Deadly Business

by Quintin Jardine

  I was still blazing mad, but sensible enough to realise that ‘Nobody’ would not cut it as an answer, so I told him the truth. ‘We were just having some girl talk,’ I added.

  ‘Did you ask where she is?’ Janet enquired. She hadn’t forgotten our earlier discussion.

  Maybe my state of mind influenced me, but I’d like to think that I simply decided it would be plain wrong to deceive her further. ‘She’s in America,’ I told her. ‘Something came up and she had to go there.’

  ‘When she went away last winter and before that in the autumn, was she in America then too?’

  There was something in her question, in its intonation, that told me she wasn’t buying any cover stories, not any more.

  ‘Yes, she was,’ I admitted, then went further. I owed Susie nothing and I wasn’t going to jeopardise my relationship with Tom’s highly intelligent half-sister, or him for that matter, by insulting them with any more attempted wool-pulling. ‘Your mother’s had a health problem,’ I told her. ‘She’s being looked after by a consultant in Monaco and he’s referred her to a clinic in America for treatment.’

  She stood tall and looked me in the eye, directly, giving me no wiggle room. ‘She’s not going to die, like Dad, is she?’

  ‘Your father died from a heart condition that wasn’t detected until it was too late. Your mother’s illness has been diagnosed, and it’s being treated appropriately. Her doctors are very happy with her.’

  I was dreading the next question: is it cancer? Thankfully, Janet seemed to decide that she had enough information and didn’t ask it. Instead she digested the news for a few seconds. ‘I won’t say anything to Jonathan,’ she said. ‘He worries about too many things as it is.’ Good kid; perceptive kid; caring kid.

  I nodded. ‘He doesn’t need to know.’

  ‘No. Thanks for telling me, Auntie Primavera. Mum’ll tell me too, eventually. When she does, I won’t let on that I knew already.’

  ‘I don’t mind if you do. My roof, my rules, like we say. If it was me, I’d have told Tom, but we all have to make our own judgements on the big issues in life. So don’t go blaming her, will you?’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t know. That’s two secrets in one day.’ She looked at her semi-sibling. ‘Did you know that our dad had been married before he married either of our mums?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, Mum told me, after he died and we came to live here. Grandpa Mac talks about her too. Hasn’t he ever mentioned her to you?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Grandpa Mac since I was seven,’ Janet murmured, ‘the summer we came here and he was here too. I’d like to go and see him in Scotland, but Mum won’t take me.’

  That didn’t surprise me. While I get on with the entire Blackstone clan, I know that they don’t have a lot of time for Susie. I got over, more or less, the way she and Oz got together, but they never did, Ellie especially. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as the two of them.

  ‘In that case,’ I promised, ‘next time you’re here with us, I’ll make sure that Grandpa Mac’s here too.’

  ‘And Grandma Mary?’ Tom asked.

  ‘If she wants.’ I wasn’t sure that she would. Mac hadn’t said anything specific, but I wasn’t sure that he and his second wife were doing too well.

  As I spoke, I realised that the crowds were gathering, and that I was way above their median age. ‘Enough of all that stuff,’ I declared, firmly. ‘Do you guys want to go to this gig or don’cha?’

  They beamed, both of them, and Janet jumped up and down like a one-woman football team that had just won the cup.

  ‘Well, let’s go,’ I shouted, ‘before the band gets tired and the bar gets emptied.’

  Not that there was any chance of either eventuality.

  We headed along the boardwalk, towards the old Greek wall, and the bandstand. It might have been billed as a reggae night but the musicians were all Catalan, mostly local, and they were pretty damn good. We were all wearing flip-flops, but I removed mine and stowed them in my bag, making damn sure it was zipped. Ours is a peaceable place but there were bound to be strangers around. Spain is a lovely country, but be under no illusion, it has its fair share of casual, opportunist crime and then some, if you’re casual and careless enough to provide opportunities.

