Cocaine Nights

12 A Game of Tease and Chase

Deviance in Estrella de mar was a commodity under jealous guard. Watched by the wary and suspicious chauffeur, who was logging my licence number into his electronic notebook, I freewheeled down the drive past the Mercedes. With its tinted windows, the bodywork seemed both paranoid and aggressive, like medieval German armour, and the nearby villas shared this nervous stance. Razor-glass topped almost every wall, and security cameras maintained their endless vigil over garages and front doors, as if an army of housebreakers roamed the streets after nightfall.

I returned to the Club Nautico, trying to decide on my next move. Elizabeth Shand, just conceivably, had a motive for killing the Hollingers, if only to get her hands on a piece of prime real estate, but she would have chosen a less crude weapon than arson. Besides, she clearly liked the old couple, and the five murders would certainly have been bad for business, frightening away potential property investors.

At the same time she had given me a glimpse into another Estrella de Mar, a world of imported bed-boys and other genial pleasures, and had identified Anne Hollinger for me. Sitting by the television set, I rewound the cassette of the porno-film, then played through the violent scenes again, trying to identify the other participants. How had this maverick and high-spirited young woman found herself in such a crudely exploitative movie? I froze her brave smile to camera as she sat in the tattered wedding dress, and imagined her playing the tape as she injected herself in the bathroom, trying to blot out all memory of the pale-skinned young man who had been determined to humiliate her.

The frightened eyes wept their black ink, and the lipstick skewed across her mouth like a gasp. I reeled back to the moment when the second bridesmaid entered the bedroom and the mirror-door reflected the balcony of the apartment and the sloping streets below.

Again I froze the frame and tried to sharpen the blurred image. A church spire was visible between the balcony rails, its weather-vane silhouetted against a white satellite dish on the roof of a building somewhere near the marina. Aligned together, they virtually pinpointed the apartment's location on the heights above Estrella de Mar.

I sat back and stared at the spire, for the first time unaware of the tennis machine as it fired its balls across the practice court. I realized now that it was this view across the town that I had been intended to see, and not the rape of Anne Hollinger. The police forensic team would have discovered the cassette within moments of searching the fire-gutted bedroom.

Someone had planted the cassette in the video-recorder, after learning that Paula and I were to visit the Hollinger house, confident that Cabrera would be too busy with his autopsy report to re-check the original findings. I remembered the Hollingers' chauffeur, endlessly buffing the old Bentley. Had this melancholy Andalucian become Anne's confidant and even, perhaps, her lover? His threatening stare, far from trying to make me Frank's guilty proxy, might have been an attempt to alert me to some undiscovered evidence.

At eight that evening Paula and I were meeting for dinner at the Restaurant du Cap, but I set off for the harbour an hour early, eager to search for the satellite dish. Pornographic filmmakers often rented expensive apartments for the day, rather than construct stage sets that could provide evidence for the police. The exact location of the rape scene would take me no nearer to the Hollinger murders, but the loose corners of too many carpets had begun to curl under my feet. The more I nailed down, the less likely was I to trip as I moved from one darkened room to the next.

While I walked down to the harbour, past the antique shops and art galleries, I scanned the rooftops of the town. The weather-vane of the Anglican church rose above the Plaza Iglesias, without doubt the one I had glimpsed in the film. I stood on the steps of the church, a white geometrical structure that was a modest replay of Corbusier's Ronchamp Chapel, more space-age cinema than house of God. The notice-board announced forthcoming performances of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, meetings of a help-the-elderly charity, and a guided tour of a Phoenician burial site on the southern tip of the peninsula, organized by a local archaeological society.

The weather-vane pointed towards Fuengirola but there was no sign of the satellite dish. Lit by the setting sun, the western skyline of Estrella de Mar ran from the Club Nautico to the ruin of the Hollinger house. A dozen apartment blocks looked down from the high corniche, a cliff-face of mysteries. On the roof of the yacht club a white satellite dish cupped the sky, but its bowl was at least twice the diameter of the modest dish in the video.

