As Easy as Murder

Nine

Was he ever right about that!

It began well enough; when I went down to the kitchen, still half asleep, I found breakfast on the table and tea in the pot. Jonny had gone, but Tom had got things moving as soon as he heard me moving about.

I’d done some pondering, as I showered, over whether or not I should tell him about Christine McGuigan and her interest in him. Finally I decided that if he was old enough to bake croissants from dough better than I can, he could handle that too, so I did.

His instant reaction? He laughed. ‘Why would anyone want to take pictures of me? I’m not important.’

‘To some people you might be,’ I explained. ‘Because of what he did in films, your dad had a lot of admirers. People loved him and want to know everything there is to know about him. And that means they want to know about you, and Janet and wee Jonathan. You know Conrad, the man who works for Susie Mum in Monaco?’

‘Yes, of course I do. Conrad was Dad’s assistant; I remember.’

Indeed, he’d been a lot more than that. ‘Yes, that’s right. Well now he does the same for Susie Mum, and part of his job is to protect the kids’ privacy, and make sure they can grow up without being pestered by well-meaning fans, or by journalists who see them as a means of making money. That’s what this woman is; she’s one of those. We don’t have a Conrad to look after you; I’ve always done that myself. Now you have to help me.’ I described McGuigan, as best I could. ‘If you notice anyone like her around in the next day or so, taking pictures of you, I want you to tell me. If I’m not there, suppose you see someone when you’re at school, tell a teacher. If it happens when you’re on the beach, at Vaive, say, tell Philippe or Teresa or anyone else you know.’

‘What if she tries to speak to me and you’re not around?’

‘Ignore her and walk straight home.’

‘What if she tries to stop me?’

I frowned, worried that I might be alarming him. ‘Tom, don’t be scared by this. She’s not out to harm you; I don’t believe that.’

‘I’m not scared, Mum. Is she bigger than you?’

‘No. A little bit smaller. She’s not that much bigger than you are.’

An eyebrow rose. ‘Did she scare you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I snorted. ‘I’m careful about you, that’s all. I won’t have her or anyone else drawing attention to you, selling pictures to the press or posting them online.’

‘Like you won’t let me go on Facebook or on Myspace or on Twitter.’

‘Exactly. Same reason. Your privacy’s important, Tom.’

‘Then don’t worry, Mum. If she did try to stop me I wouldn’t let her.’ He chuckled. ‘Neither would Charlie.’ He had a point there; Charlie might be a big oaf, but he’s Tom’s big oaf. If he turned serious, most people would pause for a moment of reflection. ‘When are we going to the golf course?’ he continued, dismissing Christine McGuigan from his thoughts.

‘In time to see Jonny start his round.’

‘Can we go sooner? He said I could watch him practise.’

And that’s what we did. When we got to the range, just after eleven thirty, he was already there, just starting his practice routine. I had intended not to disturb him and go straight up to the viewing stand, but he spotted us and waved us across. Tom hadn’t met Uche, so Jonny introduced them.

‘Honoured, young sir,’ the caddie said, at his most princely as they shook hands. ‘The boss tells me you’re a whizz on a sailboard,’ he went on. ‘I’ve tried it; I’m not. Sometimes on the golf course I can walk on water, but I can’t float on it. I just sink.’

Tom frowned, wrinkling his nose. ‘I float well enough,’ he said, ‘and I swim pretty well too, but I always wear a life jacket on my board.’

Jonny laughed. ‘Uche would need at least two of those,’ he said. ‘He can swim, but like he says, only in one direction, straight down.’

As he spoke, Lena Mankell arrived, and the atmosphere changed, as if a cold wind had blown down from Sweden. Again Jonny introduced us. She acknowledged us, politely, and then ignored us completely. In other circumstances, I might have taken that badly, but we were in her workplace, so I didn’t interpret it as rudeness, only professionalism. I left them to it and headed for the stand. I was going to take Tom with me, but Uche asked him to stay. ‘You can be our runner,’ he said. ‘Fetch more balls when we need them. Otherwise that’s my job.’