  The beach bar was still well provisioned when we reached it but it was thronged, and selling out fast. Sensibly, they weren’t dispensing anything in glass, but I wasn’t fussy. I caught the owner’s eye and asked for three bottles of still water. I gave the kids one each and we wandered closer to the action. I recognised the bass player and one of the guitarists, and the girl with the mike was familiar too. They’d switched from reggae into a set of gipsy-style music; it was earthy, to say the least, and the singer knew all the actions. For a moment I wondered whether it was suitable for twelve-year-olds, then Tom laughed at one of the lines and I realised that a frontier had been crossed somewhere without my noticing.

  But I did notice something else, or rather someone. The bloke from the square had made his way to the concert too, or maybe he’d just been curious and followed the noise … or maybe he’d followed us. Nonsense, Primavera, I scolded myself mentally, all that crap with Culshaw’s making you paranoid.

  The one certainty was that the man was as smitten by the singer as every other guy with a pulse in the audience, even my son by the looks of it. With his attention elsewhere I was able to study him more closely than in the restaurant. Yes, he was probably early to mid-forties, quite tall, a little over six feet, with a fairly muscular build under his striped short-sleeved shirt, and he hadn’t been in the area for very long, for he was still a bit of a paleface. Plus he was British; I’ve lived in the village for long enough to make an educated guess at individual nationalities. Sometimes the clue is in height, with the Dutch for example; others, it’s how their kids are dressed, for example if a boy’s wearing a blue football shirt with a rooster crest and the name ‘Ribery’ on the back, then he’s either French or confused. With the Brits, it’s their pasty or pink faces and their general deportment. That falls into two categories. There are those who think that everywhere is a colony and that therefore they have first dibs on tables, waiters, etc., and who assume that if they speak English very slowly and very loudly they will be understood. Then there are those who are diffident to the point of nervousness, and completely out of their comfort zone in any country that doesn’t serve warm dark beer or tea in large earthenware pots. The man I was looking at was harder to place than most, but I decided that he belonged in the former category, if only because he didn’t look as if he had ever been nervous in his life.

  Therefore, summed up, mystery man was a middle-aged British citizen, a stranger on his own in a place that almost without exception attracts families or older couples. A widower, perhaps, or a divorcee, but certainly not gay from the way he was admiring the vocalist. Profession? You can’t tell a book by the cover. I have seen men shuffling along the beach in the sort of swim shorts that should never have left the factory, unshaven and with at least three over-spilling bellies, and learned later that they were corporate lawyers, hedge fund managers, surgeons or whatever. But Mr Brit was well dressed in his expensive tourist shirt and trousers with a discreet Lacoste alligator just below the waistband, and he had the air about him of someone who had no need or desire to dress down from his day job. Simple, Primavera, he’s a rep.

  I nodded at that verdict, at the very moment when the singer took a break and he glanced across and caught me looking at him. He smiled, and started to move in my direction. Oh shit, I thought, and harboured the notion of using the kids as a human shield but they’d drifted a couple of metres away from me, closer to the stage. All I could do, other than grab them and beat an undignified, not to mention cowardly, retreat, was to stand there and wait, pretending that I was ignoring his approach.

  ‘Primavera?’ Ben Simmers’ call took me unawares. I turned towards him and realised from his expression that he had taken in the whole thing.
His raised eyebrows, and his concern, asked, quite clearly, whether I wanted him to intervene, but I shook my head briefly.

  The guy drew closer; he was smiling and didn’t pose any threat in such a throng, but still, I felt a pang of something that might have been alarm, if not outright fear. Rarely do I feel vulnerable, but I did then, because I had this continuous nagging feeling that I was missing something.

  He stopped, standing in front of me, no closer than the kids were, sorry, kid, because Tom had left Janet’s side and was standing in front of me, a five foot four inch, fifty-nine kilo bundle of something serious.

  As I put a hand on his shoulder, the newcomer spoke. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Slightly Irish accent, but I still couldn’t pin him down.

  ‘If that’s a pub quiz starter,’ I replied, ‘the answer is, it’s a line from It Started with a Kiss, by Hot Chocolate, early nineteen eighties. If it’s a chat-up line, it’s crap and you’d be well advised to desist, because quite apart from my son here, there are at least three guys watching you right now who would be happy to take you to the top of the old Greek wall and chuck you in the sea if they thought you were annoying me.’ I paused. ‘If, on the other hand, it’s a straight question, then no, I don’t have a clue.’

