On Honeymoon With Death ob-5 Page 8

  ‘That you are not,’ I shot back at her. ‘Why would he invite you to go to Florida with him if he didn’t mean it? Of course the bloke fancied you. Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Get away with you,’ she laughed. ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’

  ‘In that case I’d better keep you and my dad well apart.’

  ‘Don’t you dare! I have to meet the bloke who spawned you.’

  I took my cue. ‘Come for a drink tonight then. Make it around six thirty: we’ve got a table booked in Meson del Conde at half eight. Come with us if you like.’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ she said. ‘John and his girlfriend are taking me to Graham’s, in L’Escala, for a meal, but I’ll see you for that drink.’

  ‘Fine. Bring John and. . What’s her name?’

  ‘Virginie. No gags, please.’

  ‘I promise. See you then.’

  Virginie turned out to be a tall, elegant Italian girl. . but aren’t they all?. . who spoke good English, although not very often. I couldn’t make up my mind whether she was shy in such a hearty group of Jocks abroad, or just naturally aloof.

  Jonathan thought she was something else: he couldn’t take his eyes off her. As I looked at him, it struck me that I had known someone very similar. About twenty years back, I used to look at him in the mirror every day. I made a mental note to stay as close as I could to my older nephew for the next few years. I’ve been incredibly lucky in my life otherwise I could have turned into a real waster. No way will I let that happen to him.

  John Gash, on the other hand, couldn’t take his eyes off my car. The Lada was sitting in the driveway, still fresh from a total valet job a couple of days before, when the Villa Balearic Three arrived.

  ‘You have to sell it to me, Oz,’ he pleaded as soon as he saw it. Then he took a look at the mileage on the clock. ‘The parts must look practically new,’ he mewled as we stepped into the house through the open French window from the terrace. ‘Worth a dollar fortune in St Petersburg. Tell you what; you give me that and I’ll buy you a brand new Ford Fiesta.’

  I laughed at him until I realised that he was serious. ‘No,’ I told him.

  ‘Okay, then. How about a new Fiat Punto?’

  I laid a hand on his shoulder and looked him earnestly in the eye. ‘John, forget it. I don’t want a new Fiat Punto; I want a used Lada Niva. . and I’ve got one.’

  ‘Please.’ He looked to Shirley. ‘Mum, help; tell him to sell it to me.’

  ‘Sod off,’ she advised him, maternally. ‘You’ll be wanting to buy his wife next.’

  ‘There’s more chance of him selling me than that bloody car,’ Prim muttered, as she handed Shirley a glass of Segura Viudas cava.

  ‘Maybe,’ I conceded, ‘but not to be broken up for spares.’

  15

  The car stayed put in the driveway for quite a while. In some parts of Spain they may take a more relaxed view of drinking and driving than we do in Britain, but Prim and I don’t.

  Once Shirley, John and Virginie had gone, my dad volunteered to drive us all to Meson del Conde for dinner in his rented people-mover. On another night we might have taken torches and walked there and back, but Ellie didn’t trust Colin not to get lost in the dark. Neither did I, for that matter; he hadn’t calmed down quite that much since the dungeon business.

  The wee chap was hyper, like most kids his age on Christmas Eve, all through the meal and all the way back home. Then, just as I thought we’d never get him to bed, he suddenly came over all drowsy. Five minutes later, from sitting in front of the fire peering up the chimney for Santa Claus, he was out like a light and being carted off to bed by his mother.

  ‘That was quick,’ I said to my dad, as Ellie climbed the stairs with her younger son in her arms.

  He tapped the side of his nose with two fingers, gangster style. ‘Let you into a dark secret, son,’ he muttered. ‘See that last Coke I let him have when we got home? I slipped a bit of dark rum into it. . Not enough to make him ill, you understand, but enough to do the job. The Coke masks the taste; that’s why it’s so popular with young boozers. Aye, Santa could come in a fucking helicopter now and it wouldn’t waken the wee fella.’

  ‘Jesus, Dad,’ I hissed back at him, careful not to be overheard by Mary and Prim, who were making last-minute adjustments to the Christmas tree lights, ‘that was a bit extreme, wasn’t it?’

