Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries)

by Quintin Jardine

  It went through without a hitch. The group was valued at sixty million pounds, and the twenty million shares on offer were snapped up. As soon as trading opened their value rose by a third; with very limited trading they had stayed at that level until the downturn in the market took them back down to par. We didn’t panic when that happened, though; it still left Susie worth a right few quid.

  ‘Well?’ I repeated to Mr Maltbie. ‘What about Joe’s shareholding?’

  The solicitor pursed his lips. ‘That’s an interesting one,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it will revert to your offspring in due course, but it can’t yet, I’m afraid. You see, technically it isn’t part of the estate.’

  I frowned and then I got it. ‘Let me guess. They’re held by a trust too.’

  ‘Got it in one,’ the solicitor murmured. ‘Inheritance tax shelter. I’m surprised you didn’t know that already.’

  It’s not easy to kick yourself effectively while you’re sitting down, but I managed it nonetheless. A director of a company might be expected to be reasonably familiar with its shareholder register, and that would have told me right away. Worse, I was on the damn thing myself. Since Susie and I had been together, I had been building up a small shareholding in the company; a show of solidarity as much as anything else.

  ‘Who set it up?’ If ever there was a rhetorical question, that was it. Joe wasn’t the sort of accountant who’d have thought that sort of arrangement up for himself. He was a common sense guy, but once the beans got above the five-figure mark he had always struggled to count them. Plus, he’d never lived like a millionaire, or referred to himself as one, nor I reckoned even thought of himself in that way. No, considering the origin of the holding, there was only one answer.

  ‘Lord Provost Gantry did,’ Maltbie confirmed. ‘Joe benefited from the dividend income from the shares, but he had no effective right of disposal. In addition to the chairman’s right to veto any proposed sale, there is a preemption clause which gives Mr Gantry first refusal.’

  ‘And with Joe’s death . . .?’

  ‘With his death, the shares revert back to Mr Gantry.’

  ‘What, you mean they go into Susie’s trust holding?’

  ‘No, I do not. They revert directly to him.’

  ‘But he’s in the slammer,’ I protested. ‘He’s in a maximum security mental hospital.’

  ‘That doesn’t stop him owning property.’

  ‘It doesn’t stop him owning a significant shareholding in a public company?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Maltbie raised his right index finger, pointing at the dull, discoloured ceiling of his office. ‘But it does stop him exercising some of the rights and privileges of a shareholder. He’s entitled to participate in dividends, but he can’t vote himself.’

  I had never thought of Jack Gantry as a legal entity; in truth I had stopped thinking of him as a human being a long time ago. As far as Susie and I were concerned he was dead; that was how we coped best with our memories. His name was never mentioned in our house; there were no photographs of him, not even in Susie’s childhood albums. She had destroyed them all, as she had thrown out every memento of the time when she had held the courtesy title of Lady Provost, and had accompanied him to official functions.

  ‘So what happens to those rights and privileges? Are they just in limbo?’

  ‘No, that’s not the case. The Criminal Procedure and the Mental Health Acts make provision for someone to be appointed to take such decisions on behalf of a detained patient. As in England, he’ll be regarded as a ward of court, more or less.’

  ‘And in the case of a barker like Jack, who would this person be? The First Minister?’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be usual. It would normally be a lawyer or accountant. On the other hand it is possible for a person’s local authority to be appointed as his guardian, if there’s nobody else.’

  I gasped, then bellowed with laughter. ‘What? You mean that the mighty Jack Gantry’s gone from exercising complete power over Glasgow City Council to being completely in its power?’

  The solicitor allowed himself a thin smile. ‘You find irony in that?’

  ‘I think it’s fucking hilarious actually. Jack used to scare the shit out of all the officials in the City Chambers, and most of the councillors. I’ll bet some of them would enjoy getting even.’

