I took a long breath and looked at Jack. "There is another way of making the trust all legal and proper. You could adopt Susie, formally."
He snorted. "What? After she returned my letters to her, and eventually had me barred from writing to her at the hospital! I should give her a hug and adopt her? You don't know me at all, boy."
"She was rather pissed off at you," I pointed out. "Apart from killing her cousin, she also found out that you'd been using the Gantry Group nursing home division as a front to obtain prescription drugs for cutting and sale on the street. She also didn't like it that her cousin and his pals had been fencing the gear the poor punters stole to buy your heroin and jellies."
"I warn you for the last time," Duncan Kendall exclaimed, dramatically, 'that my client has been formally acquitted of all counts against him."
"And I warn you for the last time," I shot back, 'that if you annoy me any more than you have up to now, I will poke your eye out with a sharp stick." I didn't even bother to look at him. Instead I kept my eyes firmly on the Lord Provost. "Well?"
"She declared me dead, son. She's burned her boats and the jetty they were tied to."
I pushed myself out of the white chair and grabbed my jacket. I was well steamed and not even Gantry's hypnotic charm would have cooled me down: Also, I had to get myself out of Mr. Kendall's presence before I did something unfortunate. "You'll lose your anonymity, Jack," I warned.
"No," he replied. "Because when you get out of here you'll take legal advice, and that advice will be to settle. Susie'll decide to become a full-time mother and she'll accept a bid for her holding from the Maplevale Trust. It won't be full value, but it won't be ungenerous."
"You're not listening. You'll lose your anonymity."
Finally the real Jack Gantry looked at me; I don't know whether he'd ever really been mad, but I do know he'd always been evil. "If I do, Susie will lose everything, not just the holding, but all the benefit she's derived from it. If you and she defend in court, you'll lose the bulk of your fortune in costs, plus you'll be so tangled up in hearings, your career will go down the pan… unless you decide to sail off in the lifeboat and let poor wee Susie drown."
The corners of his mouth turned up in something that was not a smile.
"You've got the weekend to decide… Mr. Chairman. I'd say I'll see you in court, but somehow, I don't think I will."
Forty.
When I got out of there, at first I headed for my car; then, on the spur of the moment, I turned and headed straight for the woman in the Rover. As I neared her she looked at first startled, then confused, but when I motioned her to lower her window she did so.
"It's okay," I told her. "I'm the guy you're working for. Call Ricky and tell him that he's bound for Barcelona and that he can pull the operation as of now." She nodded, and I left her keying a number into her mobile.
Wylie Smith was waiting for me when I got back to the Lotus. "If you think I'm taking you back to Edinburgh," I told him, 'you're fucking joking."
"No," he said, 'but I'll settle for Queen Street station."
He didn't say much as we headed through Charing Cross, but he'd had an even harder job getting into the car than before. As it turned out, though, he wasn't breathless, only thinking.
"I can't do this any more, Oz," he exclaimed, as we drove past the Tron Church and into George Square.
I swung into the station entrance and braked. "Next time I'll bring the BMW," I said, icily.
"I'm serious," he protested. "I cannot work with Duncan Kendall for one day longer, not after he's kept me deliberately in the dark about matters that affect the firm. I'm a partner being treated like a junior assistant. And I'm not working for that man Gantry either. He's an associate of gangsters… and that valet of his scares the shit out of me."
"Jack's not an associate of anyone," I countered. "People associate with him as and when he allows it. He's very rich, very powerful and very ruthless; the nastiest and most dangerous man you're ever likely to meet. All the more so since he's been through the machine and come out the other side. His behaviour and his actions are completely under control, and God help anyone who gets in his way. I think you're dead right to want to quit, but before you do, you should ask yourself: do you know anything that could prove dangerous to him?"
Wylie shuddered.
"But let's suppose you did chuck it," I went on, 'and you were advising me. Would you agree with Duncan Kendall's assessment of Jack's action to regain control of the Gantry Group? It's true, by the way: Susie isn't his daughter. I believe he knew that when he transferred the business to her control, but I'll never prove it."
"To be honest," the lawyer replied, '… and don't laugh at that please… I would say that such an action would almost certainly succeed."
I started the car again. "Come on," I told him. "This might not be ethical, but I want you to meet someone."
I drove straight to Greg McPhillips' office. We arrived unannounced, but he aborted a meeting with another client and saw us when I told his secretary it would not wait. I began to introduce Wylie, but they'd met at university, and on occasions since then, so I went ahead and gave Greg a run-down of my interesting day, and my meeting with the spider at the centre of the web.
"What do we do?" I asked him, when I was finished.
He looked at me dolefully. "The best deal you can." I know about the old axiom that fifty per cent of lawyers must be wrong, but I had the feeling that neither of my chums was in this case.
Wylie took a taxi to the station this time, while I headed back to the estate, to break the worst news that Susie had ever had in her life.
But when I got there I just couldn't. I thought of her blood pressure, sure, and of the effect that the news might have, but I thought also of the sheer misery it would cause her, and I just couldn't bring myself to make her that unhappy.
So instead I told her to get ready for the road, I told Ethel she could go and visit her sister for the weekend, and not to bother coming back till Monday afternoon, and I told Jay that he was coming with us when we headed for Anstruther in the morning, a day early for the posh frock and black tie dinner in the Old Course Hotel.
Susie, of course, was over the moon. Instead of telling her that the arse was about to fall out of her entire world, I told her that the Torrent bid had collapsed, that the Three Bears had gone away, and that I had taken an executive decision on her behalf to fire Sir Graeme Fisher and replace him, pro tern, with her most trusted lieutenant.
She was still elated when we headed off for life… early next afternoon as it turned out… in a small convoy, Jay driving the BMW with the girls in the back, and me in the Lotus. I took it just in case we needed a second car up there, but there was this also; away from Susie's presence I could drop my act and set free all my concerns and anxieties.
I would have to tell her, of course, before the weekend was out. The lawyers' opinions had been firm and convincing. She was going to lose the company, and she would have to be made to face up to it, and to the need to deal with the Devil. I switched on Clyde One, if not to cheer me up, then at least to take my mind off things for a while. At first, Coldplay and Travis did the business, but then came the top of the hour news bulletin.
It began with the latest bickering in the Scottish Executive, went on to a report on the latest bickering in Glasgow City Council, and moved into a story about bickering between a football manager and his star player. After the sport, the usual formula is the latest weather and then a hand-over to the disc-jockey, but the news reader went on in a glossy, tabloid radio voice, "And this just in. Strathclyde Police have confirmed that the man found shot dead in a car outside a betting shop in Crow Road was Jock Perry, Glasgow businessman and alleged underworld figure. Detectives refused to speculate on the motive behind Perry's murder, but it is thought it may be linked to the death of Aidan Keane, a Broomhill man found dead in the River Clyde a few days ago."