  Mac the Dentist gave me a beatific smile, the one he uses when he bends over you with the high-speed drill in his hand. ‘Maybe so, but it worked with you often enough.’

  I felt my mouth drop open, and snapped my teeth together hard. ‘You what. .? You mean you. .?’

  ‘Aye, often enough. And your sister before you.’

  ‘And did Mum know?’

  His eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead as he looked at me. ‘You must be joking. Ellie’d better not know either, nor Mary, or it’ll be the parson’s nose for me when they carve the turkey tomorrow. You remember it though. You might find that it comes in handy at some time in the future.’

  I filed away another entry in the book of wonders which my dad had written for me all through my life.

  ‘You fancy one yourself?’ I asked him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dark rum and Coke. If it works on Colin, it should work on us.’

  ‘Away and work yourself,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I finished with that stuff a while back, as you well know.’ He paused. ‘However, it is more than time for you to be opening that very fine bottle of Lagavulin that I brought you, all the way from Edinburgh Airport.’

  We settled on that as our nightcap; the ladies turned it down and had a bottle of the Widow Cliquot instead. ‘You know,’ my dad announced, expansively, as we sat staring at what I still thought of occasionally as the Frenchman’s fireplace, ‘in my experience there are no bests, when it comes to Christmases. More than any other it’s a moveable feast. Time moves on, we move on. People grow away, people go away; for the best and the worst reasons there are symbolically empty chairs at the table. You can’t draw comparisons, because of that very fact.

  ‘But every so often, there comes a Christmas which is truly different. This is one of them, one that none of us will ever forget.’ He looked at me, and then at Prim. ‘Thanks, you two, for making it possible; for giving it to us.’

  He was right: it was different. It was the first time in their lives, even counting living in France, that Jonny and Colin had opened their presents outside, in the sunshine. They both slept until nine o’clock; I guessed that my dad must have spiked Jonathan’s drink as well.

  It was the first time that the rest of us had warmed up for Christmas dinner by drinking Singapore Slings round the swimming pool. Also, it was the first time that I had ever hosted a Christmas dinner, anywhere, with anyone. There was someone watching over us, of course; Mary and I felt it more intensely than anyone else, but once, as my dad said grace before the meal, I caught Jonny looking at me. His thoughts were written in his old young eyes, and they touched my heart.

  I used to think that the time spent preparing for Christmas is way out of proportion to the time it actually lasts. Not any more. That was a different day, a special day, for all that my Dad says. Okay, it ended like all others, with the kids. . not just the kids. . watching the big movie on BBC1, but it was still a belter. I knew it for sure when Colin clambered up on me, just before Ellen took him off to bed, and gave me a great big hug. That’s his highest accolade, and it’s better than any award with ‘BE’ on the end.

  Later on, Prim clambered up on me too. ‘Hi,’ I murmured. I had a slight buzz on and so did she. Somewhere in the background I could hear a noise; a rhythmic sound.

  ‘Hi,’ she whispered in reply. ‘I’m still here, you know.’

  For some reason, that turned my head upside down for a couple of seconds. I had to wait for my mind to settle down. ‘What d’you mean?’ I asked at last. That sound was sti
ll in the background, but its beat seemed a little faster.

  ‘I mean that the only words you’ve said to me today. . to me alone, I mean. . have been “Merry Christmas”, and “Thanks” when you opened your present. Is anything wrong, Oz. Is there anything on your mind?’

  I squinted as I looked up at her in the soft light of our bedside lamp. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Her frown line appeared, between her eyes. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t work out where that bloody noise is coming from.’

  The frown vanished, replaced by a grin and then a giggle. ‘You know what Spanish bricks are like,’ she whispered. ‘I’d say that right now your dad is having a better Christmas than you are.’

  I slid beneath the duvet, beneath her, partly to drown out the sound of my father and stepmother’s coupling, and partly to attend to other business. ‘That’ll never do,’ I said out loud but knowing that my voice would be muffled. ‘Not for one minute more.’

