Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

‘That’s exactly why I don’t intend to go face to face with you. After your escapade in San Francisco, I’m seeing you in a different light. I had you taped as just another effete actor like me, but it seems that you might really be as dangerous a son-of-a-bitch as Primavera said you were. So I’ve changed the plan. In that envelope my young waiter friend just gave you. . kids will do just about anything for a hundred bucks, you know. . you’ll find a document. I’ve had it drawn up by a lawyer. It sets out the terms under which I will be prepared to yield custody of Tom to his mother.’

‘Give me that phone!’ Prim demanded, beside me.

‘Don’t do that, Oz,’ said Wallinger. ‘She’d only yell at me, and I don’t need that. Just listen to me carefully. This is not a negotiating thing; what you have there is how it has to be. I’ve signed the agreement, and I expect Primavera to sign it also. Since you’ve come this far, you can be her witness. I think you’ll find it’s legal and that it can’t be construed as extortion. You can take it to the Nevada State Attorney if you don’t believe me.’

‘Nevada? Why Nevada?’ I asked. Prim stared at me.

‘That’s your next stop, isn’t it, Oz? That’s where you have to be? So, you take Primavera along for the trip. You’ll be contacted there. The signed document will be handed over and arrangements for the trade will be made.’

‘The trade?’ I shot back at him. ‘This is a child you’re talking about.’

‘This is two and one half million British pounds I’m talking about. . or however many US dollars that buys.’

I stood, looking up and down Broxton Avenue, but I couldn’t see anyone talking into a phone. ‘Where are you, you bastard?’ I growled.

‘I’m near, but far enough away.’

I took a shot. ‘You’re not in Roscoe’s office, are you?’

‘Hey,’ he whistled, ‘you really are a detective, but no, that’s not where I am.’

‘Is Tom with you?’

‘Tom is safe; Primavera needn’t worry about that.’

‘God, he better be.’

‘Oz,’ said Wallinger, patiently, ‘ask yourself this. Suppose you and the third Mrs Blackstone came to this, and you were forced to take your kids to negotiate a fair share of your joint property, would they be in the remotest danger from you?’

‘Is that how you really see this? As a palimony thing? You’re fucking crazy, man.’

‘If that’s so, in a few days from now I’ll be rich and crazy. Go to Vegas. I’ll find you there.’

There was a click and the line went dead; I was on the point of chucking the Nokia as far as I could down the street, when I remembered that it was the kid’s. Instead I scrolled through the menu till I found the number from which the call had been made. It was LA local, and I had no doubt that it was a public telephone. Wherever it was, he’d had us in sight when he’d called, because he’d known exactly when to ring. I looked along Broxton and saw any number of shops and restaurants, each with its own payphone, I was sure.

I handed the phone back to the waiter. ‘Describe the guy.’

‘He was around your height,’ he replied, ‘but not as solid. I can’t tell you much about him. He wore Ray-Bans, and he had a beard. He had on a tan-coloured jacket and a light blue hat, like you see golfers wear sometimes.’

I had seen him from the Mystery Bookstore; I had actually seen Paul Wallinger, and I had let him get away from me.

‘What happened?’ I asked the waiter, tersely.

‘He came into the restaurant about a quarter before three. I offered to seat him, but he didn’t want to eat. He said that you’d be coming in here to meet with him but he couldn’t wait. He said he’d give me a hundred dollars to deliver that envelope. That’s more than I’m going to make this afternoon, so I said okay. Then he asked me for our payphone number; he said he wanted to call you to make sure it was okay. I told him it was bust, but I said that he could call you on my cell, if it was that important. He took the number, gave me the envelope and a hundred bucks, and that was it.’

I returned the boy’s phone and gave him another hundred for the aggravation. He’d given us the envelope, unopened. Another kid might have slit it to see if there was money in it, or even drugs; this one was honest, trusting and stupid. I hoped he wasn’t studying medicine, or law, or anything maybe a little less life-threatening, like nuclear physics.

Prim almost snatched it from my hand as I sat down. ‘What is it?’ she asked, as she tore it open.

I topped up my Pinot Grigio. ‘It’s what we’ve been expecting. It’s the sharp end of the business.’

She read through the document, once, then again for luck, and looked up at me, pale beneath the tan. ‘He wants all of it, Oz, everything that he moved to Vancouver. The shit,’ she hissed. ‘He’ll give me my son, but take his inheritance. Well, he’s not getting it; I’m going to find him and I’m going to take Tom from him, dead or alive.’

‘Do you mean him or Tom?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’m not. When people start thinking like that, there can be cross-fire, and the innocent can get caught up. You’ve still got your interdict from Scotland, remember. Once we find out for sure where Tom is, I mean in which legal jurisdiction, we can take action to enforce it. I can afford better lawyers than Wallinger, I promise you.’

She looked down, and gnawed at her lip, as I’d seen her do a few dozen times before when she was preoccupied. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Speaking of lawyers, we should run that past one, just to check that it’s as binding as Wallinger said it is.’

‘Where are we going to find one on a Saturday afternoon?’

‘Good question. If necessary it can wait till we get to Vegas…’ Her gasp stopped me.

‘I’m going to Las Vegas?’

‘That’s what he wants. Before we get there, though, let me try this.’

My phone had been switched off, in case Wallinger had shown up, to prevent interruptions. When I switched it on, I noticed that I had a voice message, but I didn’t have time to deal with that. I located Miles’s cell and called it, not caring what time it was in Australia. As it turned out he was having breakfast.

‘I need a lawyer,’ I told him.

He chuckled. ‘Hey, I saw that stuff on the news. Don’t tell me the guy’s suing you for beating him up.’

‘If he does I’ll counter-sue.’ I filled him in on where we were with Wallinger, and on the document.

‘Okay, I can fix that,’ he said at once. ‘I have a lawyer on twenty-four-hour call, against something going south on one of my projects anywhere in the world. Call this guy, mention my name, and suppose he’s three up with four to play at the country club, he’ll concede the game and see you. His name’s Victor Knight.’ He read me a phone number; I patched it in and stored it as he spoke.

‘Thanks, mate,’ I told him. ‘That’s another one Prim owes you.’

Mr Knight wasn’t on the fifteenth fairway, as it turned out. He was in his Jacuzzi at his home in Beverly Hills. At the drop of Miles’s name, he gave us the address and said that he would see us as soon as we could get to him. We left half of the Pinot Grigio in the bottle, walked back to the hotel and went straight down to the garage to pick up the Jaguar.

The navigation system took us right up his driveway in twenty minutes. His home was in a small estate with private armed security; we had to be cleared at a gatehouse before we could even drive into the street where he lived. Mr Knight’s wasn’t a movie star’s mansion, but it was a movie stars’ lawyer’s mansion and that was impressive enough. It wasn’t anywhere near as big as the Loch Lomond place, but it might well have been in the same price bracket.