Deadly Business

by Quintin Jardine

  When I asked her if she could give me the names and address of the couple who’d been his unwitting taxi drivers, she shot me a look full of alarm and shook her head. I explained that I only wanted to apologise to them, and to thank them for doing the right thing when they’d found the wee chap, but still she said that she couldn’t do that, or her bosses would hand her her head as a plaything. I didn’t press her further. I decided instead that if Philippe and Theresa knew them, as almost certainly they would, I would give them a five-hundred euro tab at Vaive to work their way through, and that’s a lot of chicken pigs.

  Janet and Tom were waiting in the hall when I said goodbye to the cops and peeled wee Jonathan from round my legs. He looked at them fearfully, then saw what his sister was holding in her hand and burst into tears.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Tom told him, as he took the white chocolate Magnum from his sister. The kid gave him an awkward, cracked smile. We took him into the kitchen, where Conrad joined us, and I sat him at the table, while I tossed his damp and smelly beach clothes into the washing machine, along with my reprieved bikini and a couple of towels, all I had left to boost the load after my earlier burst of laundry mania.

  He was halfway through his ice cream when I came back from the utility room. I let him finish before I asked the question that we all knew had to be put. ‘Why did you run away, son? You need to tell us, so we understand and can help you.’

  His eyes became hard; they were scary in such a small child. ‘I don’t want Duncan as a daddy,’ he whispered.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Janet exclaimed. ‘But it’s not going to happen. Mum doesn’t like him any more, remember.’

  ‘But she does,’ wee Jonathan wailed. ‘She’s in America and they’ve got married.’

  ‘No they haven’t,’ Janet protested. ‘Jonathan, Mum’s in America because she’s been ill, but she’s better now and she’s on her way home.’

  Fuck it, Susie! I thought. You couldn’t trust your daughter with the whole truth, and now I’m stuck with it.

  ‘They are so married,’ the wee fellow insisted. ‘I heard Auntie Primavera talking to Mum on the phone and that’s what they were talking about.’ He looked at me warily. ‘I couldn’t help it, Auntie Primavera. I was going to the toilet and the door was open.’ That was a small lie, the toilet being one floor above the room where I’d spoken to Susie, but I wasn’t going to pick up on it. ‘I heard you say it.’

  Janet was struck dumb. She turned to me, and I nodded. It was all I could do. ‘Mum never told me,’ she said, sounding more bitter than a twelve-year-old ever should. ‘When I spoke to her she told me about her illness, but she didn’t say anything about that.’

  I reached out and ruffled wee Jonathan’s hair. ‘Maybe you can see why,’ I suggested. ‘I am sure she felt, and still does, that it was something she had to tell you in person.’

  ‘She can tell me any way she likes,’ she protested. ‘I agree with Jonathan. I don’t want her to be married to that man. He’s not nice. He tried to bully the boys, and I don’t like the way he looks at me either.’

  That was a new element, although it didn’t take me completely by surprise. ‘What do you mean by that, Janet?’ I asked her.

  She hesitated. ‘It’s just … not nice. There was one time at home last year when I’d just got out of the pool and I’d taken my bikini off. I thought I was alone, but there’s a glass door and it was like a mirror and I could see Duncan there and he was looking at me, with no clothes on. When he realised I’d seen him, he just smiled. He’s a bad man, Auntie Primavera.’

  Too bloody right he is, I thought, as alarmed by the revelation as she must have been by the experience. ‘Then you must tell your mother that story,’ I insisted.

  ‘I can’t,’ the girl whispered.

  ‘Then I will,’ said Conrad. ‘And I’ll be asking Mr Culshaw about it as well.’

  Janet took her brother’s hand. ‘We don’t want to live with him, Auntie Primavera. We don’t have to, do we? Can we stay here tomorrow?’

  ‘I’d love to say yes, Janet. But you know I can’t; your mother wants you home. You might not like her choice of a husband; hell, I don’t, as you must realise, but it was hers to make.’

  ‘But you don’t always need to have a man,’ she pointed out.

