Confessional

by Anthony Masters

  Monique leant over and kissed him. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so deeply sorry – but you can’t blame yourself like this. You have so much on – so many cases – that …’

  ‘Eduardo was a friend.’ He fought for control. ‘They’re sending a car.’ Larche fiddled with his napkin and then threw it down. Around them, the restaurant was beginning to fill up and the near silence which had originally accompanied their conversation had been replaced by a discreet murmur.

  ‘Have some more wine,’ she said, pouring him a glass of claret before he could protest.

  They were silent until the car arrived a few minutes later, pulling up at the kerb and sounding its horn. The soft evening light gave the Mercedes a kind of dusty sheen, and two children on skateboards paused to admire its subtle bodywork and gleaming trim.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ He half rose and sat down again.

  ‘I shall go down to Letoric,’ she said with sudden decision. ‘Phone me there.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll ring.’ Larche rose again and the horn sounded a second time. He came round the table and clumsily kissed her. ‘Waste of a good meal.’

  ‘When will you call?’

  ‘Late tonight.’

  ‘I love you, Marius.’

  ‘Kiss me again.’

  She pressed her lips to his. ‘Keep safe,’ she whispered. ‘You’re so precious to me.’

  As the DC10 circled Barcelona airport, Larche’s guilt increased. He had advised the Spanish Minister for Home Affairs, an old and valued friend, that the threats on his life were no more than the work of a crank – threats that could be discounted with a derisory smile. He had done this because he had been hung-over, overworked and uninterested. Now the worst had happened, Larche’s conscience was tormenting him as it had never done before.

  As the plane came in to land, Larche closed his eyes. He never watched landings; it was all out of his hands so he preferred to physically dissociate himself from the entire operation. Normally he found closed eyes an effectively escapist antidote, but now all he could see was Eduardo’s face.

  Grimly, Marius Larche knew he was going to have a very bad night at his hotel – something he couldn’t afford if he was going to have the difficult day he anticipated. Perhaps a few scotches would help him to sleep, but then he would wake with a hangover – just as he had done when Eduardo had called. All too often, he thought ruefully, as the DC10 touched down, life tended to be circular.

  In the early morning, the dew was still heavy on the foliage that was now nearly engulfing the Chateau Letoric. Monique Larche gently applied the brakes of her little Fiat Tipo and pulled up at the battered oak front door. She had not been able to sleep, despite the fact that Larche had phoned just after midnight. He was staying in a hotel just outside Barcelona, he had told her, and was going to try to get some rest.

  Rising at five, Monique had driven from Lyon without stopping, arriving at St Esprit just before eight. She had then taken the lower road past the lavender fields and bumped slowly over the rutted and weed-grown drive of the Chateau Letoric. Well, she thought, in a few months’ time she could have restored some sort of order from the chaos, although she also knew it would probably take a couple of years to get the old chateau into the kind of shape that she and Marius wanted.

  The heavy door opened before she could knock, and Estelle, the housekeeper, appeared wearing a stained dressing gown, with yesterday’s rouge on her cheeks. Despite her sluttishness, Monique liked her knocked-about warmth, and wondered if her feelings were reciprocated. Somehow she doubted that they were.

  ‘I saw you coming,’ she said. ‘I might have known you’d be early.’

  ‘Is it inconvenient?’

  ‘No, madame,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I know you can’t wait to get started.’ She looked past her. ‘I thought Monsieur Larche was coming with you.’

  ‘He’s been called to Spain.’

  ‘Police business?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything to do with the murder of that minister?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Ah – I wondered about that when I saw the television last night. He knew him, didn’t he?’

  ‘They met at university,’ Monique replied rather shortly.

  ‘I’ve made some coffee. But would you like breakfast?’

  ‘Coffee will be fine,’ said Monique as she stepped hurriedly inside.

