She sucked in a deep breath. ‘In that case. “nobody else” would include me. Apart from Begur, there were only two places Hector went: his apartment in Barcelona and Jacob’s, in Madrid.’ She frowned a little. ‘He’s not with them? Jacob?’
‘No,’ Xavi said, a little too sharply, then added to still any curiosity, ‘He’s still in Madrid.’
‘Can I make a guess?’ I murmured.
She looked up at me. ‘Of course.’
‘The photograph we saw in Begur, in Hector’s attic, of him and Valentina in winter, in the snow. I noticed that he uses the same scenery as the screen wallpaper on his computer in the Girona office. Do you know where they were, where those were taken?’
Pilar’s eyes widened a little. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘It was a ski lodge in Andorra. They went there last winter for Cap d’ Any . . . New Year. When they came back, they both said that it was beautiful. Valentina even said that if they ever married she would like it to be there, in that hotel. I have never thought of Andorra as an attractive place, but they did.’
‘Can you remember the name?’
‘It was called the Hotel Roc Blau. It is not large. Hector said that it has ten rooms and also some chalets; they had one of those. They told me the chalets are built right into the side of the mountain, and that the place is as high as the road goes.’
‘Did they go back there afterwards?’
‘They broke up six weeks after it.’ She paused before adding, ‘But for that, they would have gone. They called it their special place. They made me promise never to tell anyone what it was called . . . not even Jacob.’
‘Is Jacob a skier?’
Pilar laughed. ‘In no way, any more than Hector is. Those two, they are not sportsmen, either of them.’
‘Do you know how they discovered the hotel?’ I asked.
‘Valentina knew of it. Now her, she does ski. She is very good, Hector said, champion class. He told me that the Hotel Roc Blau does not advertise, and it has no website, because it has no need. All the top skiers know of it, and only they go there. Most of them don’t even tell their families about it, according to Valentina. That’s why I had to keep it secret.’
‘Let’s hope it still is,’ Xavi murmured.
‘Will you go there to look for him?’
The big guy glanced at me, repeating Pilar’s question with a raised eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It sounds like the best bet.’
‘Will you find them both there, do you think? I hope you do, for I would like them to be together. She has a lot of mystery about her, that woman, but she made my son happy. He hasn’t been the same since he stopped seeing her.’
‘A lot of mystery,’ I repeated. ‘In what way?’
‘She never talked about herself, or about her family. I asked her about them, but she always managed to reply without ever telling me anything. My business is getting information from people, but I never managed to do it with her. I have never known a woman who will not mention her mother, at some time or other . . . or rather, I hadn’t known one until I met Valentina. I began to think that she was raised in an orphanage.’
‘Maybe she was.’
‘Who knows?’ She smiled. ‘I have one guilty secret; I did try to find out her family name. She was in Begur one time and she left her bag lying about. I looked inside: her passport was there and I took a look. Yes, there was a second name, but it was no use to me. It was in Cyrillic script, and I can’t read that.’
‘Did she have a profession?’ I asked.
‘She told me that she was an accountant. When I asked her for whom she did her accounting, it got mysterious again. “For an entrepreneur,” she said, “who likes to keep his affairs very close to his chest.” It was her very polite way of telling me to mind my own business.’
Xavi looked at me, over Pilar’s head.
‘Damn nuisance,’ he said, ‘our cars being in Girona.’ He thought for a few moments. ‘We could hire one,’ he suggested.
I checked my watch; it was ten minutes before seven. ‘By the time we get that sorted, we could be back up there. Besides, if we really are going as high as the road goes up in the mountains, I’d rather do it in your Range Rover than anything else. How long’s the drive?’
‘Two and a half hours minimum,’ Xavi replied, ‘probably more. This is Friday, remember, and there’s plenty of snow up there. The road will be busy with skiers.’
‘Okay,’ I declared. ‘We go back to Girona, pick up the cars, grab a few hours’ sleep at your place, then leave at sparrow-fart, about six o’clock, looking to get there for nine.’
