"Which firm are you with?" I asked him.
He stared at me as if I had just told him the date of his birth, his mother's maiden name and his inside leg measurement. "You know me?"
"I don't think so."
"Then how do you know I'm a solicitor?"
"It's a fifty-fifty chance on these flights, and you don't look like a foot baller His crest seemed to fall very slightly. "I am, though. I play for my firm's team. We'd a match last Sunday in fact: played the Faculty of Advocates. Lost two nil."
"You let them win?"
"There were two judges in their side: we thought it wise. Oh yes, and to answer your question, I'm a partner in Kendall McGuire."
"Now there's a coincidence." I almost said it aloud. Instead; "I thought you were based in Edinburgh."
"We are: Edinburgh and London, that is. I've been in the London office since Wednesday morning, and now I'm going to Glasgow for a meeting with a client. After that, I'm off home."
I decided that I wanted to browse in W H Smith for a little longer.
"You're a pretty specialist firm, aren't you?" I asked him.
"Very. Nearly all of our practice is corporate, although we do handle some very specialised private client work, people we call Hinwies."
I knew the term but I played dumb. "Come again?"
"H. N. W. I.," he spelled out. "High Net Worth Individuals."
"Ahh," I said, reclining my seat as the captain switched off the seat belt sign. "It's nice to know that Susie and I have an acronym. We're a bit beyond Yuppieness." I waited for his chortling to subside.
"You've never acted for Gantry, have you?" I asked.
He blinked, then gave me a slightly confused look; you might even have called it apprehensive. "Ah, the Gantry Group," he exclaimed, when he caught on. "No we haven't. Not yet at any rate, but strange things happen in the business world, so you never know. Who are your legal advisers at the moment?"
"McPhillips and Company… and Greg's a mate, as well as being company secretary, so I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you. But you've got a pretty chunky client list anyway, don't you?"
"Oh yes. As I said, we're absolutely blue chip. We've acted for some of the biggest names in Scotland, and beyond." He reeled off three insurance companies, a bank and two major manufacturers.
"Don't you act for Torrent as well?" I dropped it in gently to see how far the ripples would spread.
"Not as far as I know," WHS replied.
"Then your senior partner's keeping secrets from you," I thought, 'or you 're lying in your teeth."
"Ah. I was told you did; I must have been misinformed."
"We'd like to, of course," he volunteered, 'just as we'd like to act for the Gantry Group."
"I think those two might be mutually exclusive."
"Oh? Why should that be?" He looked surprised.
On the other hand, I did my best to look mysterious. "Can't say, I'm afraid."
"Let him take that back to Duncan Kendall and see what they make of it:
"I have met Natalie Morgan, actually," Smith volunteered. "She's quite a spectacular lady, isn't she?"
"I've met her too. I don't like her… actually. She's not as bad as her uncle, though. Now he was a real cunt." I don't like the 'c' word, but when I thought of the late James Torrent, it just slipped out. "Where did you encounter Nat?" I asked the question in the hope that the solicitor's professional discretion gene might be a wee bit faulty, but he had said as much about her as he was going to, especially knowing that I wasn't a fan.
"Socially," was all he volunteered, then he changed the subject. "That was a rather unfortunate business for the Gantry Group at the weekend."
"Unfortunate," I agreed, 'but not crippling. Greg's dealing with it."
"I'm sure he is. Still, if there's anything Kendall McGuire can do for you…"
I smiled at him as cheerfully as I could. "Well…" I began, starting a look of anticipation in his eyes, '… if any of the Three Bears happens to figure on your Hinwie client list, you could ask them to fuck off and buy somewhere else."
The flight attendant chose exactly the right moment to interrupt our discussion. WHS accepted his lunch tray; I passed on mine but took a small bottle of red wine, then settled down with my Scotsman.
The lead story was a banner heading about the latest cost estimate for the Holyrood Parliament building. The subject ceased long ago to excite me… and the rest of the Scottish nation, I suspect… but for the broad sheets it's an ever-ready club with which to batter the fledgling legislature about the ears, and to demonstrate to the world that our celebrated national parsimony is alive and well. I read it nonetheless, whistling in spite of myself at the numbers they were claiming.
The back page seemed to be in the same spirit, a ritual castigation of our unfortunate rugby players in the light of their latest mauling in the southern hemisphere. It cut no ice that it was only the constant press carping that had driven the Scottish authorities to fill the team with grand-maternal Aussies and Kiwis who couldn't quite make their own national sides. It cut no ice that rugby union isn't even our third choice as a national sport; genuine, round-ball football, golf and bowls all come before it. They had been gubbed by a side with ten times the resources, but they were still a national disgrace.
I was annoyed, and a bit scunnered… there's a real Sunday Post word for you… when I fought my way to pages two and three, folding the pages awkwardly, it being a real bugger to read a broadsheet on a plane while trying to balance a glass of wine on a tray table.
My crabbitness… another from the D C Thomson lexicon… lasted for as long as it took me to cast my eye on the lead story on page three. The headline read "life police struggle to identify pig farm couple'.
My gasp must have been audible, but fortunately W H Smith had just spilled a piece of chicken cacciatore down his trousers and was otherwise occupied. I got a grip of myself quickly, and focused on the story.
