A Coffin For Two (Oz Blackstone Mystery)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘He said that, but is it true?’

  ‘It has to be,’ said Davidoff, growling with what I took to be his distaste for Shirley’s son. ‘You have found two links with Ronald Starr; the auction, which you have just told me was a fake, and now the picture above Senora Shirley’s bed. In each, the name of Trevor Eames comes up. Yes, I have to believe that he sold John the picture of Cadaques.’

  Prim took his arm. I saw the muscles of his wrist and hand tense under her touch. ‘Is it possible that John was the man at the auction?’ she asked. ‘Could he, or he and Eames together, have killed the real Ronnie Starr and stolen his pictures?’

  Davidoff’s eye narrowed, for several seconds as if he was considering her question. Then he shook his head, vigorously. ‘I don’t think so. John is not the man to be involved in something like this. Not that he is a paragon, you understand; he just lacks imagination and guts.

  ‘Oz,’ he said suddenly, ‘this impostor at the auction, how was he described to you?’

  ‘About forty, clean-shaven, dark hair beginning to go grey, ordinary looking, average height.’

  ‘It was not John, then, for sure. John is fair, like his mother, and almost two metres tall. Trevor’s partner was someone else.’

  Something in his voice made me ask him, ‘Do you know Eames?’

  Davidoff shrugged. ‘I see him around, I know who he is, I know where he lives, but I would not say I know him. I would not want to know him; he’s an asshole.’ He paused. ‘I tell you this, though. He approached John to sell him the picture, not the other way around. John, he is a fucking philistine. He talks big but he wouldn’t know a Picasso from a bull-fight poster, and he wouldn’t know where to go to buy a picture like that. Yes,’ he nodded, ‘if you find Eames and you make him talk, you know all the answers.’

  Our friend paused, and he looked at me, hard. ‘But there is one thing, Oz. You never tell me why you believe Ronnie Starr is dead.’

  So I told him the whole story, from the beginning to my meeting with Miguel’s wife’s nephew. Davidoff’s face grew darker by the minute.

  ‘These people,’ he snarled. ‘So fucking selfish. Nothing matters to them but the tourists. To treat a poor boy’s body like that. I am ashamed that they are Catalan. And you, Oz, that you were involved in it. I am ashamed of you, too.’

  Right then, the last of the sybarite Oz Blackstone vanished, and Mac the Dentist’s son was finally back, imperfect as before, but with his old standards of decency. For right then, for the first time, I was ashamed of myself too.

  Davidoff stood up, bent over Prim and kissed her, on both cheeks, and lightly on the lips. ‘Good night, my dear one,’ he said. ‘I think I better go now. I hope I have not soured your enjoyment of the night with my lecture.’

  He looked at me, over his shoulder. ‘Don’t take it to heart, my boy. I suppose you felt that you owed this Miguel a favour. If you feel that you are in someone’s debt it’s difficult to say no, sometimes. Come to think of it, to recognise a debt which you owe is a virtue. Take that from me.’

  We sat in silence for a while, after he had gone back to the summerhouse. Then we left too.

  ‘He’s right, Oz,’ said Prim as she drove us home. ‘It would have been difficult to say no.’

  I shook my head. ‘It would have been easy. No. There you are, that’s how easy it is.’

  ‘Well, it’s done now. There’s no point in belated guilt. Look back on how the rest of the evening went. We’ve got proof of a connection between Trevor Eames and the real Ronald Starr. That can’t be bad, can it?’

  ‘No, that was a surprise. It should help us persuade Eames to talk, when we find him. Hell, we may even force him to go to the police. It’d be as well if Starr’s body turns up before then, though.’

  I glanced across at her. ‘How about your evening? Has he proposed yet?’

  ‘Don’t be childish,’ she said, grinning. ‘We had another long talk, about life and the meaning of the universe. In some ways I’m getting to know a lot about Davidoff, in others I still know nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Primavera paused, reflecting. ‘Well, for example, I know that he has two homes. I asked him where he lives when he’s not at Shirley’s. He said that he has somewhere on the coast, and somewhere else, a very little place, in the country. But he didn’t tell me where either one was.

