As Easy as Murder

Fourteen

Shirley’s chauffeur-driven lift was coming for her early next morning, so we called it quits around ten thirty, after a stiff coffee for the road. In case you’re wondering, Shirley drank most of the cava and I didn’t finish the Drambuie, so I was okay to drive.

The house was quiet when I climbed the stair from the garage. I looked in on Tom; he was still awake, and reading. He’s a traditionalist in that respect: Susie gave him a Kindle reader for his tenth birthday, but he prefers real books. He had the self-satisfied smile of a winner on his face. ‘Jonny might be a champion golfer,’ he told me, ‘but he’s rubbish at the PGA Tour on X-Box.’

‘What about Uche?’

He shook his head. ‘His thumbs don’t work at all.’

I left him to dream of his triumphs, and went downstairs to the front terrace, to look out on to the square. La Terrassa was still open, and the guys were sitting outside. I went across to join them. Jonny offered me a drink, but I stuck to mineral water, like him, since I didn’t fancy alcohol, and I knew that another coffee would keep me awake.

‘How’s Shirley?’ he asked.

‘Disappointed. Let down. Steaming mad. Mystified. Any one of those, maybe all of them. But she’s not going to brood over it.’ I told him about her cruise plan, then I had to explain to Uche about the crisis, and Patterson’s vanishing act, since Jonny hadn’t mentioned it to him.

‘Perhaps it’s all a charade,’ he suggested. ‘When she gets on board he’ll be waiting for her.’

‘If he is, he’ll walk the plank. You can be sure of that. Shirley doesn’t play silly games, and she doesn’t take prisoners either.’

‘Ouch!’ he chuckled. ‘Remind me to be very polite to the lady when she gets back.’

‘Hey,’ Jonny called out, suddenly, ‘you had a call earlier. Man, English.’

‘Name?’

‘Didn’t leave one. He said he’d tried your mobile, but it was off.’ (True: I didn’t want to be disturbed at Shirley’s, and if Tom had needed me he had the landline.) ‘I asked him if he wanted to leave a message, but he said it wasn’t important.’

‘Journalist, possibly?’ I suggested

‘Don’t think so, he wasn’t pushy.’

‘So not a salesman either. Ah, bugger him. If he’s keen he’ll try again tomorrow.’

The three of us discussed our plans for the next day. I told them about my trip to the winery. The guys were going to Pals in the morning, to practise and for Jonny to confirm his touring pro relationship. His manager had been at work during the evening, negotiating terms on his client’s behalf. He told me what they were: not much money, in the first year at least, but he had pre-emption rights on the practice ground over even the club teaching pro, and he could play the course whenever he liked, with his guests at half price.

I left them to enjoy the prospect of a quiet day, and hit the sack. I slept like a brick, and woke early the next morning, clear-headed and full of enthusiasm, feeling as if I had a hangover in reverse. I wondered about it for a little, then remembered Jonny’s home truth over dinner at Can Roura, about me having withdrawn into my place of safety. The trip to the winery, even though it wasn’t very far, only to the slopes on the far side of the bay, was a step outside, and it was exciting me, without giving me the hang-up that the consulate job had, through the requirement that it involved handing over Tom’s care to someone else.

I chose a business suit for the visit, a lightweight dark number but with a skirt rather than trousers. There’s power dressing and then there’s overpower dressing: I was the absent owner’s sister-in-law, and however enthusiastic the manager had sounded on the phone, I didn’t want him to get the idea that I was there to intimidate him.

As it turned out, I couldn’t have even if I’d been so inclined. The boss man, whose name was Manolo Blazquez, would not have been intimidated by Attila the Hun. He was the manager by title, but he had owned the company before selling it in the hope of extra investment, and of access to new markets. He was also its principal oenologist, its production director, one of the most respected in all of Spain.