  16

  Next day, though, I thought about what Prim had asked me. Something had been eating at me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. It wasn’t her. No, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t still dwelling on her liaison with Ramon Fortunato, subconsciously or otherwise. I’ve become pretty good at compartmentalising my life. In other words, that was then and this is now. There was no way, I told myself, that I was going to blame her for something that happened in the past, and at a time when, honestly, it was none of my bloody business. Honestly.

  Had I something to prove as a result, though? Inside, did I believe that I wouldn’t really be square until I’d given her a kid too? No, I’m more mature than that, and anyway we had agreed before our wedding that we’d have a couple of years as a free and easy couple before we went down the baby route.

  So what was it that had been preoccupying me through Christmas Day?

  It didn’t really take me long to hit on it. I could feel a presence around the place, and I thought I knew whose it was. I’m not talking about the ghost of Sayeed Hassani, or anything melodramatic like that; the only real ghosts are those of people you’ve known and loved. The dead Moroccan was no more than a passing day’s inconvenience.

  No, the guy who was getting to me was Reynard Capulet. There were lots of things about his disappearance that I couldn’t figure out. And right at the top of the list, sat a big question. Had he gone for good? Sure, the fact that he had left a stiff in his swimming pool before his disappearance did not suggest that coming back would be a good idea, and yet. .

  The guy had been paying serious court to Shirley Gash. There is nothing of the airhead about that lady. She’s no romantic and her feet are as solidly on the ground as any I know. Yet whatever had stirred between them had affected her, beyond any doubt; and since Shirley has probably never been taken in by anyone or anything since she found out that the Tooth Fairy was really her father, I had to believe that the attraction was mutual.

  So, with a burgeoning relationship which was clearly heading for the physical, given invitations to Florida and such like, something really cataclysmic must have happened for him to have taken out Sayeed, dumped him in his empty pool and disappeared. He couldn’t have intended to come back. He must have known that selling the house would have triggered off a manhunt, with him as the prey.

  On the other hand, maybe he had believed that everyone would assume that the body was his. Had he come up with a very clever plan not just to fake his own death but to leave an unidentifiable body behind as a convincer?

  After all, the place had been left untended for months before the company, the nominal owner, had instructed the amiable and gullible Sergi to sell the place as it was. By that time, the corpse would have been unidentifiable. And the company was Capulet and his sister. . who had conveniently disappeared herself.

  So what had happened? Had he hatched a plot that would take him away from under the watching eyes of Interpol for good and all, or had he simply killed Sayeed in a quarrel and been forced to leave town fast?

  However I looked at it, I didn’t like it. I had half a mind to put the villa back on the market as soon as the family went back home, but I knew that Prim would have her say about that.

  To take my mind off the puzzle, I decided to take the boys for a run in the Lada. They had never seen the Dali Museum in Figueras. I had a sentimental attachment to the place, and although Colin was a wee bit young, I reckoned that there was enough there to appeal to him.

  I almost bumped into Shirley when I swung the big boat out of the drive, as she drove homeward in her Renault. ‘Just as well you can hear that thing coming,’ she said, as we sat window to window. ‘I knew to leave you a wide berth.

  ‘You two have a good Christmas?’ she asked the boys.

  ‘Yes thanks,’ Jonathan answered, leaning forward in the front passenger seat. ‘Uncle Oz is taking us to see the Dali now.’

  ‘Good for Uncle,’ Shirley laughed.

  ‘Got to be back for six though,’ I told her. ‘Guess what? Bloody turkey again. . curried this time.’

  ‘Better get on your way, then.’ She gave us a quick wave and we were off.

  I was right about the museum. Colin thought it was great, especially the car exhibit. . the one which fills with water. . and the Mae West Room. I kept that back until the end of the tour. ‘Who’s Mae West, Uncle Oz?’ Jonny asked me. His wee brother didn’t care; he just liked looking through the funny glass thing.

  ‘She was a famous movie star in the last century. . for a good chunk of the last century actually.’