  ‘True,’ I admitted. ‘I haven’t had a partner, not since your dad and I split up thirteen years ago. That’s been my choice …’ I felt Liam’s presence in the room, ‘… but I’m free to change my mind about it, just as your mum’s free to … make her own mistakes. Duncan will know, or be told by me if necessary, that as your stepfather, he has to care for you two as if you were his own. Let’s not condemn him out of hand. The fact that he’s back with your mother means surely that he knows he could have been better last time, and that he’ll be a good stepdad.’

  Her expression told me that she didn’t believe a word of that. I couldn’t complain; neither did I.

  Wee Jonathan slept with his sister that night. It was Tom’s idea; maybe he was considerate, or maybe he didn’t want to have to listen to the wee man crying.

  We were all up at sparrowfart next morning; quarter to seven, to be exact. Tom and I had to be on the road by eight to reach Barcelona Airport comfortably for our eleven thirty flight to Heathrow, and Conrad wanted to get the kids back to Monaco for midday, which meant that he had to leave around the same time. As I got myself ready, I reflected that Liam had been right to go back to the hotel. First morning with a new man, one, I would not have wanted to rush off and leave him, and two, I’d have preferred less company. There was a third factor too, that I hadn’t taken into account the evening before, not until Susie’s example had been laid out for us all. It was a potentially life-changing step for Tom, and I needed to prepare him for it in a way she certainly hadn’t done with her two.

  I almost rang Liam to tell him we were off, but I didn’t reckon the Riomar was geared for early morning calls, so instead I sent a text to the mobile number he’d given me. All it said was, ‘Hasta Sabado. Pxxx’; he could work that out for himself. I confess that I was anxious when I said goodbye to the kids and Conrad, worried about what awaited them and also, naggingly, how he might react to Janet’s story of Culshaw’s sneak peek at her undressing, once he was face to face with the guy.

  I would have liked to go with them, and I believe they’d have preferred that too, but the promise I’d made to Susie had made that impossible, and so I could do nothing but trust that she and the Kents would make the situation as easy as possible for them.

  We took our other car down to the airport. The jeep is a few years old now, and much as I love it, Tom reached the age a while ago at which his head started to be turned by rather flashier motors. There was gentle nagging, about a BMW, or maybe one of those cute little Mercedes sports cars with the folding roof, or maybe an Audi. I resisted them all, but then the Mini Coupé was launched, and I was as hooked as he was. We bought a nice blue one, the Cooper S model, with all the toys they had on offer thrown in by way of a discount, and that’s become our treat car. The jeep still does most of the mileage, but when we’re going somewhere special it’s in that flash little bugger.

  It goes like that off a shovel, but I rarely allow it to express itself. Still, we made good time down the autopista. Tom didn’t say a word until we were south of Girona, but eventually he came out with the question I’d been expecting, the one he could only ask when we were alone.

  ‘Do you like Liam, Mum?’

  ‘I rather think I do,’ I admitted. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘No, I like him too. I want to train with him. He told me he’s a sixth dan black belt in karate. That’s serious, Mum. Our instructor’s only third dan himself. I can learn a lot from him; so could wee Jonathan.’

  That surprised me. ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes. Wee Jonathan needs somebody to teach him things. He’s frightened of everything. I try my best to make him not scared, but I’m not with him all
the time.’

  ‘We’re a long way from Monaco,’ I pointed out. ‘And besides, Liam’s only visiting; he’s on holiday, like most of the people who come here.’

  ‘He’ll still be here when we get back, won’t he?’ he asked, anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘unless he gets bored and goes back to Toronto. That’s where he lives.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that, would he?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m sure he won’t. I hope he doesn’t.’ All of a sudden, I was less sure of myself. He wouldn’t. Would he?

  As if in answer to my question, my phone rang, loud in the car through the speakers. ‘Yes,’ I said, to accept the call.

  ‘Hi.’ I was getting to like the sound of his voice, well-travelled Irish. ‘I got your text; received and understood. Did you get on the road okay?’