Miles had tied him into a five-year earn-out, with the final price related to performance. They had spent the first eighteen months or so getting to know each other. One thing my brother-in-law had learned about Manolo was that he was a better wine-maker than he was a manager, but he didn’t want to take the risk of antagonising the heart and soul of his investment by parachuting in some guy with an MBA and an attitude. That’s why he had asked me to take on the role. ‘You’ll be a director,’ he’d told me, ‘but I don’t want you to direct. Support, suggest, cajole where necessary, but don’t give him the impression that he’s no longer the man in charge on the ground. This is a three-generation family business, and he’s proud of it.’

He was indeed. The former owner of Bodega Blazquez was a stocky man in his fifties with hair that was more pepper than salt, and with wine in his blood. He had an eye for the ladies as well, I could tell, but he had the good sense to keep it hooded as he welcomed me to his oak-furnished office, in a stone building that had once been a farmhouse. In fact, his father had been born there, as he told me during a quick lecture on the foundation and evolution of the business. The tour he gave me showed that it had grown indeed, into something pretty substantial, with factory sheds that were less than twenty years old, and modern equipment, some of which had been bought with new money injected into the business by Miles.

‘At this moment,’ he told me, when it was over and we were lunching in the boardroom, ‘I sell pretty much one hundred per cent of my annual production as soon as it is confirmed. Most goes to our major wholesaler in Emporda, but I hold some back for direct sales to the public and to supply local specialists like your friend Ben Simmers. Often, though, I sell whole vintages years ahead of their maturity date, to hotel groups across Spain. However, I believe that our quality is such that we can double our sales and our profits by tapping into new foreign markets, through Mr Grayson’s connection with the business.’

‘That’ll mean doubling your production, won’t it? Is there spare capacity in this site?’

‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but I have plans. They will involve more investment, and the purchase or leasing of more land so that we can increase our capability. I have mentioned this to Mr Grayson, and he has told me to put it before you.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Not now,’ he replied, ‘not today. I would like to put formal proposals to you and to Mr Bravo.’ He was another guy I had still to meet; he was at sub-board level in the bank that represented Miles in Spain. ‘What I would like to do, Mrs Blackstone, is to have meetings with you every fortnight, either here, or I will come to you in St Martí.’

‘Here will be fine,’ I declared, ‘unless I can’t make it across for any reason; if my son were to need me, for example.’

‘Very good. In that case I will make my presentation to you and to Mr Bravo in two weeks’ time.’

I thought over what he had told me on the drive back to St Martí. Blazquez had, it seemed to me, something of the entrepreneur in him, but he didn’t strike me as being a gambler. His insistence on having the finance guy sit in on our meeting struck me as prudent. He had plenty to gain by increasing profit, but as much to lose by under-performing. Bravo’s role would be that of a risk assessor, as well as a banker.

I was still pumped up by the meeting when I put the car away and climbed up and into the house. It was three thirty and the place was empty; that didn’t surprise me, since Jonny had warned me that he and Uche were likely to spend all day at Pals, on the range and in the small gym that the club’s owners had just installed.

I fed and watered Charlie, priority number one, then took a bottle of water from the fridge and strolled out on to the front terrace, my mind still full of product ranges, output volumes, margins and so on. I wasn’t thinking of anything else as I glanced down into the square, and so it took me a while to realise that someone, a lean, grey-haired man, was waving at me from a table in front of Esculapi.

I did a triple take. On first glance I thought, vaguely familiar, on second, no, it can’t be, and on the third time of asking myself, Jesus Christ, it is!

‘Mark,’ I shouted. ‘Wait there!’ I left the water bottle on the table, ran downstairs and out through the front gate. Charlie decided that he was coming too and I didn’t have time to argue, so the pair of us crossed the square to where he was sitting.

He smiled and glanced at the bouncing Labrador as I took a seat. ‘Faithful hound, huh?’

I looked for the elbow crutches that he’d used the last time we’d been together, but I saw only a stick. Knowing him, I reckoned it probably had a sword in it ‘That’s him, but what the. . Mark, what are you doing here? How did you get here?’

‘Eurostar to Paris, then TGV to Perpignan, and finally by hire car down here. My consultant in London isn’t keen on me flying. The remission is stable for now, but we don’t know enough about the new drug regime to be certain of its reaction to air travel.’

