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by Quintin Jardine

  ‘I’ll be the bad news. My name’s Oz; I’m Prim’s partner. We’re private detectives working for Susie Gantry.’ I didn’t give my surname; it might have led to complications we didn’t need.

  The man’s expression was transformed for a third time, into one of instant and total consternation. ‘Dammit!’ It was almost a moan. ‘What does that girl want from me now? Hasn’t she done enough?’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong, Mr Donn,’ Prim answered. ‘This is about what someone’s doing to Susie. We need to talk to you about it. I’m sorry about my deception when I called you on Monday, but I really didn’t want to get into this over the telephone.’

  Donn was a tall man; he was well-dressed, in dark flannel slacks and a green Lacoste shirt, grey hair well cut, and so clean-shaven that his face seemed to shine. As we watched him, he sighed, and shook his head, almost sadly. ‘I suppose you’d better come in. If Susie’s in trouble. .’ He stood aside, ushering us into a big square hall, then through to a study at the back of the house, which opened into a conservatory.

  ‘Is Mrs Donn in?’ I asked.

  He laughed, bitterly. ‘Mrs Donn hasn’t been in for thirty-odd years, son. She left me for someone else; there were no hard feelings, but I gave up marriage as a bad job after that.’

  He pointed to a group of heavy bamboo-framed chairs in the sun-room. ‘Sit down.’ Prim and I took seats close together, looking out into an immaculate garden.

  ‘So what’s wee Susie been up to?’ he asked at last. ‘Who’s doing what to her?’ He chuckled. ‘Trouble follows that lassie, you know. Maybe if her faither had skelped her backside when she needed it, rather than just patting her on the head, she wouldn’t have grown up so wilful. Maybe if her mother had lived, she’d have been a bit readier to see the other side.

  ‘I wasn’t all that bad at my job, you know, but there was no pleasing Susie, when Jack put her in charge of the Group, then afterwards, when she took over completely.’ I had to bite my tongue at that, for I knew from Jan’s investigative work just how bad he had been. Yet, Lord Provost Gantry was no fool; the strength of his support for his old pal Joe puzzled me at first. Later I realised that the last thing he had wanted was a competent accountant. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if someone was making trouble for her,’ Donn went on. ‘She must have upset a lot of folk in business by now.’

  ‘You couldn’t be wider of the mark,’ said Prim, evenly. ‘The Gantry Group has better relations with its customers and suppliers than it ever had.’

  ‘Aye, but not, I’ll bet, with its bankers, dear.’

  ‘The bank relationship is good too, but the Group is treated like any other business.’

  ‘Which wasn’t the case in my day. We had a special relationship then.’

  No, you daft old goat, I thought. Jack had the special relationship. Like he had with everyone.

  ‘Be that as it may, as far as we can see, Susie doesn’t have an enemy in business. Yet someone’s been threatening her. . physically. She doesn’t want to make a big fuss over this, since the chances are whoever’s been doing it is just plain sick, so she’s asked us, as friends, to help her find out who it is.’

  ‘So why did you want to talk to me, Miss Phillips?’

  ‘We’ve been given a list of people who’ve left Gantry since Susie took over.’

  ‘People who’ve been fired, you mean,’ said Donn, dryly.

  ‘Or who’ve left by mutual agreement, let’s say,’ Prim countered. ‘Like you, for example. Over the last three days we’ve spoken to them all, and eliminated them all as suspects.’

  ‘It’s stretching a point to say that I left,’ the man growled. ‘I was fired to all intents and purposes. . not once, but twice, as I’m sure you’ll know.’

  ‘What do you do for a living now, Mr Donn?’ I asked.

  ‘I play golf, son,’ he muttered.

  ‘So you didn’t walk away penniless from the Gantry Group?’

  ‘No. To be fair to her, the first time Susie lived up to the terms of my contract and more. When Jack reinstated me, it all happened so fast that there wasn’t time to sign a contract. And I have to admit that when I left the second time, the Wee One was generous. I suspected at the time that it was hush money; even now I’ve no reason to think otherwise.’

  ‘So, having taken it, why did you contemplate going to the papers?’

