On Honeymoon With Death

32

‘When does you mother expect you back?’ I asked her, as we ate a mid-afternoon lunch in the kitchen.

‘This evening,’ she answered. ‘I told her I was going to Girona.’

The truth is dead, I thought. We are all Satan’s children, right enough.

‘Why are you smiling like that?’ she said.

I hadn’t realised that I was. ‘It’s nothing,’ I assured her. ‘Other than that I was thinking that you were right. . you could do a lot better.’

‘Why is it always men who say that kind of thing?’ she mused.

‘Because that’s the way our sad, selfish minds work.’

It was Veronique’s turn to smile. ‘What unexpected honesty. Here’s some in return; some good news and some bad news you might say. The good: you’re much better in bed than Ramon. The bad: neither of you are in the same class as Rey Capulet. He is an artist, whatever else he might be.

‘Most men think of a woman’s body as no more than a piece of exercise equipment. He sees it as an instrument to be played with skill. . And believe me, he is a maestro.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I grunted, giving her a sour look.

‘What are you going to do about Primavera?’ she asked me suddenly.

I didn’t have a considered answer for that one, at that moment; so instead I told her that our future wasn’t at my disposal alone, and that Prim and I would have to talk it through together. ‘Maybe it’s what she wants to do about me that will decide things,’ I added.

‘What are you going to do about Ramon?’

‘Drop him,’ she answered vehemently. ‘For good this time. Whenever the moment is right, he’s out.’

‘Are you going to tell him about this morning?’

‘I might. Does that scare you?’

‘No.’›

‘He’s a policeman, remember. He has a gun.’

‘I’ve seen guns before. Carrying one is one thing; having the balls to pull the trigger is another. I’m not sure Ramon has. Anyway,’ I laughed, ‘you’re forgetting, I’m a public figure; I’m in the movies. I don’t have a lot of influence myself, not yet, but I know people who do. If your old man tried to make trouble for me or for Prim. . especially for her. . I’d have him squashed like a fly.’

She gave me an appraising look. ‘You have it all thought out, Oz, don’t you?’

I shook my head. ‘No, only some of it. I’m working on the rest.’

‘And what is the rest?’

‘Having the sort of power for myself that I’ve seen in others; in people like my brother-in-law, Miles Grayson, and my friend Everett Davis. The power to reach out and influence things.’

‘How do you do that?’

I considered her question carefully. I was voicing thoughts that had been idle, fanciful ambitions until then. All of a sudden they were falling into place, as the last of the old Oz facade crumbled away.

‘My first step is completing this next movie, and making it a personal success. That will cut me free of Miles, and break the only sort of hold that Prim has over me. After that, I’ll stay in movies for a while, until I’m seriously rich, instead of fairly so.’

‘And somewhere along the line you’ll ditch Prim.’ It was a prophesy, not a question.

‘Not necessarily. Prim’s had some bad things happen in her life, all of them male, including me, including Ramon. As far as I’m concerned, when she gets back, maybe we can start on a new chapter, one where it’s all good for a change.

‘Down there in Barcelona right now, with your old man, she’s playing a part. She’s being tough and vengeful, she thinks, doing what she has to do, just as you’ve been. But that’s not the real her. . any more than it’s the real you.

‘There’s no way I can change what I am, but maybe I’d like to help her get back to the person she was before all the crap happened.’

‘But do you love her?’

‘Oz doesn’t love. I can’t; not any more.’

‘Then shouldn’t you let her try to find someone who does?’

I drank the last of my mineral water. ‘I prefer it when you ask easy questions. But, of course, if she wants to, I can’t stop her.’

‘You’ll try to keep her for a while, though; if only for the sake of your career.’

‘You’re the second person to tell me that. I wish I could tell you that I wouldn’t, that I was above that; but the fact is. .

‘So what are you going to do after Ramon?’ I asked her, changing the flow of the discussion.

