class="calibre15"> Bromberg was on the ground, writhing and whimpering, her hands clasped to her right buttock, from which blood was seeping, turning her white shorts a deep red. The idea of helping her didn’t even occur to me. Instead, I looked at the Chrysler’s key, saw which button released the locks and pressed it. class="calibre15"> As I slid behind the wheel, I called to my rescuer. ‘Get in!’ He had become a spectator, but he did as I ordered, while I found the ignition slot, and looked at the controls. I was vaguely aware, from an audible thud, that he had tossed something heavy into the back, but not of him, not at that point: all my concentration was devoted to flight.
By happy chance, my Jeep’s a Chrysler too, and automatic, so everything was familiar. I fired up the engine, hit the brake-release pedal, slammed the gearstick into drive rather more firmly than is necessary and drove off. ‘Thanks,’ I said to my passenger, then turned to take a proper look at him, as the first thumps and muffled shouts came from the boot. He smiled back at me; a modest smile, yet one that was on the edge of being dazzling. ‘No problem, cousin,’ said Frances Ulverscroft McGowan.
Eighteen
‘Frank!’ I screamed. ‘What the . . .’
That was what Mark Kravitz had been saying when my phone went dead. If Frank’s mother had been kidnapped, that meant he was still alive, and on the loose.
‘Take a left at the end of this street,’ he said firmly, before the volcano I felt building within me had a chance to erupt. ‘We have to get out of the city centre and dump this thing before that woman sends the police, or anyone else, after us.’
‘I think you could find that the police are after her,’ I told him, ‘but you’re right in principle. I have to get to the airport: I’ve a plane to catch.’
‘It’s best if you miss it,’ he said. ‘Okay, go straight ahead till you get to the next junction, then left again, right at the lights and across the river.’
I concentrated on the road and on his instructions until we were on the other side of the Río Guadalquivir and well on our way into the southern suburbs. I could drive without too much discomfort, I’d discovered, if I made a point of keeping the pedal pressure on the ball of my foot.
‘Who was that creature?’ Frank asked, breaking the silence.
‘You don’t know?’
‘Never seen her before.’
‘She’s your replacement as director and sales manager of the Hotel Casino d’Amuseo. Where is it, by the way, the site of this mythical playground for the rich and famous?’
‘We’re on the way there now. Jeez,’ he mused, ‘that’s Lidia, is it? And I just stabbed her in the arse.’ I was reminded of something I’d forgotten, that he had inherited the vestiges of a Scottish accent from Auntie Ade.
‘Why did you do it, Frank?’ I demanded. ‘Why did you get involved with another fraud? Did you like being in jail? Do you like torturing your mother? For that’s what it amounts to.’
‘Please, Prim, later. I’ll tell you the whole story later. For now, take a right at this next fork then keep on that road for twenty-five kilometres or so.’
‘Where will that take us?’
‘I’ve told you, to the land where the casino was supposed to be.’
‘Whose land is it? Yours?’
Frank laughed. ‘As if I’d be that dumb. No, it belongs to him in the boot. There used to be a chemical works on it, in his father’s time, until there was an accident and it was shut down. The site’s been contaminated ever since, no use for agriculture or anything else.’
‘But all right for a leisure complex?’
‘That was the idea.’
‘And a great one it was,’ I retorted sarcastically. ‘Now here you are on the run, you’ve pulled me into it, I’ve had to send my son to safety and, to cap it all, your mother’s been kidnapped.’
He sat bolt upright. ‘Mum? Kidnapped?’
‘That’s how it looks. I left her at my place, with Tom. He went to walk the dog this morning and when she came back she was gone. The house was like the Mary bloody Celeste.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the rest behind him. Another indistinct shout came from behind us. ‘Shut up!’ Frank yelled. He picked up the gun from the central console, where I’d laid it, and fired a shot into the back seat, behind me, more or less in line with where Caballero’s feet must have been. Twin sounds echoed, from the silencer and from the upholstery, as the bullet ripped through it. All the way through? I waited for a scream but none came, only silence. I found myself hoping that the space wasn’t big enough for the guy to have twisted himself round.
