"True," he conceded, 'but that's for later. Right now we'd better get that stuff off you and Jay before it dries, and get you a new jacket befitting your status… sir."
Five.
As someone almost certainly did not say, "Apart from that, Mrs.
Kennedy, how did you enjoy your visit to Dallas?"
Apart from having a can of yellow paint chucked at her, Susie thought the premiere was great. She and I had never been out as a showbiz couple before, and once she recovered her composure and her temper… with the help of a couple of Jack Daniels and Coke in the hospitality suite… she settled into the role like the true star she is. She'd never shown any sign before of liking the limelight… she found her Businesswoman of the Year awards more embarrassing than anything else … but when we picked up early editions of the Daily Record and the Daily Mail on the way home, and found ourselves on the front pages, it topped off her night. The fact that I was plastered in paint, and being hustled inside by security, didn't depress her at all. In fact, it made her laugh.
I read through the reports in both papers. The incident was reported, but not overmuch, because there wasn't much to tell, and I had ordered the publicists to laugh it off by saying that quite a few of my old Edinburgh friends had been my fellow-members of the Idiot Tendency when we had all been lads together, and that I was looking forward to renewing acquaintance with one in particular, when I traced him. I wasn't kidding; I had a mental shortlist of who the chucker might have been, and I was intending to find out. Having stuff tossed at me, and my pregnant wife, was no longer my idea of a lad dish prank.
Susie, on the other hand, was so chuffed by the coverage that, first thing next morning, she called Mary, my stepmother, Ellie, my sister, and Joe Donn, her dark secret, to make sure they bought copies. The girls were suitably impressed… or made appropriate noises, at least… but Joe didn't answer his phone. "Must have gone to get them already," Susie muttered.
I was working at home that day, having fixed a session with my dialogue tutor to take a first look at the script of Mathew's Tale. I was working out in the gym that's part of the pool conservatory when Susie left for her office, on the South Side of Glasgow, across the Erskine Bridge… yes, some people really do use the damn thing. She had a board meeting that day and I was a director, but the agenda was routine and so she had said she would write my apology into the minutes. Joe wasn't so lucky, though; he was needed to make up the quorum. I hoped he hadn't forgotten; he was an even keener golfer than my Dad, and it took a lot to keep him off the course on a fine day.
My fine day was screwed almost as soon as I'd showered and dressed after my exercise programme. I was having breakfast with Janet and Ethel in our big kitchen, and looking forward to a game with my daughter in our enormous new garden. (Our games usually involve a ball. The way I see it, women's football is going to be a big thing in years to come… it's there already in the US… and there's no harm in giving wee Janet as many career options as I can.) Our new numbers were ex-directory… of course… so when the phone rang, my instant assumption was that Susie had forgotten something and was calling from the office, or the car if she was stuck in traffic. No such luck; it was Ricky Ross.
"What are you doing this morning?" he asked, with no preliminary banter, which isn't like him.
I told him.
"Can you scrub it? Postpone it? The police want to see you."
"Uh?"
"About last night, man. About the paint-chucking. I've leaned on young Ron Morrow at Gayfield, told him it was a fucking disgrace that it happened on his patch and that Miles Grayson will be asking questions of the chief if nobody's apprehended. So now the boy's taking it very seriously. He's come up with a couple of images on video and still shots and he wants you to look at them."
I blinked as I took it in. Truth be told, Susie and I were riding on such a high over the success of the event, and over our daughter's delight, young as she was, at seeing her Mum and Dad on the front page of the newspapers, that I at least had got over the incident that preceded it. We certainly hadn't discussed it since Miles had kitted Jay and me out in new jackets and since my hair had dried.
"Well?" Ricky demanded. "You were the guy that wanted to see the tapes, remember. I've pulled the strings for you, so how's about it?"
"Yes, sure," I said. "I can put off my dialogue coach till tomorrow.
When do you want me in Edinburgh?"
There was a laugh on the other end of the line. "You still don't realise it, do you, Oz. You're a V.I.P now. They want to come to see you."
Once upon a time, before he met up with me, Ricky Ross had a high-flying police career, a detective superintendent on his way to one of those uniforms with silver braid all over the place, and to the knighthood that goes with it. After it crash-landed he was inclined to blame me for a while, but in truth, if he had kept his fly zipped up, he'd still have had his prospects and maybe his marriage. Those days were behind us, though, and he'd become a pal; he may not be a bosom buddy, but we got on all right. The truth of the matter is that neither loss bothered him all that much. As a security consultant he makes much more money than he ever could have in the police force, even as chief constable, and as for Mrs. Ross, he confessed to me that she had actually thrown him out before he began the ill-judged liaison that landed him on the carpet.
Over time he had ridden out the disgrace of his forced resignation. The old chief had gone, replaced by a younger model who had risen through the ranks under Ricky's patronage, and who had not forgotten it. He was persona grata in Lothian and Borders Police once again, and so I was not in the least surprised that when Detective Sergeant Ron Morrow rolled up our driveway, he was in the passenger seat of Ricky's car, a hairy new S-type Jaguar.
I had met Morrow before, on a few occasions in Edinburgh, most of them formal. He was a good guy, and Ricky rated him, which, given the climate of the time and the fact that Ricky and the new chief constable were regular golf partners, meant that young Ronnie was probably going places.
He shook my hand as I opened the door for him… we never use Ethel as a maid: as if she'd let us. He was toting what I thought at first was a briefcase but realised was a laptop computer. Ricky was carrying something too, a toy for wee Janet, who'd come toddling out of her playroom behind the stairs to inspect the new arrivals. It's funny how people who don't have kids often dote over other people's. I was like that with my nephews, at least until Ellie and her husband split up; after that I felt the need to display a bit of male authority on occasion, at least with Colin, who was one of those kids with nuclear-capable mischief in him.
While Ricky made a fuss of Janet, under the amused eye of Ethel, I took Morrow through to our office conservatory. He didn't say anything as he looked around, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was casting his mind back to our first meeting, in the police station down in Leith, and he was asking himself, "How the hell did this guy wind up here?" Just as well he didn't ask me: I couldn't have given him a sensible answer.
I nodded towards the laptop, which was still in his hand. "What's that for?" I asked him.
He held it up, as if I'd never seen one of the things before. I have one which travels everywhere with me; it's my interface to the real world. "I've had all the video footage from the television and the security cameras copied on to a DVD-Rom disk; the still shots have been scanned in as well. I brought this so you could view them."
"We won't need it." I pointed to the partners' desk that we had brought from Glasgow. It really is big. Susie and I each have computers, state of the art high-speed jobs, each with its own dedicated phone line, and with wide-screen LCD monitors that sit back to back. I know of at least one married couple who conduct a significant amount of their communication by e-mail, but we haven't reached that stage yet. Mind you, for a laugh, we once held a video conference across the desk, using our web-cams, seeing ourselves on screen and hearing our voices repeat through the speakers what we had said a few seconds before.