Last Resort Read online

  ‘Hey, I’ve not done yet,’ I promised. ‘I’m out of clothes, that’s all. Wherever we go next, I’ll be there.’

  ‘But where will that be?’ Xavi grumbled. ‘I’m tired, and I’m stumped.’

  I punched him, gently, on the shoulder. ‘Like you said, you’re out of practice, investigator, that’s all. Me? I’m getting my second wind.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Two days ago you’d never heard of Hector Sureda.’

  ‘But I have now,’ I retorted. ‘And there’s more. I have this compulsion, you see. Every time I see a dead body, and I don’t know who made it dead, or why, I have an irresistible urge to find out.’

  ‘To give them justice?’

  I looked at Sheila as she spoke. ‘Not any more,’ I told her. ‘These days I’m just plain curious.’

  I was on my way fifteen minutes later. We’d debated whether Xavi should tell Pilar that I was coming, but in the end we decided that I should go in there unannounced.

  As I drove out of the estate, I paused, looking left and right for any glimpse of any part of a Skoda. When I was satisfied that my follower had given up, I re-joined the highway and set off for Begur.

  The morning had turned dull and damp by the time I reached Carrer de Santa Reparada, and cold too, for I felt distinctly chilly as I stood waiting at the Sureda/Roca door. I had to stand there for a full two minutes; maybe I should have let Xavi make that call, I thought, to give the lady a chance to make herself presentable.

  She certainly was when she opened the door, dressed in slacks and a heavy shirt. ‘You’ve only just caught me, Señor Skinner,’ she said as she let me in. ‘I’ve decided to go to the office today, if only to clear my in-tray.’ She must have read something in my expression for suddenly hers changed.

  ‘Is there news?’ she asked, urgently. ‘Have you traced Hector?’

  I was about to answer, ‘Yes and no,’ when my phone sounded. I checked the screen and recognised a Barcelona number from the code. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I need to take this.’

  It was Julien Valencia, the Mossos DG himself. ‘I have a little news,’ he said. ‘First, our crime scene people have done a good job. They have found a left handprint on the front door that doesn’t match anything we have on record, or the victim. Also they have found a couple of hairs in the doorway, and a DNA profile is being prepared. When it is ready the technicos will do a check against the database.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘There is more. They found an ejected cartridge casing, and they have identified it as coming from a Russian automatic pistol called a Makarov or possibly from a newer weapon called a Pernach. So maybe the killer is Russian.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I countered. ‘There are Russian guns all over Europe now. You should know that.’

  ‘I suppose. That’s the crime scene, Bob, but I have news on Sureda. We know now that he withdrew six hundred euro, the daily limit, in cash from his bank account from a machine at Barcelona Sants station on Friday afternoon, six hundred more in Lleida the following morning, and six hundred more on Sunday, in Zaragoza. Since then there has been nothing, and his credit cards have not been used at all.’

  ‘Thanks, Julien,’ I said.

  ‘De nada. I must go now to prepare for my press briefing. The news will be released simultaneously here and in Italy. It’s going to get crazy.

  ‘You must realise the press will identify the owner of the flat very soon, so I don’t think I can hold off identifying him any longer. Already I have passed his name and the image you left with me to the Policia Nacional, since my authority does not go beyond Catalunya.

  ‘Publicly, I will try to treat him as a witness, rather than a suspect, but my colleagues may not be so subtle . . . also I may not be my own master at the briefing,’ he added, as if in warning. ‘Does any of that help, Bob?’ he asked.

  ‘It does. When I make progress, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Good. I am relying on you to an extent; I have a feeling you may have a better chance of finding Señor Sureda than the police have. That’s why I am letting you run with it.’

  ‘You understand that finding him may not clear up your crime?’

  ‘Yes, but to be brutal, if it comes to it, I will have someone to pacify the media, and our bosses.’

  And do huge damage to Xavi Aislado’s business in the process. That’s what I thought, but I needed Valencia onside, so I kept it to myself.

