On Honeymoon With Death

12

My old man has spent most of his fifty-something years in Fife, so you might think that landing in a foreign country, then driving over a hundred kilometres to a backwater street in a strange town would be a major exercise for him. Not so.

You can see Edinburgh from some of the higher parts of the East Neuk, it’s that close to the mainstream; yet there are villages tucked away in there, in their home county, that many Fifers have never heard of. My dad knows the lot, the whole place, like the back of his hand. As a Round Table member, and later, as a Rotarian, his speciality was the Treasure Hunt, point to point car chases with clues which lead competitors to the most obscure spots, following a trail which leads back to the starting point. This is invariably a pub with a large car park within walking distance, essentially, of the competitors’ homes.

When Mac the Dentist put together a Treasure Hunt, they used to say that the farmers were favourites to win, because many of the points en route could only be reached in a Land Rover, but I know for a fact that he always did his research in his old Jaguar. You see he’s a rare creature, a dentist who’ll do house calls, on old or sick people whose only needs are running repairs to their dentures. I remember him telling me, once upon a time, about visiting a very old lady in a cottage near a hamlet called Carnbee. He discovered, in the course of conversation, that in all of the century for which she had lived, she had never been further from home than St Andrews.

Of course he offered to take her to Edinburgh, so that she could cross the Forth Bridge, at least, before she died, but she just looked at him and asked, ‘And fit have they got there, son, that wid be ony guid tae me?’

Given that history, I never had any worries about him finding our new house. I simply faxed him a street map of L’Escala, with a big ‘X’ marking the spot and put the coffee on the hob at five o’clock on the Saturday afternoon before Christmas. Ten minutes later, a hired people-mover turned into our driveway, through the open gate.

At first, my nephews were unimpressed. ‘Where’s the beach?’ asked Colin, the younger one, before he had even jumped out of the car. They had been to our old place, in St Marti, where they could run down a hill into the sea.

‘Up there,’ I told him, pointing to the terrace and the pool. ‘We have our own. If you don’t like it, you’ll just have to get used to walking half a mile.’

Jonathan’s the cool one. When he was a couple of years younger he was a toe-rag of a kid, but since his mum and dad split up he’s taken his role as the senior man in the household very seriously. ‘Nice house,’ he said, just turned eleven and trying to sound sixteen. . he didn’t make a bad job of it either.

‘Yes it is,’ I agreed. ‘Nice telly too. We’ve got BBC1; if you move yourself, you’ll catch the football results in about half an hour.’ He barely twitched, but I could tell from his eyes that I’d scored.

‘Honest to God,’ said my sister Ellie. ‘You always were a self-indulgent bugger, even when you couldn’t really afford it. There’ll be no holding you now.’

We had a general hugging session in the driveway, Prim, Ellie, Mary, my stepmother, and me. While my dad started to lug bags from the car. I took one from him, and turned to pass it to Jonny, but he and his brother were gone, straight in front of the telly, for sure.

‘Boys!’ their mother bellowed but, like me at their ages, they were masters of selective deafness.

It was good to have the family there. For the first time since we’d moved in, Prim and I were able to show the place off. Looking back, I think that was the moment at which Villa Bernabeu began to feel like a home.

We were so domesticated that Prim took the girls straight to the supermarket on the edge of town, to finish off the shopping for the Christmas dinner. Dad and I gave the boys Cokes and a bag of pretzels as they squatted on the floor watching the early Premiership match reports, then sat down ourselves with a couple of beers.

‘So you’ve landed on your feet again, son,’ he chuckled. ‘Did you get this for a song too?’

‘If we did it was grand bloody opera. This is how the other half live, I’ll have you know.’

‘So what’s wrong, then?’ he asked, quietly.

I looked at him, genuinely astonished by his question. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I protested. ‘What the hell made you ask that?’

‘Thirty-something years of fatherhood. I know you better than anyone on this planet, so when I ask you what’s wrong, it’s because I can see that something is. . even if no one else can.’

‘Even if I can’t?’

‘Even if, Christ, all those years when you and Jan were living those sham lives, do you think I didn’t know you were deceiving yourselves? As soon as I saw you this afternoon, I knew that there was something chewing at you.’

I didn’t have an answer for him. Nor, right then did I have one for myself, only surprise, for I’ve always trusted my dad’s judgement. So I just took a swig of my Estrella and thought about it.

‘It’s this next movie, I suppose. I got the script from Miles the other day, and it’s. . It’s going to be a lot tougher than the first one. I just hope I can hack it.’

‘Mmm. I see,’ Macintosh Blackstone mused. ‘So all the experts, all the reviewers who’ve been saying how well you did in the first one, and what a natural actor you are. . as if I couldn’t have told them that for Christ’s sake. . they’re all wrong, are they?’

‘Maybe they are. The last part was made for me; maybe this one isn’t. Maybe I don’t fancy making an arse of myself in front of the world.’

I knew what was coming, well before he said it; we have that kind of telepathy, my dad and I. ‘It’s never bothered you before.’

‘Ah, but this is bigger. And there’s more than just me involved. If I blow this I’m blowing a few million for Miles.’

‘He didn’t have to cast you in the first place,’ he pointed out. ‘But he’s got the same faith in you that everyone else has; more so, since he’s prepared to put his dough behind it.’

He shook his head. ‘Naw, son. You’ll be fine. Deep down you know it too. You sure there’s nothing else?’

I pondered again. The body! Christ, of course; I hadn’t told him about finding our friend in the swimming pool. Nor, I decided very quickly, did I intend to, and I would go out of my way to make sure that he didn’t find out from anyone else. What a bloody meal he’d make of that! Several meals in fact, for he’d be dining out on the story for ever back home.

