‘Down there in Barcelona right now, with your old man, she’s playing a part. She’s being tough and vengeful, she thinks, doing what she has to do, just as you’ve been. But that’s not the real her. . any more than it’s the real you.
‘There’s no way I can change what I am, but maybe I’d like to help her get back to the person she was before all the crap happened.’
‘But do you love her?’
‘Oz doesn’t love. I can’t; not any more.’
‘Then shouldn’t you let her try to find someone who does?’
I drank the last of my mineral water. ‘I prefer it when you ask easy questions. But, of course, if she wants to, I can’t stop her.’
‘You’ll try to keep her for a while, though; if only for the sake of your career.’
‘You’re the second person to tell me that. I wish I could tell you that I wouldn’t, that I was above that; but the fact is. .
‘So what are you going to do after Ramon?’ I asked her, changing the flow of the discussion.
‘I don’t know. I’ll teach again, and bring up my son, but beyond that. . maybe nothing.’
‘You won’t go off in pursuit of Capulet, the maestro?’
‘No way. Ramon isn’t a bad man: Rey is. I wouldn’t let Alejandro anywhere near him.’
‘Speaking of Alejandro, are you sure you’ll be able to keep him?’
‘I’ll take him to France if I have to. But Ramon won’t want him, I don’t think. I will be surprised if he even tries for custody; it would cramp his style.’
I thought of Fortunato’s style for a moment, and that flame of hypocritical anger flared again for a moment. I began to believe Vero’s notion of the two of them in Barcelona, and I realised that if it was true, it couldn’t have been planned in advance. Ramon couldn’t have known she’d be going down there, for she hadn’t known herself until half an hour before she hit the road.
‘Has your husband changed his cell phone recently?’ I asked.
‘No. He’s had the same number for years, since he was in the Guardia Civil.’
Prim has a remarkable memory for numbers; once they’re lodged in her brain she can recall most of them, and certainly the most important, within seconds. If Vero was right, she’d called him and he’d come running. . IF she was right.
‘You know what?’ I told her. ‘You should go to France. You should get your son away from here and bring him up somewhere new. If you raise him here there’s a fair chance that he’ll never leave. This place is fine for retired Europeans and for Catalans who are born to the lifestyle, but there really is more than that.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t know, I’m half Catalan too, remember.’
‘I do know; I’m all Fifer, and that’s worse.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘Because I like the place, yet I have the ambition and the will to go away from it when I need to. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be gone from here, back to Scotland. A few weeks after that and I’ll be in Los Angeles.’
‘Lucky you. And here was I thinking that Rey Capulet’s palace had hold of you for ever, with its sunshine, its luxury, its fine wine cellar. Did all of that come with the house as well?’
I shrugged; maybe I was starting to turn into a Catalan myself. ‘The wine? There was some in racks in the house, and in the storage area at the back. It was good stuff but I wouldn’t describe it as a cellar.’
‘No, no. I mean the cellar itself. Rey had some very valuable wines there, laid down long-term. I suppose he must have had them taken away when he left.’
I was more than a bit puzzled. ‘Vero,’ I assured her, ‘this house doesn’t have a cellar.’
She looked at me, blankly. ‘Of course it does, down below; a big one where Rey kept his wines, and some of his f iles.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Then I remembered another cellar I’d been in once. ‘Does it have a secret entrance?’
‘Don’t be silly. There’s a door under the staircase.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘There is.’
‘Listen, this is my house now, and I’m telling you there’s no door there.’
‘Come on,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll show you.’
She led me out of the kitchen and round to the far side of the big staircase, into the passage which led to our small office. ‘There. .’ she exclaimed, pointing. Then she stopped and looked, blankly.
There was no door of course. Like the other, the side of the stairway from the steps down to the floor was finished in fine wood panelling. English oak, I’d been assured by Sergi, although I was fairly sure it was really good quality Spanish pine, well treated and finished.
‘This is new.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Oz, I swear, this is new. It wasn’t here when I knew this house before, and there is a door behind it.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ But once I had, a big question came to me. Why would anyone block up a doorway in a house they were selling?
‘Do you know any good carpenters around here?’ I asked Veronique.
‘One or two. Why?’
‘Because I’m going to need one shortly.’
I went out behind the house, into the workshop and selected the biggest chisel I could find and a black-handled steel claw hammer.
She looked at me with a degree of awe as I set to work on the panelling. ‘You’re going to tear it down?’
‘Of course. I can’t have all that wine going to waste.’ I worked as carefully as I could, trying to remove the wood, rather than just rip it out. The panelling job had been done by a real expert; the joins were there, but you couldn’t see them, and the nails which secured the timber to the framework behind had been filled over and varnished to make them undetectable.
In the end, it came off easily. I worked until all the sections were loosened, then removed them together.
Yes, there was a door; but it hadn’t just been covered over, it had been bricked up. Whoever had done the job had been much better at carpentry than at building walls.
Veronique was looking frightened now; I guess I was looking pretty serious myself.
‘Listen, kid,’ I told her. ‘I think you should leave.’
‘No.’