  ‘I asked him what he did for a living, and if he still did it. He told me that he had been involved with his family business, and still is occasionally, on an advisory basis. He told me that the family had money, more than he needed. Yet he didn’t tell me what that business was. I tried, but he changed the subject.

  ‘Instead he began to tell me that I was wasted on a young guy like you. He held my hand, looked at me with that eye and said that I should drink deep from the well of experience, rather than sip from the pool of youth.’

  I whistled, loudly, over the sound of the engine. ‘Wow! I’m going to write that line down, because when I’m his age I won’t be able to trust myself to remember it. He didn’t tell you how old he is, did he?’

  She laughed, softly. ‘No. He didn’t throw out any more hints, either. He did tell me, though, that every day he sleeps for at least ten hours, swims for two kilometres or walks five, drinks two litres of water and eats three bananas. He also does forty press-ups and fifty sit-ups before he showers, shaves and dresses.’

  ‘Is he regular as well?’

  ‘He didn’t say, but I’d guess he is. I am a nurse, you know. I can spot the signs of constipation.’

  ‘How about the pecker department?’ I asked her, flippantly. ‘Did he raise that, so to speak?’

  She frowned at me. ‘No he did not. I told you, he’s a gentleman.’

  ‘He’s a fucking old rogue, that’s what he is.’

  ‘He’s a remarkable man; seriously. We know he’s over seventy-five, at least. Physically he doesn’t look more than mid-sixties, and he has a mind like a razor.’

  I grunted. ‘Old bastard. He’d better watch he doesn’t cut himself.’

  Primavera laughed like a peal of bells. ‘I love it. You try to laugh it off, but you’re jealous!’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’ I didn’t want to get into a discussion about jealousy, so, like Davidoff, I retreated from the subject.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, changing my tone, ‘something occurred to me tonight, after I saw that picture. There may be a way we can find out more about Ronnie Starr; get a clue to what he did while he was here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll make another phone call. It’ll mean I’m overdrawn in the favour department, but I’ll do it nonetheless.’

  40

  I gave Eddie half an hour to settle in and have his first coffee of the day, then made the call, at around ten-thirty our time.

  ‘Christ, Oz,’ he barked by way of greeting. ‘What the f ... is it this time? I thought we were even.’

  ‘We were. After this, I’ll owe you one. The other day, you said there had been no action on the guy Starr’s cards for about a year. I’d like to know what the last action was; where the cards were used and when.’

  ‘You wh ...’There was a long silence. I was relieved when it turned out to have been pregnant. ‘You are sure that this guy is kaput, aren’t you, China?’

  ‘Dead certain, you might say. It is important, Eddie, honest.’

  ‘Okay.’ There was another pause, shorter this time. ‘When are you due home again?’ my source asked.

  ‘Inside a month. But I need this before then.’

  ‘Relax, I’ll call you back tonight. But when you come home, I want a case of beer. Good stuff, mind, none of your weak French crap.’

  I laughed. At Spanish prices, if Eddie’s information paid off, I would be getting off lightly.

  Prim and I put in a conscientious day’s work, gathering information from the Consulate, and from the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce. I even attempted a conversation in Spanish, an
d was astonished to find that I could make sense of what I was told.

  It was just after seven when the phone rang. ‘Forget the beer,’ said Eddie. ‘I want a case of Rioja. Yes?’

  I sighed. My pal wasn’t a quick thinker, but he always got there eventually. ‘Okay, you’re on. It’d better be worth it, though.’

  ‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘Your man’s Visa was last used in Spain on the twelfth of September last year. He bought petrol with it, in a place called Verges. He seems to have taken his car over there.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘You don’t know ...’

  Eddie laughed. ‘He bought it on finance three years ago. The last payment was made in July last year. A Renault Five, L 213 NQZ. Who’s a clever boy, then?’

  ‘You are mate, you are. What else?’

  ‘The Mastercard was used last on the twenty-fifth of September, last year again. He paid a restaurant bill with it in a place called Pubol. That’s P, U, B, O, L. He signed for a debit of seven thousand pesetas. How much is that in real money?’