‘There are worse ways to travel than French trains,’ I said. ‘But what about my first question? Why are you here?’

His MS has affected his facial expressions; the muscles seem to work more slowly than those of a well person. He became sombre, in stages, as if he was taking off one mask and putting on another.

‘It’s necessary,’ he replied. ‘I was asked to come. Those people you asked me to find, the soldier surgeon and her sister, the daughters of your mate’s missing boyfriend. I traced them, no problem, but when I did I rang alarm bells like you would not believe. You are into something, Primavera, that nobody wanted stirred up. Now it has been, I’ve been engaged, retained, to get all the bees back into the hive.’

‘What do you mean, retained? And why you?’

‘By whom? Her Majesty’s Government, and others, including Interpol. Why me? Because it’s what I do. I call myself a security consultant, as you know. That has a multitude of meanings and connotations, but among them. . I’m a freelance. My background is military intelligence and the security service. I haven’t been in the field for years, since way before the MS thing developed, but in this case, I’ve been asked to come out here, first to put you right about a few things, then to go on from there, as far as I need to. All of them revolve around your friend’s absconded partner.’

‘Patterson Cowling?’

He looked around, checking that there was nobody else in earshot: early summer Tuesdays are quiet in St Martí, so there wasn’t. ‘That’s the guy,’ he murmured.

‘The retired spook.’

‘That’s your assumption,’ he said, ‘but you’re wrong; about this man at any rate. Patterson Cowling was a specialist in pro-Palestinian groups in the Middle East. He was MI6, but he was an analyst, never had a foreign posting, and worked anonymously at Vauxhall Cross, the HQ building in London. He did indeed have two daughters, Major Fleur Cowling and Ivy Cowling, now Mrs Victor Benson. I called my Ministry of Defence contact yesterday and asked where Fleur was based. Reasonably enough she wanted to know why I wanted to find her so I told her that something had come up involving her father. An hour later, no more, I had a home visit from two guys, a detective chief superintendent and a DI. We had a bit of ritual dancing, but they’d been briefed on my status, and on your earlier approach to your mate Dale, so all they wanted to do was tie the two of us together. Once they understood the background, they were able to open up to me.’

My mouth felt dry, possibly because it was hanging open slightly. I mouthed the words, ‘Agua con gas’. . fizzy water, in English. . to the tall waiter standing in the doorway. He understood and nodded.

‘Open up about what?’ I demanded. ‘If Patterson isn’t, or wasn’t, a spook, then what the hell is he and why is everyone so excited about him?’

‘For a start,’ he began, pausing as Antonio placed a bottle and a glass on our table, then beneath it a bowl of water for Charlie, ‘he isn’t even Patterson. The real Mr Cowling died from viral meningitis over a year ago. The man you met went, until recently, by the name of Robert Palmer.’

‘Then I have to let Alex know that,’ I declared.

‘Who’s Alex?’

‘He’s a friend of mine. He’s a cop and he’s looking for Patterson, Robert, or whoever the hell he is today.’

‘You can’t tell him,’ Mark said firmly. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

‘But I must; he’s involved in a double murder investigation, and he is the guy in the firing line if it isn’t cleared up.’

‘Then maybe I can help him, but not directly. This has to stay with us, Primavera, for the moment.’

I took a drink. ‘Tell me why,’ I said quietly.

‘The two guys who came to see me; they’re attached to the Central Witness Bureau. It’s a unit that supports and co-ordinates the work of witness protection units up and down the country. Robert Palmer is one of their clients.’

It took me some time to absorb that new twist in the tale. When I’d analysed the information in my head, I asked, ‘What’s his story? Can you even tell me, since you want to keep it from the Spanish police?’

