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sides to every story, and I’ve just told her mine. If you’re interested, I explained that I’d gone to you to ask for your cooperation in preparing an authorised biography of Oz Blackstone, and in selling the idea to Susie. Your reaction, I told her, was to twist everything around and set me up with your friendly local cops. I added that they scared me so badly that I made myself scarce … which is pretty much true … until I decided that I really couldn’t live without her, and came back. Naturally, Susie takes her husband’s word over yours, so get used to the idea of her being Mrs Culshaw, and not the widow Blackstone any longer. Naturally also, I take her safety and that of her kids as seriously as she does. To emphasise that I’ve persuaded her to give Conrad Kent a fifty per cent salary increase, with a bonus for every incident-free year.’
    ‘And what about my kid’s security?’ I hissed.
    ‘Your Tom can look after himself very well,’ he chuckled, ‘a lesson I learned very painfully. You had best keep him close, to look after you.’
    ‘Are you threatening me, you idiot?’
    He laughed, mocking me. ‘Of course not; I’ve got no need to threaten you. Primavera, you aren’t even a faint blot on my landscape, not any more.’
    He paused for a few seconds. ‘But here’s something you should consider; think of it as a promise though, not a threat. As Susie’s husband I’ve now got free access to her considerable resources. I intend to use them. I may not be able to touch you, or your son, not physically, but I’m going to get you both back, you for what you did to me with those cops, and him for that kick in the family jewels. I’m going to investigate everything that your beloved Oz Blackstone ever did. If there are secrets hidden, as I suspect, I’m going to uncover them. If there aren’t, then what the hell, I’ll make them up. Either way, the memory of the blessed man, which Tom seems to hold so dear, that’ll be something you and he will want to hide from rather than worship.’

Five

    Culshaw’s threat was pure bluster, I was certain, but still it rattled me, so badly that I forgot about what I’d been doing and let the linguine boil over. By the time I’d taken it off the hob so that I could wipe off the spillage with a tea towel, an unwelcome smell told me that the sauce had burned itself into the base of its pan. ‘Bugger!’ I shouted, just as Tom came into the kitchen.
    ‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ he asked.
    ‘Dinner’s wrong. I think I’ve ruined it. Smell that sauce.’
    Without a word, he took another pan from its place in the rack, lifted the original off the heat and emptied its contents into the replacement. Then he turned down the ring from level three, where I’d mistakenly set it, to one, and set the meal back to cooking. He looked at the rest of it and murmured, ‘We haven’t lost very much. It’ll be okay.’
    I looked at him and thought of one of my favourite movies,
Con Air
, and the part where Agent Larkin asks Cameron Poe what he’s going to do for him and Cameron replies,
‘What do you think I’m gonna do? I’m gonna save the fuckin’ day!’
    ‘Thank you, Cameron,’ I said, and Tom laughed. It’s his
absolute
favourite movie, the one we watch together on shit weather nights in the winter. We know it so well that we can recite some of the dialogue ourselves, although he omits the F-words.
    ‘Put the bunny back in the box,’ he countered, with pauses, just like Nicolas Cage. (Real name Nicholas Coppola, but he changed it because he didn’t want to be known simply as the
Godfather
director Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew: that’s how much of a movie anorak I am, and why I am in constant demand for L’Escala quiz night teams.)
    If it hadn’t been for Tom I’d probably have freaked out when the sauce caught, and run screaming for the inevitable takeaway pizzas, but as it turned out, dinner went fine, and if anyone else noticed that it was well