Blackstone's Pursuits

  QUINTIN JARDINE

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 1996 Quintin Jardine

  The right of Quintin Jardine to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be

  reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior

  permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in

  accordance with the terms of licences issued by the copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2008

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 5366 8

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  338 Euston Road

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  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachettelivre.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  In which I stare death in the face, Uncle Hughie swamps the Yellow Peril, and ...

  In which Dylan gets the blues, we get lucky and I seize my chance

  In which Jan gets a shock, Primavera meets Wallace, and I gain a sleeping partner.

  In which the Daft Laddie does a deal.

  In which secrets are revealed, there is a chance meeting, and deeply held ...

  In which the Earth moves.

  In which the Earth moves ... again.

  In which we meet a camp follower and learn of Dawn’s big break.

  In which Prim says ‘Hello Mum’, and the quest goes on.

  In which we tell porkies for the record, pick up Dawn’s trail, and discover ...

  In which we have a visitor, and Ali does too.

  In which the fourth most famous human on the planet buys us a drink.

  In which we dine in style and Mac the Dentist is caught in flagrante.

  In which we play seventeen holes and the Jag stays on the road.

  In which Mac the Dentist gives us some good advice, and I become a lighthouse keeper.

  In which we find she who wasn’t lost at all, in which I experience the full ...

  In which Mother offers black pudding, and we take a decision.

  In which Ray Archer is immersed in his own Genius.

  In which we meet the Widow Kane and find her wanting in the grief department.

  In which the Old School Archives gives us an answer we don’t fancy ... not one bit.

  In which plans are made for flight.

  In which Jan’s open secret is revealed to Prim, and in which we find that the ...

  In which we begin a circuitous journey South, and have a surprise phone call.

  In which we plan to score high marks on the high seas but end up cast adrift.

  In which we arrive on a movie set and thwart a daring escape bid.

  In which an unhappy sister lends us her car and plots her own escape.

  In which we cross the border and reach our objective.

  In which we do the business and Berner rings the bell.

  In which Hansel and Gretel are right up against it in the forest.

  In which the boat sails and our ship comes in.

  In which we find another stiff in Prim’s bed, a sort of justice is done and ...

  Praise for Quintin Jardine’s novels:

  ‘Perfect plotting and convincing characterisation ... Jardine manages to combine the picturesque with the thrilling and the dream-like with the coldly rational’ The Times

  ‘Deplorably readable’ Guardian

  ‘Jardine’s plot is very cleverly constructed, every incident and every character has a justified place in the labyrinth of motives, and the final series of revelations follows logically from a surreptitious but well-placed series of clues’ Gerald Kaufman, Scotsman

  ‘If Ian Rankin is the Robert Carlyle of Scottish crime writers, then Jardine is surely its Sean Connery’ Glasgow Herald

  ‘It moves at a cracking pace, and with a crisp dialogue that is vastly superior to that of many of his jargon-loving rivals ... It encompasses a wonderfully neat structural twist, a few taut, well-weighted action sequences and emotionally charged exchanges that steer well clear of melodrama’ Sunday Herald

  ‘Remarkably assured ... a tour deforce’ New York Times

  ‘Engrossing, believable characters ... captures Edinburgh beautifully ... It all adds up to a very good read’ Edinburgh Evening News

  ‘Robustly entertaining’ Irish Times

  This book is dedicated to the City of Edinburgh. (Sorry)

  In which I stare death in the face, Uncle Hughie swamps the Yellow Peril, and McArse and I meet our match

  Being a Private Enquiry Agent isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, there are some days when it cracks me up. And this was going to be one of those days, all right.

  Quite a few of the people I’m sent to interview start out by being difficult. Many of them have a two-word vocabulary ... if you know what I mean. It’s as if they blame me for their wives having found out about them shagging that nice brunette person, or for their having been caught nicking a few quid from the partnership account.

  This guy had done both, and I could tell at once that he was just not going to be the co-operative sort. It wasn’t only that I’d walked in on him and caught him stark naked. My main problem was that the poor, sad bugger was stone dead.

  Looking at him, stretched out on his back on the crumpled bed, I could tell that he had been a wee man, a bit closer to five feet than six. But equally, I could guess at once what the nice brunette had seen in him. People are always going on to me about my favourite adjectives. They say I use them for effect, but that’s not true. It’s more that I take pleasure in words which strike me as particularly descriptive. At that moment, looking at him, stretched out on his back on the crumpled bed, ‘disproportionate’ thrust itself to the front of my mind and lodged there.

  The knife was impressive too. At least its big hilt was. The rest of it, the blade, was rammed up under the wee man’s chin, nailing his mouth tight shut, away up behind his bulging eyes, all the way up, I guessed, into his brain.

  Standing there, with the newly opened curtain still swinging behind me, I must have looked about as daft as he did. I stared at him, my eyes bulging out like organ-stops, just like his. He was ludicrous, lying there staring at the ceiling, so ludicrous that an idiot grin flickered around the comers of my mouth. Oddly, I felt myself feeling self-conscious, although why, God above knew. The wee man wasn’t aware of anyone’s presence, not any more, and his erstwhile companion was long gone.

