The plane was almost ready to land in rainy Glasgow on Sunday evening, when a possible answer to Everett’s two-day-old question came to me. He and I were in the same front row seats, and so I tapped him on the arm.
‘Hey, remember that phone bill of Sonny Leonard’s?’ He nodded. ‘The other American number; the one in St Louis. We reckoned that could have been his parents, right?’ He nodded again. ‘He looked a dutiful son, didn’t he. What’s the betting he’s been in touch with his folks again within the last two weeks?’
The great dark face broke into a grin. ‘Could be, could be,’ he said, softly. ‘Why don’t you drop by the office tomorrow just after five and we’ll check it out.’
Chapter 39
I had finished my day’s work and was about to head for the GWA headquarters when the phone rang. It was Greg McPhillips, and I could tell as soon as he opened his mouth that he was not a happy boy. Inevitably, that meant that I wasn’t going to be happy either.
‘I’ll give you the bad news first,’ he began, ‘since there isn’t any good news.’
‘Greg, pal,’ I told him. ‘Right now there isn’t anything you could tell me that I’d class as good news, so don’t be bothered. What is it?’
‘Well,’ he said, as if he really didn’t fancy his job at that moment. ‘These German washing machine makers have moved very fast. I have just had a visit from their lawyer, who only happens to be a partner in the biggest firm of ambulance chasers in Scotland.’ I knew that lot. You never heard good news from them, unless you were their client.
‘The independent testers the Krauts employed turned out not to be very independent after all. They arrived in Glasgow on Friday, and they worked all weekend, taking the machine apart, looking at the wiring, scraping bits off, sending samples for lab analysis and so on.
‘They reported this morning. Essentially they agreed with the police guys and the Trading Standards people that the accident could have been caused in the way they said. However, they came up with an alternative solution.
‘They said that it would have been possible to rig a small incendiary device to the housing of the wiring that would have melted it and allowed the wiring to fall against the casing of the machine, rendering it live. It would be a very simple device, they said, triggered by a mercury-filled rocker thing, which would go off as soon as the machine started to spin. That’s an old terrorist and Special Forces trick, apparently. They use it to blow people up, but the principle’s exactly the same.
‘The mercury would vaporise with the heat, and the fuel element, which is similar to plastic explosive, would burn itself out too; the rest of the device would be identical to the casing of the wiring itself, i.e. rubber. So all you’d have left once the thing had done its business would be slightly more melted rubber than you’d expect to find.
‘They say that they found slightly more melted rubber than usual, so their scenario is a possibility.’ Greg paused, probably waiting for me to explode, but I held it together.
‘What our ambulance chaser friend had to say was that his clients were very interested by this. He pointed out that on the face of it, since there was no reported breakin to your place — indeed since the Scottish Power guys had to break in themselves — the only person who was in a position to lay such a device was you.
‘Now my professional colleague is clever. He told me that he wouldn’t dream of making this allegation to the Fiscal, because you would immediately sue for huge defamation damages, with at least a fifty per cent chance of success. However if you press ahead with a civil action, then under the privilege of the witness box, he will enter his experts’ theory as a defence, and invite the jury to reject your case.
‘In other words, Oz, he’s saying that if you sue his clients, you’ll be accused of murdering Jan.’
That did it. I have never experienced such a red, howling, venomous rage in all my life. ‘I want his name, Greg,’ I roared. ‘I want to know who this bastard is, because I am personally going to tear his fucking heart out!’
‘I don’t blame you, Oz. That’s why I’ve no intention of telling you who he is. Anyway, there’s a whole queue of people waiting in line to do much the same thing to this guy.
‘I want you to calm down, and take time to think this over, rationally.’
‘Raise the action Greg,’ I shouted at him. ‘Sue the bastards until they bleed. I don’t care what it costs.’
‘Oz,’ he said, patiently. ‘My father and our partners are not ambulance chasers. I’m not going to accept that instruction from you, or any other, until you’ve had at least a week to think about it. Come and see me next Monday. We’ll discuss it then.’
Chapter 40
I was still steaming mad when I drew up in the GWA car park. In the next bay, Sally Crockett had just started her little yellow sports coupe. She was facing out and I had parked nose in, so our faces were only a few feet apart.
She wound down her window, and I wound down mine. ‘Hey Oz,’ she said, with a cheery sympathetic smile. ‘How are you doing? You look a bit down today.’
‘Sorry, Sal,’ I replied. ‘I was lost in thought there — thoughts of killing a lawyer.’
She laughed. ‘Need any help?’
There was something about the Ladies’ Champ which always brightened me up. ‘You, on the other hand,’ I told her, ‘look as sunny as that flying banana you’re about to drive. What’s made your day?’
‘The boss has just given me next weekend off, that’s what. So I’m just going down to see my mum, then tomorrow I’m catching a flight to Barcelona. Jerry got out of hospital yesterday, so he and I are having a few days in a place called the Hotel Aiguablava, just a bit up the coast.’
She chuckled. ‘I’ve planned out some new moves for my match with the Heckler at the pay-per-view. I may try them out on him.’
‘I reckon he might like that.’
‘What he’d also like to do while we’re there, he told me, is to visit that friend of yours, the girl who treated him in the ring. I was going to phone you tomorrow morning to get her address.’
‘No problem.’ I scribbled Prim’s address and phone number on a page of my notebook, tore it out and handed it across to her. ‘There you are. Tell the big fella I was asking for him.’ I paused. ‘Does he know about Jan, by the way?’
‘Not yet.’
‘If you visit Primavera, you’d better tell him first.’
She nodded. Feeling a lot calmer than when I’d arrived, I waved her goodbye, watched as she drove off, then climbed out of the Ozmobile and walked into the building.
Everett was in his office, waiting for me, with Sonny Leonard’s phone bill lying on his glass-topped desk. As I walked in he poured me a mug of coffee from his filter and handed it to me, together with a coaster from which Tommy Rutherford’s professional face grinned up at me.
‘How we going to play this thing?’ he asked.
‘By ear seems like the best way.’ I picked up the invoice from the desk and found the St Louis number. ‘Show me how to switch your phone to hands free.’ He pressed a button and the dialling tone sounded into the room. I sat on the edge of the table and keyed in the number.
We waited for several seconds as the US ringing tone sounded, insistently. Then it stopped as we heard the call answered. The line was as clear as a bell. ‘Yaiss?’ It was an old woman’s voice, quavery and nervous.
‘Hello,’ I said, speaking more slowly than normal. ‘Would that be Mrs Leonard?’
‘Not any more,’ she answered. ‘Mr Leonard died ’bout twenty-three years ago. It’s Mrs Zabrynski now. ’Course Mr Zabrynski’s dead now too.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ And of course, I really was. ‘You are Sonny Leonard’s mother, though?’