PM The dogs?
It’s a bar, Sir, I said. It’s still there and until a few weeks ago it hadn’t changed. It has recently changed ownership and has a new image. It’s on Calle Lepanto. It used to be called The Dog’s Bollocks.
PM Bollocks?
Los cojones del perro, Sir, I explained. I realised immediately that this might need further explanation. It was an Australian theme bar, Sir. It’s a shop unit, part of the Europa Centre, which was quite new in 1979. The expressions, los cojones del perro, means something like being in with the garlic. It’s the place to be, the best in town. Australians also have venir con el langostino fresco.
PM Venir con el langostino fresco...
Indeed, Sir. In English it translates as come the raw prawn. It means tell a fib.
PM Fib?
A lie, Sir. Well, not quite a lie, more like something that stretches the truth a little. What is amazing reading this now is that at the time I had no intention of casting aspersions on the testimony of Maureen Voros, but Pérez Molino clearly interpreted my words in this way.
PM Are you suggesting that Ms Voros is not telling the truth?
MV I’ve never told a lie in my life, at least not without crossing my fingers.
PM I am confused.
I’m sorry, Sir. It’s my fault. Let me withdraw those comments, which were offered merely as an illustration. In Australia los cojones del perro, The Dog’s Bollocks, is the place to be, the best thing in town.
PM And is it?
MV No, it’s a dump. At least it became a dump. It was all right when it was new, but it was never more than a shop unit fitted out as a bar. But it had crocodiles coming out of the walls, Australian road signs and Foster’s on tap. In 1979 these things were real novelties for people who lived in south Manchester. It felt... romantic. Well we went there for a drink on the Tuesday evening...
PM Ms Voros, may I interrupt?
Pérez Molino had been growing more impatient with the passing of every second.
PM I do not understand why we are hearing all this detail about what happened thirty years ago. I want to get the hearing focused again on events of the recent past so...
MV What I am explaining, Señor, is completely linked to recent events, because the man behind the bar at the Dog’s Bollocks in nineteen-seventy-nine was a gentleman called Mick Watson. And Mr Michael Watson is a man whose recent exploits I know interest you a great deal.
There was a pause here. I timed it at a full minute when I replayed the recording. On second hearing, it was noticeable that during the pause, there was not a single sound, not even a murmur or a rustle of paper. It was at this point that I concluded that the council collectively already had their own idea of where guilt might lie in relation to recent events. But these words of Maureen Voros seemed to challenge these assumptions and each council member had individually and silently realised this at precisely the same time. Looking back, it was this revelation by Maureen Voros that placed her in an instant at the centre of the story, rather than a mere information provider. I decided to check when I got home. I made a couple of phone calls to friends and had them check the files. Maureen Voros was never called by the police to give a statement after the shooting. But in this hearing, Maureen Voros had the stand. At that point, she also had the theatre, and she knew it.
MV Now most women in that era came to Spain on holiday and had a fling with one of those gigolos, the sort of bloke that removes your dishes from your table during the day and then turns up to remove your knickers from your backside after dark. But I came all the way from my flat in Lancashire to get off with a blooming Yorkshireman!
PM So it was love at first sight.
MV Love? God, no. Just physical need. He’d been flirting with me and my friend all evening. He knew the other couple, because they had been there before on previous visits. I think that what he really wanted was to get his hands on the bloke’s wife, but he made it clear from the start that she was off limits, so Mick started to take more interest in me. I think it was his way of getting her riled up. He finished his shift at ten and we were at it in the hotel bedroom by quarter past. I remember it like it was yesterday, that first night. You don’t forget a man like Mick. It was like being woken up from a long, long sleep, a bit like Sleeping Beauty... but with Mick it wasn’t a kiss that woke you up. In Mick’s case it was something more substantial ... and certainly longer lasting. But, God, didn’t it wake me up! We didn’t bother with breakfast the next day ... or lunch either, for that matter. I lost count of... well, counting wasn’t what we spent our time doing. He left at three in the afternoon. He was already half an hour late for the start of his shift. He should have been at the Bollocks by two-thirty. He did repeat performances for the rest of the fortnight and it was then that I decided I wasn’t going home. I moved in with Mick and we stayed together for most of the next four years ... and full-time until that stuck-up bitch came along again.
PM Stuck up?
Someone who thinks she is of a higher social class than others - usually applied to those who have no basis for such a claim - afectación, Sir. There was another long pause, a moment of disarray, no less. The clerks left their seats to confer with the bench. The council members flicked through papers, compared notes and fired whispered questions back at the clerks who then rushed around in search of answers that they clearly didn’t find. There was much head shaking.
MV That’s put the cat among the pigeons.
She was speaking directly to me, and not because I was the official translator. It was as if she was offering a commentary, conscious of her ability, perhaps power to influence the proceedings. I also felt something more calculated, as if she knew she could place a remark via me directly into the newspaper reports of the hearing. The bench did not hear her comment and I tried to ignore it. Maureen Voros merely laughed. I felt she was positively enjoying herself, and that she might even have planned things this way. She was the one to break the silence. She knew that Pérez Molino had not heard what she said.