  ‘They wouldn’t quite have that sort of licence. The Mental Welfare Commission would be down on them like a ton of bricks. But . . .’ He paused, and the extended finger was replaced by the palm of his hand held up like a traffic cop. ‘. . . as I understand the circumstances of Mr Gantry’s case, he would be a State patient, and as such his hospital consultants would be responsible for him. I’m no expert in these areas, but where a patient has substantial resources it would be almost certain that the court would appoint a professional person to act on his behalf.

  ‘Whatever the circumstances, the shares will not become inactive in voting terms.’

  I wasn’t laughing any more. Whoever was feeding Jack his gruel, I still didn’t fancy having to tell Susie that one dad had replaced another as a major shareholder of the Gantry Group.

  Chapter 9

  I needn’t have worried. Susie had known all along what would happen to Joe’s shareholding in the event of his death. I’d thought I’d been clever in tracking Mr Maltbie to his lair, but unlike me, my wife is a very good and conscientious director of a public company, and she had a metaphorical finger on the pulse of every one of its members.

  ‘Can you do anything about it?’ I asked her that evening, after I had given her a run-down on my day, as we sat beside the pool enjoying a nice chilled bottle of Sancerre.

  ‘No. Not a damn thing.’

  ‘You’re not bothered?’

  ‘Of course I’m bloody bothered! I don’t want to be connected with him in any way. I wish with all my heart that it was him in that box in the undertaker’s and not Joe. But sadly it isn’t. He’s still drawing breath and, no doubt, ordering his guards about each and every day, as if he was still the big cheese. Happily, that’s one thing he’ll never be able to do to me again. I may have to have him back as a shareholder, but his influence will never reach into my office, or into our boardroom.’

  ‘How would you feel if I contacted his trustees in lunacy, or whatever the hell they’re called, and offered to buy the shares? Just so you can be rid of him for good.’

  Susie smiled at me. ‘Curator bonis,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that? An ice-cream or something?’

  ‘A Curator bonis is a person appointed by the court to look after the affairs of someone who’s mentally handicapped. You’re a love, Oz, but I couldn’t let you do that. Have you any idea what Joe’s shares are worth?’

  ‘About four million. Do you know what I’m going to earn this year, given the deals that Roscoe’s done for me?’

  She reached across and squeezed my hand. ‘You’re a love, you really are. Listen, I know you’ve been buying shares on the quiet, but that’s too big a chunk.’

  I shrugged. ‘At the current price it would be a good investment. I might just do it anyway. The way I understand it, now the shares have reverted back to Jack, you don’t have a veto over their sale.’

  ‘That’s true, I don’t. But there are other reasons why you shouldn’t do it. For a start, you need a willing seller to do a deal. I don’t know who the Curator bonis is . . . although I’m bound to find out when Joe’s estate is processed and the transfer is notified to the company’s registrar . . . but given the value of the property he’s looking after, he’s probably a big-firm accountant or a heavy duty corporate lawyer. Whatever, he isn’t going to be a mug, and if he’s doing his job properly, he’ll view those shares as a good long-term investment. If he sells them at all, it’ll be at a premium. You’ll have to pay over the odds, and if you do that . . .’ She took a sip of her wine and gave me a knowing look. When Susie’s business brain moves into overdrive, I struggle to keep up with her, but I a
lways do my best.

  ‘You and I are husband and wife; effectively what’s mine is yours and vice versa. I own sixty per cent of the business as it is, through the trust; if you do this deal it’ll take our family holding to damn near seventy per cent. On top of that, if you buy at the price Jack’s Curator’s likely to settle for, word will get around. What if the other shareholders, who are mainly institutional, get wind and come to us wanting the same price for theirs. We’d be in a pickle.’

  ‘Couldn’t the group buy them in?’

  She snorted. ‘Sure, and fuck up its cash position. We’d be back where we started, a family-owned business at the mercy of those fickle bastards who are decision-makers in the banks, who are in turn at the mercy of their institutional shareholders. No, Oz my darling boy; noble as your motives may be, I’m not going to let you compromise us.’

  ‘What are you going to do, then?’

  ‘Nothing. When the transfer takes effect I’ll sit tight and see what the Curator does. My guess is he’ll do nothing at all.’

