After a hundred metres or so the trees began to thin out, and we had an idea of where we were going. A significant climb still lay ahead, but we could see all the way to a bend around the mountainside.
When we reached it we found that it took us out on to a plateau of sorts, a level stretch of ground on which there stood a three-storey building, with a roof that sloped sharply on either side of a central ridge. In front of it were four smaller, similarly shaped buildings, two on either side.
Two off-roaders, a Skoda Yeti and a Grand Cherokee, were parked in a small compound with a high wooden fence on three sides, strongly built to shield against avalanches from the mountain behind. Xavi pulled into an empty space, beside a small tracked Bobcat vehicle, with a snowplough blade attached and raised off the ground.
I jumped out of the Range Rover and stretched my back, breathing so deeply of the cold air that I felt my head spin for a second. My winter weight jacket had never been put to such a temperature test, but it was up to it, for that moment. Xavi joined me, finishing yet another bottle of mineral water; his fourth on the journey.
‘Impressive,’ he murmured. ‘What a view.’ He was right; it couldn’t be overstated. We were facing due south, and with no pollution we could see right over the top of Andorra la Vella and its protecting hills, far into Catalunya. ‘I can almost see my house from up here.’
That reminded me of an old, bad taste joke, but I decided not to sully the moment by sharing it.
‘I can see why the skiers like this place,’ he added. ‘Look.’ I followed his pointing finger and saw, stretching upwards from a point behind the main building, a cable, with a couple of small pods suspended. ‘I’d guess that goes straight to a slope; this hotel’s practically on piste.’
Roc Blau appeared to have a small garden laid out. Like everything else, it was buried under at least a foot of snow, but there were shapes that hinted of hardy bushes, set in orderly lines. A pathway had been cleared from the parking area to the main building. We followed it all the way to a flight of five steps that stretched across the hotel’s full width, accessing a terrace that was protected by the overhanging roof. Heavy wooden tables and chairs were set out, each grouping below an electric heater fixed on the wall.
As we entered a small reception hall, through a revolving door, a bell tinkled; a few seconds later a tall, middle-aged woman appeared; she had a broad open face, blue eyes and her hair was bleached, but not chemically. ‘Good morning,’ she said, in English. ‘Welcome to Hotel Roc Blau.’ I tried to place the accent: not Spanish, not French; German, Austrian or possibly Swiss. ‘I am Magda.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I responded. ‘How did you know we’re Brits?’
She smiled. ‘I can tell at a glance. Your friend, I am not so sure, but you, certainly.’
Her grin demanded to be returned. ‘You’d have been half right with him,’ I said.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked. ‘I was not expecting any British guests to arrive today. If you made a booking, then I apologise, for it has not been registered, and we are full for the weekend.’ I must have looked puzzled, for she added. ‘I know, you only saw two cars there, but most of our guests choose the easier drive to the ski slope reception, around the mountainside. They park there and come down here in our own cable cars.’
‘I wish we’d known that,’ I told her, sincerely. ‘No, we don’t have a booking. My name is Bob Skinner, and my large friend is Xavi Aislado. We’ve come here looking for a friend of his, a friend and a colleague, Hector Sureda. He may be travelling with a woman, Valentina Barsukova.’
‘What made you imagine they would be here, Mr Skinner?’ Her smile didn’t waver.
Neither did mine. ‘I’m good at imagining. Maybe you don’t get Spanish TV up here, but if you do and you watch the news, you’ll be aware that the Mossos d’Esquadra in Barcelona are very keen to talk to Hector, and have been since a body was found in his apartment a few days ago. What isn’t public knowledge are the facts that he may be travelling with Señora Barsukova, and that someone’s trying to kill them.’
‘Really? This is Andorra, such things don’t happen here.’ Still the smile held steady . . . but her eyes didn’t.