  Joe Donn looked at me silently for a while. ‘Susie humiliated me, lad. I was angry. I had hoped that there was a closeness between her and me, just as there was between me and Jack. I was fond of her, and when she cut me out, not once but twice, I took it bad.’

  ‘So you got in touch with your journalist pal,’ said Prim.

  ‘He wasn’t my pal, Miss Phillips. I don’t know people like that. No, he was my nephew’s mate.’

  ‘Stephen’s?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s right. Truth be told, it was Stephen’s idea to go to the press. I think he got fed up with me going on about Susie. . I remember him saying once that I cared more about her than about him, my flesh and blood. Anyway, he suggested one day that there must be some dirt to dig. I said there might be, if we could get hold of a few specific letters.

  ‘Next thing I knew, he’d persuaded poor wee Myrtle Higgins to copy the bloody things. She got caught of course, and she was out too. I put a stop to it there and then. I had a hell of a row with Stephen. We haven’t spoken since, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And you haven’t spoken to the press since?’

  ‘Absolutely not. I’m not really angry with Susie any more; just disappointed, that’s all.’

  Suddenly a couple of loose ends began to tie themselves together in my brain. ‘Was Stephen right, about you caring more for Susie than him?’ I asked.

  Donn smiled, softly. ‘Aye, maybe he was.’ It was almost a whisper.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I loved her poor mother. Margaret was my wife, see, before she left me for Jack Gantry.’

  ‘Eh?’ Prim and I gasped simultaneously.

  ‘Yet you went on working for him?’

  ‘I didn’t work for him then. We were friends at that stage. He and Margaret fell in love. People do; sometimes they just can’t help themselves. Don’t get me wrong, though. I was mad enough at the time. But you couldn’t stay mad with Jack Gantry, not forever. When I saw that he loved Margaret as much as she loved him, I began to see that it was all for the best. Then Susie was born, and everything was complete for them.

  ‘Not long after that, Jack asked me to be his finance director, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to turn him down.’

  ‘Does Susie know all this?’ asked Prim.

  ‘No. I’m sure she doesn’t. Margaret, Jack and I decided when she was a baby that there was no need to tell her. She certainly didn’t know when Margaret died. Jack and I agreed that there would be no mention of a first marriage at the funeral.’

  ‘And Stephen? Does he know?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for sure. I told his father, my brother Thomas, not to tell him. He died when Stephen was only ten, so I don’t imagine that he did. I can’t vouch for Myra, though; his mother, that is.’

  ‘Where can we find Stephen?’

  He frowned across the conservatory at Prim. ‘I have no idea: nor do I care after what he did to wee Myrtle. Best ask his mother; most of the time, that is, when he didn’t have a woman in tow, he lived with her.’

  ‘Okay, but where can we find her?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Myra and I never got on that well: we don’t keep in touch. After Thomas died she stayed on in their house in Paisley, but Stephen said on one of the last occasions that I saw him that she was in the process of moving to a smaller place.’

  He gave us a sudden sour look. ‘You’re the detectives. You find her.’

  Chapter 11

  There aren’t all that many people in Scotland named Donn, not in comparison with the Smiths or the Macs or the Blacks or even the Patels. But there are enough of them to make findi
ng Stephen Donn and his mother seem like a difficult task.

  To cut a few corners, I phoned an Edinburgh pal who worked for Telecom. He did for us what he had done on occasion in the past, but for a few more quid this time — he had heard on the grapevine of our being in the money — and ran a check of telephone subscribers.

  He came up with five Stephen Donns, two in Glasgow, one in Falkirk, one in Brechin and one in Dundee. Very quietly, Dylan ran police checks on all of them, but none fitted the profile of old Joe’s nephew. We checked the Thomas Donns as well; many widows can’t bring themselves to remove their late husbands’ names from the phone book. There were three of those, all very much alive.

  Another Monday morning had come around when my pal Eddie came back with his trawl of the M. Donns; first initials only, since women’s forenames are never listed in the directory. They hold them on computer, though. ‘Sorry, Oz,’ our informant said. ‘Two Marys and a couple of Margarets, but no Myra Donns. The closest I can get is a Meera.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aye, it’s spelled M-I-R-A. My mother knows someone in Manchester with that name.’

