Quintin Jardine - Screen Savers

‘Aye, okay then,’ she conceded, almost wearily, with a glance at her husband which promised consequences later for his surrender. . a shade unreasonable, I thought. ‘Come on through, but tell your pet gorilla to be careful no tae stand on anything.’

She led us through the square hall and into a big living room. EastEnders was on the television and I knew at once who Malcolm’s lookalike was. ‘Sit down,’ she said, then looked doubtfully at Jerry. ‘Not you, though.’

I took one of the two armchairs, opposite Myrtle, while The Behemoth stood behind her husband, as he sat on the matching settee. ‘I’ll bet you’re no as tough as you look,’ Malcolm muttered. Without a word, Jerry stretched out the tree-trunks that passed for his arms, gripped the back of the heavy sofa at either side, straightened his back and effortlessly lifted it, and its two hundred pound occupant, three feet off the ground.

‘Stop that you!’ Myrtle shouted. ‘Put him down! And Malkie, you keep your mouth shut.’

Both of them did as they were told.

‘Right Mr Blackstone,’ she went on. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘How do you feel about Susie Gantry?’

‘Miss Gantry? I suppose I like her well enough.’

‘Even though she sacked you?’

‘She didnae sack me, Ah left.’

‘After you were caught smuggling photocopies of documents out to your old boss,’ I pointed out.

‘Aye, but she gave me the chance to resign. She said that if I did she’d give me a good reference. She did too, and two weeks’ extra pay over and above my holiday money and wages in lieu of notice.’

‘So if you liked Susie, why did you betray her like that? Why did you do that for old Donn?’

‘Ah didnae do it for Mr Donn. Ah did it for Stephen.’

‘Who?’ I looked at her, puzzled.

‘Stephen Donn, his nephew. He worked at Gantry’s for a while.’

I felt myself frown as I remembered. The young book-keeper installed by Susie’s father at the time of Joe Donn’s brief reinstatement. He must have worked there for such a short time that his name didn’t figure on the list Dylan had given me. It wasn’t only my memory that was triggered. In the silence, I realised that Myrtle was staring at me.

‘Blackstone, you said your name was. That accountant girl Miss Gantry brought in, she was called Blackstone too. Was she. .’

‘My wife,’ I said, not looking at her, avoiding the expression which I knew was on her face, the one I had seen so many times before, the one that always brought it all back. ‘So why did you put your job on the line for Mr Donn’s nephew?’ I went on, quickly.

For the first time, she hesitated. ‘He just asked me,’ she answered, at last. ‘He said that Mr Donn was going to the papers to get even with Miss Gantry, but that he needed some stuff from the office.’

‘He just asked you,’ I repeated. ‘And you just did it? Why, for God’s sake? Why didn’t you tell Susie?’

‘You don’t know Stephen.’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me about him.’

She looked over at her husband. ‘He and I had a fling,’ she murmured. Malcolm’s eyes narrowed to slits. He began to rise from his seat on the sofa, until Jerry’s huge hand gripped his shoulder and slammed him back down.

‘It was when you were inside,’ Myrtle exclaimed, speaking to her husband with a plea in her voice. ‘I was really angry with you, remember? Ah told you we were finished, and at the time Ah meant it. It didn’t last long, only about a month.’

‘So?’ I knew I had to keep control of this discussion.

‘He threatened to tell Malkie about us if I didn’t do what he wanted.’

‘And you thought that if he did, Malkie would beat the shite out of him and wind up inside again? Is that it?’

She surprised me by shaking her head. ‘No. I was afraid that he would try, and get himself killed. Like Ah said, you don’t know Stephen.’ She glanced across at her husband again.

‘You’re a hard man, love, but you’d never really hurt anyone. No’ really hurt them, Ah mean. It’s not in your nature.

‘Stephen would, though. He’s a real bad bastard.’ Her voice tailed off, and her eyes moistened.

‘Remember that cousin of Miss Gantry’s?’ she asked me suddenly. ‘The one who came tae a bad end?’ Remember him? I can never forget him. I nodded.

‘Stephen was palled up wi’ him from way back. They were in the same rackets. Believe me, Mr Blackstone, you do not want Stephen Donn for an enemy.’

I decided to leave it at that. Malcolm Campbell showed us to the door, silently. As he was closing it on us, Jerry put a hand on it to stop him. ‘Don’t you go laying a finger on that little wife of yours,’ he murmured, ‘just in case I find out. ’Cause believe me, buddy, I can really hurt people too.’

‘I didn’t like the boy, Oz. I know I was bound to resent him, given the way my Dad foisted him and his bloody old uncle off on me, after. .’

She broke off for a second or two. ‘All that apart, though, I still didn’t like Stephen. He’s a good-looking guy, a real ladies’ man — I’m not surprised wee Myrtle had a tumble with him — and on the face of it, he’s very pleasant. But I always felt that his smile was painted on the outside; that there was something different going on inside his head.’

Prim and I were sitting at the table in the dining room of Susie’s semi in Clarkston. She and Mike had been talking for two years about moving into the penthouse flat of the redevelopment of a classic City Centre church which her construction division was planning, but the project was still on the drawing-board. The Gantry Group’s influence with the Planning Department was not what it had been in the past.

‘What happened when you fired him?’ Prim asked, as Dylan topped up our wine glasses. ‘How did he take it?’

Susie frowned, as she replayed the event in her mind. ‘He was neither up nor down, as I remember. I saw his Uncle Joe and him together; I told them that I was now in total and permanent control of the Group and that I intended to do everything my way in the future.

‘That included putting my own staff in charge of financial management. I told them that they were being replaced by two people I had head-hunted from a major chartered accountancy firm, I showed them the severance terms. . agreed with my lawyers and watertight, including the confidentiality clause. . and I asked them to sign letters of resignation and clear their desks, there and then.

‘Joe went apeshit; he still thought of me as a wee girl, and thought he could treat me as such. He bawled and shouted that he had given the best years of his life to my Dad and his company, that I was an ungrateful wee whippersnapper, and that I would ruin everything he and my Dad had built up.’

‘Wind up with everything in ashes at your feet?’ I suggested.

‘Not in those very words, but that’s what he implied, yes.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. I let him shout himself hoarse then I showed him the interim report that Jan did for me. It was very nicely written, tactfully put, but basically it said that Joe was neither qualified nor able to serve as finance director of a major company and listed about twenty different reasons why. When he’d read it I told him that I had shown it to my auditors, and that they agreed.

‘Then I showed him his settlement figure. I pointed out that he’d already had a golden handshake the first time I fired him; and now here he was, thanks to my Dad’s stupidity, in a position to collect another. But I made it clear to him that if he walked out without signing that letter, I’d tear it up and he’d get statutory terms, which in the circumstances would have been bugger all.