‘Let’s skip what I suspect or imagine,’ I said, ‘and concentrate on what I know. Hector and Valentina saw in the last New Year here. It was his first visit but she’d been here before; he came to love it as much as she did. They were happy then, but they’re in hellish trouble now. Magda, three people are looking for them; the two of us and somebody with a gun. If we don’t find them first, and he does, they’re dead. Look at me and tell me you don’t believe me.’
She did, her expression serious at last. ‘Am I the first person you ask about Valentina?’ Her question was murmured. ‘My husband, Horst, he runs the ski lift. He called me half an hour ago to say that someone had come there asking about her. Was it you?’
I felt my spine stiffen. ‘No way,’ I replied. ‘If you don’t believe us, ask him to come down here. Magda, that makes it all the more important that you trust us. If they’re here, or if you know where they are, please tell us.’
She looked at me, weighing up a decision; finally she made it.
‘We are managers here,’ she began, ‘Horst and I. We are employed by the company that owns Roc Blau. Until the beginning of this year, that company belonged to Valentina’s father, Mr Barsukov. Then without any warning, we were told by the lawyers that it had been transferred to a new owner. We were told not to worry, that our jobs were safe, but we would not be seeing Mr Barsukov, or Valentina, again. And we didn’t, until she and Hector arrived here three days ago, on Wednesday.’
‘They’re still here?’
She nodded. ‘There is a fifth chalet,’ she said. ‘You can hardly see it from here, but if you stand on the terrace outside and look to your left, you will just have a glimpse of the top of the roof. It was kept for use by the Barsukov family alone, and because we have received no orders otherwise, it is still never rented. That is where they are. I will take you to them.’
Beside me, Xavi let out a great sigh. ‘Thank you, señora,’ he said.
She led us outside, along a path that led to a small building we hadn’t noticed before. ‘The supplies hut for the maids,’ she explained, casually, as we reached it. There, a small flight of steps led to a lower level, where the fifth chalet was situated. One set of footprints, and twin wheel tracks, led to the door.
Magda saw me looking at them. ‘Only the chalet maid has been here since they arrived. They have not been outside. When the snow is on the ground you cannot come and go from here without being noticed.’
The door was in the centre of the building and there were windows on either side. There was a floodlight set in the wall with a photo-sensor, and close to that a video camera.
‘There is a monitor inside, and another camera hidden in the door. We had better stand here for a moment, so we can be seen clearly. I don’t want to panic them.’
We did as she suggested, until she decided that it was okay to approach. ‘I’ll leave you now,’ she said.
The door opened before we reached it. A man stood there, a man I’d never met but knew from the photograph that I’d been showing people for most of the week gone by.
‘Xavi,’ Hector Sureda exclaimed, as the short distance between us closed. ‘Am I glad to see you.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t be,’ the giant beside me growled. ‘I might have come to kick your arse off this fucking mountain, you treacherous little shit.’
Then he seemed to soften, and enveloped his young friend in a great bear hug.
It might have been a relief to them, but it made me feel exposed and uncomfortable. ‘Hey, you two,’ I called out, ‘can we go inside?’
They got the message; Hector stood to one side and ushered us into a big living area, flooded with sunshine, where Valentina Barsukova waited. She was staring at us fearfully, as if we were invaders rather than saviours, and her short spiky
dyed blond hair stuck out as if she had been shocked. ‘Amor, quién estes hombres?’ she asked.
‘They’re friends,’ he replied, in English. ‘This huge fellow is my boss, Xavi . . . I’ve told you about him often enough . . . and this is . . .’
I took over. ‘My name is Bob Skinner, señora. I’m a friend of Xavi, and I’ve been helping him find you. I used to be a cop,’ I added, in validation of sorts.
‘Did Jacob send you?’ she asked, then frowned. ‘But how could he? He doesn’t know where Roca Blau is, or even its name.’
‘But he did know about Andorra, yes? And the fact that you two were together here?’
‘Yes, we mentioned it to him.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘he may have sent someone after you. Thank Christ we got here first.’
Hector frowned, bewildered. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘To stop the pain.’ It couldn’t be sugar-coated. ‘Jacob’s dead. He was murdered in Madrid on Thursday night, but not before he was tortured. No question that the person who did it was looking for the two of you, and we believe for Valentina most of all.’
