Inhuman Remains (13 page)

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Authors: Quintin Jardine

Tags: #Fiction, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Scotland

BOOK: Inhuman Remains
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At another time, when I didn’t have Caballero on the other side, and the gun, which I saw him tuck into his belt. I went with them meekly. They led me along the corridor, then to the right to a lift door that I hadn’t seen in my time there. Lidia pushed the call button. Nobody spoke as we waited; they had what they wanted and I knew there was no point in winding them up.
When the lift arrived, it was occupied by a chambermaid, with her trolley. She looked at us in surprise as she pushed it out. ‘This is the staff lift,’ she said, in a hard accent that told me she was from Ecuador, Guatemala or another of the Latin countries that provide Spain with much of its cheap labour.
‘City council,’ Caballero snapped, and she backed off, cowed. I guessed that she had read it as a threat, since not all of those migrant workers have legal status.
We rode the lift down to the ground floor. It opened into an area of the hotel that seemed to be closed to the public; the floor wasn’t carpeted and cleaning implements were propped against the wall in a corner. My captors must have studied the place on a plan in the city offices, I guessed, for they seemed to know exactly where they were, and where to go.
They walked me to a door and through it into another corridor, wider and with a fire exit at the other end. As we reached it Caballero raised his right foot and kicked the crash bar, releasing it and opening the door outwards into the street. It was still deserted. Just my luck to be snatched at the hour when all of Sevilla was eating or asleep.
The big black car was almost directly opposite us: I was close enough to recognise the Chrysler badge on the back, and the model number, 300C. At least I was being kidnapped in style, I thought . . . until Caballero reached into his pocket, produced a key and pressed it. The boot popped open. ‘You get in there,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute!’ I protested involuntarily.
‘Don’t worry, you won’t suffocate. I don’t want you to see where we’re going, plus I’m not having you wave at every police car we pass on the way there.’ He dropped the key into his jacket’s right-hand pocket, took the gun from his belt, handed it to Bromberg, on my right, and grabbed my upper arms, as if he expected me to resist being put into that dark oven.
I probably would have too, even if things hadn’t started to happen very fast. Suddenly, I was aware of a new shape, moving just at the edge of my peripheral vision, and behind Lidia. I saw a hand clamp on the wrist that held the gun, and then a flash of metal. She screamed and dropped the weapon. As she did, Caballero loosened his grip on me, enough for me to wrench myself free and to dig my left elbow into the pit of his stomach. I heard him gasp as I spun round on my undamaged foot, dipping a little to allow me to bring my right forearm up, hard, between his legs, and to a very firm conclusion. The gasp turned into the sort of squeal of pain that I’m told no woman can make, or even understand. As he began to fold into himself, I snatched the pistol from the ground, dropped it into the bag that, by some miracle, was still slung over my left shoulder, and then grabbed him. Quickly, I retrieved the key from his pocket, along with a cell phone I found there, then pushed him, bundling him into the car’s capacious boot, the prison he had planned for me. ‘Sorry, mate,’ I hissed, as I slammed the lid shut, ‘but I’m told you won’t suffocate.’

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Bromberg was on the ground, writhing and whimpering, her hands clasped to her right buttock, from which blood was seeping, turning her white shorts a deep red. The idea of helping her didn’t even occur to me. Instead, I looked at the Chrysler’s key, saw which button released the locks and pressed it.
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As I slid behind the wheel, I called to my rescuer. ‘Get in!’ He had become a spectator, but he did as I ordered, while I found the ignition slot, and looked at the controls. I was vaguely aware, from an audible thud, that he had tossed something heavy into the back, but not of him, not at that point: all my concentration was devoted to flight.

