Deadly Business (7 page)

‘Wee Jonathan did, just now.’

‘Why the little … He never did like Duncan, Primavera.’

‘Come on,’ I protested. ‘You’re not calling your own son a liar, are you?’

‘No, but …’ She hesitated. ‘Has Tom said anything to you about it.’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ I admitted. ‘Possibly to stop me from thrashing the bastard.’

‘When’s this supposed to have happened?’

‘Last year, at your place. Duncan tried to use Janet as a servant and Tom took exception to it.’

‘And Duncan hit him?’

‘That’s what wee Jonathan said.’

‘But Tom never complained to me. Honestly, Primavera, he didn’t. This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why didn’t he say anything?’

I chuckled. ‘From what I gather, he felt that when he kung fu-ed Duncan in the balls after he tried to hit him a second time, it put an end to the matter.’

‘He did what?’ At the other end of the line I heard a sound that was half gasp, half chortle. ‘Last year? He was only eleven then.’

‘Tom’s been going to his martial arts class since he was six, Susie. He was one grade off his black belt when this happened, and he got it a few weeks later. It’s lucky for Duncan that he was only eleven. He’s grown over the winter; if he did it now the guy would be looking for his nuts behind his ears. And it would serve him right.’ I took a deep breath. ‘That man is a nasty piece of work. From the start of your relationship he was using you.’

‘Using me? How?’

Suddenly she sounded even more tired and deeply anxious. I hesitated. I was concerned that I was about to go over the top with her. After all, this was a woman who had undergone rigorous treatment for a life-threatening condition. She did not need undue stress or disturbance in her life. ‘Forget it, Susie,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve said enough. You don’t need to hear this story right now. Since the guy’s history, you don’t need to hear it at all.’

‘But I do need to,’ she insisted, sounding as if she’d dredged up renewed strength from somewhere. ‘If it involves Duncan and it affects me, I want to know about it. So come on, girl, out with it.’

Oh Primavera; your hot head and your big mouth. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘if you insist.’ I launched into the tale of Culshaw’s unannounced visit to L’Escala, his exploitative ‘novel’, his attempt to screw two million out of me to protect Oz’s reputation and my own, and to the way I had seen off both him and his threat.

She heard me out without interruption. When I was finished I heard her blow out a huge sigh. ‘Did you keep a copy of the book?’ she asked.

‘I destroyed the original. As for the copy he gave me, that had a bloody virus on it that crashed my laptop a couple of days later. Trust me, Susie, you wouldn’t want to have read it.’

Another sigh, a very tired one at that. ‘Ah, Primavera, why didn’t you tell me all this at the time?’

‘I was going to, and then you were diagnosed, so I didn’t. Culshaw was gone, so I decided it wasn’t necessary.’

‘Ah, but as it’s turned out it was. I didn’t tell you the truth earlier. Wee Jonathan was right in what he saw. Duncan is back; and what have I done? I’ve only gone and married the guy, that’s all.’

‘You’ve married him?’ I repeated. ‘Duncan bloody Culshaw? Are you out of your mind?’

‘Given the circumstances,’ she said sadly, ‘that’s possible.’

I had to end the call with Susie’s sensational announcement still hanging in the air, as the front door burst open and the house was invaded by the wave of energy that is Tom and his half-sister.

‘How’s foul-mouth?’ Conrad asked me after they had headed off to their rooms to smarten themselves up for dinner and the night ahead.

‘Contrite,’ I told him. ‘He’s going to apologise to you, and ask for mercy. Your shout, though,’ I added. ‘I’m not involved … even though it is my roof you’ll be imprisoning him under over the weekend.’

The minder smiled. ‘I might give him a reprieve, if he’s sincere.’

‘I think he is,’ I said. ‘The wee chap’s had something on his mind. Has he said anything to you about Duncan Culshaw?’

‘Him?’ One word, but it carried a volume of contempt. ‘No, nothing at all. Why should he have?’

‘Because he thought he saw him, in Monaco, before you all came here.’