  It was the stench that drove home the enormity of it all. During my short, unhappy service as a probationer constable in Lothian and Borders Police I was called to the scene of precisely one death; yet another stupid kid found up a close in West Granton with a needle hanging out of her arm. My job had been to stand guard at the close-mouth, to keep a respectable distance between the wee girl - fifteen, she was, I remember - and the gawpers, oh yes, and between two bored, disinterested reporters who’d seen the same thing a few dozen times and who were pissed off because, but for this dead nuisance, they’d both have been freeloading at a civic lunch. The close-mouth was as close as I got to the victim, and until I walked into that room, that poor lassie was the only certifiably deceased person I’d ever seen.

  At first, the shock shut out everything but the sight of him, but after a few seconds the hum forced its way up my nose. By and large, sphincters are a closed book to me, but not to the wee man on the bed. His had opened all of a sudden.

  I turned back to the window, my stomach churning. The frames were the old wooden sash-cord type, the kind that usually you’d find stuck tight with paint. Thank Christ, though, once I’d freed the catch this one slid up nice and easy. I stuck my head out and took a deep breath, but it was no use. Normally, old Uncle Hughie eases up on you, giving you a couple of nudges so that you can be in the right place when finally he puts in an appearance. Not this time. The old familiar fist gripped my belly and squeezed as hard as it could, forcing up everything in there in a single violent shout, and firing it on to the pavement fifteen feet below. Well, almost on to the pavement. Instead of a splash, there was a yell.

  ‘Whit the ... Away, ya dirty bastard!’

  My eyes were still shut tight from the effort of my mighty boak. I opened one of them, fearfully, and looked down into Ebeneezer Street. The flat top of the traffic warden’s cap, and the shoulders of his tunic had caught most of it, but I was pleased to see - it’s funny, the details the mind registers in times of crisis - that some of Uncle Hughie’s output had landed on the page of his notebook on which the Yellow Peril was noting down the details of my out-of-date tax disc.

  I opened the other eye and looked at him, pleading. ‘Aw come on, man! It only expired last week.’

  He stared up at me, sending the mess on his hat cascading down the back of his heavy, porous uniform. ‘Yellow Peril’ had never been a more fitting nickname.

  ‘Whit’s the game, Jimmy?’ He didn’t have the wit to be astonished, onl
y angry.

  ‘Lamb Rogan Josh,’ I muttered. ‘From the takeaway in Caroline Street. Sorry!’ I decided that I preferred the sight on the bed. Besides, the traffic warden probably smelled even worse than him. I pulled my head back into the room. As I did, I felt a current of cool air on my face and realised that I must have left the front door open. I walked out of the room and into the hall to close it.

  I almost felt offended when she didn’t scream. I mean, isn’t that what women are supposed to do when they step into their flat and find a six-foot stranger standing in the lobby, even if he is wearing a Savoy Tailors’ Guild suit and holding a Motorola cell-phone in his hand?

  When I got round to asking her, she really did offend me. ‘You just looked terrified,’ she said. ‘I felt sorry for you.’ I could have handled it if she’d said that fear had struck her dumb, or even just plain surprise. I could even have lived with revulsion. But being told I was pitiful was as hurtful as a smart kick on the kneecap, and the effect lasted longer.

  In the there and then of it, she just stood and looked at me, her big brown eyes not startled, not even slightly wide, just questioning. She wore faded jeans, a crumpled tee-shirt and trainers with more than a few miles on the odometer. The bag slung over her shoulder looked bigger than she was. She let it slip to the floor as she shut the door behind her. In her right hand she held a bunch of keys big enough to choke a horse.

  ‘Well?’ she said, and I could have sworn she was smiling. ‘Are you him, then?’

  I looked back at her: blankly, I think. ‘Eh?’ Right at that moment that was all the articulacy I could manage.

  ‘The mystery man. Dawn’s wee bit of illicit rough.’

  The hair at the back of my neck prickled. This was like stepping into the middle of someone else’s movie. I decided that I’d better get a grip on reality, double-quick.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. My name’s Oz Blackstone. I’m a private enquiry agent. I work for lawyers, insurance companies and the like.

  ‘I had an appointment to meet someone here this morning, at ten o’clock. When I got here, the door was unlocked. I knocked, and it just swung open. I shouted, but there was no answer. I thought that was odd, so I stepped inside and took a look around.’ I pulled a card from the stash in the breast pocket of my jacket. ‘Here.’

  She looked at it. ‘Oz, eh. You don’t sound like an Australian.’

  I scowled at her. Always, the same wisecrack. I sighed, and gave her the stock answer. ‘I’m not. It’s just that Osbert doesn’t cut the mustard down Pilton way.’

