A Coffin For Two

50

Shirley spent the journey back to L’Escala with her head on my shoulder, sobbing occasionally, and tugging at her fingernails. She went straight indoors when we reached the villa. I had offered that we would stay with her for the night, but she preferred to be alone.

I went round to the garden, after she had gone inside. All the lights were out, but the night was still bright enough for me to find my way round to the sofa loungers by the palm trees. They were deserted. I looked around, puzzled, until I heard a smooth lapping sound from the pool.

Prim was swimming, slowly and rhythmically. I leaned against a palm tree, half-hidden by it, and watched her as she swam, length after length. Eventually I stepped out of the shadows, but still she didn’t see me, not until I knelt by the edge of the pool.

She looked up, startled, her mouth slightly open, until she found her feet. ‘Oz, I thought … I … Oh, you gave me a fright, that’s all.’ She stood and I saw that she had been swimming naked. I lent her my hand as she climbed up the tiled steps in one corner of the pool, and watched her as she dried herself on her skirt, struck all the time by her strange silence.

‘What was the phone call about?’ she asked, at last. ‘Why did Fortunato want to see you?’

As I told her, her face grew more and more shocked. ‘Oh,’ she cried. ‘Poor Shirley. We should stay with her.’

‘She doesn’t want that. Besides, the old chap’s here.’

‘No he isn’t. He’s gone. And stop calling him the old chap.’

‘When did he go? And why?’

She began to dress. ‘A while back. Before I had my swim. I think John’s coming early tomorrow, and Davidoff won’t stay here at the same time as him.’

‘He must be a real charmer, this John,’ I said. ‘He’d better be on his best behaviour tomorrow.’

We were half-way home before she asked me, ‘Who does Fortunato think killed Eames and Adrian? David Foy?’

I shook my head in the dark. ‘No, he’s not quoted. He’s too rich, for a start. This thing was about money, and for now the captain is putting his cash on Reis. He thinks she could have been in it from the start. And he could be right. We only have her word about the visit from Trevor.’

‘No,’ she said, violently. ‘No way. That poor girl. And her baby. She loved the man, Oz. I know that.’

And in the dark, she began to cry. She was still crying when we got home, and later as I kissed her face after she had made unexpected, furious love to me, I could still taste the salt of her tears, where they flowed soft, hot and wet.