A Coffin For Two (Oz Blackstone Mystery)

by Quintin Jardine

  Nimbly, he slid over the gear lever into the passenger seat. As we left the autopista and neared the town, he grew animated. I suspected that he might even have been excited, but not about to let anyone know it.

  It might have been forty years since his last visit, but Davidoff could still recall the way into the centre of town. I had bought a street map the day before and found our destination, but it was almost redundant as the old man directed me, right, left, then right again.

  We parked in a public underground garage, emerging into the town’s main square at around eleven twenty, with plenty of time in hand for our date with Senora Compostella. The day was overcast, but it was still warm enough to sit in comfort at a pavement café. Davidoff nodded his approval when I asked for a cortado - expresso with a little milk - ordering the same, but with a shot of brandy added.

  As we passed the time, I briefed him on the subject of the interview and on the questions I had to put to our witness. The case centred around goods manufactured in Spain and supplied in Scotland, by a Scottish customer. The specification was in dispute, and Senora Compostella’s evidence was crucial to our client’s defence against the argument. If she gave us a strong enough response, there was a good chance that the action would never reach court.

  She was ready and waiting for us when we crossed the square at midday and made our way up to the lawyers’ office. I smiled as I walked into the room, not just to put the lady at her ease, but because all of a sudden it felt good to be back at work. This was my job, after all, wherever I did it. As I sat down opposite Senora Compostella, I realised that I had been away for long enough.

  I could tell right away that she was going to be a good one. There was something in the cast of her jaw and the steadiness of her gaze as she looked back at us, unfazed even by my bizarre translator, that told me she would not prevaricate. I was right. Every one of her answers was on the button, making it clear that the pursuer’s version of the circumstance was insupportable. Davidoff performed the translator’s duties impeccably, making certain that the witness understood each question before accepting and translating her response.

  The interview took forty minutes. When it was over, the lawyer’s secretary retired for half an hour, before reappearing with a Spanish transcript. Davidoff checked it against my English notes and nodded. ‘It’s okay. This is what she said.’

  Senora Compostella signed on the dotted line, we all shook hands and at one twenty-five Davidoff and I were back in the square, each of us puffed up with the pleasure of a job well done.

  ‘This job of yours, Senor Oz,’ said my temporary colleague, grinning at me, with his eye flashing wickedly. ‘It’s a nice way to live, yes. Meeting people all the time, persuading them to tell you the truth.’

  I nodded. ‘Not so long ago, I’d decided that it was a bore. But you’re right. There are worse ways to earn your bread.’

  ‘Speaking of bread,’ he said. ‘Follow me. My old body is crying out.’ He led me out of the square, walking so briskly that I had to stretch my legs to keep up with him. We turned into a side street, then an alley off it, which opened eventually into a small square. Davidoff’s eye lit up with pleasure as he looked into its furthest corner. ‘Ah! It is still there. Wonderful.’

  I followed him across to the narrow doorway above which a simple sign, ‘Al Forn’, swung slightly in a swirling breeze. We stepped inside, into what seemed to me to be just another smoke-stained old bar, with a counter down one side, and booths lined down the other. We were the only customers. As we slid into one of the fixed tables, Davidoff nodded to a middle-aged man, who stood at the end of the bar. He wore a red shirt and black trousers, with a yellow sash around his waist.

  The waiter nodded, curious but professionally polite. Davidoff spoke to him in Catalan. I could tell from his inflection that it was a question, and also that it had had an effect, as the waiter’s mouth dropped open in surprise. They conversed for a couple of minutes before, following a last guttural burst from my friend, the man nodded and headed off towards the kitchen.

  ‘I just asked him if he is Mario,’ said Davidoff, ‘and then I tell him that last time I was here he was six years old and playing on the floor where he is standing now. This place has been in the same family for ninety years. Almost since ...’ He stopped, and shook his head. ‘No more, though. Mario says that his son is in Barça, studying to be a lawyer.’ He spat on the floor. ‘Too many fucking lawyers today. Not enough tradition.’