"Senior detectives in life' I read silently, 'admitted last night that they had so far failed to identify human remains found yesterday on an intensive pig farm near Arncroach in East life.
' The bodies, believed to be those of a man and a woman, were badly decomposed, making it difficult for police to estimate how long they had been there. Asked for a comment, Detective Inspector Tom Reekie, of North East life CID, said that, initially, the deaths were being treated as suspicious, until cause of death could be established.
"A post mortem examination will be carried out today in Edinburgh by a team including a pathologist and a forensic anthropologist.
"Inspector Reekie confirmed that identification was impossible at this stage, but that a number of possible lines of inquiry were being pursued. He said that other forces, not only in Scotland but throughout Britain, had been advised, so that they might check their missing persons files.
"However it is understood that life police themselves are pursuing the possibility that the bodies might be those of American-born Walter Neiporte (37), and his wife Andrea (29), who have been missing from their home in the fishing village of Pittenweem for several weeks.
Police sources said that relatives of the couple were being contacted in the USA and England, so that DNA samples might be obtained for comparison testing.
"Neighbours of the missing couple described them last night as "strange", and "distant", although work colleagues described Mrs.
Neiporte as a "popular, friendly woman ".
"The farm where the bodies were discovered, Lesser Saltgate, is operated by Mr. Sandy McPhimister, ofKincraig. It is one of several that he owns in the area and has been the subject of repeated complaints from neighbours concerned about lack of supervision, the standard of husbandry, and about smells coming from the premises.
"It is understood that the bodies were discovered by SSPCA inspectors called in after complaints were received of a particularly foul smell.
They were said to have been concealed in the troughs and covered in pig feed."
The last part made my stomach turn over: I imagined that Walter and Andrea had become part of the food chain.
The stories were accompanied by head and shoulder photographs of the missing couple; instantly a cold fist gripped my stomach. It didn't go away until I had convinced myself that hers was so dated and so grainy that there was no chance of Ronnie Morrow, assuming he read the story, picking her out as the woman who had chucked the paint at Susie and me.
Mind you, I had to work hard to convince myself.
Twenty-Seven.
Jay Yuille was waiting for me at Glasgow Airport, with the engine running as usual in the hope that the police and the security people wouldn't give him a hard time. I tossed my bag on to the back seat, then climbed into the front beside him. I don't like acting the toff at the best of times, and I wanted to see his reaction close up when he saw the Scotsman report.
He didn't bat an eyelid; he scanned the story then handed me the paper.
"What's this, Jay?" I asked him as he pulled away, waving to a copper who was peering through the glass at me in the front passenger seat.
Automatically, I waved at the guy too. As I did so I saw Wylie H Smith rushing off towards the taxi rank: remembering the way he'd been sweating on the shuttle, I hoped he didn't sit too close to his client… for both their sakes.
I turned back to my minder. "Looks like a domestic tragedy to me, boss," he replied, quietly.
'for sure, but…"
"But nothing, Oz: I've seen cases like these before. People get involved in something, thinking they're on to an easy mark and that they're smart enough to control the situation, take their profit and bugger off. But they're not that smart, and all of a sudden they find out that they're not in control. When that happens, the consequences can sometimes be terminal."
"But this isn't any old case, is it?"
"It is as far as you're concerned."
"Come on, Jay, let's stop pissing about. I sent you after these people and we both know that."
I saw his nostrils flare slightly. "No, sir. This is how it was. You perceived a threat to your security, you did not want to go to the police, so you asked me," he leaned on the word, 'to look into it. You did not send me anywhere. That's the way it was."
"Not exactly."
"Yes, Oz, exactly. You'll recall also that we agreed no questions would be asked about my methods?"
I nodded. "Yes, I remember that."
"Well don't fucking ask any then," he said, quietly.
"You mean I have to live with this, and that's it."
"Yup, live with it. That's more than the Neiportes are doing. Tell me something; do you really give a shit that they're dead?"
I felt my mouth twist. (Being me, I probably filed the gesture away subconsciously for use on a future movie. The truth is that art imitates life, not the other way around.) "No," I admitted. "Not one tiny turd."
"The truth is that your only worry is that it might come back to you."
"I suppose."
"Then stop worrying. It won't."
"You certain of that?"
"Dead certain, you might say." He glanced across at me as we headed west along the motorway. "But that's not really your only worry, is it? You're scared you might have replaced one threat with another; the Neiportes with me."
Scared wasn't quite the word, but I murmured, "Maybe."
"Then don't be. I came to you recommended, didn't I?"
"Yes, highly."
"Well you remember that. The report you got on me included the word "loyalty", and it wasn't used lightly. I work for you, Oz, and you pay me well. I'm a specialist, and I set my own parameters. When you ask me to do something I'll do it, and I promise you I will never use it to gain any sort of leverage over you. If you want to give me a bonus down the line, that's up to you, but I will never ask you for one." He took his right hand off the wheel and reached across. "Fair enough?" he said.
I took it and shook it. "Fair enough."
"Good. So no more questions."
