garden that's the size of a small county it helps to have something to get around in.
The estate's one deficiency, from a Janet point of view, was its lack of outdoor facilities. This was brought home to me by my younger nephew, when Ellie brought them… and Darius… for the promised weekend. 'You know, Uncle Oz,' said Colin, as he climbed up beside me for a trip in the buggy, 'it's a pity Janet doesn't have a proper playground.'
I blinked at him in surprise. 'What are you talking about, young man?
This whole place is her playground. She's got a swimming pool, and a wee golf course and everything.' As I spoke I looked across the field and saw Jonny, with a better action than mine, hit a near perfect wedge shot to about four feet from the pin; as I watched him I decided I'd give him Joe's Callaways, since he looked good enough to handle them.
The lad seemed to have set out on a futile attempt to teach Darius the basics of the game… it was bound to be futile because when you're six feet ten, golf is bloody nearly impossible.
'But she doesn't have a swing,' Colin countered, bringing my attention back to him, 'or a slide, or a climbing frame.'
'Which you would also find useful?' I suggested. He gave me a wide-eyed, innocent, 'Who? Me?' smile.
He had a point, though. When I mentioned it to Susie she agreed with him, and so we told Jay to hire a contractor and get it done. 'I'll build it myself,' he volunteered. 'Give me a shopping list of the things you want and I'll source them. Installation won't be a problem; it'll just be a matter of setting them in a solid foundation. We've got a cement mixer here and all the other tools I'll need.'
That evening Colin and I went net-surfing and found a website called rainbow play which offered a fantastic range of climbing frames, sand pits picnic tables, club-houses, and even tree-houses 'for gardens that don't have trees'. I was as hooked as he was, so I called their enquiry number and ordered the lot, plus a small club-house for delivery to Ellie's garden in St. Andrews. (What's the point of being a rich uncle if you don't act like one?) That was a great weekend, a time of idyllic, undisturbed existence… and then the bombshell hit.
To be exact, it came through the front door of the Gantry Group headquarters building, in a padded envelope addressed to Susie and marked 'personal'. She'd have opened it too, only she didn't go to the office that morning, but straight to a site meeting at a major housing development that we had launched on the outskirts of Glasgow. This project was so big, it was more new town than housing estate, with retail units and a new primary school, towards which the Group was contributing a large chunk of money. It was called New Bearsden, and it was to have the prestige to match the original version, one of Greater Glasgow's swankiest suburbs.
The parcel lay unopened in her in-tray, on her secretary's desk, until, at just after eleven am, before the eyes of an astonished Denise, it gave a soft 'crump' (at least that's how she described it) and burst open of its own accord, sending a sheet of flame high into the air. By the time she stopped screaming and recovered enough composure to grab the nearest fire extinguisher, the package was reduced to ash along with the rest of Susie's morning mail, and the in-tray was a lump of melted plastic on a badly scorched desk.
Gerry Meek was the first of the senior executives on the scene. He had the presence of mind to do two things: one, lock the office door behind him so that no one else could see what had happened; and two, call me.
Jay and I were in the car, the Lotus Elise that was another of my toys, in less than two minutes and heading for Thornliebank. Gerry had been for calling the police straight away, but I had told him to do nothing until we got there. Jay drove, and managed to break my unofficial world record for the trip. All the way there, one name kept repeating itself in my mind.
It must have showed on my face. 'That woman?' he asked, as we pulled up at the office. 'The paint- chucker?'
'I can't think of anyone else,' I told him.
He gave me a long look. 'Boss,' he murmured, barely above a whisper, but audible in the car's tiny cockpit, 'are you going to tell me the story?'
So I explained. Since I trusted Jay with my safety and that of toy family, I felt that I could trust him also with the truth about my Dad's predicament. He listened, with neither comment nor question until I was finished. When I was he nodded his head and pursed his lips. 'Yes,' he exclaimed, 'I can see why they'd be frustrated, and why they'd want to get back at you. What do we know about this couple?'
I told him the little that my Dad had told me. 'He's a lab technician, is he?' he mused. 'Come on, let's see what he might have been up to.'
He opened the car door and twisted himself out. I followed suit; I'm a bit bigger than Jay, so it took me a second or so longer.
I led the way inside and made straight for Gerry Meek's office. He looked scared, understandable in the circumstances. 'Before we go any further,' I began, 'is there anything about this company that I don't know about? Are there any secrets that you and Susie might have kept from me? Have any threats been made against the business? Have we crossed the wrong people?'
'No, Oz, nothing at all. I've been racking my brains for a reason for this but I can't come up with one.' He sounded desperate with worry. I wished I could put him out of his misery, but I couldn't.
'Let's see the mess, then.'
He took us through to Susie's outer office and unlocked the door.
'Where's Denise?' I asked, as we surveyed the black, soggy morass on the desk.
'I sent her home. She got the fright of her life. The thought of what could have happened if she'd opened that envelope…'
'It was addressed to Susie,' I reminded him, 'and marked 'personal'.
Denise wasn't meant to open it.' I had been on auto-pilot until then, keeping everything under control, but in that instant a huge wave of rage surged through me. 'The bastard who did this is dead,' I said.
'As good as in the fucking ground.'
I hadn't been speaking to him, but I think I scared Gerry even more.
'Oz, we'd better get the police.'
'Why?' I snapped back at him. 'Because of a small accidental office fire that was put out inside a minute?'
'But it wasn't,' the finance director wailed. 'You know it wasn't.'
'I know fuck all of the sort. I'm looking at a pile of wet black ash here, that's all. Denise is a smoker, isn't she?'
'Yes, but not in the off…' He caught my look and stopped in mid-sentence.
'When's Susie due back?'
'This afternoon, I think. She said she'd have lunch with the guys at the site.'
'She hasn't called in? You haven't said anything to her?'
Gerry's expression was all over the place as he looked at me; he was seeing someone he'd never met before. 'No, she hasn't been in touch.'
'Good. That gives you a chance to get that desk out of here and off to the scrapper.'
'But what'll I tell Susie?'
'Nothing. That's my job. I'll decide what to tell her, but I do not want this incident going public. Understood?'
I've come to believe that life is a constant stream of irony, of gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping perversity. I'd no sooner given Gerry Meek the heavy message than the sound of sirens invaded the office, growing louder and louder until there was no doubt about their destination. I looked out through the Venetian blinds, and gave a crazy laugh as a police traffic car, all day-glo flashes and blue lights, drew to a halt right outside the window.
'Tell them we don't want any,' I said to Jay. No way could I trust Gerry to smooth talk coppers in his condition. The state he was in, give him thirty seconds and he'd have confessed to shooting Bambi's mother.
As Jay went off to talk to Mr. Plod, I walked into Susie's office and sat behind her desk. My agitated fellow director followed me in, but I paid him no attention as I sat in my wife's chair and swivelled it around, looking out at the bright morning and trying to get a handle on what was happening. Eventually I formed my mental ducks into something resembling a row. I swung the chair round and turned back to Gerry.
'Before you packed Denise off home, did she say anything about the package?' I asked.
'It was in a Jiffy bag, apparently.'
