by Rick Blechta
“Would you care to sit down?” I inquired politely.
Regina, arms crossed, stood for a long moment glaring at me, before taking the offered seat. I thought it best to put the desk between us, so I sat in my own chair.
“You are a total bastard!” she spat out.
“You came a long way just to tell me that. A phone call would have been easier and a hell of a lot cheaper,” I answered, rather coldly and immediately regretted it.
For several seconds she didn’t say anything, and I thought she might start crying, but although her eyes brightened, Regina maintained her composure and said quietly, “Angus warned me you could be like this.”
I ran my hands over my face and back through my hair, then looked across my desk at her. “Regina... I know it won’t mean very much after the fact, but I regret what I did. I really do.” A bad thought crossed my mind. “What else did Angus say about me?”
Regina’s eyes drifted away to a poster of the Red Hot Chili Peppers behind my desk. “Angus cares about you very much. To be honest, I wish I had a friend like him.”
“You’re stalling. Come on. What did he say about me?”
“He told me that, regardless of outward impressions, you have no idea what you’re doing with your life, that I shouldn’t take what you did personally. You’ve been running away from things for years. Well I’m sorry, but I did take it personally.”
“I didn’t make any promises,” I said, but it sounded lame even to my ears.
“And I didn’t expect any! But the least you could have done was woken me up and told me that it had been fun, but you really had to be going. You made me feel cheap, slinking out like that!”
“Regina, that’s the last thing you should feel. The problem was all at my end. I guess I just freaked. It was a stupid thing to do.”
“Yes, it was. I came here to get back a measure of self-respect!”
I rubbed my cheek reflectively. “You certainly made your point.”
“Good! You damn well deserved it.”
I sighed, knowing that this was my just desserts for letting my gonads make decisions for me.
Checking my watch, I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here. Can I, ah, take you to dinner or something?”
I didn’t know why I’d said that last bit—probably another pang of guilt—but it slipped out before my brain got hold of it, and once said, it wasn’t in the realm of possibility to take it back. My only hope was that she’d decline.
She didn’t.
“That’s the least you can do,” Regina responded primly. “I haven’t eaten anything all day.”
“Okay, I know just the place. Great food, and we don’t have to be dressed up.”
“That’s good, because I don’t have much more than I did when I jumped into your car. I did a little shopping at the Glasgow airport, but that was basically just to get a few necessities.”
The lads were in the entry room and fell silent when they heard our footsteps crossing the warehouse.
“I have some things to take care of,” I told them as we came through, “but I’ll be here first thing in the morning. Kevin, could you pull the file of what we rented to the jazz festival last year? We need to come up with a quote, and I low-balled it to help them out. This year they’ll have to pay the full freight. Hamed, could you take a look at that Twin Reverb amp that isn’t working right? It may just need a new valve—”
“Tube, boss,” he grinned. “They’re called tubes on this side of theAtlantic.”
“You know what I mean, so there’s no need to correct me!” I shot back. “We’ll need to get it fixed immediately if it’s something more.”
Regina had been standing by the door looking amused. While I was giving orders, I noticed the lads’ eyes flicking in her direction speculatively. Certainly, they were eager to know if their obvious suppositions were true, but that being the case, they’d need to get used to disappointment.
Regina kept her distance as we walked to my car. She wasn’t about to make this any easier.
***
I took her to a nearby steak house where I often dine. During the drive over, I commented that I hoped this ride wouldn’t turn out like the last one. She made a sour face, which put an abrupt halt to any attempt at making small talk.
Dinner continued in the same stiff manner, and I began to wonder why Regina had agreed to let me take her out. All of my conversational attempts were met with minimal answers.
Finally, after the table had been cleared but coffee hadn’t yet arrived, I made one last stab. “So where are you staying?”
Regina looked at me and yawned. “Excuse me! I guess the jet lag is catching up. I also didn’t get much sleep last night.” She yawned again. “When I got into Toronto this afternoon, I just told the cabbie to take me to the nearest hotel. I’m afraid I don’t remember which one.”
If that was an overture, I wasn’t having any. “Fortunately, the ones near the airport are pretty well along one road, so we shouldn’t have much trouble finding it.”
During coffee, she actually asked a few polite questions about my business, but because of her continued yawning, I gave short answers and got us out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. I’d done my chivalrous duty, and now was the time to see her to her door, then get the hell out while the getting was good. I did not want her to do something silly like ask if she could stay with me. One mistake was enough for this week, thank you.
The drive to her hotel was more relaxed than the earlier one to the restaurant. Regina actually began talking about having visited Toronto one summer eight years earlier to spend time with a school chum.
“I’ve been thinking about trying to look her up, but we lost touch when we both went to university, and her parents were getting on in years. They may have retired to Florida by now.”
