I called Ricky straight away, catching him at home. 'It's you,' he growled. 'Thanks a fucking million for last night; the phone never stopped till three in the morning.'
'That teach you to sleep with a PR consultant. I've got a job for you now, though.' I filled him in on Susie's requirements; as I had expected, he jumped at the chance to get one back at Torrent. Ross Security had been embarrassed by its public dismissal by the company, and probably a little damaged financially as well.
'Who gets the reports?' That was all he asked; we didn't discuss money, legal parameters, or anything else.
'Susie: at home, though, not in the office. I'll be down south for a while.'
I left him to it, and spent what little was left of the trip to the studios in Middlesex on the phone to my bankers, to see how much ready cash I had to play with, and then to my brokers to tell them I was a buyer for any Gantry shares that came on to the market… but in small lots. I didn't want to boost the price too quickly; there might be a profit to be made, at the end of the day.
I did something else too, as soon as I got to the studios. I checked the schedule to see whether Ewan Capperauld was on set that day… I knew he wasn't in any of my scenes… and when I found out that he was, sought him out in his dressing room. He was in surprisingly fine form, for a Monday morning. I asked him what had brightened his day, but all I got was a mysterious smile.
The Gantry story hadn't made the London press… they really are insular bastards down there… and so I had to fill him in on the details. When I had finished I asked him something, straight out. 'Are you still seeing Nat Morgan?'
The smile came back. 'No. As I told you, I'm horizontally occupied in other quarters at the moment.'
'Rather you than me, mate,' I thought.
'You haven't seen her at all lately?'
'No, nor spoken to her for at least three months.'
'When you were on speaking terms, did she ever talk about Susie, and the Gantry Group?'
'Did she ever not? I'm afraid your wife is something of an obsession with the lovely Nat. She's a business megalomaniac, you know; it's something she seems to have inherited from that appalling uncle of hers. She wants to build Torrent into a corporation that stretches from sea to shining sea.'
'Do you think she's up to it?'
'Not a chance, m' boy. Between you and me she's better in bed than in the boardroom. Your Susie would have her for breakfast in a business battle.'
'Did she ever mention having any contacts within the Gantry Group?'
'Not that I recall. The only things she ever said about it were derogatory, and you don't really want to hear them.'
'I sure do.' In the distance I heard an assistant director call my name, but I ignored him. They're best left alone anyway.
'It was personal,' Ewan said, 'petty stuff. I ignored it, really. She would say that Susie had inherited her position and that she had no vision of her own. She suspected that she was still taking orders from her father, for all that he was locked away. She said that Lord Provost Gantry and her Uncle James had been men who had understood each other.'
I didn't know they'd ever met, but Jack Gantry certainly got around.
'Do you have any idea what she's up to these days?'
'Trying to do you down, from the sound of it.'
'I meant personally.'
'So did I,' he laughed, and then was suddenly serious. 'As for the other, I don't know. The truth is, Oz, the last time I heard from Natalie, she called me to say she didn't want to see me any more. Her affections now lie elsewhere, I'm afraid.'
'Any idea where?'
He shook his head. 'Not the faintest.' He grinned again. 'And now my boy, you really must go. That assistant director is almost hoarse shouting for you.'
Twenty-Four.
I wasn't the most popular man on set that morning; my discussion with Ewan had held up shooting, and delays can be more expensive in the movie industry than almost anywhere else in the world. But I made up for it by being flawless.
I had worked on my scenes the day before, and refreshed them on the plane… once I'd finished reading the newspaper coverage.
Concentrating as hard as I ever have in my life, I was able to put everything and everyone else out of my mind and, literally, become Mathew Fleming from the moment I walked on to the sound stage until the moment the make-up woman took off my dramatic facial scar at the end of the day's work. Louise Golding was on top form too, and all our scenes were first takes… a rare occurrence on a Paul Girone movie, as I'd found out already. By the time we were finished, not only had we made up for my delay, we'd bought time for one of Ewan's key shots to be wrapped up.
They had booked the cast… apart from Ewan and Scott Steele, who both live in London… into a hotel in Surrey, a secluded country house just south of Guildford, down the A3. There was still some commuter traffic around when we left Shepperton, and so we didn't get there to check in until almost eight.
I'd been snacking on set, and, frankly, Louise and I had both seen enough of the excitable M. Girone for one day, so I asked for a poached salmon salad to be sent to my room, and went off there straight away, to phone Susie.
'Good day at the office?' she asked me, just as the room service waiter wheeled in my salad on a trolley. I bunged him a fiver and he left, nodding and muttering thanks. There was a bottle of Martin Codax, a nice Spanish Albarino white wine, in an ice-bucket; I poured myself a glass as I answered.
'It was fine, and it just got better; my dinner's arrived.' (Scottish people do not have 'supper'.) I described the plateful on the trolley, and sipped the wine; not bad at all.
'Lucky you,' said my wife. 'I had macaroni with Ethel and Janet.'
At once I felt envious, and homesick, so I forced myself back to the serious stuff. 'How did it go with the lawyers?'
'I've been told to make no public comment.'
'Not even to me?'
'Don't be daft. Greg McPhillips spoke to his tame QC, and her very firm advice was that we should say absolutely nothing at all to avoid any risk of defaming the purchasers of these houses, who are not, she reminded me, Ravens, Cornwell and Perry, but their wives. She gave the okay to my proposal that we offer to buy them out of the deal, but she insists that any contact must be in print, and that she drafts all our correspondence. That's where we're at.'
'When will she have finished the first letter?'
'Tomorrow, she hoped.'
'What's been the effect of the stories on the New Bearsden project?'
Susie snorted; I could see her frowning as clearly as if I was looking at her across our desk. 'Just as we expected,' she replied. 'Total and utter catastrophe. Sales have been trotting along at nine or ten a day until now. Today we didn't have a single visitor to the sales office, other than journalists demanding to see the site plan so they could pin-point the three plots in question; I've had to tell Des Lancaster to close until further notice. Worse than that, though, we've had umpteen phone calls from buyers, straight people who've reserved plots, wanting to know whether they'll be living next door to drug dealers, and we've had at least half a dozen formal contacts from solicitors advising that their clients want to cancel, without financial penalty.'
'How have you dealt with them?'
'Stalled them, for now. We've reserved our position and said that we'll respond at the beginning of next week.'
