A Coffin For Two ob-2

by Quintin Jardine

She held up a hand. ‘Wait.’ She stepped to the door and locked it, then turned the ‘Obert’ sign round to show ‘Tancat’. ‘Come through here,’ she said, and led the way through to a comfortable sitting room behind the shop. She sat in a chair by the stone fireplace and offered us seats opposite. ‘I used to live here,’ she said. ‘There is a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen. Since I had my little boy, I’ve moved upstairs to the apartment. It’s lighter and there’s more room.’

  ‘Have you always been here, Senora?’ Prim asked her.

  She laughed. ‘Call me Reis, why don’t you; it’s my name. No, I’m really a furniture designer. I worked in agencies in Paris, Brussels, then Barcelona, until my father died a couple of years ago, and I came back here to sell the place. I realised soon that it was only worth anything as a going concern. Anyway, I could hardly close it and leave the village without a tabac or a bodega, or worse still, having to rely on that greedy bastard Mendes in the bar. So I kept it open while I waited for a buyer, and rented out the apartment to make some extra money.’

  ‘That’s how you met Starr?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Mendes sent him along to me at the beginning of July last year. I showed him the apartment and he took it for three months, rent paid in advance. He is very honest, is Ronnie: at least I thought so then.’

  ‘What does he look like?’ asked Prim.

  ‘He has fair hair, much the same colour as yours, and he is very good looking. When I saw him first, I thought he might be gay, but we became friends, then more than friends and I found out for sure that he is not. He is an artist, I am an artist too, of a sort. We had a lot in common.’

  ‘Did he tell you things about himself?’

  Reis Sonas shrugged. ‘At the time I thought he did. Then, when he vanished and never wrote, I guessed that they had all been stories. He told me that he taught painting in a college in Wales, and sold some original work, not through the galleries, but to businesses, through interior design agencies, like the ones I worked for.

  ‘He said that like mine his father had died, a few years after his mother. He had sold their house, and they had left him a little money too. He came to Spain with the thought that after another year in college, he might come over here to paint. “In the footsteps of Dali,” he told me.

  ‘He is an expert on his work,’ she said, with sudden pride. ‘He knows everything about him. That was why he came here, to be near Gala’s castle in Pubol. He painted it. He took a photo of the plain, as you can see it from her window, and painted that. He went to Port Lligat and to Cadaques, and painted them.’

  ‘Did he ever paint like Dali?’ I asked her. ‘Did he copy his style?’

  She nodded. ‘Sometimes he did. He is very good. The soft colours, the surreal subjects, he can do them all. Just like Dali, only not like him. Gentler in the concepts, you know what I mean. Not crazy, like he was.’

  ‘What did he do with this work? Did he show any of it?’

  ‘No, only to me. Then he painted over it, or burned it.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she laughed. ‘Ronnie is a real artist, in his own way. Copying he would do for fun, or to teach a class, but he would never try to pass it off.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Certain. He told me so, and he meant it. He meant that at least.’

  I paused, choosing my words carefully. ‘Do you remember him ever painting a picture of a toreador?’ I asked her. ‘A toreador with a red cape and a tear running down his cheek?’

  She looked at me as if she had caught me peering through her bedroom window. ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘I’ve seen it. It was bought by a man in Scotland.’

  She sighed and shook her head, ‘Ronnie did not paint that picture. I went up to the apartment one day, and it was there, in the room he used as his studio. I asked him if he had done it, but he said, “I know I’m good, but I’m not that good.” He said that he had been given it, as a present. I asked him who gave it to him, but he didn’t tell me. He just said that it was someone he had met. It was an incredible picture, a tour de force.’

  ‘Do you think it could have been an unknown Dali?’

  Reis looked at me and made a face. ‘I can’t say that. I can’t say it wasn’t. But I got the feeling that Ronnie thought it might have been. Not from anything he said, but from the way he looked at it, like it was a holy relic.’

  ‘Can you remember when you saw the picture?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, it was the twenty-fifth of September, last year. That’s my birthday, that’s how I know. I came up to the apartment and saw the picture, we had a drink, and then we went to the restaurant in Pubol and had dinner.

