There were five seconds of silence and, when she did reply, a hairline crack had cut through her voice. “Álvaro.” She breathed in deep and slowly back out again to cope with the heat. “He wasn’t like any of the other journalists we met. Flattery and flirting didn’t work with him. He was obsessed with bringing Marco down, but he was kind to us too. He knew we were working for Next Phase and he offered to help us get away from them.”
A thought fired in my head. “Did you give him any dirt on the Romanellis?”
“No, never. But then nothing I know about Marco is really that bad. The worst I can say about him is that he likes to party and has a wandering eye. That kind of thing might have been interesting to Gianna but I doubt it would have made it into the papers.”
“So what did Marco make you do to Álvaro?”
“We didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re suggesting. Lio had just gone upstairs when he was shot. I doubt she’d have had the time to find a gun, kill Álvaro, get showered and changed and come back down.”
“But Marco made you do something, didn’t he?”
She let out a troubled sigh. “At the conference yesterday, Álvaro got up in the middle of the auditorium and screamed accusations at Marco. He said he knew all about Marco’s past and that he was going to bring him down. Until then, he’d never made a scene like that and it took ages for us to pull him away. It was in the middle of the keynote speech and Marco was furious. When the conference was over, he told us to do whatever was necessary to destroy Álvaro’s reputation before the end of the tour.”
“And what did you think that meant?” I took a cup of water from the tap by the door and poured it down my back. Rather than cooling me off, it made me feel like I was the element in a kettle as yet more steam fizzed off me.
“I wasn’t paid to think. Lio said she would deal with it and I kept quiet. But when Álvaro came back here last night and Marco lost his temper, I saw that demon side of him that he’d always kept hidden. With someone like Marco, you know it’s there, lurking beneath the surface, but when it finally emerges it’s raw and terrifying and you can’t look away.”
Until that moment, I hadn’t paid attention to the fact that her English was now almost perfect. Even her accent had improved and I realised it was another part of the act she’d been putting on. It made me wonder if I was still falling for her tricks.
“So… why are you telling me this? Why answer my questions now?”
A single second of laughter puffed out of her. “I don’t owe the Romanellis anything.” She straightened in her seat and the steam swallowed her up once more. “I figure the job’s coming to an end one way or another. Either Marco’s going down for these killings or we finish up in Madrid and they’ll have no further use for me.”
“So you think he did it then?”
She answered with another question. “Who else would want Álvaro dead?”
“That’s the big question.” I paused to think about everything she had told me and there was still one part of the mystery that didn’t fit in. “Did you ever meet a Spanish girl called Maribel Ruiz? She had long brown hair and a heart-shaped beauty mark on her right cheek.”
“She doesn’t sound familiar, but there were some Spanish girls working for Marco before I came on board. I think he likes to imagine he’s doing us a favour by plucking us from the streets, just as his own benefactor did.”
Her comment caught me off guard. “Marco inherited his money from his family’s business. There was no benefactor.”
Standing up at last, she re-materialised before me to pull her bikini back on with a knowing grin. “Sure. You can believe the highly unlikely story that he’s the last, lost relative of the Carlucci family if you want to, but let’s just say that my past and Marco’s are far more similar than you might imagine and he would ever admit. He told me one night when he was drunk; he was a grifter and, when he met the old Carlucci woman, he found his ultimate trick.”
She opened the door and the steam rushed from the sauna, apparently even more desperate than I was to get out of there. “Wait. Do you think that’s what Álvaro discovered? Was that what he was threatening to reveal?”
I stood up to chase after her but as soon as I stepped into the dressing room, my body grew limp and I felt myself falling. The floor zoomed up to kiss me and the room went black.
Chapter Nineteen
It didn’t take me long to come round but, when I did, I had a bruise on my head and I still felt like I was dissolving.
“Izzy, are you okay?” I could hear Heike’s voice before I opened my eyes.
Ramesh was there too. “Please, don’t let her die! I couldn’t live without my Izzy.”
I rolled over onto my back and looked about.
“Glad to see you’re still with us.” The pretty brunette smiled down at me sweetly. There was an unexpected burst of compassion in the look she gave me and her coldness appeared to have melted away.
“It’s a miracle!” Ramesh fell to his knees in exaltation. “Thank you, Lord. I will never doubt you again.” Coming from a half-Hindu, half-Christian family, I’m not sure even he knew which god he was praying to.
I sat up, still feeling weak. “I’m fine.” There was a towel rolled up where my head had just been and a glass of water on hand. “Thanks for taking care of me.”
“It was all Heike,” Ramesh admitted. “I’ve been a mess since she came to get me.”
“How’s your head?” She was a hooker with heart.
“I’m fine. It’s my own stupid fault for standing up so quickly. I should have eaten more for lunch.”
“Perhaps we should call for an ambulance?” the presumably still Austrian girl replied.
I was feeling steadier so I pulled myself up onto a bench. “No, honestly, I’m fine. It was the heat that made me pass out, not the bruise.”