MV El gato entre las palomas, Señor. It’s a saying. It means that a threat has been introduced to the proximity of an unsuspecting and unprotected victim.
Levantar un revuelo, I offered, but Pérez Molino seemed not to be interested.
PM Ms Jackson...
MV Voros.
PM Ms Voros, we had no idea... There was no reference in any of the police material to suggest...
MV …to suggest that Mick and I were lovers? That we had lived together for four years in the early nineteen-eighties? Well let me tell you something else that’s not in your records. From now on you can call me Mrs Watson, because Mick and I were married in nineteen-eighty-one. We’ve separated since then, lived apart, got back together and repeated the process, upside down, back to front and sideways. But we’ve been married since then and certainly never divorced. It’s against my religion, Señor Pérez. Officially, legally, I am Mrs Maureen Watson, and I have the certificate here in my bag to prove it, if you’re interested. It’s never been annulled, not in any court anywhere in the world. Mick Watson was my husband, so I ought to be the sole beneficiary of his estate. His English will is lodged with Buckfast and Fastbuck of Bromaton, and his Spanish will was drawn up by Señora del Mar.
All eyes suddenly turned towards María del Mar, who said nothing and did nothing. She continued to look down at the open file before her, whose contents she was annotating. She had clearly expected to be mentioned.
PM Ms Voros, we are aware...
MV ...if there was an estate, of course. But, true to form, just like he had been all his life, he was in debt. All Mick Watson ever had was debts. He hadn’t a penny to his name, hadn’t my husband.
There was yet another long pause. Maureen Voros had sent the hearing spinning into territory no-one ever imagined it would visit. Clerks consulted with the council. C
lerks argued with clerks. There was more nodding of heads, and much holding out of hands expressing a mixture of disbelief and powerlessness. There was time for a couple of telephone calls. At one stage, both Pérez Molino and his chief clerk were on the phone at the same time. Maureen Voros chuckled and leaned towards me. She suggested that the two of them were talking to each other in order to shut everyone else out. But like all people on the phone, the two communicants shouted loud enough for all to hear. The session was in complete disarray. It was Maureen Voros who spoke up, this time quite deliberately loud enough for all three council members to hear.
MV The cat’s already had a couple of those pigeons on offer, if you ask me.
She used the word ‘them’ rather than ‘those’, of course. I take this opportunity to remind you, Joe, that all of her testimony was delivered in a strong Lancastrian accent. There may thus be some words that have been recorded differently or even wrongly by the stenographer when you compare the accounts.
PM Ms Voros...
MV Mrs Watson.
PM Ms Voros, when and where were you and Mr Watson married?
Maureen opened her bag, a small, thin discreet wallet on a string, the type that you can buy for two euros in the Chinese shops. She had held it close by her side throughout. Now she hauled it up in front of her, as if presenting it to the hearing as evidence. She theatrically withdrew a sheet of paper and unfolded it very much in her own time. It had the feel of a performance. It was an original legal document, printed in at least three colours. The paper size was obviously custom, unlike anything you would find in a stationer.
MV It says here that on the fifth day of March nineteen-eighty-one that Michael James Watson of Calle Lepanto, Benidorm, Spain, married Maureen Jackson of Quinney Crescent, Moss Side, Manchester, in the Coco de Mer Beach Hotel, Praslin, Seychelles. Have you ever seen a coco de mer, Señor? It’s the exact shape of a woman’s thighs and hips. I brought one back with me. I’ve still got it. It’s had pride of place above the bar in The Castle for years. At least it had until that cow chucked it out...
PM Why did you call yourself Jackson when you weren’t married? Perhaps you really were married to Mr Jackson? And in that case any subsequent marriage to Mr Watson would be null and void.
MV Like I said earlier, I’d taken his name. It was so I could send the bastard a copy to frame.
PM And the marriage to Michael Watson lasted just two years?
MV I told you a minute ago that Mick and I were married in nineteen-eighty-one and we had been together before that. We have never divorced. Mick and I were living as husband and wife until two weeks ago, when he disappeared.
PM Two weeks ago...? There was nothing on our records. Why was none of this information offered to the police?
MV No-one asked. No-one was the slightest bit interested in my side of the story. No-one ever was.
PM But you said the marriage only lasted two years...
MV What I said was that I left him, walked out after two years. I left in nineteen-eighty-three, because that bitch had reappeared in his life. He had spent more time with her than with me. And when she left again, so did I, despite the fact that he came begging.
PM That bitch?
Una perra, Sir, I said. But that would be a literal translation. Puta, whore, would be a more accurate way to express the same meaning. Pérez shook his head and muttered. The words, however, were delivered so everyone could ear. It seemed to be a device to redirect the focus, quietly, a way of reminding everyone there was a lot of ground that had not yet even been mentioned.
PM ...and we have a lot of those in this case. We haven’t even started to talk about that side of things. Perhaps it would be better to wait until another day...
He then continued, but in full voice, addressing the hearing again.
