Quintin Jardine - Wearing Purple

I called him straight away to make up. When I told him where I’d been, he was impressed. ‘One of my favourite movies,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Judy Garland — Meet me in St Louis . They don’t make them like that any more.’ He sounded more like the old Mac the Dentist. ‘What did you think of the city?’ he asked.

‘It’s got a nice airport, and that’s it; but Chicago’s impressive, though. How’s Auntie Mary?’

‘She’s getting there, but she worries about you a lot. So do I of course,’ he added, casually. ‘How’re you doing, son, really?’

‘I’m okay, Dad. I’ll never get over it, but I’ve come to terms with it. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve found something. . not faith, stronger; a sort of certainty.’

‘I understand, Oz. You and I belong to the same club now, although it guts me to think about it.Tell me something; have you had the dream yet?’

I paused. The grey dream was my greatest secret. ‘Yes,’ I admitted at last. ‘A few nights ago. It was distressing, but since then everything seems, I don’t know, not to hurt quite so much.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said softly. ‘That’s how it was for me too.’ I felt a huge surge of warmth, standing there, beside our desk. My dad and I had never been closer.

‘Come up and see us soon, Oz. So long for now.’

I hung up the phone, and turned to the thing that had been bothering me since the flight: those papers which Jan had been going over, and the excited, quietly triumphant look in her eyes.

‘What was it?’ I asked myself out loud. And right then, in my head, Jan answered me; something she had said over the dinner table with Susie and Mike came back to me, word for word.

‘I’m looking into the health care division, the last on my list, and I’ve found something very interesting. I’ll need to go over it again, and then I’ll need to consult a few people.’

Exactly that. She had still been working on those papers on the afternoon I left; yet when I had arranged her business affairs after the funeral, I couldn’t remember seeing them at all.

I opened the desk drawer in which she had kept her most recent files. I had been on autopilot when I had cleared her desk, but I knew I hadn’t sent anything back to Susie Gantry. The only papers which I had retained in each client file were rough working notes which Jan had made over her years in practice, and retained because they held some significance for her. I had kept them only because I could not bear to throw away anything that had been of her, created by her hand.

I checked The Gantry Group folder again. All it contained were those plain white pages, covered in her strong, clear script; nothing else. Yet I had left her working on those papers on the morning before she died.

I couldn’t stop myself. It was late in the evening, but I phoned Susie’s number. Ostensibly it was to arrange to meet Mike in the Horseshoe Bar next day after work, but as soon as that date was fixed, I asked him to put Susie on line again.

‘When was the last time you saw Jan?’ I asked her.

‘When we were at yours for dinner,’ she said. ‘I never saw her after that. Remember, she said she’d come and see me the following Monday.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ I paused as I thought back to that evening. ‘Listen, can you do something for me first thing tomorrow? Could you check and see whether those papers she was working on, the ones relating to the health care division, are back in your office?’

‘Sure I will. But I had assumed that you still had them.’

‘Not as far as I can see.’

‘Okay. Leave it with me. I’ll call you first thing.’

Susie was as good as her word: the phone on my desk rang at ten minutes before nine. I was sat in my captain’s chair, chewing my way steadily through my muesli and reading the Herald at the same time. It was another slow news day, which meant another photo of Lord Provost Jack Gantry on the front page.

‘I’ve checked those files,’ the First Citizen’s daughter told me. ‘Twice, just to be sure. As far as I can see, everything’s there.’

‘Is that right,’ I said. ‘I suppose she must have gone to your place in the afternoon and put them back.’

‘If she did,’ said Susie, ‘someone’s getting the sack. I have a standing rule here that everyone on the premises, staff and visitors, must sign in and out. It’s a fire safety thing. Maybe she took photocopies,’ she suggested.

‘No way. Jan never took copies of her clients’ confidential papers. She worked on the originals, then returned them as soon as she was finished. Can you remember which papers she’d have been working on then?’

‘Only that they had to do with our health care set-up; that’s all I can tell you. Now, unless there’s anything else, I’m off to read the Riot Act out in my front office. If Jan put those papers back on that Friday afternoon, as she must have, I’m going to want to know why her name isn’t in the book.’

I nodded absent-mindedly as she hung up. I had noticed changes taking place in the face in the mirror over the previous three weeks, and I could feel my new frown lines as I stared at the desk-top. Jan had still been working on the papers on the Friday morning, and she hadn’t even begun to consult the people she had talked about when we had Susie and Mike to dinner. Why would she take them back to the Gantry office that day? I was confused, a bit dazed; something was tapping at the back of my brain, trying to work its way to the front.

I went round to Jan’s drawer once more and took out her working notes on the Gantry project. There were several pages, quite a thick bundle of manuscript; I went through them one by one.They began with a summary of the financial position of the development division, then moved on to look over the construction business. The bulk of the pile of notes reflected Jan’s detailed analysis of the profitability of the public houses, with a summary page listing them all together and stating her opinion that all of the licensed premises were being operated properly.

And that was all there was. There were no notes on the health care division. None at all. Yet when I had left on that damnable Friday morning to catch the flight to Barcelona with GWA, they had been all over the place. Christ, I even remembered chiding her, in fun: ‘That’s supposed to be a partners’ desk,’ I said to her, less than five minutes before I kissed her goodbye. . without knowing that’s what it was. ‘How much of it do you need?’

The thing looked huge now, as I put the pages back into their original order and replaced them in the filing drawer. I sat down once more in my captain’s chair, staring blankly at the remains of my muesli, my heart pounding as I fought in vain against facing up to a frightening truth.

If Jan hadn’t put those papers back into The Gantry Group filing system — and I was sure she hadn’t — then, sure as God made wee sour apples, someone else had.

There was only one answer to that, of course: someone had broken in and retrieved them. But when? I reached across and picked up Jan’s lap-top — we each had one — and switched it on. It was powerful and booted up quickly. I selected her electronic diary and opened it at the date in question.

The only entry for Friday read, ‘Work at home’. Saturday’s listed priorities were ‘Hairdresser’, ten am, and ‘Watch BattleGround ’ at nine-thirty pm. From the Sunday entry, she’d decided to go to Anstruther; only for her, Sunday had never happened.

As I looked at the page, the thing that had been working its way through my cluttered brain finally broke surface; my wife spoke to me again, inside my head. Our last conversation, the last time I had ever heard her voice: on the mobile phone, me in the chaotic restaurant in bloody Barcelona, Jan sitting opposite where I sat now, working.