  ‘You’re Liam Matthews!’ Janet’s exclamation cut in out of the blue. ‘You were a friend of our father’s. You were in some films with him and you came to visit us once when we lived in Scotland, beside Loch Lomond. I wasn’t very old at the time, but I remember you. Don’t you, Tom? It was just after you came to live with us.’

  ‘Got it in one,’ the former stranger laughed, as Tom shook his head. ‘You can only have been about … what … four, then. I didn’t meet your brother that day, though, just you. You wandered in when your dad and I were talking and he introduced me, and made you shake my hand, like a little lady. By God, but you’ve grown up. You’re a proper lady now, no mistake; he’d have been very proud of you, as I’m sure Susie is.’

  Liam Matthews! Liam bloody Matthews. A name from way, way, in my past; it must have been almost fifteen years back. Finally I remembered him, and the first time I’d ever seen him. It was in Barcelona, and I was covered in blood.

  After Oz left me for Jan, and went back to Scotland, I stayed on in our apartment in St Martí and took a job as a nurse in the Trueta hospital in Girona. A few months later, I was in the near-legendary JoJo’s Bar in L’Escala one night when the telly ran an ad for a wrestling show in Barcelona, and who was doing the promo but Oz. The shock knocked me off my bar stool.

  The nutter had got himself involved with a Glasgow-based outfit called the Global Wrestling Alliance. Ostensibly he was their ring announcer, but as it turned out he was really working on an undercover investigation into a series of attempts at sabotage. Whatever, I couldn’t let the circus leave town without seeing for myself; I booked a ticket and drove down.

  It wasn’t my intention to meet him … well, that’s what I told myself and still do … but there was another serious incident that very night. One of the wrestlers was shot, yards away from me, in the middle of the ring, and I wound up in there doing some battlefield first aid. The man’s name was Jerry Gradi, and happily it still is, because they reckon I saved his life. I’m still on Jerry’s Christmas card list and he’s on mine, but he’s the only one of that crew I kept in touch with.

  Liam was there too, although I didn’t pay too much attention to him, or give him any thought, considering everything that was going on, then and afterwards.

  It’s an evening I’ll never forget, for a reason that Duncan Culshaw touched on in his scurrilous book. After the shooting, Oz and I crossed paths at the hospital where Jerry was taken, when he came to check that he was going to be all right. The two of us had dinner together and that’s where he was when he had the phone call that told him that Jan had been electrocuted by the faulty washing machine in their flat in Glasgow.

  Fast forward a little. I kept in touch with him, this time to check that he was going to be all right. Eventually, one thing led to the other, I moved back to Scotland, and we became a couple again. Odd? No, I’d never stopped loving the boy, and he didn’t hate me too much either.

  He was still involved with the GWA; indeed, that’s how he got into the acting business. As a ring announcer, he fell well short of being Michael Buffer, but nonetheless he made an impression. As a result, he landed some voice-over work on TV commercials. Eventually Miles Grayson, my brother-in-law, was brave enough to cast him in a movie, and it all took off from there. Before it did, though, Oz and I had socialised with some of the wrestling crew and Liam had been among them.

  He’d looked a hell of a lot different then, hence my failure to recognise him. Apart from the specs, which were new, and the fact that he’d carried at least ten kilos more muscle in those days, he’d lost the big hair. Liam had been famous … some said notorious … for his ponytail, which hung on the end of one of the worst mullets I’ve ever seen. He’d looked like a holdover from a seventies pop band, but at some point since then he’d turned into a New Age man.

  My brother-in-law may have had something to do with that too; at Oz’s suggestion he’d cast Liam as a cop in one of his movies. The Showaddywaddy look would not have worked for that.

  When my reverie was over and I rejoined the moment, I saw that Liam was gazing down on Tom, who still hadn’t relaxed from his defensive posture. ‘Wow,’ he murmured. ‘Even if I didn’t know who you were, son, I’d have picked you out of a line-up of five hundred as Oz’s kid.’ He grinned. ‘You think you could take me, slugger? Your dad could have, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I’m not a slugger,’ Tom replied, quietly. ‘What’s your wing chun belt?’ he asked.