I drove in silence after that, for I had something new to consider. I had marked my cousin down as something of a wimp, but it was all too clear that I’d been wrong. He’d bladed Bromberg without hesitation. He’d fired a shot that might have killed Caballero, for all we knew at that point, without even thinking about it. There was a dangerous side to him, and no mistake.
‘There’s a turning just ahead,’ he said, plucking me from my thoughts, ‘on the right. The road gets a bit bumpy after that, but follow it. It won’t be too comfortable for our passenger, but he’s asked for more than that.’
He was right about the track. The big car had luxury suspension, but even with that we were bounced about in our seats.
‘I’d have been back there if he’d had his way,’ I growled, through clenched teeth. Then I frowned as the obvious question finally forced its way out. ‘Frank, how come you showed up at the hotel in the nick of time, so to speak?’
‘I’ve been on the look-out for you,’ he replied, ‘since you left that ferocious message in my voicemail.’ He chuckled. ‘By the way, I do know what an orchidectomy is.’
‘You picked that up? So why didn’t you call me back?’
‘I’ve been keeping radio silence on the mobile. These things can be traced, you know, as easily as you can pin down a land-line call, maybe even more so. I knew you’d be flying down, and I could guess from where, so I staked out all the incoming Barcelona traffic at the airport, spotted you, and followed you, right to your hotel.’
‘So why didn’t you do the obvious and come in? Didn’t you want to be found?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t that. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t following you too.’
‘They?’
He held up a hand. ‘Later, Prim. Like I said, the whole story, I promise.’ He stopped, then pointed ahead. ‘We’re here. Draw up by that building.’
We were in flat, arid open country, several hundred hectares by the look of it, well enough for all the website claimed was going to happen on the site. All around there was nothing to be seen, save for a big brick barn, with sliding iron doors made of corrugated iron and a pitched roof. I parked beside it as instructed.
‘You’ve been here before?’ I asked, as we stepped out into the blazing hot afternoon.
‘Sure, with him.’
‘Why are we here now? This doesn’t exactly look like a getaway route.’
‘Ah, but it is, cuz.’ He slid one of the barn doors open. It creaked, but moved easily, for its size. ‘Caballero keeps a few toys here: he’s got a quad bike, a few trail motorcycles and, of course, a four-by-four. I think we’ll borrow that for the next stage of our trip.’
I looked inside. Sure enough, the barn contained an array of recreational vehicles. ‘And what about him?’
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ He reached inside the car and pressed a button. The boot catch popped and the lid swung open.
Caballero’s eyes screwed tight as the sunlight hit him. His face was beetroot and he was soaked with sweat. The cream suit would never be the same again. He groaned, and made to get out until Frank waved the gun in his face.
‘Stay where you are,’ he snapped, in Spanish. ‘You’re getting no kindness from me, you bastard. Prim, do me a favour and get my rucksack.’
That was what he’d chucked into the back seat as he’d got into the car outs
ide the hotel, a black bag with a single shoulder strap. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ve found it.’ It was weighty; I wondered what the hell he had in it.
‘Give it to me, please.’
Again, I did as he asked. He unzipped it, took out a bottle of water, and held it up for Caballero to see. ‘This is for you.’ He placed it on the ground, then slammed the boot lid shut once more. ‘Eventually.’
He walked round the car and shot out the tyres, one by one. ‘Can’t have him coming after us,’ he explained, as if I was a simpleton.
The keys were in the ignition of the four-by-four, a silver Suzuki Grand Vitara. Frank took the wheel. ‘No offence,’ he said, as we reversed out of the barn, ‘but I know where we’re going, so I’ll drive.’
‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. ‘That was a nice trick,’ I added, ‘bursting his tyres. But won’t he come after us on one of the bikes just as easily, once he gets out of there?’