‘I don’t know. I’ll teach again, and bring up my son, but beyond that. . maybe nothing.’

‘You won’t go off in pursuit of Capulet, the maestro?’

‘No way. Ramon isn’t a bad man: Rey is. I wouldn’t let Alejandro anywhere near him.’

‘Speaking of Alejandro, are you sure you’ll be able to keep him?’

‘I’ll take him to France if I have to. But Ramon won’t want him, I don’t think. I will be surprised if he even tries for custody; it would cramp his style.’

I thought of Fortunato’s style for a moment, and that flame of hypocritical anger flared again for a moment. I began to believe Vero’s notion of the two of them in Barcelona, and I realised that if it was true, it couldn’t have been planned in advance. Ramon couldn’t have known she’d be going down there, for she hadn’t known herself until half an hour before she hit the road.

‘Has your husband changed his cell phone recently?’ I asked.

‘No. He’s had the same number for years, since he was in the Guardia Civil.’

Prim has a remarkable memory for numbers; once they’re lodged in her brain she can recall most of them, and certainly the most important, within seconds. If Vero was right, she’d called him and he’d come running. . IF she was right.

‘You know what?’ I told her. ‘You should go to France. You should get your son away from here and bring him up somewhere new. If you raise him here there’s a fair chance that he’ll never leave. This place is fine for retired Europeans and for Catalans who are born to the lifestyle, but there really is more than that.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know, I’m half Catalan too, remember.’

‘I do know; I’m all Fifer, and that’s worse.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘Because I like the place, yet I have the ambition and the will to go away from it when I need to. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be gone from here, back to Scotland. A few weeks after that and I’ll be in Los Angeles.’

‘Lucky you. And here was I thinking that Rey Capulet’s palace had hold of you for ever, with its sunshine, its luxury, its fine wine cellar. Did all of that come with the house as well?’

I shrugged; maybe I was starting to turn into a Catalan myself. ‘The wine? There was some in racks in the house, and in the storage area at the back. It was good stuff but I wouldn’t describe it as a cellar.’

‘No, no. I mean the cellar itself. Rey had some very valuable wines there, laid down long-term. I suppose he must have had them taken away when he left.’

I was more than a bit puzzled. ‘Vero,’ I assured her, ‘this house doesn’t have a cellar.’

She looked at me, blankly. ‘Of course it does, down below; a big one where Rey kept his wines, and some of his f iles.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Then I remembered another cellar I’d been in once. ‘Does it have a secret entrance?’

‘Don’t be silly. There’s a door under the staircase.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘There is.’

‘Listen, this is my house now, and I’m telling you there’s no door there.’

‘Come on,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll show you.’

She led me out of the kitchen and round to the far side of the big staircase, into the passage which led to our small office. ‘There. .’ she exclaimed, pointing. Then she stopped and looked, blankly.

There was no door of course. Like the other, the side of the stairway from the steps down to the floor was finished in fine wood panelling. English oak, I’d been assured by Sergi, although I was fairly sure it was really good quality Spanish pine, well treated and finished.

‘This is new.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Oz, I swear, this is new. It wasn’t here when I knew this house before, and there is a door behind it.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ But once I had, a big question came to me. Why would anyone block up a doorway in a house they were selling?

‘Do you know any good carpenters around here?’ I asked Veronique.

‘One or two. Why?’

‘Because I’m going to need one shortly.’

I went out behind the house, into the workshop and selected the biggest chisel I could find and a black-handled steel claw hammer.

She looked at me with a degree of awe as I set to work on the panelling. ‘You’re going to tear it down?’

‘Of course. I can’t have all that wine going to waste.’ I worked as carefully as I could, trying to remove the wood, rather than just rip it out. The panelling job had been done by a real expert; the joins were there, but you couldn’t see them, and the nails which secured the timber to the framework behind had been filled over and varnished to make them undetectable.

