I did though, even if I’m still not sure when. Eventually, I was aware that we were eye to eye on the pillow. ‘Tonight,’ Susie whispered hoarsely. ‘You’re going to fuck me in that great big brass bed of yours.’
I didn’t argue. I knew who I was now; I knew what I was.
After a while, I got up and went downstairs, naked, to fetch us a couple of beers. As I passed the telephone answering gadget, I noticed that its light was flashing. There were two messages. The first was from Shirley Gash, inviting me and my house guest to dinner that evening, eight thirty. The second was from Mark Kravitz.
‘Oz, I turned something up. Call me back; I don’t trust cell phones.’
I grabbed a pen and pad and called him from the kitchen, sitting up at the breakfast bar. ‘Mark. Whatcha got?’
‘Hey, you sound businesslike,’ he said.
‘No, I’m just cold. The weather’s turned and I’m not exactly dressed for it.’
‘Move to California then. Okay, I had a pal of mine. . no names, obviously. . feed your two punters into the Big Computer. Jeffrey Chandler is an alias of one Victor Fowler. He’s also been known at various times as Ronald Colman and Leslie Howard. Seems to have a thing about mid-twentieth century movie actors.’ He laughed. ‘You never know; forty years from now there might be a conman calling himself Oz Blackstone.’
‘What makes you think there isn’t already? Go on.’
‘Okay. Fowler’s a long-term and successful fraudster. He’s done one stretch for it, but that’s all. Mind you, in his younger days, twenty-odd years ago, he served five for manslaughter. His speciality is corporate fraud; sets up dummy projects and takes silly rich people for lots of money.’ He stopped; there was a silence. ‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Sure, sorry. Something distracted me for a moment.’
While he was speaking Susie had appeared in the kitchen, wearing a white tee-shirt. . a very short one. Without a word, she had dropped to her knees, crawled under the breakfast bar and gone to work in her own special way. I tried to push her away, but she dug her nails into my thighs and hung in there. I’ve had guns pointed at me a couple of times, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more vulnerable than I did right then.
‘Fowler’s whereabouts are currently unknown,’ Kravitz continued. ‘He pulled a scam in his Leslie Howard persona a couple of years back, and took a very embarrassed oil sheikh for three million.’
‘Ohhhh,’ I said.
‘Yeah, a big score,’ said Mark. He thought I’d been impressed by the number.
‘William Hickok, is also known as William Bonney. . Billy the Kid to you. . George Parker. . Butch Cassidy to you. . and Harry Longbaugh. . the Sundance Kid to you. A cowboy fetishist, clearly. However his real name is Arthur Hardstaff. .’ For a second or two that name very nearly made me laugh. I thought I was going to have to call him back.
‘He’s not in the same league as Fowler, but he’s worked with him a couple of times before. He won’t again, though.’ I sighed with relief as Susie came up for air, and a swig of beer. Again, Kravitz thought it was a comment. ‘That’s good news, is it? It isn’t for Mrs Hardstaff, though.
‘She found him in his garage last month. He’d topped himself with the car exhaust, or so the police assumed at first. When they did the postmortem, the pathologist determined that he’d been knocked unconscious by a severe blow to the back of the head, and left there to suffocate.
‘No clue who did it, though.’
‘Tell your pal. .’ Susie dropped to her knees again. I had to stifle a gasp. The beer had chilled her mouth; and the sudden shock sent a tingle right up my spine. ‘Tell your pal,’ I forced myself to continue, ‘to put Fowler at the top of his list. Jeff Chandler just got away with a six-million-pound fraud in Spain. I guess he didn’t fancy sharing it with Wild Bill.’
‘Do you think he’s out there, where you are?’
I came up with a very quick answer to that question. ‘I think he was, up until last night, but things didn’t quite go as he expected. I’d be very surprised if he’s within a thousand miles of here now.’
‘Wow. Can you give me details of that?’
‘Tell your guy to get in touch with Captain Ramon Fortunato, of the Mossos d’Esquadra in Girona.’
‘Thanks. That’s us square for this one, mate.’
‘Fair enough. What about the third name?’
‘Murphy? There’s scores of them, but not a Brian among them. He’s clean as far as the criminal intelligence network is concerned.’
‘That’ll come. . as a relief to a friend of mine.’
I replaced the phone, and took Susie by the hair, with the vague intention of pulling her to her feet. Then I thought, What the hell, there are worse ways to spend a Friday, and let her finish what she was doing.
I’ve always been amazed by the amount a good packer can get into a single, albeit large, suitcase. When she came downstairs at eight fifteen, my ‘house guest’, as Shirley had called her, was in another new outfit. This one was a cherry-coloured, silky-velvet dress, off one shoulder, its hem just below the knee. It clung to the contours of her body in a way that suggested that it was wearing her, rather than the other way around. The bump on her forehead had disappeared entirely, and she had covered the bruise which remained with some sort of foundation. Her lustrous hair was piled on top of her head, and she had picked dark eye make-up and crimson lip gloss to set it all off.
She had gone upstairs just after five to grab a couple of hours’ sleep, and a bath. Now, restored, she looked sensational, and very, very dangerous. . As indeed, she is. I wondered just what our hostess was going to make of her, although the newly self-aware Oz didn’t care all that much.
I didn’t feel tired at all. Far from going for a kip, like Susie, I had gone into the gym I had set up in a room in the outbuilding and lifted some weights, then done some serious exercising, following a programme which my friend Liam Matthews, the GWA World Wrestling Champion, had drawn up for me. I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder than I did for that hour, that evening. It wasn’t just self-punishment; the part in the new movie was fairly physical and I wanted to be at my best for it.
Afterwards, I showered. I was towelling myself off when the phone rang. I picked it up in the bedroom; it was Prim. ‘Hi,’ she said, breezily. ‘How are things?’
‘My thing’s fine. How’s yours?’
‘Missing yours,’ she laughed. ‘You sound on top form.’
‘Never been better, my darling. Have you sorted your return flight?’
‘Yes. I can’t get out of LA till Monday. All going well I get back on Tuesday morning, at ten past eleven. Can you pick me up then?’
‘Of course.’
‘How’s Susie?’ she asked.
‘Resting,’ I told her. ‘I took her to Barcelona this morning.’
‘Yes, but how is she now? I mean, is she showing signs of getting over Mike.’
‘Hard to tell. She’s a bit withdrawn, sort of quiet. I’m having trouble getting her to talk at all.’
‘Don’t force it, then. If she wants to unburden herself, she will, in her own time. Got to go now, I’m off to see Mum again. Love you. Bye.’
Now, as I looked at Susie, the thought of her unburdening herself made me smile.
‘Mmm,’ she said, ‘you look pretty tasty.’ I had changed into Burberry jeans, a crisp white shirt and a wool and cashmere blazer.
‘You should know,’ I muttered.
‘Ha ha.’ She took my arm and turned me, so that we could see ourselves in the full-length mirror, which our predecessor had placed beside the front door. It’s a classic vanity thing; one last check to make sure that one looks perfect, and all that. We did, too. There was something about the guy who gazed back at me, something about his expression, that I didn’t recognise. I couldn’t put my finger on it; he just looked. . cool.