The tapas bars and seafood restaurants along the harbour were packed with residents relaxing after their day's work at the sculpture table and potter's wheel. Far from being dismayed by the Hollinger tragedy, they seemed more animated than ever, talking noisily across their copies of the New York Review of Books and the arts supplements of Le Monde and Liberation.

Intimidated by this cultural power-dressing, I stepped into the boatyard beside the marina, comforted by the presence of stripped-down engines and oily sumps. The yachts and motor-cruisers sat in their trestles, revealing their elegant hulls, a geometry graced by speed. Dominating all the other craft in the yard was a fibre-glass powerboat almost forty feet long, three immense outboards at its stern like the genitalia of a giant aquatic machine.

His engine-tuning over for the day, Gunnar Andersson stood beside the craft and washed his arms in a bucket of detergent. He nodded to me, but his narrow, bearded face was as closed and self-immersed as a Gothic saint's. He ignored the evening crowds and followed a flight of martins setting off for the coast of Africa. The flesh of his cheeks and scalp was stretched across the sharp points of his skull, as if constrained by some intense internal pressure. Watching him grimace at the noisy bars, I felt that he controlled his emotions from one second to the next, fearing that if he showed the slightest anger the skin would split and reveal the shrieking bones.

I walked past him, and admired the speedboat and its sculptured prow.

'It's almost too powerful to be beautiful,' I commented. 'Does anyone need to go this fast?'

He dried his hands before replying. 'Well, it's a working ship. It has to earn its keep. The Spanish patrol boats at Ceuta and Melilla can really shift.'

'So it crosses to North Africa?' He was about to move away, but I reached out and shook his hand, forcing him to face me. 'Mr Andersson? I saw you at the service in the Protestant cemetery. I'm sorry about Bibi Jansen.'

'Thank you for coming.' He looked me up and down, and then washed his hands again in the bucket. 'Did you know Bibi?'

'I wish I had. From what everyone says, she must have been great fun.'

'When she was given a chance.' He threw the towel into his work-bag. 'If you didn't know her, why were you there?'

'In a sense I was involved in her… death.' Gambling on the truth, I said: 'My brother is Frank Prentice, the manager of the Club Nautico.'

I expected him to turn on me and show some of the anger he had vented at the funeral, but he took out his tobacco pouch and rolled a cigarette with his large fingers. I guessed that he was already aware of my relationship to Frank.

'Frank? I worked on the engine of his thirty-footer. If I'm right, he hasn't paid me yet.'

'He's in jail in Malaga, as you know. Give me the bill and I'll settle it.'

'Don't worry-I can wait.'

'That could be a long time. He's pleaded guilty.'

Andersson drew on the loose-packed cigarette. Shreds of burning tobacco flew from the glowing tip and sparked briefly against his beard. His eyes roved around the boatyard, avoiding my face. 'Guilty? Frank has a special sense of humour.'

'It's not a joke. This is Spain, and he could serve twenty or thirty years. You don't believe he started the fire?'

Andersson raised his cigarette and scrawled a cryptic symbol on the night air. 'Who can say? So, you're in Estrella de Mar to find out what happened?'

'I'm trying to.'

'But not getting very far?'

'To tell the truth, I've made no headway at all. I've been up to the Hollinger house, talked to people who were there. No one believes Frank started the fire, not even the police. I may have to fly in a couple of detectives.'

'From London?' Andersson seemed more interested in me. 'I wouldn't do that.'

'Why not? They might find something I've missed. I'm not a professional investigator.'

'You'd be wasting your money, Mr Prentice. People in Estrella de Mar are very discreet.' He gestured with a long arm at the villas on the hillside, secure behind their surveillance cameras. 'I've lived here for two years and I'm still not sure if the place is real…'

He left the boatyard and led me along the walkway between the moored yachts and cabin-cruisers. The white-hulled craft seemed almost spectral in the dusk, a fleet waiting to sail on a phantom wind. Andersson stopped at the end of the quay, where a small sloop rode at anchor. Beneath the Club Nautico pennant at the stern was its name: Halcyon. Police exclusion tapes looped along its rails, falling into the water where they drifted like streamers from a forgotten party.