In the end, it came off easily. I worked until all the sections were loosened, then removed them together.

Yes, there was a door; but it hadn’t just been covered over, it had been bricked up. Whoever had done the job had been much better at carpentry than at building walls.

Veronique was looking frightened now; I guess I was looking pretty serious myself.

‘Listen, kid,’ I told her. ‘I think you should leave.’

‘No.’

‘Humour me in this, okay. This was done for a reason, and I’d rather that you were long gone from here when I find out what it was. Go back to your baby; better still, nip down to Girona and buy something to prove to your mother that you really did go there.’

‘Why?’

‘Common sense. Keep all your options open, for now at least; so that this morning never happened, if that’s the way you decide you want it.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m going to knock this wall down. This morning? As far as I’m concerned, it certainly didn’t happen.’

I recovered her coat and scarf from the kitchen, kissed her quickly, and rushed her to the door before she had a chance to protest.

I watched her from the window, and listened to the sound of her engine, until I was sure she had driven off. Then I went back out to the workshop and found a bigger hammer. . a much bigger hammer.

As it turned out I could probably have nutted my way through the badly built wall. The bricks were soft, and I guessed that they hadn’t been properly soaked before being put in place. Three good whacks, middle, top and bottom, and there was a hole big enough for me to step through.

As the last chunk fell, the smell seemed to come out in a ‘Whoosh!’ Staleness, mustiness, and something that could have been the notorious surge from the L’Escala town sewers, but wasn’t. I waited until it had subsided, then opened all the doors and windows in the living room to let it escape outside, before I contemplated going down to trace its source.

I brought my wide-beam torch through from the kitchen, but as it turned out I didn’t need it. There was a switch at the top of the stairway, I flicked it, and lo, there was light, from three neon tubes suspended from the ceiling of the big, pillared chamber.

Capulet’s wine. . mine now, legally. . was still there, racked high; row upon row of it, dozen upon dozen. I picked one up as I reached the foot of the stairs. I didn’t recognise the label, but it was 1968 vintage, whatever it was. I hoped I would enjoy it.

I moved on past the racks, towards what I knew must be the front of the house. Facing me I saw a big double-fronted, metal filing cabinet. It was open and yellowed papers were strewn all over the tiled floor.

I came to the last rack and looked round, shivering from the chill as I did. . At least I think it was the chill.

This time, as I looked at the body lying face-down. . a technical description; it didn’t have a face any more. . I was one hundred per cent certain that I’d found Reynard Capulet, the maestro. I didn’t have to prod him to find out whether he was dead or not, and I didn’t have to be an ace pathologist to know what had killed him either. The big kitchen cleaver that had done the job was still lodged in the back of his skull.

‘Don’t you move, now,’ I warned him. ‘Not till the ambulance gets here.’

Then I went back upstairs and found Captain Fortunato’s card, the one with his mobile number on it, the number that Prim must have known a couple of years before.

I almost dialled it until I thought to myself, Fuck it; might as well know one way or another.

So instead I called the Husa Princesa and asked for Prim’s room.

‘Did you decide to stay in this afternoon?’ I asked her, unnecessarily, as she picked up.

‘Yes,’ she replied. This time she sounded hesitant, not drowsy.

‘Fine. Listen, if you’re alone, I apologise. If you’re not, put him on.’

There was a silence, broken eventually by Fortunato’s voice. ‘Yes?’ He sounded a hell of a lot more hesitant than had Prim.

‘Tea-break’s over, Ramon,’ I told him. ‘Time you went back to work. I want to see you here, at the house, inside an hour and a half. You’re a copper; you can go lights and sirens if you have to.’

‘What’s this about, Oz?’ he asked.

I had to laugh at him. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, that might be regarded as a fucking stupid question in the circumstances. But as it happens, it isn’t about you. You’ll see when you get here. Now just do what I tell you.

‘Oh yes, and come alone. But from what I hear, you always do anyway.’