‘Much as I would like to give him a going-over, Mark, I can’t go anywhere near there. I’ve got my reputation to take care of, and my family’s well-being.’
He laughed. ‘Since when did you get cautious?’
‘It comes with age, kids and money.’
‘I can’t knock that. Wallinger probably wouldn’t be too easy to crack, anyway. From what you’re saying to me, he’s been working on this for three years. He probably targeted your ex; that meeting in Gleneagles wasn’t spur-of-the-moment, no chance of that.’
‘Wee Tom wasn’t in his plans, surely.’
‘I don’t imagine so, but …’
I cut across him. ‘That’s what I don’t understand, Mark. Why did he take the kid?’
‘He’s his father; maybe he loves him and couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing him again.’
‘Yeah, and maybe I really did play cricket for England.’
‘In that case, there’s only one answer: he’s going to sell him.’
‘Sell him? On fucking e-Bay, you mean?’
‘It would probably be legal, in some states at least: he could offer him up for adoption and invite bids. But I wasn’t thinking of anything as downmarket as that. Remember who Tom is. He’s not just your ex’s son, he’s Miles Grayson’s nephew. Wallinger may have cleaned your wife out, but Miles is one of the richest blokes in Hollywood. Are you going to bet me that at some point, maybe quite soon, he doesn’t offer to return the kid to Primavera in return for, let’s say, the money he’s embezzled already, plus another couple of million sterling?’
‘That would be blackmail, man.’
‘Bollocks, boss. He’s the child’s father, and he has de facto custody. If Prim agreed to the deal and Miles put up the extra cash, it would all be above board. . more or less. It strikes me, boss, that friend Paul’s been thinking on his feet. Are you sure you don’t want him taken out? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper.’ He chuckled, but I know Mark: he was being dead serious.
‘No, mate,’ I told him. ‘Potentially it would be a hell of a lot more costly, so let’s forget you ever asked me that.’
‘The answer’s no, then?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Fair enough; I like to be totally clear about things like that. I’ll get digging straight away and report as soon as I can.’
I hung up, and walked through the house to the leisure wing, as we sometimes called it when we were being flash. Susie was there, feeding wee Jonathan. . from a bottle: the real stuff had gone with the cutting of the teeth. . and watching Janet as she played with a toy in the far corner, well away from the pool.
‘What do you think?’ I asked her.
She bridled at once. ‘I think it’s bloody disgraceful!’ she exclaimed. ‘When they get this, this … this swine back, I hope they throw the whole bloody set of encyclopaedias at him, never mind the book. Theft, child kidnap, he’s got a lot to answer for.’
‘Not as much as you might think; for openers, in the absence of a court order against him, a father can’t kidnap his own kid. As for the money … Prim let him manage it, remember. It might not be as easy as you think to persuade an American court to extradite him.’
I called across to my daughter. ‘Hey, Janet, want to come and help me finish making the grown-ups’ dinner?’ It was a rhetorical question; she came running.
Actually there wasn’t much to do; Ethel would have raised hell if I’d let her get fish all over her hands so I gave her the kitchen scales, sat her on a stool and let her weigh out three portions of the gluten-free pasta that Susie and I prefer, a hundred grams each for the women and a hundred and fifty for Daddy, but don’t tell them, eh, wee Jan.
She did it very carefully, picking up every piece she dropped on to the work surface and putting it back into the packet. I let her have a Coke for her trouble; when Ethel came to fetch her at bedtime she saw it and treated me to her best nanny glower, but what the hell? My dad let Ellie and me drink the stuff, and he’s a bloody dentist.
When Prim came down for dinner, she seemed to be back on an even keel. She saw the fizzy water on the table, and smiled softly. ‘Very tactful, Oz,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want any more to drink for a while, so don’t let me put you two off having wine.’
‘All for one and one for all, d’Artagnan,’ I replied.
She shook her head. ‘No, I must be Porthos; he was the piss artist among the Musketeers, wasn’t he?’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ Susie assured her. ‘We give our livers a rest quite often.’ That was more tactful than true.
Prim was impressed when she saw the salad, which I’d dressed with balsamic vinegar and chopped herbs. ‘Did you teach him to do this, Susie?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘My mother did; I made it for you several times. You must have been too blootered to remember.’
‘Hey, I didn’t drink that much in those days. What you saw this afternoon has only happened recently; since Paul and Tom disappeared, mostly I’ve hung around the flat, drinking and waiting for the phone to ring.’
‘But it hasn’t?’
‘No.’ She paused. ‘Well, it has done, a couple of times in the last fortnight. The first time, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I thought it had to be him, but it wasn’t, just some bloke looking for him. I told him he didn’t live there any more then hung up. When he called again a few days later, I got really stroppy with him, and told him to eff off. Apart from that, for all that I stared at it, for hours on end, the damn thing’s been silent.’
Her mouth twisted. ‘That’s all going to stop; the fight-back begins as of now.’
‘As of now?’ I quoted back at her. ‘Does that mean that you haven’t told the police about the theft?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Or no; as in no, I haven’t.’
‘Why the hell not?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know, Oz. The attitude of those two idle unsympathetic bastards who turned up when I did call them didn’t exactly encourage me to ask for their help again. Plus, I had this vision of Paul being arrested in the States and Tom being taken into care. Or maybe my mind was just fuzzed with the drink. I don’t know.’
‘It must have been fuzzed. If the police had put you off, why not call Dawn and Miles? Or why not just try my mobile number, without the elaborate charade to make me call you?’
She put down her fork, and looked me in the eye. ‘Do you remember the last time I saw you guys, when I came to Edinburgh with Nicky Johnson and Miles laid him out. . probably for his own relative safety, for God knows what you would have done to him? He and Dawn let me know what they thought of me, and you, you chose that moment to let me find out that you and Susie had a child together.’
‘Hey, I didn’t choose it on purpose; I honestly thought you must have known.’
‘Whatever! After that I could hardly come crawling back to either of you, drunk and tearful, to tell you that I’d made a complete arse of myself. Well, could I?’
‘As it happens, the answer to that is “Yes”, but all you’d have had to tell either of us was that you were in big trouble and needed help. Dawn and Miles are parents as well, remember.’
She seemed to soften. ‘How is Bruce?’
‘Nearly as big as his dad, last time I saw him, and he’s only just coming up on four. They’re talking about having another. You’ve hurt them, you know, Prim, by cutting them out of your life.’
Her eyes went moist again, my cue to clear away the salad plates.
They were dry when I returned, carrying a big pot filled with Blackstone’s special pasta pescado, as I liked to call it, and three bowls, all on a tray. She and Susie were talking quietly, and carried on until I had f inished dishing up.
‘You never did this for me,’ Prim asserted, when she’d tasted the sauce.
‘I bloody did, when we had that apartment in St Marti, before. .’ I stopped myself, but I should have known she’d carry on.
‘. . before you left me to go back to Jan.’
‘Yeah, okay.’
‘No wonder I don’t remember it, then.’
‘Hey, little Miss Innocent, if we’re casting up, what about. .’