Screen Savers ob-4

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Congratulations. Does she have a mobile as well?’

  ‘No, but no problem if she does. They’re simple to tap; MI5 do it all the time.’

  ‘Comforting to know that,’ I said into my cellphone. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got anything yet?’

  He laughed. ‘Well, we know that the principal of her college fancies her. He called her about six o’clock and asked her if she’d go to the Lakes with him this weekend. She said she’d only go if the guy’s wife called her to say it was all right.

  ‘Other than that, she didn’t have many calls. Just a couple from women friends, organising a theatre night. We might have to wait for a month before the guy calls her. . but he will. I’m sure he will.’

  ‘Just a thought, Mike. Does this guy pay income tax? Did it ever occur to you that the Inland Revenue might know where he is?’

  ‘Teach your granny, Blackstone. Stephen Donn hasn’t paid PAYE since he worked at Gantry’s. He’s self-employed and his papers all go to an accountant in Paisley. We checked there: the bloke told us that Donn comes to see him once a year with his records, then comes back once the calculations are done and gives him enough cash to cover his fee and tax due. It’s a common practice among dodgy people who don’t want to be easily traced.’

  ‘When’s he due to show up there again?’

  ‘Not before next April. For my money, the guy’s involved in something illegal; probably the drugs trade, that’s what most criminals are into in Scotland these days.’

  ‘Ah well,’ I said, sincerely; I could still feel the heat of the explosion. ‘I hope you get a result from the phone thing sooner rather than later.’

  I was still thinking of Mike’s phone call as I stepped out of the hire car into Union Street just before seven a.m.. For all that I was amused by Dylan behaving like a real policeman for the first time since I’d met him, I was worried for Susie. She’s a good-hearted girl, and she didn’t deserve to be persecuted by any nutter.

  Aberdeen’s City Council was bending over backwards to help us. Project 37 was the first major movie to have been shot in the Granite City in more years than anyone could remember, so nothing for us was too much bother. Union Street, the city’s main drag, was ours until eight-fifteen, when the temporary traffic diversion would end. We had been promised that if the weather was bad, they would do it again another time, but the morning was fine and sunny.

  The cameras and lights were all in position by the time we arrived, and a mass of extras were waiting. Miles went straight to work, grabbing a megaphone and giving them instructions. It was a simple job; some of the crowd were told to walk along Union Street east to west, others west to east. A few were cast as public transport passengers, a queue boarding a bus which was drawn up at a stop. We had volunteer motorists too, ordinary drivers who had brought their cars and cycles along to join in the fun. Their instructions were simply to drive along the street, turn and drive back again.

  As he split the extras into groups, all of them volunteers recruited by an advertisement and an editorial piece in the Press and Journal, I looked around the sea of faces until I spotted Noosh. She gave me a cool smile and a wave. I beckoned her over and strolled over to Miles.

  ‘This is Anoushka, a friend of mine,’ I told him. ‘She’d like to be in the movie.’

  ‘No problem, mate.’ he said. He pointed along the road a little. ‘Anoushka, Oz will be walking along there, east to west, past that shop. You just come in the other direction. Don’t look at him, don’t look at the camera, but just stick to the outside of the pavement and you’ll be in shot.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I’ve always wanted to do this.’ I’d never seen Noosh Turkel looking like a schoolgirl before.

  ‘No problem.’ Miles went back to his megaphone. The ‘pedestrians’ were in position, and the car-owners were standing by their vehicles. ‘We don’t have a lot of time here, folks,’ he yelled, ‘so I want to get this shot right first time if I can. We’ll have a rehearsal, then go straight into a take.’

  We did our rehearsal walk-through on Miles’ call of ‘Action’, and must have convinced him that we all knew what we were doing, for we went quickly for the real thing. I was impressed by the smoothness of it all, as I walked the line which had been chalked for me on the pavement, through and past the people. The idea was that I was looking for someone in one of the Union Street shops, so every so often I would pause, peer through a doorway, then move on. My stopping points were marked with big chalk crosses, but I told myself that I was out for an ordinary walk in an ordinary street and it worked. The camera was following me, out of my line of sight, and our volunteer motorists were cruising past me, so it was easy to maintain that illusion.