PM Thank you, Señora Quejada. What I wanted to do was establish the identity of this… this bitch.
MV That bitch, the woman that reappeared in Mick Watson’s world in nineteen-eighty-one was someone called Mrs Susan Cottee. That at least ought to have been obvious to everyone. She was already pushing forty. He left me for an older woman! Do you think I was going to stand for that? There are limits, Señor Pérez. What would you have done? Well, I left him and later pissed off back to England. But we were still married. I did come back.
PM Is that marriage certificate legal? Is it a full marriage certificate in the United Kingdom, for instance?
MV No such place, Señor Pérez. England is where I come from, and I took advice. The certificate is valid under any definition of marriage in England and I still have it. While I was away there wasn’t a day went by when I didn’t remind the bastard that I still had a contract with his name on it. And, a year later, when she ditched him - exactly as I said she would do - I was back on his doorstep. I told you earlier that it’s always worked in my favour to have that flat in my name. I’ve always had somewhere to go and, at other times, an income to keep my independence intact. It’s called having the upper hand.
Se impuso a su rival, Sir. And also, ella lo dominó en su relación. It was clear that a working relationship was developing between myself and Señor Pérez Molino. On this occasion, all he needed to do was glance in my direction. I understood immediately that he needed a translation of the idiom and I supplied it in a way that hardly even interrupted the flow of the proceedings. What was interesting was that the moment he understood my translation, his expression changed. He smiled. He smiled a long broad smile and turned to face Maureen Voros, looking her straight in the eye.
PM And it seems, Ms Voros, Mrs Jackson who wasn’t or even Mrs Watson that was and apparently still is, you have retained that upper hand. I declare today’s hearing closed. You will certainly be called before us again, Ms Voros, at a date yet to be determined. In the meantime, you will be required to make a statement to the Guardia Civil in relation to the other matter.
MV I had nothing to do with that.
PM The hearing is adjourned.
Two
Dear Joe
Here’s the second day. If we thought that the first day went off track, then the second day disappeared over the horizon. We seemed to start with a focus on the first day, but it went wrong when Maureen Voros took the stand. Since then, several people have been assembled to testify. It has taken a week to get them all together, so we could proceed this morning with the second day of the exploratory hearing. Proceedings were chaired this time by García López, whose manner was significantly different from Pérez Molino. Where the latter had been quiet, even supportive, the second day’s chair was forceful, even slightly aggressive. This tendency did not help. The first person to testify was Peter Crawshaw. He is an old acquaintance of the Cottees from Kiddington. He and Donald were schoolmates and the Crawshaws and Cottees used to go on holiday together. When Peter Crawshaw took the stand, there was considerable muttering throughout the room. If you could assemble most of the stereotypes associated with the northern working-class British male, then it would look like Peter Crawshaw. His head was shaved, no doubt an attempt to hide baldness. It’s a strange culture that tries to deny something by becoming it! He was heavily tattooed and ought to have been wearing one of those creased shell suits that the British favour, largely because they are cheap. The suit ought to have had short legs that exposed a few inches of white flab above a pair of new trainers worn with old grey socks. But he was dressed quite formally, and clearly uncomfortably so. His face was excessively ruddy, probably as a result of nerves, and his cheeks pock-marked. For the start, it was clear that García López had nothing less than contempt for his type.
GL Good morning. Please introduce yourself.
PC My name is Peter Crawshaw.
It is hard to describe how slowly the words seemed to emerge.
GL And you are from Kiddington, the home town of Donald and Susan Cottee?
/> PC Well... I am actually from New Kiddington, which is not the same place as Kiddington proper. Donald was Kiddington born and bred, but Suzie, of course, was from the other side of Bromaton, though she had grandparents in Kiddington at one stage, or so I’m told.
GL It says quite clearly in my notes that the Cottees lived in a house in Kiddington, so they are from Kiddington.
PC They did live in Kiddington, but only Don was from Kiddington. Suzie had lived there ever since they got married, of course, She’d lived there since nineteen-sixty-three.
GL So she had lived in the town for more than forty-four years before she left for Spain? Is that not long enough to qualify someone as being from the place?
PC I suppose it is really, but we don’t see things that way. You can’t say you’re from somewhere unless you were born there. And sometimes even that doesn’t really qualify either. There are families in Kiddington who moved from Scotland when the Coal Board relocated miners from pit to pit rather than hiring new people locally. That started in the mid-nineteen-sixties. They’ve been in Kiddington for as long as Suzie and their children were all born there. But the entire village still calls them - collectively - the Scots, including their children, who even have Kiddington accents, but there is still that little Scottish edge to some of the words. You can tell them apart from the real Kiddingtonians the minute they open their mouths.
GL And what about yourself, are you a true Kiddingtonian?
PC As I explained, I am not from Kiddington at all. I’m from New Kiddington.
García López was starting to lose his patience already. His tendency to fiddle with a pen while speaking and then scribble frantically throughout the testimonies was disconcerting for everyone. Peter Crawshaw had been nervous at the start, but now he was visibly shaking as he spoke.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 54