So he stayed with them on the range, he watched and he ran, whenever it was necessary. To his disappointment, though, he couldn’t go inside the ropes when the round started. He had to stay in the crowd with me. Luckily, it wasn’t vast; the main galleries were with the leading twosome, and with an all-Spanish pairing a couple of groups further back. Plus Jonny’s playing partner was Thai, and there weren’t a lot of them around to follow him. Because of that we saw every stroke, all sixty-eight of them, for Jonny shot another four under par round, taking him to fifteen under par for the tournament, still two shots behind the Irish kid in the lead but alone in second place. As soon as the last putt had dropped and I was able to switch on my phone, I found a voice message from Ellie asking me to call her back.

‘How’s he doing?’ she demanded, as soon as I did. ‘I won’t be able to speak to him for another hour at least.’

‘I haven’t spoken to him myself yet.’ I’d stayed clear of him as he left the eighteenth green, just in case Christine McGuigan was lurking somewhere, in disguise. ‘But I did bump into Lena Mankell and she was smiling. Trust me, you can take that as a positive.’

‘He’s not getting too excited, is he?’

‘Ellie, on an excitement scale of ten, I’d say he was just short of three. He’s not going to choke tomorrow, I promise you. Tom was on the range with him this morning, acting as Uche’s gofer; he says nobody else has got a chance.’

She laughed. ‘Good lad; but what do you say?’

‘You know what golf’s like. Nothing’s certain until all the scores are recorded, and the boy in the lead is a terrific player. But whether Jonny wins or not I’m sure he’s going to do what he really came here to do and that’s make a lot of money. He says that third place here would be enough to get him his tour card for next year. . but that’s not to say he’s thinking of finishing third.’

I thought I heard a stifled sob on the other end of the line. ‘To be honest,’ Ellie admitted, ‘he’s done better already than I thought he would. I mean, he’s just my wee boy. Remember him when you first met him? As wild as the purple heather, he was. He’s calmed down a lot, but I still see him that way. Is he sleeping all right?’

‘That is something I would not know for sure,’ I reminded her. ‘But he’s eating well. I had a look in his bag on the range. Uche had more bananas in there than Tesco’s fruit counter.’

‘That Uche!’ She let out a cracked chuckle. ‘He’s some boy. Maybe I’ll get to meet his dad, one day, the aristocrat. If the son’s anything to go by, he must be an interesting bloke.’

I’ve never known a Saturday evening like the one that followed. Jonny was so laid-back when he arrived home that I reckoned I’d placed him a point too high on that excitement scale. So was Tom; he could see only one outcome, so it didn’t occur to him to be any more worried about the final round than he had been about the first three. No, it was me who was strung out.

I’d started putting a meal together, but only succeeded in slicing my finger instead of an onion. Jonny walked in on me as I was stopping the bleeding with a piece of kitchen roll. ‘Auntie P,’ he declared, ‘I don’t know what sort of sauce you were planning to make, but I don’t fancy it. Anyway, you’ve cooked enough this week; I’m taking us all out.’

‘You haven’t won anything yet,’ I pointed out.

‘My credit card doesn’t know that. Go on now; get dolled up.’

‘Must I? I feel like jeans and a T-shirt.’

‘Fine.’ He smiled. ‘Whatever makes you comfortable.’

In the end I settled for shorts and a check shirt, but with enough cleavage showing to make me feel, and I hope look, a little less like a middle-aged woman out with her two boys. Jonny let me choose where we’d eat; I surprised him by directing us out of St Martí, to Mike’s, a simple German-owned waterside restaurant in L’Escala, where the menu never changes but is one hundred per cent reliable, and where they give you as many chips as you want. In Tom’s case, that’s usually a lot. In my nephew’s too, as it turned out; he had a massive salad, followed by a schnitzel, then he and Tom each demolished the biggest, gaudiest ice cream on the list.

I left the talking to the lads. To my surprise much of it was about education. Tom was curious to know about schools in Scotland. (The obvious fact that he could have asked me, but hadn’t, made me suppose that he thought I was too old to remember.) He was even more interested in Arizona, and the academic courses offered to promising athletes. . not only golfers, for American colleges take most sport seriously. Jonny talked him through the lot. ‘They don’t do surfing, I’m afraid,’ he said as he finished.

I had to laugh. ‘Yes, sorry, Tom, you can’t do surfing at university,’ I told him.

