‘Why didn’t you contact me, Your Holiness?’ Susie’s voice was laced with anger and bitterness. ‘We were supposed to be engaged. We were living together.’
He looked at her, and I saw real pain in his eyes once again. ‘It was over, Susie, or at least it was on its last legs. I knew it, and so did you.’
‘Did I?’
‘You didn’t say as much, but you did. Remember the time I asked you to set a date for the wedding? You didn’t just stall me: you ignored me. You changed the subject. That was a pretty clear message to me. Anyway, I couldn’t handle it any more, you rolling in it and me on a copper’s pay.’
‘So your answer was to turn crook and leave me?’
He winced. ‘An opportunity came up; it seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘And if it had worked, if you’d got away with your big score, would I ever have heard from you again?’
‘That wasn’t my plan.’
‘You bastard!’ Susie hissed.
I held up a hand, calling a kind of truce. I needed to bring the situation under control, and not just because we were in a public place. I was as shocked as the girls by the reappearance of Michael Dylan. He had always been one for popping up dramatically, but I hadn’t expected him to do it again, not because I thought he was dead. . I’d found out the truth a few years before. . but because I’d thought he was gone from my life for good. I’d known Dylan for about ten years, since he was a detective inspector in Edinburgh. He’d seen himself as a bit of a high flyer then, but his boss (of whom more later) had left the force under a cloud, and Mike had jumped ship to Glasgow, in the interests of his career. There we had met up again, and he had met up with Susie. The rest of it, Prim had summed up pretty welclass="underline" he’d gone rogue, and taken a hard, hard fall.
I glanced around: the head waiter had reappeared and was standing behind Prim, looking more uncertain, I suspect, than he’d ever been in his life. I told him to bring us four lobster cocktails, and four medium fillet steaks, with a bottle of 1996 Torres Mas La Plana and some sparkling water. He winced slightly at my choice of a Spanish wine, but gave a tiny bow and disappeared, grateful, I reckoned, that a potential embarrassment seemed to be defusing itself.
‘I’m not saying I wouldn’t have contacted you,’ Dylan resumed, ‘if only to let you know I wasn’t dead. But then I found out about you and Oz, and the baby, and I reckoned you didn’t need that kind of news at that time.’
‘And if I hadn’t tagged along for lunch, would I ever have been any the wiser?’ Susie glared at me. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
‘That he was Benedict Luker? No way did I know, or I’d have burned his fucking book.’
‘But you knew he was alive. Prim and I almost died ourselves when we saw him, but you were only angry. If you were astonished, it was only because he was here. Admit it: you knew and you didn’t tell me.’
She had me. ‘Yes, I knew, and I kept it from you. But I’m not going to apologise for it. He turned up in Edinburgh just after Janet was born. Did I ever say I thought we might have a stalker? We did, and it was him. I met him, and I told him death became him, and that as far as you were concerned, he should stay that way.’ I fixed my eyes on him. ‘Incidentally, Benny, I still believe that.’
‘But I’m not dead, Oz, and now that Susie and Prim know it, we can’t go back there.’
He was kidding himself. I know a man in London, name of Mark Kravitz: if I’d made a single phone call to him and given him instructions. .
I confess that that dark thought crossed my mind, but I didn’t dwell on it. The trouble was that Dylan had been my best friend once. When he was engaged to Susie, I’d been engaged to Prim, and we’d been top of the Glasgow glamour list. . if you can get such a concept into your head. At the same time, unknown to Susie and me, Dylan and Prim had been a couple too or, rather, were suspected of having coupled on the odd occasion, but we weren’t bothered about that any more.
‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘You’re still with us, or Benny Luker is. Where’s Benny based now? What happened to Portugal? Weren’t you supposed to be holed up there?’
‘I did my time there, but I moved on when I did the book deal. Nobody watches over me any more. I’m in New York; Benny has an American passport, and a birth certificate.’
‘Won’t you be a bit visible, as an author?’ Prim asked him.
‘I’m going to be the reclusive type. Plus, the book’s only published in the US, so far at least. I won’t have any exposure in Britain. When the movie’s made. . Let’s face it, nobody ever cares about the author, do they? Only the director and stars.’
I heard myself gasp. ‘Excuse me? The movie? You actually think I’m buying the rights now that I know who you are?’
He smiled, and looked at me the way he used to, out from under his eyebrows. In that moment I recalled what a cheeky, chancing bastard he’d always been.
‘Why has it suddenly become a bad deal?’ he asked.
The two women frowned in unison and stiffened in their chairs. ‘Dylan,’ Susie asked, ‘were you brain-damaged when that Dutchman shot you?’
He looked at her as if she was. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What’s the problem? Oz liked the book well enough to set up this meeting. I could have sent a ringer along, pretending to be Benny Luker, and he’d have been none the wiser. But down the line he’d have had to know, so I decided to face him up now.’
He fell silent as the lobster cocktails were served and as I approved the Mas La Plana, proffered by an unsmiling sommelier. . I wondered how he’d have reacted if I’d asked for the mighty Yakima Valley red that had sneaked on to his list when nobody was looking. . but I could tell that it was only a pause.
‘If you’d stayed at home with the kids,’ he told her, ‘and if she,’ he jerked his thumb at Primavera, barely glancing at her, ‘hadn’t turned up. . and by the way, Oz, what the fuck is she doing here anyway?. . your old man would have got over his initial shock and we’d have got down to business without interference. Or isn’t he allowed to? I remember you saying back in the old days that you reckoned Oz’s business brains were hanging behind his cock.’
I couldn’t help it, I shot Susie a sharp glance, and saw her turn a nice off-beetroot shade. I also saw her stifle a grin. ‘If I did say that,’ she shot back, ‘I must have been drunk. I was wrong, that’s for sure, for I appointed him to the board of the Gantry Group, and he was bloody good. In my least sharp management moments, that’s not something I ever dreamed of doing with you.’ She drew breath for a moment. ‘But the old days really are dead, Mike, so let’s not go back there again, ever. Stay at home with the kids, you said. Yes, that’s what I do now, and I’m happier doing that than I’ve ever been in my life. Sure, I was devastated when you went, but you really can’t comprehend how big a favour you did me.’
‘It wasn’t much of a favour for Prim, though.’
I glared at him: that was something that hadn’t needed saying, but I needn’t have worried.
‘Sorry,’ Primavera said, with a bitter laugh. ‘Susie didn’t break Oz and me up. We didn’t need any help: we’d have managed that all on our own, given very little time. As for you and me, well, all I can say is that having had some, I can understand why she got over you so easily. You might have been okay for this and that, Mike, but you were no use at the other.’ Prim never was one to go for a few simple blood vessels when the jugular is exposed.
The discussion, indeed the situation, was in need of direction. ‘That’s enough,’ I decreed. ‘Mike, let’s say that you’re here impersonating Benny Luker. Agreed?’
‘Okay,’ he said hesitantly.
‘In that case, our meeting is postponed. This is now officially a reunion lunch, and you and I will talk business later, somewhere else. Where are you staying?’