  I was only vaguely aware of Noosh coming towards me. She was following Miles’ instruction to the letter, walking so near to the edge of the pavement that I was almost on the road. At that moment, I became aware of the noise too; one that hadn’t been there on the run-through; the sound of a motorcyclist revving his engine hard. I couldn’t help it; I looked along the street and saw him in the distance, a biker in heavy black leathers and a sparkly red brain-bucket with a dark visor.

  As I looked at him he let in his clutch and sped away from the kerb, heading in my direction, accelerating hard. There was something wrong, I knew; no way was this in the script. The gap between us closed, and as it did, I saw him reach inside his leather jacket. He had levelled off his speed when I saw the pistol in his hand. I should have been scared shitless, I suppose, but I’ve had a gun pointed at me before, and I knew that this one was being aimed at someone else.

  No, unmistakably, the rider was homing in on Anoushka, as she walked along, her back to him, unawares. This has to be part of the movie, I told myself. Some fucking stunt Miles chose not to tell me about. Whatever it was, I decided on the instant to play it for real. I broke into a run, heading for Noosh.

  ‘Look out,’ I yelled as the gap closed between us, sending a pedestrian extra sprawling sideways. Her eyes widened and they caught mine as I dived for her. I saw the gun levelled at her head as I hit her, saw the muzzle flash as I bore her to the ground, saw the biker swerve to avoid us as we lay in the roadway, and saw the fumes from his exhaust as he speeded up and roared away, swinging into Market Street and out of sight.

  As we lay there panting, gasping for breath, a shadow fell across us. ‘That was great cinema, mate,’ Miles drawled, with a touch of wonder in his voice, ‘but what the fuck was it all about?’

  I glared at him as I got to my feet, helping Noosh up too. ‘I thought you’d be telling me that. You mean you didn’t set it up?’

  ‘Set what up?’

  ‘The arsehole on the bike!’ I shouted at him. ‘He took a shot at Anoushka.’

  Miles is a damn good actor, but he can’t fake the sort of astonishment that showed on his face.

  Anoushka looked as bewildered as he did. ‘He shot at me?’ she gasped. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Dead bloody certain,’ I snapped. ‘As dead as you’d have been if I hadn’t taken you down. The guy was out to kill you. Now, what’s it all about?’

  She was trembling and looked tearful as she shook her head. I was sorry at once for my show of temper. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose it could have been something to do with my time in St Petersburg. There were bad people there; a lot of them.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Miles. He called over to his assistant. ‘Bernie! Call the police. Get them here fast!’

  ‘Does that blow the shoot?’ I asked him, a professional to the last.

  ‘Not necessarily. I may have enough in the can. I didn’t tell anyone, but I ran the cameras during the rehearsal.’

  ‘You may have something else in the can too,’ I told him. ‘Like a shot of that biker.’

  Chapter 18

  For a while, it looked as if the police might have to impound Miles’ film, but eventually they settled for a print.

  The team who turned up was led by a Detective S
uperintendent: Miles Grayson is an important man, after all, and he was spending a lot of money in the Grampian force’s area.

  The head man — his name was Alex Francey — interviewed Noosh and me himself, back at the Treetops, in the bar where we had met the night before. His sergeant and two detective constables were left in Union Street, taking statements from the few extras who had seen anything.

  We sat at a low round table, with coffee and biscuits which, considerately, I had put on Miles’ tab. ‘When did you first become aware of the man on the motorcycle, Miss Turkel?’ he asked.

  ‘That is Ms,’ she corrected him, stiffly. She was back to her normal ice-maiden self; she had left her fear behind in the city. ‘I wasn’t aware of him at all, not until almost he ran into us, after Oz had knocked me to the ground.’ She threw me a quick glare, making a show of flicking dust and road debris from her long skirt.

  ‘Then all I saw was the back of his bike, from ground level.’

  ‘Did you get his registration number?’

