Unnatural Justice (Oz Blackstone Mysteries)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Tell them we don’t want any,’ I said to Jay. No way could I trust Gerry to smooth talk coppers in his condition. The state he was in, give him thirty seconds and he’d have confessed to shooting Bambi’s mother.

  As Jay went off to talk to Mr Plod, I walked into Susie’s office and sat behind her desk. My agitated fellow director followed me in, but I paid him no attention as I sat in my wife’s chair and swivelled it around, looking out at the bright morning and trying to get a handle on what was happening. Eventually I formed my mental ducks into something resembling a row. I swung the chair round and turned back to Gerry. ‘Before you packed Denise off home, did she say anything about the package?’ I asked.

  ‘It was in a Jiffy bag, apparently.’

  ‘How was it addressed?’

  He looked at me blankly. ‘To Susie,’ he exclaimed.

  ‘No, man,’ I said, forcing myself to be patient. ‘Did she say if it was hand-written?’

  ‘It wasn’t. I saw it myself. The address was on a stick-on label; it looked as if it came off a printer.’

  ‘Was it stamped or franked?’ As I asked the question I realised how stupid it was. To send a letter-bomb with franked, and thus traceable, postage would be idiocy of a higher level than I’d ever encountered.

  This didn’t dawn on Gerry, though. ‘I can’t remember,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you remember the postmark? Did you see where it was posted?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry, Oz.’

  I waved a hand at him, to indicate that it didn’t matter. At that moment, the phone rang on Susie’s desk: I picked it up, hoping that it wasn’t her. It wasn’t; instead I heard Ali Speirs, the finance director’s secretary, on the line. ‘Gerry?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it’s Oz. What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve got a journalist on the phone, Mr Blackstone,’ she blurted out, anxiously. ‘He says we’ve had a letter-bomb here. Is that why the police are outside?’ I gave her boss a look of approval. He hadn’t even told his own secretary what had happened.

  ‘It’s bullshit, Ali. Put him through here, but don’t tell him it’s me. Let him think he’s speaking to Gerry.’

  ‘Very good.’ She didn’t ask why; I guessed she knew him pretty well.

  ‘Mr Meek?’ a nasal, ingratiating voice exclaimed a few seconds later. ‘This is Larry Moore, of the Red Hot News Agency. Have you got any comment to make about the bomb?’

  ‘Well basically,’ I began, ‘I’m against all weapons of mass destruction, and I think that Robert Oppenheimer and his team have a hell of a lot to answer for. On the other hand, if the Pandora’s Box of nuclear energy had to be opened, I suppose we have to be grateful that our side found the combination before Hitler did.’

  There was a brief silence, and then Moore was back, less wheedling this time. ‘Mr Meek, I was talking about the letter-bomb which was delivered to your office this morning.’

  ‘Did you deliver it? If so, can you tell me where it is? Maybe then I can answer your strange question.’

  ‘Mr Meek, are you denying that you had an incendiary device delivered?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what an associate of mine is telling the police even as we speak. We had a small outbreak of fire in the office. It was dealt with by our automatic system and by an alert staff member, and there was no need to involve the emergency services.’ He started to speak again, but I cut him off. ‘Now I’ve got one for you. Who fed you this crap?’

  ‘We don’t reveal sources, Mr Meek.’

  ‘You couldn’t reveal this one even if you did, because you don’t fucking know it. You’ve had an anonymous call, Larry, haven’t you, and you’ve seen a pound or two in it. Tell me, is there any part of the phrase “Taking the piss” that you have trouble understanding?’

  ‘Are you saying this was a hoax call?’

  ‘That’s the first sensible question you’ve asked me.’

  ‘But if it was, who’d make it?’

  ‘That’s the second, and it’s one I’m going to be trying to answer for myself. But when I do, I won’t be telling you. Have a nice lunch.’

  I hung up on him, and looked up at the real Gerry Meek. ‘Nobody else knew about the fire? Only you and Denise Scott?’

  ‘Nobody. I just happened to be passing, and I heard the sound of the sprinklers, then Denise operating the fire extinguisher. When she told me what had happened, I decided it was best kept quiet till you got here.’ He paused. ‘But there’s something else, Oz. Something I have remembered. The package was neither stamped nor franked.’

