Deadly Business (9 page)

‘’Cos you’ve poisoned him against him.’

‘Bollocks!’ I wasn’t at my most articulate. ‘Speaking of poison, who poured you the drink you’ve just had too much of? No,’ I said before she could reply, ‘that was a rhetorical question. I know bloody hell who did. In case you’ve forgotten in your euphoric state, you are recovering from chemotherapy for a form of cancer that is quite likely to damage your liver. The last thing that clown should be doing is giving you any alcohol, and as for getting you bloody trousered … Jesus Christ, Susie, you’d better employ a food-taster from now on.’

‘God,’ she said, contemptuously. ‘You really hate him, don’t you?’

‘I won’t deny that. I detest the man, I loathe him, and okay, hate will cover it as well. I know he’s spun you a story, Suse, because he phoned me a few hours ago, to tell me what it was, and to rub my nose in it … or so he thought. Everything I told you about his attempt to blackmail me is true, and I can even prove it.’

‘You might have to, girl, for Duncan says that if you repeat it,’ she hiccupped, ‘Duncan says we’re going to sue you for slander, or libel or whatever. He says we’ll put you in the fucking poorhouse, girl.’

‘Is that so?’ I laughed. ‘He thinks he can use your money to intimidate me? In that case, Mrs Culshaw, you tell your precious husband to bear this in mind. The version of me that he invented in his pathetic pseudo-novel might be a hell of a lot closer to the mark than he realises.’

‘What the fu … does that mean?’

‘It means,’ I told her, ‘that he has no idea who he’s taking on, or what could happen to him if he threatens my boy and me. Now, I’ve had enough of this shit. Call me tomorrow, Susie, when your headache subsides and you can think like the intelligent, rational woman that I know you are underneath all this nonsense. And please, for your children’s sake if nobody else’s, do not drink any more.’

Just as I ended the call, I heard her say, ‘Fuck off!’

Janet and Tom were waiting for me at the foot of the slope at the start of the boardwalk that runs behind the beach. Ben and Tunè were in the distance, heading for the music with another couple. ‘Who was that?’ my son asked.

I was still blazing mad, but sensible enough to realise that ‘Nobody’ would not cut it as an answer, so I told him the truth. ‘We were just having some girl talk,’ I added.

‘Did you ask where she is?’ Janet enquired. She hadn’t forgotten our earlier discussion.

Maybe my state of mind influenced me, but I’d like to think that I simply decided it would be plain wrong to deceive her further. ‘She’s in America,’ I told her. ‘Something came up and she had to go there.’

‘When she went away last winter and before that in the autumn, was she in America then too?’

There was something in her question, in its intonation, that told me she wasn’t buying any cover stories, not any more.

‘Yes, she was,’ I admitted, then went further. I owed Susie nothing and I wasn’t going to jeopardise my relationship with Tom’s highly intelligent half-sister, or him for that matter, by insulting them with any more attempted wool-pulling. ‘Your mother’s had a health problem,’ I told her. ‘She’s being looked after by a consultant in Monaco and he’s referred her to a clinic in America for treatment.’

She stood tall and looked me in the eye, directly, giving me no wiggle room. ‘She’s not going to die, like Dad, is she?’

‘Your father died from a heart condition that wasn’t detected until it was too late. Your mother’s illness has been diagnosed, and it’s being treated appropriately. Her doctors are very happy with her.’

I was dreading the next question:
is it cancer?
Thankfully, Janet seemed to decide that she had enough information and didn’t ask it. Instead she digested the news for a few seconds. ‘I won’t say anything to Jonathan,’ she said. ‘He worries about too many things as it is.’ Good kid; perceptive kid; caring kid.

I nodded. ‘He doesn’t need to know.’

‘No. Thanks for telling me, Auntie Primavera. Mum’ll tell me too, eventually. When she does, I won’t let on that I knew already.’

‘I don’t mind if you do. My roof, my rules, like we say. If it was me, I’d have told Tom, but we all have to make our own judgements on the big issues in life. So don’t go blaming her, will you?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know. That’s two secrets in one day.’ She looked at her semi-sibling. ‘Did you know that our dad had been married before he married either of our mums?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Mum told me, after he died and we came to live here. Grandpa Mac talks about her too. Hasn’t he ever mentioned her to you?’