  * * *

  Alison Rowe was slender, dressed like a student, Larche thought, in jeans and a T-shirt, but was probably somewhere in her thirties; and she had an air of authority. Her long untidy hair framed an oval face, and rimless glasses were pushed slightly forward on her nose. She looked as tired as he felt, but the reserve – the iron, too-stretched reserve – was her most obvious trait.

  Glancing at his watch, Larche saw that it was just after two. They were standing in the rather unlikely setting of the ambulatory of the monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes, looking down on Puerto de la Selva where the mountains met the distant unwinking blue of the Mediterranean. The heat was intense here, and the stony flints on the rugged mountain path just below them seemed to reflect back even more. He put his hands on the broken masonry of the parapet and felt the rough baking stone.

  ‘The whole area’s alive with security people,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen so much activity.’

  ‘Part of the new airport building at Barcelona was sealed off yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘It took two hours to clear customs.’ She paused. ‘It’s extraordinary to be in the middle of a huge public tragedy like this; there’s a sort of muddling-through-the-blitz atmosphere here.’

  ‘That’s what you British did then – muddle through?’ asked Larche.

  ‘I don’t know what we did,’ she replied a little defensively. ‘That’s what we like to think we did.’ There was a short silence and then she said, ‘He was a very popular man – your friend Eduardo. I was met by a security man at the airport – someone high up in Cesid. He was crying.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marius carefully. ‘Eduardo commanded a lot of respect.’

  ‘I gather you know the family well.’ She was the inquisitor now.

  ‘Yes, I knew Eduardo as a student and we’ve always been friends.’ He tried to curb the flatness of his speech, but he had woken with the predictable hangover and spent the morning being briefed by the now extremely helpful Spanish police. They seemed delighted to see someone from Interpol, as if his presence not only lent weight to the devastating importance of the tragedy but also gave them added support. They were all too clearly both mortified and frightened by their failure to protect such an eminent public figure. It was during this session that he was told the investigation at the Valley of the Fallen was well in hand but the Tomas family wanted him on Molino after he had met Alison Rowe and taken her to lunch with some high-ranking Spanish policeman.

  ‘What were you told this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘That the family wanted me to come to Molino and that we would be given every facility.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Naturally you’ll be coming with me. It’s essential you know the background.’

  ‘But all I’m good for is identifying one particular assassin,’ she protested drily.

  ‘You can be taken off Molino at any time if necessary. Surely you don’t want to kick around here on your own with nothing to do?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘But what’s all this about some girl having a fit and covering up the assassin’s escape? Was she some kind of plant?’

  ‘They don’t know and of course she’s sticking to total denial, but I would say you were right.’ Larche paused. ‘She’s a local whore who would do anything for a pay-off, but apparently there’s no evidence of her having received any money. Yet.’

  ‘But the fit,’ said Alison Rowe impatiently. ‘Surely some medic can decide whether it was genuine or not?’

  ‘She’s in hospital, under guard and having tests. But she is an epileptic.’ />
  ‘I see.’

  Larche looked at her curiously, wondering if she was trying to impress him. ‘We can talk more later,’ he said rather selfconsciously. ‘We’re going to see a man called Casas over lunch. He’s a Spanish policeman who’s meant to be looking after us.’ They both gazed down uneasily at the old disused vine terraces that ran down the dry flinty mountain to the shimmering Mediterranean below. ‘Isn’t this place rather dramatically out of the way?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘I think that’s the idea; they bundled me out of the airport very fast. I got the impression they were worried that Hooper might be hanging around somewhere – might see me wandering the streets of Barcelona.’

  ‘It’s a large city,’ observed Larche with irony.

  ‘I don’t think the police chief I met is very imaginative, and anyway he was in one hell of a panic. He wouldn’t be able to handle another corpse.’ She laughed for the first time and Larche liked the sound. ‘Apparently they use this place as a hideaway for police informers.’

  ‘A sanctuary,’ replied Larche, looking at the hazy mountains.