'The Halcyon?' I knelt down and peered through the miniature portholes. 'So this is Frank's boat?'

'You'll find nothing on board to help you. Frank asked Mr Hennessy to sell it for him.'

Andersson stared at the craft, raking his beard with his fingers, a gloomy Norseman exiled among the plastic hulls and radar scanners. As his eyes searched the sky over the town I noticed that he was looking everywhere but at the Hollinger house. His natural aloofness shaded into some unhappy emotion that I could only glimpse around the bony corners of his face.

'Andersson, I need to ask – were you at the party?'

'For the English Queen? Yes, I drank the toast.'

'You saw Bibi Jansen on the upstairs veranda?'

'She was there. Standing with the Hollingers.'

'Did she seem well?'

'Too well.' His face was crossed by flickers of light from the dark water lapping the yachts. 'She was very fine.'

'After the toast she went to her room. Why didn't she come down to meet you and the other guests?'

'The Hollingers… they didn't like her mixing with too many people.'

'Too many of the wrong people? Especially the kind who might have given her acid and cocaine?'

Andersson stared at me wearily. 'Bibi was on drugs, Mr Prentice – the drugs that society approves. Sanger and the Hollingers made her into quiet little Princess Prozac.'

'Better than acid, though, for someone who's overdosed. Or the new amphetamines the chemists are cooking up with their molecular roulette.'

Andersson put a hand on my shoulder, sympathizing with my lack of insight. 'Bibi was a free spirit – her best friends were acid and cocaine. When she took acid she made us part of her dreams. Sanger and the Hollingers reached inside her head and took out the small white bird. They broke its wings, closed the cage again and said to everyone: "Bibi is happy."'

I waited as he sucked back the last of his cigarette smoke, scowling to himself as he overruled his emotions.

'You must have hated the Hollingers. Enough to kill them?'

'Mr Prentice, if I wanted to kill the Hollingers it wouldn't be because I hated them.'

'Bibi was found in the jacuzzi with Hollinger.'

'Impossible 'That they could have had sex together? You know she was pregnant? Were you the father?'

'I was her father. We were good friends. I never had sex with her, even when she asked me.'

'So who was the father? Sanger?'

Andersson wiped his mouth, trying to rid himself of the taste of Sanger's name. 'Mr Prentice, do psychiatrists sleep with their patients?'

'They do in Estrella de Mar.' We climbed the steps from the marina to the harbour road, where the evening crowds were already blocking the traffic. 'Andersson, something nightmarish happened up there, something no one counted on. You don't like looking at the Hollinger house, do you?'

'I don't like looking at anything, Mr Prentice. I dream in Braille.' He hoisted his work-bag on to his shoulder. 'You're a decent man, go back to London. Go home, go on your travels. There might be another attack on you. No one in Estrella de Mar wants you to be frightened He walked away through the crowd, a gloomy gallows-tree swaying above the cheerful diners.

I waited for Paula in the bar of the Restaurant du Cap, striking another name from my cast of suspects. As I listened to Anders-son there had been a hint of complicity, perhaps the same regret for having mocked the Hollingers that Paula had expressed, but I was sure that he could not have killed them. The Swede was too morose, too immersed in his grudge against the world, to be able to act decisively.

By nine-thirty Paula had not arrived, and I assumed that an emergency had kept her at the Clinic. I ate alone at my table, stretching the bouillabaisse as long as I could without attracting the Keswick sisters' curiosity. It was eleven o'clock when I left the restaurant, and the nightclubs along the quay were opening, their music booming across the marina. I paused by the boatyard, and stared at the huge powerboat on which Andersson had been working. I could imagine it outrunning the Spanish police cutters, racing across the Strait of Gibraltar with its cargo of hashish and heroin for the dealers of Estrella de Mar.

