She must have been near the intercom phone for she answered almost straight away. 'Hello?'
'Natalie? It's Oz Blackstone.'
'Oz! What the hell do you want?'
'A chat. We need to talk, you and I. I have news that may interest you.'
'Indeed.' She sounded uncertain. 'You'd better come up then.' The door buzzed: I pushed it and it swung open. Last time I had used the stairs. This time I took the lift, all the way to the top.
She was waiting for me as I stepped out, framed in her doorway, her long legs disappearing into a pair of very brief shorts, her high breasts encased in a matching halter top. 'Sorry to be overdressed,' she murmured, 'but I wasn't expecting you.'
The lift door hissed shut behind me as she stood aside, letting me into her sanctum. I looked around. 'You've refurnished,' I said. The place looked a lot more spacious, somehow, than when I'd seen it before.
'Totally,' she replied. 'I had interior decorators give the place a make-over. Then I hired a feng shui consultant. Remember the Fosters ad on the telly? Well, I actually did it.'
I laughed. 'There's one born every minute, Nat, but I never thought you were one of them.'
'Nor I you.' She moved in on me, standing close, gazing up into my eyes. 'So what brings you this way. What do you have to tell me that'll interest me? Got a part for me in your next movie?'
'Sorry. Glenn Close does Cruella De Vil.'
She chuckled. 'Ouch. What can it be then? Is it that you've realised that you fancy me, and that you've decided to trade little Susie in for a winner? If so…' She reached up and tugged at the cord securing her top, but I put a hand up and stopped her.
'Sorry, but I've seen a lot better than those at work… and at home for that matter. Once upon a time, Natalie, I'd have fucked your brains out before I put the boot in. Not any more, though. That wouldn't be right and proper, so I'll get straight to it.'
Her eyes narrowed. 'How gallant of you to spare my feelings.'
'I don't give a bugger about your feelings. It's my wife I'm thinking about. I wouldn't want to take anything from you back to her.'
'Okay.' She was definitely out of seductress mode. 'Say what you have to say, then go.'
I fixed her with my coldest stare. 'Gladly,' I hissed at her. 'It's this. You will stop this vindictive nonsense towards Susie, and you will announce tomorrow that you are no longer interested in acquiring the Gantry Group.'
'Why should I do that?'
'Because you wouldn't last a week in Cornton Vale Prison. You'd hardly be in there before you'd a brush handle up you. We've got you, Nat, Ricky Ross and I. We know you set up the New Bearsden plot, we know how you did it and why. When I called you a couple of nights ago, I dropped the name Aidan Keane, a little on purpose; let's call it bait.
You swallowed it and no mistake; as soon as my call was over… I taped it, by the way… you went straight through to Glasgow to see one of your associates, Mr. Ravens, we assume, since he was going to be Mr.
Keane's new boss. Twenty-four hours later, what happens? The poor guy's found in the Clyde, with so many bullets in him it's a fucking miracle he can still float. What that makes you, Nat, is an accessory to murder, and legally as guilty of Keane's death as the guys who pulled the trigger.'
I paused to let that sink in, and to study her face; it was a mixture of anger, uncertainty and fear. 'Offering Keane a job with Mark Ravens if he got found out was a bloody silly thing to do, by the way. But I don't suppose you expected that he would be found out, or that dear old Graeme would provoke him into resigning, or that he would let slip to a mate where his future employment prospects lay.'
'You can't prove any of this,' Natalie shouted, thrusting out her chin and her chest at the same time, in an odd show of hard-nippled defiance.
'Not without corroboration, we couldn't. It's too bad that one of the Three Bears has realised the risk he's been taking, and has given a full statement to Ricky Ross, so that Ricky can cut a deal with the SDEA that'll keep him out of jail while the rest of you go down. I'm not going to tell you which one; but even if I did, I wouldn't recommend that you have a go at him. He'll be expecting you.'
I smiled at her. 'So this is the deal. It's open for twenty-four hours, no more. You either drop the bid, or I will drop you.' I turned on my heel and headed for the door. 'Oh yes, and tell your partners not even to think about coming after Ricky and me either. He's got connections with the police that would make that a very bad idea, and I've got protection that's out of their league. They'd never make it back across the river.'
I was back home in time for the ten o'clock news on telly. Susie was sat on the couch, with an anthology of twentieth-century poetry on her lap. 'So whose woods did you stop by?' she asked.
'With a bit of the luck of the Blackstones, you'll find out soon enough.'
Thirty-Six.
I had told Ricky to call me any time, but I didn't expect it to be at two in the morning. He doesn't sound excited very often, but this time he did, and no mistake.
'I don't know what the hell you said,' he exclaimed, as I rubbed sleep out of my eyes, and as Susie growled beside me, 'but it worked and no mistake. If you saw a Porsche whistling past you on the M8 it was Natalie Morgan. She went straight to that address she visited before; got there by quarter to ten.'
'She didn't overtake me in that case.'
'Not for the want of trying. My guy had a job keeping her in sight in his poor wee MG. He did, though, trailed her all the way there. This time she stayed longer; till well after midnight, in fact. And while she was there, guess who else turned up?'
'One of the Bears?'
'Better than that. All three of the buggers; by the time the last one arrived my people were tripping over each other at the scene. We've got film and still photos of them arriving, separately, between half ten and eleven, and of them leaving, together and looking rattled.'
'What about Natalie?'
'She left a few minutes after them. She had the makings of a right sore face too: I'd say someone gave her a belting.'
'Shame. She's still walking, though?'
'No thanks to you. How did you kick all that off anyway? What the hell did you tell her?' I gave him a run- down of my pitch to Natalie, in her apartment. Susie was wide awake now, listening to every word.
When I finished, he was laughing. 'She is definitely not as bright as she thinks she is. Not only did she not twig she'd been followed to Glasgow the first time, she went straight back again.'
'So who's the guy she went to see?' I asked.
'That we don't know yet. We know the flat he was in, because this time we saw which button she pushed. But we won't be able to find out who he is till tomorrow at least, till the council offices open and we can have a look at the register of electors.'
'Why not just ring his fucking bell? Right now, in fact.'
'I think I'll hold off on that, if you don't mind. Whoever the guy is, he's serious enough to be able to call the Three Bears and have every one of them drop what he was doing and come to see him. Ravens, Perry and Cornwell may not be the Kray brothers, but anyone who can make them jump when he whistles must be a very serious player indeed. Before I go thumping on that door, or have any of my people do it, I want to know who's behind it.'
'So what do we do now?'
'Like I said, we find out who he is.'
'But apart from that. What do we do about Morgan to spike this takeover?'
'Sit on it for a day or so. Let's find out who's behind it.'
'We don't need to. We've got Natalie and the Bears all in the same place at the same time. We could take that to the police.'