  ‘We did, thanks.’ I stressed the plural, hoping he would realise that he wasn’t speaking to me alone. ‘We are, in fact; about halfway there. We were just talking about you. Now I’m gone, Tom reckons you’ll bugger off with the first blonde you see.’

  ‘I do not,’ he protested, loudly. ‘I never said that, Liam. It’s Mum kidding. Do you really live in Toronto?’

  ‘I do. I have a nice big duplex down on Harbourfront, with a view over Lake Ontario, right across to America, if you could see that far. When you come back, I’ll show you some of my photographs.’

  ‘We will hold you to that,’ I told him. ‘I’ll call you when we get to our hotel in Glasgow.’

  ‘Which one? Some of those can be dodgy.’

  ‘The Malmaison; it’s fairly new, very chic, from what I saw on its website. Bye for now.’

  I hit the button on the steering wheel that cancels the call and drove on. ‘I’d like to go to Toronto, Mum,’ Tom said, dreamily.

  We had reached the airport, five minutes before our target arrival time of ten o’clock, and I was reversing into a parking space in the multi-storey when the phone rang again. I switched off the engine, killing the Bluetooth, and took it from my pocket. I checked the number, imagining it would be Liam, calling again to wish us a safe flight. I was wrong: ‘Audrey mobile’ showed on screen. I thumbed the icon to accept her call.

  ‘Hi,’ I began. ‘Where are you calling from? You should be almost home by now. Conrad and the kids will be well into France by now.’

  ‘I’m at the airport, Nice Airport,’ she replied. I knew from her voice … it was shaky and she sounded scared … that something was wrong, very wrong, and felt a sudden surge of relief that I wasn’t on hands free and that Tom couldn’t hear her. He was engaged in taking out bags from the boot; I left him to it and took a few steps away.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s Susie. Primavera, she’s died.’

  Looking back, I shouldn’t have been as shocked as I was. I knew how ill Susie was; I knew that her chances of long-term survival were practically nil. I knew the complications of the chemotherapy regime she’d been on. I knew why they’d pumped platelets into her bloodstream, and what the implications of that were. And yet, when Audrey told me, I was as stunned as she was; even with all that knowledge, there is still an inbuilt refusal to accept that someone close to you is approaching the point of death.

  I was speechless for a few seconds. A sound came from behind me: Tom closing the boot lid. Then another, a loud click as he locked the car. Then a third, the wheels of our cases as he pushed them in my direction.

  ‘Tell me,’ I murmured, back in command of my voice.

  ‘She died during the flight from Charles de Gaulle to Nice. Looking back, she was a bit hazy in the lounge before we boarded, but she said she was just tired from the transatlantic flight. We got on board, Duncan grabbed the window seat, I took the middle and Susie was on the outside. She didn’t mind that; she said it would make it easier for her if she had to go to the toilet.’

  She paused; I imagined she was finding it difficult to hold herself together.

  ‘As it happened, nobody did. It’s a relatively short flight. We took off on time, and we were still climbing when Susie said to me that she was going to try and sleep all the way, so she’d be bright when she met the kids. And she did, she nodded right off.’

  ‘Did she waken at all?’ By that time Tom had reached me with the cases; he was standing beside me frowning. I took one case from him, and gestured towards the lift; he headed in that direction.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Audrey replied. ‘They brought the bar trolley, but I don’t think she was aware of it, not even when the steward reached over us to give Duncan the two bottles of white wine that he’d asked for.’ She sobbed; I said nothing, but let her get it out.

  ‘We touched down in Nice at nine twenty. It was quite a hard landing; everyone else on the plane was shaken up, but Susie didn’t stir, not at all. At first I thought it was just because she’d been so tired. I didn’t try to waken her until we’d taxied in and were on stand, and then I couldn’t. I tried, very gently at first, then I shook her a little bit harder. It was only when I took my seat belt off and turned round to take a good look at her, I saw … the way her mouth was hanging open … Primavera …’

  ‘I understand,’ I said gently. Tom was at the lift; the doors were open, but I waved for him to wait, knowing that if I stepped inside I’d lose the signal.

