‘Thirty-something years of fatherhood. I know you better than anyone on this planet, so when I ask you what’s wrong, it’s because I can see that something is. . even if no one else can.’
‘Even if I can’t?’
‘Even if, Christ, all those years when you and Jan were living those sham lives, do you think I didn’t know you were deceiving yourselves? As soon as I saw you this afternoon, I knew that there was something chewing at you.’
I didn’t have an answer for him. Nor, right then did I have one for myself, only surprise, for I’ve always trusted my dad’s judgement. So I just took a swig of my Estrella and thought about it.
‘It’s this next movie, I suppose. I got the script from Miles the other day, and it’s. . It’s going to be a lot tougher than the first one. I just hope I can hack it.’
‘Mmm. I see,’ Macintosh Blackstone mused. ‘So all the experts, all the reviewers who’ve been saying how well you did in the first one, and what a natural actor you are. . as if I couldn’t have told them that for Christ’s sake. . they’re all wrong, are they?’
‘Maybe they are. The last part was made for me; maybe this one isn’t. Maybe I don’t fancy making an arse of myself in front of the world.’
I knew what was coming, well before he said it; we have that kind of telepathy, my dad and I. ‘It’s never bothered you before.’
‘Ah, but this is bigger. And there’s more than just me involved. If I blow this I’m blowing a few million for Miles.’
‘He didn’t have to cast you in the first place,’ he pointed out. ‘But he’s got the same faith in you that everyone else has; more so, since he’s prepared to put his dough behind it.’
He shook his head. ‘Naw, son. You’ll be fine. Deep down you know it too. You sure there’s nothing else?’
I pondered again. The body! Christ, of course; I hadn’t told him about finding our friend in the swimming pool. Nor, I decided very quickly, did I intend to, and I would go out of my way to make sure that he didn’t find out from anyone else. What a bloody meal he’d make of that! Several meals in fact, for he’d be dining out on the story for ever back home.
‘No. I’m sure. Just as I’m sure you’re right; I will be all right once the cameras start rolling. I really do like it, Dad. I’m not talking about the glamour side, either. I’m used to that from the telly work I’ve done, from being on the periphery of big Everett’s rassling circus. No, I like acting; I enjoy the challenge of it, the lights and all the rest.
‘When Miles put me in Snatch, I thought he was daft at first, but the more I got into it, the more it began to take me over.’
I looked at him, as more truth came to me. ‘You know what, Dad? I’ve tried for years to live in the normal world. Now I see that there’s no such thing. It’s all fucking mad, and the deeper you get into it, the further you go, the madder it gets.
‘The wisest thing you’ve ever done was to stay at home, in the world you grew up in. Me? I started off just by moving to Edinburgh, no more than an hour from Fife, and look at me now. I’ve become wrapped up in a chain of events that got beyond my control long ago. The world is a lunatic’s playground, and we’re all his toys.’
‘Rubbish. The world’s your bloody oyster, son.’
‘If that’s so, I’m the pearl in it, waiting to be strung and hung round someone’s neck. You know who had it right? That old lady you told me about; the one who saw St Andrews, and thought it was the Big Apple.’
My dad laughed, loudly enough for Jonny to frown at him over his shoulder. ‘The Big Apple!’ he exclaimed. ‘The Big Raspberry, more like. And what does that make Enster? The Big Turnip! How about that? And L’Escala, what would you call this place?’
I was sucked into his game. ‘It has to be the Big Anchovy, hasn’t it?’
That was it for the serious discussion. We were through our second beers when the team came back with the shopping and when Prim announced that there would be no cooking done in the house that night.
My nephews are serious students of pizza and, as I mentioned, I’m not averse to it myself, so we took them to Pizza Pazza. It’s on the beach in Riells, the newer end of L’Escala and it’s a nice, recently built family restaurant. We’d only been there for half an hour when who came in with his nice, recently built family but Ramon Fortunato.
In Spain, the kids are barely out of the wrapper when they’re taken out with their parents of a Saturday night; so it didn’t surprise me to see a six-month-old loaded in the carrier which was strapped to the policeman’s chest.
