As Easy as Murder

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘The chin and the mouth.’

  ‘Okay.’ I crouched down beside the corpse, leaning forward, as close to it as I could get. The sun was high and clear above the tent and more than enough light came through its fabric for me to see clearly. I stared at the wreckage for a couple of minutes, puzzled, still with no idea why I was there or what I was supposed to find, until . . . I spotted a mark on the chin. It was blood-smeared, but it was clear to see, a small scar, crescent-shaped. And with it a memory returned and the connection was clear.

  The top lip had been shredded and the teeth smashed, but enough remained to let me see that one of them had been gold.

  ‘You think this is the man who tried to nick Patterson Cowling’s wallet?’ I asked, knowing the answer, but being unsure how to spell ‘rhetorically’.

  ‘What do you think? The image you gave me isn’t good enough for us to confirm it, but Tom’s description matches.’

  ‘Fine, but I didn’t see him that closely. I can’t say “This is the man”, not categorically.’

  ‘Maybe not, but Tom . . .’

  ‘No!’ I snapped. ‘A thousand times no. You are not asking Tom to look at that.’

  He held up both hands, as if to fend me off. ‘Primavera, Primavera! What do you take us for? I wouldn’t dream of doing that, and neither would the boss. But we thought that if we showed him a sketch of the scar, a drawing, and he said that it matches, that would be enough for us to take to the prosecutor’s office and get authority for a search that goes beyond criminal records.’

  I considered the request for a while. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, eventually. ‘You can do that. But you better come up with a cover story, a reason why you’re asking him to do it, other than the real one. I don’t want him even thinking about this mess.’

  ‘Understood. I’ll tell him that the man’s been found, that’s all, just found, and that rather than have Tom look at a line-up, all we need is for him to confirm that the scar matches what he saw.’

  ‘I can live with that; technically, it’s the truth, even if it does have holes in it. Get it under way and come to see us this evening.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I was still a wee bit doubtful. ‘Alex,’ I ventured, ‘this wider search. It’ll be pretty futile, won’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. We’ll run the image against all Spanish nationals within a certain age group, looking for a match; also all the white male ex-pats we have on our criminal records. We won’t rule any nationality out,’ he chuckled, ‘for all our boy’s certainty that his man wasn’t any of the usual. We’ll also try immigration if we have to, in the hope that if he is foreign, he arrived in Spain by air. If so, our government will have a record of his passport information.’

  ‘I have a vision of a whole stack of haystacks and a very small needle,’ I told him, ‘but good luck to you.’

  ‘We are lucky sometimes.’ Alex grinned, ruefully. ‘Primavera, there’s one other thing,’ he continued. ‘This friend of Shirley’s, the man who asked you not to call us. We should speak to him; the only question is whether we should use discretion. What do you think?’

  I stared at him. ‘Why are you asking me?’

  ‘Because I value your opinion.’

  ‘That’s flattering; it’s also bullshit. Why should you want to speak to him at all?’

  He shrugged. ‘A man tried to rob him, failed, but got away. A couple of days later that man is found dead, killed in a cold and professional way. We have no reports of the guy trying to rob anyone else, so . . . Mr Cowling is of interest to us, it’s clear.’

  ‘What would you do normally?’

  ‘I’d pick him up.’

  ‘Then why do differently in his case?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’

  I decided to be difficult; I was doing Alex a big favour, and I wasn’t having him go all coy on me. ‘Why?’ I persisted.

  He paused, as if he was having trouble explaining his motivation, even to himself. ‘I suppose it’s the fact that you went along, even for a little while, with his wish that you didn’t report the incident. You’re my close friend and you know that what he asked you was irregular. You hardly know this man, and yet he persuaded you to go against what I know to be your instincts. That makes me wonder whether there’s more to him than it appears. So, do you know something about him?’

  I was boxed in, firmly; I couldn’t prevaricate any longer, even suppose it had been Hector Gomez who’d been quizzing me, rather than Alex. ‘Honest answer, no,’ I told him. ‘He told me the first time we met that he’s a retired British civil servant.’