He shot me down. ‘You can, Mum. I’ve looked it up online. You can do a degree at Plymouth, in England.’

‘You’re kidding,’ I gasped.

‘I’m not,’ he insisted. ‘And you can do them in California. Isn’t that right, Jonny?’

His cousin nodded agreement. ‘Sorry, Auntie P, but it is. There are one or two.’

‘Jesus,’ I laughed. ‘What next? Bungee-jumping?’

We didn’t stay out late. As before, Jonny had to be up with the seagulls. . you’ll struggle to find a lark in St Martí, but those noisy bastards are omnipresent. . to meet up with Uche. I had barely slept a wink, so I was able to send him off for the biggest day of his life with a mound of breakfast inside him.

I had hoped to spend a few calm hours before heading for the course myself, but I wasn’t capable of calmness that morning. Neither was Tom, for once; he was impatient, itching to go. A year before he might have had other Sunday duties, as an altar boy in the church, a role he’d been given by Gerard, and latterly by the venerable Father Olivares. But after the old man’s retirement, the new priest had taken the view that his assistants were required to have been baptised in the Catholic Church. . and I suspect also, although he never spelled it out, that atheism was a definite bar to office.

So, as soon as Ben Simmers had opened his shop and could take charge of Charlie, we headed on down the road. As they had done since our first day, Shirley and Patterson were travelling independently. We hadn’t made any formal arrangement to meet up; it was hardly necessary, because our Shirley would stand out in a full house at the Camp Nou football stadium. When we got to the course, the car park was busier than I’d seen it. The attendances had probably been in the hundreds on each of the first two days, and overwhelmingly ex-pat, but the weekend seemed to have lured a few more people out of the cities. Nonetheless, as Tom and I mingled with the crowds we heard as much English spoken as we heard Spanish or Catalan.

I was heading for the practice ground as usual, when Tom tugged at my elbow. ‘Mum,’ he said. ‘There they are.’ He pointed towards the clubhouse. Jonny and Uche were at the foot of the entrance steps. My nephew was in conversation with the telly guy I’d seen on the first day, the one with the Aussie hat, while his caddie was a few yards away, speaking, seriously, with another man, older, as black as he was, and entirely inappropriately dressed in a shiny suit that didn’t look as if it had come off the peg. He had his back to me, but there was something in his body shape and in the way he stood that told me who he was. As I watched them I remembered what Ellie had said the evening before.

Uche saw me looking at them. It took a second or two for his smile to appear, but eventually it broke through and he beckoned us to join them. ‘Primavera,’ he exclaimed, at his most regal. ‘Come and meet our new supporter.’ He looked at him. ‘Dad, this is my boss’s aunt, Primavera Blackstone, and her son, Tom, Jonny’s cousin.’ Then back to me. ‘Primavera, Tom, this is Kalu Wigwe, my father.’

The princeling turned, gave us a quick glance up and down, and said, ‘How do you do,’ in a voice that offered a preview of how Uche would sound once he had smoked a few hundred expensive cigars, like the one clenched between the first two fingers of his dad’s left hand. He extended the right, first to Tom, and they shook formally.

‘Very well, thank you,’ he replied.

Wigwe senior turned to me, and as he did he swept off his wraparound Oakleys and fixed me with eyes that were vivid green, and more than a little bloodshot. I felt as if they were scanning me. The moment passed with a short courtly bow and another proffered handshake. ‘And you, madam.’ He beamed, showing all of his son’s charm, but somehow with more substance to it. Close to, the suit was so sharp it was dangerous. The material was pale blue, with silk in it, I was sure, and the jacket was Mandarin style. . my dad still calls it a Nehru collar. The eyes twinkled; I guessed he liked what he saw. (With all that red in there they made me think of traffic lights changing.)

Other than that, what I saw wasn’t hard on the eye, either. Kalu Wigwe had the same oval-shaped face as his son, but his version was rendered more imposing by age, and it was adorned by a full, well-trimmed beard. His hair was cut to around the same length, and there were grey flecks through it all. He was a little thicker in the waist than junior, but for all that he still seemed well built and not gone to fat. Age? Given that Uche was a contemporary of Jonny, he was probably a little older than he looked, but surely no more than fifty. There was much about him to fancy, and yet. . although one colour was missing from those traffic signal eyes, amber, they still managed to say ‘Caution’.

