‘I bumped into Prim on her way out just as I was arriving; she let me in. Have you decided to retire, then?’
‘Bloody hell, Michael,’ I barked. ‘In the last few days, I’ve acted in a major movie, done two international television shows, found a naked lady in my bath, been shot at — or nearly — by a helmeted motorcycle assassin, and set upon by two second-division heavies with instructions to break both my arms. I think I’m entitled to a wee lie-in, don’t you?’
I stood aside to let him come in. ‘You know where the coffee and stuff is. Make us some, while I get dressed.’
It took me just under ten minutes to shower and throw on some clothes. By the time I ambled barefoot into the kitchen, still running my electric shaver over my chin, Mike had made not just coffee but two bacon rolls for each of us. ‘HQ canteen shut, is it?’ I asked. ‘I’m not sure I want any of those.’
‘Come on, pal,’ he grinned, ‘you want to play at being a polis, you have to act like one. Hope you like brown sauce on your bacon, by the way.’
‘I’ll slum it with you,’ I grunted, finishing my shave. I glanced out of the window; it was a grey, damp morning, a reminder that winter was only a couple of months away.
‘This is elevenses for me, you realise,’ said Dylan. ‘I’ve been in the office since just after seven checking up on Mrs Donn. She didn’t have a call from Stephen on Friday; that I know for sure. Nor did she phone him.’
‘Dammit.’
‘Ah, but. . your wee flash of intuition worked out. The woman is on e-mail. When did Prim visit her?’
‘Just after five.’
‘Thought so. That got me excited, because about two hours after that, Mrs D connected to her internet server and sent a message down the line.’
‘Can you read it off the server?’
‘In theory we could. What we have is a burst of digital information, that could be decoded, but that would take cleverer people than we have. But anyhow, we don’t need to do that. I had a word with the service provider and persuaded him to give me the name of the addressee. The message went to S Donn at Hotmail.’
‘Hotmail?’
‘Yes, it’s an international e-mail clearing house that anyone can subscribe to. You tap into it through the Web, and you can access it from anywhere. So, I went on line and I accessed the boy’s mailbox.’
‘But doesn’t he have a password? I thought everyone had.’
Dylan nodded. ‘Sure, but that’s not much of a barrier. Have you any idea how many people use someone’s Christian name? Have you any idea how many use their partner’s or their mother’s? I just keyed in M. I. R. A. and, open sesame, I was right in there. Stephen picked up his mother’s message less than two hours after she sent it.’
‘Have you got the message?’
‘No, he’ll have stored that on his own terminal; it’s been wiped from Hotmail. His log’s there, though, and it shows the time of transmission and collection. You don’t have to be a computer genius to work out what it said, though. “Dear son, Why is this man Blackstone and his girlfriend asking after you, and why did you nick all your photos from my house and from your Uncle Joe’s?” Or words to that effect.’
‘Do we know where he was when he collected it?’
‘No, it couldn’t tell me that.’
‘Still,’ I said, ‘now you can monitor his e-mail traffic, wherever he is.’
Dylan shook his head, even as he ripped a chunk off one of his rolls. ‘Not exactly,’ he replied, when he could. ‘I’ll have left a trace on the log this morning myself. If I go in regularly, he’ll twig for sure. Even doing it just once, there’s a chance he’ll notice the entry and know from the time that it wasn’t him. If he does that, then straight away he’ll change the password to something we’ll never guess.’
I had to agree with this. Finding the mailbox was a bonus, but it wasn’t going to unlock the secrets of Stephen Donn’s world, or even tell us where he was.
‘So, Oz,’ Mike asked, once we had finished breakfast, ‘what’s your interest in all this?’
He was so chuffed with himself over his computer trickery that he’d missed the bloody obvious.
‘Remember the naked lady I mentioned earlier? The one I found in my bath? As the Sunday tabloids say, I declined her offer and left — well actually I told her to bugger off. When those two hard men showed up twenty-four hours later I assumed straight away that she or her husband was connected to it.
