Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘Speaking of Miller, don’t you go thinking I don’t realise you set him up this afternoon. You engineered it so that I’d fill him in. Did it give you a buzz, was that it?’

Susie looked up at me, with a delicious spark of triumph in her eyes. ‘It did, as a matter of fact. But that’s not why I did it. I saw the look in your eyes when he appeared, slapping you on the back like that, and I knew that sooner or later you were going to do him some damage. I reckoned to myself that if you came across him when there was no one else around, that you might have really hurt him, but that if you squared him up in a crowd, you’d be stopped before you got carried away.

‘So I egged him on until he stepped over the line. Mind you, I thought you’d only punch him; I never realised you were so good at the Glasgow kiss!’

I had to laugh. ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘So you kept him out of hospital and me out of jail. Thanks from us both. Now back to what you were on about before. Your minder, you said? Explain.’

Susie led me across to the big sofa, spread herself on it and pulled me down beside her. All of a sudden she looked vulnerable again, as she had when she’d arrived, two days earlier. I wondered if it was real, or if she was trying to lead me on too.

‘It’s like this,’ she began. ‘I feel closer to you, Oz, than I do to anyone else in the world. You think the way I do, you’re as cunning as me, so I can’t pull the wool over your eyes, and you’re afraid of nothing, because the worst has happened already. On top of that, I reckon you care for me. I trust you like I can’t trust anyone else, not even dear old Joe. The fact that he’s my natural father doesn’t make his business judgement any better.’

She put my hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘I want you to look out for me, Oz. I want you to watch my back. I want to be able to come to you whenever I have a problem that I don’t think I can handle on my own.’

‘For example?’

‘For example that Castelgolf business. I did that almost entirely off my own bat, but not quite. I went to Joe for advice; maybe he was dazzled by the notion of having his own golf course, but he was taken hook line and sinker just like me.

‘If I’d come to you, and asked you what you thought, what would you have done?’

‘What you should have; hired Dun and Bradstreet or someone like them. Had a word with a couple of acquaintances. Sure, I’d probably have steered you away from it. But you’ll learn from this experience; you won’t make the same mistake again.’

‘No. But there are other bigger mistakes out there waiting for me. Not just in business either. Oz, I’m a rich girlie in a greedy man’s world. I might be devious, or manipulative if you like, and I might be ruthless, but I still get lonely, and in private, I still doubt myself.

‘I want you to be there for me, Oz. That’s all.’

I reached out and touched her face. ‘That’s easy. You’ve got it.’

‘Will you come on the board of the Gantry Group, as a non-executive director?’

I laughed again. ‘Fuck me, is that what all this is about? You’re offering me a seat on the board. I don’t know about that, Susie. I have no idea what my commitments are going to be for the next couple of years.’

‘There’ll be a salary involved, and shares, if you like.’

‘I’ll watch your back, but I won’t be paid for it. You don’t need to make me a director of anything.’

‘It’ll regularise things; it’ll give me an excuse to call you whenever I need you, without pissing off Prim.’

‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘If that’s what you want, okay. Expenses only, though; no salary. And don’t worry about Prim. She doesn’t have a veto over what I do.’

She moved towards me, along the sofa. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered. ‘Now let me show you another kind of Glasgow kiss.’

Afterwards, we decided that we would cash in Susie’s raffle prize that night. As I had expected, El Roser II was busy, it being the end of the Christmas festival, but they managed to squeeze another table for two into a glazed overspill pavilion on the Passeig Maritim, in front of the main restaurant.

The King of Spain went there to eat fish; if that was good enough for him, who were we to disagree?

We started with an assortment of shellfish, then majored on a stew of hake, monkfish, and sea bass with a couple of langoustines added for the sake of appearance. To drink. . not part of the prize. . we selected a bottle of Faustino Rioja. There are several Faustinos, each one with a number. The lower the number, the higher the price; Susie insisted on buying, so I went for number one.

When it was over, and we had scraped the last of our crepes suzette off the plate. . what else could we have for dessert. . I picked up the empty bottle, and looked at the distinguished label, admiring it and wondering how I would look with a beard like that. Susie took my left hand in hers. ‘You do know that we’re sitting in a goldfish bowl here?’ she asked.

Our table was against one of the pavilion walls. I looked out, through the glass, at the Saturday night promenaders, young couples, older couples, families with children, as they walked along the Passeig.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but so what?’

‘You realise that when this movie comes out in Europe, and when it’s a hit, as it will be, this is how your life will be for evermore?’

‘I’ll make bloody sure that it isn’t,’ I promised. ‘Anyway, you’re overrating me.’

‘No I’m not. You’re a Brit in a Hollywood movie; you’re tabloid meat from now on. Paparazzi after you and all that stuff.’

‘I was cast by my brother-in-law, for God’s sake!’

‘Doesn’t matter. You said yourself, Miles is commercial first and nothing second. You’re fairly well known as it is from the wrestling stuff. Now you’re going to be famous, pursued, selling exclusive rights to the first baby pics and all that stuff.’

‘Rubbish. It won’t be that bad.’

She gleamed at me, out from under her eyelashes, raised my hand to her lips and kissed it, lightly. ‘Oh no?’ she whispered. ‘Then why is there a bloke photographing us right now?’

Instinctively, I snatched my hand away and looked round. Outside, on the pavement, no more than a few yards away from us, stood a man. He was wearing dark trousers and a heavy cotton jacket, with a hood pulled up over his head. The way the streetlight was hitting the glass walls of the restaurant annexe meant that I couldn’t make out his face. Anyway, most of it was covered by what looked like a large digital camera, and it was pointed unmistakably at Susie and me.

The man waited long enough to take one more shot, catching, no doubt, the surprise and anger on my face, then turned and ran off. Still I had no clear view of him. I started out of my chair, but he had disappeared into the crowd, and I knew right away that it was useless. As I sat down again, I was aware of one or two people looking at me, but mostly the thing had gone unnoticed.

‘How long was he there?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t know. I was only aware of him when the people outside thinned out a bit. But it’s not as if we were necking or anything. Get used to it, though, love. That’s what it’s going to be like from now on. “Smile please, Oz. Gie’s your autograph, Oz.” You’ll have a fan club, you’ll have a website. Soon as this movie comes out.’

‘You reckon?’ I growled. ‘You think that was just some mark who recognised me from the telly?’

‘Who else could it have been?’

I looked at her. She wasn’t kidding; it hadn’t dawned on her. ‘I might never be able to prove it,’ I told her, ‘but it could have been Steve Miller.’

She gave a small gasp of surprise. ‘You think so? I’d have thought he’d never come near you again after what you did to him.’