Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries)

by Quintin Jardine

  I wasn’t quite sure what I’d just told him to do, but he nodded anyway. ‘Police?’ he asked.

  ‘Under no circumstances.’

  I grabbed my pitta and my Gatorade and headed for the three-car garage that had probably once been a several-horse stable. The advertising says that the BMW 7 series is a new way to drive, but my attitude’s just the same. I just point it and go like shit. There isn’t usually a lot of traffic out our way, and there’s never any traffic on the Erskine Bridge, so I was across the Clyde in no time at all, bombing along the M8, past the airport and towards Susie’s South Side office, with one eye out for day-glo motors with blue lights on top.

  Happily there were none to hold me back; I took the M77 turn-off, headed west, and pulled up at the office in Thornliebank in what must have been a record time from the house. For all that, Susie had an impatient look on her face as she stood at the door, fidgeting from one foot to the other.

  I’ll swear that as she slid her trim little body, with its bump, in beside me, she was about to ask me what had kept me, but I forestalled her by telling her to take a deep breath, calm down and explain to me why she’d made me do the David Coulthard bit. I mean, shit, I’m a valuable property these days, to be tearing around like that.

  ‘We have to go to Joe’s,’ she replied.

  ‘Joe Donn’s?’

  ‘Yes. Come on, get moving.’ There was a strange, slightly desperate tone in her voice.

  I set the car in motion . . . you don’t put these things in gear, you programme them . . . and headed off. ‘Tell me, love,’ I said, gently. The engine’s so quiet you can almost whisper over it.

  ‘He didn’t turn up for the board meeting,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t start without him, so I called him to ask where the hell he was, but I only got the answering machine. I tried his mobile, but that was switched off. After that I called his golf club, thinking that he’d got the dates mixed up and was playing a medal or something. But the secretary said that he hadn’t been there since Saturday.’

  We were at Eastwood Toll by this time; Joe’s house was in Motherwell, so I headed through Clarkston for East Kilbride, rather than risk getting snarled up in Glasgow.

  ‘Finally,’ Susie continued, ‘I did the only thing I could think of. I phoned the woman next door and asked her to check on him.’ I knew what was coming by this time. ‘Twenty minutes later I had a call from the police.’ She covered her face with her hands, pushing her fingers into her eyes as if she could keep back the tears that way. You can’t; I know, because I’ve tried that myself. ‘They said he was dead, Oz. Joe’s dead. My . . .’

  She lost the battle. Her shoulders shook as she started to sob. I pulled the car into a lay-by and hugged her. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ I murmured into her ear. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  It’s a hard old world in business, and I can’t think of too many chief executive officers who’d be as crushed as Susie by the death of a non-executive director. But she had an excuse. You see, Joe Donn was Susie’s dad.

  When Susie’s mother fell for . . . no, I’ll use an old-fashioned word, because I’m sure it was literally true . . . when she was seduced by the charisma of Jack Gantry, builder, developer, entrepreneur, power player and future Lord Provost of Glasgow, she was actually married to someone else. Yes, Joe Donn. Their break-up was civilised. In fact it was so lacking in acrimony that Joe gave Margaret a going-away present: Susie.

  It turned out that for all his outward potency, Jack Gantry only shot blanks, although he didn’t know that at the time. The divorce was through by the time Susie was born, and Jack’s name went on her birth certificate. She was raised as his daughter and no one was any the wiser for several years without Susie siblings, until a full-scale medical showed that the Lord Provost’s sperm count was lower than East Fife’s away goals tally. Even then, the trio kept the facts to themselves, and Susie didn’t find out until after her mum was dead and Jack was off in the laughing academy, pronounced crazy as a loon. Gone but not forgotten, though. The gold chain of office has had a couple of wearers since him, but to this day if anyone in Glasgow says, ‘The Lord Provost’, ten to one on it’s Jack Gantry who comes to mind.

