Quintin Jardine - Screen Savers

‘And you haven’t spoken to the press since?’

‘Absolutely not. I’m not really angry with Susie any more; just disappointed, that’s all.’

Suddenly a couple of loose ends began to tie themselves together in my brain. ‘Was Stephen right, about you caring more for Susie than him?’ I asked.

Donn smiled, softly. ‘Aye, maybe he was.’ It was almost a whisper.

‘Why?’

‘Because I loved her poor mother. Margaret was my wife, see, before she left me for Jack Gantry.’

‘Eh?’ Prim and I gasped simultaneously.

‘Yet you went on working for him?’

‘I didn’t work for him then. We were friends at that stage. He and Margaret fell in love. People do; sometimes they just can’t help themselves. Don’t get me wrong, though. I was mad enough at the time. But you couldn’t stay mad with Jack Gantry, not forever. When I saw that he loved Margaret as much as she loved him, I began to see that it was all for the best. Then Susie was born, and everything was complete for them.

‘Not long after that, Jack asked me to be his finance director, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to turn him down.’

‘Does Susie know all this?’ asked Prim.

‘No. I’m sure she doesn’t. Margaret, Jack and I decided when she was a baby that there was no need to tell her. She certainly didn’t know when Margaret died. Jack and I agreed that there would be no mention of a first marriage at the funeral.’

‘And Stephen? Does he know?’

‘I couldn’t say for sure. I told his father, my brother Thomas, not to tell him. He died when Stephen was only ten, so I don’t imagine that he did. I can’t vouch for Myra, though; his mother, that is.’

‘Where can we find Stephen?’

He frowned across the conservatory at Prim. ‘I have no idea: nor do I care after what he did to wee Myrtle. Best ask his mother; most of the time, that is, when he didn’t have a woman in tow, he lived with her.’

‘Okay, but where can we find her?’

‘I’ve no idea. Myra and I never got on that well: we don’t keep in touch. After Thomas died she stayed on in their house in Paisley, but Stephen said on one of the last occasions that I saw him that she was in the process of moving to a smaller place.’

He gave us a sudden sour look. ‘You’re the detectives. You find her.’

There aren’t all that many people in Scotland named Donn, not in comparison with the Smiths or the Macs or the Blacks or even the Patels. But there are enough of them to make finding Stephen Donn and his mother seem like a difficult task.

To cut a few corners, I phoned an Edinburgh pal who worked for Telecom. He did for us what he had done on occasion in the past, but for a few more quid this time — he had heard on the grapevine of our being in the money — and ran a check of telephone subscribers.

He came up with five Stephen Donns, two in Glasgow, one in Falkirk, one in Brechin and one in Dundee. Very quietly, Dylan ran police checks on all of them, but none fitted the profile of old Joe’s nephew. We checked the Thomas Donns as well; many widows can’t bring themselves to remove their late husbands’ names from the phone book. There were three of those, all very much alive.

Another Monday morning had come around when my pal Eddie came back with his trawl of the M. Donns; first initials only, since women’s forenames are never listed in the directory. They hold them on computer, though. ‘Sorry, Oz,’ our informant said. ‘Two Marys and a couple of Margarets, but no Myra Donns. The closest I can get is a Meera.’

‘What?’

‘Aye, it’s spelled M-I-R-A. My mother knows someone in Manchester with that name.’

‘M-I-R-A,’ I repeated. ‘You could pronounce that Myra, couldn’t you?’

‘There’s nae law against it, Oz;’ said my cheerful chum.

‘Okay, let’s try her. Where does she live?’ He read out an address in Barassie, in Ayrshire.

As soon as I had hung up, Prim called Joe Donn to check the spelling of his sister-in-law’s name, but there was no reply, other than a message inviting us to leave a message. She looked across at Lulu. ‘Fancy doing that interview for McPhillips this afternoon?’ Keen as mustard, our newly promoted executive nodded.

‘That’s good,’ Prim smiled. ‘I fancy a trip to the seaside.’

We thought phoning Mrs Donn and asking her straight out if she had a son called Stephen, and if she knew where he was. Sure, it was the obvious thing to do, but we decided that if she was the woman we were after, and was concerned for her son, it would be too easy for her just to say ‘no’, and stop us in our tracks. Eyeball to eyeball was surer, and anyway, I fancied a walk on the beach too.

Barassie is no more than a village to the north of the town of Troon, on the Ayrshire coast. Even without our street atlas we would have had no trouble finding the address Eddie had given, or rather sold us, in a newish block of flats set in immaculate grounds in a small crescent just behind Beach Road.

We had the afternoon in front of us, and it was a beautiful day, so we decided to take a walk on the sands before getting down to business. I had something in mind; as it turned out, so had Prim.

‘If the weather was always like this in Scotland,’ said she, as we stood, holding hands and looking across the wide, calm Firth of Clyde at the spectacular and wholly unexpected skyline of the Island of Arran, ‘we’d never think of going anywhere else.’

‘Maybe, but it ain’t,’ I pointed out. ‘In a month or two on this very spot we won’t be able to stand up straight for the wind and the rain.’

‘So what, if we’ve got each other?’

‘So it’s just as good to have each other in Spain, or in Barbados, or in California, or in Singapore, or in Sydney, or in any other place where the rain doesn’t hit you horizontally. What d’you say to the idea of leaving Lulu to run the business, once she’s got a bit more experience, and taking a sabbatical this winter, a couple of months maybe?’

She looked at me, curious. ‘I’d say it sounds like a great idea, but what’s brought it on?’

‘Ach I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the old Oz trying to get out. What with the business, the GWA gig, the Sly Burr stuff, and now Miles’ and Dawn’s movie, I’m feeling more than a bit hemmed in. Just when I should be more in control of my life than ever before, it’s all gone crazy; I’m not in charge any more. This thing we’re doing for Dylan’s a welcome break, I tell you. . yet we don’t need to be doing any of it, neither of us.’

‘It isn’t Glasgow that’s difficult for you, is it? The flat, and all its hard memories. .’ She was frowning now, concerned.

‘No, love. I can handle all that, honest.’

‘It’s not me, is it?’

Her big brown eyes were wrinkled as I looked down at her. The sun glinted on the natural highlights; the skin of her tanned shoulders glowed with health. I put my arms around her and kissed her.

‘Oh, no, my love,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not you. If not for you, I really would be crazy. I’d have come apart, back then, if you hadn’t been around to hold me together. I don’t know what to call what you and I have between us; there’s nothing conventional about it, that’s for sure.’

‘No, there isn’t; is there.’ She put her head on my chest. ‘I should have hated you when you left me there in Spain. When we talked it through, I was very rational, trying to be as mature and considerate as I could, laying my own sins alongside yours, and agreeing that what we were doing was right for both of us. But all the time I was trying my best to hate you, trying to find the anger I felt should be there.

‘I couldn’t though, because I realised that you couldn’t help what you were doing. So after you left, I went back to real work, built up a new circle of friends, slept with a bloke just for the hell of it, and got on with my life.