By happy chance, my Jeep’s a Chrysler too, and automatic, so everything was familiar. I fired up the engine, hit the brake-release pedal, slammed the gearstick into drive rather more firmly than is necessary and drove off.
‘Thanks,’ I said to my passenger, then turned to take a proper look at him, as the first thumps and muffled shouts came from the boot.
He smiled back at me; a modest smile, yet one that was on the edge of being dazzling. ‘No problem, cousin,’ said Frances Ulverscroft McGowan.
Eighteen
‘
F
rank!’ I screamed. ‘What the . . .’
That was what Mark Kravitz had been saying when my phone went dead. If Frank’s mother had been kidnapped, that meant he was still alive, and on the loose.
‘Take a left at the end of this street,’ he said firmly, before the volcano I felt building within me had a chance to erupt. ‘We have to get out of the city centre and dump this thing before that woman sends the police, or anyone else, after us.’
‘I think you could find that the police are after her,’ I told him, ‘but you’re right in principle. I have to get to the airport: I’ve a plane to catch.’
‘It’s best if you miss it,’ he said. ‘Okay, go straight ahead till you get to the next junction, then left again, right at the lights and across the river.’
I concentrated on the road and on his instructions until we were on the other side of the Río Guadalquivir and well on our way into the southern suburbs. I could drive without too much discomfort, I’d discovered, if I made a point of keeping the pedal pressure on the ball of my foot.
‘Who was that creature?’ Frank asked, breaking the silence.
‘You don’t know?’
‘Never seen her before.’
‘She’s your replacement as director and sales manager of the Hotel Casino d’Amuseo. Where is it, by the way, the site of this mythical playground for the rich and famous?’
‘We’re on the way there now. Jeez,’ he mused, ‘that’s Lidia, is it? And I just stabbed her in the arse.’ I was reminded of something I’d forgotten, that he had inherited the vestiges of a Scottish accent from Auntie Ade.
‘Why did you do it, Frank?’ I demanded. ‘Why did you get involved with another fraud? Did you like being in jail? Do you like torturing your mother? For that’s what it amounts to.’
‘Please, Prim, later. I’ll tell you the whole story later. For now, take a right at this next fork then keep on that road for twenty-five kilometres or so.’
‘Where will that take us?’
‘I’ve told you, to the land where the casino was supposed to be.’
‘Whose land is it? Yours?’
Frank laughed. ‘As if I’d be that dumb. No, it belongs to him in the boot. There used to be a chemical works on it, in his father’s time, until there was an accident and it was shut down. The site’s been contaminated ever since, no use for agriculture or anything else.’
‘But all right for a leisure complex?’
‘That was the idea.’
‘And a great one it was,’ I retorted sarcastically. ‘Now here you are on the run, you’ve pulled me into it, I’ve had to send my son to safety and, to cap it all, your mother’s been kidnapped.’
He sat bolt upright. ‘Mum? Kidnapped?’
‘That’s how it looks. I left her at my place, with Tom. He went to walk the dog this morning and when she came back she was gone. The house was like the
Mary
bloody
Celeste
.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the rest behind him. Another indistinct shout came from behind us. ‘Shut up!’ Frank yelled. He picked up the gun from the central console, where I’d laid it, and fired a shot into the back seat, behind me, more or less in line with where Caballero’s feet must have been. Twin sounds echoed, from the silencer and from the upholstery, as the bullet ripped through it. All the way through? I waited for a scream but none came, only silence. I found myself hoping that the space wasn’t big enough for the guy to have twisted himself round.
I drove in silence after that, for I had something new to consider. I had marked my cousin down as something of a wimp, but it was all too clear that I’d been wrong. He’d bladed Bromberg without hesitation. He’d fired a shot that might have killed Caballero, for all we knew at that point, without even thinking about it. There was a dangerous side to him, and no mistake.
‘There’s a turning just ahead,’ he said, plucking me from my thoughts, ‘on the right. The road gets a bit bumpy after that, but follow it. It won’t be too comfortable for our passenger, but he’s asked for more than that.’
He was right about the track. The big car had luxury suspension, but even with that we were bounced about in our seats.