  Susie and Joe were never close, until he went away. He had been finance director of the Gantry Group when she took over its day-to-day management from Jack, and she had grown up with him as a sort of unofficial uncle, but that didn’t save his bacon. He had been absolutely duff as an accountant . . . ideal for the Lord Provost, since it allowed him to get away with all sorts of illegal activity . . . and Susie had fired him at the first opportunity, then had done it again after Jack had tried to reinstate him. But once she discovered the truth, she had him back, not with any hands-on financial responsibilities, but as a non-executive director, someone she could trust alongside her. The Gantry Group runs very smoothly, but Susie liked the extra insurance of having Joe and me alongside her. With a five-person board, the others being Gerry Meek, the new finance director, and Gillian Harvey, the bank’s appointee, it gave her a built-in majority should she ever need it.

  I let her cry it out by the side of the road from Busby to East Kilbride, and when she was ready, we set off on our way once again. It didn’t take long until we reached Motherwell, a town that grew up at the close of the nineteenth century on the backs of the coal and steel industries, then ended the twentieth having to reinvent itself after the former had been worked out and the latter destroyed by a Tory Cabinet four hundred miles away. I never saw the strip and plate mills in their heyday, but from the way Joe described them they must have been a sight to behold, if not to live near.

  Naturally, being a well-heeled bloke, his house was as far away from that part of town as you could get. It was in Crawford Street, no more than two or three minutes from the M74 exit, a chunky red-brick detached villa with more than a hint of art deco about it. An ambulance and two cars, one of them a police patrol vehicle, were stationed outside when we got there. The green-suited paramedics were sitting in their cab, talking to two police officers, a man and a woman, who stood on the pavement.

  I parked short of them, just down the gentle slope, and took Susie’s hand as she climbed out. The older of the two coppers, a sergeant, saw us and turned towards us, quietly crushing a cigarette under a large foot. ‘Are you Miss Gantry?’ he began.

  ‘Only at work,’ she replied, curtly. ‘Everywhere else I’m Mrs Blackstone. This is my husband.’

  The sergeant barely gave me a glance. Clearly the chap was neither a film fan nor a tabloid reader. ‘Fine, but you reported Mr Donn missing?’

  ‘No,’ I interrupted. ‘When he failed to turn up for a meeting and couldn’t be contacted, my wife called his neighbour and asked if she would check on him. The next thing she heard was from you guys, that he was dead.’

  ‘Aye,’ the uniform replied. ‘It was me that phoned. I’m Sergeant Kennedy.’

  ‘So why did you want us here so fast?’ I asked him.

  ‘We needed your wife to identify him, since Mrs Cameron, the neighbour, was in no state to do it. We gather that Mr Donn had no living relatives, so we got back to you.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he has a sister-in-law, but they haven’t spoken in years. But why the rush?’

  ‘We just wanted it done quickly, so we could move him.’

  ‘What do you mean move him? We’ll take care of him. We’re Joe’s family.’ It came to me that there was something wrong with the picture; Kennedy’s attitude was wrong in some way. ‘Look,’ I demanded, ‘what’s happened here? Where is Joe, and how did he die? Was it a heart attack?’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘No, it was not. Look, you were acquainted with the deceased and you’re prepared to identify him, yes?’

  ‘Yes, on both counts. Joe and I are colleagues; I’ve known him for years. Let’s do it.’ I turned and reached out to open the garden gate, but Kennedy put a hand on my arm.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not that way; he’s through here.’ It seemed to da
wn on him that being customer-friendly was in his remit. ‘While we do this, maybe PC Money here can look after your wife, make her a cup of tea, like.’

  ‘I want to come with you,’ Susie protested.

  I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t need us both,’ I told her. ‘Now please, humour me, and humour wee Mac in there. Do as he suggests and go with the constable. And ask her to make one for me while she’s at it.’

  For once in her life, Susie allowed herself to be persuaded.

  As PC Money, whose first name, it emerged, was Cassandra, offering an extra reason to call her Cash for short, led her up the path to the front door, I followed the sergeant to the side of the house and up the driveway. At once I knew where Joe was. The garage had double doors; they were open and his Jaguar was inside. He was always a Jag man. It was like a badge of office to him. There was a rear door, leading to the back garden. It was open too, and the afternoon breeze was blowing through, but I could still smell the fumes.