  I barely heard the question. ‘Oh,’ I replied at last, ‘about thirty-five quid. What was the restaurant called?’

  ‘It doesn’t say, just Ristorante.’

  ‘How about other debits?’

  ‘The three before that were in a bar stroke café in a place called La Pera. Need any more?’

  I beamed across the table at Prim, who was watching me intently. ‘No, Eddie. That’s great. You’ve earned that Rioja, China. In fact we might even throw in the beer as well!’

  41

  ‘Eddie may have turned up trumps,’ said Primavera, looking across the breakfast table as I crunched my way through half a xapata filled with boiled eggs, ‘but we’d better think what use we can make of his information.’

  Our successes of the day before had dulled the memory of our confrontation on Tuesday. Breakfast was a fun time once more, and play had resumed as well in other areas. The weather seemed to have responded to our change in mood. It was warmer than it had been; well into autumn, we could still feel the heat in the morning air.

  ‘I’ve already done some thinking along those lines,’ I said, when I could. I wiped the flour from the xapata from the corners of my mouth. ‘In fact, when you were out getting the bread, and the eggs were boiling, I made a couple of phone calls.

  ‘Ronnie Starr bought his petrol in Verges. He picked up the tab for at least one guest, maybe two, in Pubol on September twenty-five, and he seems to have been a regular at that bar in La Pera.

  ‘All of that indicates that he was based somewhere in that area. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’ Prim nodded.

  ‘In that case, if we can find out where he lived, we might find other people who knew him, and who can tell us more about him. Maybe someone will give us a lead to the phoney Starr.’

  ‘Unless one of them is the phoney Starr.’

  I grimaced. ‘That had occurred to me. We’ll just have to be careful about the questions we ask.’

  ‘Why don’t we say that I’m his cousin and that we’re out here trying to find him?’ she suggested.

  ‘Good idea. People are more likely to talk to us on that basis. Well done.’

  She nodded. ‘Don’t mention it. Now, how are we going to find out where he lived?’

  ‘We can ask around the hostels. But he was out here from the end of the academic year to the autumn. That’s three months, at least. Isn’t it more likely that he would have rented an apartment?’

  ‘At summer prices?’

  ‘It’s cheaper inland. A small place in the area in which we’re interested wouldn’t cost you very much. I thought we might ask around the rental agencies in Verges, Flaça and La Bisbal, so I phoned Maggie and got some numbers from her.’

  Prim looked at me doubtfully. ‘That’s fair enough; it’s logical. But you’ve got an orderly mind. Couldn’t Starr have done what we did? Stopped off somewhere and found a place to stay by accident? If you looked at our Visa slips what name would you find most often?’

  I smiled at her. ‘Casa Miñana.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, patiently. ‘Which is next door to our apartment. So ...’

  ‘So the first place we should look for Starr is La Pera. Christ, Prim, I think I’ll give up the detecting game. You’re far better at it than I am.’

  Primavera laughed. ‘You’ve always said you’re an enquiry agent, not a detective. Maybe you should stick to that and leave the detecting to me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘In that case, get out of those very fetching shorts and into your raincoat, trilby and gumshoes.’

  She grinned across the table. ‘Okay. But only if you’ll help me.’

  42

  It was lunchtime when finally we arrived at the café-bar in what passes for the main street in La Pera. It wasn’t difficult to find, being the only one in town. Prim had stopped short of the detective kit, settling instead for a cotton skirt and the style of white blouse in which, on occasion, she could stop heavy traffic.

  The owner was fifty-something, a short, round-shouldered man, with a bad shave and greased hair. The sleeves of his creased, blue-and-white striped shirt were rolled up and he smelled of stale tobacco. When we walked in he had been deep in conversation with his only customer.

  He leered at Prim as we took two seats at the bar. I could sense her displeasure, but she kept a smile set on her face.

