Quintin Jardine - Screen Savers

‘Know how I figured where he and Donn were headed?’ She gave the briefest shake of her head.

‘When I went to see Mike at Pitt Street that time, he came to the front desk to collect me, all bright and breezy, and he’s whistling a tune — a tune from South Pacific. Bali Hai, it’s called. When, finally, the scales fell away and I knew that he had to be Donn’s inside man, that scene flashed straight back into my mind.

‘Pure bloody Dylan that was; I can see him now counting his money and laughing to himself that he’d even told me where he was going, and dumb old Blackstone hadn’t a clue. Ah Mike,’ I called out, hearing the sadness in my own voice, ‘you always had to show off. You always had to try to be just that bit smarter than you really were. And you always had to try to be one up on me.

‘I told the Dutch authorities about my guess. They checked yesterday’s flights out of Schiphol, and they came upon two UK males, Mr Michael Auden and Mr Stuart Dee — another poet and another river; another bloody Dylan joke, I’ll bet — booked KLM to Singapore, then routed on to Bali.

‘That was their getaway destination all along, and the cheeky sod even dropped me a hint, never thinking I’d work it out.

‘He did it the day before yesterday, as well; when I called him to ask him to run those checks into abandoned production platforms — which of course he never did. The mad bugger practically told me, if I’d realised it at the time, to look at Dawn’s e-mail. “If he phones. .” he said, “if he uses the post. .”

‘The best of it is that he was right. I really am as dumb as he thought. I actually tipped him off that we had rumbled Donn when I asked him to do that. And later, I even mentioned the activating word for the account — code name “mother-in-law”, I told him. That’s how they were able to release the money without waiting for the deadline or for an e-mail from Miles. Mike knew your Mum’s first name. He met her that time we all had dinner in Glasgow.

‘Oh, love, I knew something was wrong, I knew there was someone else involved, but I never suspected it was Mike himself until we hit that platform and found that Donn had gone early. When I spilled the code, Dylan sent him an e-mail, then headed straight for Amsterdam, while his partner flew there in the Jet Ranger. The Dutch found it last night in a car park on the edge of the city.’

Prim was dry-eyed by now. ‘How did they get together?’ she asked.

‘Superintendent Hennessy — that’s Mike’s boss; he was one of the guys who interviewed me in Amsterdam — thinks that he recruited Donn as an informant; around the time of that do at Gantry’s, when the photo was taken. The guy had no record, but he did have shady connections in Scotland and in Holland. Interpol knew about him, apparently; they had him placed as one of the movers of big loads of Pakistani hashish from the Far East through Europe. The dates of those operations coincide with him working offshore in the area.

‘Dylan’s private notes in the office refer to him turning Donn. He didn’t have the brains to do that, of course: what really happened was that Donn turned him, completely in the end. When Mike ran for it, he took two genuine passports, made up from blanks that had been stolen from an office in Liverpool, but recovered by the Glasgow police in a raid.

‘We’ll never know for sure whose idea it was to kidnap Dawn for ransom, as part of the vendetta against me, but I’m pretty sure that Mike came up with it and Stephen did the planning. Getting himself on to the movie crew was a brilliant idea, and as it turned out, so fucking simple. He does some research, knocks down the Szabo guy, then turns up next morning at his agency looking for movie work, with special experience on oil rigs as an added attraction.’

I looked sideways at Primavera. ‘He was a really clever piece of work, was Stephen Donn, and like Myrtle Campbell said, vicious with it. I’m pretty certain that if the two of them had got to Bali, and had got to the money, not long afterwards Mike would have been found dead in a ditch.’

‘What about the money?’ Prim asked. ‘Is it gone for good?’

‘No. They’ll get it back. Governments are involved now; ours, the Dutch, the Swiss. Even as we speak, bankers are being leant on very hard. Your brother-in-law has some incredibly powerful friends, you know.’

‘I know that, my love, just as you’ve had an extremely dangerous enemy. That’s still the big unanswered question, isn’t it. Why the hell did Stephen Donn have such a hatred of you?’

I smiled at her; the sort of grin that leaves smugness way behind and climbs to the upper reaches of self-satisfaction. ‘Oh, I know that,’ I told her, as casually as I could.

‘I’ve been thinking about that from the very start; and I’ve had a wild idea about it. Thanks to a check that the MI5 man made for me tonight, I know for sure now. I’m not going to do anything about it though, not yet.

‘The real life Oz Blackstone movie isn’t over yet. There’s still one last scene to be shot.’ Primavera gasped with astonishment as I outlined the script.

The next few days were spectacular. The news blackout was lifted at two o’clock that afternoon, at a press conference in Whitehall no less, at which the star performers were Miles, Dawn, me. . and the Prime Minister, determined to milk every last drop of publicity from the story.

He took the lead in telling the story of the kidnapping, of our turning to Detective Inspector Michael Dylan, a rogue Scottish policeman, only to be betrayed by him, of Miles turning in desperation to his Friend in a High Place, and of our insistence on being involved in the rescue mission ourselves.

He ended with an account of the confrontation in Amsterdam Airport, of the two fugitives’ attempt to use human shields to escape, and of their being shot by a Dutch Special Forces officer.

A few of the details were a bit fudged up; I didn’t like Mike’s name being blackened any further, but I knew that the PM could hardly tell the world that he’d been executed, on his orders, to save embarrassment. I was pleased though, that no mention was made of earlier events.

As you can imagine, the media went absolutely apeshit. Questions flew at us from all corners of the room. Miles was asked about his feelings when he realised that his wife had been taken, and his relief when we found her safe. He dealt with them with dignity and with eloquence. . although he said nothing about almost blowing Dawn’s brains out, or even about shooting the shit out of the galley kitchen.

They asked me about Dylan, and about what happened in Amsterdam. I told them that he had been a good friend to me, that there had been many times in my past when he had been there for me when I had needed him, and that his betrayal of us all for nothing other than money was one of the saddest things I had ever known. I also asked everyone to spare a thought for his girlfriend, who was at that moment under sedation in Glasgow.

I went along with the official version of the events in the airport restaurant as best I could. I didn’t say outright that Mike had threatened anyone, simply that ‘they’ had attempted to take a woman hostage, and that my Dutch companion had been left with no choice but to shoot them.

They asked me about Stephen Donn too; I told them that I had only ever known him as Stu Queen, movie electrician. I resisted the urge to add that Miles was disappointed that we hadn’t found him on the rig, since he would have taken great satisfaction from shooting his lights out himself.

Dawn didn’t take any questions. Miles told the crowd that she was still unable to speak about her ordeal, and they respected that. As our limo drove across Westminster Bridge on the start of the journey back to Surrey, he told me that their agent had sold the rights to a world exclusive interview to CNN for three million dollars.