  ‘But . . . ?’

  ‘No buts. That’s what he is.’

  He grinned at me. ‘So you checked. I knew you would.’ He paused. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll start smoking again myself if I have to spend much longer in this man’s company.’

  We slipped out of the tent, back into the clearing. Magda had gone, leaving only a couple of crime scene officers, who appeared to be searching the area, square centimetre by square centimetre, looking for … anything that didn’t belong there, I supposed. I looked around and saw Hector Gomez, leaning against a tree, taking a long drag on what would not have been his first cigarette.

  ‘So,’ Alex continued, his tone questioning, once more, ‘I can tell the boss we should pick up Mr Cowling and interview him formally? That’s what you think?’

  Bugger! was actually what I thought. Not what I said, though. ‘I think that Patterson was a victim of an attempted crime,’ I replied, a little testily. ‘I don’t see what you’d gain by interviewing him other than ticking a couple of boxes.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno,’ he countered. ‘There is that connection between him and the victim, and Shirley’s house is no more than a couple of kilometres from here.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Alex,’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s ridiculous. Quite apart from being a pleasant, peaceable human being, the man is portly and pushing seventy. He’s not Daniel bloody Craig or Jason bloody Statham.’

  ‘You don’t have to be, to rip someone open with a shotgun.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ I snapped in English, even more exasperated. ‘Go ahead then, pick him up and clamp electrodes to his testicles, or whatever it is that you guys do. But you’ll still get no more good from it than those same ticked boxes. On the other hand, you have no idea of the shit you might bring down on yourself!’

  As soon as I’d said it, I knew that I’d underestimated my friend. He didn’t need to electrify people to get results. All he needed was quiet, indirect cross-examination for them to eventually tell him everything they knew . . . or in the case of me and Patterson Cowling, didn’t know.

  ‘Indeed?’ he murmured. ‘And where would that fall from?’

  ‘Look, Alex,’ I sighed. ‘I’m not going to spell it out to you, because nobody spelled it out to me. You do what you believe you have to do, or whatever Hector orders you to do, but look out for yourself at the same time.’

  ‘We will,’ he promised. ‘Hector doesn’t even know about Mr Cowling’s connection with the dead man. All I told him was that the scar and the gold tooth made me think of your report and Tom’s description. From what you say, there’ll be no harm done to anyone if I leave it that way.’

  ‘Good.’ I glanced at my watch. Time was getting tight; I had to pick Jonny up from Pals and get back to L’Escala for five. ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘Sure. Thanks for your help, for all of it. There’s an artist I know who lives near here and isn’t squeamish. I’ll ask him to do a sketch from a photograph and bring it round for Tom to look at. We should go too; we need to get as much manpower as we can to organise a wider search of the area in case the dead man’s clothing, and maybe even the murder weapon, was dumped somewhere near.’

  ‘Do you think that’s likely?’

  ‘Not at all. But I need to get Hector out of here as well. He’s not as tough as he pretends, and a
t the rate he’s smoking, he’s liable to set the forest on fire.’

  Six

  The boys were on the clubhouse terrace when I returned, each drinking what I hoped were only colas, and not Cuba Libres. Bacardi hangovers are not recommended on the morning of the biggest day of your life. I’d barely sat down before a spritzer arrived, in a tall glass, with ice and a slice of lemon. The barman there knows how I like them.

  ‘How did you do?’ I asked.

  ‘I finished five under,’ Jonny replied. He smiled. ‘When you left, Auntie, you took my competitive edge with you.’

  ‘Just as well I did,’ I said, cheerfully. ‘It wouldn’t have done you any good, the day before a tournament, to have your ass whupped by a middle-aged woman.’

  ‘Never happen,’ he drawled, ‘and you’re not middle-aged.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Five years ago, you’d never have got to four up on me.’

  His eyes gleamed, and I saw a flash of his uncle. ‘Five years ago, I’d have been giving you a lot fewer shots.’

  ‘There is that,’ I conceded.