  Mario reappeared a few minutes later, carrying a tray on which was piled tomato bread, melon and cured mountain ham. As he placed them before us, a very old woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. Unnoticed by Davidoff, she stared at him, almost in disbelief, with her hand at her mouth. Then with a shake of her head, she turned and was gone.

  I wondered about her, but the first slice of melon soon distracted me. ‘Davidoff?’ I asked between mouthfuls. ‘When you were here last, forty years ago, what were you?What were you doing?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘I came to this place to speak Catalan. When Franco was around, it was against the law for us to use our own language. But still we did. Here and in places like it, where everyone was known and where the police could not come unnoticed. We would come here and we would speak, sing, recite poetry and debate, all in Catalan. Here we kept the torch alight.’

  The eye misted over. ‘That’s history though. Noble, but still only history. Let’s you and I talk about today. Oz, I have a confession to make to you.’ It seemed to burst out from him. ‘You have a rival. I am captivated by Primavera. I am insanely jealous of you, and maybe I would kill you if it made it possible for me to take your place.’

  No adjective exists to describe my reaction. ‘Astonished’ certainly wouldn’t do it justice. I stared at him, and realised that he was deadly serious. ‘Well,’ I said, when I could, for there was something about his matter of fact declaration that had unnerved me for a second. ’Maybe I should kill you first.’

  He smiled. ‘Maybe you should, my boy. But don’t worry. I like you too much to do you harm. Primavera would not approve, anyway.’

  I gave my best ‘Who cares?’ shrug. ‘You never know. She’d be worth twice as much with me gone. Tell you what, I’m not afraid of competition. If you think you’ve got a chance, you have my permission to pay court to her. Best man wins and all that stuff.’

  ‘Hah,’ he laughed. ‘Maybe with two bulls such as us competing for her it is Primavera who will be the winner. I accept your gracious gesture. Let us see.’

  As we finished our ham, I glanced around. ‘Did Dali come here?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Davidoff. ‘He came here. He put his sign on the place. A moment.’ Beckoning me to follow, he slid out of the booth and stepped over to the end of the bar nearest the door. At its corner a square wooden pillar rose to the ceiling. It was as old as the building and glazed with the latest of many coats of varnish. The dark little man swung the door open, to see better, and began to peer at the far side of the column, feeling with his fingers. At last he nodded. ‘Here. Look.’

  I leaned in alongside him and looked at the space between his thumb and first finger as he pressed them against the wood. At first I couldn’t see it, until I moved my head and found the right angle of light. There it was. The distinctive thistle-like ‘D’, the ‘a’, the ‘1’ and the final sweeping ‘i’ with its accent mark, carved carefully into the column, varnished a dozen times since it was cut, perhaps, but still marking the place where he had been.

  I followed Davidoff back to our booth as Mario reappeared with coffee and brandy. ‘La cuenta,’ said the lithe old man, and a few minutes later the bill was presented; nine hundred pesetas. Peanuts, we couldn’t buy the ham for that in our butcher in L’Escala.

  I dropped a thousand peseta note, and another two hundred for luck, on to the table. ‘Good,’ said Davidoff. ‘Now come with me, and I will show you Dalí. You are my friend, so I will introduce you.’


  I was puzzled as I followed him out of Al Forn and back to the car park, but he said nothing more. He stayed silent, too, on the drive back up the autopista, his attention being focused on industrial developments along the way, all of which were clearly new to him, few of which met with his approval. ‘Ahhh,’ he muttered as we passed a factory on the Barcelona ring road, ‘they are raping Catalunya.’

  We were north of Girona when he told me to leave the autopista. ‘Come off here, and head for Palafrugell.’

  I did as I was told, picking up the C255 and following the signs for La Bisbal and beyond. Around fifteen minutes later, with the clock showing almost four-thirty, we had just past Flaça when Davidoff sat bolt upright in his seat. ‘Here! Look out, it’s coming. A turn to the right.’ I braked hard, and just in time, otherwise I would have driven past the tiny white arrow pointing to La Pera. The road was narrow, even by local standards, and twisty, a succession of blind corners leading up to a village which looked, as we approached, like an inland version of St Marti.