I waved them over and made the introductions; I didn’t have any choice really. The ladies did the obligatory cooing over the baby, although it was obvious to me, if no one else, that Prim was a little more restrained in this than the other two. While they were doing that I took my first look at Veronique. She was very attractive; tall, slim, dark, well-groomed and, I told myself, unmistakably Spanish. She smiled at me, in a gentle way that told me a hell of a lot, not least that right at that moment she’d rather have been somewhere else than watching her old man’s ex inspect her kid.
I caught the shrewd old dentist looking at her too; he wasn’t just admiring her teeth.
It was as well that the Fortunatos’ table was on the other side of the restaurant. I would have been happy simply to nod to them on the way out, had not the beer caught up with me. I was washing my hands in Pizza Pazza’s palatial bog when who came in but the bold Ramon.
‘Nice kid,’ I said, as he went about his business.
‘Thank you.’ I was about to leave but he called me back.
‘A moment, Oz. I wanted to ask you something.’
He sounded unprofessionally serious. I hoped we weren’t about to go into any off-limit areas. ‘The man you mentioned the other day; Sayeed the fisherman. Who told you about him going to prison?’
‘An English guy in Bar JoJo. Or was it the lady herself? I can’t remember, but they both seemed to know about it.’
‘Yes,’ said Fortunato. ‘The story seems to be all over town. I can’t find out where it began, but I do know this much. . it is not true.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked him, well hooked by this time.
‘What I say. If Sayeed had gone to jail for smuggling I would not necessarily have known about it, since it would have been a Guardia Civil matter. But in the way of things, I would have heard something. So, I checked with them, and with the prison authorities; Sayeed Hassani. . that’s his full name. . is not in prison, nor has he been in prison. . Not in the last six years at any rate.’
‘They got it wrong, then.’
‘They did, but so did everybody else.’
‘Eh?’
‘I’ve checked around. I looked for his boat on the beach, where he pulls it up to save paying for a berth in the marina. It’s there, but it’s rotting. I went to his apartment; it’s locked up, and the town taxes for the last year have not been paid. I asked the neighbours; none of them can remember seeing him this year.
‘So I spoke to his brother, Abou. It was easy to find him, for he is in jail. He’s doing three years in Barcelona for robbery. They were not close, but he was upset that Sayeed had not been to visit him for a long time. While I was talking to him, I leaned over and pulled a hair from his head. He thought I was crazy, that’s all, or maybe that I was trying to frighten him. But I took that hair away and I used it as a comparison in a DNA test.
‘And guess what, Oz?’
I guessed; and I got it right this time. ‘The guy in the pool. It was Sayeed; not Capulet.’
He nodded. ‘I thought you deserved to know that, since you were responsible for my finding out. There’s more, too. The bullet that we found in the body is a heavy calibre, point four five. I discovered that at one time Capulet was a Swiss Army reservist, and as such, he was issued with a point four five Colt automatic.’
In spite of myself, I felt a bit of a shiver run down my back. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Find Capulet, if I can.’ The policeman reached into his jacket, and took out a card, one of those that Pizza Pazza leaves lying on all of its tables for punters to take away and give to their friends.
‘But first, there is something you could do for me.’
I looked at him and saw that he seemed to be blushing. ‘If only to explain why we’ve been in here so long …’ He held out the card. ‘Could you give me your autograph?’ He gave me a cringing smile. ‘It’s for my wife, you understand.’
13
Christmas Eve isn’t quite the same in Catalunya as in Scotland; Spanish kids are given their presents on 6 January, the last day of the festive season, rather than on 25 December. There was no point in trying that on with my nephews, though, and especially with wee Colin. He had a focused look about him, and an air of suppressed excitement that seemed to be shooting off sparks.
Prim and I had put up the tree at the foot of the big stairway, and had decorated the rest of the house in traditional style, well before the team had arrived from Scotland, so there was nothing to be done in that department.