‘This is a surprise, Uche,’ I said. ‘You didn’t say your father was going to turn up.’

‘I rarely announce my arrival,’ Kalu replied. ‘I have an unpredictable schedule, and I can never be sure of being able to keep family appointments, so I tend not to make them. There is also the consideration that uncertainty keeps my sons on their toes.’

‘You have more than one?’

‘I have three; Uche is the oldest, then there’s Oba and Solomon. Oba’s nineteen and Solomon’s seventeen.’

‘And Mrs Wigwe? Is she with you?’

‘Mrs Wigwe is with our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.’ Behind him, Uche’s eyes narrowed just a little as he spoke. ‘I have a companion, but she didn’t make the trip. It was, after all, short notice. I didn’t decide to come until yesterday. When I saw that Jonathan was doing so well, I knew that I had to support the team. So I flew here.’

‘I’m surprised you could get a flight so quickly.’

‘I don’t have that problem,’ he replied, modestly. ‘I have a Gulfstream jet, based at Lagos.’

‘That’s still a long trip,’ I remarked, ‘on the spur of the moment.’

‘Around eight hours.’ He shrugged, as if it was nothing. ‘I landed around nine last night, at Girona, very close to here.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a very comfortable aircraft; and it’s always ready to take off. I’d be happy to show you around. Perhaps you and Tom would like to take a flight with me.’

‘You don’t fly it yourself, do you?’

‘My goodness no, Mrs Blackstone,’ he laughed. ‘It’s not built for pleasure flights. I employ a crew; previously they were with Air New Zealand. They’re the best, I’m told.’

The last time I flew on a private aircraft it came down a lot harder than the pilot had intended. I walked away, but nobody else did. As a result, I’ve stuck to scheduled services ever since. ‘That may be,’ I said, politely, ‘but I think I’ll pass on that, thank you. And it’s Primavera, please.’

‘Anywhere you like?’

‘I like it here. Thanks all the same.’

‘Dad,’ Uche growled. ‘Stop being a flash arsehole.’

His father looked at me, his expression pained. ‘You hear that, Primavera? The money I’ve invested my son’s education and that is the result.’

‘But he does have a fine, cultured accent, Mr Wigwe,’ Jonny pointed out. He’d finished his chat with the telly guy and come over to join us. ‘They called him the Count at ASU. It went down very well with the cheerleaders.’

‘So did they,’ his caddie murmured. ‘Very well.’ I shot him a warning glower; Tom was within earshot, and I didn’t want to have to explain the remark. . or maybe I hoped that he didn’t understand it.

But as it happened, he seemed to be in conference with Jonny. ‘Can I?’ I heard him exclaim.

‘It’s all fixed up,’ his cousin replied. He looked at me. ‘Our board boy’s called in sick,’ he told me. ‘You know, the kid who follows us round with the sign that shows our scores. The tournament director told me in the clubhouse, and I’ve volunteered Tom for the job.’

‘Is he big enough?’

‘Mum! I’ve grown two centimetres in the last month. I’m a hundred and fifty-two now.’

Or five feet tall, expressed another way; and still short of eleven years old. I found a chart online a couple of years ago, and I’ve been plotting his growth ever since. It says that he’s on course to be around six three.

‘He’s well big enough, Auntie P,’ Jonny assured me. He looked at Tom’s feet. ‘He might be better in golf shoes than those trainers, though.’ He punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go and see the FootJoy guys. They might just have a pair your size. Then I’ll introduce you to the guy who runs the board boys.’

‘Shouldn’t you be practising?’ I asked.

He checked his watch; his large, multi-buttoned sponsored watch. ‘I’m not due on range for another fifteen minutes,’ he said. He glanced at Uche. ‘See you there, mate, okay?’

He and Tom left, and I found myself alone with two generations of Wigwes. I recalled the serious discussion they’d been having when I’d arrived and thought it best to let them resume it. ‘See you later, guys,’ I chirped.

‘Please don’t go, Primavera,’ Kalu exclaimed. ‘I hoped we might have lunch.’