  ‘Over dinner, Ronnie said that he was thinking about leaving the college right then, rather than a year later. He asked me how I would feel about not going back to Barca, but about us setting up home together, in La Pera or somewhere else around here.

  ‘I said that sounded like a damn fine idea.’ A tear came to her eye but she kept control. ‘There and then, he took off the gold chain from round his neck, and gave it to me. “Till I can buy a ring,” he said.’ She reached up to her throat, and held the chain out for us to see. ‘I didn’t get no ring,’ she snorted. ‘I got Felipe instead. Ronnie said that he would have to go back to Wales to sort things out with the college. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when the man came.’

  I frowned at her. ‘What man?’

  ‘An Englishman named Trevor. I’d met him once in the bar with Ronnie.’

  ‘Was there another man with him? Around forty, medium everything?’

  ‘Yes there was, but he never told me his name. I never saw him again after that.’

  ‘So when did Trevor come?’ I asked.

  ‘Two days after my birthday. The day after it, I went to Barca, to visit a girlfriend. I told Ronnie about it and said I’d be staying overnight. He said okay, and that he would look after the shop for me.

  ‘When I got back, the shop was closed, and there was no sign of Ronnie. I opened up and a couple of hours later, Trevor came in. He said that he had a message from Ronnie. He told me that he had to drive back to Wales very suddenly, the evening before, and had asked Trevor to pick up his things and send them on.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘That’s what I asked. “All of them,” Trevor said. “His clothes, and his pictures.” He said that Ronnie needed those for the college.’

  ‘Didn’t it strike you as odd that he had left without them?’

  ‘Sure it did, at first. But Trevor explained that they had been having a drink on the previous afternoon when Ronnie had gone off to make a call to the college. He had returned in a panic and had said that the college wanted him back before the end of the next working day. “Or else,” were the words Trevor used. He had to leave then if he was going to make it back in time, in his little car. He had been worried about his clothes and pictures, but Trevor had told him that his friend, the other guy, whose name I didn’t know, was going back to England next day, and that he would take them and drop them off in Cardiff.’

  ‘So you gave Trevor Ronnie’s clothes and all his pictures?’

  ‘Not all,’ she said. ‘I kept the one of Gala’s castle, and of the plain. Ronnie gave me those as my birthday presents. They’re upstairs, still. But the others I gave to Trevor, with his clothes.’

  ‘Including the Toreador?’

  ‘Yes. That and the painting of Cadaques.’

  ‘What about the Port Lligat painting?’ I asked.

  ‘Ronnie told me he had traded that. But he didn’t say where. Artists do that all the time; trade pictures for materials, or meals in restaurants.’

  ‘When he didn’t contact you,’ asked Prim, sympathetically, ‘did you try to get in touch with him, after a while?’

  Reis shook her head. ‘No. I knew I was pregnant by then. I reckoned that if Ronnie had wanted to get in touch with me he would. So I decided that he had been lying to me;
and because of that I decided also that I would bring up my baby on my own.’

  Her jaw was set in a hard line. Suddenly she didn’t look quite so pretty.

  ‘When Ronnie was here, did he get to know anyone else that you were aware of?’

  A crease appeared between her eyebrows as she considered my question. ‘No,’ she began, ‘but there was one time. Once on a Sunday afternoon when I was closed, and Ronnie wasn’t painting, we went along to the bar in Pubol. While we were there a man walked past the doorway, looked in and said hello to Ronnie, in English. Ronnie waved back, then the man walked on. When I asked who he was, he said only that it was someone that he had met there before.’

  ‘Can you describe him, after all this time?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Reis Sonas. ‘I could still draw you his picture. He was Catalan, obviously, with olive skin, and he was wiry. He moved like a little cat, except he was not all that small. He looked ancient, yet not old, if you can understand me. And he had a patch over one eye.’

  Beside me, I heard Primavera’s quiet gulp.

  ‘Have you seen him since, this man?’ I asked. She shook her head.