  ‘Mrs Cameron rang the doorbell after your wife called her,’ Kennedy said as we approached. ‘She was waiting on the doorstep when she heard the motor. It was just ticking over, very quiet. You had to be that close to hear it. She had the good sense not to try to open the garage herself; she went rushing back to her own house and called the station. Cash and I got here a couple of minutes after the shout, but it was too late, well too late. The doctor reckons he’s been dead for several hours.’ He stopped. ‘It’s quite a tight fit in there. Could you go in and take a look?’

  From the doorway, I could see the figure in the driver’s seat. I edged my way up the side of the Jag and looked through the open window. No surprises. It was Joe all right, and he was dead all right. His face was a funny pink colour. In fact he looked like a guy who’s had a couple of bevvies and is sleeping it off. Except I knew that even if he had been a big drinker, which he wasn’t, he would never have done anything so stupid as to go to sleep in his car, in a closed garage, with the engine running.

  I backed out the way I had come. ‘That’s Joe all right,’ I told the copper. ‘Is the doctor still here?’

  He nodded. ‘She was in the back garden writing up some notes last I saw her.’ At that moment a short, busty woman in a tweed suit, maybe aged in her mid-forties, came through the back door of the garage and made her way to us.

  ‘Dr Halliday,’ she announced, briskly.

  ‘Oz Blackstone,’ I replied, shaking her hand. She blinked and looked closer at my face; this lady did go to the movies.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Identification complete?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s poor old Joe. The sergeant says he’s been dead for some time. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, it is; probably since last night in fact, although the temperature in here with the engine running and everything makes it difficult to be precise. The pathologist should be able to confirm it, though. How did you come to know Mr Donn, Mr Blackstone?’ she asked.

  ‘Through business, but there’s a family connection too. Joe was once married to my wife’s late mother.’ The whole truth wasn’t relevant, so I kept that to myself. ‘What do you think happened?’ I continued instead.

  ‘It’s a bit obvious what happened, sir,’ said Kennedy. ‘Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.’

  ‘It’s not bloody obvious to me. Joe Donn was no more suicidal than you are, Sergeant; maybe less so, for all I know. If you report that to the Fiscal, I’ll challenge it. This has to have been an accident.’

  ‘It’s difficult to see how you could accidentally gas yourself like that,’ Doctor Halliday murmured, sympathetically.

  ‘Joe was always tinkering with his car. Look at the way it’s gleaming in there; anything less than perfection was no good to him. He could have heard something wrong with the engine and been checking it. Maybe it was dark, maybe he forgot the doors were closed, or he was overcome far quicker than he could have realised.’

  ‘And maybe life got too much for him,’ the sergeant said, ‘so he just got behind the wheel, turned on the engine and said goodbye.’

  ‘Was there a note?’

  ‘We haven’t looked yet, sir.’

  ‘When you find one I’ll start to believe you, but not before. You know what Joe was supposed to be doing tomorrow night? He was in the final of the Lanark Golf Club match-play championship. Joe’s been a member for forty years and he’s been scratch or damn near it for most of that time, yet he’s never won the championship.’

  ‘Maybe he’s got the yips since the semi,’ Kennedy retorted.

  ‘Not funny.’

  The sergeant winced. ‘Maybe no’, sir. I’m sorry. Still, I don’t see this as anything other than a suicide, and that’s what I’ll be reporting.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean by that, sir?’ he said, with the beginning of a threat in his voice.

  ‘I mean that I’ve got friends.’ I took out my mobile. ‘I make one phone call and there will be CID here to start a proper investigation. That will not look good for you, so do yourself a favour and call the cavalry yourself.’

  Kennedy snorted. ‘You think you can call out Strathclyde CID, do you, Mr Blackstone? You’re a policeman, are you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I was, about ten years ago. Not that I hung around long, mind; I didn’t like being shouted at by people who thought that having three stripes on their arm made them better than me in some way. I still have contacts, though. As a further matter of fact I was at a Chamber of Commerce dinner a week ago where I was sat next to your chief constable: he asked me to autograph his menu for his wife.’ I looked at the sergeant. ‘No bullshit,’ I said, quietly.

