Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

‘I thought that would have been your first call,’ I said, ‘given that you and I were in that business together.’

‘I told you, my mind was fucked up, or I would have. No matter, a man came to see me within two hours: his name was Gary Anderson, and he said that he was an ex-cop. He interviewed me, I gave him all the detail I could, and he said that he’d get on with it. He was very good, better than you and I ever were, or much quicker, anyway. He came back to see me at four o’clock next day, Thursday. He told me that Mr Paul Wallinger had flown from London Gatwick to Minneapolis on the previous Saturday afternoon, on a Northwest flight. His infant son Tom was with him and they had travelled club class.’

‘Minneapolis is a hub airport,’ I told her. ‘Did he have an onward booking?’

‘No, he didn’t: Anderson checked that. I asked him how he’d been able to get Tom on the plane without a passport. He told me that he’d been to the US Embassy and put him on his own, as an American citizen, which he is, just as much as he’s British.’

‘He was well prepared,’ said Susie.

‘He’d had two fucking years to prepare,’ Prim shot back bitterly. ‘Anderson checked his business background, at least the details I’d given him. Everything was phoney: the company he said he worked for didn’t exist. You probably think that makes me an idiot, living with someone for that long and knowing so little about what he did during the day. But honestly, it isn’t so daft. I’d never visited Paul at his office, or had any reason to: he told me that his wasn’t always a desk job, and that he spent most of his time out looking at the businesses he was interested in. That figured, for he’d often be away for a couple of days at a time, even when I was nearly due, and even when Tom was just an infant. As for a business phone number, he said that he didn’t have a direct line and that he always used a mobile. “So what’s he been living on?” I asked Anderson, but I didn’t have to: I knew. He’d been living on me. When I checked, all the household costs had come either out of my Visa account. . I’d given him a card of his own, hadn’t I? … or out of a joint account he’d set up for us, but never put anything into himself. Do you know, I even paid for his fucking flight to America, the one he left me on?’

‘I hope you cancelled the card,’ said Susie indignantly.

‘Too right I did.’

‘Did you keep the last statements?’ I asked.

‘Probably. Why?’

‘They could come in handy,’ I said, casually, but noting how off the ball she was, in that she didn’t follow me. Task number one, Blackstone: get her off the drink so that her brain can work properly again. ‘So, what about the money?’ I knew that this was going to be bad: the guy was a con-man, and she’d let him take over her financial management. ‘What have you got left?’

‘I’ve got half a million, invested in an annuity that doesn’t mature till I’m fifty-five and that I can’t touch before then. I’ve got two hundred and fifty thousand in a Swiss account that, fortunately, I forgot to tell him about, and I’ve got the flat. Everything else is gone, sold or cashed up in the month before he left.’

It was my turn for the heavy frown. While Prim and I were together we’d amassed a right few quid, some jointly, some from the generous points arrangement on my first movie, and a hell of a lot from my shareholding in the GWA, after it went public. When we split up, so did the money, more or less straight down the middle: on the figures she’d quoted me, allowing for even modest capital growth, the guy had fleeced her, and how.

‘He took around two and a half million?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, but that’s not the point: he’s got Tom, Oz, he’s got Tom.’

I got up, fetched myself another beer from the fridge, and walked towards the open doorway to the garden. I stood there thinking, letting the evening breeze cool me. After a while, I turned back to face the girls. ‘Okay,’ I said: that was all.

‘What are you going to do, Oz?’ asked Susie.

I looked at her, smiled, then shrugged my shoulders, just like Nicolas Cage in one of my favourite movies, and stole his best line. ‘What am I going to do?’ I replied. ‘I’m going to save the fucking day, that’s what I’m going to do.’

The trouble with the grand statement was that I had no idea how I was going to make it happen. I knew one thing for sure, though: I wanted to meet Paul Wallinger. Arguably, the guy had a right to his own kid, but the money that he’d stolen from Prim had once been mine too, and I took a seriously dim view of that.

Actually, the financial side of it begged a lot of questions, but I decided to put them on hold for a while. Prim was strung out, no doubt about that, but she was also drinking way too much. When we were a couple, we’d been what I’d call normal thirty-something users of alcohol. We took it socially, and while often enough it would end the day, it never, ever began it; it worried me that my former wife had turned into someone who looked as if she put Bacardi on her corn flakes.

When I glanced at my watch and said that I’d fix dinner, Susie read my mind. She took Prim off to her room and talked her into sleeping off her latest cargo for a couple of hours.

I was in Ready, Steady, Cook mode, so I didn’t spend too much time in the kitchen. I chopped some Chinese leaves into strips and mixed them with feta cheese, olives and red chillies, seeded, as a salad starter, then blended tomatoes and some coconut cream, and added a few mushrooms, baby corn, and whatever spices my hand fell upon, to create Oz Blackstone’s celebrated impromptu pasta sauce. I set it simmering, cut some monkfish and salmon fillets into cubes, to be added later, and went back to the office. No, I did one other thing before that. I checked that we had plenty of bottled water, still and sparkling, in the fridge: there was going to be no more booze on offer that evening.

Back at my desk, I switched on my computer. Right at the top of my box was an e-mail from Roscoe, reporting progress on my three deals. I sent him an instant message asking if he was available for a face to face; a few seconds later a box popped up on my screen inviting me to switch on my web-cam.

It’s my favourite means of communicating with my agent, other than across the desk: with both of us on high-speed broadband, the quality of both sound and vision is pretty good. I could see from the view through the window behind Roscoe that the LA weather was as usual. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, and in the background I could hear the sound of air-conditioning at full hum.

‘One of the offers we turned down,’ I began, ‘was from the Global Wrestling Alliance. Right?’

‘Yes, it was, but the money was insufficient and there was no guarantee of distribution. They need you more than you need them, I’d say. It wouldn’t have advanced your career, Oz.’

‘Would it do it any harm, though?’

‘The script itself read pretty well, and I rate Santiago Temple, the director. Liam Matthews has done well in the Skinner movies he’s made with you. It would be okay if all other things were equal, but to be honest, they’re offering way below your market value, and they don’t have the financial flexibility to meet it.’

‘I’m not worried about the money, Roscoe; Everett Davis is a very good friend; you must know that.’

‘I do, but sometimes part of my job is to protect you from your friends.’

‘I appreciate that, but I owe him, and this time I feel I have to do it. He wants me in Vegas in ten days. I’d like you to get back to him, cut the nicest deal you can without screwing him financially, but make it work.’