‘Possibly,’ she said, ‘but not necessarily.’
‘How d’you make that out?’
‘Maybe the man in the coffin was the host at Gavin Scott’s dinner?’
I shook my head. ‘Look, Scott’s evening at Peretellada took place late in June, three months ago. Suppose the auctioneer was killed the day after, and the body buried up there by the church. When Miguel and I saw it, the skeleton was clean. Like, I mean there were no … bits … on it.
‘Now I know we’ve had a hot, humid summer, with a few heavy rainstorms at night. I know the coffin lid was open. I know that with the movement of earth you get around here, it wasn’t buried that deep for all that it was a Roman relic. Yet still; you’re the one with the medical background. You tell me, could that corpse have deteriorated to that extent in such a short time?’
She thought about it for a while. ‘I’m a nurse, Oz, not a pathologist. I’m no expert in rates of decomposition. However, I have worked in Africa, in a war zone, and I have come upon bodies that had been lying in the open for up to four months.’ She shuddered. ‘None of them were in the condition you describe. Even with vultures and other scavengers, none of them were as clean as the skeleton you described. There were always … bits … left.’
She paused. ‘Okay. Starr bought his watch a year and a half ago. Maybe the man in the coffin stole it before he was murdered. Maybe the real Ronald Starr was the man at the auction.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘In theory that would be good news. It would mean that we have a UK address for him, where we can at least start looking.
‘But just let’s stick with the possibility that the guy in the coffin was the real Ronald Starr. The skeleton is missing, remember. What if the police have it? What if, even as we speak, they are hard at work trying to identify it by dental records?’
‘How would they know where to start?’ Prim asked, almost in protest.
‘They can look at dental techniques and materials used, and take a fair guess about where the work was done. Then there was the belt, and the scraps of clothes. Maker’s labels would tell them his likely nationality. Once they have that … plain sailing. I have a dentist pal. He gets asked for patient records far more often than you’d think.’
I looked at my partner for a few seconds, letting my arguments take hold. ‘Suppose we turn up with Ronald Starr’s shiny watch at or around the same time as the Spanish police identify his skeleton? Don’t you think that they, and the British police as well, would give us some funny looks?’
‘True,’ said Primavera.
‘Thank you. Now here’s the really scary one. Let’s say we have the authentic Ronald Starr in that stone box, since last year. Yes?’ She nodded. ‘Right. Then, three months ago, at Gavin Scott’s dinner, the host introduces himself as Ronald Starr. Let’s discount completely the possibility that there might be two Ronald Starrs with two “R”s along this small stretch of the Costa Brava.
‘What we’re left with is the certainty that Ronald Starr MarkTwo knew he didn’t have a rival for the name. My guess is that the man we’re trying to trace isn’t just a con-man, or an art-thief. He’s a murderer.’ I gulped as I said it. So did Prim.
‘Where does that put Trevor?’ she asked.
‘God alone knows. It could put him at the graveside, holding a shovel. Although he needn’t necessarily know about any of that. But let’s not kid ourselves that you and I can pick out a murderer simply by looking him in the eye. Bitter experience tells us that’s not the case. No, the one certain thing is that when we approach Trevor, we’ll have to do it very carefully.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Prim. She stood up, and began to wander around the terrace that had become our office. My eyes followed her. She really was devastating: beautiful, dynamic, bursting with energy. A few days before I had asked her to marry me. What sane man wouldn’t have?
At last she turned towards me again, her back to the sea. ‘Oz, is there any way we can find out more about Ronald Starr? We really need to know all we can about him. Dead or alive, this whole affair seems to fit around him.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘The problem is how we can do that, without arousing suspicion, or drawing attention to ourselves.’ I thought about it, until a small idea switched itself on, like a dim light bulb, in the back of my brain. ‘There is one possibility. Back home, I used to do some work for a credit control company. Those guys get everywhere. They have databases like you wouldn’t believe. Another of my football pals works there, and he owes me a couple. I could ask him if his outfit has a file on Mr Starr.’
