Quintin Jardine - Screen Savers

‘Ach, well. It’s probably all over, like you say. Prim and I have taken it as far as we can, that’s for sure.’

‘Yes,’ said Susie, ‘and thank you both very much. I’m grateful for everything you’ve found out. . and I mean everything.’

I opened another bottle of the fine Austrian; and then another. For most of the next three hours or so, Susie agonised over whether she should approach Joe Donn to bring their unorthodox connection into the open.

‘Wha’d’y’ think, Mike?’ she asked him over and over again. ‘Nothing, love,’ he replied consistently. ‘You have to work that one out for yourself.’

Finally, at around the twelfth time of asking, he slipped an arm round her waist and lifted her out of her seat. ‘I think, my dear,’ he announced at last, ‘that it’s time for you to go to bed.’

‘Yesh pleashe,’ she giggled. Night had fallen as we drank and talked. The moon shone down upon us, and the lights of Sauchiehall Street shone up at us.

‘Why don’t you crash out here?’ I suggested.

Dylan shot me a look. ‘If you think I’ve spent the last three hours drinking Strathmore and watching the Wee One get pished, only to decide to stay the night, you have another think coming, pal.’

So we saw them to the door and all the way down to the main entrance. Susie’s car was backed into one of our block’s visitor places, off-street and hidden from those entrepreneurs who make their living through dealing in expensive alloy wheels. The term ‘Hot Wheels’ has a different meaning in Glasgow.

We followed, watching with some amusement as Mike walked the love of his life down to the front door, then strode across to their car and slid behind the wheel, thinking that she was on his heels. But Susie had stayed put, saying her extended goodbye to us.

‘So sorry,’ she slurred, as she threw her arms around Prim’s neck, for support as much as affection. ‘So sorry. We’ve spent all fuckn’ night talkin’ ’bout me, ’n it sh’d have been your night all along. You two be happy now.’

I couldn’t help grinning as I looked across at Dylan, as he switched on the car’s ignition, then left the engine running as he jumped out and came across to retrieve his scooshed girlfriend.

He was halfway towards us, when the car exploded. There was no big bang as such, just a soft ‘crrummmp’ sound, followed by a fireball, and then another so violent that it threw all four of us off our feet, and so hot that it seemed to draw all the air from our lungs.

By some miracle, none of us was seriously hurt. The only casualty was Mike’s red Lacoste wind-cheater, the back of which was melted by the heat.

No longer just a foursome, we sat upstairs in our apartment, with medics buzzing around us, fire officers asking us questions about the sequence of events, and uniformed policemen hanging around in the background.

Downstairs, in the car park, the sleek silver sports coupe in which Susie and Dylan had arrived was now a blackened skeleton, as was the vehicle next to it, a Mazda owned by a ground floor neighbour. Prim and I were lucky; our cars, a BMW Z3 and a Freelander, had been far enough away to escape the flames.

It would have been an exaggeration to say that the experience had sobered Susie, but it had quietened her, that’s for sure. She sat on our two-seater with her head on Mike’s shoulder, looking totally confused and whimpering quietly. The ambulance team had wanted to take her to the Royal, but she had panicked when they produced a wheelchair so, for the sake of peace and quiet, they had left her in Mike’s care.

None of us said much, not for a while. We just sat there, sipping black coffee, exchanging looks. It was as if we were waiting for something to happen. When it did, it came in the form of a middle-aged Chief Inspector and a slightly older man, a Divisional Fire Officer, both of them wearing the heavy uniforms and looking as if they owned the place, as they burst into our living room.

‘A word in private, DI Dylan,’ barked the policeman.

‘No.’ My friend Mike is rank conscious, normally, but a fiery enema is liable to make anyone unco-operative. The Chief Inspector, clearly not programmed for that response, stared at him, his mouth hanging slightly open and his heavy moustache twitching.

‘I’m not leaving Susie. You want to talk to me, you do it here.’

Mr Senior Plod glanced at Prim and me, in an attempt to be meaningful.

‘What’s your name, Sir,’ asked Dylan.

‘Chief Inspector Brown,’ he replied, then nodded towards the fireman. ‘This is Mr Callaghan.’

‘Well, Mr Brown, this is Mr Blackstone and Miss Phillips. They’re friends and they’ve had their eyebrows singed too, so they have an interest in this. We’ll talk here.’

Chief Inspector Brown folded his cards. ‘Pull up a chair from the table,’ I offered.

They settled themselves in front of us, but Brown managed still to behave as if Prim and I weren’t there. ‘What are you working on just now, Inspector?’ he began.

‘I can’t tell you that.’

For the second time in as many minutes, the policeman was stuck for a word. So he simply repeated the question, more emphatically this time. Dylan repeated his answer.

‘Look,’ snapped Brown. ‘Do I have to get your senior officer to order you to tell me?’

As I looked at Mike, I saw something in his face I’d seen only once or twice before. ‘Just you fucking try it,’ he said quietly.

‘I’ll do just that. Where d’you work from?’ The Chief Inspector’s mouth was set in a tight line.

‘Headquarters. Pitt Street.’

‘Right. Use your phone, Mr Blackwood?’

‘There’s one in the kitchen, Mr Brown,’ I told him. He stood and stomped off, leaving Divisional Officer Callaghan sitting in an awkward silence.

When he returned, almost five minutes later, his face was distinctly red. I always feel sorry for people who blush. It’s like wearing a sign round your neck reading, ‘I’ve been a dickhead.’

Brown settled awkwardly on to his dining chair. ‘You might have told me you were Special Branch,’ he mumbled.

I stared across at my pal. ‘You might have told me too,’ I said. ‘If I’d known that our nation’s security was resting in your buttery grip I might have felt differently about staying in this country.’

Dylan grinned. ‘Need to know, Oz. Need to know. I was transferred four months ago.’ He turned to Brown. ‘Now, can we forget about all that silver braid on your uniform and assume that I’m in charge here?’

Not waiting for a reply he turned to the fireman. ‘What have you got, Mr Callaghan?’

‘Someone doesn’t like you, Mr Dylan,’ the DO replied. ‘There were two seats to this fire; the car’s petrol tank and another source. I think someone followed you here and when you were inside, secured a firebomb device close to the fuel tank, beside the exhaust. It had a small explosive charge, and a quantity of petrol in a plastic container. I’d say it had a trembler trigger and that the vibration from the silencer was enough to set it off.

‘The heat from the first blast was enough to blow the vapour and fuel in the main tank. If you’d still been in that motor, son,’ said the grizzled fireman, grimly, ‘you’d have been done to a fuckin’ crisp.’

‘Yeah.’ Mike nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He looked at Callaghan, then at Brown. ‘But as far as your reports go, it was a wiring failure. A tragedy averted, but an accident nonetheless.’

Brown drew in a deep breath and shook his head. ‘I don’t know about that, Inspector.’

‘Well I bloody do, Chief Inspector. That’s how you’ll write it up, and if anyone says anything different to the press, I’ll bloody have him. Police or fire service, it doesn’t matter, his carcass will be mine.’ I hadn’t realised till then that Mike was turning into a Glaswegian; his Edinburgh veneer was being worn away. He went on, ‘Oh yes, and one other thing; neither my name nor Miss Gantry’s will feature in your reports.