‘How do we do that?’
‘In my experience, the best way is to ask.’
‘Are you forgetting Uche’s gun?’
‘You’re a cop. Your uniform’s bullet-proof, because only a lunatic would shoot at it.’
Alex frowned. ‘Yours isn’t. Or is that stick all the protection you need?’
‘I’m still here,’ Mark pointed out, cheerfully. ‘And I’ll bet I have a lot more experience than you of situations like this. If I wasn’t here you’d probably fly in someone like me, as a negotiator.’
‘Shit! Okay, we go up there and we do what you say. But the decision on calling in back-up will be mine. You may be here to protect Palmer, but you’re a civilian, a foreign national, and my first task will be to protect you.’
‘Boys,’ I said, quietly, ‘if I may interrupt your pissing contest. If either of you think you’re going up there without me, then take a reality pill.’ They stared at me. Alex started to speak but I cut him off. ‘I’m coming, end of story. You don’t seem to realise that I’m the only one of us who’s actually met all of these people. Two out of the three aren’t remotely dangerous, and the third? Last seen, he’s been rendered harmless and anyway, if he’s what we think he is, he gets someone else to do his close-up work.’
‘And what if that person gets there before us?’ Mark asked.
‘I’ve got a feeling that’s what this whole kidnap thing is about, don’t you? In which case . . . let’s get a fucking move on.’
Alex let out a great sigh. ‘What’s the point of arguing with this woman?’ he moaned, then stood. ‘But before we go, I have to ask this, and I’d appreciate an honest answer. Mr Kravitz, are you carrying a gun? That I couldn’t allow.’
The reply was instant and firm. ‘No, I’m not; search me if you want to be sure. I can still hit a target with a rifle, from a prone position, but my MS makes me useless with a handgun. I’d be dangerous to everyone except the person I was trying to shoot.’
We took my jeep. The car that Alex had arrived in was an ordinary saloon, and from Shirley’s description of the road we’d be tackling, a four-by-four would be needed. I didn’t need directions to get to Darnius, since it was only forty minutes from L’Escala, but I’d have driven right past the turn for La Central if Alex hadn’t been there.
The road to the hotel should have been labelled ‘Proceed at your own risk’. Most of it was single track and every one of the many bends seemed to be blind, but at least it had a hard top. That ended as soon as we reached La Central and crossed the tiny, narrow bridge that sat just beyond, with a yellow sign advertising a restaurant in what had once been Robert’s Mill, and with an arrow pointing the way.
We began the ascent, and it didn’t long for me to wonder what the hell a couple of sixty-somethings had been doing walking up a small mountain like that. Winter rains had left deep ruts in the dirt surface and once or twice I had to steer around the remnants of fallen trees. There was woodland on either side of the camino and some of it was pretty thick. Once or twice I thought we might be in among it, so narrow were some of the twists and bends. It could have been worse, though; in muddy conditions I wouldn’t have gone much further than the hotel, but spring had sprung early in Catalunya and we’d enjoyed almost four weeks of sunny weather.
It took around fifteen minutes to reach the fork that Shirley had described. When I saw it I could see how they had got it wrong. There was another restaurant sign, but without an arrow. Guesswork, if you weren’t smart enough to work out that there were no windmills in woodland country, only watermills, and that no rivers run in ground as high as that which we’d reached, far less along a track that continued to climb for as far as I could see.
I hadn’t thought that driving conditions could get any worse, but they did. The way grew narrower and rougher; the jeep even bottomed out a couple of times, despite its underside being normally well clear of the ground. I had to concentrate even harder, so I was more than a little annoyed when Mark, in the front passenger seat, patted my arm.
‘What?’ I snapped.
‘Ease off, Primavera,’ he said. ‘There’s a dustcloud up ahead. I think there’s another vehicle ahead of us.’
I stopped, and looked. He was right; the surface was bone-dry and I could see billowing dust in the distance, the same sandy-grey colour as the fine film that had formed on my hood. As far as I could judge, it was a few hundred metres away, and heading in the same direction as us.