  ‘Go round it,’ barked Davidoff. ‘Take the road to Pubol.’ Again I did as I was told, circling La Pera and driving on for another kilometre, until the road petered out, ending in a circular, red ash car park. ‘Okay,’ he said, as we drew to a halt. ‘Now I will show you where you will find the heart of Dalí.’

  We stepped out of the big car, and once again I followed his lead, as we climbed up towards a collection of old buildings which barely qualified as a village. I could see a single street, and hear noise coming from what might have been a bar. There was a church tower, with a cross. Beyond them all there was another building; not huge, but imposing, and managing somehow to dominate the local skyline.

  Davidoff stopped at the foot of the street. ‘You have been to the place in Figueras, yes?’

  ‘The museum? Sure. It’s sort of obligatory, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged. ‘So they say. You will have seen Dali’s tomb there.’

  I nodded.

  ‘A tourist attraction! Like the whole museum. His grave is part of a fucking funfair to bring visitors to the town. Deutschmarks, francs, dollars, pounds; that’s what it is about. But that is not where the spirit of Dali belongs. This is where it lives today. Come on.’

  He bustled off, up the sloping street, with me on his heels as usual. We hadn’t gone far before he turned into an opening on the right and led me up a few wide stone steps. There was a turnstile at the top. Davidoff stopped and nodded towards it. I took the hint, and handed over a two thousand peseta note. The blonde girl in the booth gave me two tickets, my change and a smile. I would have returned it, but my guide pushed me through the gate, following behind.

  It was a solid stone building, three storeys high, and seventeenth-century, according to a stone over the main entrance on which the numbers ‘168’ could be seen, the fourth having faded with time. It would have been wrong to describe it as a country house, yet it fitted into a category of sorts. Davidoff told me what that was. ‘This is the Castle of Pubol,’ he announced. ‘Legend has it that Dali gave this place to Gala, his wife. It is true that there she lived her later years.’ He led me around the corner of the building, into a garden. While it couldn’t have been called overgrown, it was filled with head-high shrubs, set around two parallel paths which led up to a shallow ornamental pool.The impression was one of controlled wilderness.

  ‘Gala’s real name was Elena,’ said Davidoff. ‘She was older than Salvador, but from the moment in 1929 when they met, he was enamoured of her ... even though she was married to someone else at the time. They ran off, almost at once. They had to be together, for she was as crazy as Salvador was. Dali worshipped her, he painted her, he indulged her. She invades all his work, and pervaded all his life.

  ‘He promised her that one day he would give her a castle; then one day, by accident, he found this place. He bought it as a ruin, and he renovated it. He put his mark upon it.’ Davidoff nodded around him. I followed his glances. The pool was lined with countless images of some composer or other; I couldn’t put a name to him. Around the garden, amid the shrubbery, stood several huge statues of emaciated, distorted elephants.

  ‘When it was finished,’ he said, with feeling. ‘He gave it to her, as hers alone. And he promised her that he would come here only at her invitation.’ Davidoff chuckled sadly. ‘But she did not invite him often. She had other, younger tastes, and she was able to indulge them here, without him around.’

  He led me into the castle’s courtyard and up an iron stairway, installed over the original stone steps, which I guess had been judged unsafe. It led into the first floor, a series of interconnecting rooms.

  ‘This is where Gala lived her strange indulgent life. She would surround herself with young men. Like him, look.’ We were in the music room. He pointed to a large photo set on top of the grand piano. It showed an ageless, painted lady, beaming with lecherous pride like a decadent Roman empress, as, beside her, a blond, cherubic young man played the same instrument.

  We wandered through the fairly ordinary rooms, then up an internal stairway which led to the building’s highest level. It was darkened, and filled with a series of display cases, in which an array of clothing was on show. ‘There are some of her dresses,’ said Davidoff. ‘As you can see she was a small woman, like a bird, to the end.’