‘I can tell you, but, at this stage, you alone. I’ve been hired by the Bureau to come out here, investigate and do what’s necessary to maintain Palmer’s cover, but I’ve been given very limited discretion to recruit local help as I need it. That’s you, Primavera. You did sign the Official Secrets Act when you took that consulate job, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s fine; it binds you for life.’ The advice was unnecessary. I’d already been reminded of that fact, fairly recently. ‘In the beginning,’ he continued, ‘Robert Palmer was a business executive. He was sales and distribution manager for a large pharmaceutical firm, until he was well into his forties. Then he had an idea; he turned entrepreneur. He started his own drug company, UK registered, but with its factory in Bulgaria, thanks to very generous start-up grants in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and he developed markets all around the world. At first his products weren’t very sexy: aspirin, ibuprofen, antacid tablets and liquids, free market stuff, all nice earners enough to get him established and known. However, after a couple of years he moved on to what had been his real intention; he stepped across certain lines. He began to copy other products, the kind that were covered by international patents, and sold them out of Bulgaria, through a second company he’d set up there, into areas of the world where regulation and copyright enforcement is lax or non-existent.’ He paused. ‘With me so far?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, he’s a crook.’

‘Mmm. Not really, not at that stage. But. . this new activity brought him to the attention of someone he hadn’t anticipated; someone who very definitely was a crook. He was made an offer which he decided he couldn’t refuse. He expanded his facility in Bulgaria and began producing recreational drugs, some legal in certain markets, but others outlawed everywhere, of which ecstasy was the most common. Once he was set on that road, he couldn’t get off.’

‘But he was a willing partner?’

‘He had a few million reasons to be willing,’ Mark said. ‘The new activity was also successful. The products were high quality. Palmer was never involved in distribution; his associate handled that side of it and his network must have been good, because nothing illegal or even dubious was ever traced back to Bulgaria.’

He smiled. ‘Now we get to the really interesting part. About three years ago, his new partner encouraged, or coerced, if you believe him, to move on from there. He told him that he’d found a remarkable young chemist who had developed a new way of synthesising human growth hormone that made its use absolutely undetectable by anti-doping agencies, and therefore, you can imagine, of enormous commercial value. Palmer started production immediately. The stuff was a huge success; he couldn’t make enough of it.’

‘Where did it go?’

‘Interpol guessed that it was sold globally, but even now, they don’t know for sure.’

‘But is the stuff illegal?’ A reasonable question, I reckoned. ‘It might be outlawed in sports, but is it against the law?’

‘Its manufacture isn’t; there are recognised HGH brand names. However Palmer’s product isn’t licensed anywhere in the world, and if it was its sale would be controlled, for sure. Off-prescription sale of HGH gets you five years in federal prison and a quarter-million dollar fine in the US. Carry it undeclared internationally in your luggage, and you’ll wind up in the slammer in many countries. Whatever, the stuff that Palmer’s factory produced was a black market drug, and because of its unique property, it would never have been licensed.’

‘But he got away with it for a while?’

‘Yes,’ Mark conceded, ‘because he was based in Bulgaria, and because it was all under the radar. He was only detected, and the product was only discovered, because one of his Bulgarian managers swiped some of the HGH, took it across the border and sold it to the coach of a Greek football team, who, as luck had it, was under police surveillance as a suspected doper. Honest to God, the stuff was so good and so effective, that nobody even knew it existed until then.’ He paused. ‘The smuggler thief talked his head off, and the thing became an Interpol investigation, Greece and Bulgaria both being members. The trail led straight to Robert Palmer. He was arrested in Hove, where he lived. . alone, by the way: he didn’t have a wife, let alone two daughters.’

‘What about the genius chemist?’

Mark smiled. ‘Ah, he got out from under. The Bulgarian factory was raided, and the production of the stuff was shut down, but he was long gone. There had been a tip, a leak from the Interpol office in Sofia. The only people they found were production staff who thought they were making multivitamin pills and phials, not ecstasy and HGH. In fact the chemist was never there. The production process was set up on the basis of written instructions to the local staff. Nobody ever saw him; they still don’t know who he is.’

‘And Palmer?’

‘When he saw that he was in deep trouble, he started to bargain. He claimed not to know anything about the distribution network, but he was able to tell Interpol that the business had gone transatlantic by that time and that the growth product was being sold in volume into the USA, across several sports, from college level up. You can imagine how excited that made the American Drug Enforcement Agency.’

I nodded; having lived there for a while, I surely could.