We could hardly talk about rugby after that, so the rest of the journey back to the estate was spent in silence. When Jay dropped me at the house, it was empty. Susie was still at work, Ethel and Janet were away on a Daybreak Nursery outing, and the contract cleaners weren't due until the following Monday. The only sound I could hear was that of a mower in the distance. I guessed that Willie was quickening up the greens on the golf course.
I dumped my bag, which held the few clothes I'd brought back with me, mostly for the wash, and changed into a pair of swim shorts. I did a hard half-hour on my gym equipment, enough to work me out, but nowhere near enough to change my body shape, then swam for a bit to cool off.
All the time I was thinking, at first about the Neiportes and how the police investigation would go, but gradually I found myself turning back to the week's first crisis, and Susie's three rogue house-buyers.
If they'd had a couple of people bumped off and dumped on a pig farm, they wouldn't be bothering about it afterwards, I reckoned.
I was still in the pool when the phone rang. There was a hands-free unit near at hand, so I heaved myself out and picked it up just before the automatic answer cut in. "Yes?" I said, breathing only a bit harder than normal.
"Oz, is that you?" It was my Dad, and he sounded agitated. It didn't take a quantum physicist to know why.
"It's me."
"Have you seen the papers?"
"Yes, of course, it's tragic, isn't it. Those poor people… and from Pittenweem too, that's assuming they are who they think they are."
"Oz…" Mac the Dentist said heavily, but I talked right over the top of him.
"Look Dad, I know you're upset, with the thing happening on your doorstep, but I really don't have time to talk to you just now." I hung up on him.
We all have paranoid tendencies, but they're multiplied many times over when we have things to hide. At that moment all I could think about was Princess Diana, Prince Charles and their various bugged telephone conversations, which surfaced so embarrassingly in the tabloids. I could tell that my Dad was on his mobile, out in the garden, I imagined, and I'd been using a phone that worked on a radio signal.
The last thing I wanted was a detailed conversation being intercepted by some radio ham in Auchtermuchty and sold to the press.
I dried off, went through the house to the office conservatory, and called his surgery number on a more secure line… I'm reasonably certain I'm not on the MI5 surveillance list, and I know he isn't.
"I'm free now," I said, breezily, when he answered. I checked my watch; it was five minutes short of four. "Fancy a few holes at Elie?
If I leave now I can get there for quarter to six."
Twenty-Eight.
Susie wasn't best pleased when I got home at ten thirty. I'd left her the briefest of notes as I'd rushed out, forgetting that I'd said I'd pick her up from the office. I'd fixed that by calling Jay from the road and asking him to collect her in the Freelander… she was getting too big to drive comfortably, or even safely… but she still had a petted lip on her when I walked in.
There was only one thing to do, and that was to kiss it better. "I'm sorry," I said when she had softened. "It was a spur of the moment thing; I hadn't seen my Dad for a while, and the way things are I wasn't sure when I'd have another chance."
"It's all right," she whispered. "You're a big softy, that's all.
Truth is I envy you. I wish I could bugger off on the spur of the moment to see my father."
I wrapped her in my arms again. "I know, love, and I'm so sorry you can't. But, here, you can nip off and see mine any time you like. How about that?"
She smiled. "I like the thought of that. I'll go and see Mac any time … just as long as I don't have to sit in his dentist's chair that is."
"No chance of that." Like me, and many of our generation, Susie has perfect teeth. Macabre I know, but in that instant I found myself wondering how they'd identify us in a plane crash.
She
might not have enjoyed visiting my Dad that afternoon, though. He'd been as agitated as hell when he'd arrived, a couple of minutes after me even though I'd come from the other side of the country and he'd come from Anstruther. I'd said nothing to him as we'd changed, although I could see him boiling.
He'd demonstrated his discomfort by carving his tee-shot out of bounds, then barely clearing the hill with his second, causing the starter to avert his eyes in sympathy. (I, on the other hand, had popped a three-iron over the top, nice as you like.) He took it until my par putt rattled into the cup, and no longer.
"Right!"he said.
But I shook my head. There's a thick plantation behind the second tee, and you never know. I hit a nice five wood; there's no need to risk a full driver, although my Dad did and found the rough. I won the second with a bogey five… I took too much club for my second, knocked it through the green and had to chip back up… and only then did I turn to Mac the Dentist.
"Nothing, Dad," I told him. "You have nothing to be concerned about."
"But son, what the hell have you done?"
I gave him my best incredulous look, hoping that it would fool him.
"What are you saying? Just fucking think about what you're saying here?"
He reddened before my apparent anger. "But…"
I didn't let him go on. "What makes you fucking special?" I asked him, as I took a seven iron out of my bag and tossed my ball on to the ground behind the marker posts. "What makes you think you have to be the only person they've blackmailed? These were nasty people; neither you nor I have any idea what else they were into. The only thing we know is that somewhere they've messed with the wrong guy and wound up dead for their bother."
I took a deep breath, focused and hit a gentle faded shot to the front of the third green. Then I turned back to him. "There was nothing unpredictable about that. What is incredible is that you actually think it was me who bumped them off "No," he protested. "I don't think that. But you know people, son; that sort of people. That was my first thought."
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