‘The cows are in the broccoli patch,’ the victim had replied.
‘Are they now. Maybe we’d better wait till tomorrow, and talk to you then.’
‘No, no!’ Dave had shouted. ‘They’ll have eaten all the fucking broccoli by then.’
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory as I looked at Prim. ‘If there’s a good side to this it’s that nobody’s been killed,’ I told her.
‘So far,’ she retorted. ‘But that’s more by accident than design. Colin could have broken his neck, Dad could have died, Mike and Susie almost did, and Noosh Turkel almost caught a bullet in the head. We’ve got to warn everyone close to us, Oz. They’re all in danger.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so; not unless I’m actually there with them. That’s been the pattern.’
‘Except in London. There you were the target.’
‘Yes, and I have to find out why.’ I frowned at her. ‘I have to do it on my own, too. I want you to stay here with your mother. Look after her, and after old David when he gets home. You’ll be safer here too; well away from me.’
‘But what about the business?’
‘You’ve been saying you reckon Lulu could run it on her own. I guess it’s time to find out if you’re right.’
Prim sat in silent thought for a minute or two. Finally, she nodded. ‘All right. Mum and Dad could use me here, that’s true. But what are you going to do?’
‘Well, tomorrow, I’m going back to Glasgow and I’m going to have a talk with Mike. After that I’m going to find those two guys in London.’
She looked at me doubtfully. ‘And how exactly are you going to do that?’ she asked.
At that moment, I didn’t have an answer for that one, so all I could do was smile at her. ‘Maybe I’ll hire a private detective,’ I said.
She didn’t see the funny side. ‘Maybe you should do just that. Maybe you should even do the same as Susie and hire a bodyguard.’
‘Honey, the way things have been happening I’m the only person who doesn’t need one. But maybe I should hire the whole bloody SAS and place them with all my family and friends.’
Prim screwed up her face, as she has a way of doing when something is really getting to her. ‘Oz,’ she said. ‘Think about this. Who hates you so much that they would do all those things? What man, or woman, has it in for you that badly?’
‘Forget women,’ I told her. ‘Assuming that Elanore doesn’t use deadly nightshade as a herb in her steak and kidney pudding, someone doctored your Dad’s drink in that bar — and there were no women in there, none at all.
‘Who could my enemy be? It’s a funny old world out there, love; the GWA programming pulls a big television audience. There are bound to be a few nutters among them. It could be that someone out there has taken a deep and pathological dislike to me.’
‘Hardly,’ she protested. ‘You’re only the bloody announcer, for Christ’s sake. This has to be someone with a more personal grudge.’
‘But who? I lived a very uneventful life until I met you. I didn’t upset people, and they didn’t upset me; I was just an ordinary twenty-something, enjoying himself. Since then, out of all the things that you and I have done together in the last three years, I can think of three people who might have reason to hate me. . and you know who I mean.
‘Of them, two are dead and the other one has to feed himself with a rubber spoon, when he isn’t whistling, “When I rule the world”, or just plain howling at the moon.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ Primavera countered, ‘I know who you mean. But there’s a man you’ve forgotten, isn’t there? Someone that you did think, once, was trying to get you — to get both of us, in fact. If you think about it, he has a far better reason to do you now than he had then.’
It had been a hard day; I had faced down my future mother-in-law and lived to tell the tale, then rushed her poisoned husband to hospital. After all that it was little wonder that my normally razor-sharp powers of deduction weren’t quite at their sharpest. Otherwise how could I have forgotten Ricky Ross? Once a high-flying detective with his eye on a Chief Constable’s uniform, knighthood and all the rest, his career had ended in disgrace, a turn of events for which he was inclined to blame Osbert Blackstone, Esquire, and no one else.
Still. .
‘Naw,’ I exclaimed. ‘I know he’s a nasty bastard, but he wouldn’t. .’
‘Not so long ago you were prepared to accept that he would. You and I travelled a thousand miles believing all the way that he was on our trail. He wasn’t then, but maybe he is now. Revenge is a dish best served cold, like they say.’
‘Naw,’ I repeated; but I knew she had a point. My known enemies currently at liberty made up a very short list: a list of one, in fact, and it was him.
Chapter 36
I was still pondering upon the possibility of the persecuting policeman next morning, when my whole view of the situation was stood on its head. I had just showered, and was changing into the clothes which Prim had brought with her on her headlong rush from Glasgow, when Elanore knocked on the bedroom door.
‘Oz,’ she called out. ‘There are two constables downstairs. They say they’ve come for you.’
‘Fine, thanks. Tell them I’ll be ready to talk to them in a minute. D’you want to give them a coffee while they’re waiting?’
There was a pause. ‘No, Oz,’ she said, sounding a shade alarmed, even through the thick door, ‘you don’t understand. They’ve come to take you away.’
‘They what?’ I finished dressing in seconds. As I trotted downstairs I saw two large policemen, with flat hats and low foreheads, waiting in the hall. I recognised their type at once, having been a probationer constable myself when I was younger and sillier. Looking at them, I had the fleeting impression that their dark uniforms and awkward-looking equipment belts were somehow sucking the light out of the place.
‘Mr Blackstone?’ said the older of the two, who looked about five years younger than me.
I nodded.
‘Yuvtae come wi’ us.’ I looked at his big lumpen face, into his dull eyes, and saw nothing at all. The guy was expressionless.
I hadn’t come downstairs with the intention of being unco-operative, but he had pushed the wrong button. ‘Would you repeat that for me, please,’ I asked him. ‘Slowly and in English.’
‘Yuvtae come wi’ us,’ he said again, deliberately, ignoring my request for a translation. ‘We’ve been telt tae pick yis up and take yis tae Perth.’
‘And who told you?’
‘The CID wants yis.’ Having pushed my unco-operative button, he had now tripped my downright bolshie switch.
‘In that case they can come and get me,’ I replied. A faint look of uncertainty came into his eyes — the first sign that anything was actually working behind there. His younger colleague seemed to grow a couple of inches and made as if to move towards me.
‘Listen,’ I snapped, to forestall him. ‘I wasn’t a copper for very long, but even I know that you cannot walk into someone’s house and take him away without any sort of warrant or even explanation. Now, did the CID tell you why they want me?’
‘Naw,’ the older bloke replied.
‘And you didn’t think to ask them?’
‘Listen, Mr Blackstone. When the CID tells us tae dae something we just does it. We disnae ask them whit fur.’ As I stared at his stolid impassivity I realised that the best I would get out of this situation was a few quid in compensation from the Police Authority for wrongful arrest, assault, and maybe irreversible brain damage caused by a restraining blow from a side-handled baton. I decided that I didn’t need any of that. I gave in.
‘Okay,’ I said, then turned to Elanore. ‘When Prim comes out of the bathroom, tell her what’s happened. I’ve got no idea what this is about, but I’ll get it sorted as fast as I can.’
They hadn’t even sent a decent car for me. All the way to the police headquarters in Perth, I sat crammed into the back seat of a Metro, looking at the massive backs of the two trolls. When we reached our destination the younger PC levered me out and seized the sleeve of my jacket as he marched me into the building. I really didn’t like that, but I knew that if I had protested they would have ignored me.