“What are your long-range plans, though?”
“I wish I knew.” Regina was silent for a couple of minutes. “I quit my job in Paris. It wouldn’t have been fair to make them sit around, waiting for me to come back—even if they would have. I don’t think I want to work there anyway, since it was my father who got me the job. They probably are aware of who he is, and I couldn’t stand being around them, knowing that they know.” I could see from the corner of my eye that Regina was shaking her head. “I don’t think he’d leave me alone anyway, especially after what happened back in Birmingham.” She suddenly pointed. “Oh, look! There’s my hotel.”
The Constellation. I pulled in and stopped at the front entrance. The doorman was nowhere to be seen, and Regina suddenly seemed reluctant to get out of the car. “Michael...”
Not wanting to give her a chance to say something I didn’t want to hear, I interrupted. “Regina, I can’t say that it hasn’t been interesting. We met under the most bizarre circumstances imaginable.”
She smiled for the first time that evening. “Relax. I just wanted to thank you for the meal—and what you did for me in Birmingham.”
“Yes. Of course.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for everything, Michael. You’re a good man.”
“I’m sorry for what happened between us.”
“Well, I’m certainly not!” Another smile flitted across Regina’s face. “You must be wondering what you did to deserve all this.”
She got out of the car, and I watched her slim form as she disappeared through the doors.
That thought had crossed my mind once or twice.
***
The ringing of the telephone felt like a quarter-inch drill bit going directly into my right ear. Rolling over, I groped around on the bedside table and only succeeded in knocking the cordless off its stand. With a colourful oath or two, I got out of bed and began feeling around for it on the floor more by sound than anything else, longing to put it out of its misery. I might have thought of turning on the light if I hadn’t been so soundly asleep when it had gone off.
Finally, I located it halfway under the bed.
“Hello?”
“Michael?”
“Yes, this is Michael,” I said very patiently.
“It’s Regina. Look, I’m sorry to be calling at such an ungodly hour—”
“Just for the record,” I interrupted, “what time is it?”
“Four a.m.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and finally turned on the light. “How did you get this number?”
She hesitated for a moment. “From Angus.”
“And why are you calling me in the middle of the night?”
“I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t really important,” she said a touch resentfully. “It’s just that I can’t reach Angus on the phone.” Looking heavenward, I answered, “He’s probably out somewhere.
Why do you have to speak to him so desperately?”
“Angus wanted me to call after I saw you. I promised I would. I’ve been trying for the past two hours, and no one answers!”
“Okay. Let’s go through this step by step. Were you supposed to ring him at a particular hour?”
“He said to call any time since he was planning on being home, but I thought it would be better to wait until I wouldn’t be waking him up. If I called at two a.m., that would be five hours later over there, and he’d be sure to be up.”
“I am aware of the time difference,” I responded dryly, thinking that Regina hadn’t shown the same compunction about waking me.
“He was very adamant that I should call.”
“That’s odd. Angus is usually pretty reliable that way. Is the phone line still working? It could have gone down in the storm. Happens once or twice a year.”
“I checked. Everything’s fine, according to the operator. I’mw orried,Michael.”
There was no need to ask why. We both knew that if the blokes we’d tangled with in Birmingham got a good look at the license plate on Angus’s Jag, it wouldn’t take them long to track down who owned it. I felt a knot forming in the pit of my stomach.
“Michael?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“There may be a perfectly innocent explanation, but I’m going to ring the Dunoon police and ask if they’ll send a car over to make sure Angus is all right.”
“Please call me as soon as you know anything,” Regina said firmly. “I won’t be able to sleep at all until I find out he’s okay.”
***
That was the end of any hope of sleep for that night.
Naturally, as soon as I rang off with Regina, I tried Angus—with no result. After making a pot of tea, I sat at the kitchen table brooding. At half four, having had no better luck with a further try, I rang up the Dunoon Police.
The officer who took my call, while very polite, made it quite clear they had their hands full at the moment but promised someone would look in on my friend as soon as they could spare the manpower. I got the strong impression that they wouldn’t be getting to it any time soon.
In a bit of turnabout, I called Regina, and while she claimed she’d been awake worrying, she definitely sounded groggy. I rang off feeling distinctly un-guilty about waking her.
The phone rang again shortly before nine.
“Mr. Michael Quinn?” a voice asked in about as thick a Scottish accent as I’ve ever heard.
“Speaking.”
“And are you the Michael Quinn who rang the Dunoon Police earlier with concerns over the well being of a Mr. Angus MacDougall?”
Finding the pedantic manner of the caller extremely irritating, I answered back sharply, “Of course I am, otherwise you wouldn’t have this number, would you?”
“What gave you reason to be concerned about his welfare, sir?”
