"Yes. All three. This morning."
"Fine. See they're honoured, then send them another five grand each as a gesture of goodwill, and leak the story to the press. But not through Alison Goodchild: I want you to call Arnott Buchan at the Sunday Herald and tell him that it's a present from me. Tell him also that we've made an agreed termination payment to Aidan Keane's estate of one hundred thousand pounds, and that the company will meet his funeral expenses as a gesture to his widow. You should clear all this with Phil first, of course, but he'll agree with me."
"I'll do as you instruct," said Greg, but there was doubt in his voice.
"It's the smart thing to do," I told him. "The Three Bears won't go away, not all at once anyway. For now they're a fact of Glaswegian life, so there's no point in rubbing their noses in their own mess. As for the payment to Keane's widow, that's good PR, no more, no less.
We'd have spent that much defending an interdict hearing, and you know it."
"I suppose so," he conceded. "I'll get it all rolling now."
"Good, then do something else for me. Call Sir Graeme Fisher and tell him that I will expect his letter of resignation from the board of the Gantry Group to be in the hands of the acting managing director by close of play this afternoon. Statement to the Stock Exchange tomorrow morning, please."
"What if he refuses to resign?"
"Then he'll face a vote of no confidence at the next board meeting, and will be publicly humiliated. But it won't come to that; he supported Torrent, and he'll know the consequences now they've pulled out."
"Golden handshake?"
"Not a fucking penny."
"Who succeeds in the chair?"
"A representative of the minority shareholders. Me."
"Jesus Christ, you can't appoint yourself chairman."
"I think you'll find that I have the support of the majority shareholder," I reminded him. "And of another significant player in the company." I looked at Gantry again. "Isn't that right, Jack?"
He gave that cackling, mirthless laugh of his again, and nodded. "For now, son, for now. After that, who knows?"
"Oz." Greg's voice was a whisper in my ear. "Who are you with?"
"Never mind. Get on with all that." I pressed the red button. The Lord Provost reached out a hand. I knew what he wanted and gave him the phone so he could be sure it was switched off.
"No tape either," I said, taking off my antelope hide jacket and throwing it on the couch, then turning so that he could see there were no bulges beneath my tight-fitting tee shirt. He looked at my physique. "You've been working out, son, and no mistake. Better just drop your kegs, in case you've got a microphone strapped to your cock."
I did as he asked; anything to make him start talking.
"So you called off the Bears," I said, as I buckled my belt. "And bloody Goldilocks as well."
"I had to. When poor silly Natalie panicked last night and came rushing straight here after you'd spun her your story, I knew the game was up. I knew full well that you'd tail her here, indeed that you'd probably done it before, and that you'd be on to me inside twenty-four hours. So I called the boys and told them to get here."
"You must have been really pleased with Nat, with her falling for the crap I spun her. She took a nice photo when she left. A bit different from when she arrived, though."
Gantry frowned. "That was unfortunate. Jock Perry will live to regret doing that. She told them what you had said, you see, that one of the three of them had turned over, and that it was probably either him or Kevin, since she guessed that Ravens had done the boy Keane. Perry was close to her; he gave her a backhander. I have to admit that you had even me wondering for a second." He tutted, four tuts, in fact.
"Topping Keane was a fucking stupid thing to do, especially straight after Nat had been here."
"I thought you'd ordered that."
"As you would, given the sequence of events. But I didn't. That was another example of Mr. Perry's impetuosity. He was always a fucking chancer that one, but this time, if I read the situation right, he may find that the other two take the view that he's too risky to have around any longer."
"He'll be no loss to the city," I commented. "Any more than would the other two. But Jack, where do you hang with these guys, to have them running after you?" Then I remembered the story Susie had told me, about Jock Perry in the nightclub, the proposition, and then the champagne apology, 'when he found out who I was'.
"Those three started life as my message boys, Oz," Jack said, casually.
"They're still my fucking message boys."
I sat down in the white leather armchair and made myself comfortable.
Gantry followed my example and sat back in the swivel chair. He picked up two remotes from the floor beside him: as he pressed one, the Venetian slats levelled and the blinds rose, giving us the uninterrupted view of Glasgow that I knew so well. He pressed the other and Vivaldi segued into Dwight Yoakam. A perfect choice, I thought; we were, after all, in the Nashville of Europe.
"Tell me, Jack," I said. "Fill me in on the whole story. But start with my first question, the one I asked earlier. How the fuck do you come to be here? Did you dig a tunnel? Is there a Jack Gantry replica doll in your room in the state funny farm?" As I gazed across at him, I was astonished to discover that for that moment at least, fascination had pushed my anger to one side. The man was hypnotic; whatever emotion you felt as you came into his presence it seemed impossible to sustain it. If you were depressed, he lifted you up; if you were enraged, he calmed you down. Sitting opposite him, I found myself totally intrigued.
He shook his head. "No need. As Duncan started to say earlier, whatever you may have thought, and with some justification, I admit, I was never convicted of a criminal offence."
He frowned. "It's true, as you'd have known if you'd read the right papers at the time, instead of the red-tops. After the unfortunate circumstances that led to my nephew's body being found in my deep freeze, I was examined by half a dozen of the top nutcrackers in the country. They agreed unanimously that I was suffering from schizophrenia, megalomania, delusions of adequacy, inflammation of the willie, and a whole list of other Freudian nonsense that boiled down to one thing. Whether or not I had done the things that the Crown Office suggested I had done, I had been insane at the time and still was. That meant, of course, that I could not stand trial."
I nodded. It was a lecture, like being back at university.
"Therefore," he went on, 'under Section 54 of the Criminal Justice Act, an examination of facts was held, at which I was not present, having begun treatment in Gartnavel by that time. This led to my formal acquittal on all charges. However, the Crown did manage to convince the judge that I represented a degree of danger to the public, and so I was committed to the State Hospital for treatment."
He cackled again. "I was a good patient, Oz. I responded to the treatment they gave me, and after a year or so it was agreed that I had made sufficient progress to go back to Gartnavel. After a further period of treatment, my consultants expressed the view to Duncan Kendall, my Curator bonis… that's a loony's court-appointed manager, if you didn't know… that I was fit to return to society."
Jack nodded. "And quite right too," he muttered. I had a feeling that he really believed he shouldn't have been taken away from it in the first place. "Therefore," the lecture resumed, "Duncan, in accordance with the Mental Health Act, instructed a petition to the First Minister for my release. But my counsel also pointed out that all this time I had been a patient and a ward of the state, not its prisoner, and he argued that I was as entitled to have my medical confidentiality preserved as any other individual. This was referred to the Court of Session for a ruling on precedent, and at a hearing held in camera, three senior judges decided that my counsel was dead right. The case went back to the First Minister. As it happens, Seb McTigue, the present chief executive of this country, is a former Glasgow City councillor, and a former colleague of mine. But we go back longer than that; he was another of my message boys, before I spotted something in him and got him into politics. With my file on his desk, he was only too keen to confirm my release, and even keener that it be afforded the privacy I sought." The Lord Provost smiled at the recollection.