sent had been trying to kill me he’d have blown my brains out. He didn’t; he shot me through the right side of the chest. It got a bit hairy, because he hit my lung, but that served to convince you, didn’t it? They wanted the other guy dead, but not me.’

  ‘Why not? You were a rogue policeman, and Special Branch at that. Surely they wanted you even deader than him?’

  ‘No. They wanted the names in my head; I’d never been debriefed before I did my runner. I knew what the guy they killed knew, namely some key links in the chain of drug imports, not just to Scotland, but to the whole of Western Europe and beyond. When I began to recover, they gave me a choice. .’

  ‘Who were “they”?’

  ‘Our security services, the Dutch and the American DEA; heavy hitters all of them. They scared the shite out of me, I can tell you. I gave them the names I had, but they said that wasn’t enough, that the list didn’t go far enough. They gave me a new identity and they told me to contact some of the guys I’d been told about, to infiltrate the network, and to stay in until I had the whole chain and could deliver them.

  ‘I tried to tell them to get fucked. They offered to dump me in the North Sea.’

  ‘So did you do everything they told you?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes. Two months ago there was an international operation starting in Burma and Thailand, and winding up in London, Glasgow, Amsterdam and New York. All sorts of people were taken down; some of them were taken out completely. . like me, for example, I’m dead again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean they did again what they did in Amsterdam, but in Bangkok this time.’

  ‘What? They shot you?’

  He grinned. ‘Right in the head; but not with a bullet, with a special cartridge filled with blood, like you guys use in the movies. There were witnesses, a couple of the middle-ranking people who were being arrested. The idea was that when they got to jail they would spread the word that I’d been bumped.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘As far as I know; but these dealers have tipsters everywhere on the inside. I should know, I used to be one.’

  ‘So who are you now?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. But you’re right, I have a third identity now; I was set up with that, and with a chunk of money. The deal was that I’d go to Portugal and never go near the drugs business again.’

  ‘As easy as that?’

  He gave a grim smile; it was less than a couple of years since he’d gone tits up at Schiphol, but his eyes looked twenty years older. I wondered what they’d seen since then. Of course, he’d been dead twice; that must have an effect on a bloke. ‘Not quite as easy,’ he replied. ‘They told me that they know where I am, and who I am. They may have a use for me in the future.’

  ‘So what the fuck are you doing here? Why haven’t you got yourself yet another false passport and gone somewhere out of their reach? Why have you been following Susie and me?’

  ‘I’m taking a chance, that’s what I’m doing. . and there is nowhere out of their reach. No, I was ready to split for Portugal, when I picked up a Scottish paper in London and who did I see on an inside page, but you and Susie, and your new baby.

  ‘You might have been surprised when I turned up. . think how I felt when I saw that. What the hell happened, Oz? What happened to Prim?’

  I looked at him, hard; for all his adventures he didn’t scare me, not a bit. It was the other way round and he knew it. By coming back, he’d put his life in my hands. ‘You know what the punch in the mouth was for. Didn’t it even occur to you that Susie might have spilled the beans about you and her?’

  He winced. ‘I left a letter behind, didn’t I?’

  I nodded. ‘Some secret operative; you couldn’t even cover your tracks with your best pal’s fiancee.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Oz, it was just. .’

  ‘. . one of those things? Spare me, please. So was Susie and I at first. The fact is I didn’t know about you and Prim till a couple of days ago. Susie only told me when she showed up at her place.’

  ‘Her place? I thought. .’

  ‘She bought it from me. Before we. . Anyway, back to your story; you saw us and you were gob-smacked.’

  ‘Yes. I bailed out. I told my minder I was going and I split. He took me to the airport, but I lost him, went back into London and caught a train to Glasgow. It took me a while to pin you down, but when I did, I started to follow you.

  ‘I wanted to see you, man, to see the two of you, to see how you had turned out. That’s all. I’m sorry if I spooked you. .’

  ‘Lying bastard! You’re not sorry at all.’

  ‘I am if Susie got worried; honest.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. So, now that you’ve seen us, what do you think?’

  He drained his glass and gave me a long look. ‘I think you’re all right. You look like a family, you know. I really hope you stick it.’ He gave a big sigh. ‘You know, I always thought that we had the wrong women, you and I; I always thought that Susie was more your type and Prim was more mine.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that you two are basically straight, while she and I are basically bent.’