  ‘What if he offers you the shares?’

  ‘Why the hell should he do that?’

  ‘Does Jack know that you know he’s not your real father?’

  She seemed to jump in her chair, then settled back into its thick cushions, her brow suddenly furrowed by a frown. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘But unless Joe told him, I can’t imagine how he would. You know I haven’t seen him or spoken to him since he went away, but I can’t say for sure that Joe didn’t keep in touch with him. They were friends from way back, after all.’

  ‘Has Jack ever tried to contact you?’

  ‘Only the once, after he was committed to the State Hospital. I had a letter from him.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘You never asked me till now. But that’s not surprising. Let’s face it, Oz; if one of us has a reason to hate Jack Gantry it’s you, rather than me. I found out everything he did, from Mike, and I know that Jan’s death wasn’t an accident.’

  I looked away from her, across the pool, as I replayed in my mind’s eye my last meeting with the maniacal Lord Provost, when he had justified himself to the last. I had wanted to kill him then, and if my friends hadn’t been there to prevent me I might have done just that. I had never spoken of that night to Susie, and even if Mike Dylan had when he was around, I still didn’t want to.

  ‘So what did you do with the Lord Provost’s letter?’ I didn’t ask her what it had contained.

  ‘I sent it back to him, via the State Hospital superintendent, and told him that I wanted no further contact with him, of any sort. The superintendent replied; he said that he understood, and that he would take care of it for me. So far he’s been as good as his word.’

  ‘Long may it stay that way,’ I said, a touch grimly, ‘and long may the old bastard stay out there in Carstairs, enjoying his drug-infested porridge.’

  I resolved to think no more of Jack Gantry, and to forget any notion of bidding for his shares in the group that still bore his name. Instead, I settled into my chair, smiled at my wife, and thought of my own Dad. I was due to give Mac the Dentist a phone call. I had still to tell him about Joe: I had put off doing that until I could give him the whole package, funeral arrangements and everything.

  There was something else I probably had to tell him too. She had not been at the forefront of my thoughts since the bombshell in Motherwell had exploded, but Andrea Neiporte was still there. I had wondered whether to spill the beans to Mac or not, but I was coming down on the side of ‘Yes’. If she was capable of tossing a can of paint at me, she was probably still capable of making trouble for him.

  Jay had reported to me, that evening and the night before, that there had been no sightings of her on the video cameras at the entrance to the estate, or anywhere else for that matter. That was good; my guess was that the thing at the premiere had been her way of getting back at me for roughing up her old man. Still, I couldn’t be certain, so Mac had to be told.

  Susie, on the other hand, had not; she had written the incident off as a nutter at work, and there was no sense in making her any the wiser.

  I decided to speak to my Dad as soon as Susie left for work next morning. That was first on my list. But what further action to take against the Neiportes ran it a close second.

  Chapter 10

  I had intended to phone Mac the Dentist, but with a long, almost empty day stretching out in front of me I decided to give him the bad news in person. So, once Susie had gone, driving herself in the big Beamer, I told Janet that she was going to see her Granddad, and loaded her into the Freelander that we kept for knocking around the estate.

  I’d have left it as a father and daughter outing, but Jay Yuille is a conscientious guy. He pointed out that he was employed principally as our bodyguard and that he could hardly be guarding them if they were seventy miles away. I have to confess that there have been occasions when I’ve found Jay’s omnipresence just a wee bit intrusive, but I’ve always managed to keep those feelings to myself, since I’m the guy whose lifestyle made him necessary in the first place.

  So I yielded to his insistence and let him come with us. I took the wheel, though, with him in the front passenger seat fulfilling the valuable function of picking Janet’s toys up and handing them back to her each time she threw one on the floor. I drove sedately, because of the precious passenger, and because the Freelander, while it’s a chunky motor, isn’t exactly a flying machine.

  The Forth Bridge was quiet heading north . . . it always is in the morning, but wait till the Edinburgh commuters head for home . . . and soon we were on the new road which heads for the East Neuk in more or less a straight line. Normally I’d have headed for Anstruther through Elie and St Monans, but there was a degree of urgency, in that Janet would soon be needing a pit stop.