  Matthews put his thumb in his waistband. ‘About thirty-four just now. What’s wang shine anyway?’

  ‘Wing chun is the martial art I study. It’s Chinese, something like karate.’

  ‘I’m only kidding,’ Liam said. ‘I know what it is and I can guess what it means: it means, “Don’t mess with me,” right?’

  ‘No; actually it means “Forever springtime”. It’s close to what my mother’s name means in English.’

  ‘Whatever, young man,’ the ex-grappler chuckled. ‘I am more pleased to meet you than you could ever imagine.’ He extended his hand and Tom shook it. Then he looked at me. ‘And I’m just as pleased to meet you again, Mrs Blackstone.’

  ‘Stop kidding around,’ I told him. ‘It was Primavera back then and it still is. So, Mr Matthews,’ I continued, as the singer reappeared to finish her set, ‘what brings you here? Are you a tourist, and if so is Mrs Matthews back at the hotel? Her name was Erin, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you give me the “mister” either,’ he replied then shook his head. ‘Erin was never officially sanctioned, so to speak, nor has anyone else ever been. If you remember, she was an air hostess. She wound up marrying a pilot she thought was a safer bet than me.’

  ‘Maybe the Specsavers look put her off. I didn’t mark you down to wear those ever.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t like contacts, and I won’t let anyone burn my eyes with lasers. These are the best I can do. You’re still twenty-twenty, yes?’

  ‘So far,’ I said. ‘So, Liam, what are you doing here?’

  ‘It isn’t a long story,’ he replied, glancing up at the stage, ‘but this is probably not the place to tell it. If you’d like to meet for lunch tomorrow, today rather,’ he corrected himself, ‘I’ll tell you then.’

  Given the Susie situation, I wasn’t sure how the day would pan out. ‘Lunch might be a problem,’ I said. ‘Coffee would be better. Same place you were earlier, eleven thirty?’

  ‘That’s good for me. I’ll say goodnight then.’

  ‘Aren’t you staying for the music?’

  He looked up at the singer once again. ‘Better not,’ he chuckled. ‘I can’t understand a word she’s singing; I can only guess at it, and it’s driving me crazy.’

  Six
>
  We called it a morning at one thirty. Just being there had been enough for Janet and Tom. Sheer excitement – and that coffee – kept them going for a while, but eventually they both showed signs of flagging, and didn’t protest when I suggested that we head for home.

  I was as tired as they were but I didn’t sleep very well. My head was still buzzing with jumbled visions of Susie, her new husband, and a younger version of Liam Matthews, complete with big hair, drifting in and out of mental focus.

  I got up at the usual time, showered and dressed, maybe a little further upmarket than usual, with my coffee date in mind. I did flirt with the idea of dialling Susie’s mobile in what would have been for her the very early hours of the morning, to get even for her drunken, abusive phone call, but Culshaw would probably have answered, and the only thing I wanted to hear of him was his eulogy.

  But I did call Alex Guinart, as soon as I reckoned he’d be at his desk in Girona. ‘How was San Juan for you?’ I asked him when he answered. ‘Quiet?’

  He laughed. ‘Quiet is not a word I’d apply to it, but in police terms it was peaceful, as it usually is. The firefighters were busy as always, but most people were too happy or drunk to make trouble. How was yours?’

  ‘Mixed. Tom and Janet took me to the beach concert for a while. I needed the diversion because I’d had a difficult day. Alex,’ I asked, ‘do you remember that man you helped me get rid of last year, the would-be extortionist?’

  ‘Hah,’ he barked, ‘I remember him very well. Mr Duncan Culshaw. I didn’t simply let it go, you know. I opened a file on him, and entered it into our database. He is now officially a person of interest in Spain.’

  ‘So you still have the recording?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could give me a copy?’ I ventured.

  ‘That would be correct, Primavera, I couldn’t. But I could give it to any criminal authority that is investigating him. He’s not trying to con you again, is he?’ he asked.