‘Nowhere. I flew in to Nice a couple of hours ago and took a taxi along here; I expected to be gone by tonight.’
‘Then stay over for a day or so. Prim, do you mind if I book him into the Columbus?’
She stared at him, disparagingly. ‘As long as you don’t give him my room number.’
‘Right, I’ll call our secretary and have her make the booking.’ I looked at Dylan. ‘Does Benny have a credit card?’
‘Visa and American Express.’
‘Give me the Visa details: she’ll need them for the reservation.’ He drew a wallet from a pocket in the unspeakably gaudy shirt and handed me the plastic. ‘Thanks. Once that’s done we’re going to have a nice civilised lunch, then our driver will take you, me and Prim back to the hotel, and Susie back home. Honey, you’ll prepare Tom for a visit from his mum. Prim, you’ll change into something casual, and pack a swimsuit if you like, and Conrad will come back for you.’
‘Can’t I take Tom out?’
‘With Conrad, yes, if you insist. But I’d rather you took all three of them, or Janet at least, for Jonathan can be a bit fractious. We’ve got Tom used to the fact that he’s one of a family of three kids, and I don’t want anything undermining that.’
‘You don’t trust me to take him out on my own, do you?’
‘Not yet,’ I told her, honestly, ‘and not for a while. You kept him from me for three years. Maybe in another three I’ll be sure you won’t run off with him.’
‘I won’t, but have it your way. It’ll be nice taking Janet out for an ice-cream.’
At first Dylan looked puzzled by this conversation, but as it developed, I could see that he was getting the picture.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Now everybody’s as happy as can be expected.’ I made the call to Audrey, then handed the Visa card back to Dylan. ‘Michael,’ I continued, ‘we’re all glad you’re not dead. . okay, that’s arguable, but let’s take it as read for now. Why don’t you tell us about a typical day in the life of Benedict Luker, and how you came to write the book? To be honest, old son, I never gave you credit for having that much imagination.’
He did as I asked, and a strange tale it was, if it was to be believed. It seemed that Rob Willis. . the persona under which he’d settled in Portugal. . had posed as a former police officer, retired on health grounds after an on-the-job injury. Actually this was an approximation of the truth, but the Iberian peninsula is so crowded with retired British coppers that he was hardly going to be a sore thumb.
It had never occurred to me to doubt Dylan’s account of the undercover adventures he had recounted when we had met up in Edinburgh: he’d volunteered it knowing that I had the contacts to check the story out if I chose. Equally, I took this new account at face value.
What he told us was that he had been working in a bar in a town called Tavira when he had been approached by an ex-pat friend of his named Chuck, a retired haulage contractor from the London borough of Walford or somewhere similar. The guy had told him that he had been robbed. His house, a few kilometres in-country, had been burgled while he and his wife had been on the golf course. The thieves had taken the usual, telly, DVD player and all his movies and CDs. Unfortunately, they had also taken his wife’s jewel box, which, on that one day, contained a very special rock that she had neglected to put away in the safe. It was a diamond pendant, a stone with a lustrous blue shine that had come into his family about fifteen years earlier, in circumstances that Dylan’s confidant thought best to leave vague, but which precluded his reporting the matter to the local police. . or any other police for that matter.
Chuck’s plea to Dylan was simple. ‘You were a copper, I know that, but thirty years in the East End sharpens your sense of smell, and I can smell something iffy about you, son. So, how about helping me get my stone back?’
How was he to reward such confidence? By saying no, and maybe start Chuck asking a few questions about his past? No way. So he agreed, and the two of them began their own investigation. Dylan had been a half-decent detective in his time, and the thief had borne no passing resemblance to Raffles, the gentleman burglar, so pretty soon they had a few leads.
‘Are you saying,’ I asked him, ‘that Blue Star Falling is based on the truth?’
‘Got it in one, Oz,’ he replied, with a beam that broke the local smugness record by a mile, and that takes some doing in Monaco. ‘It’s all tricked up, of course. The locations are changed, the names are changed, and of course the ending was nothing like that.’
‘How did it really end, then?’
‘I found the diamond with a fence, I got it back off him. . I threatened him with the police and he believed me. . and I told Chuck who had stolen it. I didn’t want to know any more.’
‘What if Chuck reads the book, and recognises the story?’
‘Chuck’s never read a book in his life, nor has his wife. But even if he did, it’s well disguised. I have this really talented editor. She’s bloody lovely too; I think I may have some standing there.’ He smiled. ‘So that’s how Benedict Luker, novelist, came to be, and how we all came to be sitting round this table.’
I looked at him with a degree of grudging admiration, something I’d never done in my life before. ‘You’re a grade-A fucking nutter, Michael.’
He nodded his silver-streaked head. ‘Anyone who read my CV would be justified in thinking that. And if they were in any doubt, I can always get you to give them a reference.’
‘And me,’ Susie exclaimed.
‘Don’t leave me out,’ said Primavera.
3
No question about it, that was the most bizarre and embarrassing lunch of my life. I actually found it necessary to go across to the archbishop’s table and apologise for any offence that my friends’ unguarded tongues might have caused. Untypical behaviour for Oz, you may think, but my family and I live in the damn place: the last thing I need is to be denounced from the high altar.
Nobody wanted dessert. . well, Prim and Dylan might have, but I wasn’t going to offer it. I knew I had to get Susie out of there and back home, away from the contrived, artificially civilised atmosphere, so that she could sit down on her own and come to terms with the sudden storm that had turned the smooth waters of her life into a white-capped sea.
I called Conrad as soon as I could and summoned him to the hotel to pick up Susie; then, in one of those changes of plan which are my trademark, I summoned a taxi to take Prim, Dylan and me to the Columbus. In the hotel, I waited by the desk as he checked in. The receptionist looked more than a little surprised that he had no luggage, but she didn’t query it, maybe because he was with me. I guess that must have been it, otherwise she’d have taken one look at that shirt and turned him away. As soon as he had completed the formalities I walked him the short distance to the hotel shop and made him buy a couple of polos with the Columbus logo and its slogan, ‘Live Life, Love Life’, some boxers, white socks, a pair of tailored shorts, and a baseball cap. Cowboy hat, indeed!
‘This trip’s costing me a fortune,’ he grumbled, as he signed the card slip. ‘You’d bloody better be prepared to deal.’
‘I won’t even sit down with you till you look respectable,’ I told him cheerfully. ‘I’ve got an image to protect: I can’t be seen around town with a fucking tramp.’
He stared at me. ‘Is this the same guy who used to chum me to the Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow for a pie and a pint?’
‘No, it isn’t,’ I replied, ‘so get used to it.’
Prim was waiting in Reception when we returned: the green number had gone, to be replaced by a sleeveless white shirt, loafers and pedal-pushers. As it always was with her, she managed to look a hell of a lot tastier than in more formal get-up. As Dylan went off to his room to transform himself into something more acceptable, I called Conrad to come and pick her up, then walked her down the steps to the front door to wait for him.