  My stepmother was at home when we arrived; she’d taken early retirement from teaching, and was only doing the occasional supply job. Things were completely natural between the two of us now, and I was grateful for that. Mary had been my mother-in-law before she’d married my Dad; Jan’s death had shattered her as much as it had me. Afterwards she’d had to live with Prim’s return to the scene, then our break-up. I hadn’t been sure how she’d react to wee Janet, but she’d been a gem, accepting her as she would have any grandchild. As usual, she was all over her like a rash when we pulled up, unannounced. ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ she scolded me.

  Janet had been to Enster often enough to have sussed out its main attractions. For example, there’s a café on the harbour front. ‘Ice-cweam,’ was all she needed to say to Mary before she found herself loaded into her pushchair and heading for the town. Once again Jay insisted on going along, and this time I had no qualms about it, as the idiocy of bringing my daughter to a place where people might be after her father and grandfather began to dawn on me.

  We had passed the Neiporte cottage on the way through Pittenweem, and I had pointed it out to Jay. He had said nothing, but a cold light had seemed to come on in his eyes.

  When they had gone, I was left alone in my Dad’s house, waiting in his kitchen for him to come through from the surgery, once he had finished mauling his twelve o’clock patient. I allowed him his usual twenty-minute average. I filled the kettle on the quarter-past mark, and five or six minutes later was stirring two mugs of coffee by the sink when I heard him walk in behind me.

  ‘What the f . . .’

  I turned to face him at the sound of his hearty greeting, a mug in each hand . . . and almost dropped them. There were dark circles under my father’s eyes that I had never seen before. His broad shoulders seemed to droop as he stood there, and his pale blue nylon surgery tunic seemed to hang loose on him. I felt as if I was looking at a man I didn’t know.

  ‘No, Dad,’ I said. ‘That’s my line.’

  I handed him one of the mugs, turned him around and propelled him through to the living room. When he was sat in his armchair, I leaned forward in mine and look
ed at him, forcing him to look in my direction. ‘You look like the picture in Dorian Gray’s fucking attic,’ I told him. (My Dad and I have never been anything other than frank with each other.)

  ‘Thanks, son, for your vote of confidence,’ he retorted. Even his voice sounded weary. ‘You look pretty sharp yourself. Are you here alone?’

  ‘No, I’m with you. Janet and Mary have gone on an ice-cream mission; Jay’s with them.’

  ‘Jay? Kevin bloody Costner, you mean, or should it be Frank bloody Farmer . . . whatever his name was in that bodyguard movie. He didn’t do you and Susie much good at the premiere the other night.’

  ‘Yes he did. He took most of the stuff. Jay’s a good guy, so don’t worry about us. What’s with you? Have you been bothered by that American twat again?’

  ‘Not him.’

  ‘I didn’t mean him.’

  ‘She’s English, remember. Yes, I had a call from her. It was . . .’

  ‘Does she still want money?’ I interrupted

  ‘No, she didn’t say any more about that. It was . . . it was unpleasant, that’s all. She just screamed abuse at me, called me terrible names, said terrible things to me.’

  ‘How many calls?’

  ‘Two. One the day after you were here, then another a few days ago, the day after your premiere in fact.’

  I heard a low growl, and realised that I was its source. ‘Bitch,’ I rumbled. ‘I’m sorry, Dad: I made a mistake. I put the fear of God almighty into the husband, thinking that would be enough. Clearly, I should have done the same to her. That’s not beyond redemption, though.’

  Mac the Dentist shook his head. ‘Don’t make it any worse, son. Leave her alone, please.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that. It was Andrea Neiporte who chucked that can of paint at me at the premiere.’

  His mouth dropped open, revealing his crooked, coffee-stained lower teeth . . . funny thing, but as far as I’ve seen, dentists rarely present good advertisements for their profession. ‘Wh . . .’ He looked stunned. ‘How do you know that?’