‘But suppose, just suppose, Stephen Donn was sufficiently annoyed by his mother’s message to want to put me out of business for a while. Even if he was in Amsterdam he’d have had time to get over to London, source some hired muscle and put it on my trail.’
‘Why should he even know about you?’ Mike protested.
‘For openers, my surname must be familiar to him; Jan worked at Gantry’s before him, remember. Also he blew up Susie’s motor in my car park. If he’s been stalking her, there’s every chance he knows me and how I relate to her.’
‘But how would he know where to find you?’
‘Anyone who’s watched the GWA in the last couple of years knows I’m part of their set-up. Anyone who’s watched satellite sports promotions in the last month would have known I was due in London last weekend. Anyone who can read a newspaper could have known I’m in Miles’s movie, as did the person who hired those gorillas. They said that my pulling out of the film was to be the trigger for the second half of the payment for the job.
‘I tell you, mate, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Stephen Donn put me on the spot, rather than Richard Barowitz or his wife.’
‘So where are these heavies now? Have the police got them?’
‘No, they were a bit damaged, so we let them go. The GWA doesn’t need that sort of publicity.’
‘Great! That’s another possible lead to Donn gone down the pan. This guy’s trying to kill my girlfriend, Oz. You have a couple of guys who might have met him and you let them swan off into the bloody night!’
His sudden show of irritation took me by surprise, but I had to admit that it was justified. ‘I’m sorry man,’ I said. ‘The Donn connection didn’t occur to me at the time.’ Then I had an afterthought. ‘You could always check the hospitals. One of them had damage to his throat and a lacerated tongue, and the other had a broken forearm, or wrist.
‘Even if you do find them, though, you won’t get much of a description out of them. All they could tell us was that the bloke who paid them was ordinary looking and that he wore Raybans.’
‘Fuck the description. The next time Donn sees you on telly and realises that you’re in one piece, he might go looking for his money back. If he does that I’d like to have some people of my own there to meet him, as well as your two damaged Cockney pals.’
Chapter 25
Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t too bothered about the London episode being repeated. If Stephen Donn had sent me a message, effectively it had been received, since Prim and I were no longer involved in the search for him, and wouldn’t be visiting either his uncle or his mother again. If Richard Barowitz had been behind it — well, I’d already decided that I wouldn’t be doing any more voice-overs for Roxy Matrix and their alternative bloody humanoids.
Happily, my schedule for the rest of the week was so busy that I was able to forget all about the London experience. The Edinburgh voice-over was a piece of cake — literally; it was an ad for a Scots bakery chain — but my two days on Deeside introduced me to some new aspects of movie-making.
Miles had said that my scenes would be simple, and he was good as his word. The most difficult thing I had to do was to walk in on an argument between him and Dawn, and deliver the deathless line, ‘Hey, leave me out of this!’ — with style, mind you. All the same, it was fascinating to watch, in another setting, the care and precision with which the operation was run. There were close-ups, two-shots, three-shots, and the positioning and backgrounds had to be right for every one of them.
The mansion was even bigger than I had expected, with a long, south-facing drawing room which was big enough to accommodate actors, production crew and equipment; a major cost saver as opposed to replicating it on a set, Miles assured me.
My first three-way scene took up a whole day; Miles and Dawn had always struck me as a happy relaxed couple, but there, in the office as it were, sparks flew all day as he fought for perfection in the scene. They were meant to be arguing on screen, but there were moments off-camera when I wondered if they were keeping it up simply to preserve the mood, or were really going at it.
I had a room in the house for the three nights I was up there. At the end of that difficult, but ultimately rewarding, day’s shooting, Dawn went off for a bath while Miles and I sloped off to the study for a soothing gin and tonic. ‘I didn’t realise you could be such a bastard on set,’ I told him, settling back into a big, over-stuffed armchair. ‘If I talked to Prim like that I’d have the imprint of her engagement ring in the middle of my forehead.’
