Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

He was ready to do business when we arrived, a dapper bloke, silver-haired but fresh-faced, dressed in grey slacks, a blazer, and a blue and white striped shirt. We made some contrast as we were still in shorts, but he didn’t bat an eyelid: he was used to actors.

He took us through the house and out on to a huge patio at the back, where he offered us plush seats around a low table. It reminded me of our leisure wing, but being in LA this one was outdoors. ‘Run through your situation for me,’ he began.

I’d done enough talking for the day, so I left it to Prim. It took her longer to run through the story than it had taken us to drive there from Wilshire Boulevard. When she was done, she handed him the document.

Knight studied it, line by line. When he was finished he laid it on the table and nodded. ‘If you sign and implement that,’ he announced, ‘you will be handing over ownership of your fortune voluntarily, with full legal effect, and no prospect of recovery.’

‘But I’ll get my son back, and that will be irrevocable too. Yes?’

‘Yes, that’s the case. However, Ms Phillips, I have to point out that in the light of this gentleman’s behaviour just about any court in the United States would give you your son back.’

‘If we could find him.’

‘There is that; it’s easy to hide in this country. There is also the possibility that Mr Wallinger could take the child to Mexico. It’s a lot easier for Americans to gain admission there than the other way around.’

‘What should I do?’ she asked.

‘As you say Mr Blackstone has told you, if you find the child, you could seek to enforce your Scottish court order. You could also petition for custody under US law, with, as I have indicated, a significant chance of success. Our courts are a lot more flexible with children than with adults. However, I concede that this is all contingent upon locating the infant.’

‘So?’

‘So, to be brutally honest, it’s your call.’

We thanked Victor Knight, and left him to his weekend. As I slid back into the S-type, I switched my cell-phone back on; it had been off for that meeting too. That message warning popped up again; this time I retrieved it.

It was short and sweet. It was Susie, sounding strange, tired and drawn; all she said was, ‘Oz, I trusted you, and you lied to me. If it’s her you want, stay with her and may God rot the pair of you. And if by any chance you don’t know what I mean, check your e-mail.’

‘What the hell are you on about?’ I said to the phone.

‘What’s up?’ Prim asked.

‘Susie,’ I told her. ‘From the sound of things Wallinger’s been stirring her up again.’

‘How?’

‘God knows; I’ll find out when we get back to the hotel.’

As I piloted the Jag out of Beverly Hills and back into Westwood, that was all I could think about. Well, almost all: my ear was throbbing again and that got my attention. I was tired, and annoyed. I was doing my bloody best here, out of some sort of duty, and I was doing it on a pink ticket from my wife, and now here she was getting outraged about it. Part of me wanted to forget her and her problem, whatever it was; happily it was only a small part. I determined that as soon as we got back to the Century I would get online.

That was my top priority; it really was. It wasn’t my fault it was knocked on the head. I parked the car in the tight basement space, then we took the incredibly shaky wood-lined lift. I got out at the reception area, leaving Prim to go up one more to the suite, and went straight to the desk. I retrieved my laptop, and was heading for the door. . the lift was so slow I decided that I’d be quicker on the stairs. . when the clerk called after me, ‘Excuse me, sir, there’s this too. It was left for you.’

I turned, to see that she was holding out a package, wrapped in red and white striped paper and tied in a neat bow. ‘Who left it?’ I asked as I took it from her, then I held up a hand to stop her reply. ‘Let me guess: it was a guy about my height, but slimmer, with shades, a beard, a tan-coloured jacket and a funny blue hat.’

The woman nodded. ‘That’s right, sir. Should I not have accepted it?’

‘No, it’s okay. He’s some damn joker who’s been following us around, but you weren’t to know that. If he shows up again and I’m in, try to stall him and call me.’

‘Will do, Mr Blackstone.’

I took my laptop and the package up to our mini-suite and showed it to Prim. ‘A gift from Wallinger,’ I told her.

She stared at it. ‘What do you think it is?’

‘I haven’t a clue; if it’s half a pound of Semtex you can kiss your arse goodbye, for I’m going to open it.’ I was joking about the explosives: Wallinger needed us, or at least he needed Prim, to get the money. Still, I took the package into the bathroom. I undid the bow carefully; it was tied tight and the wrapping was pretty crude, a sure sign that it had been done by a man. (There’s an old Scots saying, ‘Let on you’re daft and you’ll get a hurl for nothing,’ which means, loosely translated and put into context, that if one makes a real bollocks of wrapping a present, one will never have to do it again. It’s a principle I’ve followed all my life, but I’ve never had to feign incompetence.)

Eventually I just tore the ribbon loose and ripped off the paper, feeling that involuntary pang of regret that is part of my Scots heritage at the knowledge that it couldn’t be reused. It had enclosed a small, square yellow box, around six inches by six by six. I lifted the lid off, cautiously, and saw that it was packed with tissue paper. I removed the top layers, until I came to a red plastic circle with regular upraised dots all the way around: a baby’s teething ring.

I took it out and saw a small square of paper folded below it. I unfolded it: written in a scrawled hand was, Tom doesn’t need this any more, Mommy. It’s been such a long time .

I took them through to the bedroom and showed them to Prim. She grabbed the ring with both hands, her eyes moistening. Her mouth twisted into a scowl as she read the note; when she was finished she crumpled it and threw it away. ‘What’s he doing?’ she exclaimed.

‘He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases,’ I murmured.

‘What?’

‘Alice in Wonderland. It’s the duchess talking about the sneezing boy.’

‘And what did she recommend be done about him?’

I smiled. ‘She recommended that the crap be beaten out of him, actually.’

‘She knew what she was talking about,’ Prim muttered.

We thought about checking out of the Century Wilshire and driving straight to Vegas, where Everett had said my suite was waiting. Prim was all for it, but she wasn’t driving: it would have taken us until midnight and I did not fancy arriving that late.

Instead we walked back down to the Village and ate in a place called the Napa Valley Grille. . no, I don’t know where the ‘e’ came from. It was glass-walled so we were pretty visible, but I didn’t care. In fact, I found that I didn’t care about anything much, other than getting to the Bellagio, meeting up with my friends and starting work on their movie.

I hadn’t forgotten about Susie’s message, or her advice to check my e-mail, but there was a practical difficulty with that. Our hotel had no in-room access, and the one terminal they did possess seemed to have been commandeered permanently by a Japanese salesman.

Prim was pretty subdued over dinner. I could see that she was wrestling with the decision she had to make. When I considered it again, the teething-ring trick had been quite cute, a piece of psychological pressure applied just at the key moment.