  A glimmer of recognition came into his eyes; whether it was of me, or of the inevitable, I wasn’t sure. ‘If you insist, then,’ he muttered, then turned his back on me, walked a few steps away and spoke softly into his radio.

 

  Chapter 7

  The CID came all right. They took photos of Joe in the car, and fingerprinted everything in sight, including the doctor and me, in case we had been careless. (They didn’t take prints from Sergeant Kennedy and PC Cash Money; all police officers are fingerprinted for elimination purposes, although their records are kept separately from the Bad People.) They supervised the rolling of the Jag from the garage and the removal of Joe’s body, then they searched the car.

  I watched them from a distance as they did it, and Susie joined me after they had taken Joe off to the mortuary in Glasgow. Crawford Street isn’t a place where crowds will gather naturally, but a few people had stopped to spectate. There would have been a lot more if the High School along the road had been in session, but it was closed for the Easter holidays.

  The sudden, suspicious death of Joe Donn warranted two detective constables and two technicians. I thought they’d want to take statements from us, but they didn’t. I began to wish that I had made that call . . . it would have been to Ricky Ross, whose Masonic arm reached everywhere. They searched the house too. I assumed that they were looking for a suicide note, and it gave me a degree of satisfaction when Kennedy came over to me and admitted that they hadn’t found any trace of one.

  ‘Did they check his computer?’ I asked. I knew that he had one, since I’d sent him some photos of Janet once, by e-mail.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘But I’ll make sure they do, don’t you worry.’

  There wasn’t much to do after that but go home. Gerry Meek had been in the office, waiting for the board meeting, when the call had come from the police, so Susie phoned him from the car to let him know what had happened. Gillian Harvey was out of town, on a visit to a bank client in Sheffield: Susie left a message with her secretary, asking her to call whenever she could.

  There was no one else to inform, really, other than Joe’s sister-in-law, Mira. I did that when we got back to the house, although with just a bit of trepidation. She had seen some tragedy in her life since our brief meeting, and I couldn’t
be sure that she didn’t blame me for some of it. She was okay, though, sorry to hear about Joe’s death, if not exactly grief-stricken. I promised I’d let her know about funeral arrangements, and we left it at that.

  I guess that word got around the Motherwell nick after the CID officers reported back to their bosses, and they saw the names on the report. I had a call early that evening from a detective superintendent, who introduced himself as Tom Fallon, Divisional Commander. He didn’t have anything startling to tell me; he called to let Susie and me know that the brass was in the know and that the brass was taking it seriously. However he went on to say that there were no signs that Joe’s death was suspicious. His people hadn’t gone firm on their report to the Procurator Fiscal, but he had steered them towards a finding of accident, subject to the post mortem report, rather than suicide. He assured me that they had ‘expedited’ the autopsy, and that in fact the old boy was being carved up even as he spoke.

  The results came through next morning, after Susie had gone to work. That was one of the hardest things she ever did. She had had a strange relationship with Joe, one that had been turbulent in business terms, but when everything else was stripped away, he was her father, and his death hit her like a hammer. Okay, she had spent most of her life thinking of Jack Gantry as her dad, but blood is blood.

  The trouble was, no one knew but me . . . well there was one other who did, but we hadn’t seen Prim in a while, and didn’t even know where she was . . . and Susie and Joe had decided that they would keep their true relationship secret. So that morning, she put on her tough face, hid the depth of her sorrow and carried on with business as usual.

  As he had promised, Detective Superintendent Fallon called again, in the middle of my postponed session with Neil Quinnan, my dialogue coach. ‘It’ll be accidental death, Mr Blackstone,’ he told me: no preamble, straight to the point. ‘The PM showed a high blood alcohol level, more than three times over the permitted limit. I’ll go with the assumption that he had a wee bit too much to drink, went out to tinker with his car . . . as you told the officers at the scene he liked to do . . . and just got careless. Maybe he switched the engine on to listen to the sound, and just fell asleep. Given that there was no suicide note, and given the other circumstances . . . he had no business worries, he was doing well in the golf championship . . . that’s by far the likeliest explanation for the tragedy. I’ve got no doubt that the Fiscal will accept that.’