‘Humour me in this, okay. This was done for a reason, and I’d rather that you were long gone from here when I find out what it was. Go back to your baby; better still, nip down to Girona and buy something to prove to your mother that you really did go there.’
‘Why?’
‘Common sense. Keep all your options open, for now at least; so that this morning never happened, if that’s the way you decide you want it.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going to knock this wall down. This morning? As far as I’m concerned, it certainly didn’t happen.’
I recovered her coat and scarf from the kitchen, kissed her quickly, and rushed her to the door before she had a chance to protest.
I watched her from the window, and listened to the sound of her engine, until I was sure she had driven off. Then I went back out to the workshop and found a bigger hammer. . a much bigger hammer.
As it turned out I could probably have nutted my way through the badly built wall. The bricks were soft, and I guessed that they hadn’t been properly soaked before being put in place. Three good whacks, middle, top and bottom, and there was a hole big enough for me to step through.
As the last chunk fell, the smell seemed to come out in a ‘Whoosh!’ Staleness, mustiness, and something that could have been the notorious surge from the L’Escala town sewers, but wasn’t. I waited until it had subsided, then opened all the doors and windows in the living room to let it escape outside, before I contemplated going down to trace its source.
I brought my wide-beam torch through from the kitchen, but as it turned out I didn’t need it. There was a switch at the top of the stairway, I flicked it, and lo, there was light, from three neon tubes suspended from the ceiling of the big, pillared cham
ber.
Capulet’s wine. . mine now, legally. . was still there, racked high; row upon row of it, dozen upon dozen. I picked one up as I reached the foot of the stairs. I didn’t recognise the label, but it was 1968 vintage, whatever it was. I hoped I would enjoy it.
I moved on past the racks, towards what I knew must be the front of the house. Facing me I saw a big double-fronted, metal filing cabinet. It was open and yellowed papers were strewn all over the tiled floor.
I came to the last rack and looked round, shivering from the chill as I did. . At least I think it was the chill.
This time, as I looked at the body lying face-down. . a technical description; it didn’t have a face any more. . I was one hundred per cent certain that I’d found Reynard Capulet, the maestro. I didn’t have to prod him to find out whether he was dead or not, and I didn’t have to be an ace pathologist to know what had killed him either. The big kitchen cleaver that had done the job was still lodged in the back of his skull.
‘Don’t you move, now,’ I warned him. ‘Not till the ambulance gets here.’
Then I went back upstairs and found Captain Fortunato’s card, the one with his mobile number on it, the number that Prim must have known a couple of years before.
I almost dialled it until I thought to myself, Fuck it; might as well know one way or another.
So instead I called the Husa Princesa and asked for Prim’s room.
‘Did you decide to stay in this afternoon?’ I asked her, unnecessarily, as she picked up.
‘Yes,’ she replied. This time she sounded hesitant, not drowsy.
‘Fine. Listen, if you’re alone, I apologise. If you’re not, put him on.’
There was a silence, broken eventually by Fortunato’s voice. ‘Yes?’ He sounded a hell of a lot more hesitant than had Prim.
‘Tea-break’s over, Ramon,’ I told him. ‘Time you went back to work. I want to see you here, at the house, inside an hour and a half. You’re a copper; you can go lights and sirens if you have to.’
‘What’s this about, Oz?’ he asked.
I had to laugh at him. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, that might be regarded as a fucking stupid question in the circumstances. But as it happens, it isn’t about you. You’ll see when you get here. Now just do what I tell you.
‘Oh yes, and come alone. But from what I hear, you always do anyway.’
33
I regretted that last, thoughtless, crack as soon as I had said it, but I was fairly sure that Ramon would link it to Prim, not Vero. . if his English was that good.
He certainly didn’t mention it when he arrived, an hour and twenty-three minutes later. Allowing him four or five minutes to get dressed, he had made pretty good time.
As he walked up the drive, in his crisp uniform, everything about the policeman’s body language suggested that he expected me to take a swing at him as soon as he came within range. I had spent most of the time since we had spoken in my gym, pressing weights, and punching the bag, so I probably looked ready for it, too.
Instead, I clapped him on the back, almost sympathetically: from the way he flinched I could tell that it had thrown him.
‘Come on in, lover boy,’ I said. ‘I hope you haven’t eaten recently.’
He gave me a bewildered look. ‘Oz,’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Fuck all would just about cover it. I’m sure that Prim’s told you everything that happened between us, so the best that you and I can do is put a lid on it. If you insist on talking about it, I’d probably start behaving unreasonably, like a stupid jealous husband, and we don’t want that.’
‘So what is all this about?’ he asked. We were still standing in the doorway, so he couldn’t see the mess at the side of the stairs.
‘Are you any good at carpentry?’ I asked.
He gave me a stare that hovered between paranoia and idiocy. ‘What?’ he croaked.
‘You heard.’
‘Hombre, I can’t even hang a picture straight.’
‘How about bricklaying? Are you any good at that?’
‘I’ve never laid a brick in my life.’
I studied his eyes as he answered me; they’re a better guide than any truth drug. He didn’t know what I was talking about.