‘Slim chance, I reckon,’ he murmured. ‘That man’s a gold-digging waster if ever I saw one. I was glad when the boss got shot of him. So were the kids. He scared Jonathan. If he’d been around much longer I’d have had to do something about him, but thankfully, Susie saw the light, although she’s never said anything about it, not even to Audrey.’

My face must have been sending out signals, for suddenly, his eyes narrowed. ‘Little Jonathan was wrong, wasn’t he?’ he asked. ‘That wasn’t really Culshaw he saw, was it?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ I replied. ‘He’s back.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘And there’s worse.’ I dropped Susie’s bombshell on him.

‘What?’ he gasped. ‘She’s …? But Audrey’s with her, I’ve spoken to her just about every day and she’s never said a word about it.’

He pulled his mobile from his pocket and hit a speed dial button. Cellphone reception can be dodgy in St Martí, because of the thickness of the stone walls of its buildings, and so he stepped out on to the front terrace to maximise the signal and probably also for privacy while he interrogated his wife. I left him to get on with it, and I went down to the kitchen to warm up the seafood pasta sauce that I’d knocked up earlier in the day. I was weighing enough linguine for five … yes five; wee Jonathan may be a shrimp, but he can eat with the hungriest of us … when Conrad joined me again.

‘It’s true,’ he announced, not that I’d been in any doubt. ‘Audrey told me that Culshaw turned up in Scottsdale just after they did, “to be with her and comfort her” he said, and moved into their hotel. Susie told her to keep it secret, even from me. He wasn’t with her for the hard yards of the treatment though; it was still Audrey who went to the clinic with her when she had her chemo. He just hung around the hotel and fawned over her when she got back. Two days ago, the day after the course was finished, Susie told Audrey to charter a plane. Audrey wasn’t sure about it, for the chemo had knocked ten bells out of her, but Susie insisted, and yesterday morning the three of them flew to Las Vegas and did the whole Elvis Presley impersonator wedding bit. Audrey thinks that Culshaw had arranged it all last week.’

‘And she didn’t tell you even then?’

‘She hasn’t had a chance. They only flew back to Scottsdale late last night. She had to do her own insisting this morning: she called a doctor this morning to check over Susie, over her objections, because she was so knackered from the trip. He’d to give her a multi-vitamin injection, just to get her out of bed.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Indeed,’ Conrad said, hesitating before going on. ‘I don’t know what this means for me, Primavera. I can’t stand the man, and I’ve never hidden it from him. He’s going to want to get rid of me, that’s for sure.’

‘And Audrey?’

‘No, I don’t see Susie ever letting her go. They’re too close.’

‘Then don’t you worry about it. I have a feeling you’ll be okay. Susie didn’t employ you originally, Oz did, and for a very specific reason, one that’s still valid. Do you have a contract?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, twelve month rolling, with the company, but effectively it’s Susie who employs me, and if this guy’s her husband …’

‘If he is. It all sounds as fishy as this here sauce.’

‘He is, Primavera. Audrey was there, remember. She was their witness.’

‘Vegas marriages are as easy to dissolve as they are to do,’ I said. ‘I lived there for a while; I know how the place works.’

‘Maybe they are,’ he countered, ‘but only if Susie wants to do that, and from what Audrey said, she won’t. She says she’s besotted with the guy.’

‘She may have been yesterday, but I’m not so sure about today, not after I filled her in on some background she didn’t know about.’ I gave him a potted version of the previous year’s blackmail attempt and of how it was thwarted. ‘I had my reasons for not proceeding with a criminal complaint,’ I told him, ‘some of which you can probably guess, but if I have to, I can still fill out a
denuncio
. The tape of our conversation is pretty damning and I suppose the cops will still have it. In fact, tomorrow morning I will do that very thing.’

He frowned. ‘That would be risky. You were right to hold off last year. Oz wasn’t exactly whiter than white, but the truth is, he was blacker than even you know.’

‘Do I want to know how black?’ I murmured, although I wasn’t sure he’d kept any secrets from me.

‘No, you don’t, but understand this, a full investigation into his past wouldn’t just be tricky; it could be calamitous.’

His firmness made me pause. ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ I conceded, ‘and decide in the morning.’

