A Coffin For Two

52

Of course, Prim and I went to Ronnie Starr’s funeral. We had expected to be the only people there, other than Reis, but we were wrong. Mrs Adams, the principal of the Cardiff Art College, had flown over to pay her respects. She took me by surprise; from her voice, I had expected her to be an Amazon, but in fact she was a small, fat woman with bad hair, the kind you would always walk past in a crowd.

The discovery of Starr’s body had made news in Britain, and as a result, the media outnumbered the mourners by two to one. They stood back silently as the coffin was slid into its hole in the white wall of the mausoleum, and as we filed out of the cemetery, but as soon as they were through the gates, they pounced on Reis.

Only one reporter approached us, a spotty wee girl in her mid-twenties. She had a Welsh accent, and she grinned all the time, as if she was enjoying her unexpected swan in Spain, regardless of the circumstances.

‘What’s your connection with the deceased?’ she asked, without an ‘excuse me’, or a ‘please’, just the arrogant assumption that she had a right to an answer.

I told her that her mother was a hand-maiden of the whore of Babylon and that her father was a wild boar, and then I invited her to fuck off. Since I told her all this in Spanish, she simply grinned some more and walked away, to find someone who would understand her stupid questions. I watched her go with a feeling of accomplishment: my Spanish was improving all the time.

As I watched her, I took a long look around for someone else, someone whom I thought just might have shown up, but I saw no one, save Reis, the principal, the TV cameraman, the reporters and the undertakers.

‘Come on,’ I said to Prim, ‘Let’s go along to Pubol.’

We drove the half-kilometre or so, and had a snack in the bar where I had sat last with Fortunato and with a stunned Shirley Gash. We were the only people there for a while, then an English family arrived, dad, mum and two loud, overindulged kids, over for half-term at the villa, as they announced to the owner.

I waited for a little longer, in case I caught sight of someone else, but eventually, we headed back to L’Escala, to devote more time to our expanding business.

The growing work-list was done on time, good and full reports were submitted to our clients, and invoices were prepared. It was good, healthy, stimulating activity, and as it proceeded, Prim seemed to recover from her shock over Adrian’s death, and possibly from delayed reaction to our encounters with the remains of Eames and Starr.

But for my part, I went through life as if I was in a bubble of unreality. Captain Fortunato had gone back to his office to wait for nothing to happen. Prim, even if she might be a little strange and distant, seemed to be putting the bizarre events behind us. Shirley Gash, who returned from England on the Friday after Starr’s funeral, came to us for dinner next day with her grief under control.

Looking at them across the table, making their small talk, I saw them suddenly as someone had once noticed some people on a famous football pitch. They thought it was all over. I knew it wasn’t.

I went back to Pubol three times in the week after Ronnie Starr’s funeral. Once, I told Prim that I was going to make sure that Reis was all right. On the other occasions I simply went, unannounced. Each time, I sat in the bar, looking at the street outside. Each time I paid my money and I went into Gala’s castle, into her garden, with its weird animals, into the garage, where the Cadillac stood on view to the tourists, roped off again as if it still had contained only one body in its lifetime, and into the Delma, where the stuffed giraffe and the statuary still stood guard over her lonely tomb, and over the redundant slab beside it.

I was looking for someone, but I never really expected to find him. Rather, I hoped that he would find me, but that didn’t happen either. Eventually, leaving an empty feeling, my certainty began to slip away.

There were only three days left before Prim and I were due to fly back to Scotland for my dad’s wedding, when at last I found the key. It was Tuesday morning, and Shirley had taken Prim to Girona to buy a dress for Saturday. I was sitting at the table on the balcony working alone on a report, when the thought fired itself like a bullet into my brain.

My wallet was in my jacket in the wardrobe. I rushed into the bedroom, and searched through it until I found the business card that Adrian Ford had given me, just after he had finished cleaning my clock at the snooker table.

Sure enough, it carried a mobile number. I picked up the phone and dialled it. At first, it was unobtainable, but I tried once more, using the UK code to link into the system. It rang three times before it was answered.

‘It’s taken you this long to figure it out,’ said a familiar voice on the other end of the line. ‘Oz, my boy, I’m disappointed in you. I was afraid I’d have to come and get you.’

‘Where are you?’

‘You don’t need to know where I am right now. Come to the castle tonight at eleven o’clock. There’s a side door beyond the garage. It will be unlocked and the alarm will be switched off. Come to the Delma: you’ll find me there. Got that?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘But listen to me. It is very important that you come alone. You must not bring Captain Fortunato and his gang, and most of all you must not bring the lovely Primavera. I could not bear that. You promise me this?’

‘I promise.’

‘Good. I see you. Before you come, one thing you can do. Take a look in the book about Dali, the one I told you not to buy when I took you to the castle, but which I know you bought anyway. Take a look in there and see if you can find the answer.’

The line went dead. I sat at the table, gasping, realising that for the last thirty seconds I had been holding my breath.

I had looked at the book before, of course; at all of the colour plates and some of the text. However, I had found the translation patchy and confusing, altogether too heavy going for my taste, and I had chucked it before the end.

I fetched it from the coffee table and attacked it again, opening it more or less where I had given up before, around page 150. I scanned the pages for two hours, stopping occasionally to ponder a particularly obscure reference, then going on when I had satisfied myself that it signified bad translation rather than hidden meaning.

I finished the text proper, then the fine-printed notes. Finally, I turned to the section headed ‘Appendices’. And there, from page 320, the answer jumped out at me, as clear as the bright day which lit the autumn snow on the tips of the high Pyrenees.