‘Sorry,’ I lied, sort of. ‘I have to meet friends.’ He was an interesting man, no question, but he was radiating interest in me as well. He wasn’t unattractive, a bit more than that indeed, but I thought of the absent ‘companion’ and decided that if he was advertising a temporary vacancy, it wasn’t one I saw myself filling.

I headed for the retail tent hoping that Shirley was in shopping mode, but if she was she was doing it somewhere else. Still I killed a quarter of an hour looking for her, then headed for the practice ground. When I got there, Jonny and Tom were waiting, alongside Lena Mankell, looking not her usual frosty, but downright glacial. I could guess why: no sign of Uche. As for my boy, he was wearing a nice new pair of shoes, with cotton liners that didn’t quite qualify as socks, and he was carrying a bag that I guessed contained his trainers.

Shirley and Patterson were in the stand, watching the action. I didn’t think that Lena was nice to be near at that moment, so I headed towards them. I passed close enough to hear Tom ask, ‘Would you like me to go and find him?’

Jonny started to nod, then stopped, frowning over Tom’s head. I followed his eyes, and there was Uche, toting the massive bag and smiling, probably as close to apologetically as he could manage. Kalu was following behind him, on his way to join us in the bleachers, or so I thought until he stopped, said something to his son, and stepped back out through the entrance to the arena. I carried on, and settled myself down beside my chums.

Shirley pointed in the direction from which I had come. ‘Who was that?’ she asked. ‘The black guy in the Savile Row suit?’

‘Uche’s dad,’ I replied. ‘He flew in for the big day; on his own jet, no less.’

She whistled. ‘Bit of all right,’ she pronounced. ‘And Uche’s mum?’

‘She’s in the arms of another; our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ, to be specific.’

‘What a shame. Uche never said his mother was dead.’ No, he hadn’t, I thought. ‘Leaves a clear field, though.’ She winked, lasciviously.

‘Which I will not be cultivating,’ I declared.

‘No?’ she exclaimed. ‘And him with a private jet? Could be your chance to join the mile-high club, and you probably wouldn’t even have to do it in the toilet.’

I frowned at her, severely. ‘No thank you very much. Anyway, I am a member, several times over.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You are?’ she gasped. ‘You dirty little bitch. Come on, spill the beans.’

‘Aspen, Colorado,’ I revealed. ‘Oz and I went on holiday there once, oh, must be twelve, thirteen years ago. That’s well over a mile high.’

‘Gawd! You must have been out of breath.’

‘Not once, my dear, not once. We weren’t in any rush.’ I smiled as some very vivid memories came back. ‘You should try it,’ I advised her.

‘You hear that,’ she said, turning to Patterson. But he wasn’t there; nature must have called while we were talking, or he’d had a severe case of the munchies. While Shirley had been wheedling my sexual exploits out of me, he’d slipped out, without either of us noticing.

Below us, Uche was on station and Jonny’s practice was under way. Lena’s expression had gone back to mildly severe, so she must have been content that his swing hadn’t altered overnight. The Irish kid and the other main contenders were lined up on either side of him, each with his own distinctive technique, each one hitting the ball straight and true, as if they were combining to show the new lad. . and me, for that matter. . what he was up against. But the new lad wasn’t watching; he was concentrating entirely on his own game. ‘Your best is all you can be, Auntie P,’ he’d said to me the night before. ‘The trick is to make that a little bit better every day.’

Still. . I won’t say that my faith in him was waning, but young Irish really did look unbeatable.

I was in danger of succumbing to nerves and maybe even despondency, when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I couldn’t answer it on the stand, so I whispered an apology to Shirley, and slipped down from the stand. There was a ‘missed call’ message on the screen by the time I was able to take it out: Alex Guinart.

‘Shit,’ I muttered. ‘What now?’ I remembered my undertaking. ‘He’s not expecting daily reports on Patterson’s movements, surely?’

I considered, quite seriously, deleting the call from the list, and acting the daft lassie (self-explanatory Scottish saying) if Alex asked me about it. Probably that’s what I would have done, if it hadn’t started to tremble again as I held it in my hand. I looked at the screen: him again. I tutted, impatiently, as I pressed the green button. ‘Yes, Inspector Guinart?’ I said. ‘Don’t you normally have Sundays off?’