  ‘M-I-R-A,’ I repeated. ‘You could pronounce that Myra, couldn’t you?’

  ‘There’s nae law against it, Oz;’ said my cheerful chum.

  ‘Okay, let’s try her. Where does she live?’ He read out an address in Barassie, in Ayrshire.

  As soon as I had hung up, Prim called Joe Donn to check the spelling of his sister-in-law’s name, but there was no reply, other than a message inviting us to leave a message. She looked across at Lulu. ‘Fancy doing that interview for McPhillips this afternoon?’ Keen as mustard, our newly promoted executive nodded.

  ‘That’s good,’ Prim smiled. ‘I fancy a trip to the seaside.’

  We thought phoning Mrs Donn and asking her straight out if she had a son called Stephen, and if she knew where he was. Sure, it was the obvious thing to do, but we decided that if she was the woman we were after, and was concerned for her son, it would be too easy for her just to say ‘no’, and stop us in our tracks. Eyeball to eyeball was surer, and anyway, I fancied a walk on the beach too.

  Barassie is no more than a village to the north of the town of Troon, on the Ayrshire coast. Even without our street atlas we would have had no trouble finding the address Eddie had given, or rather sold us, in a newish block of flats set in immaculate grounds in a small crescent just behind Beach Road.

  We had the afternoon in front of us, and it was a beautiful day, so we decided to take a walk on the sands before getting down to business. I had something in mind; as it turned out, so had Prim.

  ‘If the weather was always like this in Scotland,’ said she, as we stood, holding hands and looking across the wide, calm Firth of Clyde at the spectacular and wholly unexpected skyline of the Island of Arran, ‘we’d never think of going anywhere else.’

  ‘Maybe, but it ain’t,’ I pointed out. ‘In a month or two on this very spot we won’t be able to stand up straight for the wind and the rain.’

  ‘So what, if we’ve got each other?’

  ‘So it’s just as good to have each other in Spain, or in Barbados, or in California, or in Singapore, or in Sydney, or in any other place where the rain doesn’t hit you horizontally. What d’you say to the idea of leaving Lulu to run the business, once she’s got a bit more experience, and taking a sabbatical this winter, a couple of months maybe?’

  She looked at me, curious. ‘I’d say it sounds like a great idea, but what’s brought it on?’

  ‘Ach I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the old Oz trying to get out. What with the business, the GWA gig, the Sly Burr stuff, and now Miles’ and Dawn’s movie, I’m feeling more than a bit hemmed in. Just when I should be more in control of my life than ever before, it’s all gone crazy; I’m not in charge any more. This thing we’re doing for Dylan’s a welcome break, I tell you. . yet we don’t need to be doing any of it, neither of us.’

  ‘It isn’t Glasgow that’s difficult for you, is it? The flat, and all its hard memories. .’ She was frowning now, concerned.

  ‘No, love. I can handle all that, honest.’

  ‘It’s not me, is it?’

  Her big brown eyes were wrinkled as I looked down at her. The sun glinted on the natural highlights; the skin of her tanned shoulders glowed with health. I put my arms around her and kissed her.

  ‘Oh, no, my love,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not you. If not for you, I really would be crazy. I’d have come apart, back then, if you hadn’t been around to hold me together. I don’t know what to call what you and I have between us; there’s nothing conventional about it, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No, there isn’t; is there.’ She put her head on my chest. ‘I should have hated you when you left me there in Spain. When we talked it through, I was very rational, trying to be as mature and considerate as I could, laying my own sins alongside yours, and agreeing that what we were doing was right for both of us. But all the time I was trying my best to hate you, trying to find the anger I felt should be there.

  ‘I couldn’t though, because I realised that you couldn’t help what you were doing. So after you left, I went back to real work, built up a new circle of friends, slept with a bloke just for the hell of it, and got on with my life.

  ‘Then you showed up in Barcelona, and there was the awful coincidence of me being there when you heard about. .’ She paused for a second or two.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do; whether to be around for you if you needed me, or whether to steer clear for good, in case you thought I was trying to step back in there. Then you asked me for help; in the circumstances you might have been seen as cruel and insensitive, but, my dear, you’ve never struck me as either of those things.’