‘Ten minutes earlier and we might have been waiting for them,’ I murmured.
‘No,’ Mark contradicted. ‘They’ll have come straight here from the airport, and I don’t imagine they’ve just nipped out for an early lunch. Someone else . . . unless of course this is a through road; that we don’t know for sure.’
‘It isn’t,’ Alex volunteered from the back.
‘Then wait. Roll down the windows and listen.’
I did as I was told. Funny thing, but even although we were in the middle of a wood, there was no birdsong, only the sound of a high-revving engine in the middle distance. And then there was nothing. ‘He’s stopped,’ I whispered. Why did I whisper? No idea.
I reached out to turn the engine on once more, but Mark stopped me. ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘We could hear him, so . . . We’re on foot from here.’
‘Are you okay with that?’ I asked.
‘As long as it’s not too far. If I start to struggle you two go on.’
We climbed out of the jeep and set out up the track. In truth we travelled almost as fast as we had on wheels, sticking to the side of the road and avoiding the deepest ruts; some of them looked like small ravines. We’d gone a couple of hundred metres when we reached the other vehicle, the one we’d been following. It was a mid-range Volkswagen saloon, new, metallic blue beneath the dust, totally unsuited to the terrain, as out of place as Rudolf Nureyev in a Wild West saloon. Incongruous also because there were two kid seats in the back.
I looked ahead and I could see why the driver had stopped. The nose of another vehicle was sticking out from a gap between two trees that might have been intended as a passing place. It hadn’t been new for some years. It was a crappy old off-white Seat, the kind that a car hire company will only keep in the hope that a renter might write it off, or steal it.
Mark had fallen a few metres behind. ‘Careful,’ he murmured as he caught us up. ‘Let’s go steadily. This changes things.’
We walked on, but slowly, taking care not to kick any loose rocks and send them clattering. We’d only gone for another fifty metres when the forest on our right track opened out into a clearing, in the middle of which was an old stone building, but not so derelict that it didn’t have a front door, through which a man was stepping. We had the briefest glimpse of him, but it was enough to tell us that he was very large, and that he was carrying something in his right hand, an object with a polished wooden stock.
Before any of us could react, he was inside the old house. ‘That’s a sawn-off shotgun,’ Alex exclaimed. ‘This is where I send for back-up.’
Neither Mark nor I tried to stop him as he reached for his phone. Then, from inside the house, there came a crash and a yell, then another . . . We waited for the blast of a firearm, but after that there was only silence.
‘Hold off on that, Alex,’ Mark murmured. ‘We may not need the heavy squad.’
‘If not, then what do we do?’ he asked.
‘I’m going in.’
‘You can’t,’ I protested. ‘You don’t know what’s happening in there.’
‘I can guess, though, and so can you. Somebody’s about to be killed. What’s the worst that can happen to me? I might die ahead of schedule, but not by that much.’
He set off for the house, walking briskly, using his stick. ‘Bugger,’ I muttered, and went after him. ‘Shit,’ Alex hissed and fell into step alongside me, drawing his service pistol from its holder.
There was no shotgun fire as Mark threw the door wide and stepped into
a big open area. In fact the weapon was on the floor, not far from its wielder, who lay face down, with an egg-sized lump on his right temple, and with his hands secured behind his back with a plastic tie. The egg had been laid, I realised, by the bloodstained object that dangled from the fingers of Uche Wigwe’s left hand as he stood over his captive. It was one of Jonny’s lob wedges, a match for the club that had won him the championship three days before.
In his right hand my nephew’s caddie held a revolver. It was pointed at the head of the fallen assassin; at the head of Lars Martinsson.
Alex raised his own gun, but Mark waved to him to lower it, as he stepped up behind Uche, and patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘You’re not going to use that, mate,’ he whispered, and took the pistol from him. ‘You’re not the type.’
‘That man killed my mother,’ the Nigerian told him, in a voice as hard as the stone of the walls, ‘and that man there, my father, ordered it.’
He stared across the room in the direction of an old wooden chair, under a window. Kalu Wigwe was tied to it. He was alive but he’d been beaten about the head, and beaten bloody, for there were streaks of gore all over his flight suit.
