Poisoned Cherries (30 page)

“She isn’t people!
 
She’s your wife, and she’s got the biggest down on me any woman could possibly have on another.
 
So when she swans into my house, goes gooey over my baby, and wishes me long life and happiness, no way will I believe a bloody word she’s saying!”

“Well I do, okay?”

“Sure you do, like you believed her in the past, when she was having it off with half of Spain in your absence.”

“She didn’t really lie to me, though.
 
I just assumed.
 
Anyway, all that time was none of my business.”

“Yeah?
 
And what about her and Mike?
 
When she was with you and he was with me?
 
What about that?”

Young Street grew blurred all around me; I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it until my eyes focused.
 
“What did you just say?” I asked her, when I could find the words.

“Nothing I ever planned to,” she replied.
 
“I never intended to tell you, but the two of them had an affair, in Glasgow.”

“Prim and Dylan?
 
You’re making that up; you have to be.”

“I wish I was, but I’m not.
 
After he died, I found a letter she wrote him; the daft bastard kept it, inside the birthday card it came in.
 
It was wishing him many happy returns, in more ways than one.”

“So,” I said slowly, ‘when you turned up in Spain, and we got it together, you were getting your own back too?”

Susie fell silent.
 
“No,” she answered eventually.
 
“I didn’t plan it that way.
 
But it made it a hell of a lot easier, I can tell you.”

“So why didn’t you tell me about her and Dylan until now?”

“I don’t know.
 
I didn’t see the need, I suppose.
 
You liked him and he’s gone.
 
What was the point of telling you?”

“And did you tell Prim you knew?”

“No.
 
I’m keeping that in reserve for when I need it.”

“And when will that be?”

“When she tries to get you back, as she will.”

“She won’t; she knows better.”

“I know better; she will, believe me.
 
Maybe she’s started already.”

I thought about our encounter that afternoon, and Prim’s willingness to put the couch to good use.
 
Susie latched on to my silence.
 
“She has, hasn’t she!”
 
she exclaimed, almost triumphantly.

“Well if she did, she failed.
 
And when she saw that she had she went to see you and wished you all the best.”

I heard her laugh.
 
“In your dreams, big boy.
 
Tell me something.
 
This man who’s been following you, the guy who took our picture and planted it in your room; has it ever occurred to you that he might be working for your wife?
 
Did it never occur to you that she was being far too compliant over the divorce?”

No, it had not; never, until that moment.
 
I told Susie as much.
 
“Well maybe you should give it some thought.
 
You’re trying to make a movie, which she knows all about because her sister’s in it.
 
Out of the blue, dodgy things happen.
 
Why shouldn’t she be behind them?
 
Why shouldn’t she be behind all of them?”

forty-Four.

I thought about what Susie had said for the rest of the night.
 
I started thinking about it again, as soon as I was wakened next morning by the sound of the door buzzer.

I checked my watch as I answered; it was five to nine.
 
I’d overslept and Liam Matthews was at the door, ready to begin rehearsals for his big week of being a movie star.
 
Having shot the beginning of the movie the day before, we were scheduled to film one of the climactic scenes, a complicated shoot-out in Edinburgh University’s McEwan Graduating Hall, which had been made available to us for a full week.

As I waited for the lift to come up from the street, I ran through what Susie had said.
 
Could Prim have sent the stalker?
 
Could she have planted that photo herself?
 
She’d had the chance.
 
Sure, if she had she’d put on a terrific act when I’d told her about the baby, but she’d put on some A-list performances for me in the past... not least keeping me totally in the dark about her having it off with Mike Dylan, God rot his bones.

Yes, I told myself, as I listened to the whoosh behind the sliding steel door, she could be behind the man who followed me.
 
I wouldn ‘t put that past her.
 
But to be behind all of it..
 
.

Then the lift opened, and there he was, the GWA World Heavyweight Champion, a true superstar of wrestling.
 
I half expected him to have the big leather and gold title belt slung over his shoulder but, thankfully, he was out of character for the week.

When I first met Liam, I took an instant dislike to him.
 
He was pushy, arrogant, playing all the stuff in his ring persona in real life, pissing off just about everyone around him, and surviving in his job only because of his exceptional physical gifts, his technical skills ... he was a world championship medallist as an amateur..
 
. and his natural acrobatic talent.
 
Pound for pound, because he’s much smaller than most of his enormous colleagues, Liam is as good a sports entertainer..
 
. wrestler, that is ... as the world has ever seen.

Happily,

he’s also worked his way though his difficult period, found himself a nice girl, and let the nice guy within him work his way to the surface.

He filled a void in my life when Dylan’s death left me short of a best pal; given what I’d learned in the last twelve hours or so, was I glad to see him right then.

He looked me up and down.
 
“Jesus, boy, what have you been up to?
 
You look frazzled.
 
You’ve got eyes on you like piss-holes in the snow.”

“I’d a few beers last night, then I didn’t sleep very well.
 
I’ve had a disturbing weekend.”
 
I heard myself give a slightly hysterical laugh.
 
“Weekend?
 
Fuck, since I came back to Edinburgh, the whole place has been growing crazier and crazier.”
 
I dumped Liam’s bag in the spare bedroom off the living area, took him into the kitchen and made him coffee, then led him through to my suite.
 
He sipped quietly as I shaved then showered, and as I told him, stage by stage, about everything that had happened to me over the last few weeks, from Prim’s walk-out in California, to her reappearance on the shoot and her visit to Susie in Glasgow.
 
“You think I look frazzled, do you?”
 
