On Honeymoon With Death ob-5

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘The worst that’s going to happen is that you’ve generated a capital loss to offset against a capital gain somewhere along the way.’

  She snorted. ‘Huh. You’ll be singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” next. I believed them, Oz. I really thought I was a business whiz kid. Now I know I’m anything but, and soon the whole world’s going to know about it. D’you think the newspapers aren’t going to find out about this?’

  ‘Get your PR people to handle it. They’ll get you a decent press.’

  ‘Maybe, but everything I’m trying to forget will get raked up in the process; my Lord Provost, Mike, maybe even the fact that Joe’s my real dad.’

  ‘No way anyone’s going to find that out. Jack Gantry’s name’s on your birth certificate, isn’t it?’

  She conceded that point as we stepped back into the hypermarket and took the lift up to the top floor cafeteria.

  We found a table with a fine view across the city and ordered lunch, plus a bottle of Vina Sol. Susie had decided that the hair of the dog was a must. As we sat and sipped it, waiting for our food, she looked at me. ‘What do you think, then? What do we do now?’

  ‘First, you call Ann Hay or Joe. Tell them what we’ve found out and have them contact the other investors. . they’ve got to be informed. Then we turn my friend Captain Fortunato loose on this man Toldo.’

  ‘Captain Fortunato? Your friend?’ She didn’t even try to hide her surprise.

  I didn’t bite. ‘Why shouldn’t he be?’

  She gave me a long look.

  ‘You’ve heard of him, though?’

  ‘Yes. Prim mentioned him to me once.’

  ‘What did she tell you about him?’

  She eyed me up, unsure about me, unsure of what I knew.

  ‘Oh, you know; girl talk.’

  ‘What? Like when I left her they had a fling, but it collapsed when she found that she was in the club? That sort of girl talk?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘She finally told you, then.’

  ‘Finally,’ I said. I didn’t like the thought that Prim had told anyone, even Susie, before me.

  ‘You don’t mind, then?’

  ‘It was none of my business then; it’s none of my business now.’

  She looked at me again, out of the corner of her eye. ‘You don’t mind, then?’ she repeated.

  ‘Of course I fucking mind!’ It burst out of me in a shout that startled the woman at the next table, never mind making Susie jump; I lowered my voice. ‘We come back here on our honeymoon, and one of the first people we meet is a guy whose kid she had aborted. This might be amiable old Oz you’re talking to, but there’s a limit.’

  ‘So how come you say he’s your friend?’

  ‘First because I concentrate very hard on not thinking about it, and second because, apart from the fact that he had a wife at the time, there’s nothing I can blame him for. I can’t blame Prim for what happened either, only myself, but I don’t like the way I found out about it.’

  ‘Does that mean that you’re going to tell Prim about what happened this morning?’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  I glowered at her.

  ‘That’s it,’ she teased me. ‘Show me those hairy eyebrows. You’ve just proved something I’ve suspected for a while. No wonder you’re a hit in the movies.

  ‘You’re a natural, sunshine, a consummate actor. Amiable old Oz, as you called him, is a part you’ve chosen to play; the saintly youth that everyone loves and who can do no real wrong. But inside you’re just as tough as the next guy, and probably a hell of a lot tougher. When it suits your book, you can be really brutal, but you get away with it because people look at you and think “Oh, but it’s nice smiley Oz, so it must be all right.”

  ‘For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve been waiting for you to drop your guard, and now you’ve done it.’

  I carried on looking at her, not smiling, not blinking. ‘You’re talking about someone I don’t recognise,’ I told her.

  ‘If you could hear the coldness in your voice, you’d recognise him. “We all wear masks, kid.” That’s something else the Lord Provost said to me. “Most of us look in the mirror without knowing who we really are, deep inside.” He did, though; he could see his inner man. His problem was that he didn’t realise that, deep inside, that man was a monster.’

  ‘And what about Susie Gantry?’ I asked her. ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘I’m like you,’ she answered at once. ‘On the outside, I’m light and cheerful and user-friendly; a lot of my business success is built on that, I’m sure. I’m everybody’s flavour of the month. But behind it all, I’m hard and cunning and ruthless and, sometimes, not very scrupulous.