‘Normally, yes,’ he conceded. ‘But normal went out the fucking window a few days ago. Where are you, Primavera?’

‘You must know where I am, surely. I’m at the golf tournament, waiting for my nephew’s big moment.’

‘Of course,’ he sighed. ‘I’d forgotten.’

He sounded so out of kilter that I began to worry about him. ‘What is it?’ I asked him.

‘Forget it,’ he replied, but without any sincerity. ‘I don’t need to involve you. Not yet anyway.’

‘But you will, at some point?’

‘Possibly.’

I persisted. ‘Do you need me?’

‘No, but. .’ He hesitated. ‘I’d appreciate it.’

‘Will it take all day?’

‘No, just a couple of hours.’

I knew from experience that Alex never said too much over the phone, but I could work things out. It was indeed Sunday, and he sounded very different from his normally phlegmatic self. A friend in need. . I completed the old, ambiguous, saying, then added in the fact that the needy friend was a cop. ‘Okay, where are you?’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘No I’m not, so out with it quickly. Where do I find you?’

‘You don’t need to,’ he said. ‘We have people where you are. I’ll have one of our cars bring you. It’ll be faster that way; we can do it under blue lights. What are you wearing?’ I told him, leaving out the black thong and the pop-up bra.

‘Then go to the clubhouse and wait by the steps. I’ll have a car there inside five minutes.’

‘And will there be one to bring me back?’ I asked, pointedly.

He chuckled. ‘Unless I arrest you.’

I headed for the meeting place and beat the car there by about thirty seconds. Just one officer, the driver, unsmiling behind his shades, but courteous; he opened the back door for me, and didn’t put his hand on my head when I got in, as you see them do on the news and in the movies.

We left the course at normal speed, then headed north, my first clue to our destination. As soon as we were on the main road, the lights went on and the foot went down. I didn’t speak to my driver at all. . at that speed, I didn’t reckon it was a good idea to distract him. . just watched the road and ticked off each exit as we passed it. We left the motorway just north of Girona, then took a quiet road, one I use often when I go to the city. That made me assume that we were going back to L’Escala, or even St Martí. I carried on thinking that until we went past the turn that would have taken us there and instead drove on towards Torroella de Montgri.

The options were lessening; in the small town, we turned off the central roundabout, headed down the leafy ramblas and eventually crossed the River Ter. Pals? I wondered, until the driver made a left turn, into a narrow road that I’d driven past a few hundred times, but never along. I wasn’t sure where it led, other than eventually to the sea, but there were a couple of restaurant signs at the beginning, so I knew that it wasn’t entirely uninhabited territory.

We drove on for maybe a kilometre, through absolutely flat land, before we took another turn, into a camino, a track rather than a proper made-up road. A few hundred metres ahead, I saw cars; three of them and, ominously, a dark, unmarked van. I’d seen it, or its brother, before, and I knew what it was for.

Until that very moment, I hadn’t attempted to guess why Alex wanted me. He’d been his usual cautious self on the phone, I knew it couldn’t be a family crisis, nothing wrong with Gloria or Marte, for he’d used police transport, and if anything had gone wrong at my place I’d have had a call from my alarm monitoring service well before he’d know about it. I certainly hadn’t considered, not for one second, that he’d want me to look at another stiff.

That must have been written all over my face as I stepped out of the car, for he came towards me, in another paper tunic, with hands outstretched as if to ward me off. In the background, I could see the obligatory white tent; until then it had been hidden behind the mortuary wagon. ‘Alex,’ I said as he reached me, ‘the last time was once too often.’

‘I know,’ he admitted, ‘and I’m deeply grateful. You’ll never have another speeding ticket in Catalunya, I promise.’

‘I want Hector’s signature on that one as well,’ I told him. ‘Where is he, by the way? Intendants don’t have their Sundays interrupted, is that it?’

‘He’s off sick.’ Alex’s reply was barely more than a whisper. ‘He had chest pains in the office on Friday, late in the afternoon. I took him to the Trueta, and they kept him in, for investigation. He’s still there; they think he’s going to need bypass surgery. It’s not generally known, but it will be very soon.’

