'How was it addressed?'
He looked at me blankly. 'To Susie,' he exclaimed.
'No, man,' I said, forcing myself to be patient. 'Did she say if it was hand-written?'
'It wasn't. I saw it myself. The address was on a stick-on label; it looked as if it came off a printer.'
'Was it stamped or franked?' As I asked the question I realised how stupid it was. To send a letter-bomb with franked, and thus traceable, postage would be idiocy of a higher level than I'd ever encountered.
This didn't dawn on Gerry, though. 'I can't remember,' he replied.
'Do you remember the postmark? Did you see where it was posted?'
He shook his head. 'Sorry, Oz.'
I waved a hand at him, to indicate that it didn't matter. At that moment, the phone rang on Susie's desk: I picked it up, hoping that it wasn't her. It wasn't; instead I heard Ali Speirs, the finance director's secretary, on the line. 'Gerry?' she asked.
'No, it's Oz. What's up?'
'I've got a journalist on the phone, Mr. Blackstone,' she blurted out, anxiously. 'He says we've had a letter- bomb here. Is that why the police are outside?' I gave her boss a look of approval. He hadn't even told his own secretary what had happened.
'It's bullshit, Ali. Put him through here, but don't tell him it's me.
Let him think he's speaking to Gerry.'
'Very good.' She didn't ask why; I guessed she knew him pretty well.
'Mr. Meek?' a nasal, ingratiating voice exclaimed a few seconds later. 'This is Larry Moore, of the Red Hot News Agency. Have you got any comment to make about the bomb?'
'Well basically,' I began, 'I'm against all weapons of mass destruction, and I think that Robert Oppenheimer and his team have a hell of a lot to answer for. On the other hand, if the Pandora's Box of nuclear energy had to be opened, I suppose we have to be grateful that our side found the combination before Hitler did.'
There was a brief silence, and then Moore was back, less wheedling this time. 'Mr. Meek, I was talking about the letter-bomb which was delivered to your office this morning.'
'Did you deliver it? If so, can you tell me where it is? Maybe then I can answer your strange question.'
'Mr. Meek, are you denying that you had an incendiary device delivered?'
'I'll tell you what an associate of mine is telling the police even as we speak. We had a small outbreak of fire in the office. It was dealt with by our automatic system and by an alert staff member, and there was no need to involve the emergency services.' He started to speak again, but I cut him off. 'Now I've got one for you. Who fed you this crap?'
'We don't reveal sources, Mr. Meek.'
'You couldn't reveal this one even if you did, because you don't fucking know it. You've had an anonymous call, Larry, haven't you, and you've seen a pound or two in it. Tell me, is there any part of the phrase 'Taking the piss' that you have trouble understanding?'
'Are you saying this was a hoax call?'
'That's the first sensible question you've asked me.'
'But if it was, who'd make it?'
'That's the second, and it's one I'm going to be trying to answer for myself. But when I do, I won't be telling you. Have a nice lunch.'
I hung up on him, and looked up at the real Gerry Meek. 'Nobody else knew about the fire? Only you and Denise Scott?'
'Nobody. I just happened to be passing, and I heard the sound of the sprinklers, then Denise operating the fire extinguisher. When she told me what had happened, I decided it was best kept quiet till you got here.' He paused. 'But there's something else, Oz. Something I have remembered. The package was neither stamped nor franked.'
My eyebrows rose. 'Hand-delivered? A courier.'
'Could be.'
'Once the police have gone,' I told him, 'go and ask Danny.' The front of house act at Gantry Group head office is quite up-market, as befits a public company. We have night security, but during the day, from eight in the morning till five pm, there's a uniformed commissionaire, whose job it is to receive visitors and take deliveries. He's an ex-constable and his name is Daniel. 'You'd better give Ali the official version too, just as I gave it to that guy, and ask her to circulate it.'
I looked over my shoulder, out of the window. The two coppers had climbed back into their patrol car, and were leaving, a hell of a lot more quietly than they'd arrived. They had barely cleared the drive before Jay was back, his path crossing with Gerry's in the doorway.
'Sorted?'
He nodded. 'They bought it. They'll report it as a waste of police time. I asked them what they knew about the caller. All they knew was unidentified male.'
'They weren't the only ones to get a call.' I told him about Mr. Larry Moore.
'What'll he do?'
'Flog his non-story for what he can get for it. It'll appear somewhere, I'm sure. I can see the headline, 'Letter-bomb scare after fire at Glasgow firm'. I just hope that none of the tabloids have the wit to tie this to the paint incident.'
'But don't be surprised if they do,' Jay warned.
'I won't be. I'm going to have to tell Susie, that's for sure.'
'Wise, boss. Now, what about these Neiporte characters? Are you sure about not bringing in the police?'
'Dead certain. It'd get out for sure… and think of those headlines when it did. 'Film star's dentist dad in sex smear scandal'.'
'You've missed your true vocation,' my bodyguard chuckled. 'You should have been a tabloid sub-editor. But you're right: that's how they'd treat it, and since half their customers don't read past the headline …'
I nodded, feeling the anger begin to swell again. I reached under the desk for a switch I knew was there, to make dead certain that Susie's private taping system, a hold-over from the Jack Gantry days that she hadn't bothered to remove, was switched off. 'I can't go near them again, Jay,' I said. 'I wouldn't trust myself. But I want this stopped in its tracks. No more incidents, no more threats.'
'No questions asked?' That was the key question in itself.
I looked him straight in the eye for more than a few seconds. 'None.'
Thirteen.
As it turned out, Susie's series of meetings at the New Bearsden project took up the whole of her working day. When I called her on her mobile just after lunch, she told me she'd be coming straight home.
When I told her what had happened at the office, her first thought after she came down off the ceiling was for Denise Scott. It didn't occur to her that she herself might have been lying in a burns unit somewhere, wondering if she'd be able to see again when they took the bandages off her face, and if she could, whether she'd be able to live with what was in the mirror.
It was only after she had called her secretary at home and satisfied herself that she was okay, that I was able to give her the rest of the story, and tell her how we had handled the police and the press. She didn't disagree with any of it; I was pleased that she accepted what I offered her as my reasons for playing it down. Given her early days as Gantry Group managing director, she was hyper-sensitive about its public image.
I'd thought about it, and if she'd really pressed me, I'd been prepared to tell her the truth, the whole story about the Neiportes and their attempt to blackmail my Dad, but it didn't get that far. The only thing she asked was why we hadn't told Goodchild Capperauld, the group's retained PR company, to handle it. 'There's public relations and there's crisis management,' I pointed out. 'Alison and her people are good at what they do on the positive side, but I've got no idea what they're like at scraping shit off walls.'