‘No. I’m sure. Just as I’m sure you’re right; I will be all right once the cameras start rolling. I really do like it, Dad. I’m not talking about the glamour side, either. I’m used to that from the telly work I’ve done, from being on the periphery of big Everett’s rassling circus. No, I like acting; I enjoy the challenge of it, the lights and all the rest.

‘When Miles put me in Snatch, I thought he was daft at first, but the more I got into it, the more it began to take me over.’

I looked at him, as more truth came to me. ‘You know what, Dad? I’ve tried for years to live in the normal world. Now I see that there’s no such thing. It’s all fucking mad, and the deeper you get into it, the further you go, the madder it gets.

‘The wisest thing you’ve ever done was to stay at home, in the world you grew up in. Me? I started off just by moving to Edinburgh, no more than an hour from Fife, and look at me now. I’ve become wrapped up in a chain of events that got beyond my control long ago. The world is a lunatic’s playground, and we’re all his toys.’

‘Rubbish. The world’s your bloody oyster, son.’

‘If that’s so, I’m the pearl in it, waiting to be strung and hung round someone’s neck. You know who had it right? That old lady you told me about; the one who saw St Andrews, and thought it was the Big Apple.’

My dad laughed, loudly enough for Jonny to frown at him over his shoulder. ‘The Big Apple!’ he exclaimed. ‘The Big Raspberry, more like. And what does that make Enster? The Big Turnip! How about that? And L’Escala, what would you call this place?’

I was sucked into his game. ‘It has to be the Big Anchovy, hasn’t it?’

That was it for the serious discussion. We were through our second beers when the team came back with the shopping and when Prim announced that there would be no cooking done in the house that night.

My nephews are serious students of pizza and, as I mentioned, I’m not averse to it myself, so we took them to Pizza Pazza. It’s on the beach in Riells, the newer end of L’Escala and it’s a nice, recently built family restaurant. We’d only been there for half an hour when who came in with his nice, recently built family but Ramon Fortunato.

In Spain, the kids are barely out of the wrapper when they’re taken out with their parents of a Saturday night; so it didn’t surprise me to see a six-month-old loaded in the carrier which was strapped to the policeman’s chest.

I waved them over and made the introductions; I didn’t have any choice really. The ladies did the obligatory cooing over the baby, although it was obvious to me, if no one else, that Prim was a little more restrained in this than the other two. While they were doing that I took my first look at Veronique. She was very attractive; tall, slim, dark, well-groomed and, I told myself, unmistakably Spanish. She smiled at me, in a gentle way that told me a hell of a lot, not least that right at that moment she’d rather have been somewhere else than watching her old man’s ex inspect her kid.

I caught the shrewd old dentist looking at her too; he wasn’t just admiring her teeth.

It was as well that the Fortunatos’ table was on the other side of the restaurant. I would have been happy simply to nod to them on the way out, had not the beer caught up with me. I was washing my hands in Pizza Pazza’s palatial bog when who came in but the bold Ramon.

‘Nice kid,’ I said, as he went about his business.

‘Thank you.’ I was about to leave but he called me back.

‘A moment, Oz. I wanted to ask you something.’

He sounded unprofessionally serious. I hoped we weren’t about to go into any off-limit areas. ‘The man you mentioned the other day; Sayeed the fisherman. Who told you about him going to prison?’

‘An English guy in Bar JoJo. Or was it the lady herself? I can’t remember, but they both seemed to know about it.’

‘Yes,’ said Fortunato. ‘The story seems to be all over town. I can’t find out where it began, but I do know this much. . it is not true.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him, well hooked by this time.

‘What I say. If Sayeed had gone to jail for smuggling I would not necessarily have known about it, since it would have been a Guardia Civil matter. But in the way of things, I would have heard something. So, I checked with them, and with the prison authorities; Sayeed Hassani. . that’s his full name. . is not in prison, nor has he been in prison. . Not in the last six years at any rate.’

‘They got it wrong, then.’

‘They did, but so did everybody else.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’ve checked around. I looked for his boat on the beach, where he pulls it up to save paying for a berth in the marina. It’s there, but it’s rotting. I went to his apartment; it’s locked up, and the town taxes for the last year have not been paid. I asked the neighbours; none of them can remember seeing him this year.

‘So I spoke to his brother, Abou. It was easy to find him, for he is in jail. He’s doing three years in Barcelona for robbery. They were not close, but he was upset that Sayeed had not been to visit him for a long time. While I was talking to him, I leaned over and pulled a hair from his head. He thought I was crazy, that’s all, or maybe that I was trying to frighten him. But I took that hair away and I used it as a comparison in a DNA test.

‘And guess what, Oz?’

I guessed; and I got it right this time. ‘The guy in the pool. It was Sayeed; not Capulet.’

He nodded. ‘I thought you deserved to know that, since you were responsible for my finding out. There’s more, too. The bullet that we found in the body is a heavy calibre, point four five. I discovered that at one time Capulet was a Swiss Army reservist, and as such, he was issued with a point four five Colt automatic.’

In spite of myself, I felt a bit of a shiver run down my back. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Find Capulet, if I can.’ The policeman reached into his jacket, and took out a card, one of those that Pizza Pazza leaves lying on all of its tables for punters to take away and give to their friends.

‘But first, there is something you could do for me.’

I looked at him and saw that he seemed to be blushing. ‘If only to explain why we’ve been in here so long …’ He held out the card. ‘Could you give me your autograph?’ He gave me a cringing smile. ‘It’s for my wife, you understand.’