A Coffin For Two

21

I leaned on the terrace wall, freshened-up coffee in hand, gazing out across the sun-washed mountains. ‘Christ, Ms Phillips,’ I said, over my shoulder, ‘but we’re some investigators, are we not. Imagine, finding Ronald Starr as quickly as this.’

Behind me, Prim laughed ironically. ‘Sure, it’d be great, if he wasn’t dead. And also, if we hadn’t lost him again. Or had you forgotten that?’

‘You must be joking. Misplacing a skeleton is not something that slips your mind after a few days.’

I turned and sat down beside her again at the table. ‘You realise, don’t you, love, that Gregor’s fax makes this a completely different situation. For openers, it means we’re looking for someone else.’

‘Possibly,’ she said, ‘but not necessarily.’

‘How d’you make that out?’

‘Maybe the man in the coffin was the host at Gavin Scott’s dinner?’

I shook my head. ‘Look, Scott’s evening at Peretellada took place late in June, three months ago. Suppose the auctioneer was killed the day after, and the body buried up there by the church. When Miguel and I saw it, the skeleton was clean. Like, I mean there were no … bits … on it.

‘Now I know we’ve had a hot, humid summer, with a few heavy rainstorms at night. I know the coffin lid was open. I know that with the movement of earth you get around here, it wasn’t buried that deep for all that it was a Roman relic. Yet still; you’re the one with the medical background. You tell me, could that corpse have deteriorated to that extent in such a short time?’

She thought about it for a while. ‘I’m a nurse, Oz, not a pathologist. I’m no expert in rates of decomposition. However, I have worked in Africa, in a war zone, and I have come upon bodies that had been lying in the open for up to four months.’ She shuddered. ‘None of them were in the condition you describe. Even with vultures and other scavengers, none of them were as clean as the skeleton you described. There were always … bits … left.’

She paused. ‘Okay. Starr bought his watch a year and a half ago. Maybe the man in the coffin stole it before he was murdered. Maybe the real Ronald Starr was the man at the auction.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘In theory that would be good news. It would mean that we have a UK address for him, where we can at least start looking.

‘But just let’s stick with the possibility that the guy in the coffin was the real Ronald Starr. The skeleton is missing, remember. What if the police have it? What if, even as we speak, they are hard at work trying to identify it by dental records?’

‘How would they know where to start?’ Prim asked, almost in protest.

‘They can look at dental techniques and materials used, and take a fair guess about where the work was done. Then there was the belt, and the scraps of clothes. Maker’s labels would tell them his likely nationality. Once they have that … plain sailing. I have a dentist pal. He gets asked for patient records far more often than you’d think.’

I looked at my partner for a few seconds, letting my arguments take hold. ‘Suppose we turn up with Ronald Starr’s shiny watch at or around the same time as the Spanish police identify his skeleton? Don’t you think that they, and the British police as well, would give us some funny looks?’

‘True,’ said Primavera.

‘Thank you. Now here’s the really scary one. Let’s say we have the authentic Ronald Starr in that stone box, since last year. Yes?’ She nodded. ‘Right. Then, three months ago, at Gavin Scott’s dinner, the host introduces himself as Ronald Starr. Let’s discount completely the possibility that there might be two Ronald Starrs with two “R”s along this small stretch of the Costa Brava.

‘What we’re left with is the certainty that Ronald Starr MarkTwo knew he didn’t have a rival for the name. My guess is that the man we’re trying to trace isn’t just a con-man, or an art-thief. He’s a murderer.’ I gulped as I said it. So did Prim.

‘Where does that put Trevor?’ she asked.

‘God alone knows. It could put him at the graveside, holding a shovel. Although he needn’t necessarily know about any of that. But let’s not kid ourselves that you and I can pick out a murderer simply by looking him in the eye. Bitter experience tells us that’s not the case. No, the one certain thing is that when we approach Trevor, we’ll have to do it very carefully.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Prim. She stood up, and began to wander around the terrace that had become our office. My eyes followed her. She really was devastating: beautiful, dynamic, bursting with energy. A few days before I had asked her to marry me. What sane man wouldn’t have?

At last she turned towards me again, her back to the sea. ‘Oz, is there any way we can find out more about Ronald Starr? We really need to know all we can about him. Dead or alive, this whole affair seems to fit around him.’

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘The problem is how we can do that, without arousing suspicion, or drawing attention to ourselves.’ I thought about it, until a small idea switched itself on, like a dim light bulb, in the back of my brain. ‘There is one possibility. Back home, I used to do some work for a credit control company. Those guys get everywhere. They have databases like you wouldn’t believe. Another of my football pals works there, and he owes me a couple. I could ask him if his outfit has a file on Mr Starr.’

‘Good,’ said Prim, resuming command. ‘You do that. Meantime, let’s draft those responses to our other clients. We don’t have all day. We’re due at Shirley’s at two-thirty.’