She nodded, and wrapped a towel around herself. “Well if you’re sure you’re alright, I’ll leave you with your friend.” She looked at me to check this was okay then took her possessions and left.
“Are you certain you’re not dying, Iz?”
I smiled at my faithful companion. “Of course not. And there’s no time for lying about in a daze.”
“That’s a relief.” His tone changed. “Uncle will shout at me again if I don’t get all my work done this afternoon. I have to finish cleaning out the empty rooms from yesterday. You wouldn’t believe the stuff people leave behind. I found a phone, some phone chargers, a bunch of books, a Bluetooth speaker, more phone chargers, an unopened packet of bacon sandwiches – which were delicious – and a load more phone chargers.”
I rested my weight on his shoulder as we left the leisure centre and headed back to reception. “You know, you really should talk to Kabir about getting some more staff. It’s not fair the way he’s taken advantage of you.”
A grin shaped Ramesh’s face. “He’s family. What else would you expect?”
“That doesn’t mean he should use you as a slave.”
“Don’t worry about me, Iz. I’m actually starting to enjoy myself. The good thing about doing the bedrooms is that I get to eat all the little coffee biscuits I could ever dream of. I’m supposed to lay them out with the tea-making facilities, but who’s going to know?” Still smiling like a manatee, he picked up a box from reception and headed over to the lift.
I thought about talking to Jaime again as he was alone now, but there were other people ahead of him on my list. I spotted Celestino and Sagrario playing cards in the dining room and decided I should cross them off first.
“Do you know how to play Escoba?” Celestino asked me as I sat down at their table and he dealt out their cards.
“I know solitaire? Is it anything like that?”
The corners of his mouth turned upwards the tiniest bit, but it didn’t break his concentration as he picked up his hand to
view the cards. “You better sit this one out, pay attention and I’ll deal you in for the next round.” He was a man who took his cards seriously.
“I was talking to Marco Romanelli earlier.” As I spoke, I watched their faces for any hint of emotion. “He’s a wonderful man, so full of grand ideas. I’m sure that if Next Phase is given a fair go, it could change the whole political system in Europe. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Sagrario picked up a card from the table but didn’t look at me as she answered. “Yes, wonderful.”
“Celestino, what was it that attracted you to the movement in the first place?”
His eyes flicked in my direction and I was sure that he knew what I was doing. “It’s like Marco says, we need change.” This was all he offered, but I could see the annoyance on his wife’s face.
I kept pushing, determined to get the reaction I was after. “Of course, it will only work if we apply all of Next Phase’s ideas. Doing things by half will get us nowhere.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Sagrario nodded with her eyes still glued to her cards.
“It’s one thing to get businesses nationalised again but we also need a balance in our society.” I was making this nonsense up as I went along. “Now, I’m not a racist, but it’s obvious that people should stick to their own.”
I’d finally provoked a tut from the old lady. I could see that I would have no luck getting any information out of stone-faced Celestino, but his wife was a different bucket of salmon.
“Don’t get me wrong, I have foreign friends, but it’s like in the animal kingdom, certain species live in certain environments. It doesn’t take make sense for us to be scattered across the planet. Holidays are one thing, but Englishmen should live in England and Spaniards in Spain. And, as much as I like them, it’s only right that the Africans should go back down to Africa.”
That did the trick. Sagrario was suddenly raging. “So then, who would work in our hospitals and pick our food? It’s that kind of disgusting attitude which set Spain back fifty years under Franco. A whole generation died trying to protect us from bigotry and I never thought I’d live to see such ideas return to Spain.” Her words faded out and she raised her hand to her mouth.
Her husband looked across at her but didn’t panic. He tossed a card down and turned to address me. “I think it is wonderful that we live in a world where everyone is free to express their opinions.”
I could see right through him. “I knew it! You two aren’t fascists. Romanelli and his gang are the last people you’d want anything to do with. Tell me the truth, why are you really here?”
Sagrario kept her mouth shut this time and her husband scanned the room to make sure that no one could hear. “Know your enemy, Izzy. If we’re going to stop these barbarians, then we have to understand them. That’s why we booked this hotel; to see Romanelli up close. And that’s why we went to the conference yesterday.”
“So, what are you? Political activists?”
Sagrario still looked terrified, so Celestino did all the talking. “I prefer the term guerrilla journalist. In 2008 after the financial crash, we lost everything. We had an ironmonger’s shop in Seville and it went bust. We survived for a while but, when the bank took our house away, we ended up in a shelter. That’s where we decided that we would never let a government rob us again. We set up a blog to expose corruption. We’ve made it our goal to stop this kind of thing before it can infect the country. We can get closer to people because they think we’re just a sweet old couple.”
I was doing some sums in my head adding bits of information together leaving others aside. “So you must have known Álvaro?”
Sagrario switched her focus to me. “We’d crossed paths, but we maintain our anonymity so that nobody knows who we really are.”
“Okay then, just to summarise; the two of you are here because you are undercover septuagenarian guerrilla journalists, hell-bent on stopping Marco Romanelli’s movement?”
Sagrario’s sweet little old lady face brightened up at this. “That’s exactly it, dear.”
