Quintin Jardine - Deadly Business

‘Duncan,’ I told him, ‘if the version of me that you portray was real, you wouldn’t have had a morning. My friend the night porter downstairs would have gone conveniently absent, leaving me free to come up and cut your throat while you slept. By the way,’ I added, after a pause, ‘don’t be too sure that won’t happen. Enjoy the rest of the night, and if you do waken up, I’ll see you for coffee in L’Escala, at ten, in a café called El Centre, next to the church.’

In the morning, I kept him waiting. I had some sleep to catch up on. My lovely son helped me do that; even at eleven, as he was then, he could be a self-starter, and he wakened me with a mug of tea and a bowl of cereal around eight, having fed himself properly, taken Charlie for a trot and got ready for school. Slut of a mother, you’re thinking, but it’s wonderfully liberating when your child gets to that stage. It gives you just a little extra freedom, and takes a little of the constant pressure away.

I had another call to make before I met Culshaw, and that delayed me for a few minutes, and so it was pushing quarter past ten when I arrived at the café. He was seated at one of the outside tables, almost in the shade of the huge palm tree that stands between the church and the town hall, as if it’s keeping them apart.

I’d hardly sat down before a waiter appeared. I ordered a cortado , a short coffee with milk, and a bottle of Vichy Catalan sparkling water.

I put my bag on the table, and laid my phone beside it as I settled carefully into my plastic chair: sometimes their legs can be a little wobbly, and it would have spoiled the moment if I’d landed on my arse. I looked at Duncan; he was neatly dressed in white trousers, a pale blue T-shirt and a tan cotton jacket, but his eyes were a little baggy, and I guessed that he hadn’t slept too well after my call. First points to Primavera. That said, he didn’t seem nervous; the opposite, in fact. He had a faint smile on his face, and those baggy eyes said that he was rather pleased with himself.

He gazed at me, as if he was waiting for me to open the batting, but I wasn’t going to play his game. I waited him out, until finally he said, ‘Well? What did you think of it?’

‘It’s not going to win the Booker Prize,’ I replied drily.

‘That won’t worry me,’ he laughed. ‘They’re famous for not selling. My book will be a blockbuster.’

‘It’s a heap of shit, Duncan. It’s a hatchet job on Oz, thinly disguised as a novel. Most of it’s fabricated into the bargain.’

‘Hey,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s a work of fiction, so by definition it’s fabricated. How big an advance do you reckon I’ll get for it?’

‘Fuck all,’ I snapped.

‘That’s not what my new literary agent says. He has three publishers fighting for it, and that’s just on the basis of a synopsis. We’re up to six figures and the bids are still rising.’

‘Then you’re going to have a major delivery problem,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not finished.’

‘It could be if I wanted it to be. I could wrap it up where it is now, go straight to Al’s death and have Phyllis in the vicinity, only for Sheila to join all the dots, and kill her in a big bloody finale.’ He paused. ‘But you are right. It could be better than that, and that’s why I need your help.’

‘You what?’ I gasped. ‘You need my help? Are you completely out of your tree?’

‘No,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s a gap in my knowledge, and only you can fill it. Susie certainly can’t.’

‘Susie doesn’t know about this travesty, does she?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘But you have been pumping her for information.’

He had the nerve to wink at me. ‘I’ve been pumping her in all sorts of ways, my dear,’ he murmured. I wanted to punch his lights out, as I think I could have, given our relative sizes, but I mastered my anger as he continued. ‘But I haven’t been interrogating her, if that’s what you mean. I’ve simply encouraged her to talk about her past and made notes as she’s gone along.’

‘What about Mac and Ellie, and Ali Patel? Did you talk to them or was that pure imagination too?’

‘Oh yes, I spoke to them all, and to Oz’s school chum, one of the two he beat up. I told them I was a journalist researching a magazine feature about Oz. None of them were very helpful, apart from the victim of his violence.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘you’re lucky he’s not around, because I hate to think what he’d do to you.’

‘That is rather the point of the novel. It’s about the decline of the central character into darkness, even as he grew rich and famous. And through it all there’s this character in the background, this duplicitous manipulative woman, Phyllis, dragging him down. And that’s not all that far from the truth, is it, Primavera? Go on, be honest, admit it.’

I looked him in the eye. ‘Do you even understand honesty, you little shit? You understand duplicity, that’s for sure, but do you have a straight bone in your body?’

‘This discussion isn’t about my morals, Primavera, it’s about yours. Go on, do you recognise the people I’ve described?’

He leaned back in his chair, drawing me a challenging look. I decided to answer him. ‘To an extent, yes I do. Oz changed over the years, there’s no doubt about that, but the trigger for it had nothing to do with me. He never got over Jan’s death, and that’s the real truth of it, that’s the point you’ve missed by a mile in your concoction of nonsense. As for suggesting that I had something to do with it, I wasn’t even in the same country when it happened.’

‘No, that’s true,’ he agreed. ‘You were here in Spain, with him. And wasn’t that convenient for both of you.’

‘How the hell did you know that?’

‘Susie let it slip, and a friend of Oz’s, Everett Davis, confirmed it.’

That made sense, but I was conceding nothing. ‘So what?’

‘It’s interesting, that’s all, the fact that you were both clear of the scene when the … accident … happened. But what about you anyway? Did my description hit the spot?’

‘Was I angry with Oz? Yes. Twice in my life; first when he chose Jan over me, and then when he two-timed me with Susie. Did I hit back at him? Yes, but I regret it now. Duplicitous, manipulative? Hurt and betrayed sums it up.’

‘Which leads us to that plane crash in the US,’ Culshaw said, ‘the private plane that Oz was supposed to be on. That’s a matter of record, for he was listed as missing, presumed dead, until he showed up in New York. You, on the other hand, were listed as missing too, and you didn’t surface again until after Oz was dead.’

‘That’s true,’ I admitted, ‘but I had my reasons.’

‘I’m sure. But what if I suggest that your “reasons”,’ he smirked, ‘for staying underground were to plot and bring about his death? What if I suggest that you were never on that plane either, that you slipped away first, and that Oz realised this, smelled a rat and got off himself?’

‘Then I would suggest to you that you are crazy.’

The smirk became a beam, a great self-satisfied beam. ‘That’s not how the publishers will see it when I use it as the basis for the completion of my novel, as I intend to do, now that we’ve had this conversation. They’ll buy it and you know it. As I said, I could do a deal today, even without that ending.’

‘And I’ll sue.’

‘On what basis?’

‘That it’s a thinly disguised defamation.’

‘Of whom? Oz is dead, and remember, you can’t libel the dead.’

‘Of me, you idiot. And your book will only be bankable if you can throw out the hint that it’s about Oz and me, without saying as much.’