At the rate Gomes had been smoking when I’d seen him last, that news didn’t surprise me too much. He was in a good place though; the ‘Trueta’, named after a Catalan nationalist doctor who was exiled in Britain during the civil war, and became a professor in Oxford, is a teaching hospital, Girona’s biggest and, by general agreement, its best.

‘That’ll be bad news for Marlboro,’ I ventured. ‘I hope he’ll be all right soon.’

Alex nodded. ‘He will be. . unlike the patient we’ve got here. Again, Primavera, thank you for coming.’

‘Okay, but why did you want me?’

He smiled. ‘Honestly? I don’t know, for sure. I just did, given the circumstances.’

‘What circumstances? What have you got here?’

‘Come and see, if you want.’

‘I don’t, but that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’

I put on a sterile suit and boots and went with him, into the tent. It was bigger than the one in the woods, but it had to be, for there was a thorn bush taking up a lot of the space inside. A body lay at its base, a white woman, naked, stripped of all clothing and adornments, and with no face. ‘Jesus!’ I whispered. ‘The same.’

‘As our victim outside L’Escala,’ he added. ‘Stripped and mutilated, I assume, for the same reason: to make identification as difficult as possible. It’s very effective too, for we still are no nearer knowing who the other one is.’

I crouched beside the body as he spoke and leaned forward for a better look. Whoever had used the shotgun had done an even better job second time around. Most of the head was missing. . actually it wasn’t, but it was scattered all around, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could try all they liked, but Ms Humpty was fucked, permanently. I peered at the part that remained, the left side, from the jaw to just above the temple. And as I did, a shudder ran through me.

‘Our pathologist believes that she was strangled first,’ Alex was saying, above me, ‘and that she was dead when the gun was put to her head.’ He sighed. ‘What a mess. I suppose I wanted you here because you were at the other scene, and so I hoped that you might see something that I don’t, something that connects in some way. It’s not very professional of me, I know, and not very kind either. Stupid also, because why the hell should you? I’m the bloody detective. What could have I expected you to tell me?’

I could have kept my mouth shut. Indeed, if there had been anyone else in that tent, even the photographer who had stepped outside to give us room, I might have, for that moment at least. But there wasn’t, it was just Alex and me, and I’d held his daughter at her baptism. So I said, ‘How about if I tell you who she is, or was, if you’re feeling pedantic?’

‘Eh?’ he gasped.

‘That’s the woman you threatened to run out of town on Friday, at the golf course, the TV reporter with the Irish passport. That’s Christine McGuigan.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ he croaked.

‘I wish I was.’

‘But how can you possibly know, from. . from that?’

I beckoned him, and he joined me, crouching. When he was in position I reached out and pointed. ‘See that mark?’ I asked. ‘There on her temple. That abrasion.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. The pathologist said she must have struggled with her killer, got it then.’

‘Then your pathologist is wrong.’ I pushed myself to my feet, paper tunic rustling, and he followed suit. ‘You know that big dress ring I have, the one with the red gemstones that look like rubies but aren’t, in a gold setting?’

‘Yes,’ he murmured, cautiously, as if he wasn’t sure that was the right answer.

‘I think you’ll find it matches that bruise. You didn’t scare her as much as you thought. Alex. She wasn’t going to give up that easily.’

I told him about my confrontation with Christine, about me catching her in the act of taking long-lens pictures of Tom, for sale to the highest bidder, and about me knocking her bow-legged.

‘Oh my,’ he whispered, when I’d finished. ‘When I said earlier, about arresting you, I was joking. But now. . Why the hell did you have to go and tell me that?’

‘Because you’re my mate and you know I’m not a bloodthirsty killer.’ I paused. ‘But just in case you have to convince anyone else, what time was she killed?’

‘The pathologist says between ten and midnight last night. But not necessarily at this place; the mutilation was done here, clearly as you can see, but he believes that it must have happened some time after death, because of the absence of blood.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘you can take me off your suspect list. I was in Mike’s Restaurant with Jonny and Tom and quite a few other people until just before ten. From there I went home and phoned my dad. When we were done, I went online and wrote an email to my sister, telling her all about my week, and my new family member. I finished and sent it at ten minutes to twelve, and then I went to bed. The transmission time will be logged into my computer and there’ll be a record of the call on my phone.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, sincerely. ‘We’re both off the hook.’