  My eyebrows rose. ‘Hand-delivered? A courier.’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Once the police have gone,’ I told him, ‘go and ask Danny.’ The front of house act at Gantry Group head office is quite up-market, as befits a public company. We have night security, but during the day, from eight in the morning till five pm, there’s a uniformed commissionaire, whose job it is to receive visitors and take deliveries. He’s an ex-constable and his name is Daniel. ‘You’d better give Ali the official version too, just as I gave it to that guy, and ask her to circulate it.’

  I looked over my shoulder, out of the window. The two coppers had climbed back into their patrol car, and were leaving, a hell of a lot more quietly than they’d arrived. They had barely cleared the drive before Jay was back, his path crossing with Gerry’s in the doorway.

  ‘Sorted?’

  He nodded. ‘They bought it. They’ll report it as a waste of police time. I asked them what they knew about the caller. All they knew was unidentified male.’

  ‘They weren’t the only ones to get a call.’ I told him about Mr Larry Moore.

  ‘What’ll he do?’

  ‘Flog his non-story for what he can get for it. It’ll appear somewhere, I’m sure. I can see the headline, “Letter-bomb scare after fire at Glasgow firm”. I just hope that none of the tabloids have the wit to tie this to the paint incident.’

  ‘But don’t be surprised if they do,’ Jay warned.

  ‘I won’t be. I’m going to have to tell Susie, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Wise, boss. Now, what about these Neiporte characters? Are you sure about not bringing in the police?’

  ‘Dead certain. It’d get out for sure . . . and think of those headlines when it did. “Film star’s dentist dad in sex smear scandal”.’

  ‘You’ve missed your true vocation,’ my bodyguard chuckled. ‘You should have been a tabloid sub-editor. But you’re right: that’s how they’d treat it, and since half their customers don’t read past the headline . . .’

  I nodded, feeling the anger begin to swell again. I reached under the desk for a switch I knew was there, to make dead certain that Susie’s private taping system, a hold-over from the Jack Gantry days that she hadn’t bothered to remove, was switched off. ‘I can’t go near them again, Jay,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t trust myself. But I want this stopped in its tracks. No more incidents, no more threats.’

  ‘No questions asked?’ That was the key question in itself.

  I looked him straight in the eye for more than a few seconds. ‘None.’

  Chapter 13

  As it turned out, Susie’s series of meetings at the New Bearsden project took up the whole of her working day. When I called her on her mobile just after lunch, she told me she’d be coming straight home. When I told her what had happened at the office, her first thought after she came down off the ceiling was for Denise Scott. It didn’t occur to her that she herself might have been lying in a burns unit somewhere, wondering if she’d be able to see again when they took the bandages off her face, and if she could, whether she’d be able to live with what was in the mirror.

  It was only after she had called her secretary at home and satisfied herself that she was okay, that I was able to give her the rest of the story, and tell her how we had handled the police and the press. She didn’t disagree with any of it; I was pleased that she accepted what I offered her as my reasons for playing it down. Given her ear
ly days as Gantry Group managing director, she was hyper-sensitive about its public image.

  I’d thought about it, and if she’d really pressed me, I’d been prepared to tell her the truth, the whole story about the Neiportes and their attempt to blackmail my Dad, but it didn’t get that far. The only thing she asked was why we hadn’t told Goodchild Capperauld, the group’s retained PR company, to handle it. ‘There’s public relations and there’s crisis management,’ I pointed out. ‘Alison and her people are good at what they do on the positive side, but I’ve got no idea what they’re like at scraping shit off walls.’

  She accepted that analysis. Happily she didn’t seem even to consider the idea that the incident might have been linked to the paint affair.

  She asked how the package had made it through to her office. I was able to tell her that. Daniel, the commissionaire, had recalled it being delivered by a skinny cyclist messenger in a skin-tight suit, a plastic crash hat and wrapround sunglasses. The description fitted any one of a couple of thousand kids pedalling around the city. I knew that our chances of finding him amounted to zero, but I promised her that Jay and I would trawl round all the listed courier firms to see if we could trace the one that had made the drop.