  ‘I’ve only ever met one person who I reckon was the same however you looked at them, inside and out.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘You have to ask? Jan, of course. She had no secrets from herself, or anyone else.’

  I thought about that; she had none from me, of that I was sure. ‘And Prim?’ I asked her. ‘What about her?’

  ‘That, my dear, you have to find out for yourself.’

  There was a bustling beside us, as the waiter arrived with our Catalan salads. I was grateful for the interruption. Susie hadn’t made me angry, but she had made me feel very uncomfortable. I’m not a great Burns student, but I do remember the line about seeing ourselves as others see us. I had a feeling that what she was saying was all too true.

  We didn’t speak as we ate our starters, not until the waiter had taken away our plates. ‘I’m sorry,’ Susie began.

  I held up a hand to stop her. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I feel like you’re taking me on a journey of self-discovery here. I might as well carry on till the train gets to the station.’

  My mobile rang as I spoke. It was Fortunato. ‘Yes, Ramon,’ I answered, to let Susie know who was calling.

  ‘I have found out about your friend’s company,’ he told me. ‘It is in the official register, okay. The holders of the shares are the people you mentioned, Hickok and Chandler; there is a third also, but he has only one share; a formality, you understand.’

  ‘I understand. He’s a lawyer and his name’s Josep Toldo.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘We’ve been to the bank, and had a talk with the manager.’

  ‘Ahh. Yes, Senor Toldo is the administrator of the company. He has an office in Girona; I have heard of him before, some good, mostly bad. If you are wanting to set up a business here, it is as well that you have some Spanish involvement. If you want someone who will not ask too many questions, you want someone like him.

  ‘What did the manager tell you?’

  ‘He said that the money’s gone, and the account’s closed. It was moved on more than a month ago. You should find out whether Toldo knew that it was being transferred. If he did, he could be in trouble.’

  ‘Maybe. I would like that.’

  ‘What else did you find out about the company?’ I asked.

  ‘There was very little to find. I had my people ask around in the town of Ullastret, and in La Bisbal. Toldo and the two Englishmen approached a farmer last year and offered him ten million pesetas, merely to explore the possibility of building a golf course on his land. He thought they were crazy, so he said okay.

  ‘They brought designers along, and they brought another Englishman, a Mr Murphy, to meet him. Everything was very good, very enthusiastic, only they did not pay him the money. He had to ask Toldo for it, but eventually a transfer was made, last summer. That was the last he heard; there has been no digging, nothing; no visit from the people in the town council who approve these things, or from the Catalan government, which has a say also. This is not surprising, because no plans have ever been put forward.’

  ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘They showed the investors the agreement with the farmer, and the model of the project. They set up an account in a small unsophisticated bank in Barcelona and lo
dged the invested capital, six million sterling. Then they moved it on, and spun a story about the project being delayed by an archaeological investigation, to keep the investors at bay for a while.’

  ‘You are sure of all this?’

  ‘Yes. Someone knew that Ms Gantry, my friend, was coming out to visit the development. Last night they tried to stop her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter right now. I’ll give you the detail another time. But it does tell me that at least one of these guys is still around.’

  ‘Then the sooner I pull Toldo in the better. I need your friend to make a formal complaint, Oz, but we can do that later.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll bring her to your office in Girona tomorrow.’

  I looked across the table as I put the phone back in my pocket. ‘There you are, kid. The wheels of justice are in motion.’

  ‘That’s good. Did you say I get to meet the nice policeman tomorrow? That’s a dubious pleasure, after the way Prim described him when she told me about him.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  She fluttered her eyelashes at me. ‘Well, dear, you know how we girls spill the beans to each other when we start. . Or maybe you don’t.

  ‘I got the impression that she was pretty smitten by him; I know that she was really hurt when he left her to go back to his wife. He sounded to me like a bit of an arsehole all round. I mean, the least he could have done was stick around until after the termination.’

  ‘You what?’ I couldn’t stop myself reacting.

