On Honeymoon With Death ob-5

by Quintin Jardine

‘Are you kidding me?’ I asked her. ‘If there’s one thing we’ve both learned over the past few days it’s that we never know anyone as well as we think; sometimes, not even ourselves. Your ex might not be at the top of my list, but believe me, he’s on it.’

  We called it quits at that, before we got angry with each other again.

  30

  It took a few minutes, but after Prim had hung up, I started to feel lonely. I gave some thought to what Susie had told me to do, and for a while I thought about getting into the car and driving down to Barcelona after all, leaving the bloody house to my mystery visitor.

  I got over that urge by reminding myself that there was someone out there who had tried to kill Susie, and frame me for it. That got me sufficiently mad once more for me to forget everything else.

  No way, I decided, was I going to be held a prisoner in my own home. Equally, if the bugger did come back, he was going to be warned off.

  I had precious few leads, only one in fact, so I set out to run it down. But before I went out I took a couple of simple steps, just in case. First, I took the brown manila envelope and turned it over, found a marker pen on the drawer, and wrote on it, ‘I am not a mug, but you do owe me one.’ Then I went upstairs to our en suite bathroom and picked up a tin of talcum powder that Prim had left behind.

  I left the note in the kitchen, on a work-surface, then headed for the back door. I didn’t bother to set the alarm, instead I uncapped the powder and sprinkled it liberally on to the floor of the short entry corridor, backing towards the exit as I did so, to avoid marking my trap with my own footprints. When I was finished, I put the lid back on the tin and chucked it back inside.

  That done, I locked up and headed into L’Escala to kill time by grabbing something to eat before JoJo opened her glass door at around ten thirty. I found a table in La Taverna de la Sal, just up from the town beach. It wasn’t difficult; there was no one else in the place.

  I had a Catalan salad and a steak, glancing up, as I ate, at a television above the bar. The Spanish football season was back in full swing after its holiday break, and one of the local channels was showing a review of all the weekend’s matches. The presenter and the pundits were all speaking Catalan, but football is a universal language, so I understood what was going on.

  Just about the only thing I miss about Edinburgh, apart from my loft, and the fun times I had there during my days as a swinging single bent on building up a track record, is the weekly kickabout which I had with a bunch of like-minded pals, including the unforgettable Ali the Grocer, who has to be the most foul-mouthed shopkeeper in Scotland.

  My meal and the programme finished virtually simultaneously. There were a few minutes left until Jo’s standard opening time but, rather than have another coffee, I paid my bill and strolled out on to the small beach-front. The night air was as sharp as you would expect in the second week in January, but there was no wind and the skies were as clear as they had been forty-eight hours earlier when I had stood not far from there with Susie.

  The place was deserted; the Cafe del Mar was doing a little business, but its neighbour, La Caravel, seemed to be closed for winter refurbishment. I sat on the wall, looking out to sea and wondering what the fuck I was doing there, and how I had got myself into this mess. My cell phone sounded and I answered it, a touch impatiently.

  It was Susie. ‘Hello again. You don’t mind me phoning, do you? If you can’t talk just disconnect.’

  ‘Oh, I can talk all right,’ I assured her. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘Prim’s still in Barcelona then?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m sitting on the beach in L’Escala, staying angry with the bastard who’s been setting me up for all this grief.’ I told her about the missing mug, and the second break-in.

  ‘Hey,’ I asked her, as soon as the thought occurred to me, ‘tell me something, if you can. Think back to last Thursday night when we were in the bar.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Now tell me, can you remember anything about the drinks you had? How many, for openers?’

  ‘Two brandies; big ones.’

  ‘Did they both taste all right?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Now you mention it. .’ she murmured, slowly. ‘The first one was fine, very smooth in fact, like very good Cognac even though it was Spanish. But the second, when I sipped it, tasted just a wee bit sharp; which was odd, since the lady poured it from the same bottle as the first.

  ‘That’s it, though. My next memory, apart from you taking my boots off, is lying at the foot of the stairs in the buff, looking up at your baby blues.’