Robert Palmer, the man I’d known as Patterson, was standing beside him; he met my gaze as I looked at him.
‘She was your witness?’ I asked him. ‘Kalu’s wife?’
‘She was more than my witness,’ he replied, ‘much, much more.’ His voice seemed to have changed with his name; it was hard, strained, and not all that far from hysteria. ‘Kalu took me to Nigeria, four years ago,’ he continued, ‘to show off, no doubt, to impress me, to let me see that he really is a prince out there. Sure,’ he snorted, ‘and he’s also a fucking criminal, who isn’t just into designer drugs. He’s involved in money laundering, international fraud, slavery, and he even finances Somali pirates for a cut of their ransom money. He thought he was sure of me, and financially he was. I’d left my scruples behind a long time before. Oh yes, Kalu and I got on great. Then on that trip, he introduced me to his wife, to Sonya.’
He shrugged. ‘As I explained to Uche when I went to see him on Monday night, things happen that you can’t control. That’s how it was with Sonya and me. It might sound corny to you, but we fell in love. We saw each other whenever we could; we used to meet in a different city every time, Rome, Miami, London, always when Kalu was off screwing around, and that’s something he did a lot. Didn’t you, you fucking monster. Flashy, cheap women everywhere, but you treated Sonya, who was pure gold, like . . .’ He punched the bound man, harder than I’d thought he ever could, hard enough to produce a small scream even in his semi-conscious state.
‘Enough,’ Kalu moaned.
‘Enough!’ Alex ordered, sharply.
‘No. Not nearly enough,’ Palmer shouted back.
‘Hey,’ I intervened. ‘Robert. Didn’t you tell me a few days ago, when you were someone else, that humanity is essential, and that needless cruelty is inexcusable?’
‘This was necessary. It was justice,’ he protested, but I knew I’d got to him, and in the same moment I knew too that the naturally kind person with whom I’d had that discussion was the real whoever-he-was.
‘How the hell did you find us?’ he asked, more quietly.
‘With help,’ I replied, then took him back to the story. ‘How long did it take Kalu to catch on?’
‘He got suspicious of Sonya about two years ago, but he didn’t know it was me she was seeing, until we set up her escape through Malaga.’ He sighed, and I could hear the despair in it. ‘It turned out that setting it up through Facebook wasn’t as clever as we thought. Sonya made a mistake. She used her home computer, and by that time Kalu was checking everything. So when Sonya went into room 106 in the Silken Puerta, he and Lars were waiting for her. They thought they’d be killing me as well; they were disappointed when only Beau Lucas, my American minder, showed up. Poor Beau; nice guy.’ He winced. ‘They got her body out of there in a cart, then put it in a big suitcase and took it back on board the plane. Those fucking Kiwi pilots!’ he hissed. ‘He made them fly low over the Atlantic, so he could chuck her out. They’ll deny it, but they knew what he was up to. They’re lucky, those guys, that all they got was tied up for a few hours. I’d have wasted them, but Uche said no.’
‘And Lars?’ I asked. ‘I take it he spotted you at the golf course. Had you met before?’
‘Yes, a couple of times at the factory.’ He looked at Mark. ‘Who are you, by the way? CWB? Interpol?’
‘Both,’ my friend replied.
‘Who’re you working for here?’
‘Everybody. You were a little short of the truth with Interpol, Palmer, weren’t you?’
He nodded, with a smile that was slightly embarrassed. ‘Just a bit,’ he admitted. ‘I told them that I only made the stuff, but I knew a little more than that. Kalu made sure I did, enough to tie me in, but not enough to be a threat to him.’
He pointed at the giant on the floor. ‘Lars was part of the route for the HGH into the US sports market. Before he became a crap golfer, he had an early career in the Swedish military, and Kalu found him useful for other work. I’d no idea he was in Girona, and I never saw him there. But he saw me, that first day we went there. He wasn’t certain, but he got in touch with Kalu, and Kalu told him to find out for sure. The Bulgarian and the Irish woman were both in Spain; they had to relocate after my place was busted and the HGH network was shut down. He sent Genchev, then the girl, first to nick something from me, then to take a closer look than he could risk. When they failed . . . you know what he did to them.’
