Quintin Jardine - Poisoned Cherries

I watched her all the time. I watched Susie feed her, change her Pampers, dress her for the day, settle her down for the night. When she was asleep I couldn’t stop myself from slipping into the nursery and standing there, staring at her. I’d always thought of myself as a clever bastard; I’d just never realised how clever I was, until her mother and I made her.

I was standing there, on the Wednesday after we’d brought her home, when I felt a small hand slip into mine. Susie stood beside me, looking down, just like me, her mouth hanging open in a smile as gauche as mine. Joe Donn had just headed back home to Motherwell, and we were alone again with our child.

‘There won’t be anyone else, you know,’ she whispered. ‘Remember all that stuff I spouted back at the turn of the year, about finding a titled twerp to give me a couple of kids and a place in the country that he could run with my money? That was all crap; I’ve got what I want.’

‘So now I can piss off, is that what you’re saying?’

‘No. What I’m saying is that you can walk through that door any time you like, and come back any time you like.’

‘Mmm. I don’t know if that’ll work both ways.’

‘I don’t care. As long as you provide accommodation suitable for Janet when she comes to stay with her dad, I don’t care. She’ll have a full-time nanny as of next week, and they’ll arrive as a package.’

I hadn’t given any thought to that one. In fact I hadn’t given any thought to anything that might happen after the baby’s birth.

‘Christ,’ I murmured, ‘I don’t even have accommodation suitable for me at the moment.’

‘You still own the Spanish villa, don’t you? She was made there, so where better for her to visit?’

‘I’m selling that to Scott Steele. He’s been renting it for a while, and he made me a good offer for it.’

‘What have you got in America?’

‘Nothing; the place where Prim and I lived was leased, and I’ve let it go. If I was asked what my permanent address is right now I’d have to say that I don’t have one. I don’t even have a car; I sold those to Scott as well.’

Susie stifled a chuckle. ‘Oz Blackstone, millionaire vagrant; look, I mean it. You have to have something; I’m not having you take Janet to some crappy rented condo.’

‘Okay, let’s do some supposing. Suppose you fancied coming to visit Daddy with her, to play families for a couple of weeks? Where would you like it to be?’

‘Anywhere safe, where they speak English.’

I gave her my arched eyebrows look. ‘What the fuck are you doing in Glasgow, in that case? It’s disqualified on both counts.’

She dug her nails into the palm of my hand. Janet started to stir, and so we crept out of the nursery, as quietly as we had come in.

‘How about Fife?’ I asked her, as she half-closed the door behind us. ‘I’ve seen all these places, but I’m still a Fifer at heart. My Dad’s house has been lying virtually empty since Ellie moved to St Andrews; I could take that over.’

She patted my chest. ‘Whatever makes you happy. . as long as it’s good enough for our daughter.’

‘Nothing will ever be good enough for our daughter.’

She squeezed my fairly impressive triceps. ‘God help the lads when they come calling, in that case.’

‘Indeed. It takes one to know one.’

Susie grinned up at me, slipped her arm through mine and led me along the hall.

‘How’re you feeling now, by the way?’ I asked her. ‘Still sore?’

She stopped at the bedroom door. ‘Not so’s you’d notice.’

I’d left the Edinburgh accommodation problem to Greg McPhillips. Life is ironic; he used to give me work, now he was getting so much from me that he’d almost become my personal assistant.

He called me on Thursday morning with a proposition. ‘I know this chartered surveyor in Edinburgh,’ he began. Everybody knows a chartered fucking surveyor in Edinburgh, there are so many of them, and especially in the city centre pubs, but Greg’s a boy for long preambles so I let him stroll on.

The tale took a couple of twists before it settled down with a property developer who lived mostly off-shore but retained a duplex apartment on top of a building which he had refurbished in the Old Town, and which he was prepared to rent, fully furnished, of course, to the right clients, for the right amount of money.

Greg hadn’t seen it himself, but his pal had assured him that the place was worth a look, so I drove back to the capital that afternoon, in Susie’s M3 once again, but giving it its head all the way this time. . subject to normal speed limits of course, officer.

The surveyor, a serious-looking, bespectacled guy named Luke Edgar, met me on the pavement at the Mound, about halfway between the Bank of Scotland head office and the temporary home of the Scottish Parliament. At first, I had no idea where we were going, but when he walked ten yards to an anonymous wooden front door I knew right away.

The building is probably the oldest surviving tenement in Edinburgh, and certainly the tallest. It wasn’t the CN Tower, as I looked up at it, but it went pretty high by Old Town standards. I knew the story; it had been bought and tastefully refurbished by the developer, a well known Edinburgh guy with a celebrated Midas touch, and a reputation as the best spotter of opportunities in the business.

He had made a good job of the Mound, that’s for sure. The apartment towered over Princes Street, and looked panoramically across the city, west, north and east. I knew I was going to take it as soon as I walked through the door, although I made a show of haggling with earnest Edgar.

There was a big reception room downstairs; I hit on that right away. We could use it for cast meetings, read-throughs and even rehearsals. I took a look at the kitchen; everything was state of the art. There were two bedrooms off the living area and two more upstairs; a couple more than I needed, but there would be plenty of room for a makeshift nursery if I could persuade Susie to bring the baby through to see her dad at weekends. To cap it all off, there was a superb Bang and Olufsen sound system, with speakers wired into every room in the place.

It didn’t take long to do the deal. Greg’s pal won the haggling hands down; he didn’t budge on his price and I caved in quick. . what the hell, Miles was picking up the tab anyway. We shook hands on a three-month lease, with an option to extend on a month-by-month basis if shooting overran, and arranged that I would sign next day and move in whenever I liked.

I was pretty chuffed as I drove back through to Glasgow. I knew that Susie would like the apartment, and I was pretty confident that we’d wind up playing house at weekends, for a while at least.

Life, I thought, was indeed a bowl of bloody cherries, and great big red ones, at that.

I persuaded Susie to help me move in on the Saturday, and to stay over, with the baby, for the weekend. She’s always been very much a Glaswegian, and therefore pretty dismissive of Edinburgh, but when she saw the place, even she was impressed.

‘You’ve got this thing about eyries, haven’t you,’ she said, as she looked out across the Mound. ‘Your old flat in Edinburgh was a loft, then you bought the Glasgow place, which looks over everything, and the villa in Spain. I’ll bet you had a view in California as well. Right?’

I thought of the crashing Pacific waves. ‘True,’ I admitted. ‘It’s the way I was brought up.’

‘Rubbish,’ she laughed. ‘It’s you, Blackstone. You’ve either got a voyeuristic streak, or it’s sheer paranoia. . you’re afraid of the idea of anyone looking in on you.’