“Angus didn’t answer his phone when I was certain he would be in. Has someone been up to his house?”
Again the pause. “Yes, they have, Mr. Quinn.”
“And is my friend all right?”
“Did you have reason to suspect that he wouldn’t be?”
I felt as if a cold wind had blown through me. “For God’s sake, tell me what’s going on!”
“I would first like to ask you a question or two if I may, Mr. Quinn. Did your concern for Mr. MacDougall come from any fear that someone might wish to harm him?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Please answer my question.”
I considered well before answering. “No, not really. I had just promised to call him, that’s all, and when he didn’t answer the phone after repeated tries, I rang you folks up. Now can you tell me what’s wrong with Angus?”
“This is not normally something we like to do over the phone, you understand, but the constable dispatched to the MacDougall house found him dead in his sitting room.”
I slumped back on my chair. Even though I had been expecting bad news, I had not been expecting anything like this.
“Did he have a heart attack or something?”
“We can’t be sure about the cause of death until we have the results of an autopsy.”
“What? How?” was all I managed to get out.
The voice on the other end now sounded more patient—probably from too much experience at this sort of news-breaking. “Take a few deep breaths, Mr. Quinn. When you’re ready to continue, I have a few more questions I would like you to answer.”
“Anything.”
“Very good, sir. Now, when did you last see or speak to Mr. MacDougall?”
“I was at his home two days ago before returning to Toronto. He drove me to the ferry.”
“And did you speak with him since?”
“No.”
“Why specifically were you to call him today?”
My brain switched into high gear again. “I had borrowed his car, and it had got damaged. I was calling to find out how much the repair bill would be.”
“You’re speaking of the blue Jaguar XKE, 1967 with damage to the bonnet, farside wing and farside window?”
That was pretty thorough! “Yes. Why are you asking me all this?”
“It’s necessary considering the situation.”
Lack of sleep and tension, guilt, grief, whatever, caused me to snap, “Would you kindly tell me what’s going on?”
The voice answered, not unkindly, “Our investigation up to this point has been very preliminary, but we’re treating this as a homicide.”
I felt as close to passing out as I ever have, with one other exception. I took a few deep breaths before asking, “Your name is?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Campbell, sir.”
“I will be on the next plane leaving Toronto for the UK .”
“A very wise decision, Mr. Quinn. It will save us a great deal of trouble.”
After hanging up, I completely fell to pieces.
Six
I’ve never particularly enjoyed flying. There’s the interminable waiting at the airport, then there are the planes themselves: claustrophobic, noisy and uncomfortable. Between connecting flights, I had too many hours alone with my thoughts, none of them even remotely good. Angus’s death was clearly on my shoulders.
Immediately after getting off the phone with the Scottish detective, I’d called my travel agent. In short order she’d booked me on a flight to Manchester, with a connection on to Glasgow which would get me in at eight a.m. the following morning.
Regina’s first reaction to the horrible news had been a desire to accompany me, and I only just talked her out of it. If what we were surmising was correct, the bad guys could quite possibly still be around and on the watch for her. If they identified me, then there wasn’t much we could do, because I had to go.
Everything that day took on an air of unreality. The last time I’d felt this detached from normalcy was five years earlier when my brother Bobby had suddenly passed away. No one expects a brother to die of a massive heart attack two days before his fiftieth birthday. My reaction to my mum’s call had been the same: I’d taken the first plane.
/> Some people never learn.
***
Far too early the next morning, I got into my hired car with a heavy heart and headed west for the Calmac ferry dock at Gourock. My mood was not improved by the fact that I’d have to brave crossing the Firth of Clyde yet again. The day was fine and clear, though, and I spent the twenty-minute ride with hardly a lurch of my stomach. That didn’t stop the dread creeping up on me as the boat neared the end of its journey.
One of the ferry employees pointed me in the direction of the police station. I’d already arranged to meet Detective Chief Inspector Campbell at eleven a.m., which gave me time to find a café for a spot of breakfast, nothing more than a bap and a cup of tea, since my nerves were completely on edge.
DI Campbell turned out to be a tall, slender man as overly fussy in person as he’d sounded on the phone. I gauged him to be in his midfifties, although that could have been due to the fact that he seemed so bloody dour.
He didn’t greet me particularly warmly, considering that I’d flown across the Atlantic on short notice to try to help him. He did offer me coffee, though, which I accepted, although I don’t often drink the stuff. A good-looking female constable brought it in, then sat down in the corner with a pad and pen. Campbell took almost no notice of her.
“Now tell me, Mr. Quinn, about your relationship with Angus MacDougall.”
“Angus is... was one of my oldest friends. I was a member of a band when I was younger, and Angus was our road manager.”
“The name of the band?”