‘They weighed into the investigation, heavily. However, Palmer was able to persuade them that he was just the producer. . he wasn’t doing anything against Bulgarian law, but small details like that don’t deter the DEA. . and that the big prize was his partner, whose interests, he said, stretched into Central and South America, and included major money laundering for drug cartels, plus other stuff. Palmer said that this man had a network of distributors and informants across the western world. He said that he himself hadn’t been worried about being nailed in Bulgaria because several government officials, police officers, and a key Interpol agent had been on the guy’s payroll. This was borne out, of course, by the leak before the raid.’

He took a sip of water, before continuing. ‘Palmer was lawyered up by this time. His brief proposed a deal; he said that Palmer would name the partner and testify against him, in return for immunity from prosecution. . the ecstasy and sodium oxybate, the date rape drug also known as GHB, were his Achilles heel, as it turned out. . protection and a new identity when it was all over. There was a conference in Lyon, at Interpol headquarters, and not least because of American insistence, that deal was done, and signed off, all legal and unbreakable.’

I sensed that Mark was tiring; he’d had a hell of a journey. ‘Do you want to take a break?’ I asked him.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I must finish this. After that, Palmer was installed in a safe house in East Anglia, and given two handlers, one American, a DEA agent called Beau Lucas, and one Brit, a senior secondee to Interpol from the Met, called Graham Metcalfe. The whole thing was kept desperately secret, for there was one thing still to do. For any prosecution to succeed, the investigators needed a second witness, and Palmer would not reveal his partner’s name until that person was secured.’

‘Did he have somebody in mind?’

‘Oh yes. He told his interrogators, after his arrest, while he negotiated his deal, that there was one person and one person alone who could help bring his partner down, but that the only way to reach him was for Palmer to make contact and set up a meeting. That he would do after the deal was signed; nothing before, not a word.’

‘And they bought that?’

‘Of course they did,’ he laughed. ‘The Americans were bricking it. The HGH chemist was still out there. There was nothing to stop Palmer’s buddy setting him up in business somewhere else, and putting the integrity of global sport at risk.’

‘The Stars and Stripes rule, okay,’ I murmured. Ever the cynic. ‘What happened next?’

‘From the safe house, Palmer made the contact; in confidence. His handlers weren’t involved in it.’

‘How did he manage that?’

‘Through Facebook, would you believe. They used fake identities to communicate. When it was sorted he told Lucas and Metcalfe that a meeting had been arranged. The three of them would fly to Malaga and go to a hotel called the Silken Puerta; the witness would be waiting in room 106, which they would have booked in Palmer’s name.’

‘And was he?’

‘We’ll probably never know, not for sure. The handlers wouldn’t go along with all of Palmer’s arrangement. They explained to him there’s a reason for calling a place a safe house. They insisted that only one person would go to bring the witness in, because that’s all it would need, and it wouldn’t be Palmer. In fact, Graham Metcalfe assumed it would be him, but Lucas pulled agency rank and went.’ He drew a deep breath and I sensed tension in him. ‘It was kept so tight that they didn’t tell anyone outside the loop, not the Spanish bureau of Interpol, not the Guardia Civil, not the local cops, nobody. If they had. .’

‘What?’

‘Beau Lucas might still be alive. They might have cracked the whole operation. But they didn’t. They kept it undercover. Lucas was supposed to call Metcalfe at a certain time, to confirm that contact had been made and they were heading home. He didn’t, but that didn’t set the alarm bells ringing, not right away. In fact nothing did, until a chambermaid let herself into the room, and found what was left of the guy. He’d been shot, close range, with a sawn-off. The room was covered in feathers; turn up the sound on a telly,’ he said, ‘and a pillow makes a pretty effective silencer.’

‘Let me guess,’ I ventured. ‘His face was blown off.’

Mark stared at me. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

‘Lucky guess. You finish yours, then I’ll tell you mine.’

‘It was as you said. There was nothing left to identify the body, nothing at all; his wallet, watch, clothes, face, were all gone. So they assumed that he was Mr Palmer, the man who’d booked the room. They’d have gone on thinking that if Graham Metcalfe hadn’t called the Guardia after the third missed checkin call, to ask if anything had occurred at the Silken Puerta.’

