Poisoned Cherries (32 page)

forty-Six.

There is a myth that movie-making is all early starts and late finishes and that the other side of the coin for guys like me is that we earn our vast sacks of gold by being dumped in arduous locations for weeks and months on end and are then screamed at from six a.m. till midnight by neurotic directors who are overly jealous because we can act and therefore are recognisably famous while they can’t and therefore aren’t.

I believe that’s true on occasion, but it’s never happened to me yet.
 
My experience is of filming in attractive cities and countryside, under the guidance of a mentor who explains how he wants a scene to look and sound once it’s shot, rehearses until he’s happy it’s going to turn out that way, then completes in a minimum of takes and with no histrionics at all.

But then, so far, I’ve only worked with Miles Grayson.

No, as I’ve come to appreciate, the people who really work hard on movie projects are those behind the cameras ... and there are a hell of a lot of them.
 
Every one seems to look after his or her own bit of the business, and most of them seem to have exotic titles.
 
For example, there’s someone called a focus puller; I assume that her job is to pull focuses, but how she pulls them, and with what, is and always will be completely beyond me.

The crew’s first day at the McEwan Graduating Hall was scheduled to begin at six-thirty.
 
For the cast, it began at mid-day.

Susie had a flying start; she had asked Mandy to pick her up at seven-thirty, and she was up and ready.
 
We had a coffee and toast breakfast, I took some in to Liam, and then we headed for the Mound.

“Thanks,” I said as the lift wound quietly down to the ground floor.

“What for?”
 
she laughed.
 
“Coming through for a posh dinner at the Caley, sat beside Ewan Capperauld and across from Miles Grayson, then getting to sleep with you?
 
That was not a chore, my darling, I promise.”

“No.
 
I mean thanks for putting up with me and all the shit I have brought into your life; having a minder at home, surprise visits from Prim, and all that crap.”

She patted my chest.
 
“Listen, all of that is offset by the incredible good you’ve brought into it.
 
There wouldn’t have been a Janet without you.”

“Which begs ... no screams ... the question,” I told her, ‘that has been gnawing at me.
 
I know you’ve said you love me, and you keep on showing it, but is that only because we’ve made a family together?
 
A family’s something you’ve never had, not properly.
 
So, without Janet, would there still be a me?”

The lift doors opened and we stepped out; the entrance hall was empty.

“Funny you should ask that,” Susie whispered, ‘because just occasionally, when I brush the Stardust out of my eyes, and look at the real world, I ask myself that very same question about you.”

“What’s your answer?”

“I’ll tell you.
 
Remember the signature I want from you, the one we joked about last night?
 
I want it on our marriage forms.”

I whistled; as in whistling in the dark, perhaps.
 
“Jesus!
 
You’ve taken my breath away.
 
I mean, no one’s ever proposed to me before. You sure about it?”

“I’m in business, Oz.
 
I wouldn’t propose a merger if I didn’t think it was absolutely right for my company.
 
The same principle applies in my life.
 
I know how I feel and I know what I want.
 
Now, how about you?”

“I know how I feel too.
 
For a while I believed that there was no goodness in the world any more.
 
But you and Janet changed that.
 
I love you and our daughter and I will always be around for you.
 
I don’t need to tell you that, I hope.
 
But remember, I’ve stood before the anvil twice, and twice I’ve been burned by the heat of the forge.

“Christ, the ink isn’t even wet on my divorce, never mind dry.
 
On top of that, am I a guy you can trust?”

“I think so.
 
If I can trust you after what I walked in on the other night, for God’s sake .. .”
 
Her eyes were laughing; they made me want to say, “Yes, yes, yes,” right there and then.
 
But it wasn’t as easy as that.

“Let me think about this, Susie.
 
There are things I have to sort out.”

“Such as?
 
Whether or not you really love me?”

“No.
 
The past; that’s all.”

The light went out of her eyes in an instant.
 
“Prim got to you, didn’t she?
 
You’re having second thoughts about the divorce?”

I shook my head.
 
“Not one.”

“Well she is, in that case.”

“I wouldn’t let her.
 
No, that’s a done deal, honest; even if she did try to back out, it’s done.
 
I’d use her fling with Johnson as grounds.”

“She might counter-sue.”

“Tough.”

“Well, what is it that you have to sort out?”

“Everything.
 
Me.
 
Jan.
 
Everything.”

Her eyes were full of doubt now.
 
I had hurt her and I knew it, but if I told her the real reason for my hesitancy, the mad idea which was still there at the back of my mind, that would hurt her a lot more. The devil alone knew what it would do to her.

Forty-Seven.

Liam and I hit the gym again at eight-thirty; we hit it bloody hard. We did an hour flat out, going through the same routine as the day before, ending with ten minutes of meditation.

We had taken our shaving gear down with us; I was just wiping off the remnants of the gel when my mobile phone sounded.
 
“Where are you?” Ricky asked.
 
He was using his crisis voice; I leapt straight to the worst conclusion imaginable.
 
The police had found the link between David Capperauld and Anna Chin; they were after Alison, and us.

“I’m at the gym.”

“Wait there.
 
I’ll pick you up.
 
Gimme the address.”

I did; I handed Liam my car keys and told him that if I didn’t see him back at the apartment, I’d head straight for the McEwan Hall.
 
Privately, I hoped that I’d make it anywhere other than the cells at Gayfield police station.

Ricky’s Alfa pulled up outside the club in less than ten minutes.
 
He looked as grim as he’d sounded, and that made me feel no better.
 
“Where’s the fire?”
 
I asked him.
 
He answered with a savage grunt.

“Ah, I see,” I muttered.
 
“It’s at your house.”