  ‘Ahh,’ Susie exclaimed, with a hint of something I couldn’t place, ‘she didn’t tell you that bit. I guess that’s why the guy’s still your friend. Apparently, when she told him she was pregnant, he insisted that she had an abortion; he more or less arranged it, in fact. And as soon as the appointment was made, he packed up and went back to his wife.’

  The whole story must have been written on my face. ‘She didn’t tell you that much, did she?’

  ‘No. She told me that he still doesn’t know about the kid. She also told me that he was pretty mediocre under the duvet as well,’ I added, bitterly.

  ‘I don’t know about that. She never told me otherwise, I promise you. And I can understand why she said what she did. She probably thought that if she’d told you the whole story you’d have filled him in.’

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Yes you!’ she gave a short, explosive laugh, which startled the lady at the next table again. ‘Mike told me once about the time you and your wrestler pal were attacked by a couple of hoodlums in London, and what happened to them.

  ‘Knowing that, if I’d been in Prim’s shoes, I’d have been worried about your reaction.’

  ‘Who me?’ I repeated.

  ‘You really don’t know yourself at all, do you?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  I shook my head, picked up the Vina Sol, and filled my glass to the top. ‘Congratulations,’ I mumbled, ‘you’ve just earned yourself a shot at driving the Mercedes.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Susie, with no hint of remorse that I could pick up. ‘I have spoiled your lunch, haven’t I?’ She lifted up my hand from the table, and kissed it, quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to, really.’ I yanked it back from her and turned my head away, to stare out of the panoramic window of the cafeteria.

  ‘Enough,’ I snapped, then changed my mind. ‘No, not quite. Is there anything else you know about Prim, or about me, for that matter?’

  ‘I know she loves you. I know you think you love her.’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘You love you, Oz. Let’s face it, you’re a fucking egomaniac.’

  I turned back towards her. ‘And you’re a fucking poison dwarf, you know that?’ I think I was probably snarling. ‘I should have let that guy bounce your head off the floor a couple more times before I came downstairs.’

  She smiled at me, sweetly. ‘Yeah. But I’m really getting you hard, am I not?’

  She was right.

  I left my Vina Sol on the table. All of a sudden I wanted to drive back myself. And so I did: fast.

  If there’s a speed record for the autopista A7, I must have broken it. There were times when I was fairly certain that the Merc’s wheels were clear of the ground. I looked at Susie’s knuckles as we swung into the exit lane at Sortida Five. Her fists were clenched tight, and they were bone white.

  We hadn’t spoken all the way from Barcelona, and we stayed silent for the rest of the journey home. As I drew the car to a halt in the driveway and pulled on the brake, Susie jumped out, and ran to the front door. I was perverse enough to go to the back, and unlock that.

  She followed me into the kitchen, but I kept on walking, round and up the wide stairs. Still she followed me. I stopped at her bedroom door; it was open. I picked her up, carried her inside and threw her on to the bed. She tore at my clothes, I tore at hers; we broke the speed record for getting naked as well.

  Foreplay was a type of golf as far as we were concerned. I covered her and we took each other as hard and as roughly as we could, but not quickly, pulling back just in time, slowing, stopping even, until we knew we were both ready. When we did let go, it was perfect; savage, screaming, exultant; I thought I would never stop as I came into her.

  I did though, even if I’m still not sure when. Eventually, I was aware that we were eye to eye on the pillow. ‘Tonight,’ Susie whispered hoarsely. ‘You’re going to fuck me in that great big brass bed of yours.’

  I didn’t argue. I knew who I was now; I knew what I was.

  After a while, I got up and went downstairs, naked, to fetch us a couple of beers. As I passed the telephone answering gadget, I noticed that its light was flashing. There were two messages. The first was from Shirley Gash, inviting me and my house guest to dinner that evening, eight thirty. The second was from Mark Kravitz.

  ‘Oz, I turned something up. Call me back; I don’t trust cell phones.’

  I grabbed a pen and pad and called him from the kitchen, sitting up at the breakfast bar. ‘Mark. Whatcha got?’

  ‘Hey, you sound businesslike,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m just cold. The weather’s turned and I’m not exactly dressed for it.’