Feet rang against the metal steps that led down to the marina. A party of Arab visitors were returning to their craft in the short-term harbour beside the mole. I guessed that they were Middle Eastern tourists who had rented a summer palace at the Marbella Club. They wore full Puerto Banus fig, a dazzle in the dark of white drill, jewelled Rolexes and the plushest silks. One group of middle-aged men and young Frenchwomen boarded a cabin-cruiser tied up near the Halcyon. Expert with mooring lines and engine controls, they were about to set off when the younger men in the second group began to shout from the steps of the mole. They shook their fists and waved their yachting caps at a small, twin-engined speedboat that had slipped its moorings and was gliding silently through the undisturbed water.

As if unaware that he had stolen the craft, the thief stood calmly in the cockpit, thighs pressed against the helm. The beam of the Marbella lighthouse swept the sea, touching his pale arms and hair.

Within moments a chaotic sea-chase had begun. Jointly steered by two of its excited captains, the cabin-cruiser surged from its berth while the startled Frenchwomen clung to the leather banquettes. Unconcerned by the craft bearing down on him, the hijacker continued to motor towards the sea, barely leaving a wake behind him as he saluted the furious young men on the mole. At the last moment he rammed the throttle forward, expertly side-slipping into a lane of calm water between the moored yachts. Too clumsy to turn, the cabin-cruiser ploughed past and clipped the bowsprit of a venerable twelve-metre.

The thief eased back his throttle, seeing that his exit to the open sea was blocked by the cruiser. Changing course, he drove below the lattice footbridge to the central island, a maze of interlocking waterways and exits. Trying to cover every escape route, the cruiser reversed through a cloud of exhaust, then surged forward when the speedboat emerged from the darkness under its nose. Still standing at the helm, legs stylishly braced apart, the thief rolled the wheel and banked around the cruiser's bows. Free at last, the craft porpoised through the rough water towards the advancing waves.

I leaned against the harbour wall, surrounded by people who had carried their drinks from the nearby bars. Together we waited for the speedboat to disappear into one of a hundred bays along the coast, before slipping under the cover of night into a marina at Fuengirola or Benalmadena.

But the thief had still to satisfy his appetite for play. A game of tease and chase began in the open water three hundred yards from the mole. The cruiser swerved after the circling speedboat, which leapt nimbly past its pointed bows like a torero evading an overweight bull. Wallowing in the churned water, the cruiser's captains searched the criss-crossing wakes, their lights sweeping the confused waves. The speedboat's engines were silent, as if the thief had at last tired of his game and was about to slip into the shadows of the Estrella peninsula.

I decided to turn away when a blaze of orange fire lit up the sea, exposing a thousand wave-crests and the passengers standing on the foredeck of the cruiser. The speedboat was burning, its engines still pushing it through the water. In the moments before it sank, bows following the heavy outboards into the deep, a last explosion tore apart its fuel tank and bathed the marina and the watching crowds in a copper halo.

I looked down at my hands, which flared at me in the darkness. The harbour road was packed with cheering spectators who had stepped from the nightclubs and restaurants to enjoy the display, eyes gleaming like their summer jewellery. Arm-in-arm, a cheerful couple swayed past me into the path of a passing car. As it edged by them the man slapped its roof with his hand. Alarmed, the driver looked over her shoulder, and through the confused air I saw Paula Hamilton's anxious face.

'Paula!' I shouted. 'Wait for me… park by the boatyard.'

Had she come to look for me, or had I read her features into those of another driver? The car moved through the crowd, then left the harbour and joined the lower corniche road to Fuengirola. Half a mile away, below the ruins of a Moorish watch-tower, it stopped beside the breaking waves, its lights fading in the darkness.

The cabin-cruiser circled the floating debris of the speedboat, its crew hunting the waves. I assumed that the thief would be swimming towards the rocks below the watch-tower, to a rendezvous previously arranged with the car's driver, who waited for him like a chauffeur outside a stage-door after the evening's performance.