  ‘And now?’ I asked her. ‘How do you feel now? Are you really happy, or just enjoying yourself like we did the first time?’

  ‘Both. There’s just one worm that gnaws at me from time to time, but I can live with it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ She shook her head. ‘Come on,’ I insisted.

  ‘Okay. It’s the notion of being second best.’

  ‘You’re not. You’re different; you’re you. There are no degrees. My first life is over. You’re my life now, and I love you.’

  Primavera looked up at me and smiled. ‘Marry me, then.’

  ‘Funny you should ask me that,’ I said, reached into my pocket, took out a small box, and pressed it into her hand. In it was a diamond; a very large diamond, set in platinum. She took out the ring and slipped it on to the appropriate finger. Of course, it fitted. Dramatic gestures have to be well planned; I had established very casually that Prim’s third finger left and my pinkie were almost exactly the same size.

  The stone caught the sunlight and sparkled, but it was nowhere near as bright as her smile. ‘Too many people about for us to celebrate properly,’ she chuckled. ‘But wait till I get you home.’

  ‘In that case, let’s go and see Mrs Donn. With any luck she’ll be out, and we can go straight back to Glasgow.’

  She wasn’t, though. Within ten seconds of my pressing the buzzer next to her name at the apartments block’s entrance, a voice crackled from the speaker. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Donn?’ I asked, my voice raised. It’s a reflex, isn’t it. Standing before one of those things you always feel the need to get as close as you can and shout.

  ‘Yes. You don’t have to yell. I can hear you.’

  ‘Sorry. My name’s Blackstone. Your brother-in-law Joseph suggested that I should speak to you. My associate and I are trying to contact your son, Stephen. It has to do with the time he spent working for the Gantry Group.’

  ‘Has it now,’ said Mrs Donn, metallically. ‘You’d better come up, then. I’m on the top floor.’

  The block was as well looked-after inside as out, better than our own, in fact. We climbed two carpeted flights of stairs, to reach the third-storey landing. She was waiting for us at her front door, a slim, well-dressed woman, with close-crop
ped brown hair and fine angular features. It was difficult to place her, age-wise, but I guessed that she was in her mid-f ifties.

  ‘I’m Mira Donn,’ she announced, pronouncing the name ‘Meera’. Clearly, she and Joe hadn’t spoken much. ‘Come in and tell me what this is all about.’ I had been expecting her to sound like a Paisley Buddy, but her accent, no longer filtered through the intercom, was smooth and cultured, as if she had really worked on it.

  I introduced Prim as she showed us into her living room, which had a small balcony looking out on to the beach. The twin glass doors were open, and a copy of the Herald lay on a folding chair outside. I glanced around the room; it was conventionally furnished, but in the corner opposite the television, there was a small desk with a lap-top computer.

  ‘I was watching you on the sands,’ she said. ‘You were a picture, you know. And then you walked right up to my door. Not many people out on a Monday, are there, now that the schools are back in. I’m lucky; as a college lecturer I have another week.’

  ‘What do you teach?’ Prim asked, as we eased ourselves into two more chairs. The small terrace seated three, just.

  ‘Communication skills. At the local Technical College. Before, I lectured in Glasgow, but I decided to move down here a couple of years ago.’ She smiled, ‘Preparation for retirement.

  ‘So how is my brother-in-law?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘A strange man, Joseph. Empty, I’ve always thought. Empty of everything, including pride. Imagine, that he could work for the man who stole his wife. I only met Jack Gantry three times; he was hypnotic, I’ll grant you, but even so.’

  ‘Mr Donn seems very well,’ Prim answered her. ‘He’s retired completely.’

  ‘He always was. My husband was an accountant too. Unlike his brother, he was fully qualified, yet when he died, he was only a senior manager in his firm. He worked under the most tremendous pressure and eventually it killed him. Joseph, on the other hand, failed his finals and wound up making a small fortune working for Gantry. I’d be bitter if it wasn’t so ironic.