‘Okay, but think really carefully before you do anything.’

I made him that promise and set about the evening meal. The sauce was simmering, the linguine was boiling, and I was making some tomato bread when the phone on the counter rang. I snatched it up, hoping that it was Susie calling to tell me that she’d just terminated the shortest marriage on record, but it wasn’t. No, it was Duncan fucking Culshaw.

‘Ah, the happy bridegroom,’ I said after he’d announced himself.

‘Ecstatic,’ he agreed. ‘Tough luck, Primavera. Your attempt to shaft me with Susie fell flat, I’m afraid. I heard her talking to you … I’m never far from her now. I’d assumed that you’d go nuclear the moment you found out about us, so I’ve been prepared for a while. There are two sides to every story, and I’ve just told her mine. If you’re interested, I explained that I’d gone to you to ask for your cooperation in preparing an authorised biography of Oz Blackstone, and in selling the idea to Susie. Your reaction, I told her, was to twist everything around and set me up with your friendly local cops. I added that they scared me so badly that I made myself scarce … which is pretty much true … until I decided that I really couldn’t live without her, and came back. Naturally, Susie takes her husband’s word over yours, so get used to the idea of her being Mrs Culshaw, and not the widow Blackstone any longer. Naturally also, I take her safety and that of her kids as seriously as she does. To emphasise that I’ve persuaded her to give Conrad Kent a fifty per cent salary increase, with a bonus for every incident-free year.’

‘And what about my kid’s security?’ I hissed.

‘Your Tom can look after himself very well,’ he chuckled, ‘a lesson I learned very painfully. You had best keep him close, to look after you.’

‘Are you threatening me, you idiot?’

He laughed, mocking me. ‘Of course not; I’ve got no need to threaten you. Primavera, you aren’t even a faint blot on my landscape, not any more.’

He paused for a few seconds. ‘But here’s something you should consider; think of it as a promise though, not a threat. As Susie’s husband I’ve now got free access to her considerable resources. I intend to use them. I may not be able to touch you, or your son, not physically, but I’m going to get you both back, you for what you did to me with those cops, and him for that kick in the family jewels. I’m going to investigate everything that your beloved Oz Blackstone ever did. If there are secrets hidden, as I suspect, I’m going to uncover them. If there aren’t, then what the hell, I’ll make them up. Either way, the memory of the blessed man, which Tom seems to hold so dear, that’ll be something you and he will want to hide from rather than worship.’

Culshaw’s threat was pure bluster, I was certain, but still it rattled me, so badly that I forgot about what I’d been doing and let the linguine boil over. By the time I’d taken it off the hob so that I could wipe off the spillage with a tea towel, an unwelcome smell told me that the sauce had burned itself into the base of its pan. ‘Bugger!’ I shouted, just as Tom came into the kitchen.

‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ he asked.

‘Dinner’s wrong. I think I’ve ruined it. Smell that sauce.’

Without a word, he took another pan from its place in the rack, lifted the original off the heat and emptied its contents into the replacement. Then he turned down the ring from level three, where I’d mistakenly set it, to one, and set the meal back to cooking. He looked at the rest of it and murmured, ‘We haven’t lost very much. It’ll be okay.’

I looked at him and thought of one of my favourite movies,
Con Air
, and the part where Agent Larkin asks Cameron Poe what he’s going to do for him and Cameron replies,
‘What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day!’

‘Thank you, Cameron,’ I said, and Tom laughed. It’s his
absolute
favourite movie, the one we watch together on shit weather nights in the winter. We know it so well that we can recite some of the dialogue ourselves, although he omits the F-words.

‘Put the bunny back in the box,’ he countered, with pauses, just like Nicolas Cage. (Real name Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it because he didn’t want to be known simply as the
Godfather
director Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew: that’s how much of a movie anorak I am, and why I am in constant demand for L’Escala quiz night teams.)

If it hadn’t been for Tom I’d probably have freaked out when the sauce caught, and run screaming for the inevitable takeaway pizzas, but as it turned out, dinner went fine, and if anyone else noticed that it was well done and that the linguine was a little beyond
al dente
they had the very good sense to keep quiet about it.