‘I haven’t seen Grandpa Mac since I was seven,’ Janet murmured, ‘the summer we came here and he was here too. I’d like to go and see him in Scotland, but Mum won’t take me.’

That didn’t surprise me. While I get on with the entire Blackstone clan, I know that they don’t have a lot of time for Susie. I got over, more or less, the way she and Oz got together, but they never did, Ellie especially. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as the two of them.

‘In that case,’ I promised, ‘next time you’re here with us, I’ll make sure that Grandpa Mac’s here too.’

‘And Grandma Mary?’ Tom asked.

‘If she wants.’ I wasn’t sure that she would. Mac hadn’t said anything specific, but I wasn’t sure that he and his second wife were doing too well.

As I spoke, I realised that the crowds were gathering, and that I was way above their median age. ‘Enough of all that stuff,’ I declared, firmly. ‘Do you guys want to go to this gig or don’cha?’

They beamed, both of them, and Janet jumped up and down like a one-woman football team that had just won the cup.

‘Well, let’s go,’ I shouted, ‘before the band gets tired and the bar gets emptied.’

Not that there was any chance of either eventuality.

We headed along the boardwalk, towards the old Greek wall, and the bandstand. It might have been billed as a reggae night but the musicians were all Catalan, mostly local, and they were pretty damn good. We were all wearing flip-flops, but I removed mine and stowed them in my bag, making damn sure it was zipped. Ours is a peaceable place but there were bound to be strangers around. Spain is a lovely country, but be under no illusion, it has its fair share of casual, opportunist crime and then some, if you’re casual and careless enough to provide opportunities.

The beach bar was still well provisioned when we reached it but it was thronged, and selling out fast. Sensibly, they weren’t dispensing anything in glass, but I wasn’t fussy. I caught the owner’s eye and asked for three bottles of still water. I gave the kids one each and we wandered closer to the action. I recognised the bass player and one of the guitarists, and the girl with the mike was familiar too. They’d switched from reggae into a set of gipsy-style music; it was earthy, to say the least, and the singer knew all the actions. For a moment I wondered whether it was suitable for twelve-year-olds, then Tom laughed at one of the lines and I realised that a frontier had been crossed somewhere without my noticing.

But I did notice something else, or rather someone. The bloke from the square had made his way to the concert too, or maybe he’d just been curious and followed the noise … or maybe he’d followed us.
Nonsense, Primavera
, I scolded myself mentally,
all that crap with Culshaw’s making you paranoid
.

The one certainty was that the man was as smitten by the singer as every other guy with a pulse in the audience, even my son by the looks of it. With his attention elsewhere I was able to study him more closely than in the restaurant. Yes, he was probably early to mid-forties, quite tall, a little over six feet, with a fairly muscular build under his striped short-sleeved shirt, and he hadn’t been in the area for very long, for he was still a bit of a paleface. Plus he was British; I’ve lived in the village for long enough to make an educated guess at individual nationalities. Sometimes the clue is in height, with the Dutch for example; others, it’s how their kids are dressed, for example if a boy’s wearing a blue football shirt with a rooster crest and the name ‘Ribery’ on the back, then he’s either French or confused. With the Brits, it’s their pasty or pink faces and their general deportment. That falls into two categories. There are those who think that everywhere is a colony and that therefore they have first dibs on tables, waiters, etc., and who assume that if they speak English very slowly and very loudly they will be understood. Then there are those who are diffident to the point of nervousness, and completely out of their comfort zone in any country that doesn’t serve warm dark beer or tea in large earthenware pots. The man I was looking at was harder to place than most, but I decided that he belonged in the former category, if only because he didn’t look as if he had ever been nervous in his life.