  She gave me an odd smile, with a touché look about it. ‘I know what you mean. My name’s Prim Phillips. It’s short for “Primavera”. In English that means “Springtime”. I was conceived in May, on a holiday in a tent in the Costa Brava, and my Maw’s a terrible romantic. I decided early on that there was no bloody way I was going through life answering to “Vera”, therefore ... You and I are kindred spirits in the daft name stakes.’ She shook her tousled sun-bleached head and smiled, and flashed me the sort of look that doesn’t stop at your eyes, but drills right into your head. ‘Imagine,’ she said, ‘giving a wee girl a four-syllable name!’

  She picked up the huge bag. ‘Hold on till I stick this in the bedroom. Then you can tell me the rest of your story.’

  I stepped between her and the door. She frowned, and for the first time, looked just a touch apprehensive. I tried to sound cool and reassuring, but it came out flustered and panicky. ‘Don’t go in there, Miss Phillips. I said there was no reply; I didn’t say that there wasn’t anyone here.’

  She was afraid now. ‘Dawn ...’ she began. She tried to push past me, but I gripped her arms and held her. It wasn’t easy. She’s a strong wee package.

  ‘No, it isn’t Dawn ... unless she’s balding and helluva well hung.’ See me, see gallows humour! She looked at me, twisting against my grip and wincing. I realised that the Motorola was digging into her arm, and let her go. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘That’s my bedroom. I want to see what’s in there,’ she said. ‘However bad it is, I’ve seen worse. Come on.’ There was something in her voice which told me that ‘Don’t,’ would always be the wrong thing to say to this woman. I tried, ‘Are you sure?’ instead, but that didn’t work either.

  ‘Okay,’ I said finally. ‘But don’t get the wrong idea about me when you see in there.’ She looked at me, incredulously.

  When I got round to asking her whether, finding two strangers in her flat, one with a head like a kebab and the other heading for the door, it hadn’t occurred to her for a second that the live one might have had something to do with the dead one being dead, she offended me again. ‘Don’t be daft, Oz. I’ve met people who could do that sort of thing. You couldn’t, not in a month of Sundays, not if your life depended on it.’ It can do something to your manhood when a slip of a woman looks you in the eye and tells you that you don’t have the stuff to be a cold-blooded killer.

  Back in the there and then of it, she stood beside the bed, looking down at the wee man. ‘That’s got to be him, all right. Dawn’s bit of illicit. She said in her last letter that he was built like a cross between Danny deVito and Nijinsky. I thought she meant the dancer, not the horse!’

  His hands were by his sides. She leaned over and lifted one up. ‘Been dead for a while,’ she said. ‘He’s cold, and the rigor’s beginning to wear off. When did you find him?’

  I glanced at my watch, embarrassed by the tremble of my hand. It was almost ten-thirty. ‘About half an hour ago.’

  All of a sudden I couldn’t take it, all that coolness in the face of crisis. ‘Look, Miss Phillips, Prim, whatever: what is it with you? You walk into your flat and you find a strange guy knifed to death in your bed, and you’re standing here as if it’s just something that the cleaner’s missed. What sort of a world do you live in?’ My voice rose as I spoke, and suddenly there was a crack in it that I’d thought I lost in my teens.

  She took me by the arm and led me out of the room, through the hall and into a narrow kitchen. ‘Sit down, Oz.’ There were two chairs, one on either side of a gate-leg table. She picked up a white plastic kettle and filled it from the mixer tap over the sink, then switched it on. She lifted a jar marked ‘Tea’ and shook it. Turning, she bent her back against the work-surface and looked down at me, as the kettle began to hiss and bubble behind her.

  ‘I’m a nurse. I’ve just spent a year in a refugee camp in Central Africa, in the middle of a tribal war zone. When I say I’ve seen worse than that in there, I’m not kidding.

  ‘On top of that, I’ve just spent the last umpteen hours wide awake in aeroplanes. All I wanted, when I came in here was a shower, a vodka and tonic, and a sleep. Instead, I’ve got a slightly hysterical private eye in my kitchen and a corpse in my bed. If my reaction seems odd to you, it’s because all this is a dream; because none of it’s happening.

  ‘It’s also because I’m trying not to imagine where my sister is, or how she’s involved with what’s through next door.

  ‘That’s me. Now, before we do anything else, what’s your story?’ She turned her back on me as the kettle boiled and set about the business of making tea. I sat there, bewildered and dumb.

  She looked over her shoulder. ‘Well?’

  I stood up, in a feeble attempt to assert myself. I searched for something smart to say, but all I could manage was a shrug of the shoulders. She handed me a mug of tea. It reminded me of the dark, hot, sweet char that was my Granny Blackstone’s standard remedy for shock, exposure, skinned knees, a wee touch of the flu and a host of other conditions up to and including mild coronary incidents. My Granny’s tea was a wonderful brew. Apart from its therapeutic value, she used it to dye Easter Eggs, and swore by it as a tanning agent. She used to keep it cold in a jar, and slabber it on herself every time the sun poked its nose into the back court. She was found one day, dead in her deckchair. My Dad reckoned that she’d finally pickled herself.