‘I’d have been back there if he’d had his way,’ I growled, through clenched teeth. Then I frowned as the obvious question finally forced its way out. ‘Frank, how come you showed up at the hotel in the nick of time, so to speak?’
‘I’ve been on the look-out for you,’ he replied, ‘since you left that ferocious message in my voicemail.’ He chuckled. ‘By the way, I do know what an orchidectomy is.’
‘You picked that up? So why didn’t you call me back?’
‘I’ve been keeping radio silence on the mobile. These things can be traced, you know, as easily as you can pin down a land-line call, maybe even more so. I knew you’d be flying down, and I could guess from where, so I staked out all the incoming Barcelona traffic at the airport, spotted you, and followed you, right to your hotel.’
‘So why didn’t you do the obvious and come in? Didn’t you want to be found?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t that. I couldn’t be sure they weren’t following you too.’
‘They?’
He held up a hand. ‘Later, Prim. Like I said, the whole story, I promise.’ He stopped, then pointed ahead. ‘We’re here. Draw up by that building.’
We were in flat, arid open country, several hundred hectares by the look of it, well enough for all the website claimed was going to happen on the site. All around there was nothing to be seen, save for a big brick barn, with sliding iron doors made of corrugated iron and a pitched roof. I parked beside it as instructed.
‘You’ve been here before?’ I asked, as we stepped out into the blazing hot afternoon.
‘Sure, with him.’
‘Why are we here now? This doesn’t exactly look like a getaway route.’
‘Ah, but it is, cuz.’ He slid one of the barn doors open. It creaked, but moved easily, for its size. ‘Caballero keeps a few toys here: he’s got a quad bike, a few trail motorcycles and, of course, a four-by-four. I think we’ll borrow that for the next stage of our trip.’
I looked inside. Sure enough, the barn contained an array of recreational vehicles. ‘And what about him?’
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ He reached inside the car and pressed a button. The boot catch popped and the lid swung open.
Caballero’s eyes screwed tight as the sunlight hit him. His face was beetroot and he was soaked with sweat. The cream suit would never be the same again. He groaned, and made to get out until Frank waved the gun in his face.
‘Stay where you are,’ he snapped, in Spanish. ‘You’re getting no kindness from me, you bastard. Prim, do me a favour and get my rucksack.’
That was what he’d chucked into the back seat as he’d got into the car outside the hotel, a black bag with a single shoulder strap. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ve found it.’ It was weighty; I wondered what the hell he had in it.
‘Give it to me, please.’
Again, I did as he asked. He unzipped it, took out a bottle of water, and held it up for Caballero to see. ‘This is for you.’ He placed it on the ground, then slammed the boot lid shut once more. ‘Eventually.’
He walked round the car and shot out the tyres, one by one. ‘Can’t have him coming after us,’ he explained, as if I was a simpleton.
The keys were in the ignition of the four-by-four, a silver Suzuki Grand Vitara. Frank took the wheel. ‘No offence,’ he said, as we reversed out of the barn, ‘but I know where we’re going, so I’ll drive.’
‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. ‘That was a nice trick,’ I added, ‘bursting his tyres. But won’t he come after us on one of the bikes just as easily, once he gets out of there?’
‘True,’ Frank admitted. He stopped the car, got out and went back into the barn. I watched him as he picked up a container, as he splashed its contents over all of the machines inside, and as he took a book of matches from his pocket, lit one, used it to ignite the others, and tossed it on to the quad bike. Finally, almost as an afterthought, he threw the gun inside too. As he slid the door closed I could see the flames beginning to bloom like roses in an accelerated frame-by-frame nature film.
‘He will get out of there, won’t he?’ I asked, as we drove off.
‘Sure. Those things have a manual release inside the boot. They’re American made: I suppose they fit it in case you’re snatched by Big Tony Soprano and the boys.’
‘What if he doesn’t know that?’
Frank gave me the smile again. I felt a tremor as I realised just how much it reminded me of Oz. ‘Then that’ll be just too damn bad for him,’ he said.
Nineteen
‘
W
hat’s the game plan?’ I asked, as we headed back towards the city. ‘Indeed, do you have a game plan?’

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