  I ordered a café con leche para mi, and a copa de vino blanco para la senora, in perfectly acceptable Spanish. The man gave an approving nod, and set a dish of small sweet olives before us as he prepared the drinks. I glanced around his café. There were bench seats along the wall between the two doors, and at the far end, beyond the bar, a dozen tables waited in vain for diners. The place was badly in need of a paint job, but it was clean and tidy. It reminded me a lot of Al Forn, in Tarragona. I wondered how long it had been in the same family, and whether there was another generation ready to take over.

  The man came back with the coffee and wine. I thanked him and plundered my Spanish once more. Slowly and carefully I told him that we were from Escocia, and that we were looking for someone who had been in La Pera a year before, a cousin of la senora aqui. He frowned at me and replied in Catalan, a long rambling sentence.

  I couldn’t understand a word, but I knew what he was saying all right because I had encountered the same attitude many times before. He was telling me, ‘I’ll respond to your pidgin Spanish to sell you food and drink, but if you want information from me, boy, you’d better be able to talk to me in my own language.’ It can be put much less subtly than that. In Port Lligat, there is a notice painted on the wall beside the jetty which reads: ‘Only Catalan spoken here.’

  Before I could even glare at the guy, Prim saved the day. She smiled at him and asked him the same question in perfect French, her eyes wide and beguiling. The man looked at her for a second or two, and was duly beguiled. He replied, in French as good as hers, even if his accent was a bit guttural.

  They spoke quickly, so I couldn’t follow all of it. When they were done, and when the man had retired to resume his conversation with his crony, she filled in the blanks. ‘He remembers my cousin Ronnie,’ she said. ‘I was right. My friend says that Starr arrived here last summer. He remembers him very well because he spoke Catalan. Not many foreigners do. He had a meal here, and he took a room above the bar for one night.

  ‘Next day he told him that he liked the place and wanted to find an apartment so that he could stay longer, somewhere with a little space for him to paint. At the end of this street there’s a tabac and liquor store run by a Senora Sonas. There’s an apartment above it which she used to rent out. It was empty at the time and so my friend sent him there.

  ‘He took it, and he was here all summer. In the autumn, he said, he just went away; back to Wales, he assumed. He says that Senora Sonas will be able to tell us everything about my cousin Ronald.’

  I squeezed her hand. ‘Bullseye,’ I said. ‘Did you ask
him if Starr ever came here with friends?’

  ‘Of course I did. He says that he remembers him being here a couple of times with deux Anglais. One of them was a bald man, smallish, heavily tanned. He can’t remember anything about the other one. Not young, not old, well dressed; that’s all.’

  I looked at my watch. It was almost two o‘clock. ‘Sod it,’I said. ‘I suppose we’ll have to wait to see Senora Sonas. She’ll be shut for the afternoon.’

  Prim shook her head. ‘No. He says she doesn’t close. The people here smoke a lot, it seems. They like the tabac to be open all day long.’ She finished her drink and the last of the olives. ‘Come on,’ she said, waving goodbye to her new pal, ‘let’s go and see her.’

  As far as I can see there’s never quite enough room inside Spanish village liquor stores, for some of the stock is always lying out in the street; big carafes of dodgy wine, plastic blocks of spring water, much of it drawn free from the village well and sold to the unwary, and cases of beer, all set out on the ground, well below the height of the average dog’s cocked leg. A tip: if you choose to drink straight from the bottle in Spain, always give the top a really good wipe first.

  The sign above the door read ‘Bodegas Sonas’, not that there was much chance of us getting it wrong. La Pera is not a shopper’s paradise. I suppose I was expecting the female equivalent of the man in the café-bar, and I guess Prim was too. The reality took us by surprise.

  Inside the store was a tall woman, in her mid thirties, with jet black hair and skin which looked rich and creamy even in the dim light of her shop. It’s my observation that there is a time in the lives of members of the human species, in their early fifties, when everything seems to head south at once. Senora Sonas was a long way short of that. She was in her prime. As I looked at her, tall and dark-haired, I thought at once of Jan, and felt a momentary pain.

  Prim took the lead this time. Speaking French, as she had in the bar, she explained, untruthfully of course, who she was, and what she and I were looking for.