I copied her sunny expression. “And how often do people fall for that excuse?”
Celestino joined in. His deep, booming laughter thundered across the empty dining room. “It’s the first time we’ve tried it. What do you think?”
Sagrario was looking worried so I tried to put her mind at ease. “I’m not trying to get you into trouble. I just need to know why you’re here. I can’t see how you would be involved in either of the murders, but, to work out who was, you have to tell me why you’ve been lying.”
The old man’s expression was suddenly hard and fierce. “That’s for you to work out. Why should we give away all our secrets, just because you’re a pretty girl who happens to speak a bit of Spanish?”
“Yeah, why should we trust you?” There was something nasty in Sagrario’s tone that put me on edge.
“Because, before long, I might not be the only one who sees through your sweeter than sweet act. The truth has a habit of exposing itself.”
Having relaxed into the conversation, there was a change in Celestino. He rounded his shoulders, pulled his hands into his body and stared down hard at his cards. “Sagrario, it’s your turn.” I would get no more out of him.
I waited, as they played their game, in the hope that Sagrario would open up to me once more. It was useless. Celestino won the hand and I left them to it, still none the wiser of the rules of the game.
First Heike and Lio, now the Spanish couple. It was hard to believe that anyone was who they said they were. Delilah Shaw was the one person in the hotel who seemed most suited to the Next Phase ethos, and she claimed she had nothing to do with them. It’s a detective’s job to find the truth, but what if everyone around you is lying from the start?
I walked to the terrace to get my thoughts in order. Ian Dennison was already out there sitting under a parasol with his wife as their two kids ran around the garden pulling up flowers and occasionally punching one another. The weather was just right. The sun was high in the sky, a few wispy clouds floated about and the air was a perfect thirty degrees. Every time I ended up on the terrace, it made me want to sit down with a book, order an ice-cold lemonade and exchange real-life murders for fictional ones.
“Oi, Izzy Palmer?” Dennison called over and I knew that “Death on the Nile” would have to wait. “Have you worked out who the killer is yet?”
I pulled my sunglasses down my nose and looked over at him. “Yes, Ian. My working hypothesis is that you’re the culprit.”
“Hey, that’s a good one, that is.” He laughed but it didn’t sound real. “Hey, Sharon, did you hear that? She thinks I’m the killer.”
Mrs Dennison let out a nervous giggle of her own.
“I’m not joking,” I replied, raising my voice. “You do realise that you’re one of the very few people whose presence was unaccounted for at the time of both killings?”
He suddenly didn’t look so cheerful. “What are you saying? “He turned to his wife once more. “Sharon, what’s she saying? I was asleep both times. I told the police. I told them, I was asleep both times.” The more nervous he got, the more he repeated himself.
“Exactly. Asleep in your bed with no witnesses.” It was my turn to address his wife. “Mrs Dennison? Can you say for sure that Ian didn’t get out of bed last night and come down to the beach?”
She peered at her husband before replying in an almost inaudible voice. “I… I sleep with earplugs in because of Ian’s snoring so… Well… no, I can’t say for sure.”
Dennison was sweating even more than normal. “This is ridiculous, why would I have killed those two people? They didn’t mean anything to me.” His voice went a whole octave higher.
“I’m not so sure about that.” If only everyone was as easy to manipulate as Ian Dennison. “You keep saying how much you admire Marco Romanelli, perhap
s you thought you’d solve a few of his problems to get in his good books.”
He was jerking and glancing about now, like an angry cockerel. “This is insane, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I’m not a murderer!”
“So tell me what you’re really doing here this week. I know you didn’t just come for the conference.”
He gestured to his wife with one elbow. “Sharon and I thought the kids might like some time on the beach. The conference was a bonus.”
“Tell me the truth, Ian.” I turned my chair to face him and the legs made a terrible screech on the concrete. “I don’t believe you for a second. You couldn’t care less about Next Phase, could you?”
He rose to his feet and pointed one finger at me. “How dare you. I’m a racist me. I love all this send ’em back to where they come from stuff. It’s about time someone stood up and did something about…” He struggled over the next word and there was no conviction in his tone. “… foreigners.”
“Oh, sorry I take it all back. So it’s just a coincidence that Marco Romanelli owns a luxury car firm and you have a company that imports and exports expensive cars.”
For a moment, the only sound on the terrace were crashing waves and screaming kids. Big red Ian froze where he stood. I believe the term is snookered.
He looked to his wife but she didn’t have much to say at the best of times. When his reply did come it was garbled and hesitant. “I… I don’t know where you get these ideas. I’m… I… Well, I’m just here for the sunshine. The kids go crazy if they don’t get a dose of sun from time to time. In fact, I’d better check on them. You can’t let them off the leash too long or they start to bite people.”
He went off across the patio and down the steps to the garden. I almost felt sorry for his kids, who bore the brunt of his humiliation. He instantly slapped them around the ears and told them off for whatever they’d done. His wife glanced back at me and it was clear that she knew more than her husband was letting on.
Chapter Twenty
A Corpse on the Beach Page 14