  ‘After Jo poured it, did you drink it straightaway, or did you let it lie on the bar?’ I felt as if I was back at my old job, interviewing witnesses for lawyer clients.

  ‘No, it lay there for a bit. I know, because. . That’s right, one of the pool players, the younger one, came in to pay JoJo for his drinks. He got out his wallet and all his cards and stuff fell on the floor. I helped him pick them up.’

  ‘Aye, and while you were doing that, he slipped something into your drink.’

  ‘You think so?’ Susie exclaimed.

  ‘I’m bloody certain. Either he or the other guy did. Given the amount you’d had to drink, a simple sleeping powder would have done you in.’

  ‘Well, it couldn’t have been the older bloke. He was just coming through from the back room when the other fellow dropped his stuff. I remember seeing his feet when I was picking it up.’

  ‘This first guy. What did he look like?’

  ‘Let me think; tall, but then most men look tall to me, clean-shaven, wore glasses, dark hair, around thirty maybe.’

  ‘Nationality?’

  ‘I don’t know. JoJo spoke Spanish to him, but he never said a word; not even thanks to me, just a wee nod when I handed him his stuff. Then he put a note on the bar and left without waiting for his change, as if he was in a hurry.’

  ‘I guess he was.’ Maybe because he didn’t want me to see him.

  ‘Wait a minute, Oz. If this guy spiked my drink, then broke in and tried to do me, and it was all planned and everything, how did he know we’d be at JoJo’s in the first place?’

  ‘Who says he did? He might just have seen his chance and taken it. But no; I think he must have spotted us together earlier on and followed us there. I think his real aim was to get rid of me, not you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By having me huckled off by the police for doing you in, or at least for trying to.’

  The breath she took was so deep I heard it clearly down the phone.

  ‘Oz. Get out of there now, please. You’re starting to worry me. Go and patch it up with Prim in Barcelona; come to me, even, if that’s what you want, but do something. ’

  ‘You think I’m cracking up?’ I laughed.

  ‘No, of course not, but you have had a hell of a time. I don’t like the thought of you being there on your own.’

  ‘It’s the way I want it, and don’t worry about me. Now, how are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. I phoned Prim and she tore me to ribbons, but when we were finished, I sort of had the impression that she would go back home in a couple of days, once you’ve had time to stew in it.’

  ‘That’s okay by me. I don’t want her here right now. Not till I get this sorted out.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, no. What the fuck.’

  ‘Och, Oz honey, I’m sorry. I wish I’d stayed in Glasgow.’

  ‘Do you really?’

  ‘No. But now I’ve traded one care for another, and I don’t know what’s worse. Last week, I was worried about myself and tripping over my lack of self-esteem. You cured that, and no mistake, but there’s been a trade. Now I’m worried about you. Take care of yourself, pretty boy. You’ve got too much going for you to chuck it all away. G’night now.’

  ‘You too.’

  Sometimes it’s a hard life just being yourself, you know. After Susie’s call, I sat
there on the beach wall, still looking out to sea. Offshore, the lights from the small anchovy boats shone like fireflies as they bobbed on the surface of the untroubled Mediterranean.

  Lucky bloody Mediterranean. My troubles were pressing down on me like the world on the shoulders of Atlas and, without knowing it, my weekend lover had just added another. I didn’t know if I wanted Susie worrying about me, because that meant caring too and no way did I want that; I might feel obliged to care back, or to be really honest, and admit that I did already.

  The ludicrous thing about the whole situation was that she was dead right about one thing she had said. Not many guys on the planet had more going for them than me right at that moment. Millionaire, movie actor, plenty of places still to go and the ruthlessness to make sure that I got to each and every one of them.

  So why the hell was I getting myself involved in a dangerous situation into which I had stumbled by accident, and away from which I could walk without fear of retribution?

  ‘So why am I, Jan?’ I asked, out loud, my breath cloudy in the sharpness of the evening.

  ‘Good question, Oz,’ she answered. ‘And you don’t have an answer to it, my daft darlin’ do you?’

