once, by e-mail.
'I don't know,' he replied. 'But I'll make sure they do, don't you worry.'
There wasn't much to do after that but go home. Gerry Meek had been in the office, waiting for the board meeting, when the call had come from the police, so Susie phoned him from the car to let him know what had happened. Gillian Harvey was out of town, on a visit to a bank client in Sheffield: Susie left a message with her secretary, asking her to call whenever she could.
There was no one else to inform, really, other than Joe's sister-in-law, Mira. I did that when we got back to the house, although with just a bit of trepidation. She had seen some tragedy in her life since our brief meeting, and I couldn't be sure that she didn't blame me for some of it. She was okay, though, sorry to hear about Joe's death, if I not exactly grief-stricken. I promised I'd let her know about funeral arrangements, and we left it at that.
I guess that word got around the Mother well nick after the CID officers reported back to their bosses, and they saw the names on the report. I had a call early that evening from a detective superintendent, who introduced himself as Tom Fallon, Divisional Commander. He didn't have anything startling to tell me; he called to let Susie and me know that the brass was in the know and that the brass was taking it seriously. However he went on to say that there were no signs that Joe's death was suspicious. His people hadn't gone firm on their report to the Procurator Fiscal, but he had steered them towards a finding of accident, subject to the post mortem report, rather than suicide. He assured me that they had 'expedited' the autopsy, and that in fact the old boy was being carved up even as he spoke.
The results came through next morning, after Susie had gone to work.
That was one of the hardest things she ever did. She had had a strange relationship with Joe, one that had been turbulent in business terms, but when everything else was stripped away, he was her father, and his death hit her like a hammer. Okay, she had spent most of her life thinking of Jack Gantry as her dad, but blood is blood.
The trouble was, no one knew but me… well there was one other who did, but we hadn't seen Prim in a while, and didn't even know where she was… and Susie and Joe had decided that they would keep their true relationship secret. So that morning, she put on her tough face, hid the depth of her sorrow and carried on with business as usual.
As he had promised, Detective Superintendent Fallon called again, in the middle of my postponed session with Neil Quinnan, my dialogue coach. 'It'll be accidental death, Mr. Blackstone,' he told me: no preamble, straight to the point. 'The PM showed a high blood alcohol level, more than three times over the permitted limit. I'll go with the assumption that he had a wee bit too much to drink, went out to tinker with his car… as you told the officers at the scene he liked to do… and just got careless. Maybe he switched the engine on to listen to the sound, and just fell asleep. Given that there was no suicide note, and given the other circumstances… he had no business worries, he was doing well in the golf championship… that's by far the likeliest explanation for the tragedy. I've got no doubt that the Fiscal will accept that.'
The guy was leaning over backwards to be helpful; I could see that.
'Thanks, Mr. Fallon. I'm grateful for that, and so will my wife be, when I tell her.'
'My regards to your wife,' he said. 'I was stationed in A Division, in Glasgow, in the Lord Provost's time. I met her quite a few times at functions in the City Chambers, when she was accompanying her father.'
I could almost hear him shake his head at the other end of the line.
'It was awful the way that turned out. Quite unbelievable at the time, and as far as I'm concerned it still is.'
My laugh had no humour in it. 'Maybe so, Superintendent, but it didn't stop it all being true.'
'Aye, that's a fact as well. Still, I'm glad it's turned out all right in the end for Miss Gantry and you. She deserves it, after what she's been through. First with her father, then my late and unlamented colleague Inspector Dylan. I really do hate it, you know, when an officer goes to the other side. I take it personally, and most of my colleagues do as well. Fortunately it doesn't happen all that often, and I've certainly never known one who went as bad as he did.'
I tutted my agreement, wondering how he'd react if he knew that Mike Dylan wasn't nearly as late as everyone thought.
'About Mr. Donn, sir,' he continued. 'We're in a position to release the body, but I'm not sure who's going to claim it. I believe you told Sergeant Kennedy that there's a sister-in-law.'
'I did, but my wife and I will look after things. I'll instruct an undertaker and he'll be in contact with you.'
By the time Susie got home from the office, the arrangements were well underway. Joe's remains had been moved from the mortuary to a funeral parlour in Mother well, and plans were in hand for a cremation at a place called Daldowie, in Lanarkshire, five days later, on the following Tuesday.
She kissed me when I told her, then we took Janet for a walk round the garden. We said nothing to her about Papa Joe, of course. Apart from being pointless, it's neither right nor fair to try to tell a two-year-old about death.
Eight.
There were other things to be done, of course. The formality of registration had to be completed: I did that next morning in Mother well, armed with Dr. Halliday's death certificate, which I had collected from the friendly detective superintendent, and a cremation certificate signed by two other doctors. Fallon turned out to be a tall, thin man, with an even thinner moustache. I had told Susie about him, but she had no recollection of him from her City Chambers days.
'There were all sorts of people fawning about the Lord Provost back then,' she'd muttered, grimly. 'He'd just have been another face in the crowd.'
On the spur of the moment, I asked the policeman if he had ever encountered Ricky Ross; he responded with a nod, and what I took to be a very knowing wink. 'Oh aye,' he said. 'The famous fallen star. I hear he's rising again. As a matter of fact I was thinking of asking him if he had any openings. I can retire from this lot any time I like now.'
I promised that I would put in a word for him and headed off for the Registrar's Office, and after that for Joe's lawyer. I knew nothing of that side of his life, but I had looked through his papers, in his house, before going to the police station, and found a few letters addressed to a guy named Ewan Maltbie, of a firm called Rusk, Mansell and McGregor, of whom none now figured on the practice letterhead, or, I guessed, among the human race.
I found him in a grey sandstone building near Mother well Cross. It was a lawyer's office as I had remembered them in my youth. Where Greg McPhillips' place in Glasgow is bright, airy and glassy, screaming 'Top Ranking Corporate Clients' at you as loudly as it can, this was dull, dusty and modestly furnished, the way a solicitor's chambers are supposed to be. Ewan Maltbie matched his surroundings almost perfectly; he had a superior, all-knowing look about him, he was modestly dressed and there was a presence of dandruff on his shoulders like the first light snowfall of a life winter.
There was nothing dull about him, though. His eyes were as sharp as little pins and they bored into me across the desk; he never seemed to blink. He didn't smile either, nor do anything else to make me feel welcome. As I looked at him, across the deeds and documents piled high on his desk, he reminded me of my first bank manager.
Maltbie had heard about Joe's death the night before; although there was nothing in the press, word had spread through the Mother well grapevine like a flash fire through a pine forest. (I saw one of them once in Spain, from a safe distance; the flames swept through the fallen needles on the dry ground at about the same speed as a man could run.) He knew as much as I did; maybe Fallon had told him on the quiet, or maybe it had come from Dr. Halliday.
'What exactly is your relationship to my client, Mr. Blackstone?' he asked me finally.
'Don't you know?' I countered.
The wee eyes grew even sharper. 'Maybe I can't answer that.'
'Why couldn't you?'