We settled on that as a plan.
‘When you find Hector,’ Pilar asked, ‘what will you do? The police will want to talk to him about Battaglia.’
‘So will I,’ Xavi said, ominously. He hadn’t forgotten that his younger colleague had been consorting with the enemy. ‘But that can wait. We will keep him right with the Mossos. Bob doesn’t believe they’ll have enough evidence to hold him, but if he needs a good lawyer I’ll find him one. You trust me to look after him, my dear; you look after Simon.’
We left her there in the family room. Outside, taxis were coming and going all the time; we hailed the first one that was free. I’d have settled for the train, but Xavi asked the driver if he’d take us to Girona. With the promise of a decent tip, he agreed.
‘The killer will have a twenty-four-hour head start on us, Bob,’ my friend pointed out, as soon as we were on the Ronda de Dalt, and heading north. ‘He could have found them already.’
‘You’re assuming that he’s heading in the same direction as us,’ I pointed out. ‘Jacob, poor bastard, took at least three hits before he talked . . . that’s assuming he did, and that the gunman didn’t simply get fed up and shoot him. He could have sent him south, east or west. But suppose it is the worst case, and he did give up Andorra, he doesn’t know about Roc Blau.’
‘We don’t know a hell of a lot about it either,’ Xavi pointed out. ‘All we have is the name, no address, no postcode. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so all the public offices will be closed in Andorra la Vella, like everywhere else.’
‘We’ll ask when we get there. Or maybe . . .’ I paused for thought, and the obvious reared up and bit me. ‘You own a couple of dozen newspapers,’ I exclaimed, ‘including several in Catalunya. Skiing’s a sport, so you must cover it.’
‘Of course we do. We have specialist writers.’
‘In that case, call one of your people, a sports editor or whatever. Tell him we want a location for Hotel Roc Blau, where the top sliders hang out.’
‘Good idea,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll call Andrea Graciana, on GironaDia. She’s my best. But she’s a reporter, mind, she’ll want to know why I’m asking.’
‘And you’re the boss, mind,’ I retorted. ‘Just fucking tell her to do it.’
He laughed, a great rumbling sound in the darkened cab. ‘That would really get her going. I’ll tell her I want to take Sheila and Paloma up to Andorra for a break, and that someone mentioned the name to me.’
The day staff in Girona had gone home, but he managed to track the woman down on the contact number held by the sport desk. I listened as they spoke, and heard him chuckle a couple of times.
‘What’s the joke?’ I asked when they were finished.
‘A Real Madrid footballer’s been caught shagging a teammate’s wife. They can’t decide which one to sell in the next transfer window. That would never have happened in my playing days; most of our guys were paid so little they couldn’t afford wives.’
The taxi trip took a couple of minutes under an hour. We retrieved both cars and I followed Xavi back to his place. As I parked the Suzuki I did a quick, unsuccessful search for my phone charger, in the vain hope that I’d left it there. I was beginning to feel completely isolated, something I’d never known for as long as I could remember, and I didn’t like it.
I was going to ask Xavi if I could call Sarah and Alex from his
landline, but he had called Sheila from the road and she had dinner ready for us . . . just the three of us; Paloma had eaten earlier, and Ben was off with his woman . . . and by the time that was over, I judged that it was too late.
Next morning we set off as planned, a few minutes after six. The masia was in darkness when we left, and we had to take it easy on the country roads, but once we hit La Carretera, heading for Vic, and then Manresa, we were able to make decent time.
We’d started off with no firm destination, but that changed just after eight, as the sun started to rise on what promised to be a clear morning, when a phone call interrupted the radio programme that Xavi had selected . . . one of his own stations, naturally.
I could hear Andrea through the car speakers; she had a nice voice, even though nearly all of her message was lost on me. It made sense to Xavi, though, for he kept nodding, and repeating ‘Vale, vale’ . . . that’s ‘Okay, okay’ . . . as she spoke.