  ‘There’s a small flat,’ she explained as they walked slowly back down the shallow steps and out into the tiny courtyard. She paused. ‘By the way, what rank has Casas?’

  ‘He’s in the Cesid. I think he feels he needs to keep an eye on us in case we show up the Spanish police and their security people.’

  ‘Do you know the Tomas family well?’

  ‘Yes, but not nearly as well as Eduardo. I’ve stayed on Molino before though.’ He paused. ‘His brother Blasco is a Benedictine monk. He belongs to a community on the island of Fuego – about twenty kilometres further down towards Blanes. The other brother is a marine archaeologist called Jacinto, whose wife Maria is a scuba diver. They run a rather chic diving school in Estartit.’

  ‘I’ve heard about them. Aren’t they macho adventure seekers popular with the rich and famous?’ she asked rather abruptly.

  ‘No comment.’ Larche stared at her reflectively. ‘The Tomas family have always been devoutly religious,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘They’re a rock solid part of the old Catholic establishment in Spain. Do you remember Bishop Carlos?’

  ‘Isn’t he the priest who led the rebellion against the new Mass? He wanted to keep it in Latin, didn’t he?’

  ‘And clashed head-on with the Pope and lost,’ replied Larche. ‘But he’s still a bishop and publicly licking his wounds courtesy of the family.’

  ‘So they’re powerful,’ said Alison Rowe.

  ‘Yes,’ Larche replied, ‘they’re powerful in the old Spanish ways.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means they’re insular and secretive.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s time to meet Casas,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Why were you asked to see me alone?’

  ‘Heycroft,’ he replied. ‘I think he wants us to be a good team.’

  ‘You asked me to start clearing out those chests in the study,’ said Estelle, ‘and I found some of Monsieur’s old sketches. He must have only been a boy at the time, but they’re rather good.’

  Monique was surprised; there was a note of familiarity in Estelle’s voice that she had not heard before. Previously Estelle had always referred to Marius in rather a remote way – not as a person she had known quite well over the last year when she had had to take over the running of Letoric and turned from housekeeper and nurse to Marius’s mother, to caretaker of a crumbling old mansion.

  ‘I must have a look.’

  ‘Yes, I put them on the desk for you to see.’

  Hurriedly, Monique changed the subject. ‘How’s the clearing up going?’

  ‘Awful. I don’t know what to throw away.’

  ‘The clothes …

  ‘Oh, they’ve gone. And I’ve taken some of the old lady’s stuff over to the nursing home. The rest I put in the cellar – just for the moment, in case she asks for it. You know what she’s like.’

  ‘Yes. How is she?’

  ‘Rambling. She hardly knows anyone.’ There was a tinge of bitter regret in Estelle’s voice. Well, Monique thought, at least that’s one person she cares about. She finished her coffee and stood up.

  ‘I’ll go and have a look at those sketches.’

  ‘They might be worth framing,’ said Estelle and Monique looked at her sharply, certain she detected a hint of mockery, but Estelle’s face was solemn.

  The study was dim, but sharp, clear Provençal light thrust shafts through the ancient curtains, now worn so thin they were almost transparent. She and Marius had sifted through the contents of the desk and the bureau themselves, but they had left the trunks to Estelle. ‘Father put all the debris in there,’ Marius had said. ‘There’s nothing that’s private or precious.’

  He had been wrong. The sketches were laid out, face down, on the dusty surface of the desk, and as Monique idly turned them over she could see that Marius had had a talent for drawing. Many were of the chateau in better times, with the formal garden mellow and attractive. The fountain was clear of weeds and the lawns were smooth and verdant, dotted with statues and dominated by a summer house. There were other pictures of his parents, of a dog running across the lavender fields and of streets in St Esprit. Then she came to the bottom of the pile – to the pictures of the strapping young man on the tractor. This was Jean-Pierre, and as Monique turned over the sketches she became increasingly uneasy.

