'Well you remember that. The report you got on me included the word 'loyalty', and it wasn't used lightly. I work for you, Oz, and you pay me well. I'm a specialist, and I set my own parameters. When you ask me to do something I'll do it, and I promise you I will never use it to gain any sort of leverage over you. If you want to give me a bonus down the line, that's up to you, but I will never ask you for one.' He took his right hand off the wheel and reached across. 'Fair enough?' he said.
I took it and shook it. 'Fair enough.'
'Good. So no more questions.'
We could hardly talk about rugby after that, so the rest of the journey back to the estate was spent in silence. When Jay dropped me at the house, it was empty. Susie was still at work, Ethel and Janet were away on a Daybreak Nursery outing, and the contract cleaners weren't due until the following Monday. The only sound I could hear was that of a mower in the distance. I guessed that Willie was quickening up the greens on the golf course.
I dumped my bag, which held the few clothes I'd brought back with me, mostly for the wash, and changed into a pair of swim shorts. I did a hard half-hour on my gym equipment, enough to work me out, but nowhere near enough to change my body shape, then swam for a bit to cool off.
All the time I was thinking, at first about the Neiportes and how the police investigation would go, but gradually I found myself turning back to the week's first crisis, and Susie's three rogue house-buyers.
If they'd had a couple of people bumped off and dumped on a pig farm, they wouldn't be bothering about it afterwards, I reckoned.
I was still in the pool when the phone rang. There was a hands-free unit near at hand, so I heaved myself out and picked it up just before the automatic answer cut in. 'Yes?' I said, breathing only a bit harder than normal.
'Oz, is that you?' It was my Dad, and he sounded agitated. It didn't take a quantum physicist to know why.
'It's me.'
'Have you seen the papers?'
'Yes, of course, it's tragic, isn't it. Those poor people… and from Pittenweem too, that's assuming they are who they think they are.'
'Oz…' Mac the Dentist said heavily, but I talked right over the top of him.
'Look Dad, I know you're upset, with the thing happening on your doorstep, but I really don't have time to talk to you just now.' I hung up on him.
We all have paranoid tendencies, but they're multiplied many times over when we have things to hide. At that moment all I could think about was Princess Diana, Prince Charles and their various bugged telephone conversations, which surfaced so embarrassingly in the tabloids. I could tell that my Dad was on his mobile, out in the garden, I imagined, and I'd been using a phone that worked on a radio signal.
The last thing I wanted was a detailed conversation being intercepted by some radio ham in Auchtermuchty and sold to the press.
I dried off, went through the house to the office conservatory, and called his surgery number on a more secure line… I'm reasonably certain I'm not on the MI5 surveillance list, and I know he isn't.
'I'm free now,' I said, breezily, when he answered. I checked my watch; it was five minutes short of four. 'Fancy a few holes at Elie?
If I leave now I can get there for quarter to six.'
Twenty-Eight.
Susie wasn't best pleased when I got home at ten thirty. I'd left her the briefest of notes as I'd rushed out, forgetting that I'd said I'd pick her up from the office. I'd fixed that by calling Jay from the road and asking him to collect her in the Freelander… she was getting too big to drive comfortably, or even safely… but she still had a petted lip on her when I walked in.
There was only one thing to do, and that was to kiss it better. 'I'm sorry,' I said when she had softened. 'It was a spur of the moment thing; I hadn't seen my Dad for a while, and the way things are I wasn't sure when I'd have another chance.'
'It's all right,' she whispered. 'You're a big softy, that's all.
Truth is I envy you. I wish I could bugger off on the spur of the moment to see my father.'
I wrapped her in my arms again. 'I know, love, and I'm so sorry you can't. But, here, you can nip off and see mine any time you like. How about that?'
She smiled. 'I like the thought of that. I'll go and see Mac any time … just as long as I don't have to sit in his dentist's chair that is.'
'No chance of that.' Like me, and many of our generation, Susie has perfect teeth. Macabre I know, but in that instant I found myself wondering how they'd identify us in a plane crash.
She might not have enjoyed visiting my Dad that afternoon, though. He'd been as agitated as hell when he'd arrived, a couple of minutes after me even though I'd come from the other side of the country and he'd come from Anstruther. I'd said nothing to him as we'd changed, although I could see him boiling.
He'd demonstrated his discomfort by carving his tee-shot out of bounds, then barely clearing the hill with his second, causing the starter to avert his eyes in sympathy. (I, on the other hand, had popped a three-iron over the top, nice as you like.) He took it until my par putt rattled into the cup, and no longer.
'Right!'he said.
But I shook my head. There's a thick plantation behind the second tee, and you never know. I hit a nice five wood; there's no need to risk a full driver, although my Dad did and found the rough. I won the second with a bogey five… I took too much club for my second, knocked it through the green and had to chip back up… and only then did I turn to Mac the Dentist.
'Nothing, Dad,' I told him. 'You have nothing to be concerned about.'
'But son, what the hell have you done?'
I gave him my best incredulous look, hoping that it would fool him.
'What are you saying? Just fucking think about what you're saying here?'
He reddened before my apparent anger. 'But…'
I didn't let him go on. 'What makes you fucking special?' I asked him, as I took a seven iron out of my bag and tossed my ball on to the ground behind the marker posts. 'What makes you think you have to be the only person they've blackmailed? These were nasty people; neither you nor I have any idea what else they were into. The only thing we know is that somewhere they've messed with the wrong guy and wound up dead for their bother.'
I took a deep breath, focused and hit a gentle faded shot to the front of the third green. Then I turned back to him. 'There was nothing unpredictable about that. What is incredible is that you actually think it was me who bumped them off 'No,' he protested. 'I don't think that. But you know people, son; that sort of people. That was my first thought.'
I didn't want him to get any nearer the truth, or I'd have had trouble keeping up my act. So I shut him up, as Jay Yuille had silenced me.
'And your last,' I said, icily. 'I warn you, Dad, don't ever talk to me about this again, or it'll be many a day before you and I stand up on this tee again. Let the police get on with their investigation, for I promise you it will not come back to you. If they phone you looking for dental ID, send it to them without a word. Yes?' I snapped. He nodded, looking at the ground like a chidden schoolboy.
'Right. Now in case you've forgotten you're two down and I've got a twenty-footer for a birdie waiting down there.'
'How did your golf go anyway?' Susie asked.
I smiled. 'My Dad played shite. Never won a hole; he didn't even manage a half till the sixth.'
'That's not like him. He'll be losing to Jonny next.'
'He does that already.'