  ‘Reis, I don’t think Ronnie was lying to you.’ I took Starr’s watch from my pocket and showed it to her. She went chalk white. ‘I believe that Ronnie’s dead, and I expect that pretty soon there will be proof of that.’ I could almost hear her heart hammering, though she was on the other side of the room. As I looked at her, her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head slowly, as if in denial of the truth.

  ‘If I can give you some advice,’ I said, ‘if I were you I would raise a court action in Wales to have Felipe recognised legally as Ronnie’s son. He could be in line for quite a legacy. I reckon his father would want him to have it, rather than the government, don’t you?’

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight, briefly, then nodded. ‘If we can help,’ I said. For the first time I felt the need of a business card. Instead I picked up a pen and paper from the fireside and wrote down our names and our telephone number. I handed it to her. ‘If you need to contact us.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, as she took it.

  She stood up and showed us to the door, past Ronnie Starr’s son, who was beginning to stir in his cot.

  As soon as we were out in the street Prim’s breath exploded in a loud gasp. ‘Davidoff,’ she burst out. ‘He knew Ronnie Starr. And he didn’t tell us.’

  I took her arm. ‘Hold on. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. They were on talking terms, yes, but there’s no proof it was any more than that. Starr didn’t mention his name to Reis; maybe he didn’t know it. Maybe Davidoff didn’t know Starr’s name either.’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘The most nationalistically biased man in Spain forms a nodding acquaintance with a foreigner, without finding out his name.’ Still, she had cooled down.

  ‘We’ll ask him, okay?’

  She frowned at me. ‘Too bloody right we will!’

  43

  Our opportunity to confront Davidoff arose next day just after noon. We didn’t have to go in search of it. We were on the terrace completing responses to two instant enquiries from our third advertisement, which had appeared in the press that same morning, when the door buzzer rang.

  Assuming that the caller would be Miguel or his son, I pressed the button to release the lock without lifting the handset, left the door ajar and went back to Prim on the terrace. A minute later a theatrical cough sounded in the doorway.

  ‘Good afternoon, my friends. Pardon this disturbance, but I have come for two reasons. The first is simply to see you both again … especially you, my dear,’ he added, beaming at Prim and advancing towards us. ‘The second is to invite you to dine with Davidoff on Sunday evening, in Shirley’s summerhouse.

  ‘My friend Adrian will be leaving on Saturday, and the unpleasant John will arrive on Monday. I never visit his mother when he is there. I always feel in the way, and also, I don’t like the asshole. But on Sunday, Shirley will be free and I can cook my special paella for her as I do every year, to thank her for putting up with me. I hope that you will be able to join us.’

  Davidoff’s visit had set us both on the back foot. We hadn’t discussed how we were going to confront him with the previous day’s discovery.

  I played it by ear. ‘We’d love to come. About eight o’clock?’ He nodded.

  I drew up a chair for him, at the terrace table. There was hot coffee in a jug on the floor, and so Prim automatically went to the kitchen to fetch him a mug.

  As she poured, I came straight to the point. ‘Davidoff, you devious old bugger, you might have told us you knew Ronnie Starr?’

  His face was a study of pure bewilderment. His eye widened, his eyebrow rose, furrowing his brow, and his jaw dropped, slightly. ‘I?’ he said. ‘I knew him? Whatever makes you think that?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ I said, ‘we met his girlfriend, by accident, really. She owns the bodega in La Pera. She told us she was with him in Pubol once, and you said hello to him.’

  ‘I did?’ he said, archly. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Summer of last year. If it refreshes your memory he was tall, fair-haired, in his thirties and British.’

  The astonishment left his face and was replaced by a sorrowful look. ‘That was Ronnie Starr, was it? What a sad coincidence. Yes, I met the young man in the bar at Pubol a couple of times. He bought me a drink, I bought him a drink and that was it. He was a pleasant fellow, but I never did learn his name. He said he was a painter, and that turned me off. I had hoped he would be more interesting than that; a doctor, say, or a lawyer. Over in Pubol, everyone you meet thinks he is a painter.’

