Free As Easy as Murder by Quintin Jardine

He approached me last summer, when I was on vacation, working as a bag monkey . . . they paid us peanuts, hence the name . . . at a private club in East Lothian and practising there in my time off as an added perk.’
    ‘He found you?’ Patterson repeated. ‘How? Did he approach your parents? Or did the college put him in touch with you? Data protection laws in the US are patchy at best, but I’d have thought that a university would have to respect its students’ privacy.’
    ‘Mine did,’ my nephew agreed. ‘I have no idea how Brush found me, but I know it wouldn’t have been through Arizona State. It’s a very protective place. As for Mum and Harvey, no, he didn’t contact them at all. But why should he? For all I indulge them, I’m over twenty-one, Mr Cowling. I’m my own man.’
    ‘Sure, sure. Forget it,’ Patterson said. ‘I’m making too much out of it. Trust me, I know how easy it is to find people.’ He paused, then added, ‘Unless they don’t want to be found, in which case it can become very difficult. Even then nothing’s foolproof. I know of someone who thought he was completely anonymous, only to discover . . .’ He stopped, smiling, his eyes suddenly a little distant. He didn’t throw the faintest glance in my direction, but he didn’t have to; message transmitted, message received. ‘Still,’ he continued, abruptly, ‘for this man to walk up to you at a fairly obscure golf club, one among hundreds that must employ young people like you in the summer . . .’
    ‘No,’ said Jonny, firmly, ‘that’s not how it happened. He contacted me by email.’ He saw my eyebrows rise, and nodded. ‘That’s how he did it, Auntie P. I checked my box one day and found a message from “ [email protected] ”. It said that he’d been following my college golf and that he’d be interested in knowing my future plans. I wrote back and told him that I didn’t have any, none that were firm at any rate, but like most young amateurs at competitive level I was interested in finding out exactly how good I was. He replied and said that he was an ex-pro who’d never really made it on any tour but who did know the business, and who was putting together a stable of young players, “out of the clutches of the global golfer production lines”. That’s how Brush describes the big agencies. I asked him what made him a better bet than them, given that their record of success hasn’t been too shabby over the last half a century. He said “I care”; simple as that. He also attached two draft management contracts. One was the standard deal offered to new pros by the GRA, the biggest company in the world, and the other was his. He guaranteed me a level of financial support through sponsorship as soon as I joined the professional tour, and he guaranteed that all my affairs would be handled by him, rather than by some salaried employee with a couple of dozen people like me, maybe more, in his group, every one of them expendable. I asked him for a list of his clients. He said he didn’t have any, that he was just starting out, but that his promise to me was that he would never have any more than six. I reminded him at that point that I didn’t even know for sure whether I would turn pro, and if I did, whether I could cut it on tour. His reply was that he wasn’t making his approach without having seen me play, and having faith in me, and that part of his job would be to help me make that first decision. Finally he proposed that we work together on a gentlemen’s agreement, not just until I turned pro, but until I made my first cut in a tour event. Lena’s fee, Uche’s wages; Brush has covered those, for now at any rate. Almost all of the sponsor money we’ve had so far is still in the bank . . . not that there’s all that much, just initial retainers. Only my travel and living expenses since I left college a couple of weeks ago have come out of that; Brush hasn’t even taken his commission. As of now,