He thanked her when they were done, then lowered the volume of the radio as it kicked back in. ‘We head for a place called El Serrat,’ he announced, ‘then go north from there. She says we’ll find a camino that leads up to the hotel. We’ve to look for a sign that says “HRB” at the turn-off.’
‘Sounds like the end of the universe.’
‘There’s no way out, that’s for sure.’
‘Does it have twenty-first-century facilities? For example, a phone?’
‘Not that Andrea could find, I asked her. It may be too high for a landline.’
The closer we got to Andorra, the more dense the traffic became; there were lots of off-roaders and lots of roof racks, some holding coffin-shaped boxes and others with skis clipped into special holders. The higher we climbed, the lower the outside temperature dipped, until it was down to zero and snow flanked the highway.
We were ten kilometres short of the border with the micro-state when the radio died once more and the phone rang again.
‘Hola,’ Xavi exclaimed as he accepted the call.
‘Who’s that?’ Julien Valencia asked. He spoke Castellano, but even in that language I could tell that he was confused.
‘Julien,’ I said quickly, ‘Bob Skinner here. I’m on the road.’
‘You’re not alone?’
‘No, I’m with Xavi Aislado.’
‘I can’t speak on hands-free, Bob.’
‘No problem,’ Xavi said. He dug his phone from a breast pocket in his jacket, handed it to me, then killed the Bluetooth.
I nodded my thanks to him. ‘Okay now,’ I told Valencia. ‘What’s the panic?’
‘There is no panic, but I have some important news for you. What you said to me last night, Bob, that got to me. I am not a civil servant, but I understand why you felt that way, because I have been behaving like one of those. You made me feel ashamed of myself for letting the Justice Minister push me around. Also I am angry that the guy in Holland, in Europol, my equal, went over my head to the fucking politicos.’
‘Good,’ I agreed. ‘I’m glad to hear it. So what are you going to do about it?’
‘I have done it already. I have friends too, as I am sure you do, in the criminal intelligence community, people I can talk to who know I can be trusted with what they tell me. I called one, a former colleague of mine when I was in the Guardia Civil. She’s in Madrid, and she hates the Interior Ministry, so she was very willing to talk to me. I asked her the same thing that I asked the guy in The Hague, about a missing Russian woman, Valentina, then something beginning with B, A, R.’
‘And?’
‘And she didn’t even pause to think about it. The lady’s apellido is Barsukova. She is the daughter of a Russian oligarch, Veniamin Barsukov. This man was super-rich in minerals, but he got that way by criminal means, by persuading people to sign over assets to him at gunpoint, for nominal amounts. Naturally these crimes took place in private and could never be proved.’ He paused. ‘Are you with me?’
‘I’m so with you that I think I can guess what’s coming next. He upset the people in power at home?’
‘Exactly, so he left the country and moved to Spain, where it is a lot warmer, and a lot safer for him all year round. When he did so, he took a lot of secrets with him, business dealings like his own that would embarrass those powerful people in Russia. Barsukov is no fool, he did not walk around unprotected, but a year ago, his brother was assassinated, and that scared him. So he did a deal.’
‘With whom?’
‘With the Americans, of course; he told them what he knew and they gave him a new identity and laundered his assets, so that he cannot be found, ever.’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘What was the value of this information to the Yanks?’
‘In the short-term, none, while the regime is strong, but in time it can be used against it, to destabilise it.’
‘Valentina,’ I asked, ‘where does she fit in?’
‘She was a problem, it seems. She is Barsukov’s only child; she could have vanished with him under the deal but she refused. She was in love, she said, and she would not leave Spain. With our help, she also was given a new identity, and stayed here. However, she was told that she had to lie low, and that she and her lover had to be very careful. She knows none of her father’s secrets, but his enemies will kill her anyway, simply to punish him.’
‘As we’ve seen,’ I murmured. ‘Was there a leak? Did they know she was still in Spain?’
‘Not necessarily. It is clear that they have been watching Hector Sureda, but that may only have been a precaution, against an outside possibility . . .’