‘Good,’ said Prim, resuming command. ‘You do that. Meantime, let’s draft those responses to our other clients. We don’t have all day. We’re due at Shirley’s at two-thirty.’
22
I called my pal Eddie just before lunchtime by his clock; by ours it was thirty-five minutes before we were expected to arrive for afternoon drinks with Shirley Gash.
Eddie is a creature of habit. He works in a big glass office in Edinburgh’s new financial district, each day in his working life taking hundreds of dispassionate decisions, any one of which, he knows, may result in some poor wee woman he has never met and never will meet being refused extended credit to buy a new washing machine, something which is probably essential if her six kids are to have clean clothes every day, or a new cooker, essential if their meals are to be cooked properly.
Eddie hates his job, but he does it anyway, because it’s a job, and because within his decision-making limits he is allowed to exercise a tiny element of his own judgement, which might sway the balance occasionally in the poor wee woman’s favour.
Like many guys in his position, Eddie has a safety valve. Every working day, he and four pals take a taxi along the Western Approach Road, past the brewery, to the Diggers, where each of them has two pints of McEwan’s eighty shilling ale, and a pie, for lunch. Actually, the Diggers isn’t called the Diggers, not officially. The name above the door is Athletic Arms, but it’s straight across the road from the Dalry Cemetery, thus …
I could picture Eddie, slipping on his jacket with an eye on the clock, cursing as the phone rang.
‘Two-one-four-three.’ He growled his extension number at me.
‘Eddie, hello. It’s Oz.’
‘Blackstone! Where the eff are you? I spoke to Gregor last night. He said you’d been in buying gold jewellery for this absolutely gorgeous big brunette, but he thought you were heading back to Spain.’
‘I was. I did. That’s where I am now.’
‘With the gorgeous big brunette, you lucky bastard?’
I coughed. ‘Aye, the weather’s lovely. A few clouds in the sky, temperature in the low seventies. Just about par for the course.’
‘I see,’ said Eddie. ‘Not with the gorgeous big brunette. So what can I do for you, you horny bastard, if it’s not a lift to the football you’re after?’
I glanced across the terrace. Prim was sat at the table, checking the faxes which she was about to send to our three potential clients. She gave me a quick grin.
‘That magic database of yours,’ I said to Eddie. ‘You’re forever boasting that it’s the best in the business.’
‘That’s right. All human life is here, my man. Even you. In fact I looked you up for fun this morning, after Gregor said he’d seen you. You seem to be doing very well.’
‘Pleased to hear it. Listen, I’ve got a name. Mr Ronald Starr — two Rs — 126 Glannefran Hill, Mold, Clwyd, Wales. I need info about him, if he’s in your computer.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘For fuck’s sake, Oz. Have you never heard of the Date Protection Act?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well …’
‘I don’t think it’s a problem.’
‘Hah! It’s a problem, all right. A major league problem. A go to jail problem.’
‘Not if the subject’s dead, surely.’
Eddie hesitated again. ‘I’m not sure about that, even. But this gu
y Starr, are you sure he’s dead?’
‘Either that or he’s got helluva thin over the last few months. Skeletal, even. Look, Eddie, I don’t want financial info. Only some background stuff: married or single, occupation, employer and when was the last time that any trace of him showed up in the system.’
A great exhalation of breath came down the phone line like a roar. ‘Christ, I don’t know, Oz.’
I sighed, as loudly as I could. ‘I hate to do this, Eddie, but d’you remember that time …’
‘… when my mother had that problem, and you had a word with someone. Aye, okay. Enough said. Look, you don’t want this just now, do you? Only the lads are waiting for me.’
‘No, of course not. But if you can give me a call from home tonight.’ I gave him my phone number.
‘Okay,’ said Eddie. ‘Around six o’clock, our time.’
‘Great. I’ll be here. Be clear, man, this squares us.’
There was a growl. ‘Too fuckin’ right it does, pal. Too fuckin’ right!’
23
‘She’s fantastic,’ Prim had said of Shirley Gash. It turned out to be true, literally. Shirley is the stuff of fantasy, without a doubt.