  ‘She is dead then?’ I asked, unsure of anything in this strange place.

  ‘Oh yes. More than ten years ago. Come, I will show you something else.’ He set off once more, at his loping half-trot. I followed down the stairs, out into the courtyard and back towards the garden. But not into it. He turned a sharp corner and as I stepped round behind him I found that we were in a garage; once a stable, I guessed, or even a kitchen. It was occupied.

  The car was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen; but then I have a thing about classic American automobiles. This one was a Cadillac, a lovely, big powder blue creature, with leather upholstery. Its body work shone under the neon light above, and it was roped off, to keep away the greasy fingers of tourists.

  ‘What ...’ I began.

  ‘Gala lived her last years here,’ said Davidoff. ‘But she did not die here. When she became ill she was taken, in this car, to Dali’s house in Port Lligat, near Cadaques. And when she passed away, she was simply put back into this same vehicle ... there, in that back seat there, and taken home.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Now I will show you where the spirit of Dali lies.’ He walked slowly now, almost on tiptoe, as we went back into the castle. To the left a doorway led off the courtyard. He led me through it, and down another flight of stairs, of washed stone like its walls and ceiling, and like the great cellar into which it opened.

  I looked at the crypt and I couldn’t speak. Maybe it wasn’t a lifetime first for Oz Blackstone, but it’s a pretty rare occurrence, nonetheless. The place was filled with a soft yellow glow from up-lighters, serving to emphasise the colour of the stone. All but a small section of the floor was roped off, but there was no need to move about in this chamber to know what it was.

  The far wall was curved, and there the light picked out a number of objects; statuary mostly, save for one. I’d never seen a giraffe before, not even in a zoo, but I guessed that this one was perhaps half-grown. It stood maybe eight feet tall, long neck crested by its small face, its spotted amber coat shining, stock-still; stuffed.

  It held my gaze until I was able to tear it away to look at what lay immediately before me. There were two long rectangular slabs, each ten feet long, four feet wide, six inches thick, flat and standing proud of the floor. In the stone to the right a simple cross had been cut. Its neighbour was unmarked.

  ‘This is the Delma,’ said Davidoff. ‘This is the grave of Gala, the inspiration of Dali.’

  ‘And this?’ I asked, pointing to the second tombstone.

  ‘This was for Dali himself. This is where it is said that Salvador declared he would be buried, but he never was.’

  ‘Why not?’ />
  My little friend shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Some say that he forgot how much he loved her. In the end, as always, he was as crazy as a bedbug. People could pour things into his mind. Whether this was poured or not no one knows, but when he died, the people of Figueras just announced that he had decided he should be buried in the museum there.’

  ‘But how could they do that?’

  ‘Easy. Because everything of Dali belongs to a foundation now. They have the pow and when Salvador died, well, it was god’s mouth to their ears. So in Figueras the flamboyant man lies. And Gala lies here by herself.’

  His face twisted into a grimace. ‘But what has happened since is not good. This place, her private home, has been opened as another museum, another tourist attraction. I do not like that. No one came here when she was alive without her asking them. Why should it be different now she is dead?’

  He crossed himself, barely noticeably, and motioned me towards the doorway. We left in silence. The sun was shining into the courtyard when we emerged. ‘Did you know Dali?’ I asked him.

  He smiled, for the first time since we had come to Pubol. ‘Everyone knew Dali. Dali belonged to all Catalunya. I guess he still does.’

  I looked across the yard. Gala’s castle even had its own souvenir shop. I wandered across and looked in at the postcards, posters, and other memorabilia. Among them was a large coffee table book of the artist’s life and work, translated into French and English.

  I went to pick one up, but Davidoff shook his head. ‘No good. I know more than you will find in there. Let’s go back to L’Escala. This has been a long day for me.’

  ‘Why not end it,’ I asked him, ‘by coming to our place for dinner? I have something I’d like to show you.’

  ‘Dinner? Yes. I would like that. First I must go back to Shirley’s and sleep for a little. I must be fresh if I am to pay court to Primavera.’

  31