Quintin Jardine - Deadly Business

‘Monsoon Holdings Limited?’

‘Bullseye.’

I rang Tom back, on his phone. As he answered, I could hear road noise. ‘We’ve had to go, Mum,’ he told me. ‘Liam was worried that Duncan would see us if we waited any longer.’

‘I understand. Look, come into Edinburgh and pick us up. Tell Liam we’ll wait across the road from the station.’

We headed for Waverley Bridge. I’d been tired before we’d eaten, but all that sugar had refuelled me; as we passed it I was ready to run up the Scott Monument. When my mobile sounded yet again, as we stood waiting, across from the station access roads, I snatched my phone from my pocket like a gunfighter.

‘Yes!’ I exclaimed, so assertively that I think Cress Oldham was taken aback, for she paused for a second or two before replying.

‘I’ve issued your statement,’ she told me, ‘and it’s gone down well, so far. The analysts I’ve spoken to appreciate that you’re not a pushover, and that the Monsoon people aren’t going to have it all their own way. Also, we’ve got a hit, from that image you sent me. The one name on Fabricant’s board that’s common to the Greentree Stanley client list is a company called Torrent PLC. I can’t confirm that it’s behind the briefing but …’

‘That name’s familiar,’ I told her, ‘but right now I can’t place it.’ It was too, it had been mentioned recently, but I had so much information swirling around inside my head that I couldn’t bring it to the surface.

‘I’m in the process of finding out as much as I can about them,’ she replied. ‘But it could be a coincidence; I repeat, nobody at Greentree Stanley will confirm the source of leaked information … unless they’re forced to in court. I’ll-’

‘Yes, do that, get back to me. Got to go now.’ I cut her off because I could see our car turn down from Princes Street on to Waverley Bridge, with Liam at the wheel. Wylie and I ran across the road through a gap in the traffic and climbed into the back seat as he drew to a halt.

‘Starsky and Hutch,’ I laughed as he pulled away again. I could see him grin in the rear-view.

‘Who?’ Tom asked, twisting round to look at me.

‘Blasts from my past,’ I said. ‘What have you got?’

‘I don’t know,’ Liam replied, as he turned right into Market Street, as our taxi driver could have done, but didn’t. ‘A few shots of Culshaw getting out of his car and going into the house. Whether he’s identifiable, that’s something else again. He’s in profile in one of them, but in the rest he’s mostly got his back to the lens. There are others, though. For a very short time, I could see him through an upstairs window, and there was someone else there. I got off a couple of frames, very fast. That was when we decided we’d better get the hell out of there. If we had a clear view of him, then vice versa.’

‘How good are the images?’

‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t had a chance to look at them. Even if I did, I’ll probably need to load them on to a computer screen for them to be big enough to be legible.’

‘Can I have a look?’ I asked, reaching out a hand to Tom, who was holding the camera.

‘Better not, Mum,’ he said. ‘You might delete them by accident.’

‘Thanks for your touching faith in my high-tech skills,’ I muttered, but he had a point. Push the wrong button and the memory card could have been wiped.

‘How do I get out of here and back to Glasgow?’ Liam called out from the driver’s seat. I hadn’t been in Edinburgh for years, but my trip up Lothian Road had reminded me of one route, and I was able to give him directions to and along the Western Approach Road, past Murrayfield Stadium, on to Gorgie Road, and eventually to the motorway.

Once we were headed westward, moving steadily through heavy traffic, I asked Tom about his morning. ‘What did you see in the museum?’

He shrugged. ‘Old stuff. Cars, trams, a steam train; like the motor museum in Monaco, only much bigger. There are a couple of streets too, like they used to be.’ He grinned, then switched into Catalan. ‘I liked it well enough,’ he said, ‘but Liam, he was like a dog with two cocks in a forest.’

I came within a breath of asking him why a dog would go on a woodland walk with poultry, when I realised that wasn’t what he’d meant at all.

‘Tell her about the ship,’ Liam chipped in, blissfully unaware that his tackle had been mentioned in despatches, and that I was still coming to terms with the mental image.

‘There’s a tall ship moored there as well,’ my son explained. ‘It has three masts, and it was built on the Glasgow river. It’s quite big, seventy-five metres long, but it doesn’t sail any more. I’ve seen bigger in L’Escala, and been on a couple.’

Tom’s more into surfing these days, but he’s been to the local sailing school, and over the last year or so he’s crewed for a few people.

‘Have you?’ Liam exclaimed, clearly impressed. ‘Could you fix it for me to do that?’

Tom nodded. ‘Sure, as long as you know what you’re doing.’

Jesus , I thought, smiling, this man I’m involved with, he’s a schoolboy at heart .

Suddenly, Cress Oldham’s last called forced its way back into my mind. I turned to Wylie. ‘Does the name Torrent PLC mean anything to you?’ I asked him.

He swivelled round to face me in his seat. ‘Are you kidding?’ he gasped. In our admittedly short acquaintance, I’d never seen him so animated.

‘Hey,’ Liam called from the front, ‘even I’ve heard of them. Last time I was in Edinburgh, got to be ten years ago, making my first movie for Miles Grayson, after Oz got me the gig, he … Oz that is, got involved in this thing. It was a big scandal at the time. It involved a company and that was its name. There was this chick, too.’ He twisted as if he was trying to look at Wylie in the rear-view. ‘Isn’t that right … I’m sorry, I don’t …’

I realised that they hadn’t been introduced, and did the honours.

‘So I believe,’ Wylie told him. ‘I wasn’t involved in that in any way, but there was another incident later on, and I was party to that. Torrent PLC tried to take over the Gantry Group, even though it wasn’t really big enough to do so. Oz was involved again, very much, since Susie was expecting her second child at the time, and he dealt with the crisis. I’m not entirely sure how he did it, but the bid was withdrawn.’

Of course; and it was Harvey who had mentioned it by name.

I knew how Oz had seen off the threat, because years later, he’d told me. It was one of the secrets that I had not wanted Duncan Culshaw to explore; it was well buried and it had to stay that way.

‘Torrent PLC is owned by a woman called Natalie Morgan,’ Wylie continued, ‘one hundred per cent. She inherited it from her uncle whose name it bears.’

‘That’s right,’ Liam exclaimed, again. ‘She was involved in that thing. The actor … Ewan Capperauld was his name … who was supposed to play the cop in our movie, it turned out he was banging her. His wife found out, the whole thing blew up in his face and hers, big time, and he had to pull out of the movie.’

A few days before, I might have been concerned about his choice of words for Tom to hear, but after that crack about dogs and trees, my last delusions of innocence were in pieces.

‘If that’s the case,’ Wylie said, ‘she came out of the experience with a grudge against Oz, because the failed takeover bid was personally motivated, most certainly. But Primavera, why are you asking about Torrent?’

‘Because that’s who’s been using those leaked management accounts against us. The name jumped off Diego Fabricant’s client list.’