  He paused. ‘So they were his poor sad bones that you and Senor Minana dragged across L’Escala. My God, and I knew him; that makes it even worse.

  I nodded. ‘There’s more. Starr left his mark on La Pera, and no mistake. The girl who saw you with him had his baby a few months ago. A fine wee boy called Felipe; fair-haired, from what we could see of him in his cot.’

  ‘Tsshhh!’ sighed Davidoff, shaking his head. ‘Appalling. Poor woman; poor child. To be left so.’

  Prim took him by the arm. If she had been doubtful of him the day before, there was no sign of it now. ‘Don’t worry too much about them,’ she said. ‘The mother seems a very resourceful woman, and the baby stands to inherit Ronnie Starr’s estate.’

  ‘Ah, my darling,’ he said, mournfully. ‘All the estate in the world cannot make up for the lack of a father. But enough.’ It was as if he had willed himself to brighten up. ‘This affair will not spoil our evening on Sunday.’

  He looked around at me. ‘You found Starr’s woman and child. Have you yet found Trevor Eames?’

  ‘No, with one thing and another, we haven’t had a chance to look for him lately. We were going to do that this evening, then go to Ventallo tomorrow night to see what we could find out there. You said to us that you knew where Eames lives. Can you show us?’

  He shook his head. ‘Someone told me once that he has an apartment in one of the old blocks up in Riells de D’Alt, but I don’t know where. You could find out from the town hall.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘That might draw attention to us, and we don’t want that. We’ll try the boat again.’

  Davidoff patted my hand. ‘Yes. That is probably the most sensible thing to do.’ He stood up. ‘Until Sunday then.’ Prim walked to the door with him, taking his arm again. In the doorway he kissed her goodbye. She was barefoot, and so he stood a few inches taller than she was. As I watched them, I thought of Reis Sonas. ‘Ancient, yet not old,’ she had said.

  Yes, I understood exactly what she meant.

  44

  We stopped in for coffee in the Trattoria that evening, and booked a table for dinner, although it was quiet and at that time in the season a reservation was probably unnecessary.

  On the off-chance I asked our host, who knows everyone in L‘Escala, if he had seen Trevor Eames lately, but he said
that he hadn’t. ’I hear he was crewing a German boat,‘ he volunteered. ’That Trevor, he is always crewing,’ e added, backing the whispered innuendo with a heavy wink, out of Prim’s sight.

  Leaving the Frontera parked across the road we went for a leisurely walk round the marina, in the direction of La Sirena Two’s mooring. From a distance, it looked just as we had seen it on our last visit, locked up secure for the winter. When we reached it, that impression was confirmed. The dinghies were still strapped to the side, the classic wheel was lashed and immobilised, the cabin curtains were drawn.

  ‘Bugger’s not home yet,’ I growled, frustrated. ‘It’s just like it was last time we looked.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Prim, ‘except …’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Look at the wheel. Last time we were here, I’m sure that it wasn’t tied like that.’ She pointed to the cabin. ‘And there, that curtain’s open just a fraction. If he isn’t here now, he’s been back.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go on board and give the door a knock.’

  ‘Careful,’ Prim advised.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not as daft as all that. If he’s in, I’ll try to get him out on the deck, so that we can be seen from the quay when we’re talking to him.’

  ‘Do we mention Ronnie Starr?’ she asked. ‘I mean the fact that he’s dead.’

  ‘Hell, no! We don’t know that, remember. No, we tell the truth more or less. We’re working for Gavin Scott, looking for more info on the Toreador. We want to trace the Ronald Starr who staged the auction.’

  ‘Do we mention the Cadaques picture?’

  ‘No. Let’s just try to win the guy’s confidence.’

  She looked doubtful: not scared, you understand, just doubtful. ‘Oz, are you sure about this?’

  ‘No. That’s why I want to talk to him out in the open. Mind you, the chances are he’s buggered off again, back to sea. Come on.’

  I led the way, jumping on to the deck of the yacht, Prim landing lightly behind me. I leaned across and knocked on the cabin roof. ‘Mr Eames,’ I called. ‘Can we have a word?’