Nine Ten Begin Again: A Grasshopper Lawns affair (2 page)

She led the way into a crowded restaurant off the concourse and Edge followed her, smiling to herself. ‘A gorgeous lover’, Donald would enjoy that. The advantages of having a gay friend who knew both fashion and the publicity business better than she ever would were still coming home to her, but being kissed publicly wasn’t something she’d expected. Public display was a bit of a horror with Edge, but when the man doing it was both expert and extremely photogenic, well, one could but be grateful.

‘You make a good-looking couple,’ Shona persisted when they’d found a table and ordered drinks, and eyed her speculatively.

‘He’s easy on the eye,’ Edge agreed, smiling. ‘But that’s not why we’re having lunch. Are we finally going to talk?’

‘Oh aye, we’re finally going to talk. Your script has six people, and from a budgetary point of view we’d find that challenging. What I’d wanted to run past you was this possibility;’

She paused as their drinks were served, and Edge sharpened her attention, all her concentration now switched to evaluating not only the suggestions, but whether she could work with this unexpected and brusque woman.

Onderness police station

‘Not very much on Grasshopper Lawns.’ Sergeant Betty MacLean nodded thanks for the cup of tea Constable Stuart McBain put at her elbow. ‘You put in sweeteners? Ta. Just says it’s a retirement village in the rolling farmlands near the Firth of Forth, yadda yadda, easy reach of Edinburgh, well placed between Linlithgow and Onderness. Details on application. And some photos. It looks okay, individual units and a main house. Not a huge place.’

‘Getting ready to retire, are you?’ Stuart sat at his own desk and Betty snorted.

‘Cheek! Years still before I need to retire, and catch me moving to an institution when I do. Did you not see the email from Central? The new bursar at the Lawns is hiring ex-cons for maintenance work and the residents are fluttering. We’re to put in an occasional appearance to reassure the old dears. I was just looking it up to find out a bit more.’

‘You’d do best to ask Kirsty.’ Stuart sipped at his tea and pulled a face. ‘It’s a wee bit strong, sorry.’

‘I like it strong. And if I wanted to ask Sergeant Kirsty Cameron anything—which I don’t, because unlike you and Iain I
don’t
think she’s God’s gift to Police Scotland—I’d have my work cut out, wouldn’t I? In Embra all the time, shaking her tits at the brass to get onto high-profile investigations while people with
years
more seniority have to cover for her here.’

‘I meant because her aunt lives there, is all.’ Stuart glanced towards her, then looked past her to the doorway and went painfully red. ‘Hey, Kirsty.’

‘Hey, Stuart. Betty. Don’t mind me; I’m taking a break from all that exhausting tit-shaking to catch up. Any chance of some tea?’

Kirsty, an attractive police officer in her mid-twenties with flaming red hair and a slender figure without, despite the accusation, any exaggerated curves, turned from hanging up her coat.  Stuart, who knew a cue when he heard one, fled.

Betty, sturdy and pugnacious after twenty-five years of service, looked defiant. ‘You weren’t meant to hear that.’

‘I’d guessed that.’ Kirsty smiled impishly. ‘I don’t blame you, I got a really lucky break. Thanks to that place.’ She nodded at Betty’s computer screen, which still showed the Grasshopper Lawns website. ‘I’m happy to do liaison, but you won’t find it boring if you do. It’s been quiet since you transferred across, but they’re not your standard old dears at all. My aunt and her buddies uncovered the case I’m on now—not at the Lawns, for once!—and she called me, but there’s been murder galore there. I’ll introduce you, if you like. She’s in the residents association now, so a good contact for your liaison.’

‘Quite the Miss Marple, is she?’ Betty looked up as Stuart put his head nervously around the door with another cup of tea. ‘Come on in, lad, don’t look so worrit. Kirsty’s gasping for her brew.’

Kirsty flicked through photos on her iPhone and passed it across to the older woman. She took her tea from Stuart with a smile of thanks, and he craned his neck as he passed behind Betty to see the small screen.

‘That’s my aunt, the slim one. She’s written a script for a TV series that’s about to go into production, with any luck. Miss Marple was in her eighties. Edge has twenty years, more, to go. She’s great.’

Betty peered at the group image of four people and two dogs. ‘Oh aye, she looks like you.’ She frowned and bent closer. ‘I ken the bloke on the end! He was part of a murder investigation when I was just starting out. What’s his name, Duncan something? An actor.’

‘Donald MacDonald. I looked the case up after I met him. The husband did it as far as we were concerned, but walked. Good memory!’

‘Oh aye.’ Betty handed the iPhone back, looking complacent. ‘I remember now. Husband tried to say she committed suicide after an affair with MacDonald. He was a real looker back then, but as it turned out, a bit of an arse-bandit. Still is. Good looking, I mean. I like that Paul Newman type. So they’re friends?’

‘Very good friends, all four of them. If you take on the liaison, two things you should know: there’s a bulldog type of dog, Maggie, you should never trust near your handbag, she steals purses, and there’s a man called Major Horace you should never trust near any part of you. You can’t miss him. You spot a man brushing up his moustache and looking determined, back away fast. I mean it. The man is a walking advertisement for sexual harassment.’

Betty grinned, fully restored to good humour. ‘Noted. I’ll take Stuart with me for protection.’

‘I dinnae like dogs!’ Stuart shook his head vigorously and Kirsty smiled at him as she picked up the first of the folders stacked on her desk.

‘You love sci-fi, though. That big bloke in the photograph is William Robertson, if you read sci-fi you must know his stuff, he’s really well known. That’s Vivian Oliver with him. The one that—um—that the
Chronicle
was calling our very own Susan Boyle earlier this year.’ She glanced slyly at Betty. ‘She’s not exactly an old dear either.’