‘. . . which was real all along, that they were still in touch. And when they hacked into his diary and saw that he’d arranged a dinner meeting, with someone referred to only as B, they thought they might be on to a winner.’
‘It’s even better than that,’ Valencia exclaimed. ‘My friend is a Russian speaker; she told me that in the Cyrillic alphabet, our letters V and B share the same character. A Russian might read B as V and think Valentina.’
I whistled. ‘So goodbye Bernicia, by mistake.’
‘Exactly. The rest of the story we can work out. They must have been watching Jacob Ireland also.’
‘That’s what I’ve been thinking, but it’s not necessarily the case, Julien. Any decent profile on Hector would show Ireland as his best friend, and that would mark him as the first port of call for anyone trying to find him. Poor bastard.’
‘And poor Valentina and Hector if the assassin got what he needed from Señor Ireland.’
For a moment I thought our conversation was over, until he asked, ‘Bob, where are you and Señor Aislado going now? Do you know where they are?’
‘We might. We’re heading for Andorra.’
‘That is out of my territory: it’s another country.’
I laughed. ‘I did know that, chum. What can you tell me about its police force?’
‘It’s very small, as you’d expect. I know their director; we have an informal understanding that if he has a major situation, he can call on me for extra manpower.’
‘And if one of your investigations crosses into his territory?’
‘We work together. When you get to your destination, Bob, should you need police help, call me. If you find Señor Sureda and Señora Barsukova . . .’ He hesitated.
‘We’ll bring them straight to Barcelona, whether they like it or not. Until this hit man is caught, they’ll be safest in your custody.’
Unless he’s ahead of us.
That scary thought was preying on my mind as the Andorran border came into sight, until it was replaced by another worry.
‘Hey,’ I called out to Xavi over the sound of some early Christmas music on the radio, ‘we don’t have our passports.’
‘We won’t need them,’ he assured me.
The ski-slope traffic was thick by then; it slowed to a crawl as it approached the crossing, then speeded up. There were two Spanish booths on either side of the single carriageway, and two An
dorran, twenty-five metres beyond, but none of them was manned. There were few cops to be seen and all of them were on the other side of the road.
‘They might stop us on the way out,’ Xavi said, ‘but only to check that we’re not smuggling. They don’t give a shit about what goes in.’
He had programmed El Serrat into the satnav; he let it guide us and I looked at the scenery. I don’t get claustrophobic but I pity anyone who does and who finds himself in Andorra. Mountains towered above us, on either side; I had a mental image of the Almighty pausing in his work of creation to take an axe and whack it into the Pyrenees, leaving a great gouge that would become an anomalous state.
We followed the traffic up to Andorra La Vella, the main town, then gave our digital navigator free rein. The roads had been slush-covered until then but as we drove higher, that gave way to hard-packed snow. Xavi stopped to fit chains to the tyres, and the Range Rover began to do the job that it had been built for.
There were poles on either side of the road and as we climbed they showed a depth of snow that became steadily greater. We passed through El Serrat almost without realising it, carrying on, still climbing until we reached a hairpin junction, with a sign.
‘We turn here,’ Xavi announced. ‘Andrea said we should head for the national park.’
For the next ten minutes I wished she hadn’t; I’m a lousy passenger, even at the best of times. The road was narrow, and on my side of the car the mountainside seemed precipitous. Yes, it was forest, but that was no consolation. If we’d gone off, there would have been nothing but catastrophe. At one point we had to overtake a very slow-moving bus; I listened for the sound of its passengers screaming, but they must have been struck dumb by terror.
At last, at very long last, Xavi called out, ‘That’s it. See?’ He pointed. ‘The HRB sign. The camino.’
Sure enough, it was there, a few metres ahead, so small and insignificant that we’d never have spotted it without Andrea’s guidance.
The word camino means ‘road’ in English but these days there’s less to it than that. Most that carry that name are simply dirt trails, with no blacktop. The one that led to Hotel Roca Blau was narrow, and very steep. I have no idea what lay under the snow, but at least that had been ploughed since the last fall, and the surface was firm and passable.
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