  Casas was thin and elegant, a handsome sixty-year-old, cleanshaven and slightly defensive. He ordered a substantial seafood lunch which they ate in a small restaurant overlooking the sea at Puerto de la Selva.

  ‘I gather you were a personal friend of the late Eduardo Tomas,’ Casas began, ‘and that he had already asked for your help. Perhaps unofficially?’

  Larche briefly related the facts, although he was sure that Casas knew most of them already, and made no attempt to cover up his disastrous underrating of the situation. Casas then turned solicitously to Alison Rowe.

  ‘I – I hear this assassin Hooper wounded you some years ago,’ he said briskly.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied expressionlessly.

  ‘And you would recognize him?’

  ‘I believe I can.’

  Casas turned to Larche. ‘I understand the family have given you permission to be on the island?’ His voice was neutral.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to take Detective Superintendent Rowe with me.’

  ‘You are?’ Casas raised his eyebrows and smiled a ready-to-be-offended smile. ‘Do you have the family’s permission for that? Or the investigating officer’s? Or the security services’?’

  ‘No,’ said Larche firmly. ‘I shall take responsibility. Other members of the Tomas family could still be in danger from this assassin.’

  Casas nodded, smiling faintly as if he was tolerating some degree of insanity in Larche. ‘I think that’s rather unlikely, don’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dismiss Hooper as irrelevant if I were you,’ said Alison, irritated by his patronizing manner. ‘We clearly don’t know whether this is a political assassination or something more personal, something that might affect the Tomas family.’ She paused. ‘Or do you?’ she challenged.

  Casas shrugged impatiently. ‘The investigation is at an early stage.’

  Larche looked through the window at the flotilla of police boats surrounding the foreshore and the crowds of loitering spectators watching from the harbour.

  Casas caught his glance. ‘The island is swarming with police, secret service, intelligence – you name it, they’re on Molino. There is more than adequate protection for the Tomas family. And please – I’ve not been asked to give you a briefing – just to assist with the logistics.’

  And so that you could take a look at us and report back. Larche smiled slightly at Alison Rowe who smiled back.

  Casas intercepted the exchange and frowned. ‘I’m not in any way involved in this investigation,’ he added.

  ‘Just in us?’ asked
Larche jovially.

  ‘You’re our minder,’ put in Alison rather over-casually and immediately looked as if she regretted the comment.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Casas and Larche both looked puzzled.

  ‘It’s just an English expression. It means you are here to look after us – to protect us.’

  Casas relaxed and took a sip of the dry white Macon he had ordered.

  ‘We’re not going to be disruptive,’ said Larche, ‘and we’re not conducting a separate investigation. We would like to liaise with the investigating officer, of course.’

  ‘That would be Emilio Calvino. He’s a pleasant fellow with a very fine mind.’

  ‘And he’s in charge of the whole investigation?’ asked Larche.

  ‘Put it like this – he is in charge of the police investigation. There are other enquiries going on but naturally everything is being co-ordinated. The government are looking for quick results.’

  ‘So he could be replaced if he’s slow in delivering the goods?’ said Larche shrewdly.

  ‘It’s a complex business.’ There was a slight hesitation in Casas’s voice. ‘Do you know Molino well?’

  ‘I’ve known Eduardo well over the years, but I’ve only stayed on Molino for brief periods and that was usually as a member of a large house-party,’ Larche explained. ‘I always felt an outsider – rather like a poor relative – so I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. I’m not a jet-setter.’

  Casas nodded, clearly agreeing that Larche was no international playboy, but also pushing the remains of his sea bass around his plate as if he was ruminating about something else.

  ‘So is there anything additional that I should know about Molino?’ asked Larche amicably, aware that Casas was wondering whether he could confide in him.

  There was a curious stillness in the air and Larche knew that Alison Rowe was also listening intently. She’s very intuitive, he thought, and was suddenly glad that she was coming with him. Despite his need for space, he still needed the qualities of a woman that a man lacked. Larche forced his concentration back to Casas.