Inhuman Remains (25 page)

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Authors: Quintin Jardine

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

BOOK: Inhuman Remains
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But what the hell was it? When I was in my teens I won a pen from the
Scotsman
prize crossword, but I couldn’t begin to crack that clue. Nor had I any idea of how to go about solving it. Life and bloody death, Auntie Ade was trying to tell me something, and I didn’t get it. I stood there behind the curtains, my face screwed up in concentration, thinking, thinking, thinking, achieving nothing, nothing, nothing, until I felt tears of frustration run down my face.
And then the church bell rang. As I’ve told you, my son and I live next door to the medieval church; a few years back, the parishioners raised money for a new set of bells, and they’ve been active ever since, striking the quarters and the hours, then striking the hour again at two minutes past, in case you lost count the first time . . . a quaint but useful local custom. They are loud, yet Tom and I no longer notice them. Like farmyard smells, they have become our norm, and while others may feel their teeth jar with the sound, we sleep through them.
That one, though, it smashed its way right into my consciousness. It rang once signalling the hour, but then began to peal again, not just the big bell but all its brothers and sisters, calling the faithful to mass.
I’m not one of those faithful, but I know the parish priest. I threw an ankle-length day-dress over my head, and ran downstairs, holding the mobile. On the way out of the door, I grabbed a sun-hat, in case a bare-headed woman in church upset any traditionalists.
I felt myself beam when I saw he was there, in the doorway. Tall, black robed, handsome: it’s a bugger but the few men I do fancy in my village are either happily married or celibate. Still, he and I enjoy the odd drink together. I looked inside; there were so few worshippers that I reckoned he’d better ring the bells again. ‘Father Gerard,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Come to seek absolution, my child?’ he asked.
‘First of all,’ I told him, ‘I’m older than you, so “my child” sounds a bit silly. Second, I doubt that you’d want to hear my sins.’
‘I never turn away a sinner, Prim.’
‘In that case, I want you to listen to something. When you’ve heard it, you might be alarmed, but I need to know what she’s trying to say. At the moment, it’s beyond me.’
‘I’ll try,’ he replied. ‘Come back here a little nearer the altar.’
I followed him; we stood to the side of the church, our backs to the tiny congregation, and I played him the video. I saw his face darken as he listened. I played it again. ‘Primavera,’ he hissed, ‘the police. Tell Alex Guinart.’
‘They’ve promised to kill her at the first sight of a police car or uniform. I’ve got no time left for specialists. Things have moved on since that was sent. They have my cousin too. Gerard, can you help? What does she mean?’
‘Yes, I think I know.’ I sighed with relief. He leaned closer to me. ‘Across Spain there are many old pilgrim trails. People still walk them today. In the old times, where these trails crossed, it was the custom to set up a shrine, for the travellers to pray and to make offerings. Many of them still exist. For example, there’s one near Camallera. You can see it from the road. There’s another near St Jordi des Vallès. But the nearest, it’s close to Bellcaire. You turn left at the crossroads, go along until you see a sign that says “Santa Caterina”. Follow that track and it will take you there. If she’s around here, and I read her right, that’s the one you want.’
‘Why are you so sure she’s there, not near one of the others?’
‘Because there’s an old building up there. It used to be a retreat, used by nuns mostly, but it’s been deserted for many years.’
I kissed him on the cheek, in front of his small flock. ‘Thanks, Gerard.’
He held my arm as I made to leave. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘If you won’t call the police, wait until after the service and I’ll come with you.’
‘No time,’ I told him. ‘But you’re a love for offering. You could pray for me, though. Every little helps.’
He smiled. ‘That’s not a little. Often it’s everything you need.’
‘You’re a wise man, Father Gerard.’
‘Me? No, I’m only a priest. You’ll find wisdom, and courage too, where you least expect it.’
Thirty
I
went back to the house, excited, then took some mental deep breaths at the thought of what I was about to do. I was right, I knew . . . at least I knew then. It was a matter of risk management. Significantly, to me, Gerard had accepted my view that a police assault would lead, probably, to Adrienne being killed. I was her best chance. (By that time, subconsciously, I had abandoned Frank to his fate.)