  I’d been aware as I spoke that Pilar’s eyes were fixed on me. ‘Was that about Hector?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘Let’s sit down somewhere, I have a lot to tell you and it’s not pleasant.’ Her hands flew to her mouth; I continued, quickly, ‘Hector’s still missing, but he’s safe. I believe he’s hiding somewhere.’

  She took me into her kitchen, and offered me coffee. I needed a caffeine boost, so I accepted. As soon as she’d made it, I went through every detail of what had happened since I saw her last.

  When I reached the part of the drama that was set in her son’s apartment she began to tremble. When I told her who we’d found dead on the floor, the news that was soon to be announced on national television, she stared at me, and gasped, her mouth forming a perfect O shape.

  ‘It was her? What was my Hector doing with her?’

  ‘I can hazard a guess, señora, but only he can tell us.’

  ‘This will kill his father,’ she wailed. ‘Simon must not know.’

  ‘Must not know what, my dear?’

  The hoarse question came from behind me. I turned to see a man in a dressing gown framed in the doorway. He walked with help from a carved stick, and carried in his free hand an oxygen bottle, from which a fine tube led behind his back and into twin feeds inserted in his nostrils.

  ‘Simon,’ Pilar exclaimed. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking for food; I’m hungry. Why are we speaking English? If it’s for the benefit of our visitor, you might introduce him.’

  ‘Let me introduce myself,’ I said, standing. ‘My name’s Bob Skinner; I’m a friend of Xavi Aislado.’

  ‘Ahh,’ Sureda grated, ‘he has spoken of you for many years: the fearsome policeman.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t look so fierce to me, but the deceptive appearance can be the most dangerous.’

  ‘Simon!’ his wife snapped. ‘You must go back to bed.’

  ‘No, my dear. I see the way you’re dressed. You are going to Girona. As soon as you were gone I would have got up anyway and made myself a bocadillo. You want to save me some energy, you can do it for me.’

  She frowned at him but moved towards the fridge.

  ‘And while you do that,’ he added, easing himself into a carver chair, and laying the oxygen bottle by his side, ‘Señor Skinner can tell me what it is that has you so anxious, this thing you say will kill me to know.’ He smiled, and I could see the charm of the man. ‘Pilar, my curiosity is aroused, and if it is not satisfied that will be more dangerous for me than knowing what has happened with my son.’

  Simon Sureda looked me in the eye, and I understood at once why Xavi revered him: there was an intangible quality about him, a calm wisdom. ‘I know something is wrong,’ he said, ‘because I have not seen him since Friday morning, when he left here with an excitement in his eyes that has not been there for a while. I know he is not dead, because his mother is not prostrate with grief, only anxious. So what is it, señor? What is this mystery?’

  I glanced at Pilar. She sighed, then nodded, giving up the fight.

  ‘Let’s begin on Friday, then,’ I said, ‘with what we know so far. But first, do you know the name Battaglia?’

  ‘The Warrior? Of course I do.’ He grinned. ‘She wants to buy us all out, the stupid woman. As if there was a chance of that happening. Never, while Xavi Aislado breathes.’

  ‘That’s more true than you realise,’ I told him.

  As I had done with his wife, I led him step by step through the story, ending with the discovery that Xavi and I made in Hector’s apar
tment, and our subsequent meeting with Julien Valencia.

  ‘I know Valencia,’ Simon murmured, interrupting me. He was calm, a man in control of his emotions. ‘He’s an ambitious man, as much of a politician as a policeman, but overall, I believe you can trust him.’ He paused for a second, before adding, ‘And that is everything, señor, si?’

  I nodded. ‘Almost, but I’ll get to the rest in a minute. First, I want to ask you . . . did you have any idea that your son had been in contact with Bernicia Battaglia?’

  He moved in the chair, and his oxygen bottle started to roll away from him. I reached down to stop it, and stood it on end.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘none at all.’

  ‘I understand that he knew about her offer to buy InterMedia?’

  ‘Of course he did. Xavi reported her approach to the directors, quite properly, even though he had already taken the decision that it was unacceptable.’

