There were two goon-types in the sitting room of the suite: big sorts with loud suits and louder shirts and Marine-style crew-cuts. Obviously the security sent over by the studio. They looked as out of place in Glasgow as it was possible to look and I would have sworn I could see their Californian tans fading as I watched. A man who was easily as tall and broad as the goons stood up as we entered. In a quiet and friendly but authoritative tone, he asked the goons to leave us alone. My Nordic ice maiden led them out.
‘Mr Lennox?’ John Macready switched on the one hundred watt smile that had beamed from the publicity photograph. I shook his hand. ‘Please sit down. Can I get you a drink?’
I said a Scotch would be fine but a Bourbon would be better.
‘I didn’t know you were an American, Mr Lennox.’
‘I’m not. I’m Canadian. It’s just that I prefer rye.’
He handed me a wrist-straining hunk of crystal filled with ice and whiskey.
‘Canadian? I see … I couldn’t quite place your accent.’ Macready sat down opposite me. He had been meticulously tanned, tailored, groomed and manicured to the point of artificiality; an unreality compounded by the fact that he was preposterously handsome. He turned down the wattage of his smile. ‘I know you’ve been hired by Mr Fraser. I take it he has told you everything.’
‘He’s told me all I need to know about the blackmail, if that’s what you mean, Mr Macready.’
‘And the photographs? He showed you those?’
‘I’m afraid he had to.’
Macready held me in a frank gaze with no hint of embarrassment. ‘I take it you know what it could mean for my career if these photographs were to be made public?’
‘The very nature of the photographs means that they can’t be made public. Any newspaper or magazine that printed them, even with strategically placed black bars, would be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. But that isn’t the danger. A newspaper can print that they are in possession of the photographs and describe their contents in broad terms. It then falls on you to deny the allegations, which you can’t, because — although they are unpublishable — they are fully admissible in court as evidence in a libel trial. And, it has to be said, in a criminal prosecution, too. You are aware that the acts depicted are illegal under Scots law.’
‘Under American law as well, Mr Lennox.’
‘Yes, but the Scots have an enthusiasm for prosecuting these kind of cases. Presbyterian zeal.’
‘Trust me, I know all about that, Mr Lennox. Macready isn’t a stage name: I’m of Scottish descent. My father and grandfather were both elders of the Presbyterian church in West Virginia.’
‘Does your father know about …?’ I groped around for an appropriate noun, but it remained out of my grasp, somewhere between inclination and problem. Macready picked up on my discomfort and gave a small, bitter laugh.
‘My father has never discussed it with me, nor I with him, but I know he knows. Despite my war record, my acting achievements and the wealth I’ve accumulated, all I see in my father’s eyes when he looks at me is disappointment. And shame. And, as you’ve pointed out, Mr Lennox, my sexual preferences make me a criminal, for some reason. But let me make this absolutely clear to you: I am not in the slightest ashamed of who and what I am. It is my nature, not a criminal trait or sexual perversion. I wasn’t turned into what I am because someone fiddled with me as a kid, and it’s not because I suffer from an unbounded libido that one gender cannot contain. Incidentally, that last description applies to one of your own swashbuckling heroes.’
‘But the studio …’
‘The studio knows about it. Has done for years. They fret about it all right, but that’s got nothing to do with some skewed sense of sexual morality. All they care about is the impact it would have at the box office. On the bottom line. Trust me, Hollywood has a much more liberal view of the world than Fayette County, West Virginia … or Scotland. The fact that I am homosexual is an open secret in Hollywood circles, Mr Lennox. But it is kept well out of view of the queue outside the movie theatres in Poughkeepsie or Pottsville or Peoria. What and who you see on the screen as John Macready is a falsehood … but it is a falsehood that moviegoers have to believe in.’
I thought about what Macready had said.
‘I’m not here to judge you, Mr Macready. Frankly, I don’t care what anyone gets up to behind closed doors so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. And I agree that there are far better ways for the police to occupy their time. But you are a Hollywood star and the other party is the son of one of Scotland’s most prominent aristocrats. This is a serious situation.’
I paused and took a sip of the whiskey. It was a rich, aged bourbon and I guessed it hadn’t come from the hotel’s stock. I was four city blocks and a million miles away from the Horsehead Bar.
‘The other party in the photographs … you haven’t mentioned this to him?’ I asked.
‘No, not yet. I’ve been advised not to, but I think he has a right to know.’
‘I would stick to the advice you’ve been given, Mr Macready. The … prominence of the young gentleman in question is possibly something that could work in our favour. I really don’t see the press being allowed a free rein by the powers-that-be. It’s entirely possible that they would be stuck with a D-notice.’
Macready shrugged at me.
‘A D-notice is a banning order issued by the government to block stories that might damage the national interest.’
‘Nothing like a free press,’ said Macready with overdone irony as he sipped his bourbon.
‘Well, it’s something you might end up being grateful for.’
‘If so, isn’t that exactly why we should be telling the other party? That way we might get the whole damn thing stopped before it gets started.’
‘I think we should keep our powder dry on that one. It’s something we may have to resort to. But it would be a gamble: it could be that they could decide that he’s simply not important enough for them to issue a D-notice. In which case, he would be as well and truly screwed as we would be.’
The phrase was out before I thought it through, but Macready didn’t seem to have picked up on it. I took another sip of the bourbon and it breathed on an ember somewhere in my chest.
‘What is the big deal with Iain, anyway?’ asked Macready, giving the other party his name for the first time. ‘I knew he was some kind of aristo, but I didn’t know he was that well connected …’
‘His father is one of the big Dukes up here. And he’s a cousin — God knows how many times removed — of the Queen. The Queen’s mother is a Scot, you see. Which makes him, no matter how far down the food chain, minor royalty. Royalty is big here, Mr Macready. It’s symbolic. It’s funny, I’m investigating another case that goes all the way back to Nineteen thirty-eight, when they had a big exhibition here in Glasgow to celebrate the Empire. Well, the Empire has all but gone and that makes the monarchy all the more important. Us Canadians hang on to it to prove we’re not Americans. Yet. The Brits are clinging on to it because it’s all they’ve got of the past. If the British lose their monarchy, they’ll have to face up to the thing they fear most.’