He headed up towards the city centre, swung round Picardy Place, and then along York Place-.
 
When he didn’t stop outside Alison’s office, I began to feel a bit easier.
 
He didn’t say a word as he drove along Queen Street, then out across the Dean Bridge towards the west of the city.

“I don’t know why I’m taking you here,” he muttered, eventually.
 
“But you’ve been arriving at disaster scenes since you got back to Edinburgh, so you might as well pitch up at another.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

We drove, in renewed silence, out through Blackhall, until he took a right turn just past the library.
 
I still hadn’t a clue where we were going, until, after another couple of twists and turns, he swung in to Gamekeeper’s Road and into the driveway of one of the big villas that line it.

Three police cars and an ambulance were lined up in front of the house.
 
The doors of the ambulance were open, but no one was hurrying; I knew what that meant.

I still hadn’t a bloody clue.
 
Then I looked at the garage to the side of the sandstone mansion.
 
The wide door was open and I could read the personalised plates on the Roller and the Mercedes that were parked inside.

“James Torrent,” I heard myself gasp.
 
“This is James Torrent’s place?”

“Was,” said Ricky, tersely.
 
“Now it belongs to his estate.”

My head went all over the place again, as I realised what he had said.

“Very sad,” I managed, ‘but why are we here?”

“Ronnie Morrow didn’t know I’d been fired as security consultant.
 
He phoned me.”

He’d filled that gap in his knowledge, though.
 
He was standing in the doorway as we crunched up the drive; he was dressed in a white crime-scene tunic.

“You might have told me, sir,” he said, reproachfully.
 
“I found this on his desk.”

I peered at the copy letter as he held it up by a corner; I couldn’t read it all, but I could see that it was addressed to Ross Security and I could guess what it said.

“As far as I’m concerned we still have a contract,” Ricky snapped back.

“Okay.”
 
He nodded to me.
 
“But why bring him?”

“He was with me when you called.
 
I didn’t have time to drop him off.

What happened?”

“Come and have a look.”
 
He gave us each a tunic like his, from a pile by the door, and waited till we put them on.
 
Then he led us into the house and up a big wide staircase; it reminded me of the place in Spain that I was in the process of selling to Scott Steele.
 
At the top we turned left; a heavy panelled door lay open and we could see the people bustling inside.

We could also see James Torrent.
 
He was behind a big wooden desk, in a chair that looked like the twin of the one in his penthouse office.
 
He was reclining, his little piggy eyes staring at the ceiling, his great mouth hanging open, slackly.

“Don’t go beyond the doorway,” said Morrow.
 
“You can see enough from here.”

“How?”
 
asked Ricky.

“Stabbed.
 
Right through the heart.”

“When?”

“Just after midnight, the ME reckoned.”

“Weapon?”

From one of the cavernous pockets of his tunic, Morrow produced a knife, encased in a clear plastic evidence envelope.
 
A sound like a police siren went off in my head.
 
I recognised it; when we were together, I’d once given Alison a fancy desk set for her office.
 
It had included a paper knife with a long thin gilt blade and a fancy tooled handle, just like the one Morrow was holding.
 
Okay, it wasn’t a one-off piece, but after the last couple of weeks .. .

“We’re going to have to speak to Alison Goodchild again,” the detective sergeant announced, as if he’d been reading my thoughts.

“Why?”
 
I blurted out; I was startled and couldn’t disguise it.

“When he was killed, Mr.
 
Torrent appears to have been signing his day’s correspondence.
 
The letter I showed Mr.
 
Ross was at the top of the pile he’d done, but there was another folder in his briefcase with more, not signed yet.
 
One of them was to her, terminating her contract.”

“Aw come on, Ronnie,” Ricky protested.
 
“You might as well list me as a suspect!”

“Don’t take it like that, sir.
 
You and she aren’t the only people getting bad news in those letters.
 
We’ll have to talk to everybody; you know that.”

Ross was mollified.
 
“I suppose so.”

I tapped him on the shoulder.
 
“Listen, I need to go.
 
I have to be on set at eleven-thirty and it’s five past now.”

“Okay.
 
I’ll take you.”

Morrow led the way back to the front door; we stripped off the tunics and dumped them on a pile of discard just outside, in the pathway.

“I won’t bother to interview you, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Thanks for the courtesy,” Ross shot back, as we walked towards his car.

“You might have told me you’d such a tight deadline,” he grumbled as we climbed in.

“I don’t.”
 
I told him about the knife.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered, when I was finished.

“But it’s a plant.
 
You know that.”

“Sure.”

“And she’s got an alibi, hasn’t she?”

“Sure.
 
She was in my bed.
 
And I’ve got a grudge against Torrent as well as her!
 
Some alibi.
 
That knife’ll have her prints on it.
 
Sure, I’ll say she was with me, that we’re in a relationship.
 
All of a sudden she’s got an accomplice.
 
Do you know what?
 
They’ll wind up arresting us both.

“Worse than that; they’ll assume we’ve been having it off since before her fiance was murdered.
 
Chances are they’ll do us both for that as well.”

Forty-Eight.

I’d never seen Ricky Ross panic before; it was not a pretty sight.
 
It was all I could do to stop him picking up Alison and making a run for it.
 
He saw sense at last, though, on the drive back to the city centre.

“We have got to concentrate on what we started on Sunday, man,” I told him.
 
“We have to find the killer before it goes pear-shaped for us all.”

“You think it isn’t already?”
 
he retorted, as we drove across the George IV Bridge.
 
“But you’re right.
 
We’ve got some time yet; even if Alison’s prints are on that knife, it’ll take them a while to lift them and match them.
 
If she goes away on a business trip, even if it’s only for a couple of days, that’ll buy us more.”