  ‘Like you, Uncle Oz?’ Colin shouted. ‘A film star like you?’ There was a queue to view the exhibit; the couple in front turned and gave me a curious, blank look. I thought they were English, till I heard him muttering to her in German.

  I had to laugh. ‘No, wee man; not like me in the slightest. Mae West was a very naughty lady. I’m a very well-behaved man.’

  ‘That’s not what Mum says,’ my younger nephew shot back. ‘She says you were as bad as me when you were my age.’

  That’s loyalty for you, I thought.

  ‘Listen sunshine,’ I told him. ‘Every dodgy thing I ever did, I learned from her. You can tell her that too.

  ‘Come on. It’s time we were heading back to L’Escala.’

  There’s a handy car park less than two minutes from the Dali Museum, an ugly concrete thing, but it’s hidden out of the way. I loaded them back into my Russian off-roader, and pulled out into the narrow, twisty streets which led towards the outskirts of town. The Lada was beginning to pall on me. It handled okay, but its stiff suspension was pretty tough on the back. I had to drive fairly slowly, for I didn’t want Colin bounced around by too many potholes, so we were ten minutes late when we made it back to L’Escala, and turned up into the woodland road which led back to Villa Bernabeu. Darkness was falling fast.

  We had gone fifty yards along, very slowly, for the tarmac is badly buckled in places by big tree roots, when I heard a crack. ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  Jonathan, sitting beside me, looked over his shoulder. . for all the rough ride, Colin was out like a light in his seatbelt, dreaming of Mae West for all I knew. ‘I think the side window’s broken,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Damn it,’ I swore, as we approached the villa. ‘Must have kicked up a stone. The road’s bloody awful here.’

  I turned into the driveway and closed the automatic gate behind me with a remote. Colin was wakened when I stepped out of the car; I could see the woozy look on his face as he stretched in his seat. I could see it clearly through a round hole in the passenger window; that, and something else too.

  In the opposite window, there was an almost identical hole; round, with spidery cracks radiating outward from it.

  ‘There’s one here too,’ Jonny called out, unnecessarily.

  My heart was thumping as I unfastened Colin’s seatbelt. Call me a panic-merchant if you like, but by now, I think I know a bullethole when I see one.

  ‘What happe
ned to the car?’ Prim’s voice came from the terrace, behind me, as I lifted the wee chap out.

  ‘A stone chip, I guess.’ I forced a laugh. ‘It almost looks as if someone took a shot at us,’ I told her, meaning her and the kids to take it as a joke, but I made the mistake of looking into her eyes as I did so.

  I had to tell her the whole story after that, everything Fortunato had told me; that it was Sayeed, not the Frenchman in the pool, and that the bullet which had killed him had come from a gun similar to his.

  ‘Jesus,’ she whispered, looking out of our bedroom window as I finished, down at the moonlight reflected in the pool. ‘So what happened tonight? What happened to the car? You really think that someone took a shot at it?’

  ‘No,’ I answered, truthfully. ‘I think that, maybe, someone took a shot at me. I reckon someone’s seen the car driving around and thought that Capulet was back in town. The windows are smoked glass remember, from any sort of distance it would be difficult to tell who was at the wheel. It could be that our friend didn’t just leave a body behind. It could be that he left an enemy as well.’

  I suppose I should have been shaking in my boots as I finished my story: yet I wasn’t. Neither, from the look of her, was my wife. . although she wasn’t actually wearing boots, but soft leather moccasins. The fact is, since she and I met we’ve been in stickier situations than that; one thing we’ve learned from them is that there’s nothing scary about the past. Once it’s happened, it isn’t dangerous any more.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she asked. ‘Tell Ramon?’

  ‘Probably. I’ll call him later. Before that, I’m going to see John Gash. He wants the Lada; he can have the Lada. The sooner that thing’s in bits, the happier I’ll be.’

  17

  I didn’t keep any secrets from John. No, I told him what I thought had happened, and I said that if he still wanted the bloody car he could have it, on condition that once it was in his mother’s garage, it did not go out again, other than in a large crate. I told him he could stuff the Fiat Punto, though; I settled for two and a half grand cash.