‘I’m a perfectionist, mate,’ he said, his accent becoming noticeably more Aussie, as it always did in private. ‘I direct most of my own movies because I’m lousy at taking direction myself. I could name half-a-dozen people in Hollywood — and you’d know them all — who won’t work with me. If I see something that I know would make a movie better, then I tell them; most LA egos can’t take that.
‘Dawn’s made the same way. She has her own ideas and won’t keep them to herself; that’s why I fell for her in the first place. When she was cast in Kidnapped, she had only a tiny little part, no more than a week’s work. Yet on her second day on set when I was laying down the way I wanted the scene played she said in her little Scots voice, “Excuse me, but don’t you think it would be better if. .”
‘If she wasn’t so fucking gorgeous I might have fired her there and then — my ego’s as well-developed as any of those guys I mentioned. Instead, I thought about what she had said, and took part of it on board. We never looked back from that moment on; now when we work together I know that she’s going to say what she thinks. I might not always agree with it, and when I don’t we go at it hammer and tongs, yet at the end of the day she makes me a better director and I make her a better actor.’
He grinned as he got up to mix us two more G and Ts. ‘If it didn’t work that way we’d have gone the way of most movie couples long ago. As it is, we’ll last for ever. She doesn’t know this — don’t you tell her, either — but when this project is wrapped up, the director credits will be Miles Grayson and Dawn Phillips.’
‘Hey, that’s great,’ I told him. ‘Can I tell Prim?’
‘If you think she’ll keep it to herself, sure you can. Don’t mention it to Elanore, though. She’d burst her girdle.’
I studied him as he gazed out of the window. Somehow I knew that he was contemplating an evening shot, making use of the spectacular effect of the sinking sun as it washed the trees which bounded the mansion. ‘You really love your work, Miles, don’t you,’ I said.
‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘I can’t imagine it any other way. Don’t you?’
‘I would if I knew what my work was. I know I’m past my sell-by date in the job I started on, acting as a lawyer’s leg-man. Prim’s keeping that business going, but I’ve reached the stage when I don’t enjoy it any more. The truth is it was never any more than okay; it paid the bills and gave me a lifestyle, but there was never any fulfilment. The only time it gave me a buzz was when I found myself involved with real detective work, and that only ever happened by accident.
‘My GWA work is different, though. Bizarre as it may be, I’m doing something creative there. In my voice-overs too, and now here, even though it’s a one-off. But always I have the feeling that I’m just stumbling along.’
‘Then take control, Oz. You’re privileged; thanks to the lottery you can decide what it is you want to do and go for it, shit or bust. You say this movie is a one-off, but there’s no reason why it should be. You ain’t going to win an Oscar, but you’re competent in what you’re doing. I’d cast you again, and so will others.’
I had to laugh. ‘You saying I should become an actor?’
‘No,’ he shot back. ‘I’m saying you could. I’d recommend a little formal drama training, but it’s open to you as a career option.’
‘If I want a career.’
‘Of course you do. You’re a young guy and you’re full of energy. You can’t sit still.’
He was right; I tried that once, and it was a near-disaster.
‘I don’t know what I’d be doing now if I hadn’t found this business. I’d have played cricket for a while, I guess. I can’t bat worth a light, but I was a pretty quick bowler. I might have managed a few one-day games for Australia. But after that, I’d probably have wound up selling cars, or maybe insurance.
‘Every day I say a little prayer of thanks that twenty-odd years ago, I answered a newspaper ad looking for young guys to work as extras or minor players in a movie. I’ve been hooked on this business ever since. It’s the breath of life to me, and I’d die as a person without it.’
‘Do you have any ambitions left, then?’ I asked. This had turned into the deepest conversation I’d ever had with Miles. I’d known him for going on three years, but I hadn’t learned much about him that I couldn’t have found out in a newspaper.