‘True,’ Frank admitted. He stopped the car, got out and went back into the barn. I watched him as he picked up a container, as he splashed its contents over all of the machines inside, and as he took a book of matches from his pocket, lit one, used it to ignite the others, and tossed it on to the quad bike. Finally, almost as an afterthought, he threw the gun inside too. As he slid the door closed I could see the flames beginning to bloom like roses in an accelerated frame-by-frame nature film.
‘He will get out of there, won’t he?’ I asked, as we drove off.
‘Sure. Those things have a manual release inside the boot. They’re American made: I suppose they fit it in case you’re snatched by Big Tony Soprano and the boys.’
‘What if he doesn’t know that?’
Frank gave me the smile again. I felt a tremor as I realised just how much it reminded me of Oz. ‘Then that’ll be just too damn bad for him,’ he said.
Nineteen
‘What’s the game plan?’ I asked, as we headed back towards the city. ‘Indeed, do you have a game plan?’
‘Oh, yes,’ my cousin replied, ‘and it’s a good one. But rather than have me describe it, just watch, Primavera, watch and learn. Where did you get that name anyway?’
‘From my mum.’ I let out a small, outraged snort. ‘And don’t you go there with the names, Frances. At least mine was planned, not an accident forced upon me by an intellectually under-developed employee.’ To my surprise, I found that even under all that stress I was laughing.
‘I can only blame her for the girlie first one,’ he confessed. ‘The other, that was all dear old Ade’s idea.’
‘Ulverscroft?’
‘Yes. It’s a publishing company; they specialise in large-print books.’
‘For the hard of hearing?’
He grinned. ‘No, you’re thinking of the taped version. Do you know,’ he went on, ‘that this has now become the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and probably the longest time we’ve ever spent in each other’s company.’
‘Not quite,’ I advised him. ‘The first time you came to visit us my dad took the three of us, you, me and Dawn, to the beach in St Andrews. I remember it, because I didn’t want to go, but Mum persuaded me that he wouldn’t know what to do when you had “little boy’s needs”, as she put it.’
‘What the hell did that mean?’
‘It meant that I had to take you to the ladies’ toilet, and make sure you did everything properly.’
‘You mean you got to watch?’
‘And worse. You were only just three at the time.’
‘You’ll be glad to hear that I can go on my own now.’
‘So could Tom, when he was that age. So can Charlie, and he’s even younger.’
‘You have two kids? I thought . . .’
‘Charlie’s a Labrador.’
‘My God. Who was the father?’
‘Shut up and drive, you idiot.’
He did, into a small commercial area to the south-west of the city, where he parked in a supermarket car park, well away from the store.
‘Are we going to shop our way to freedom?’ I asked.
‘I told you. Watch and learn.’
He reached into his pocket and produced the most elaborate Swiss Army knife I’d ever seen. ‘Is that what you used on Bromberg?’
‘Yup. Specially sharpened to meet the need, should it arise. Three-inch blade, but that will do the job, as you saw. And, of course, it does many other things.’
From its many tools, he selected a Phillips . . . no relation . . . screw-driver, jumped out of the car and proceeded to remove the number-plates. ‘Back in a minute,’ he said, when he was done, and disappeared into the rows of parked cars.
Actually, two minutes had passed, but no longer, when he returned with two different plates, which he fixed to our stolen jalopy. ‘There,’ he declared, with more than a little pride, as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. ‘It’s going to take the owner of the other car a couple of days at best to notice that he has a new registration. If Caballero does get loose, if he makes it to the road and stops someone, if . . . long odds against, in the circumstances ... he calls the cops . . .’
‘Then they’re not going to find the number he gives them on a silver Suzuki.’
‘Exactly. And just to confuse them further . . .’ He switched on the engine and drove off, not out of the car park but round, closer to the store. He parked once more, this time in a space about fifty metres from a big sign that read ‘Taxi’. I looked and saw a couple of cabs waiting for takers. ‘Come on.’
We grabbed our belongings, Frank locked the Suzuki and we walked, unnoticed, across to the rank. I nodded to the first driver and he nodded back. ‘Station,’ Frank told him, as we slipped into the back seat.