  ‘Not a good one, other than. . It’s a bit like sleeping with Susie; if I hadn’t, I know I’d have spent my life wondering, and probably regretting it.’

  ‘But what if it has consequences that could follow you, looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. . just like sleeping with Susie?’

  ‘What consequences could that have?’

  ‘Time will tell. But what if. .?’

  ‘They can join the queue of Oz’s secrets. The man in Geneva, Davidoff’s tomb, Mike Dylan’s death, the real Noosh Turkel story; it’s getting crowded back there. I’d ask you to say hello to them, love, but I know they’ll all be somewhere else.’

  ‘Thank you for that, darlin’.’

  ‘Do you think I’m going to wind up where you are, then?’

  ‘Count on it. You’ll always be where I am. I’ll always be where you are.’

  ‘But how can that be if I’m the heartless bastard that Susie showed me I am?’

  ‘You’re not. You’re angry and hurt about what happened to me. You tried to hide from it by making Prim a substitute for me, just like she tried to make you a substitute for Ramon, and for another man in Perthshire, before she ever met you, before she went to Africa. Someone she never told you about. . the reason she went to Africa, in fact.

  ‘But you can only cure that sort of hurt one way: it’s beyond all other forms of repair. I know, because I feel it too.’

  ‘So what am I?’

  ‘You’re what you’ve been made into. When you were a boy you were artless and innocent, like Jonny. Then you became a self-indulgent young man, fulfilling your own desires, first and foremost. Then you found yourself again, and me.’

  ‘How could you love someone like that?’

  ‘Because I was someone like that. That’s what Susie doesn’t know. Artless like you as a child, then just as self-indulgent as a young adult. Until I rediscovered you, and myself. Then it was all cut short.’

  ‘So what do I do?’ I asked her, aloud again.

  ‘You know what to do. Just don’t hurt anyone. . unless they deserve it.’

  ‘And what if it’s dangerous?’

  ‘Then you might be with me sooner rather than later.’ I’ll swear I could hear her laugh, but it was bitter, unlike any I’d ever heard from her in life. ‘What do you want me to say? “Live long and prosper, darlin’”?

  ‘Just look out for Jonathan, that’s all. Colin’s like his mum, but look out for Jonny …’

  And then the spell was broken and she was gone, into the night. I blinked and sat bolt upright on the wall, wakened from my dream. Yes, dream for sure, except. .

  I had to do it, there and then. I called the Husa Princesa in Barcelona. When they dialled her room, Prim answered on the fourth ring.

  ‘Oz, what is it?’ she murmured, huskily, as if she had been asleep. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I have no idea, love. I just want you to promise me something, that’s all. Next time I see you, I want you to tell me about the man in Perthshire, before you went to work in Africa.’

  There was a long silence, so long that I began to wonder whether she had hung up on me.

  ‘You bastard,’ she hissed. ‘You’ve been interrogating my father. He and my mum are the only people you’ve ever met who know about him. Not even Dawn …’

  ‘No!’ I told her, trying to cut short her anger. ‘I promise you I haven’t spoken to Dave, or Elanore either. I can’t tell you how I knew, not over the phone at least. I just did, that’s all. But it’s okay, Prim; no more blame, no more recrimination, I promise. Come home tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘What?’ Her voice could have engraved the word in granite. ‘You’ve forgiven me for marrying you under false pretences, have you?’

  ‘Put it this way. If you did, so did I. Let’s just see what we can make of it, eh?’

  ‘I’ll see,’ she whispered.

  ‘Shit, check out of there right now and come home tonight.’

  ‘No, we agreed earlier I’d stay here. I’ll call you tomorrow, sometime or other. But now, just let me go back to sleep.’

  She hung up and I stood up, my backside chilled by my stone wall seat. I remembered why I was still in L’Escala and headed for Bar JoJo.

  It was open, of course; during my interlude everything else had shut down, but its light still burned like a campfire torch at the furthest oasis in the Sahara.