‘What about the witness? Was he killed too?’

‘Almost certainly, but Lucas was the only body found in that room. Dead American, though, so you can imagine the fall-out from that. The DEA shoved Interpol and everyone else aside. They closed the hotel and put their own CSI team in there, everyone but Gil fucking Grissom, but maybe him too. They analysed everything; practically tested the feathers for fingerprints. After three days, they established that there were two different blood types in the room.’

‘The previous guest cut himself shaving?’ I suggested, wryly.

‘If he did, it was deep enough for it to spray on the wall. They searched the entire hotel after that, inch by inch, item by item, until they found a laundry trolley with blood smears inside, matching the others in the room. So the witness was killed there, it seems, but the body was taken away. Next question. Why take the risk?’

That was a no-brainer even for me. ‘Whoever did or ordered the killing couldn’t afford to leave it behind; that would have been a bigger risk. Defacing. . literally. . Lucas was a delaying tactic, or maybe no more than the killer’s trademark. Eventually, he’d have been identified, even if Metcalfe hadn’t blown the whistle straight away. But no way could the other body have been left, because it would have led investigators straight to the target: identification couldn’t have been ruled out.’ I paused as I saw the flaw in my thesis. ‘But no, Palmer knew, knows, who the witness was.’

‘That’s right. And Palmer wasn’t, isn’t, saying anything. He refused to accept the certainty of his contact’s death. He saw Lucas’s killing as a warning to him to stay silent. He may well be right too.’

‘And Interpol? How do they see it? They can’t be happy about Palmer’s silence.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Primavera. Without that second witness, Palmer’s testimony would be worthless. Sure, they’re desperate to know who his partner is, but the deal he was given was legally drawn up and witnessed, and it wasn’t contingent on him naming him, something he’s consistently refused to do without the guarantee of him being taken out of play, permanently.’

‘Couldn’t that be arranged?’

‘Hah! Are you suggesting that the Americans might take direct action? No; another US administration might have, but this one doesn’t seem to have the balls for that sort of thing. Anyway, too many other nations are in the know. Instead, Uncle Sam’s gone home to watch his own back yard and Robert Palmer’s been dropped into the witness protection programme. Patterson Cowling died at exactly the right time. Because of the career he’d followed, he was a non-person. With the cooperation of MI6, the Home Office and the Justice Ministry, the Met witness unit took over his identity, and gave it to Palmer.’

‘Why?’ I asked; something in me was offended that the original Mr Cowling hadn’t been allowed to stay dead.

‘Simple,’ Mark replied, bluntly. ‘Because it was a hell of a lot easier than creating a new one. He stayed in the safe house for a while, getting used to his new self, then they turned him loose to get on with his life. Graham Metcalfe transferred from Interpol to the Central Witness Bureau as his handler, to keep an eye on him, just in case at some time in the future a new witness turns up, and Palmer can be pulled in to earn his freedom properly. Metcalfe was one of the two guys who visited me yesterday morning, by the way.’

‘Do the Cowling daughters know about this?’

‘Yes. They had to be told. But they have no idea who Palmer was or where he is.’

‘Did they give him a new face as well?’

‘No, they just fattened him up and gave him a different hair colour, and contact lenses that make his eyes blue instead of the distinctive brown they were.’

‘I see.’ I frowned. ‘So someone who’d known him before, and saw him again, might think they recognised him, but couldn’t be sure?

‘I suppose. Why?’

‘That’s part of my story,’ I said, then checked my watch and saw that it had just gone five. ‘But first things first; any minute now. .’

Right on cue, a brown figure crested the hill on his bike, skidded to a halt at our front gate and jumped off. ‘Hey,’ I called to him. So did Charlie, in his own way, and ran to greet him.

Tom came across to join us, his face a-glisten with a light sheen of perspiration. There’s a speed limit on the cycleway from L’Escala to St Martí, but it means nothing to him, unless it’s busy, in which event he keeps it more or less in sight. ‘Hello, Mr Kravitz,’ he exclaimed, forestalling an unnecessary introduction. I’d forgotten that they’d met, in London, three years before.

