message.'
I told him about the spotty actor. 'It's fortuitous. Gives me a chance to put some things in place.'
'And to check up on how well I'm doing in Susie's absence.'
'Not even I would have the nerve to do that, Phil. But how's it going?'
'As anticipated. McPhillips and Company had the expected letters of protest this morning.'
'Did they return the cheques, though?'
'No, they didn't go that far. That doesn't mean anything, though; not presenting is adequate evidence of rejection.'
'So what happens next?'
'There'll be a brief period of ritual dancing, and then they'll ask the Sheriff Court to set a date for an interdict hearing. By the end of the week, I'll expect.'
'And the Torrent bid? What's the timetable on that?'
Culshaw shrugged. 'You read the same papers I do. You know as much as me. Torrent's advisers told the Stock Exchange that it would be at the beginning of next week, on either Monday or Tuesday. Fisher's scheduled a board meeting for next Wednesday. Between now and then, I've instructed the investor relations consultants to sound out the minority shareholders… excluding you, of course.'
'Did you know that Fisher and Morgan's uncle were pals?'
'Who told you that?'
'Natalie.'
Phil slapped a hand on his forehead. 'Jesus Christ, Oz.' He cut himself off short as the waiter appeared to take our orders.
'You didn't bloody speak to her, did you?' he continued as the young Australian left. (Sometimes, especially when I'm in London, or when I hear an interview with a Scottish rugby international, I find myself thinking that those people are colon ising Britain. And why not? What goes around comes around, I suppose.) 'Of course I did. No one's rattling her cage, Phil, although they should be. I had to do something to try to put the wind up her.'
'And did you?'
'Not much. She did something funny the day afterwards, though: paid a visit to someone in Glasgow. I don't know what that was about.'
'And I don't want to know any of this. It's one thing for you to set detectives on a business rival, but keep it to yourself, and outside the knowledge of the company. If you're rumbled and I'm called to give evidence at an interdict hearing, I want to be wide-eyed and innocent.'
'Well that's okay, for I didn't tell you that I've been tailing her.
Now what about Fisher?'
'What about him?'
'I want his head.'
'You can't do that, Oz. He's too big a fish.'
'He's a fucking shark and he's out to eat my wife. I'm going to harpoon him before that happens. I'm asking you to call an extraordinary board meeting; propose a motion of no confidence. You'll have Susie's proxy.'
'He wouldn't sanction it; I can't call such a meeting without his cooperation.'
'You mean we're stuck with him until the Morgan offer is tabled?'
'I'm afraid so. And you know what'll happen when it is.'
'It's been spelled out to me. That means one thing: we've got seven days to nail Natalie Morgan's olive skin to her office door.'
'And how do we begin to do that?'
'Like you've just said, you don't. I begin with Mr. Aidan Keane, just as soon as he surfaces.'
Thirty-Three.
As it happened, Aidan Keane surfaced at seven o'clock that evening. His return was announced by the screams of a female pedestrian, on the iron footbridge across the Clyde, who happened to be looking over the side when he floated beneath her downstream, staring up at her with a terminally surprised look on his face.
I heard the news on the late-night edition of Reporting Scotland: they didn't name the victim at that stage, but I had a terrible suspicion, which was proved right inside half an hour when Arnott Buchan rang me.
'Are you sure?' was all I could say after he told me, although I was certain of it myself.
'I got it from a police source. Identification wasn't a problem. There was a photographic driving licence in his wallet.'
'Did he drown?'
'If he did it was the four bullets in him that weighed him down.'
'What's the betting?' I asked, as innocently as I could.
'My money's on Ravens deciding that he didn't need him on his payroll, or that the other two guys took cold feet and decided to take him off the pitch. If that's right, it could look good for you.'
'How could it? Off the record, our suspicion is that these three guys are colluding to extort money from the company, but Keane was our only real chance of proving it.'
'Hmph.' Buchan gave a muffled grunt. 'Is that all you suspect?' he asked. 'You don't think this is linked to the takeover bid?'
'If I did, I wouldn't fucking tell you. Our counsel won't let us go public with what I just said to you.'
'Sounds to me, then, as if you're as far up the creek as the boy Keane.'
'Maybe that depends on how you guys report his murder.'
'There'll be no mention of the Ravens link I told you about, you can be sure of that. It's no more than pub talk and no lawyer would let an editor run it. The story will be that Keane left the employment of the Gantry Group after Sir Graeme Fisher's investigation into the New Bearsden cock-up, and less than a week later, he's dead. To be brutally honest with you, if the coverage points the finger at anyone it'll be your wife. And, forgive me for saying this, given who her father is, there'll be a few people believe that.'
'I may not forgive you,' I retorted, coldly. 'Any newspaper that does imply that will be sued out of business… yours included.'
'Don't worry, Oz, it won't be me that does it. But I will be doing a piece for Sunday, so is there anything else you can tell me about Keane?'
I could have told him that the start of his last journey was witnessed by a detective in my employ, but I decided firmly to keep that to myself for as long as I could. If I spilled that, every one of our surveillance targets would be looking over his, and her, shoulder from that point on.
'I can tell you that it's time something effective was done to stamp out gun crime in this country, but apart from that you're on your own.'
I rang Ricky as soon as Buchan had hung up. Alison Goodchild was with him, so I killed two birds with one call by telling her to call Phil Culshaw and agree a company statement about Keane's death.
Once she had gone to do that on her mobile, I spoke to Ross. He knew, but he hadn't picked up the news from the telly as I had. Avril had called him after a man and a woman she recognised as CID officers turned up at Keane's flat, and took his hysterical wife off shortly afterwards in their car. She had followed them all the way to the city mortuary.
'We may have her,' I told Ricky.
'What the hell do you mean? Have who?'
'Natalie. I threw Keane's name at her on Monday night; I told her that he had been fingered as the inside man in the Three Bears plot. Two days later the guy's fished out of the drink. If that doesn't point in her direction, nothing does.'
Ricky growled down the phone. 'Hold your horses there, man. Natalie Morgan is not the sort of person from whom Mark Ravens, or Jock Perry or Kevin Cornwell, takes hit orders. You knew about Keane because that journalist told you. If his source was talking too much and Ravens, or the three of them, decided there was a danger of their being exposed prematurely, they wouldn't need telling to take him out.'