  ‘I wasn’t exactly thinking about that at the time, having just been rugby-tackled by a large man.’

  Detective Superintendent Francey grinned. ‘So the day hasn’t been all bad,’ he said. I winced as he spoke, hoping that he would see my face and know that he was on dodgy ground.

  Noosh chilled him, froze him solid, with just a stare. For a moment, they looked like two Batman villains: she Ms Freeze, he Jack Nicholson’s Joker, with his smile painted on his face.

  ‘Right,’ he went on quickly. ‘Can I ask you to think back now? Just try to picture the scene again, and tell me everything that happened.’

  Noosh loosened up, just a bit. ‘I was simply walking along on the outside of the pavement,’ she replied, ‘as I’d been told to do by Mr Grayson. Then I saw Oz running. I was surprised, but I remember thinking that this must be a part of the movie they hadn’t told me about. When I realised that he was coming at me, I didn’t have time to do anything about it.’

  She paused, her eyes closed for a few seconds as if she was picturing the scene inside her head. ‘He reached me, and pulled me to the ground. As I fell, there was a bang. Yes I remember that now. Then the noise of tyres on the road, and of the bike speeding up once more.

  ‘I looked up at the man. I saw his back as he drove off, and his shiny crash helmet. But I don’t remember his number plate.’

  ‘He didn’t have one,’ I said. ‘I remember that now. I saw him from the front and the rear; the bike didn’t have a number plate. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Okay, but you got a good look at the man?’

  ‘Sure, dressed from head to foot in black leather, with a damn great black-visored, crimson thing covering his head.’ I frowned at the detective. ‘It could have been you, for all I could tell.’

  ‘Did you actually see the gun being fired?’ Francey asked.

  ‘Yes, definitely. Flash, bang; that’s how it goes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you sure it was being fired at Ms Turkel?’

  It was my turn to run a play-back in my head. ‘Yes, I’m certain,’ I told him, once the sequence was over. ‘He accelerated from way back up the street. My attention was attracted at first by the noise he was making. We were recording wild sound, and I thought it might screw up the take. Then I saw him ease down his speed, line himself up behind Noosh, and pull the gun from his leathers.’

  ‘Can you describe the firearm?’

  ‘Small and black. It looked like an automatic. Mind you, I’ve only seen two real, unholstered pistols in my life, so I’m no expert.’

  ‘What about the bike? What make was it?’

  I shrugged. ‘Two wheels, handlebars, painted mainly yellow: that’s it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It was a Kawasaki,’ Noosh blurted out, looking at me, rather than at the detective. ‘I know about motorcycles, remember.’ I did. For a while, when she and Jan lived together, Noosh owned a Honda.

  Francey coughed. ‘What about the man, Ms Turkel? Have you any idea about him? You said you’re a lawyer,’ he added helpfully. ‘Have you got any disgruntled criminal clients who might be bearing a grudge?’

  She shook her head, sending her sleek hair swinging. ‘I’m a corporate lawyer, officer. I don’t do criminal work.’

  ‘Well, how about your private life? Is there an ex-boyfriend who might want to hurt you?’

  ‘I don’t have ex-boyfriends,’ she said, abruptly. ‘I have ex-girlfriends, but none of them ride motorcycles.’

  ‘Well maybe one of them has a boyfriend who does?’ the Superintendent suggested, with a touch of desperation.

  ‘Only one of my ex-girlfriends has ever had a boyfriend,’ Noosh retorted. ‘And he is not a biker; not at all.’

  ‘Still, if you could give me his name. .’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘You don’t have that choice.’ Francey shifted in his chair, as if he was flexing his shoulders. ‘You may not be not a criminal lawyer, but I don’t have to tell you about the penalties for withholding information.’

  ‘That’s right, you don’t, because there are none. I’m not obstructing your investigation and I’m not under oath.’

  ‘The Fiscal might not share your view about obstruction, and the Law Society might disagree with you too. I can make a lot of trouble for you, Miss Turkel.’