  I laughed. ‘That has to be a compliment, coming from you.’

  He grunted. ‘Here,’ he said, suddenly, ‘what are you doing hanging out with my old boss, Ricky Ross? He was your mortal enemy for a while.’

  ‘Aye, and you were my best friend.’

  ‘Touche.’

  ‘Ricky’s head of security on the movie,’ I told him. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Mmm. You going to get more beer in?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Like hell! You are. You owe me, pal.’

  He gave me a grin and disappeared to the bar, returning after a couple of minutes with two more.

  ‘So what’s next?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m going to turn up in Portugal, as planned. I’ve seen what I came to see, and I’m content.’

  I leaned across the table. ‘That’s good,’ I murmured, ‘for you have to know one thing. Susie is never to learn about this, or about you. If you ever show up near us again, if you ever try to contact her. .’ I paused. ‘You’ve changed, I’ve changed. If you ever do that then I promise you. . you will be dead again, and it will be for real this time.’

  I looked him in the face and gave him time to think about it. ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘I reckon I do. There was always a hard bastard under your surface, wasn’t there. But don’t worry; I’m too fond of Susie. . and of you. . ever to threaten either of you. The only thing is. .’ He hesitated, then took off the shades and stared at me.

  ‘I’ve got no one, Oz. I’m cut off from everyone I’ve ever known in the life I had before all this; they’ve fucking buried me. You’ve no idea how lonely it is, being dead.’

  I heard what he was saying, loud and clear. ‘You’ve got my e-mail address,’ I told him. ‘If the need really arises. . and it had better be more than going for a pint, mind. . that’s how you can reach me. Use the same stupid name and I’ll know.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He drained his lager in a one-er, and stood up. ‘So long.’

  The guy who had once been Mike Dylan turned on his heel, and walked out of the Pear Tree, into whatever kind of a future might await him.

  Chapter 50

  It had been a while since I had drunk Eighty at all, let alone shifting three pints of the stuff in under an hour, so my brain was even fuzzier than it had been after the Oxford when I got back to the apartment and pushed the entry button.

  ‘Whozzat?’ Liam asked, through the speaker.

  ‘Santa Fucking Claus.’

  ‘You can come in down the chimney, then.’ But he pushed the button, anyway; just as well, by that time my bladder was feeling the pressure.

&nb
sp; He gave me an appraising look when I re-emerged from the bathroom. ‘Where the hell have you been then?’ he enquired. It’s a funny thing about mates, is it not; when you share a flat with them, they can be worse than wives in some ways.

  ‘Thinking,’ I told him.

  ‘Thinking about how fast you can get to the bottom of the glass?’

  ‘That, among other things. Come on, superstar of wrestling, let’s go get that Chinese.’

  We grabbed a cab on the hill outside; by chance, it was the legendary white taxi, the one with the tartan-lined interior, and Jock and Roll music playing from the moment you step in until the moment you close the door behind you. It is to Edinburghers what the great white buffalo is to Native Americans. There is a theory that the driver is long dead, and that it is but his shade that cruises the city streets bringing eternal delight to tourists. Whatever the truth of it, he took us straight to the Kwei Linn.

  The crispy duck was as I remembered it from a few years back, and so was the chicken in black bean sauce. We walloped them down, with a beef dish and a mild prawn curry. I stuck to fizzy water. . Okay, I admit it. We shared a bottle of Lambrusco, but it’s much the same. . and by the time we got to the coffee stage, I could see clearly again.

  ‘You back in the land of the fully conscious, then?’ Liam asked. I nodded.

  ‘Where did you go tonight?’ He was still doing the ‘pal as old woman’ routine. It’s instinctive with blokes; we can’t help it.

  ‘I had to meet someone.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Male. Someone I hadn’t seen in a long time.’

  ‘Let me guess. You found the guy who’s been stalking you.’

  ‘No. I let him find me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. We had a talk and he’s gone.’

  He frowned. ‘Oz, you didn’t hurt him, did you?’

  I laughed, quietly. ‘Nah. All that communing with my peaceful side’s done me good. I only hit him once, and not very hard at that.’

  ‘So what did he want?’

  ‘He only wanted to say hello. He came a long way to do it, and had a funny way of working up to it, but he got to it eventually.’