Rather than retrace our route to Perth, we took the twisty road down from Auchterarder through the hills, and picked up the motorway just south of Kinross. I tried to call Archer on the mobile, but the cloud was low, and we were in a dead zone for transmission until we were in sight of the Forth Bridge.
Eventually, I got through. When he came on the line, he spoke quietly, as if he had company. ‘I need to see you,’ I said. ‘I’ve found Kane’s girlfriend. She was out of town when he was killed, and she doesn’t have the fiver. I have to meet you today, to talk about what we do next.’
‘Okay,’ Archer whispered. ‘But not in the office. Meet me at midday, in the Abbotsford.’
I hate going into pubs at lunchtime. Nearly always, I feel guilty, and wonder about everyone else who’s in there taking in alcohol in the middle of what should be a working day. (Oz Blackstone, closet prude!) The Abbotsford’s an exception though. It’s a real characterful place, still in its original wood panelling, with a big oval bar, and a few booths with benches for those who prefer to drink sitting down.
Prim and I agreed that there were no plus points to be gained from introducing her to Archer at that stage, so when we reached Rose Street, she ducked into Marks amp; Spencer to replenish her knicker stock while I shouldered my way through the brass-handled double doors of the old pub.
The Abbotsford was still relatively quiet; the place smelled of mutton pies heating in the oven and beans on the hob, being made ready to be hoovered up by the lunchtime rush. There was no sign of Archer in the bar, but when I looked into the back room, I found him there, sat, alone, at a table, nursing a half-pint of Guinness.
He offered me a drink, but I said a quick ‘No thanks’ and sat down facing him. As usual there were no preliminaries. ‘Where did you find the girl?’ he asked at once.
I treated myself to the luxury of telling him the truth. ‘She was up in Perthshire, with her parents. She was there at the time Kane was killed, and she can prove it.’
He looked at me over his Guinness. ‘D’you think she was in the know about it, though?’
‘No chance. She wanted shot of the wee man all right, but not that way.’
‘She said she doesn’t have the fiver?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you believed her?’ There was more than an edge of doubt in his tone.
‘Yes. Kane spun her a story about wanting to squirrel his money away from his wife, before he left her. He told her she’d have every penny, otherwise. Dawn’s an actress. She’s got an active imagination, so it wasn’t difficult for her to take his story at face value. She was sorry for him so she agreed to help him set up the account. When she got back, she gave him the fiver, and that’s the last she saw of it.’
‘Are you trying to tell me she doesn’t know about the missing money?’
‘That’s what she said, and from the way she looked at me when I asked her about it, I believe her.’
His look was one of pure scorn. I was annoyed even before he opened his mouth. Afterwards, I was downright angry. ‘Come on Blackstone!’ He spat it out, his eyes narrowing. ‘Who are you trying to kid? Know what, I reckon you’re shagging this tart now. I reckon you and she have done a deal about the money!’
Temper and Oz are not normally associated, one with the other. I’ve never taken a pop at anyone in my life, but I’ve never come closer to it than I did with Ray Archer right then. Instead, and it was as if my hand made its own decision, independent of my brain, I picked up his Guinness and threw it in his face.
He started off his bench. I thought he was going to take a swing at me, and so, before he was even halfway upright, I shoved him back on to his pin-striped arse.
Now it was me spitting out the words. I don’t know whose voice I was using, but it didn’t sound like mine. ‘You say that just once more, pal, and I’m going to make a phone call to a guy I know on Scotland on Sunday. Then I’m going to see my lawyer. After that, he and I are going to see Inspector Dylan.
‘If you want to end up twisting in the wind, with all your partners beside you, then just keep it up.’
His head went down; he took his hankie from his breast pocket and mopped his dripping face. ‘I’m sorry, Oz,’ he said softly, gazing at the table, not at me. In those seconds his tone changed from aggressive to wheedling. I disliked that just as much. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. My firm has ten partners and forty employees. The career of every one of them is riding on my shoulders, and it’s getting to me. You’re the last person I should be upsetting. Please forgive me.’
His protestations of concern for his workforce were lost on me. He was only thinking about money… his money. ‘Level with me, Mr Archer,’ I said, recovering the normal Oz tone, ‘how long do I have to get your funds back?’
‘A week at the outside. Our client’s abroad just now. He’ll be back in Edinburgh in ten days.’
‘And if we don’t get it back, what’s the down-side? Do you really go bust?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you can’t get that money back by next Monday, my partners and I, and that means mostly me, will have to cover the loss and probably pay a premium to buy back the stock that Kane sold. With luck, we’ll keep the firm afloat, but …’ He gazed up at me, with what he hoped would look like desperation.
‘At the moment, only you, my financial controller and I know about this thing. If I have to tell my partners, that makes it all the more dangerous for us. After that, just one tongue loosened in the Drum and Monkey by one pint too many and it could be all up for Black and Muirton.’
A sudden thought ran down my spine, like a mouse with very cold feet.
‘Tell me about your financial controller.’
Archer smiled, wanly. ‘Jerry? No, Oz. Forget it. Jerry Hannah’s sixty-nine years old, and he has a bad heart. Apart from all that, he’s the tightest-mouthed old bastard I know. If you told Jerry a secret he wouldn’t even repeat it back to you.’
‘And you’ve told no-one else?’
He shook his head, but there was a hesitation there. ‘No. Only my wife. I told her the whole story last Monday, as soon as I’d pieced it all together, about the theft, about Berners and the bank account, and how Kane and the girl had set it up. I told her I was going to hire you to get the money back.’ He gave me one of those man to man glances. ‘I had to confide in someone. Anyway, Marian and I make a point of having no secrets.’
I gave him the nod he expected.
‘I don’t suppose Willie Kane would have told anyone about his scam. I mean he and Mrs Kane weren’t exactly on pillow-talk terms any more, were they?’
He gave a short, choked off laugh. ‘No indeed. God, when I think about it, poor Marian. Getting my worries and Linda’s at the same time. I told you, she’s Linda Kane’s best friend. We’re near neighbours, so they see each other every day. Linda used to work for Black and Muirton, you know. That’s how she and Willie met. She was his secretary. The odd couple, and no mistake.’
‘Mrs Kane must have been pretty upset when he walked out on her. Then with him being killed, your wife must have had a hard time with her.’
Archer snorted. ‘From what Marian says, “grief-stricken” isn’t quite the term for her. She was absolutely furious when he left. But “incandescent”, was how Marian described her after the murder. I suppose we all build walls against bereavement in different ways.’
Suddenly he snapped back into his businesslike mode. ‘So what are you going to do next, Oz? The trail of that banknote must be pretty cold, if Willie’s girl doesn’t have it.’
So far, I had gone through our conversation without telling Archer a single porky-pie; now I was struggling to keep up my run. I could have said, ‘Look Ray, it’s all right, I’ve got the fiver,’ but something held me back. Probably it was the fact that somewhere in the city, outside the Abbotsford, was the guy who had killed Kane to get that banknote. That and the thought that, one way or another, unwittingly or wittingly, Archer must have put him on the trail. I thought about Kane, and that knife, and all of a sudden my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. The less Archer knew, the safer it would be for Prim and me.