  ‘I understand that you’re not a director, señor,’ I ventured.

  ‘That is correct.’ He smiled. ‘You wonder why, since my wife is and my son is, and I have been there from the beginning of the Aislado ownership?’ I nodded.

  ‘The answer is simple: I chose not to be. I am a journalist, señor, not a manager. Pilar is comfortable with being on the company board, of course she is. When Josep-Maria Aislado bought his first newspaper in Girona, he brought her in as its editor because he saw her as an ally as much as an employee.

  ‘We were together even then, she and I, but I preferred to be a simple reporter, for that was my strength. I was happy to mentor others, but I believed then and I believe now that as a senior manager there would be a danger of my integrity being compromised.

  ‘Xavi, he was the same. When he worked for the Saltire, in Edinburgh, before InterMedia bought it, he discovered that its owner was a crook. He ran the story; he exposed the guy in his own newspaper, and then he saved it, by having Joe take it over.’

  ‘Xavi’s a manager now,’ I pointed out.

  ‘That’s true,’ Simon conceded, ‘but only because it was forced on him by circumstances. He hasn’t written a news story in years, yet I’ll bet if he found a scandal and chose to shine light on it, he would do so fearlessly, even if it struck at his own heart.’

  His wife interrupted him, by placing before him a sandwich on a plate; it was half a baguette, filled with lettuce, tomato and tortilla.

  He smiled. ‘Thank you, my dear. Now you should go.’

  She said something to him in Catalan, that I took to mean, ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ He nodded. ‘Three hours,’ she added, ‘then I’ll be back.’

  ‘I will try not to die while you’re away,’ he chuckled, in Castellano, which I understood completely.

  ‘It’s better she’s gone,’ he said, as soon as he heard the door close behind her. ‘I can guess what you are going to ask me, and Pilar might not like to hear it.’

  ‘Indeed? What would that be?’

  ‘Whether my son was as resolutely opposed to the idea of a sale to BeBe as Xavi was . . . am I correct?’

  ‘Spot on,’ I murmured. ‘Was he?’

  ‘The fact is, no, he wasn’t. Hector is a child of the Internet. He believes in growth and global markets. His preference would be for InterMedia to absorb BeBe, but he knows that Xavi has no ambition to do that, so he would accept the alternative. He has gone as far as he can in the company as it stands; it cannot contain him any longer.’

  ‘Xavi has never mentioned any of this to me,’ I told him.

  ‘Xavi does not know how Hector feels; nor does his mother. He has only spoken of this to me.’

  ‘How did you react when he did?’

  The frail man shrugged his shoulders, weakly. ‘I didn’t react. I cannot take sides between my son and his mother, or for that matter between him and his patron, the man who has made him what he is today.’

  ‘Between us, how do you feel?’ I asked.

  ‘I understand him. If you stand still in a world that is moving constantly, everyone will pass you by.’

  ‘Have you said that to Pilar?’

  He flashed me a crooked smile. ‘In my condition I don’t need the grief it would bring me. Once the surgeon gives me my new heart valve, I will write an editorial on the subject and I will insist that it is published in GironaDia. Hector asked me to do it. I didn’t commit myself, but I said I would consider it, when I am well.’

  He frowned. ‘Maybe I will talk to Joe Aislado as well. With Battaglia dead, BeBe will be ripe for the plucking, and he is not so old that he has lost his eye for a business opportunity.’

  I dragged him back to the moment. ‘Let’s just focus on the fact that she is dead, and on Hector’s predicament. He had given you no clue that he was meeting her?’

  ‘No. I think back over the last few weeks but I can recall nothing. However, as I told you before, he was excited the last time I saw him, on the day when you say they met. Which of them do you think made the contact?’ he asked.

  ‘My assumption is that she did. They met on his territory; that’s as good an indicator as we have.’

  ‘From what they say, she’s a very attractive woman,’ he mused. ‘And my son has always been fond of the ladies. Nature must have taken its course, for him to take her to Barcelona. He’s only ever brought one woman here, and that was the Russian girl. Yes, they must have been getting along.’