‘Then I was right,’ he whispered. ‘Bernicia was shot because she looked like Val.’
I nodded. ‘Now let’s all sit down, and calm down.’
I took a moment to look around the chalet. It was much bigger than had seemed possible from the outside. There were two doors off the living room, and each lay open, one showing a kitchen, the other a bedroom. Between them a spiral staircase led to a lower level. The far wall was glass, with double sliding doors leading to a terrace, enclosed by a timber surround; they lay open and yet it wasn’t cold inside, for in a hearth, in the centre of the space, a great log fire was blazing.
Valentina, Hector and Xavi all sat on a long sofa of soft brown leather; I bagged a chair on the other side of the fireplace and turned it round to face them.
I looked at the digital genius. ‘Did Battaglia contact you, or was it the other way round?’
‘She got in touch with me,’ he replied. ‘Not directly at first, but through a guy who was one of her aides, a lawyer, I think.’
‘What was the pitch?’ Xavi asked, grimly.
‘They pushed the benefits of a link-up between BeBe and InterMedia.’
‘And you listened?’
‘Yes,’ Hector replied, animated. ‘They had a point, Xavi. We can’t stand still in our industry, not any more. We can’t dig in our heels and say, “This is how it’s going to be in five, ten, fifteen years,” because we just don’t know. The truth is, we don’t know how it will be in one year. This is not a period of change, this is a time of revolution, and anyone who doesn’t keep pace with it will be crushed.’
‘You might have told me, chum,’ Xavi sighed. ‘It is my company, after all, mine and Joe’s.’
The younger man shook his head, in denial. ‘No, you’re wrong,’ he retorted. ‘You may be the majority shareholders, yes, you may own the physical business, but it has stakeholders too . . . all the people you employ, who have put their careers in your hands. You have a duty to them to do what’s best for them, and that definitely does not include laughing in the face of Bernicia Battaglia. I would have told you, really, but in my own time, after I’d heard Bernicia’s proposal.’
‘Did you have time to hear it?’ I asked.
He glanced at me, across the fireplace. ‘As it turned out, no, I didn’t, not properly. I met her for dinner in Girona, but that was no more than an ice-breaker. I couldn’t concentrate on business, not at all, because my mind was blown by how much she looked like Valentina.
‘Instead of getting down to detail that night, we agreed that we’d go to my place in Barcelona next day for further talks, in private. And yet I was still thinking of Val next morning. I bought roses; in my mind I was giving them to her, not Bernicia.’
He paused, shuddering. ‘Then we got to Barcelona, and . . . I can’t describe it.’
‘You don’t have to,’ Xavi told him. ‘We’ve been there. It was us that found her. We’ve spent the last few days clearing up after you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hector moaned, ‘but when it happened . . . I was putting water in a vase for the roses,’ he began to explain, ‘when I heard a noise.’
‘We’d worked that out, son,’ I said. ‘And worked out why you bolted too.’ I looked at Valentina. ‘Were you two always in touch, even after you and your father went off the radar?’
She stared at me, astonished by what I knew.
‘I wasn’t just any old cop,’ I murmured.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘They told me I shouldn’t because I would be in danger if I was discovered, but I had to. I couldn’t risk email, so I wrote to Hector instead. I used Jacob’s box number in Madrid, and he forwarded my letters to the office in Girona. He did the same thing in the other direction. I have a box too, where I’ve been living, in my new name.
‘On Saturday, Hector wrote to me directly, and asked me to meet him at Jacob’s, as soon as I could. I received the letter on Monday, and went there next day.’
I frowned at him. ‘Why did you do that? You’d just seen Battaglia’s brains on your carpet. Why reach out to Valentina after that?’
He took a deep breath, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Until then,’ he began, ‘neither of us had been completely convinced that there really was a threat. Our plan was to give it a year, then if everything was okay, we’d meet up again casually, Val with her new name and her new hair, as if it was a completely new relationship.