  ‘I called the flight attendants,’ she continued. ‘They’re all first-aiders, and they could see right away it was serious. They asked if there was a doctor on board and a woman came up from the back of the plane. She had ID that showed she worked in a hospital in Paris. She couldn’t find a pulse, she held a mirror under her nose, and I could see there wasn’t the faintest sign of breath on it. Then she shone a penlight in her eye and said the pupils were completely non-reactive. They had oxygen on board, and those shock pads, but the doctor said she was beyond resuscitation, and she pronounced her dead, at nine twenty-nine local time. The captain was there; he made a note of it, and got her to sign a declaration.’

  ‘Did she suggest a cause of death?’

  ‘No. The pilot asked her, but she said she wasn’t prepared to guess, that there’ll have to be an autopsy.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘They put a sheet over her, and got everyone off the plane through the back exit. We had to clamber over her, Duncan and I.’

  ‘How did he react?’ I asked.

  ‘You know, Primavera, I can’t answer that, not properly. He didn’t burst into floods of tears or anything, put it that way. He was very quiet. That’s until the captain asked me who was the next of kin. I said it was Janet, just automatically, without even thinking, and Duncan shouted, “No, she’s fucking not! I am!” The crew probably just thought he was hysterical, but he wasn’t. He was making a point, if you ask me.’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ I told her. ‘I can see that. What are you doing now? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the VIP lounge; they’ve asked us to wait here to talk to the ambulance crew that are coming to take Susie’s body to the morgue. They’re going to take her to the hospital in Nice. I want her to go to Monaco, but that might not be possible, a jurisdictional thing, the airport manager says, since she died in France. Duncan’s outside, having a cigarette … to calm his nerves, he said … but I can see him from where I’m sitting. He’s standing in the forecourt and he’s not smoking; he’s on his phone. He switched it on when we got in here, and got a text right away.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ I muttered. ‘Audrey,’ I continued, ‘I have to think about all of this, and I have Tom with me. I can’t kid him on about this. I will call you back as soon as we’re through security and I’ve had a chance to talk to him.’

  ‘You’re still going to catch your flight?’

  The thought of not catching it hadn’t even occurred to me. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘It’s even more important now that I do. I’ll speak to you again shortly; meantime, hang in there.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Tom asked, as soon
as I’d joined him at the lift. We weren’t alone; a fat bloke with a suit bag and a briefcase was waiting beside us, and I didn’t want to be breaking any news in his earshot.

  ‘Not now, love,’ I said. ‘Be patient, until we’re inside the building.’

  He nodded, but his face was set in a look that wasn’t fearful exactly, but told me he wasn’t expecting to be hearing any good news. I’d called Audrey by name and if he’d heard me … He said nothing, though; instead he fussed me through the fast bag drop, which wasn’t, and security, putting his carryon bag and mine on to the X-ray conveyor and reminding me to take off my belt and watch. I set the damn gate off, of course, thanks to the metal button on my bloody trousers, and had to endure a pat-down, no, a feel-up, from a clumsy woman who was so thorough in her search that I asked her if she was enjoying it, for I sure as hell wasn’t. She threatened to call her supervisor. I threatened to call the police. I must have been better at threatening than her, for she backed off.

  I was still steaming mad with her by the time I’d reclaimed my stuff, but my son’s presence, and the knowledge of what I was about to tell him, helped me control myself. We went straight to the business class lounge. I’ve known those to be busier than the concourse at some airports, but Barcelona’s was quiet that morning. I checked the board as we walked in, letting Tom show our tickets. Our flight was showing a ten-minute delay; that meant we had more than half an hour to boarding time, enough for what had to be done.

  I fetched a soft drink and some biscuits for him and a coffee for me, then steered us to the quietest corner I could see. His patience finally ran out as soon as I sat down.

  ‘It’s Susie, Mum, isn’t it?’ he said, his face tense.

  All I could do was nod.

  ‘She’s dead. I can tell by your face.’