‘When did you realise you’d been rumbled?’ I asked.
‘For sure? Not until Kalu walked on to the practice ground. I saw him and he saw me, and I got out of there.’ He looked at me, with an expression that was almost a plea. ‘Primavera, I’d run away from my old self. I never stopped grieving for Sonya . . . oh, I knew she was dead; I knew she had to be . . . but I became a different man, literally. I met Shirley, I found a new life, one I’d thought was beyond me, and I’d truly given up being Robert Palmer. I wanted to be clear of Wigwe; that’s why I refused to give anyone his name. If I had shopped him, I’d have been tied to him forever, and probably he’d have slithered out from under and I’d have wound up in a suitcase myself. But it wasn’t just fear: I was happy, honest, I really was. Then the bastard turned up and I realised that I couldn’t be, not really, until he was dead. So I went to see Uche, and I told him what had really happened to his mum.’
I turned to him. ‘You didn’t know?’ I murmured.
‘No, Primavera,’ the younger man replied. ‘I knew that my father was capable of most things, but not that, no, I didn’t believe that. His story to my brothers and me was that she had died in a boating accident, while we were all away studying, and that her body had never been found. I didn’t believe it, of course. I suspected that either she had run off, or he had sent her away. Now, I see I should have known, but I wouldn’t allow myself to, or maybe I couldn’t. I suspect I was hiding from the truth . . . until Robert came to see me and I knew I couldn’t hide any longer.’
‘And so we set this up,’ Palmer continued. ‘Kalu had told Uche when he planned to leave, early when there was very little traffic at the airport. So we snatched him; it was easy. We were able to drive straight in, and up to the plane.’
‘Where did the gun come from?’ Mark asked.
‘It was mine; I brought it with me, just in case. I kept it in Shirley’s safe, in a lockable box; I told her there were bonds in it.’ His eyebrows twitched, and the corners of his mouth flicked upwards in a brief smile. ‘I never imagined I’d need it, but it came in handy this morning. It impressed Kalu, that’s for sure. Didn’t it, mate?’ He paused. The bound man’s traffic signal eyes turned towards him. There was no arrogance left in them, only pain and fear.
‘We brought him here,’ his captor went on. ‘We made him admit to everything . . . he isn’t really very brave, by the way,
not nearly as brave as his son; a few whacks with that golf club and he was screaming at us to stop. When he was finished, we knew everything. That was when we made him call Lars and tell him to meet him here, to get rid of me once and for all. We had the opposite in mind, and everything was going our way until you three showed up. Why the hell didn’t you just wait outside for a minute longer?’ he growled. ‘I’d have killed them, even if Uche had bottled it. Now they’re both going to walk out of here.’
‘Looks that way,’ Mark agreed. He looked down at Martinsson, who was fully conscious once more, still face down, but aware. ‘But when you do, big fellow, you’re going to sing for your supper, aren’t you? You’re going to tell the whole story to Interpol, you’re going to admit to killing Genchev and McGuigan, and in return you will not be extradited to the US, and you won’t be executed for Beau Lucas’s murder.’ He drove his stick, hard, into the back of the Swede’s neck. ‘Aren’t you?’ he growled.
‘Yes, yes!!!’ the fallen killer yelled.
‘That’s the deal, then.’ He turned to Alex. ‘I think you should take this one outside now,’ he suggested. ‘Uche will help you, I’m sure.’ He watched as the cop and the chemist hauled the former Scandinavian golf champ to his feet and dragged him from the room, from the old, dark house, into the bright day outside.
‘There you are, Mr Cowling,’ Mark said, easily. ‘You can relax.’
‘How do you work that out?’ Palmer retorted. ‘How long will it be before this thing here hires someone from his jail cell to finish me off?’
‘You wouldn’t do that, Mr Wigwe, would you?’ Mark asked.
As Easy as Murder Page 26