‘Sure I have,’ he replied ‘and it’ll go on for as long as I do. I want to make my next movie better than my last, and so on. It’s nothing to do with money; that just happens, and it doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with art. I’m not Bergman, or Bresson; I’m trying to be the movie equivalent of Robert Louis Stevenson; a great story-teller and entertainer.
‘My motivation is constant improvement; that and trying to reach as many people with my work as possible. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do if it was in the interests of one of my movies.’
‘Including his own stunts.’ Dawn’s voice came from the door of the study. We stood — gentlemen to a fault, both of us — as she came into the room; she was dressed in a simple blouse and skirt, and the ends of her hair were still wet from the shower. ‘I warn you now, Oz. If you ever work with us again, and there’s action involved, make damn sure there’s a clause in your contract that says he has to use a standin.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her. ‘After last weekend, I don’t need to be told that.’
Chapter 26
For the next couple of weeks I settled into what most people would call chaos with just a dash of organisation; for me it was a normal life. Most of my time was booked, Sly Burr having worked a couple of London voice-overs into my movie schedule, but I managed to go into the office on a couple of occasions, just to make sure that Prim, Lulu and the new assistant were running Blackstone Phillips Investigations to my satisfaction.
I realised very quickly that they were doing a far more disciplined job than I ever had, and were providing just as good a service, but no way would I ever have admitted that to them.
Primavera came with me to Dublin with the GWA, and to Copenhagen the following weekend. She was popular with the wrestling team, most of whom remembered her first appearance among them, on a dramatic night in Barcelona — a night I will never forget either, but for a different reason.
By the end of the following week, my filming in the North was over; next on the schedule were two weeks in the studio in London for my off-camera narration, and for a few more scenes that Miles had mentioned, casually over dinner, on my first night in the Deeside mansion.
I’m pretty fit, but the action was catching up with me. I was knackered, and so I was pleased that the GWA had a weekend off, thanks to a big golf tournament which was dominating the satellite television channels. Prim and I decided that we would get out of Glasgow, and spend a couple of days in St Andrews with my sister, my nephews, and of course Wallace, my old flatmate.
They were all pleased to see us when we arrived at the freshly decorated bungalow, with its v
iew across the links; none more so, it seemed, than Wallace. Green iguanas are reptiles, right, and generally reptiles have very small brains, capable of focusing only on catching and crunching insects, or in the case of crocodiles, any large mammals which are daft enough to drink from the wrong river. I doubt if they even think about sex; although. .
My point is that when I gave him to my nephews on a permanent basis I didn’t expect my old chum to have a memory which stretched back beyond his last bowl of Wonder Wienie Iguana Superfood, yet every time I walk into a room and he’s there, no matter how many other people are around, he ambles across to me, climbs up my leg and settles across my shoulders. He has five strong talons on each foot, so I have to be careful what I wear when I’m seeing him. The first time we visited Ellen and the boys in their new house, he did for a new silk shirt as well as leaving some choice scratches.
The performance was repeated when I went into the boys’ playroom, soon after we arrived at St Andrews that Friday evening; I’ll swear that as he secured himself on my old denim shirt he even rolled an appraising reptilian eye at Prim. After all, he played a significant role during the first night we ever spent under the same roof.
Ignoring his presence, and with Jonathan and Colin following, we wandered through to the kitchen where Ellie was preparing a meal. When I’d called her to ask if we could come, I’d told her we’d go out to eat, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Very few people are capable of throwing a chilling look down a telephone line, but my sister is.
‘You can take him with you, back to Glasgow, if you like, Oz,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you ever try to house train him?’
I felt my nephews’ eyes settle on me. They weren’t taking their mother’s threat seriously; they were used to the sparring between us and were waiting for my counter-punch. I raised an imperious eyebrow. ‘Of course. When he lived with me in the loft he used to climb up on the roof and crap in the guttering. Try leaving a window open.’
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