  ‘What did the cops want?’ Uche asked, boldly. For an instant, I registered annoyance in Jonny’s eyes, as if he’d known that I’d have told them in my own time, without being pushed . . . or not, if that was my choice.

  ‘They had something they weren’t quite sure about,’ I said, carefully, ‘and they thought that I might be able to help.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Not really. All I did was confirm what they suspected already.’ I didn’t want to get into it, so I told him a lie that wasn’t, not really, or the truth, but not quite. ‘Alex Guinart, my cop friend, quite often asks me about things that concern the British community in St Martí and L’Escala. Everything’s urgent to him, hence the summons.’

  That seemed to satisfy his curiosity. We finished our drinks, Uche paid for them, then we went our separate ways, he back to the rented house and Lena’s family, Jonny and I to St Martí.

  We travelled in silence . . . if you don’t count Norah Jones, and many people wouldn’t . . . till we reached the bridge that leads into Torroella, across the River Ter. ‘That was a load of crap, wasn’t it?’ Jonny said, just loudly enough to get my attention.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The way you fobbed Uche off.’ He laughed softly. ‘You have a way of telling people to mind their own business without them realising they’ve been told.’

  ‘If I do, maybe it’ll work on you.’

  I must have spoken more sharply than I’d intended; I sensed rather than saw him frown beside me. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, sounding just like Tom does when he’s pushed his luck too far. And making me realise that I couldn’t treat the two of them in the same way.

  ‘No,’ I blurted out. ‘I’m sorry, Jonny, I shouldn’t have snapped at you. You’re absolutely right, I did fob him off, but I shouldn’t do the same with you. I’d be pissed off if you weren’t open with me, so . . . They wanted me to look at a dead man.’

  ‘Jesus!’ he hissed. ‘Why? Was he clutching a piece of paper with your name scrawled on it?’

  ‘Written in his blood? No. They thought I might have seen him before. And they were right. So have you.’ I told him who I’d seen, lying dead and desecrated in the suburban forest.

  ‘Wow!’ He whistled. ‘What do you think; that he tried it on again but picked on the wrong bloke?’

  An interesting assumption, I thought, and probably the basis of the continuing police investigation, once Alex rid himself of the irrelevant connection with Patterson. ‘That’s quite possible,’ I agreed. ‘Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with us, at least it won’t be once my friend shows Tom a sketch to confirm the identity as close to one hundred per cent as they can get. But what am I talking about?’ I contradicted myself out loud. ‘That won’t, will it? They haven’t the faintest idea who the guy is, and whatever Alex says, they’ve got a very slim chance of finding out, unless someone comes forward to report a missing person.’

  ‘Ouch. Was it a mess?’ he asked. His question was serious, not ghoulish. It sounded sympathetic, in a strangely literal way, but I don’t imagine it’s an experience we could have shared.

  ‘That’s why they’re having to show Tom a sketch of the scar on his chin,’ I replied. ‘I couldn’t look at the guy and say positively that it was him.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to,’ he growled. ‘Couldn’t they have shown you a sketch too?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Jonny,’ I assured him. ‘I won’t wake up screaming. I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘Where, for Pete’s sake?’

  There were a couple of answers to that. I chose the safe one. ‘I was a nurse, remember. I’ve been in operating theatres. I did anatomy as part of my training. And I worked for a while as a volunteer in an African war zone. But we won’t go into any of that. All you need to understand is that Alex Guinart wouldn’t have put me in a situation he didn’t know I could handle.’

  ‘A murder mystery, eh,’ he said, as the CD changer moved Norah on and replaced her with the Drive-by Truckers; just at the right time, I reckoned, as a change of mood was called for. ‘Right on our own doorstep. Or am I getting ahead of myself?’ he added. ‘Could it have been suicide?’

  I chuckled, grimly. ‘If it was, it was very definitely the assisted kind.’

  The other band from Athens, Georgia, cranked up the volume at that point and so conversation was out for the rest of the journey, or rather until my car’s Bluetooth cut it out automatically as it picked up a call. ‘Yes,’ I said, the simple command to accept it.