I had seen her before, a couple of times at tables on the other side of the Trattoria, and on another occasion dining beneath the trees in the square at St Marti, with a man. I had been struck by her each time, but meeting her up close was something else.
‘Come away in, folks,’ she boomed from the top of the wide stone stair which led up to her front door. The villa’s high, wide iron gate had slid open as if by magic as I had pulled the Frontera to a halt in the street, giving us access to a wide driveway.
Prim waved and trotted up the steps, with me at her heels, as always. At the top, she stood on tiptoe and kissed our hostess, on both cheeks.
‘Shirley,’ she said, turning to me. ‘This is Oz; Oz Blackstone.’
‘Hello, love. Great to meet you after all I heard from this one at the weekend.’
All at once I was engulfed, by arms and a flowery muslin wrap, and by a great bosom, encased in a peach-coloured swimsuit. I hadn’t realised how big she was until then. She was at least as tall as me, slim enough, but strongly built, with breasts like racing airships, so she could never be model thin. I found out there and then that Shirley Gash is one of nature’s great huggers. When that splendid woman, in her pastel colours, hugs you, it’s an experience akin to falling into a field of sunflowers.
‘Hi,’ I said, when I could. ‘Just as well we’ve been formally introduced, isn’t it.’
She roared with laughter and threw an arm around my shoulders, drawing me into the villa. Rude as it was, I gazed around. I couldn’t help it. This was not your average Spanish holiday home. Everything about it was on the big scale, as if it had been built to scale for Shirley … which in fact turned out to have been the case. The square entrance hall led to a huge living-room, beyond which I could see a roofed-over terrace, so big that it put ours to shame.
I was about to step through its double doors when she took my arm. ‘No, this way, love. It’s too nice a day to sit in here.’
She led me through a door at the back of the hall and out into the sunshine. I looked around, and whistled. Three tall, thick palm trees shaded a corner at the back of the house. Two more stood off to the side, with a hammock slung between them, and other mature shrubs and flowering bushes were set around the grassed over area. But the garden was dominated by the pool, around twenty metres long, I guessed, and rectangular in shape. It was surrounded by a paved terrace, beyond which, on the left, I could see a summerhouse, stone-built like the rest. It seemed large enough for a family of four, with big arched wooden doors which opened into the pool area.
‘Like it?’ asked Shirley. I nodded, speechless.
‘Clive, my late husband, and I,’ she said, with strong traces of a Midlands accent, ‘we built it together. He was in the furniture business, manufacturing and importing. He started the company from scratch and did very well. A few years ago he was killed in a helicopter crash. My son does most of the running of the business now, along with my brother, so I decided to hand the place in Staffordshire over to him and spend most of my time over here.’ The mention of adult offspring made me look at her again, playing my ‘guess her age’ game. I lost. Shirley could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty … as, it turned out, she was … but the way she looked, at that first meeting, only a fool would have cared.
‘How do you find living here?’ I asked her, and not simply to make conversation.
‘It’s okay in the summer,’ she replied, with barely a pause. ‘But sometimes, in the winter, when it’s quiet …’ She looked at me, with a big open smile. ‘Frankly, love, it gets on my tits. But when that happens at least I can bugger off back to the UK.’
She showed us to a group of garden seats, big double loungers, like wooden sofas, with thick cloth-covered cushions. Some of them were set in the shade of the palms. ‘Make yourself comfortable, won’t you. Clive had these made for us in the factory. They’re placed so that you can sit in the sun, or sit out, whichever you prefer.’ Since I had coated myself in Piz Buin before leaving the apartment, I chose the sunshine. Prim took a seat tucked away under the palm leaves.
‘I’ve made up sangria and sandwiches,’ said Shirley. She glanced at Prim. ‘I don’t know if he’ll be joining us or not. You can never tell with that bugger.’
All of a sudden she cupped her thumb and middle finger to her lips and whistled. It was the sort of piercing sound that would put a line of bo’sun’s pipes to shame; the sort of whistle that most wee boys dream of being able to do, but very few can; the sort of whistle which, up close, threatens the integrity of your eardrums. In theory it should have been one of the least lady-like things I had ever seen — or heard — in my life, yet in no way did it detract from the glamour of the larger than life Shirley Gash.
