A Coffin For Two

34

We picked up a street map of Begur in the tourist information office, and found Starr’s house without difficulty in the little inland town.

On the way down I had taken a detour, back to Pubol, so that Primavera could see Gala’s castle, and her grave. ‘So sad,’ she had said. ‘That she’s left here all on her own. There’s something, something … not right about it.’

The gift shop was open as usual. Because Davidoff wasn’t there to stop me, and maybe to spite the wee bugger, I bought the Dali book after all.

The Foy villa stood on its own at the top of a little hill. There was a Jag in the garage, and a Citroen Saxo in the driveway when we parked the Frontera in the street at three-thirty. The sky had been leaden all the way down, and as we arrived the first raindrops of the storm began to fall. We jumped out of the car and ran up to the front door.

The man who opened the door was around fifty, but looked very fit for it. He stood about six feet two, with a trim waist and a heavy chest. Frizzy, silver-grey hair rose from his high forehead. Not a man, I sensed at once, you’d be wise to cross.

‘Si?’ he said, staring at us in surprise.

‘Mr Foy? My name’s Blackstone, and this is Ms Phillips. We’re working for Gavin Scott.’

His eyebrows narrowed. Very, very slightly, but they narrowed. ‘Gav? What does he want? Have you come all the way from Edinburgh?’

I shook my head. ‘No. We live here too, just a bit up the coast. We’re private investigators.’

He smiled. ‘Private eyes, eh. Well, you’d better come in.’ He held the big, white door wide for us and ushered us into the house, through to a living-room with a terrace which overlooked the distant Mediterranean.

‘You’re alone here?’ I asked.

‘My wife’s next door, at the neighbours. It’s her bridge afternoon.’ His accent was difficult to place. North of England perhaps.

‘How did you come to know Mr Scott?’ said Prim, as Foy invited us to sit.

‘I used to be a client. Jenny and I were in the rag trade in Glasgow and Newcastle, till we sold out and retired here. Gav and Ida still keep in touch.’

‘They were here in June, yes?’

‘That’s right.’The smile returned. ‘I think I can guess what this is about now. That picture, yes?’

‘Got it in one. Mr Scott has asked us to find out more about it, to try to authenticate it if we can. That means we need to find the man who set up the dinner, and the auction. Have you encountered him again, since then?’

Foy shook his head. ‘The mysterious Mr Starr? No I haven’t.’

‘How about Trevor Eames?’

‘I see him occasionally at the golf club.’

‘Is he a member?’

Foy grinned. ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve never been quite sure. He’s always in tow with someone or other when he’s there, although he never seems to be buying. Never seen him on the course, though.’

‘When he told you about the auction, didn’t it strike you as pretty weird?’

‘This can be a weird place, Mr Blackstone. There’s more than a few people like Starr around here; not exactly kosher.’

I grunted. ‘You can certainly say that about the guy who sold Gavin Scott that picture. For a start, he isn’t Ronald Starr. The real Starr was murdered, almost a year ago. We think he painted the picture that you saw at the auction. And our guess is that the guy who sold it bumped him off.’

‘Fucking hell!’ David Foy slumped back in his cane chair, all of the colour gone suddenly from his face. Then, just as suddenly, he jumped to his feet. ‘I think you’d better go. I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘Eh?’ Prim and I stared at him, stunned by the change in his manner.

‘You heard me. Hop it. Get the fuck out.’ He jerked his thumb towards the door, menacingly.

Automatically I stood up, but Prim sat her ground. ‘If you won’t talk to us, Mr Foy,’ she said quietly, ‘would you speak to the Guardia Civil?’

‘You wouldn’t go to them.’

She looked up at him, with her sweetest, most beatific smile. ‘Too fucking right we would,’ she countered. ‘Murder, fraud, maybe art theft: oh yes, they’ll want to talk to you. They might even give you a bed for the night.’

He stared down at her, his forehead knitted, then across at me. Finally, he sat down again, in the cane chair. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But none of this goes back to Gavin. Okay?’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said Prim.

Foy ran his hands through his thick hair and looked across at us. ‘The whole thing was a set-up. It started off as a laugh really. I bumped into Trevor at the club earlier on this year, just before Easter, and I bought him a drink. After we’d had a couple of bevvies, and got a bit relaxed, he started to talk about this chap he knew who’d come by this picture. It was a forgery, he said of a Dali, but so good that even an expert couldn’t put his hand on his heart and swear it wasn’t the real thing. He said his mate had asked him to get him a few quid for it.

‘He offered it to me first off, for seventy-five thou, sterling. I told him to fuck off. Then I thought about Gav. The auction was my idea. You know what Gav’s like with pictures. Thinks he’s a connoisseur, a real ace. I told Trevor about him, and I suggested that if the thing was that good, and he accepted it as genuine, then if we could get him bidding for it, he’d go through the roof.’ He paused. ‘A couple of days later, Trevor called me and said his chum wanted to talk about my idea. We met in the place at Peretellada. Trevor introduced the guy as Ronald Starr.’

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

‘Ordinary. Around forty. Medium everything. There was nothing about him that stood out.’

‘Would you recognise him again?’

‘Too right!’ said David Foy, emphatically. ‘I’d recognise anyone who owes me money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The bastard stiffed me, didn’t he. We talked my idea through. Then the guy Starr took me out to his car and showed me the picture. I’m no bleeding expert, but even I could see it was the business. I began to regret not giving him his seventy-five grand. Not enough to change my mind, though. We agreed that we’d set up the auction, and that I’d fit Gav into it.’

I looked at him. I don’t think I was smiling at the time. ‘Some pal you are. So the meetings with Trevor at the golf club, they were all prearranged?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the other people at the auction?’

‘All hired hands. The whole thing worked a treat. Mind you, Starr went further than I intended. Our deal was that he would fold at two hundred and fifty US, but Starr and his phoney Swiss took a chance and carried on up to four hundred.’

I shook my head. ‘But why? What did you have against Scott?’

Foy shrugged. ‘Gav thinks he’s a real player. I just wanted to show him he was still small-time, that’s all.’

‘And what was in it for you?’ asked Prim.

‘Twenty per cent … which I never got.’

I smiled at him. ‘Appropriate in the circumstances. What happened?’

‘I haven’t seen Starr since that night in Peretellada. We had agreed that the three of us would meet up there again, a fortnight after the pay-off, to divvy up. Trevor and I showed, but there was no sign of the other fella. Only a message that dinner was on him, and that he hoped we’d enjoy it.’

‘Have you tried to find him?’

Foy grinned, ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. I did employ some local talent to ask around, but they came up empty. Like you said, I suppose it serves me right.’

Prim and I nodded, simultaneously, and stood up to leave. Outside, the short, heavy storm was over. Foy called after us as we walked down the drive. ‘You won’t tell Gav, right?’

Prim looked over her shoulder. ‘You haven’t given us a single reason why we shouldn’t. What do you think we’ll do?’

We left him, staring after us, with a king-size worry that hadn’t been there half an hour earlier.