‘Okay,’ Prim said, ‘let’s wait for his call. Don’t tell the police yet, if you really feel that’s the way to play this. But if I were you I’d start getting ten million together right now.’
She swung her feet off the couch and stood up. ‘If that’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. You should, too. Where’s our room, Oz?’
She was right. There was no longer any sense in staying awake; our chains were being pulled hard enough as it was. We said good night — or good morning — to Miles, picked up Prim’s bag from the hall and went upstairs.
I was in bed, watching my fiancee undress, when a memory came back to me from the weekend. ‘Hey,’ I asked her, ‘what did Joe Donn want?’
She gasped, then grinned. ‘I’d forgotten all about that. He had something to tell me. I’m too tired, it’s not relevant and it’s too heavy to go into. But what he really, really wanted was to show off.
‘He’s been doing a bit of detective work — something that you should have thought of, actually. Remember that girl Myrtle, who had a fling with his nephew while her boyfriend was in the slammer?’
‘Sure, I remember her.’
‘Well, old Joe went to see her. She used to work for him, after all. He reminded her of an office outing, one they had all gone to during the brief time when Stephen was at Gantry’s, and he asked her if he was right in thinking that she had a camera with her.
‘Clever old guy.’ She chuckled. She shrugged her bra on to the floor, stepped out of her knickers, then reached into her bag and took out a stiffened envelope. As she slipped into bed she handed it to me. ‘She did, and when she dug out the photos she had taken, there was one of the boy Stephen. Joe had it blown up and gave it to me.
‘It doesn’t mean a thing now, but I decided to bring it down anyway. The original’s there too.’
I took it from her and shook out the two photos. One was a group shot, typical office party stuff; I barely glanced at that before picking up the enlargement and gazing at it sleepily. . then I woke up, abruptly.
I knew the guy. Oh, sure I knew him. But not as Stephen Donn, occasional book-keeper. I knew him as Stu Queen the spark, our movie electrician.
I was halfway down the corridor to Miles’ room when Geraldine Baker opened her bedroom door, and I remembered that I didn’t have a stitch on.
Chapter 47
‘Look, love, I know you’re Dawn’s sister, but he’s her husband; that puts him in the driving seat as far as I’m concerned. So if Miles says no police, I’m not going over his head.’
She frowned at me in the mirror as she ran a brush through her hair. ‘Maybe you’re not, but I don’t like sitting on my bum with Dawn’s life in danger. It’s not just Miles who cares about her, and you and me. There’s Mum and Dad, and thousands, maybe millions, of other people who’ve seen her on the screen and feel part of her.
‘Those of us who are here don’t just have a duty to Dawn to get this right; we owe it to all of them too.’
I pulled my belt tight, fastening it in the sixth hole; two years earlier, before I started working out with the wrestlers, I could only manage the fourth. ‘Fuck all them,’ I said, bluntly. ‘It’s Dawn I care about. If I thought you were right, then sure, I’d force Miles to call the Old Bill. But Mark Kravitz is our hired gun; he’s the security expert, and he has a personal and professional reputation to protect. I don’t hear him demanding that we bring in the coppers.’
She put down the hairbrush and looked at me, evenly. ‘To borrow your expression, fuck Mark Kravitz.’
‘Don’t do that, please. Not so close to our wedding.’
Not even a trace of a smile crossed her face. ‘Don’t give me reassurance, Oz. I want action; we have to do something.’
I know when to give in to Primavera. It’s one of the secrets of our sucess as a couple. ‘Okay,’ I told her. ‘Let’s talk to Miles.’
We found him alone in the dining room, looking at breakfast with little or no interest. ‘Where is everyone?’ Prim asked.
‘I’ve sent everyone home, or in Kiki Eldon’s case, back to her office. I don’t want any of them around; just you two.’
‘What about Mark?’
‘He’s gone too. We don’t need protection any more; it’s happened already. We know who Oz’s stalker is now, but there’s not a Goddamned thing we can do about it. It’s like a chess game, and he’s captured our Queen.’
I didn’t like his mood; he seemed to be beaten, and all of a sudden I was on Prim’s side of the argument, one hundred per cent.
‘Look,’ I told him. ‘To quote a famous ex-boxer, we may be just prawns in the game of life, but we’re not quite helpless. Even prawns can topple over-confident kings if there are enough of them. We’ve got a rogue knight on our team too. I’m going to call Mike Dylan; he’s been in on this from the start anyway. . come to think of it, it was him who started it.’
‘No,’ Miles protested, weakly. ‘Queen, or Donn, if that’s his real name, said he’d know if we called the cops.’
‘Mike isn’t the cops. He’s Special Branch; he can do things without the rest of the force knowing about it. He has done already. It was him who put me on to the brothers Neames, remember. Stephen Donn was a mystery to us. He was a night person; no one knew anything about him. But now we have an alias, someone else in the same skin. Maybe Dylan can find out something about Stu Queen — like where he lives, for a start.’
‘How? I’ve already called the agency who hired him out to us. They don’t have an address, only a mobile phone number.’ He took a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and pushed it across the table.
‘Okay, that’s a start,’ I said. ‘Let’s give it to Dylan and see what he can come up with. Look behind most mobile phone numbers and you’ll find a direct debit drawn on a bank account. This isn’t the Pope we’re after, Miles. This bastard’s fallible just like the rest of us. Maybe this number will lead us right to his front door.
‘Then there’s the van. We know already that there’s no vehicle registered with the DVLA in Stephen Donn’s name; not this Stephen Donn, anyway. But what about Stu Queen? Maybe he owns a Transit, or a Movano, or something similar, and maybe Mike can trace him through the log book.’
The movie star looked up at me; only a man now; a weak, vulnerable bloke like the rest of us. No way could he have got away with playing a thirty-something that morning. ‘And if we can, what does he do when Dylan’s stormtroopers batter down his door?
‘Oz, Prim. I’ll give this man whatever he wants just to get Dawn back, and our baby.’
Primavera gasped beside me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hand go to her mouth. I hadn’t told her that Dawn was pregnant; that truth held a special sort of pain for me, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, not even to her. Miles didn’t know that, but Prim did; she squeezed my arm in a way that said everything.
‘I know you will, Miles,’ she said, gently. ‘I wouldn’t put Dawn in danger any more than you would. But she’s in danger already; the more we know about the person who’s holding her, the better we’ll be able to deal with him when the time comes. . however we go about it. Now; do you agree that we call Mike?’
Eventually, he nodded, wearily. ‘Do it. But on a mobile phone; if there’s even the slightest chance that Donn has a tap on the line here, you’d better not use it.’
I agreed with that. As always, I had my cellphone hooked on to my belt. I took it out and keyed in Dylan’s direct line number in Pitt Street. He was there.
‘Mike, it’s Oz,’ I began. ‘Listen; is this line secure?’
‘Of course it’s fucking secure, you bammer. This is Special Branch.’
I complimented him on his ever-improving grasp of Glaswegian; and then I told him what had happened. About Dawn’s kidnapping, about the letter, about Stu Queen who was really Stephen Donn, and about his uncle’s part in identifying him.
‘I’ve always said,’ he said, when I was finished, ‘that the secret of good detection is luck. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned professional like me, or an inept, stumbling amateur, like you or like old Donn.’