They shook hands, like adults, and he dropped into a chair. Our visitor said nothing at first; he just gazed, that was all. When he did speak, it wasn’t the usual platitudes about being big for his age, or looking like his father, or like me, both being the case; no, it was a question. ‘What do you want to be, Tom?’

‘Mum’s always asking me that,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mark told him. ‘Neither did your dad, until the day he died.’

I cut into the exchange. ‘Are you taking Charlie for a run as usual?’ I asked him.

He nodded, then jumped up. ‘Yes. Come on, boy. Where’s Jonny, by the way?’

‘Still at work, I suppose; him and Uche both.’

‘He didn’t even ask why I’m here,’ Mark observed, as he watched him remount his bike.

‘That’s like his father too,’ I said. ‘Oz was curious about everything, but often he kept it to himself.’

‘Or hired people like me to satisfy it for him.’

‘True, but Tom doesn’t have that luxury. When he gets round to it, he’ll ask me about you, and he knows that I’ll tell him. No secrets in our house.’

‘None?’

Sharp question; Kravitz had helped me out of some difficulty I’d got into a few years earlier, involving my cousin Frank. I’d never told Tom about that; he’d been too young, and for some of the detail, he always will be. ‘None that involve him,’ I retorted.

‘Ready to spill this story to me?’

He caught me off guard; my mind was still somewhere else, in Shirley Gash’s swimming pool, three years before, as it happened. ‘Pardon?’

‘Your story?’

Back to the present crisis. ‘Yes, sorry. How did I guess that Beau Lucas had his face blown off, you ask? Because that’s what seems to happen when your Mr Palmer’s involved.’ I gave him a rundown of everything that had happened in the eight days gone by, from Patterson Cowling’s introduction as Shirley’s new partner, to the attempted theft a few metres from where we were sitting at that very moment, and the dramatic incidents that had followed, leading to Patterson’s disappearance, and to his unveiling as Robert Palmer as was.

‘That’s why I asked if his appearance had been changed. It seems to me that somebody might have-’

‘Yes,’ Mark picked up, ‘might have thought he recognised him, but not been sure, so he sent in people to try to find out. Has the first victim been identified yet?’

‘No. The police aren’t even close.’

‘But it’s only the police who are looking? The Catalan people, these Mossos d’Esquadra?’

‘Yes.’

‘What have they got to go on?’

‘Blood group, DNA and a photograph taken on a mobile phone. That was published in the local papers and shown on television. Not a whisper of a reaction, from what I hear from Alex, other than a couple of women who hoped it might be their missing husbands.’

‘Then Graham Metcalfe and his DI, Harry Ferguson, need to get hold of it. The search should be at a different level. What about the woman, McGuigan? What’s known about her?’

I tried to recall as much as I could of what Alex had told me. ‘She worked in Ireland until a little over a year ago, as a TV sports reporter, legit, union member and everything. Then she dropped out of sight, and showed up in Spain, calling herself Christy Mann and scratching a living feeding video to shit websites and celeb photos to any tabloids that would buy them.’

Mark smiled. ‘Sports reporter,’ he repeated. ‘And she relocated in a hurry at the very time Palmer’s Bulgarian factory was busted. As I said, we know nothing about the distribution network for the HGH, but it was global, Palmer said, and those two facts about Miss McGuigan would fit, if she was part of it.’

‘Might he have known her?’

‘Not according to him. He’s always insisted that he just made the stuff, and that the only two people he knew on his partner’s team were the man himself and the witness.’

‘What about the genius chemist?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t he know him?’

‘He said he wasn’t allowed to meet him. This was a very secure operation, Primavera, so that makes sense. Just as it makes sense that McGuigan was involved in distribution in Ireland; a woman with contacts and freedom of movement across the world of sport.’

‘Too right it’s secure,’ I pointed out. ‘These two people were sent in to try to identify Palmer. They failed and, not only that, they drew attention to themselves in the process. Now they’re both dead; no chances taken.’

‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘It’s no wonder the man ran. He put his trust in Metcalfe and in Ferguson, believing that they’d given him the sort of new identity that couldn’t draw attention. . and they had; a dead intelligence officer, for God’s sake. . only to find himself in more danger than ever.’

‘And maybe not just him,’ I whispered, as I considered the caution of the man who was after Palmer, and his ruthlessness in closing down any potential threat. ‘If Patterson’s mate even suspects that he might have told Shirley about him. .’ I whistled. ‘Going on a cruise is the smartest thing she could have done. Mark, did Metcalfe and his boss know about her, and their relationship?’

‘Of course they did. The Central Witness Bureau actively encouraged it. The reasoning was that he’d be even safer as part of a couple of obscure nobodies with a nice quiet backwater lifestyle. After Palmer picked your friend from all the lovelies on the website they vetted her before they let him make the approach. Don’t worry about her. She’ll be regarded as under protection, just as much as he is, probably even more so, since she’s completely innocent. On a cruise, you say? Give me the details: I’ll tell the minders where she is and she’ll be looked after discreetly wherever she is.’

‘For how long?’ I exclaimed. ‘For ever? This isn’t just about your employers bringing Palmer back inside the safety net. They’ve got to find this partner of his and deal with him, through the courts or otherwise.’

‘Agreed, but that dictates we have to find Palmer first, and find him alive. When we do, I’m sure he’ll realise that the rules have changed, and that he has no option but to help us nail the guy. But if we don’t, if the other side get to him and kill him, the threat to Shirley won’t go away.’

‘Then shouldn’t we go to Alex Guinart? His interests are the same as ours. He has two murders to solve, and we’re both heading in the same direction. He’s looking for Palmer too, if only as a witness. We’re all after the same man.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I have a pretty broad remit from my clients, but one thing I’ve been specifically forbidden to do is involve local law enforcement. This thing is out of control because of systemic corruption. Robert Palmer’s partner had a paid informer within Interpol, for Christ’s sake. If he could penetrate them, he could have sources within any police force. If I contact your friend, he could find out about me. And through me, you’d be brought into the web.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re saying that by telling me all this you’ve put me at risk?’

‘No, my dear, you did that yourself when you started asking questions about the man. If I’d let you carry on stumbling around in the dark, you might well have walked into the path of a shotgun and wound up with half your head missing.’

I wasn’t so sure about that: I’d only wanted to kick Patterson Cowling’s arse on my friend’s behalf. I’d had no interest in Robert Palmer, or in undetectable performance-enhancing drugs, or even in dead DEA agents. But there was no point arguing, not then anyway. The game was afoot and I was in it.

‘Well,’ I persisted, ‘if you’re not going to link up with the best cop I know in these parts, what are you going to do next?’

‘I’m going to report back to Graham Metcalfe, who’s controlling me on behalf of all the agencies involved, his own, Interpol and the DEA, and fill him in on what’s been going on here. He’ll investigate Christine McGuigan’s past in Ireland; he’ll look into her known contacts, bank statements, phone records, everything that’s traceable. He’ll also get hold of that photograph of the first victim and try to identify him.’

‘How will that help?’

‘We’ll know that if it does. Alongside that, though, he’ll pull in all the resources at his disposal and do a very big computer job. He’ll look at flight records and hotel bookings in Malaga on the day of Beau Lucas’s murder and then we’ll do the same for this area, over the last couple of weeks, and find out how many names pop up twice.’

I nodded. It made sense. And then I thought of something that made even more. ‘Perhaps you can narrow it down a little,’ I suggested.

‘How?’

‘Where was Robert Palmer when he took off?’ I asked. ‘He was at the golf tournament. And consider this: he didn’t leave home that morning planning on doing a runner, because he left his passport on Shirley’s dressing table. So, instead of looking for one person in a whole region, why not establish who was at the Catalan Masters, all of them if that’s what it takes, even spectators who paid their entry money by credit card, then see which of them was in Malaga?’

Mark’s facial mask seemed to stretch as he beamed. ‘Your old man would have been proud of you,’ he said.