  I didn’t want to go any further down this road, but I couldn’t let this go on. ‘I’m the man she’s talking about, Superintendent, ’ I said, a wee bit more aggressively than I’d intended. ‘Noosh and my late wife lived together for a while. They parted on good terms and neither Jan nor I ever held any grudges. You’ll need to find another line of inquiry, I’m afraid.’

  He gave me a policeman’s look; it came right over the top of his nose, boring into me. ‘Any ideas, then?’ he asked, dryly.

  ‘Only one,’ Noosh intervened. ‘I spent some time in my firm’s St Petersburg office. While I was there I had a client who turned out to be Mafia, so we ceased to represent his company. He was unhappy; threats were made, so my firm decided it was time for me to come back to Scotland. But as we all know, such people can have long arms.

  ‘That is the only help I can give you. Now, what are you going to do for me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Francey looked puzzled.

  ‘I mean,’ Noosh chilled him again, ‘are you going to give me police protection?’

  He recovered his composure, just a little too late to be convincing. ‘Of course, ma’am. I’ll see to it right away.’ Seizing the excuse, he hurried out of the room.

  Chapter 19

  The rest of that day would have been a complete wash-out in filming terms, had we not scored enough usable footage before Noosh’s disaster.

  As it was, with some hard work by the crew, we were able to bring our schedule forward and shoot the studio scenes which had been pencilled in for Wednesday. It was a long day, but I was happy; it meant that I could catch a flight to Glasgow next morning, back to Prim. I’d been missing her, especially in the aftermath of the Union Street incident.

  I had another visit from the Old Bill in the evening, just as the crew were striking our set, from a detective sergeant and a constable sent along by Francey to take a formal statement. It made me feel that I was back at my old job, even though I was on the other side of the table.

  The sergeant’s questions laid heavy stress on the gun. I didn’t tell him much more than I had told his boss; small, black thing, didn’t appear to have a revolver chamber so I guessed that it was an automatic. Mind you, I could have told him that it was a Walther. I’ve had one of those pointed at me, not once but twice, and when you’ve looked down the barrel of a gun you can almost remember its serial number. I kept that detail to myself, though; those were incidents which I definitely did not want to discuss with the police.

  Instead, I asked him, ‘Why do you need to know?’

  ‘We pass it on to police intelligence.’ I bit my lip; it wasn’t the time for the old gag about con
tradictions in terms. ‘They can sometimes give us a steer about other crimes where that type of gun’s been used. We’re still looking for the bullet, of course; once we find that it might tell us whether that specific weapon’s been used in another incident.

  ‘It’s a bugger not havin’ it.’ He sighed in a way which hinted that, sod it, his life would have been much easier if they’d been able to dig a slug out of Noosh or me, or one of the extras.

  I let it pass and waved them goodbye, then took a taxi out to the address in the west of the city which Noosh had given me. I wouldn’t have felt right if I had left without checking that her protection was in place.

  Detective Superintendent Francey had been as good as his word. There was a car parked just across the street from her small granite bungalow; two guys were sat in it, and I guessed that they weren’t looking for unlicensed television sets. I gave them a cheery wave as I opened the garden gate, before they could start worrying about me. I don’t suppose many hitmen arrive by taxi, but I didn’t want anyone to get nervous.

  In a way, stepping into that living room was like a trip into the past. I recognised the sofa, the two recliner armchairs, upholstered in soft grey fabric, and the low coffee table. They had all been in the flat in Castle Terrace, in Edinburgh, which she and Jan had shared. Noosh’s manner, too, was the same as it had been then; not unfriendly, but cool and appraising.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’ve been better. I have a sore bum, for one thing.’ She smiled. ‘But at least it doesn’t have a bullet in it.’

  ‘You’re safe now, anyway. Those guys across the road are pretty obvious.’ I looked around the room. ‘Do you live alone?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She nodded, pausing for a moment. ‘I don’t think I’ll live with anyone again,’ she ventured. ‘Too dangerous. There can be too much hurt involved.’

  Suddenly she looked vulnerable, and I thought of her in a way I never had before. ‘Noosh,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. I never meant for that to happen.’