  The Queen of the Night was at her station as always. Lionell was seated in a corner watching Sky News on the small television set. The only other customer, apart from a large black former tomcat, was perched on a stool at the bar, his broad shoulders hunched. I had recognised him even before he turned to eye me up and down and I saw the thick, grey-flecked beard.

  ‘Noches,’ Miguel grunted. I asked for a beer and, as JoJo was pouring it, sat on one of the available stools, near the heater.

  ‘And a good evening to you,’ I replied, in Castellano.

  ‘What brings you here on this fine night?’ Jo asked, as she topped off the head of my drink to a perfect depth. ‘And on your own too. I don’t ever remember seeing you without a lady.’

  I gave her my best, gauche, John Hannah grin. ‘I’m fresh out,’ I said. ‘My wife’s in Barcelona.

  ‘Actually, I’m trying to find someone,’ I told her. ‘Remember when I was in last Thursday night, with Susie? There was a guy here, and when he was at the bar he dropped all the cards and money out of his wallet. She helped him pick them up, but after he had gone, she found a ten thousand peseta note sticking to her shoe. We reckoned that it must have been his.

  ‘D’you remember who he was?’

  She shook her elegant head, slowly. ‘No. I remember who you mean, but I don’t know him. Never been in here before. . and I’d know if ’e had.’ She turned to Miguel. ‘You were playing pool with him. You musht know who he was.’

  The gentleman of the sea looked at her. ‘Why should I?’ he growled in Spanish. ‘I was at the table alone and he came in and picked up a cue. He didn’t even ask if I wanted to play, he just joined in. Then, after a while, he went into the lavatory, came out again and went away.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jo, ‘and he gave me a five thousand note for one beer and didn’t wait for his change, just took his stuff from your Susie and shot out the door!’

  ‘Do you know anything about him?’ I asked Miguel.

  He looked at me, sideways. ‘Only that he was English, like you.’

  ‘I’m Scottish, mate, not English.’

  He treated me to his full frontal glare. ‘Is all the same!’ he barked.

  31

  For at least an hour after I woke next morning, I regretted becoming involved in a discussion of sub-national identities. It took a litre of Evian and a session on the weights before I felt anything like no
rmal, and I don’t think I’d even won the argument that Jocks are in just the same constitutional position as Catalans.

  Still, I had been sober enough when I got home to remember to check my talcum powder burglar trap. It hadn’t been sprung and my note was still there, untouched.

  It was quarter to ten before I settled down to my script, sitting close to the phone in the living room, to be handy for Prim’s call, whenever it came.

  When I was at secondary school, I studied French and Spanish. For the first couple of years I found them difficult; but I stuck at it. (I didn’t have any choice: my mother and my sister saw to that in their different ways.) Then about halfway through my third year, when I was fourteen, it just clicked. I looked at a piece of Spanish text one day, the words meant something and it all just fitted together. I never looked back after that. I scored ‘A’s in my Grade Highers, and for a brief period I thought about becoming a modern languages teacher, until the thought of a lifetime in the classroom chilled me to the bone.

  I had a similar experience that morning. I sat down with the screenplay, closed my eyes and went through it from memory, scene by scene. I was almost at the end when the realisation came to me. I could do this thing: it wasn’t beyond me. Indeed, even on my own in Spain I knew that I was making a passable job of delivering my lines. With coaching, and firm direction from Miles, I would be pretty good. For the very first time, I looked forward to getting back on to a sound stage, and to giving it my best shot. Apart from anything else, it would be a blessed relief from everything that had happened.

  I had to tell someone. I realised that I hadn’t spoken to my dad for a while, so I called him. I had lost track of the days, and almost forgotten that he still filled teeth for a living. I was lucky, though; I caught him between patients.

  ‘Guess what,’ I began, ‘I think I’m an actor.’

  ‘I could have told you that when you were four and I caught you dressing up in your sister’s clothes and putting on your mother’s make-up.’

  I felt myself blush through my tan at the memory. ‘Well, please, please don’t tell anyone else.’