Quintin Jardine - Wearing Purple

I sensed, rather than saw, the dimming of the light. I was barely aware of the start of Daze’s music. But I knew where he was. Without looking I saw, pace by huge pace, his march down the ramp, towards the ring where Liam was waiting. My lungs were bursting as I reached the foot of Alex Kruger’s tower. I caught sight of him up there, poised over his console, his eyes shining. The crowd noise was so great that my loudest bellow would never have reached him. . even if he hadn’t been wearing headphones.

There was a ladder at the side of the scaffolding, up to his perch. I grabbed it, at first almost pulling it backwards on top of me, then steadying it and finding a footing. I tried to run up it, but my shoe slipped at once, making me bang my forehead into a rung. Scrabbling at it, I gained momentum at last, and pushed and hauled my way up as fast as I could.

A change in the sound of the crowd told me that Daze was stepping over the ropes and into the ring. I knew what would happen next.

I had reached the top of the ladder. I threw myself on the floor of the cage. The little Belgian was standing, over the console, both thumbs raised, looking like my nephew Jonathan at his PlayStation.

‘Alex,’ I screamed at him. ‘Don’t fire those flares!’

They told me later that the headline match between Daze and Liam was one of the finest technical displays ever seen on pay-per-view television. They told me that it alone would have made the whole show value for money, never mind any of the earlier great performances that I had seen.

They told me that Liam Matthews placed himself unshakeably on the top tier of wrestling superstardom by the way in which he attacked an opponent at least a foot taller than he was, almost wearing down the giant until he made his one fatal mistake, delivering himself into Daze’s Spear, the most awesome finishing move in wrestling history.

They had to tell me this afterwards, for all through the bout I lay sprawled on the floor of Alex Kruger’s booth, gasping for the breath to explain to the FX operator that the flares on the ring posts might have been booby-trapped. All the time he stared at me like I was nuts, openly resentful that I had ruined his big moment.

All the sounds of the action floated up to me, until finally, I heard the single sustained roar which told me that it was over. Then the breathless, but still booming, voice of Daze filled the hall. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, wrestling fans everywhere; thank you for being with us for this BattleGround Special . Till Saturday, in Frankfurt, Germany, from Ingliston, Edinburgh, goodbye.’

I gulped, a touch fearfully now that the panic was over. That should have been my announcement. I climbed off the floor of the booth and stood, looking at the crowd below as the hall emptied. Everett and Liam were still in the ring; it was full of youngsters and they were signing autographs.

I yelled at the big man, but he couldn’t hear me above the continuing babble, and the taped walk-out music which was still playing. I waved frantically until at last I caught his eye. He shot me a huge questioning frown. I tried to work out a gesture which meant, ‘Clear the ring, for fuck’s sake.’ I couldn’t, so I yelled my message, as loud as I could.

I couldn’t tell at first whether he had understood, until he raised his mike again and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the GWA superstars will all be happy to sign more autographs for you outside, but meantime we have to ask you to clear the hall as fast as you can, so that we can strike the ring.’

Telling Alex to follow me, I climbed down from the tower, and pushed my way through the departing audience. ‘What the hell’s up, Oz?’ Everett asked as I reached him. ‘What happened to my flares?’ he barked at Alex.

‘I want them examined,’ I told him. ‘But very carefully. If I’m wrong, fire me, but until then, stick with me. Alex, can you dismantle these installations?’

‘Of course I can,’ said the Belgian, and set to work. Laboriously he stripped off the black insulating tape which secured the flare canister nearest to his tower, and lifted it into the centre of the ring. Carefully he reached into it and lifted out something looking like a large firework; which it was.

‘It’s okay,’ he announced. He moved on to the next corner and repeated the process. ‘All right again.’ And the third.

My heart was in my boots as he removed the fourth and last canister. I was beginning to feel like the biggest idiot in Edinburgh. . well, the second biggest, after Dylan. My heart resumed its normal position in my chest as Alex recoiled from the container.

‘Tschaaah!’ he gasped.

‘What is it?’ asked Everett.

‘This one’s loaded with gelignite,’ the technician replied.

‘How much of the stuff?’ the big man ground out, eyes narrow. Standing beside him, I felt myself begin to tremble. Standing on his other side, I saw Dylan’s face quiver.

‘From the weight of it, enough to blow you, big as you are, clear out of the ring, and probably to kill Mr Matthews if he’d been close to the thing when it went off. Enough to do serious damage to the commentators, the timekeeper and the people at the announcer’s table. Enough to injure the spectators nearest to the ring.’

As Mike sagged, I noticed that he was still holding the report on Gary O’Rourke. I reached over and took it from him and handed it to Everett. ‘Guess what the PNC check showed,’ I said.

As he finished reading the page he crumpled it in his huge hand. ‘Gonna find the son of a bitch,’ he growled.

But Dylan had recovered himself. ‘No, sir. This is a police matter now. We’ll find him.’ He turned to his two colleagues who were standing at the side of the ring, together with the stiff-suited security chief.

‘The man’s name is Gary O’Rourke, road crew foreman. Find him and arrest him.’

The security man raised a hand. ‘Is he the fair-haired chap, by any chance? Glasgow accent, powerfully built?’

‘That’s the man,’ I confirmed.

‘He left during the last bout. I was checking outside and saw him come out from the staff door, carrying a motor cycle helmet. Just after that I saw a bike ridden out of the car park.’

‘Magic,’ Dylan groaned. ‘I should have lifted him as soon as you tore off to that tower, Oz.’

I looked at him, feeling sorry for him once again. ‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t, Mike.’

Naturally, Dylan circulated a description of O’Rourke’s motor cycle, together with its registration number, which the national computer system spat out a lot more quickly than it had volunteered his curriculum vitae.

Just as naturally, there was no trace of him.

‘Bastard’s disappeared,’ Dylan grumbled as he came back into my flat just before noon, after picking up Susie’s photocopies from her place before she left for work, and checking into his office to file his report on the night before.

‘He had more than an hour before the stop order went out. That’s plenty of time to get under cover. Christ, on that bike of his he could have been well into England by then.’

‘What are you doing about this guy Reilly in the States? Are you going to ask the Americans to interview him?’

He screwed up his face and shook his head. ‘No chance, on what we’ve got. I tried that on my boss and he nearly blew me out of his office. Before we can ask the Philadelphia police to go anywhere near Reilly we have to show them good cause. The way things are at the moment there isn’t the semblance of a case against the man.

‘Your big pal might be dead certain about him, but until we’ve had a chance to talk to Mr O’Rourke in a room with walls that move about, there’s no way we can prove it. And maybe not even then; our boy Gary does not strike me as a soft touch.