The ladies were working themselves into a controlled frenzy too, as they began the day-long preparations for a meal that would take two hours at most to demolish. As for my dad, he had bought Volume One of Chester Himes’ Harlem Cycle at Edinburgh Airport and had settled himself in the gentle winter sunshine in one of our big deck chairs, not to be disturbed.
Since there was nothing for me to do, I decided to play the favourite uncle and take the boys off to see the Greco-Roman ruins of Empuries. The entrance to the great rambling site was less than a quarter of a mile from our front door, so I resisted the urge to take them for a hurl in the Lada, and instead we set out to walk there.
We hadn’t got out of our street when an English voice called out to me. ‘Hello there!’ It came from inside Shirley’s garden; I looked over the gate and saw her son. I had met John Gash before, in unhappy circumstances, and I had been unimpressed by a couple of things he had done, under the influence of his late and not very lamented uncle. But according to Shirl, he had got his act together and was doing a pretty fair job of running their family business, alongside his own ventures like the Russian spares job.
I was taken by surprise by his shout, since I had begun to think once more about Fortunato’s bombshell the night before. Naturally, I hadn’t mentioned it when we got back to the table; I still didn’t want the family to know anything about the episode, and I didn’t think that the new development would make Prim’s evening either. Somehow, I had been more comfortable with the concept of Capulet being the bag of bones in the piscina. I mean, it was almost as if I knew him and, given his supposed line of work, his demise could have been classed almost as an industrial injury.
Call me illogical if you will, but the thought that it wasn’t him. . that it was a total stranger, if you like. . made me feel a shade uncomfortable. For one thing, it meant that Capulet was probably still alive. For another, it raised the possibility that he had put the bloke there himself, before he disappeared. But would he really put the place up for sale with an accessory like that? I mean selling with furniture and fittings is one thing, but. .
That was as far as I had got when Shirley’s son and heir hailed me over her garden gate. ‘It’s Oz Blackstone, isn’t it?’ he boomed, cheerily as he strolled down the path to the high garden gate. The slope of the land wasn’t quite as severe as ours, so he didn’t see the lads until he had almost reached it. ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise you had company.’
‘Yes, these are my nephews, Jonathan and Colin. Jonny’s the one who’s partly turned into a human being; the other one’s still just a wee boy.’ Both of them shot me glares.
‘You’ve put on a bit of weight, haven’t you?’ Mr Gash commented.
I might have been offended by such a personal remark, had it not been true. I’ll never be Lennox Lewis, but since I started working out regularly with my wrestler chums, and built up a daily exercise regime, I’ve put on eight or nine kilos and turned some gathering fat into muscle in the process.
I shrugged my beefed-up shoulders. ‘I suppose I have,’ I agreed. ‘How’s it going with you, John?’ I asked him, then answered my own question. ‘Pretty well, I hear; according to what your mother says.’
‘It’s okay,’ he agreed. ‘The business is on a pretty solid footing. I’m more into importing than my father was. I’ve moved the manufacturing side up to the top end of the sector. There’ll always be a market for traditional English high-quality furniture, and not just at home either. So I buy the cheaper stuff from abroad, taking advantage of the strong pound, and I sell the expensive stuff at home, and abroad to people who are so rich they don’t give a damn about currency rates.’
Gash junior smiled thinly. ‘I couldn’t interest you in an over-stuffed Chesterfield, could I? Upholstered in the softest leather you’ll find anywhere in the world.’
I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth. ‘Nah. I’m a Fifer, John. I earn in dollars, but I’ll buy in euros. Makes much more sense.’
‘Ah,’ he said, with a hearty public school chuckle. ‘No more buying British; that’s what you’re saying? I thought I saw a spanking new Mercedes going into your drive this morning.’
‘Where can you buy a British car these days?’ I asked him.
‘What about a Jag?’
‘Don’t be daft, that’s American.’
‘Okay, a Lotus, then.’
‘Malaysian.’
‘Gotcha! Morgan.’