  ‘Or he simply took her there to discuss business,’ I suggested . . . and then I thought of the roses. ‘But we don’t know, for it’s all a mystery from then on.’

  ‘What did you hope that Pilar could tell you?’ Simon asked. ‘And why, señor, if you will forgive me, are you even interested in my son?’

  ‘I promised Xavi I’d help find him,’ I replied, instantly, ‘and I haven’t done that yet. Yes, I know I could leave it to the police from now on, but a promise is a promise. As for your wife, I was going to ask her if she knew where he might have gone.’

  ‘You would have been asking the wrong parent.’ His laugh was weak, but his smile was wide.

  ‘To his mother,’ he continued when his voice returned to normal, ‘Hector is a model of virtue. But no man can be that good, and stay normal. His successes have always been reported to Pilar, but his failures and his faults have been confessed to me.

  ‘The truth is that my boy was a little wild in his college days. He drank more than he should have, he smoked marijuana in industrial quantities, and as for the women in his life . . . I met a couple of them when I visited him in Oxford.’

  ‘Oxford?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes, he studied there. Its computer science course is rated the third best in the world, after two universities in the US. It is very expensive, but his godfather paid his tuition fees. Joe,’ he added. ‘Joe Aislado is his godfather.’

  He paused. ‘Anyway, those women, they were pretty loose. They were not students, more . . . camp followers, I think is the English phrase.’

  ‘But he graduated in spite of it all?’

  ‘Oh yes, with first class honours. He really is a genius, Señor Skinner.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you have sons?’

  I gazed at him. I nodded. ‘I have three. My youngest . . . he’s a bit young to be showing special skills, other than on the golf course. His older brother we adopted after he was orphaned; he looks like following in your Hector’s footsteps.’

  I hesitated, then decided to be frank; after all, the guy was no better than even money to see Christmas. ‘There’s a third one, from an old relationship; he’s something of a genius too, in chemistry, but he used his talents unwisely, and it caught up with him.’

  ‘He is a burden to you?’ Simon asked, gently.

  ‘I hardly know him, señor . . . but that is something I will rectify. Is Hector your only child?’ I asked, moving on discreetly.

  ‘Yes, he is. We’d have liked a daughter too, but it never happened.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘I have two of those; they’re challenging . .
. regardless of their age.’

  ‘And so is my Hector, it seems,’ he sighed. ‘As I said, he had a few troubles as a student, and also as a younger man in Barcelona. There were a couple of occasions when I had to use my influence with the police there to keep him out of court, but those were minor adventures, scuffles in nightclubs and such. In recent years, however, as he has become more and more important to the InterMedia group, he has become a responsible citizen. I think his girlfriend Valentina helped too; I wish she was still around.’

  ‘Your wife told Xavi and me that he ended the relationship,’ I said.

  ‘Because that is what Hector told her. I do not know what happened, but he was upset by it. He brought her here to meet us; there was talk of a future together and then . . . she was gone. He told me very little, but as I understood it she left him, not the other way around. What he told Pilar, it was only to stop her thinking badly of Valentina.’

  He sighed, as deeply as he could. ‘If only . . . if they were still together he would not be in this trouble.’ He frowned then looked me straight in the eye. ‘You are telling me the truth, Señor Skinner, yes? You do think he is innocent?’

  ‘I do,’ I assured him. ‘I’m not being partisan either. I don’t know Hector, so I have no inbuilt bias in his favour. My opinion is based on what I saw at the crime scene.’

  ‘And Valencia? And the Mossos investigators? What do they think?’

  That was a good question. ‘Valencia is looking for Hector as a witness, not a suspect; that’s what he told me yesterday. Whether he still feels that way today . . .’ I glanced at my watch, ‘we should know very shortly, when he has his press conference. He’ll face some tough questioning, especially when the journalists there realise who Hector Sureda is, and what he is to InterMedia.’

  ‘He will face some tough questioning from the examining judge too,’ Simon pointed out. ‘In Spanish law he is the head of the investigation; he will want to complete it as quickly as he can.’