  I played it poker-faced, and went through the motions of beginning to trace the culprit. I asked her if she had had trouble with anyone recently, if she’d sacked any employees for misconduct, or incompetence, but nothing and nobody came to mind. ‘It’s probably just a one-off,’ she pronounced, finally, ‘but we’ll have to increase security at the office from now on, for everyone’s sake.’

  ‘That’s being taken care of,’ I told her. ‘Gerry’s going to ask our security firm to supply a mail scanner. It’ll be Daniel’s job to put everything through it before it’s distributed.’

  ‘What about here?’ she asked. I was pleased to see that she was beginning to show a degree of concern for her own security.

  ‘We’ll have one here too. Jay or I will screen everything. You don’t touch it, okay?’

  She snorted. ‘We’ll see about that.’

  As I’d feared, the story did make the press next day, but it was the Herald, rather than one of the tabloids, and so it was written up as a hoax call, rather than a genuine emergency; happily the police confirmed that. ‘Maybe you should go into the crisis management business,’ Susie suggested, as she read it over breakfast. She had a real point there, had she only known it, but I chose to laugh it off.

  The mail scanner arrived next morning, but Jay wasn’t there to set it up. He had gone off on what I had told Susie was a couple of days’ leave, to deal with a family emergency. I didn’t tell her that the family in question was mine. She said something pointed about bad timing, but she liked Jay as much as I did, so she didn’t push it. When I said I’d told him to take as long as he liked, just to make sure that he got the problem sorted, she nodded agreement.

  I plugged the scanner in and gave it a test run with an envelope loaded with coins; in the instant that it slid down the shelf of the machine and through its sensor beam, the alarm went off with a clang. I found the volume control and turned it down, then switched it off. The truth was I didn’t expect to have to use it in earnest. I was damn sure who the pyromaniacs were and that they were about to receive the sort of warning that they really would take seriously.

  With that done, it looked as if I was in for a long solitary day. Having decided that our daughter should prepare for the arrival of her brother by learning to mix with other kids, we had found a playgroup in Rhu that looked ideal for the purpose. She and Ethel had headed off there just after nine for what the head teacher . . . if that’s what they’re called in kiddie corrals . . . had called ‘enrolment and indoctrination’. Our nanny had snorted at that one, but Janet hadn’t batted an eyelid. All she was focused on was the word ‘play’.

  Left with only old Willie, the gardener, for company, I did the obvious thing and phoned the golf club to check whether there was a tee time available. There was indeed, provided I was prepared to share it with an overseas member, newly arrived from the south of France and hungry for action. I gave him all that he could handle, and a little more besides; he took his three and two cuffing in good part, and proved to be an entertaining lunch companion as well.

  When I got back, I checked my e-mail, finding the few spam messages that had made it through my filter . . . ‘No, sir, I don’t need emergency finance.’ ‘No, sir, I don’t want to see people who look something like famous people in unusual sexual positions.’ (I’m a bloody actor for Christ’s sake; I’ve seen real famous people in unusual sexual positions) . . . and a ‘How’s it going, buddy?’ message from Miles Grayson.

  I’ve become such an e-mail nerd, I almost didn’t bother to check my voice-mail. It was almost by accident that I saw the light flashing on my telephone. There were two messages. One of them was from some enthusiastic girl telling me that I’d won a voucher worth a thousand pounds towards the cost of a luxury fitted kitchen . . . The first time an enterprising company decides to cold-call people and say, ‘We’ve got this really good product that we’re prepared to sell you at a fair price,’ they’ll make a bloody fortune . . . and the other was from Ewan Maltbie, asking if I could call him back.

  It was either him or the fitted kitchen girl, so Maltbie won . . . if only narrowly.

  Although I was returning his call, his secretary made me hold on for five minutes, listening to ‘Sultans of Swing’ . . . could there ever be a better choice of telephone music for a law firm than something by a band called Dire Straits? . . . before he came on the line himself. ‘Mr Blackstone,’ he began.

  ‘I never imagined you could play guitar like that,’ I said.

  ‘Pardon?’ he replied, sounding bemused. Solicitors? Getting the joke? Forget it.

