Bitter End Part 23

The guy in the c.o.c.ktail bar?'

'Uh-huh. I'd seen him before that night -that's why I spoke to him -but I'm d.a.m.ned if I can remember where.

About Chirnside, I think.' She smiled at him in a half amused, half rea.s.suring way, and re-crossed her ankles.

Then, on Sat.u.r.day, when I was in that convenience store across the road -y'know?

-there he was again, in a shop doorway, looking at postcards. But, like I said, it could have been a coincidence.'

It wasn't a coincidence. She knew that and Buchanan knew that. She had told him so often that coincidences were figments of the imagination that he had come to believe her. Crossing the guy's path twice -that was a fluke: crossing it three times, especially in two widely s.p.a.ced locations, definitely stretched credulity. Furthermore, his recollection of the chap in the c.o.c.ktail bar cla.s.sed him as just the sort of character he didn't want anywhere near Fizz. Even at the time, with Giles and himself virtually at her elbow, he had been uneasy to see her laughing up into his lived-in face so trustingly and the very idea of such a thug (he was sure the guy was a thug) finding out where she lived was doing his head in.

'You'd better move out right away,' he told her firmly. 'Is there anyone you can crash with for a few days?'

Fizz gave a little spurt of laughter. 'You don't have to throw a wobbly, Buchanan. At the very worst he's only following me. If he wanted to do me any harm he'd have done it before now. He's had ample opportunity.'

'So, why's he following you?'

'You tell me.'

'Not for his own ends,' Buchanan hazarded. He noticed his fingers drumming on the desk and gave them a pen to 145. play with. 'More likely somebody's paying him to do it.'

'You think he's a private detective.'

'It's possible. I wouldn't be surprised.'

'Oh s.h.i.+t.' Fizz lost her joie de vivre in an instant, thudded her boots to the floor and stared at him in open consternation.

'I know what you're thinking. Friggin' Gra.s.sick, right?'

Buchanan ground his teeth. 'I hope not, Fizz. G.o.d, I hope not but it's the sort of thing he'd do, there's no doubt about it. He must have had me watched and I led his bloodhound to you. Why didn't I guess he'd do something like this?'

Fizz was on her feet, pacing about the room, punching things and chain-swearing. Buchanan knew how she felt.

How often had he told himself that his a.s.sociation with Fizz was guaranteed to end in disaster for at least one of them, if not both. This was the nightmare scenario he'd been predicting for years but it was a surprise to discover that it was the snuffing of Fizz's bright future that he regretted rather than the dimming of his own.

'OK,' Fizz said, after a while. She tidied her hair, which had sprouted a thousand excited tendrils, and set her hands on her hips. 'If Gra.s.sick already knows about my involvement the damage is done. There's nothing we can do about that and, anyway, how much harm can he do me?

I always know that I can rely on Buchanan and Stewart to employ me even if n.o.body else will. Right?'

'Right,' Buchanan felt safe enough in saying, since he could hardly let her starve. If the worst came to the worst Dennis would desert the sinking s.h.i.+p without a backward glance and would have to be replaced. Alan Stewart, who had been his father's partner for thirty-odd years, might even take early retirement rather than tarnish his professional reputation by a.s.sociation with one accursed.

Buchanan and Stewart wouldn't exactly be the first choice of employer for well qualified legal pract.i.tioners, so the chances were that Fizz would be the best he could hope for. 146. 'Right,' she agreed, looking grim and determined but also unaccountably smug. 'However, the fact that Gra.s.sick is paying a detective to trail us must mean that he's running scared. He has something to hide, Buchanan -got

to have -otherwise why is he so worried about what we might uncover? It doesn't have to be his wife's murder but it's something really really serious, right?'

'I imagine so.' Buchanan could see where this was going but he let her run with it.

'So, that's our ace. Our only chance is to find out what it is that he wants to keep hidden and use it to blackmail him with.'

Buchanan found this proposal less than cheering since (a) it was only another name for what they'd been trying to do all along and (b) blackmail was simply not his bag.

And, for that matter, (c) it would be a brave man who tried to blackmail Ghengis Gra.s.sick.

Tell me about the guy who was following you,' he said to change the subject. 'You spoke to him. Did you discover anything about him?'

All lies, I suspect,' she said, coming back to her chair, and thudding her feet back up on to his desk. 'He told me he was on a fis.h.i.+ng holiday but that was about all. It was like squeezing blood out of a stone. I thought he was just a little short on social skills but, of course, he must have been horrified at my spotting him.'

'Did you tell him you'd seen him before?'