Kirsty had very nearly said that Vivian was indirectly the reason she was on her current exciting assignment, but caught herself in time and Betty hadn’t noticed her momentary hesitation. To avoid any more slips that might threaten the restored
entente cordiale
, she focused her full attention on the file she’d picked up. It was, as it happened, a murder case, but the Onderness police were only being kept updated because the lad’s father lived in the town. James Kirby had died in seedy circumstances in Glasgow and had, it seemed, been an accident waiting to happen all his short life. She knew his father Hamish, who was the usual bursar at the Lawns, and scanned the few details with a practiced eye, knowing her aunt would be asking for them. Nothing there for the amateur sleuths. She picked up the next folder and stifled the faintest of sighs. Racist graffiti in the Forth-side town might be a far cry from her involvement on a multi-corpse forensic investigation, but eventually the assignment would end and she would be back full-time in Onderness—which, in fairness, definitely had its own moments of high excitement, and the last one not that long ago. She picked up her tea and immersed herself in the report.

On the train

‘That was an incredibly sexy kiss,' Edge said admiringly on the train back to Linlithgow, and Donald nodded in acknowledgement, his eyes creasing.

‘Art kisses, we called them in my acting days. The trick is to move your jaws but keep your lips still, so it looks as though we’re playing tonsil hockey but in fact I’m not even smearing your lipstick. Did it work?’

‘Oh, yes, she was completely impressed. Said she’d had a different mental image of me, expected me to arrive in a woolly jumper, my knitting in my bag. And I’m going to ask for a copy of the photographs. I hope he got that sexy little throat stroke.’

‘And that blush about your breakfast
faux pas
. I couldn’t have scripted it better. As long as you don’t look too surprised in the photographs, but you caught on quickly.’

‘Well, you winked. But how did you know?’

He laughed. ‘You remember my makeup friend, Gillie Campbell? She was working there today, doing some corpse makeups, and heard them saying Shona was being a bit rough with you, treating you like a pensioner looking for work. She let me know, then hung about until you left with Shona and sent me a text, and I slipped out of my meeting to intercept. Shona seemed okay, I thought.’

‘Yes, we’d already had a little spat and she likes my moxie. Did you know I had moxie? And then she liked my sexy lover. Thank you, Donald.’

‘It was fun,’ he said absently. ‘I wasn’t having anyone that I had dressed being called a pensioner. It’s enough of a struggle getting you to wear the clothes I pick out, without some teenage production manager disparaging them.’

Edge looked down at her well-cut suit and grinned. ‘I didn’t fight you on this. I really like it.’

‘You
did
fight me on not wearing a prim little shirt under it. And I was right.’

She chuckled. ‘Her assistant Jason actually tried to see down my front. A bit shy-making. I felt a bit mutton dressed as lamb.’

‘You don’t look it. You can add your little scarves and distracting collars to your timeless classics when you turn into mutton, and dinna fash, I will tell you when it’s time. Right now, make the most of it,
look
like a scriptwriter with her finger firmly on the public pulse. How did you leave things?’

‘They’re small, but I’ve worked with several of the team before and we got on well when we did. Shona wants to cut the script to four, and it isn’t only slashing salaries—she’s put real thought into it. It could be done.’

‘Cut Jim and Megan?’

‘Yes!’ She looked at him, surprised. ‘Did you also think so? You never said.’

‘I think it works better with them, but they would be the easiest to lose. Nice interaction, though, and you’d have to lose some good dialogue. No way of giving it to the other characters. They bring something to the series it would be a shame to lose.’

‘I think so too. Anyway, Shona showed me her casting suggestions after lunch and I liked them, but it’s still the lowest offer I’ve had. They just don’t have the budget. Sarah sent me along because they’re the only ones at this point who are up for me staying involved on the scripts.’

‘And you want to stay involved?’ He was listening closely and she nodded.

‘I think so. I still don’t know if I could work with Shona. I don’t like people who play games, and she’s very dogmatic, and very opinionated. If she doesn’t
get
the script the way I do, we’ll be arguing all the time. If I do go for it, I’ll probably invest in the show, rather than have them cutting financial corners. Sarah hasn’t told them that’s an option yet, not unless I decide in their favour. I’ve got a fairly firm offer from the States, which they’ve pushed up a tad because Sarah wouldn’t give them an answer, and another network showing definite interest. But they’re both only interested in the concept: they’d change the whole format to fit their formula. I’ve never felt possessive about a treatment before, but I do think this one has potential and I’d like to run with it.’

‘You don’t really need the money, so don’t let that be the consideration. If what you could put into the production financially would save the two characters, and you get even one good season out of it, you might find the American networks would be more open to keeping the format, and then they’d want your input. I’ll ask around, see what I can pick up on what Shona’s like to work with, but a small team does give you more say. Would they film in Edinburgh?’

‘No, they film mainly in Devon, better weather.’ She looked at the rain lashing against the darkened windows of the train as it rushed through the gloomy afternoon and grimaced. ‘They have a point. She suggested I go down for a couple of weeks into December. The whole team is there and we could fit some work around their schedule, even use the actors on location for some read-throughs to see how the dialogue works. It sounded tempting. So, what were you in town for?’

‘Investment meeting, I’d forgotten it was today. A show I backed for its first year. We made a good return on it so they’re hoping the initial investors will invest in the film version.’

‘Will you?’

‘I’ll sleep on it and tell you at breakfast. We’re nearly there. Have you got your car with you, or do you want a lift back to the Lawns?’