  He went on. ‘I want to talk to you about Joe’s personal effects. I’ll be putting the house on the market this week. However I expect a quick sale. I’ve already had two notes of interest from other firms in the town, and once it’s advertised I expect a lot more. As you know, I’m bound to sell all the furniture . . . all that is sellable, that is. However I wondered whether you and Mrs Blackstone might like to go through it first, to see whether there’s anything you’d like to buy privately, before it goes to auction.’

  I couldn’t imagine that there would be, but I decided to accept the invitation anyway. ‘We’ll take you up on that, Mr Maltbie. There’s one thing that I’d certainly like to look at, and that’s Joe’s computer. It’s just possible that he had items on it that relate to the Group. If that’s the case then I’d like them erased . . . or I suppose the company might buy it, as an indirect contribution to the charities that will benefit from the sale.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I heard Maltbie mutter, ‘I don’t recall Joe ever saying anything about having a computer, but if you’d like to check, I have no problem with that. When would you like to visit?’

  ‘Gimme a minute,’ I told him. Susie and I keep a master diary on our computers: I was still switched on, so I was able to consult it quickly. ‘If you don’t hear to the contrary,’ I said, ‘we’ll make it tomorrow afternoon, say two thirty. That seems to be the only opening this week.’

  ‘That will suit me. I’ll arrange for a member of my staff to meet you at the house.’

  ‘Not necessary; we’ll collect the keys from your office.’

  ‘No, no, I insist. You’re both busy people.’ I smiled as I thought about my day. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he continued, ‘I was sorry to read about the incident in Mrs Blackstone’s office on Monday. It’s a blessing no one was hurt. We can never take too many precautions in our offices these days, you know. It just takes one moment of carelessness . . .’ He paused. ‘Mind you, I can understand why the papers were prepared to believe that hoax call. There are some funny people around these days.’

  ‘Too bloody right, mate,’ I muttered, so quietly that I doubt whether he heard me.

  ‘The Gantry Group’s not having the
best run of luck just now, is it?’ I heard him say.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said you’re having a hard time just now. First poor Joe, going in such a tragic way. Now a fire in your office. If one didn’t know they were both sheer blind bad luck, one might almost think that someone has it in for you.’

  I blinked as he said it. I’d been so focused on the paint-chucking incident that I’d gone straight there for a connection. But Ewan Maltbie didn’t strike me as a tabloid reader; he probably didn’t even know about that. It’s amazing what you can see when you’re not wearing blinkers.

  Chapter 14

  After I thought about it some more, though, I didn’t buy into the lawyer’s suggestion. There was no threat to the Gantry Group: we were major employers and well up there among the business flavours of the month. On the other hand, there had been a threat to my Dad, a physical attack of sorts against Susie and me, and we knew who was behind both of them.

  I did give a moment’s thought to calling Jay on his mobile and telling him to go easy on the Neiportes, but I decided to let him get on with it. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I guessed that it would be along the lines of my own call on Walter, only a bit more scary. We hadn’t discussed what to do if our bluff was called, but I had worked it out for myself. I was going to pay them, but I was going to set it up so that the exchange was filmed, and so that it was made very clear that it was an extortion payment.

  I half-expected Jay to be back before we left for Motherwell. He wasn’t, but I gave it no thought. Susie had come home for lunch with me and our daughter, now a fully enrolled and indoctrinated pupil at the Daybreak Nursery, and loving every minute of it.

  When we left for Motherwell, with Susie at the wheel this time, we took a more direct route, crossing the lonely Erskine Bridge to avoid the west of Glasgow, then picking up the M8 and heading for Edinburgh, although we wouldn’t get anywhere near it.

  The Kingston Bridge was busy, as it always is during the working day, but at least the traffic was moving, albeit slowly. As we rolled across, I found myself glancing up towards the skyline on my left, to the distinctive building where Susie and I had lived. Prim and I had lived there too, for a while, and before that, Jan and I had died there . . . or at least she had, although part of me, maybe the good part, had gone with her. Now that I had cut that place from my life, I realised how badly I had needed to do it, but that something had held me back for too long. Closure is a word used by many people who don’t really know what it means. I only came to understand myself, when I turned my back on that cursed place.