  ‘Okay then.’ Shirley Gash’s voice, never subdued at any time, boomed out from the speakers. ‘What the hell’s up? There have been cops going up and down our road all day, and now one of my neighbours tells me she saw you heading in the same direction. What’s the story? I’ve asked a couple of the Mossos people, but they won’t say a word.’

  ‘Neither can I right now,’ I told her. ‘I’m driving and I’ve got a couple of roundabouts to negotiate.’ I had been thinking, though. I might have talked Alex out of talking to Patterson Cowling, but that hadn’t killed my own curiosity. I rather fancied a chat with the man myself. But it would be difficult to separate him from Shirley, in which case . . . tough on him.

  ‘If I call you back in fifteen minutes on your landline, will you be in?’ she persisted.

  ‘Yes, but I’ll be busy.’

  ‘Meet us for supper?’

  ‘No, I’ve got hungry lads to feed, but I could probably meet you somewhere later, for a coffee.’ I glanced at Jonny, and managed to ask, just by raising an eyebrow, ‘Will you stay in with Tom?’ He nodded.

  ‘That’ll have to do, then,’ Shirley conceded. ‘We’re going to eat at La Clota.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll join you about nine-thirty; but don’t get involved with anyone else, or my lips will stay sealed.’

  ‘We’ll ask for a private booth,’ she said. I laughed: they don’t have any.

  I called in at a fish shop on the way home, and bought three monkfish, fairly small, as that species goes, but still well big enough for each of us. Jonny had never seen one before, not in its entire state. They’re ferocious-looking bastards, all mouth and teeth, but they’re fantastic when they’re baked in the oven. The lady offered to take the heads off, but I declined. There are two thumb-sized pieces just behind the eyes; the best part of the fish, my son and I agree.

  I’d just closed the oven door on them when Alex Guinart arrived, with a sketch, and with the Magda woman, still silent, looking as if she might have had other plans for the evening. I hadn’t told Tom that he was coming. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want him asking me why, and dragging me into telling him about my trip to the woods, but also because I wanted him to have a clear mind when it came to look at the thing, his instant reactions always being the most reliable.

  I’d have struggled to get his attention anyway; as soon as he arrived home, and had taken Charlie for his ear
ly evening run, he engaged Jonny in a detailed debrief of his round over Pals. Pros can remember every detail of every shot they play, and so it went on for some time. Indeed the last putt had only just fallen when the door buzzer sounded, a few seconds after the church bells had rung seven for the first time. Don’t be confused when you come to St Martí; they always ring the hour again, at two minutes past, in case you missed it before, or lost count.

  Alex told Tom what he wanted, not quite following the party line that we’d agreed, but safely enough. ‘Remember the man you saw,’ he said, ‘the man who tried to rob Mr Cowling? The photo we have doesn’t really show the scar on his chin. Take a look at this drawing and tell me, if you can: did it look like this?’ He handed over the sketch; my son studied it for a few seconds and nodded.

  ‘That’s it,’ he confirmed. ‘Like a scimitar. Has he done something bad?’

  ‘Stealing is bad, Tom,’ Magda announced, stolidly. I winced. Only the second time she’d opened her mouth in my presence all day, and she had to go and say something stupid. Nobody likes being patronised: there’s an age at which kids recognise it and my lad had reached it at least a year before.

  ‘I know that,’ he replied, politely, then beat her at her own game. ‘It’s one of the Ten Commandments.’ He might not believe in God, but he can cite him as evidence when necessary. ‘But he didn’t actually steal anything from Mr Cowling. I stopped him and he ran away.’ He paused. ‘Of course,’ he added, as if he’d had a revelation, ‘there’s a Commandment against trying to steal too, the one about coveting.’ Magda shifted from one foot to the other; they hadn’t covered that in her training course.

  ‘What I meant,’ he went on relentlessly, looking at Alex once again, ‘was, has he done something else? You haven’t caught him, or you wouldn’t be asking me to look at a drawing.’

  The inspector shook his head, in confirmation. ‘No, we haven’t. But when we do find him, we have to be absolutely certain that we’ve got the right man. You understand?’