  ‘Move to California then. Okay, I had a pal of mine. . no names, obviously. . feed your two punters into the Big Computer. Jeffrey Chandler is an alias of one Victor Fowler. He’s also been known at various times as Ronald Colman and Leslie Howard. Seems to have a thing about mid-twentieth century movie actors.’ He laughed. ‘You never know; forty years from now there might be a conman calling himself Oz Blackstone.’

  ‘What makes you think there isn’t already? Go on.’

  ‘Okay. Fowler’s a long-term and successful fraudster. He’s done one stretch for it, but that’s all. Mind you, in his younger days, twenty-odd years ago, he served five for manslaughter. His speciality is corporate fraud; sets up dummy projects and takes silly rich people for lots of money.’ He stopped; there was a silence. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, sorry. Something distracted me for a moment.’

  While he was speaking Susie had appeared in the kitchen, wearing a white tee-shirt. . a very short one. Without a word, she had dropped to her knees, crawled under the breakfast bar and gone to work in her own special way. I tried to push her away, but she dug her nails into my thighs and hung in there. I’ve had guns pointed at me a couple of times, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more vulnerable than I did right then.

  ‘Fowler’s whereabouts are currently unknown,’ Kravitz continued. ‘He pulled a scam in his Leslie Howard persona a couple of years back, and took a very embarrassed oil sheikh for three million.’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, a big score,’ said Mark. He thought I’d been impressed by the number.

  ‘William Hickok, is also known as William Bonney. . Billy the Kid to you. . George Parker. . Butch Cassidy to you. . and Harry Longbaugh. . the Sundance Kid to you. A cowboy fetishist, clearly. However his
real name is Arthur Hardstaff. .’ For a second or two that name very nearly made me laugh. I thought I was going to have to call him back.

  ‘He’s not in the same league as Fowler, but he’s worked with him a couple of times before. He won’t again, though.’ I sighed with relief as Susie came up for air, and a swig of beer. Again, Kravitz thought it was a comment. ‘That’s good news, is it? It isn’t for Mrs Hardstaff, though.

  ‘She found him in his garage last month. He’d topped himself with the car exhaust, or so the police assumed at first. When they did the postmortem, the pathologist determined that he’d been knocked unconscious by a severe blow to the back of the head, and left there to suffocate.

  ‘No clue who did it, though.’

  ‘Tell your pal. .’ Susie dropped to her knees again. I had to stifle a gasp. The beer had chilled her mouth; and the sudden shock sent a tingle right up my spine. ‘Tell your pal,’ I forced myself to continue, ‘to put Fowler at the top of his list. Jeff Chandler just got away with a six-million-pound fraud in Spain. I guess he didn’t fancy sharing it with Wild Bill.’

  ‘Do you think he’s out there, where you are?’

  I came up with a very quick answer to that question. ‘I think he was, up until last night, but things didn’t quite go as he expected. I’d be very surprised if he’s within a thousand miles of here now.’

  ‘Wow. Can you give me details of that?’

  ‘Tell your guy to get in touch with Captain Ramon Fortunato, of the Mossos d’Esquadra in Girona.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s us square for this one, mate.’

  ‘Fair enough. What about the third name?’

  ‘Murphy? There’s scores of them, but not a Brian among them. He’s clean as far as the criminal intelligence network is concerned.’

  ‘That’ll come. . as a relief to a friend of mine.’

  I replaced the phone, and took Susie by the hair, with the vague intention of pulling her to her feet. Then I thought, What the hell, there are worse ways to spend a Friday, and let her finish what she was doing.

  I’ve always been amazed by the amount a good packer can get into a single, albeit large, suitcase. When she came downstairs at eight fifteen, my ‘house guest’, as Shirley had called her, was in another new outfit. This one was a cherry-coloured, silky-velvet dress, off one shoulder, its hem just below the knee. It clung to the contours of her body in a way that suggested that it was wearing her, rather than the other way around. The bump on her forehead had disappeared entirely, and she had covered the bruise which remained with some sort of foundation. Her lustrous hair was piled on top of her head, and she had picked dark eye make-up and crimson lip gloss to set it all off.