I asked him, as I buckled my belt.
 
“Is it any bloody wonder?”

“No,” Liam conceded.
 
“I don’t suppose it is.”
 
He looked at me, appraising me once again.
 
“You know what’s the most dangerous thing in the sports entertainment business?”
 
he asked, in his light Dublin brogue.

“Tell me.”

“Aggression.
 
It’s when a wrestler goes into the ring in an aggressive frame of mind that someone gets hurt.
 
You’re so full of it right now that if you came across this guy who’s been following you, the good Lord alone knows how far you’d go.
 
What you need, Oz, is to take that aggression out on someone who can absorb it.”

“Who?
 
You?”

Liam laughed; it was loud and refreshing and I felt a bit better right away.
 
“Don’t be so fucking stupid.
 
I’d damage you.
 
No, you need to take it out on yourself.
 
What’s our timetable for today?”

“We meet up for lunch at the rehearsal room in George Street; one o’clock sharp.”

“Fine.
 
Have you sorted yourself out a gym in this town?”

“Yes.
 
Not far from here.”

“Then that’s where you and I are going to spend the morning.
 
We’ll get you healed there.”

My friend was as good as his word.
 
We headed down to the Edinburgh Club, where Liam put me through his own training routine.

While he’s small for a wrestler, around my height, he’s maybe fifteen pounds heavier than my one-ninety-five, and fast and exceptionally strong with it.
 
He worked each piece of apparatus flat out and he made me keep up his pace all the way.
 
He made me press weights I’d never even attempted before, with my arms and legs, until I screamed out loud with the effort.
 
When we were done with that, he made me put on the gloves and held the heavy punch-bag while I hit it, harder and harder, combinations at first, then single punches, big booming shots, every one of them aimed at a bearded guy, wearing shades.
 
Finally, I nailed the red leather bag with a huge right-hander that broke Liam’s grip on it and sent him rolling over backwards.
 
“Jesus,” he grinned as he got to his feet, “I’m glad that was between me and you.”

To wind up, he took me on the judo mat and showed me some new moves, and other stuff he had been working on himself, not necessarily for use in the ring, more the type of throws and holds that had won him his world championship medal.
 
When we were done with that, he sat down in the middle of the mat, and told me to do the same.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed, ‘cleanse your mind of all but the most peaceful thoughts.
 
Take the biggest lungful of air you can, and release it slowly, then breathe shallow, quietly, so you can’t even feel it.
 
Then find what’s dearest to your heart and focus on that alone.”

I did as he said.
 
As I exhaled I had a vision, behind my closed eyes, of Jan, my dead soul-mate.
 
She’d come to me before in times of need and she did so again, wordlessly this time.
 
I could hear nothing but the sound of my own heart, its beat slow and steady.
 
As I concentrated on the picture in my mind I seemed to close in on its centre on something within her.
 
It grew and became clearer until two figures formed; Susie and the baby.

I sat there motionless for I know not how long, looking at my child and her mother, aware only of them and of the violence draining out of me.
 
I’d probably have stayed in my trance all day, had not Liam broken it by touching me gently on the shoulder.

“Okay, boy,” he said.
 
“Time to be moving.”

As I took my second shower of the day, I felt cleansed in every sense.
 
As I towelled myself dry and dressed, I realised just how strung out I had been, and how close to the edge I’d come.
 
I took a look in the mirror, and couldn’t see a trace of the guy who’d been there a few hours before.

“You have to master yourself, Oz,” Liam said to me, quietly, as I drove back to the apartment on the Mound.
 
“There’s something dangerous about you; it needs to be driven out and kept out.
 
What we did this morning should be your standard work-out from now on, but the most important part of it is the part at the end.
 
If you can’t do anything else, none of the physical stuff, at the very least you should commune with the peaceful side of your nature every day in life.”

Since then, I’ve taken that advice to heart and followed it, religiously; it works, most of the time.
 
I still find it strange to think of the GWA champion as a man wholly cleansed of aggression, but I understand completely why that has to be.
 
These people are trained professionals, kids; don’t try their stuff at home.

We were dropping our gym gear at home .. . straight into the washing machine .. . when my hard-won serenity was put to its first test.
 
I had missed my morning check of my e-mail, so in the few minutes that were left before we had to head for George Street, I switched on my laptop, plugged in my modem, and set up an AOL flash-session.

Even if there’s mail, normally it takes seconds to run, unless there’s an attachment to download; this time there was, an untitled JPEG file.
 
It took just under a minute until it was complete and Joanna’s voice said “Goodbye’.
 
I opened my off-line filing cabinet and looked at the ‘incoming’ folder.
 
There were two new messages; one was a cheery ‘hello’ from Susie, saying sorry that she’d given me a hard time the night before, and assuring me that everything was okay in Glasgow.

The second was from a source I didn’t recognise; it was on Hotmail, untitled, and the sender address was no more than a jumble of letters, ‘mzrimnmeal92’.
 
I opened it, thinking that it was junk mail, expecting someone to be offering me free insurance, promising me a bride from St.
 
Petersburg, or trying to sell me a magic pill that would make my dick three inches longer... I’ve had all of those and more in my mailbox in my time.

This one was different, though; the message was two words, that’s all.

“Hello, Oz.”
 
At the foot of the screen, an icon indicated an

attachment.

I have my computer set up so that all my downloads go straight to my desktop.
 
I clicked three times, and the folder was open.
 
I found it, easily; ‘u’ for ‘untitled’ with the JPEG symbol.
 
I opened it and watched as it unrolled on the screen.