‘You’ve laid just about everything else, though,’ I said, with a light laugh which made him wince.
‘Come on. Let me show you what I’m talking about,’ I led him into the house.
‘I got the deed for this place back from the notary a couple of days ago. I didn’t look at it closely when we completed the purchase, so I decided that I might as well read it. When I did, I found a reference to a cellar, accessed by a door in the side of the stairs.
‘But there was no door, only wood panelling.’ I pointed to the pine sections, which leant against the wall. ‘It had been bricked up, then covered over. For a bloody good reason too, as you’ll see when we go down there.’
His face had gone pale. He started for the revealed doorway, but I put a hand on his sleeve to stop him; just to make certain. ‘Listen, before you do anything that might have consequences, I want to tell you something. I know about Veronique, and the Frenchman.
‘If you want me to block that door up again, and to replace that panelling, I’ll do it, and it’ll stay there for good. I worked on building sites when I was a student, so I’ll make a passable job of it.’
He frowned at me. ‘I honestly do not understand what you are saying to me, Oz,’ he murmured.
‘Okay,’ I told him, ‘if you don’t, that’s good enough for me. Go on down.’
I followed him down into the cellar. I was right behind him when he saw the body, and I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him as he jumped back, involuntarily.
‘Mother of Christ!’ he gasped, in Spanish.
‘I shouldn’t think so for a minute. Reynard Capulet, I’d say; beyond a shadow of a doubt this time.’ I pointed to the left wrist, and the heavy gold, diamond-set watch which hung loosely round it. ‘That’s a pimp’s Rolex if ever I saw one.’
Fortunato had recovered his composure, enough to let him lean over the body. ‘We should be able to trace its ownership, certainly; with a bit of luck we’ll still be able to lift some prints too. It’s very dry down here.’
He turned. ‘Come on, let’s get upstairs before we contaminate the scene any further.’
I led the way this time; we went round the stairway and into the kitchen, from where the policeman phoned his office to call out detectives and technicians, while I took a couple of beers from the fridge.
He looked me in the eye, as he took his first slug. ‘Sayeed in the pool, now Capulet in the cellar. What do you think, Oz? You’re a sharp guy. Any ideas?’
‘Bloody obvious, isn’t it? The Moroccan was killed and planted in the pool to make it look as if Capulet had shot him after a quarrel, then run off. At first I thought that the Frenchman might have killed him to fake his own death. . until I found that thing downstairs.’
Fortunato nodded. ‘I agree with that. I guess we’d better contact Interpol, and round up his known associates.’
‘I guess you’d better,’ I agreed, ‘only that can’t be the whole story.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Clearly, the sister has to have been in on it; Lucille, the one who’s gone missing. With her brother dead, she took the decision to sell all his property, the three places in Paris, Florida and here, that were owned technically by the company she controlled.
‘Maybe one of his Mafia pals was involved in it, but she had to be too.’
He scratched his chin. He must have shaved very quickly, for blood began to run from a fresh nick just above his jaw, on the left side.
‘I suppose so,’ he conceded. ‘I don’t imagine Interpol have been looking for her. . not too hard at any rate. They’d better start now.’
‘So should you,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she’s gone far away.’
His look wasn’t jus
t a question. It was a whole cross-examination in itself.
I answered it by telling him all the stuff he didn’t know about Susie’s visit, about her dangerous fall down the stairs in the middle of the night, and about my certainty that her drink had been drugged earlier in the evening, by the same guy who had sent her flying, to try and incriminate me and get me out of the house.
I told him about the envelope which Prim had received, the one which had put me in deep shit and him back in her bed, and I told him about the missing mug. Finally, I told him about the trap I had laid for the intruder, the one which hadn’t been sprung.
‘He may have found what he was after, or he may have felt that he’d pushed his luck far enough: I don’t know. I do know that whatever it was, or is, must be extremely valuable, for he and Lucille have had all that time since Capulet was killed to find it, and they’re still looking. More than that, they’re taking big risks to do it.’
‘Yes,’ Fortunato agreed. ‘But why? If this is something in the house, and Lucille is involved, why did she sell it to you in the first place? Why not refuse your offer and keep looking?’
‘I don’t have an answer to that one,’ I told him. ‘But I know a man who does. Why don’t we go and find him, once your people get here, and once you’ve contacted Interpol and asked them to find a photograph of Lucille Capulet and fax it to you.’
34
He wasn’t hard to find. He wasn’t in his office, but his secretary sent us to a bar at the far end of Riells beach; he was there, sitting at the bar, drinking cafe solo and talking to the attractive owner.
‘Hello Sergi,’ I hailed him in Castellano as we walked in. ‘Just the man I want to see. How about buying my friend and me a beer out of your commission on the sale of Casa Nou Camp?’
‘Que?’ he blurted out, then laughed. ‘Ah, you mean Villa Bernabeu.’
‘Not any more. I’m a Barca fan.’
‘Whatever. Sure I will buy you a beer, and your pal.’
‘You know him, do you? If not, let me introduce you to Captain Fortunato, of the Mossos in Girona.’
On Honeymoon With Death ob-5 Page 24