‘When Bernicia was killed, I panicked. I decided that we had to run for it, before the Russian people got lucky. I thought this was safe, so we came here as a first step.’ He frowned. ‘How did you know about it?’
‘You left a couple of leads behind. Your mother gave us the rest.’
‘My mother,’ Hector exclaimed. ‘How is my father? Do you know?’
‘He’s going to be fine,’ Xavi said. ‘Now we have to make sure that you are.’
‘How the hell can you do that? Battaglia is dead, Jacob is dead. How can we be safe from this person?’
‘You’re going to jail,’ I chuckled, ‘both of you. But it’ll be short term, until this hit man is caught. They’ll move you on from there. Right now, we’re going to get into Xavi’s car and get the hell out of here. There’s a police officer in Barcelona who’s very keen to meet you. Pack, as fast as you can.’
The big man stood. ‘Yes,’ he declared. ‘But first I have to take a leak. Where is it?’
Valentina pointed to the bedroom door. ‘Use the en suite.’
He left us, closing the door behind him.
‘I’ll tidy up in the kitchen,’ Valentina said, and went off to do just that, leaving Hector and me alone for the first time. I looked around the place, taking the chance to appraise it properly. It had a homely feel to it; the furniture was polished in places from regular use, and there were pictures, ornaments and sculptures all around. I spotted some nice paperweights on a sideboard; one was a snow scene, solid glass, not the kind you shake up. I picked it up to admire it, feeling its smooth solidity in my hand.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Hector asked, out of the blue. ‘You don’t live in Spain. Xavi’s mentioned you, sure, but I know he hadn’t seen you in years.’
I shrugged. ‘Simple, I’m here and he asked for my help. I had nothing else to do, and I love a challenge, so . . .’
‘I’m glad you did. I doubt if he’d have found us by himself, without you. These Russian people are very scary, señor. They seem to be capable of anything.’
‘You’d better believe . . .’
I was interrupted in mid-sentence by a chime from the front door. I followed Hector’s eyes as he gazed at a screen on the wall, and saw a woman in the frame, in uniform and carrying a mop and pail. There was a trolley behind her with an array of cleaning products.
‘Chalet maid,’ Hector said. ‘I’ll tell her to go away.’
I didn’t bother to watch him as he
went to the door and opened it. I was looking through the open doors at the spectacular view beyond, and so I didn’t even notice him backing into the room, not until a woman’s voice called out, ‘Donde es la mujer?’ Her accent was rough and definitely not Spanish.
I spun round, and as I did, I shouted, ‘Stay where you are, Valentina. Block the door if you can.’
The woman was small and dark-haired, with a broad forehead, above a sharp nose and a narrow, mean mouth. She shoved Hector backwards, with greater force than her slight frame suggested she possessed, sending him sprawling as she turned her silenced pistol on me. I know a bit about guns, having fired a few in my time, and I can spot a Russian weapon, as opposed to, say, a Glock, or a Smith and Wesson.
‘You should tell her to come out, mister,’ she hissed. ‘She will anyway, when she hears your scream after I’ve shot off your prick.’
As I’ve said, I don’t react well to threats, not even from a little woman with a gun. She was two or three yards away from me, but I was armed too. I was still holding the paperweight.
At that range I didn’t need to wind up to throw it; a strong flick of the wrist was all it took to send it flying towards her. It would have caught her in the right eye, but her reflexes were good. She jerked her head to her left, just in time, and so it only skidded off the side of her head.
By then I was halfway towards her, but only halfway, and I knew that wasn’t going to be enough. The seconds were flowing like treacle, and she had ample time to refocus her aim and to put a nice neat hole in any part of my body she chose. She would have too, if the bedroom door hadn’t opened at exactly that moment, distracting her yet again, as Xavi appeared. It was only by a fraction of a slow-moving second, but it was enough.
I grabbed her arm with my left hand, seized the pistol with my right, ripped it from her grasp and hurled it behind me into a corner of the room.
Last Resort Page 27