‘Oi,’ she shouted across the garden, in the general direction of the summerhouse, ‘are you coming out or what, you old bastard?’ She gazed towards the big wooden doors for a while, but nothing stirred. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and vanished indoors, to reappear with a big tray laden with a huge plastic jug of sangria, four beakers, and a plate piled high with baguette sandwiches.
The voice came from over my shoulder, taking me by surprise. ‘Hope that wasn’t me you were shouting at. I respond to “Adrian” most of the time, but never to “You old bastard”.’ Prim and I looked back, simultaneously, towards the house. A man stood there, smiling. The door offered little head-room and so he almost filled it, although he was of no more than medium height. He was wearing cream slacks and a shirt to match, with a tiny crest on the breast pocket. He had a neatly trimmed beard, and his dark, sun-tinted hair was cropped to around the same length, giving his head a sort of ‘fitted’ look.
‘No,’ said Shirley. ‘I leave out the “old” in your case.’ She turned towards us. ‘Prim, Oz, this is my brother, Adrian Ford. He arrived on Sunday night for a week. Treats this place like a bleedin’ holiday camp, he does.
‘You off out to play again, then?’
Adrian nodded. ‘I should get another eighteen holes in. I won’t be home for supper, Shirl, I shouldn’t think.’
‘If you are, you’re taking me out. I don’t mind giving you a roof, but you know better than to look for me in the kitchen.’
‘Course I do, Sis.’ He leaned out of the doorway, kissed her, smiled and nodded to Prim and I, then vanished into the house.
Shirley stared after him. She was trying to frown, but I could tell that she was pleased by his attention. ‘Bugger!’ she muttered. ‘Still, he is my little brother and I do love ’im. He’s come over here as often as he can since Clive died, and since he got divorced. Five or six times a year; just to make sure I’m all right, he says. He means it too. He probably will be back this evening, and if he is, he will take me out for dinner. John, my son, says he’s a bloody liability in the business
, but fuck it, it can afford him.’
‘Where does he play his golf?’ I asked.
‘At Torremirona, the new course up towards Figueras.’
She turned back to the sangria and poured us each a glass. ‘I promise you,’ she said, ‘this isn’t too strong. You can come a right cropper with sangria. All the bars make it differently. There’s brandy in most of them, gin in others. Christ, I’ve had some where I’ve been sure there’s been bloody strychnine lurking in there.
‘This is safe, honest. Here,’ she picked up the plate, ‘have some grub.’
The sandwiches turned out to be filled with anchovies and escalivada — sliced peppers and onion fried in olive oil. They were all absolutely fresh, and the bread was still warm. ‘D’you bake this yourself, Shirley?’ I asked, half in jest.
‘Yeah,’ she replied, completely in earnest. ‘I buy in the dough, freeze it, then just stick it in the oven when I need it. That’s how bleedin’ bored I can get out here. I mean, baking my own bread. If my Clive can see me now, he must be roarin’ with laughter, wherever he is.’ She glanced briefly downwards as she ripped off a handful of baguette.
‘Go on, then,’ she said, escalivada sandwich held ready for action. ‘Tell us your story, then. Everybody’s got one out here. We get all sorts of couples turning up along this part of the Costa; Brits, French, Germans. Hell of a lot unmarried, very few of them with too much to say about what they did in England. Most of them are knockin’ on a bit, though. You two are the exception. You’re the first pre-wrinklies I can remember settling down out here. So what brought you?’
I looked at Prim. She smiled and nodded very slightly, amusement in her eyes as she wondered what I would say. I think I surprised her by telling the truth. ‘I was in the investigation business in Edinburgh. Prim and I did a job on a paid-by-results basis. We got a great result, got paid a lot, and thought we would move out here for a while.’
Prim nodded. ‘That’s right. But after three months, like you, we were beginning to get lethargic. Hence the new business.’
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