‘Not if you want one NOW. We’ll settle for the Merc, thanks and for the Z3 in Britain.’
I glanced up at him; I’d forgotten that he was a lanky lad, slightly taller than me. ‘Shirley said you were going into the car business yourself, in a way.’
He gave that forced laugh again. ‘You mean my Lada sideline. Just a bit of fun, you understand. Makes a pound or two though. It’s a crazy concept isn’t it? A car that’s worth nothing in running order, but a small fortune once you take it to bits.’
I had to agree with him. ‘I don’t understand it, myself. I’ve got one. I inherited it with the house, and I’ve been running around in it. Maybe I’m a Russian at heart, but I like it.’
‘They’re not all dogs,’ John conceded. ‘The four-by-four is quite a decent motor.’
‘Yes, that’s what the previous owner left behind.’
‘Ah yes, the late Mr Capulet. Mother told me about the nasty surprise that was waiting for you in your swimming pool. She was a little upset, I think, although she did her best not to show it. As far as I gather, the chap was paying court to her.’
I paused, wondering whether to reveal Fortunato’s surprise. Finally, I decided that Shirley had as good a right to know as I did. ‘She can cheer up, then,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t him.’
As John Gash’s eyes widened, I felt a tug at my hand. ‘Sorry,’ I told him. ‘Got to get these lads on the move. Tell Shirley I’ll explain later.’
14
‘Later’, turned out to be as soon as we got back from the ruins. She must have been watching for me from her window, for I had hardly turned into the street before she was out in the drive, as her son had been earlier.
I saw her coming and told the boys to go on ahead of me. They had enjoyed the ruins as much as I had known they would. Ever since his lucky escape after a fall in St Andrews Castle a few months before, Colin had been much easier to control; less liable to go crashing off to explore on his own, more likely to go along quietly, listening to what he was told.
‘What’s this John’s been telling me?’ Shirley asked breathlessly, holding the gate open for me. ‘Rey’s not dead after all?’
I didn’t step inside; instead, I leaned against one of the gateposts. ‘I don’t know about that,’ I cautioned her. ‘Those weren’t his bits in the pool; that’s all I can tell you.’
‘But the police have no reason to believe he’s dead?’ She sounded too eager for my liking. Shirl is pretty con
trolled as a rule, good at masking her feelings. I guessed that she had been more keen on Capulet than she’d admitted earlier.
‘No, they haven’t,’ I admitted. ‘But no one’s seen him for a year, remember. All of his property has been sold; not just Villa Bernabeu, but the other places as well. As far as L’Escala’s concerned he might as well be dead; he’s not coming back, Shirley.’
I felt rotten as the gleam of hope vanished from her eye, all the more so, since I had put it there in the first place. ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose not.’ Then, as if with a great effort she perked up. ‘Still,’ she went on, ‘it’s good to know that he didn’t end up at the deep end of his own pool. Do the police know whose body it is, then?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Remember the guy we were talking about in Jo’s that night?’
‘What? Sayeed the fisherman? The smuggler who went to prison?’
‘That’s the one; Sayeed Hassani. Only he didn’t get the nick; he got the bullet instead. It was him.’
‘So who put him there?’
‘The police are still working on that. They do want to talk to your pal Capulet, though, if they can ever find him. It begins to explain his disappearance, though. Maybe he had a fall-out with Sayeed, killed him over it and had to disappear as a result. Or maybe he had planned to disappear anyway and Sayeed was a loose end he had to tie off before he left.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t Rey at all,’ Shirley protested. ‘I seem to remember that Sayeed had a brother; a right bad lot he was too. Maybe they fell out. Maybe he did it.’
I knew that he’d have found it difficult from his prison cell, but I decided to leave her that one straw to clutch. ‘Maybe he did. I’m sure the police are talking to him about that even now. But I do know that they’re a lot more interested in finding Reynard Capulet than they were a couple of days ago.’
‘Well bugger him if they do,’ she said, tersely, yanking herself finally back into the real world. ‘I thought he fancied me, I really did. Stupid old woman that I am.’
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