I introduced Prim as she showed us into her living room, which had a small balcony looking out on to the beach. The twin glass doors were open, and a copy of the Herald lay on a folding chair outside. I glanced around the room; it was conventionally furnished, but in the corner opposite the television, there was a small desk with a lap-top computer.
‘I was watching you on the sands,’ she said. ‘You were a picture, you know. And then you walked right up to my door. Not many people out on a Monday, are there, now that the schools are back in. I’m lucky; as a college lecturer I have another week.’
‘What do you teach?’ Prim asked, as we eased ourselves into two more chairs. The small terrace seated three, just.
‘Communication skills. At the local Technical College. Before, I lectured in Glasgow, but I decided to move down here a couple of years ago.’ She smiled, ‘Preparation for retirement.
‘So how is my brother-in-law?’ she asked, suddenly. ‘A strange man, Joseph. Empty, I’ve always thought. Empty of everything, including pride. Imagine, that he could work for the man who stole his wife. I only met Jack Gantry three times; he was hypnotic, I’ll grant you, but even so.’
‘Mr Donn seems very well,’ Prim answered her. ‘He’s retired completely.’
‘He always was. My husband was an accountant too. Unlike his brother, he was fully qualified, yet when he died, he was only a senior manager in his firm. He worked under the most tremendous pressure and eventually it killed him. Joseph, on the other hand, failed his finals and wound up making a small fortune working for Gantry. I’d be bitter if it wasn’t so ironic.
‘Tell me. Did the Gantry daughter ever find out about her mother?’
‘Not as far as we know,’ I said. ‘We’re friends of Susie, so now we’re in a bit of a quandary. We don’t know whether to tell her or not.’
‘I would tell her. It was Jack’s idea to keep it a secret; he bullied Margaret and Joe into agreeing.’
‘Why?’
She looked at me and made a face. ‘Who knows for sure, young man? But Jack always had to be seen in new things. New suits, crisp shirts, the latest model car; and he insisted on the same for Susie when she was a child. I always suspected that he was trying to gloss over the fact that his wife was secondhand.’
‘Does Stephen know that Susie’s mother was his Auntie?’
‘Not from me,’ Mira Donn answered, shaking her head. ‘Since Tom died, I’ve barely even thought of the Gantrys. I had no reason to tell him, and I’m sure Joseph wouldn’t; Jack’s word was law to him.’
‘How can we get in touch with your son?’ Prim asked quietly.
‘Why do you want to?’
‘Because someone’s been sending Susie threatening letters.’
‘Threatening?’
‘Threatening her life.’
‘A lunatic, surely.’
‘Quite possibly, but there are a number of people we need to talk to, just to be on the safe side, and Stephen’s one of them. Can you give us his address, or a phone number?’
‘No, my dear, I can not. Stephen flies in and out of my life like a migrating bird. Right now he’s off with the flock.’
‘What does he do for a living these days?’ I asked her. ‘He worked as a book-keeper at Gantry’s, we understand.’
‘He only did that as a favour to Joseph. Stephen has a book-keeping qualification from FE College, but he never wanted to do that for a living. Instead he chooses what he sees as the glamorous life. He travels the world; every so often I will have a postcard from an exotic place. He tells me that he has interests in nightclubs, and such things, but I never hear any details. One day he will grow up, I’m sure, but there’s no sign of it yet.’
‘When did you hear from him last?’
‘Around two months ago.’
I handed her a business card. ‘Perhaps you’d ask him to call us next time he gets in touch with you.’
‘I’ll do so, but I make no promises. Stephen is a law unto himself.’
‘I hope he can carry on like that, Mrs Donn. So far this isn’t a police matter, but if these letters don’t stop, I can’t see it staying that way.’
Chapter 12
We cut it fine, that night. On the way back to Glasgow, Prim called Susie and invited her and Mike for supper. But, once we were home, we caught up with celebrating our engagement and rather lost track of the time.
Fortunately, like many independent young people, we are fairly accomplished high speed cooks. ‘Dab hands wi’ a Wok,’ as they say in Glasgow and Shanghai. We had just finished preparing our ingredients when the buzzer sounded.
Naturally, Susie clocked Prim’s diamond as soon as she opened the door. If she was miffed that it was bigger than hers, she didn’t show it at all. ‘Congratulations,’ said Mike as he shook my hand. ‘I didn’t realise you were pregnant.’ Entirely the wrong thing to say to me, but once it had escaped from his mouth there was no hauling it back, so I laughed it off. If anything showed in my eyes, he didn’t notice.
We spent the best part of the next hour drinking champagne. . or three of us did, since it was Susie’s turn to drive. . and looking out on the city below.
Eventually, Prim and I disappeared into the kitchen and set to work with the wok. We dished up our stir-fry with a couple of interesting bottles of Austrian red wine. . guaranteed free of anti-freeze. . which Prim had found in our local off-licence. She has a great eye for these things.
‘When are you getting married?’ Susie asked, as she cleared the last prawn from her bowl.
As Prim looked at me, I could only shrug. ‘This year,’ I supposed. ‘Once I’m through with Miles Grayson’s movie.’
Dylan’s mouth dropped open. ‘Once you’re what?’ he gasped. Susie looked as flabbergasted as he did. ‘You mean Miles wasn’t kidding at Rogano’s the other night?’ she squealed.
‘No, he wasn’t as it turned out. Och it’s nothing, though,’ I protested, with a show of modesty that was completely fake. ‘It’s nepotism, really. What I’m doing is just an extension of the work I do with the GWA, and from the voice-overs.’
‘How many careers are you planning to have?’ asked Mike.
‘After this, just one: husband.’ I found myself smiling. ‘Okay, I might keep on the GWA stuff because I like the people so much; and the money for these commercials is just too silly to turn down.’
‘Jesus, man, how much more do you want?’
I looked at him, severely. ‘Money is money, Michael. You ask Susie. I could do these jobs for free, but the advertising people wouldn’t understand. Neither would Sly Burr: he knows that twenty per cent of anything is better than one hundred per cent of fuck all.
‘One thing, although I haven’t talked this through completely with Prim. There’ll be no more sitting in grubby rooms interviewing people to help bloody lawyers get even richer than us. It’s time to move on from the Private Enquiry business.’
I sensed my fiancee grinning at me. ‘I was getting to like it.’
‘Then you keep it on, my dearest, if that’s what you want. As you say, you and wee Lulu virtually run it between you already. But I’m going to concentrate on the things I enjoy most. . I might even play a bit more golf.’
‘And what about the Private Eye-ing?’ Susie gave me a mischievous look over her glass of sparkling mineral.
‘I gave that up a couple of years back,’ I assured her. ‘The stuff I’ve been doing for you two is strictly a one-off, with Prim’s permission.’
‘So how’s that going?’ asked Mike, serious all of a sudden.
‘That’s the other thing on tonight’s agenda. We’ve been looking at everyone on your list, spoken to them all, and, we think, eliminated them all. We’re left with one name, though, the one you didn’t include: Stephen Donn. He was behind the bother you had with his uncle. Joe was angry with you at the time, and Stephen seems to have taken advantage of that. The old fella swears blind that he didn’t know about Myrtle copying those documents.
‘Joe has nothing against you, Susie. He was very hurt when you fired him, but for a reason that you couldn’t help.