Therefore, summed up, mystery man was a middle-aged British citizen, a stranger on his own in a place that almost without exception attracts families or older couples. A widower, perhaps, or a divorcee, but certainly not gay from the way he was admiring the vocalist. Profession? You can’t tell a book by the cover. I have seen men shuffling along the beach in the sort of swim shorts that should never have left the factory, unshaven and with at least three over-spilling bellies, and learned later that they were corporate lawyers, hedge fund managers, surgeons or whatever. But Mr Brit was well dressed in his expensive tourist shirt and trousers with a discreet Lacoste alligator just below the waistband, and he had the air about him of someone who had no need or desire to dress down from his day job.
Simple, Primavera, he’s a rep
.

I nodded at that verdict, at the very moment when the singer took a break and he glanced across and caught me looking at him. He smiled, and started to move in my direction.
Oh shit
, I thought, and harboured the notion of using the kids as a human shield but they’d drifted a couple of metres away from me, closer to the stage. All I could do, other than grab them and beat an undignified, not to mention cowardly, retreat, was to stand there and wait, pretending that I was ignoring his approach.

‘Primavera?’ Ben Simmers’ call took me unawares. I turned towards him and realised from his expression that he had taken in the whole thing. His raised eyebrows, and his concern, asked, quite clearly, whether I wanted him to intervene, but I shook my head briefly.

The guy drew closer; he was smiling and didn’t pose any threat in such a throng, but still, I felt a pang of something that might have been alarm, if not outright fear. Rarely do I feel vulnerable, but I did then, because I had this continuous nagging feeling that I was missing something.

He stopped, standing in front of me, no closer than the kids were, sorry, kid, because Tom had left Janet’s side and was standing in front of me, a five foot four inch, fifty-nine kilo bundle of something serious.

As I put a hand on his shoulder, the newcomer spoke. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Slightly Irish accent, but I still couldn’t pin him down.

‘If that’s a pub quiz starter,’ I replied, ‘the answer is, it’s a line from
It Started with a Kiss
, by Hot Chocolate, early nineteen eighties. If it’s a chat-up line, it’s crap and you’d be well advised to desist, because quite apart from my son here, there are at least three guys watching you right now who would be happy to take you to the top of the old Greek wall and chuck you in the sea if they thought you were annoying me.’ I paused. ‘If, on the other hand, it’s a straight question, then no, I don’t have a clue.’

‘You’re Liam Matthews!’ Janet’s exclamation cut in out of the blue. ‘You were a friend of our father’s. You were in some films with him and you came to visit us once when we lived in Scotland, beside Loch Lomond. I wasn’t very old at the time, but I remember you. Don’t you, Tom? It was just after you came to live with us.’

‘Got it in one,’ the former stranger laughed, as Tom shook his head. ‘You can only have been about … what … four, then. I didn’t meet your brother that day, though, just you. You wandered in when your dad and I were talking and he introduced me, and made you shake my hand, like a little lady. By God, but you’ve grown up. You’re a proper lady now, no mistake; he’d have been very proud of you, as I’m sure Susie is.’

Liam Matthews! Liam bloody Matthews. A name from way, way, in my past; it must have been almost fifteen years back. Finally I remembered him, and the first time I’d ever seen him. It was in Barcelona, and I was covered in blood.

After Oz left me for Jan, and went back to Scotland, I stayed on in our apartment in St Martí and took a job as a nurse in the Trueta hospital in Girona. A few months later, I was in the near-legendary JoJo’s Bar in L’Escala one night when the telly ran an ad for a wrestling show in Barcelona, and who was doing the promo but Oz. The shock knocked me off my bar stool.

The nutter had got himself involved with a Glasgow-based outfit called the Global Wrestling Alliance. Ostensibly he was their ring announcer, but as it turned out he was really working on an undercover investigation into a series of attempts at sabotage. Whatever, I couldn’t let the circus leave town without seeing for myself; I booked a ticket and drove down.

It wasn’t my intention to meet him … well, that’s what I told myself and still do … but there was another serious incident that very night. One of the wrestlers was shot, yards away from me, in the middle of the ring, and I wound up in there doing some battlefield first aid. The man’s name was Jerry Gradi, and happily it still is, because they reckon I saved his life. I’m still on Jerry’s Christmas card list and he’s on mine, but he’s the only one of that crew I kept in touch with.