Fizz sn.i.g.g.e.red. 'I did. I bet he was thoroughly cheesed off about it. He pretended he didn't have a clue what I was talking about and, frankly, I didn't think any more about him. I'd sort of hoped he might be a local and could fill me in about the hearsay in Chirnside since the explosion, but he was a dead loss. Naturally.' She tucked a curl behind her ear. 'I'll tell you what, though: either he's a brilliant actor or he has the mental capacity of a mayfly. So, if Gra.s.sick is paying him any more than fifty pence an hour he's being ripped off.' 147. As far as Buchanan was concerned either possibility was equally likely. Gra.s.sick could afford the best and the best would certainly be capable of acting dumb to put Fizz off the scent -as she had been. The deciding factor would be whether they could now succeed in losing him.

For the past few minutes he had been slowly working his way towards a decision. Obviously, he couldn't let Fizz go home to her flat tonight. It might not give her a moment's uneasiness to know that she was being watched but Buchanan knew he, personally, wouldn't shut an eye.

Even if she had someone she could crash with, and he wasn't at all sure she had, she wouldn't dream of going into hiding. However, if they were out late together, she might consider staying over at his place.

'Gra.s.sick is speaking at the Central Library tonight,' he said. 'I saw it advertised in the Scotsman. It's a political talk but I thought it could be quite informative to find out more about that side of his life.'

Fizz looked less than thrilled to bits at this prospect.

'Politics bores me to death and politicians are the pits.'

'It's only a one-hour talk. You might find it interesting.'

'No thanks,' she said politely. 'If I wanted to listen to an a.r.s.ehole I'd fart.'

Buchanan winced, as she'd intended him to, but answered her with nothing more than a look because the telephone rang. It was Giles.

'Anything new?' Buchanan asked him quickly, before he found himself having to answer that question himself. He had made virtually no progress over the weekend, not on the Gra.s.sick case, and he wanted to postpone sharing the news about Fizz's stalker until she wasn't sitting there listening to him.

'Not a lot,' Giles admitted. 'I've been checking up on the Gra.s.sicks' gas supplies this morning. I started wondering how much gas it would take to cause the destruction of a house like Brora Lodge and it seemed to me that the devastation was a lot more widespread than you'd expect 148. from the normal week-to-week supply. I haven't got around to establis.h.i.+ng whether that's true or riot just yet but I did locate the Gra.s.sicks' supplier in Chirnside. It turned out that they'd been getting through more than usual over the last few weeks.'

'You think Gra.s.sick could have been stockpiling it?'

Buchanan suggested. 'When you said they'd ordered more than normal, d'you mean they'd bought more than would be accounted for by the bad weather we've been having?'

Giles drew a thoughtful breath. 'It's difficult to be sure because there's n.o.body around who can tell me how often they stayed at Brora Lodge over the last few weeks. The Armstrongs never seem to notice anything and, of course, the Pringles are not returning calls. However the Gra.s.sicks' order changed from eleven kilogram cylinders to fifteen kilogram cylinders last time round which may be circ.u.mstantial to you but, to me, seems pretty conclusive.'

Buchanan was inclined to agree. He glanced at Fizz's alert face and took a desperate step. 'I'm going to hear Gra.s.sick speak at the a.s.sembly Rooms tonight,' he told Giles. 'It's some sort of debate, I think, but I've been wondering about the political side of his life for a few days.

It seems a bit extreme, I know, but his wife could have been murdered as a warning to him, or to bring pressure to bear. I think it merits an hour's research, anyway.'

'So do I,' Giles responded right away. 'I'll come with you -if that's all right with you?'

'Absolutely. I'll wait for you in the foyer. Seven-forty-five.

Buchanan was not surprised by Giles's interest, nor by the rapidity with which Fizz changed her mind and decided that she did want to listen to an a.r.s.ehole after all. Fizz was already regretting telling Buchanan about her

stalker. OK, she'd had no choice but to mention her

suspicions but maybe she could have played them down a

bit and saved herself the irritation of his paranoia. 149. He was trying to play it cool, of course, but she wasn't deceived by his sudden wish to be in her company. In fact, she had him sussed from the instant he suggested -oh, so indifferently -that it was scarcely worth her while to go home after work when they could share a carry-out at his place and go straight to the a.s.sembly Rooms from there.

It wasn't that she had anything against this arrangement, since it involved free food, but she did wonder what his plans were for later in the evening when, presumably, the centurion would still be in situ. It would be interesting to find out.

Giles met them in the entrance lobby, scrummy as ever, and gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek in greeting. 'Brilliant venue,' he commented, rolling his eyes at the plate-gla.s.s mirrors and chandeliers.

'Haven't you been here before?' Buchanan asked.

'Once. I saw Julian Clary here, during the Edinburgh Festival. It was many years ago when he was "The Joan Collins Fan Club".'