‘So what have you got to go on?’ I asked, as we left the tent.

‘Nothing, other than I’m certain that the murderer is local.’

I frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because he’s left the bodies in two remote areas. It was pure luck that they were found so quickly. This one was discovered by the chef in one of the restaurants along there, walking his dog. Only a local has that sort of knowledge.’

‘Tell me you’re kidding,’ I exclaimed. ‘Haven’t you heard of Google Earth? That will take you anywhere, and usually show you nice pictures as well. For example, you’re in your front garden in Google Earth’s street view.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of it, but. .’ His eyes widened. ‘They can’t do that, Christ; I’m a cop.’

‘It’s okay,’ I assured him. ‘They pixelate all the faces, and car registration numbers. But what it means is that everyone’s a local, everywhere, when it comes to knowing the lie of the land.’

He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Thanks,’ he moaned. ‘Now I have nothing to go on. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to be a suspect after all?’

‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.’ He looked really down, and so I did my best to raise his spirits. ‘Come on; it’s not all that black. You know who this victim is. The two were both killed in more or less the same way, by the same person.’

‘I can’t prove that,’ he muttered, gloomily.

‘Spoken like a defence lawyer.’

He shook his head. ‘No, spoken like our new prosecutor. She’s a hard woman to please.’

‘Then don’t go to her until you have to. What I’m saying is that when you look into Christine McGuigan’s background, she might point you at the identity of the first victim. They have to be connected; they must be. Fuck it, they are! They have a murderer in common. So it could well be that they knew each other and that when you look into McGuigan’s life you’ll find the first victim. And when you do, the next step is to find who else they had in common.’

He peered at me, from under his frowning eyebrows. ‘Since when were you a detective?’ he chuckled, if a little grudgingly.

‘You’re forgetting,’ I retorted. ‘I was once. There was a period in our lives, when Oz and I lived together in Glasgow, when we ran a private inquiry agency.’

‘You wouldn’t like to take it up again, would you? I’m up against it. With Hector on the sick list for God knows how long. . and maybe tied to a desk for the rest of his career. . I’m acting intendant, with two murders on my hands, and bosses in Barcelona who don’t listen to excuses.’

‘They’ll give you help, though, an extra pair of hands.’

‘They have done already. Magda’s been pushing for a move to criminal investigations; I’ve been told to use her, for now.’

‘Magda,’ I repeated. The sullen woman from the woods, the one who had tried to talk down to Tom, the Mystery of the Missing Personality.

‘Exactly,’ he murmured.

I looked around the crime scene, in vain. ‘So where the hell is she?’

‘She has a little girl. She couldn’t come at short notice, she told me.’

‘So have you, and you did.’

‘Yes, but I’m a man; I don’t have a choice.’ He nodded in the direction of another officer in paper clothing. ‘Neither did Jorge over there; it’s his wife’s birthday and he’s had to cancel a family lunch.’

‘Bloody nonsense!’ I exclaimed. ‘She’s at it.’

‘Maybe so, but they don’t know that in Barcelona. I’m stuck with her, which is only a little better than being on my own.’

I felt heart sorry for him; and a little worried. A job like his generates stress at the best of times, and when there’s someone in a small team who isn’t bearing her share of the load, it makes it worse. ‘So, tomorrow,’ I suggested, ‘give her a nice desk in your office. That one next to the toilets should suit her. Then gather up all your petty stuff, all your open burglary investigations and the like, and tell her to get to work on those.’

‘I can’t. All that has to be on the back burner till I make progress on these murders.’

‘In that case, give her a phone and a computer and tell her to find out all she can about Christine McGuigan.’

‘Fine, but I’ll have to tell her where to start looking.’ He paused. ‘The Novotel.’

‘Pardon?’

‘That’s where she said she was staying, remember. The hotel at the airport.’ He waved at his sidekick. ‘Jorge,’ he called out. ‘Let’s leave this to the technicians. Primavera’s given us a lead. You and I will take her back to her golf tournament, and then we will follow it up.’