‘But what if they’re watching the station?’ I asked him quietly.
‘That’s a small chance we’ll have to take, but I reckon that at the moment they . . . quote, unquote . . . will be looking for Caballero’s car, and for him. If they’ve found him by now, and I doubt that, they’ll be looking for the Suzuki. Either way, we’ll know in about ten minutes.’
That was more or less how long it took the taxi to drop us at the entrance to the big airy railway station. I paid the driver, and we headed inside. Frank found a timetable board and studied it. He smiled. ‘Perfect,’ he murmured. He turned to me. ‘There’s an AVE . . . that’s high speed . . . to Madrid in twenty-five minutes. We’ll take that.’
‘Madrid? I want to go to Barcelona. That’s where my car is.’
‘We’ll get there, eventually, when it’s safe.’
‘Safe? To hell with it, Frank, I’ve had enough of this. I can still catch my flight: I’m taking another cab to the airport, flying to Barcelona and driving to Monaco to join Tom.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Primavera,’ he pointed out, ‘less than two hours ago, Caballero and that woman were about to cart you off somewhere and kill you.’
‘That’s an exaggeration. They weren’t going to kill me. If they were they’d have done it at the hotel.’
‘Listen, Emil Caballero is an extremely well-connected man in this city, but not even he could commit murder in a public building and expect to get away with it. You got in their way; you annoyed them. What use were you to them alive?’
‘And your mother?’ That didn’t need saying at that point, and I regretted the words as soon as they were out. Frank had been olive-skinned before he acquired the permatan, but still he went pale.
‘That’s between me and them.’ He shot me a piercing look. ‘There’s no chance of a misunderstanding, is there? Your son didn’t overreact or anything, did he? Could she have gone for a swim?’
‘Tom was on the beach. He’d have seen her. She was in the middle of making their breakfast, Frank. She took nothing with her. Plus, she told me the other day she doesn’t believe blue-flag beaches are any cleaner than the rest . . . “Shit doesn’t know it’s not supposed to wash up there,” was how she put it . . . and that she wouldn’t put as much as a toe in the Medi
terranean.’
‘That’s my dear old mum for you. Okay, I’ll grant you it sounds bad. But to answer your question, my guess is that she’s been taken to put pressure on me.’
‘So tell me. Why? What’s this all about?’
‘Soon, once we’re settled. For now, you go and get us two tickets on the AVE to Madrid. How much cash do you have? You don’t want to be using your credit card.’
‘Four hundred and something.’
‘That’ll be enough.’
It was. In fact it was enough for me to buy club class, which let us use a very nice lounge for the fifteen minutes or so that it took for our train to be called. I took a glass of white wine from the bar, and spent the time doing women things, hair, makeup . . . not that I ever use much more than the lippie I had in my bag . . . and such. When I was finished I looked a little less like someone who’d just emerged from a fight to the near death, and a flight from danger. Or was that into danger?
Club class on the high-speed train was as close to the in-flight equivalent as Renfe could manage, with a hostess to show us to our seats and bring us drinks and nibbles. As soon as she had gone and we were settled in, I looked across at Frank, ready for the explanation he had promised. He was asleep, wasn’t he? Like a baby, as if nothing had happened and we were just another couple of tourists. Except, we weren’t: we didn’t have any clothes for a start . . . at least, I didn’t, for I had no clue what was inside Frank’s rucksack. After the Swiss Army knife episode, there could have been a white tuxedo in there and it wouldn’t have surprised me.
He dozed for a while, waking just as the train slowed and cruised past an establishment that looked suspiciously like a prison. I waited for it to pick up speed once more, but it didn’t. Instead it eased its way into a station.
Frank jumped to his feet and grabbed his bag from the overhead rack. ‘Come on,’ he said.
‘But this isn’t Madrid. You’ve only been asleep for half an hour.’
‘I know; this is Córdoba. We’re not going to Madrid.’
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