I picked up the phone without even thinking about it, and dialled the land-line number in Monaco. Audrey Kent picked up. She told me that Susie was working and had asked not to be disturbed, but that Ethel Reid, the nanny, was looking after the children.
Soon, Tom was on the line. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he said breezily. ‘Charlie and I are having a great time. I’ve been to the motor museum; they’ve got some new cars in.’
‘You mean new old cars?’
‘
Oui
.’ He chuckled. ‘I mean yes. You know what I mean, Mum.’
‘Have you and Janet been speaking French?’
‘Yes. We were at one of her friends’ birthday party yesterday so we had to. Jonathan too. Not Charlie, though. He only speaks dog. How’s Auntie Adrienne?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Has she come home yet?’
‘I’m on my way to collect her now,’ I told him, thinking on my feet. ‘She had to go away with someone, someone Frank knew. He turned up out of the blue.’
‘And she went away and left Charlie and me? He must be important.’
That’s the closest I’d ever heard Tom come to criticising an adult, but I let it pass. The little guy was entitled. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘We’re having lunch. Then Ethel says we can have an hour on the PlayStation, and after that we’re going to swim with Mum.’ Tom calls both Susie and me ‘Mum’; I’ve never worked out how he manages it, but when he uses the word, he never leaves anyone in doubt about which one of us he’s talking about. ‘Did you find Frank?’
‘Yes, but he’s gone away again.’
‘What’s he like?’
I had to think about that. I wanted to reply, ‘More complex than you could ever imagine. A sheep in wolf’s clothing. A lovely little guy that I’ve let get to me in spite of myself.’ But he wouldn’t have understood any of that so all I said was ‘He’s nice.’
That was okay by Tom. I told him to be a good boy, and to be sure to let wee Jonathan win every so often on the PlayStation, then let him rejoin his lunch.
The church bell struck one thirty. Time, precious time, was moving on, I realised, and I had things to do. First I had to dress properly for my task, and that did not mean a long flowery day-dress. I went back upstairs, had a very quick shower, then dug out a pair of jeans I had discarded for the summer. I put them on, with a thick black belt, and added a checked cotton shirt and a light, sleeveless jacket. Too much in the heat, I knew, but I needed the pockets. Finally, I put on a pair of thick-soled sandals with heavy toe protectors. My right foot was still painful when I moved the wrong way, but if the need arose to kick someone where it hurt the most, they would do the job.
When I was ready I went down to the garage with the taser, reopened the safe and took out the half-dozen replacement cartridges I’d included with my order, then spent ten minutes practising reloading the weapon. The on-line sales pitch had claimed it could be done in four seconds, but the best I could manage was six. I hoped that would be enough, for I knew Sebastian and Willie would be reunited, and that I’d have to be ready to drop them both.
I was almost ready to go. I took a bottle of water from the stock in the garage fridge, and a couple of isotonics, just in case Adrienne needed rehydrating once she was free. She’d looked well cared for in those videos, but I couldn’t be sure. Almost as an afterthought I ran upstairs and fetched Frank’s rucksack. I’m not certain now, but I reckon my reasoning at the time was that,
if
he was still alive, and
if
I could spring both him and his mother, he might want to disappear before the police arrived. Since Interpol had disowned him over the Sevilla affair, there might be a danger of him being caught up in any aftermath.
‘Have I everything I might need?’ I asked myself. Not quite. The taser would knock them down, but for how long? I took Frank’s knife from his bag and cut four lengths from an old blue towrope that hangs on the garage wall, a relic from our former, less reliable vehicle.
I heard two o’clock ring, or maybe even two minutes past, if I’d missed it the first time, since the sound was muffled by the bulk of the great stone house above me. I slid the taser into its holster, safety off, clipped it on to the front left of my belt, so I could reach it quickly, opened the garage door, set the alarm and backed out. I didn’t even wait to be sure that the door had closed behind me, but put the Jeep straight into drive.
Not much was in my favour at the start of the journey. The first hazard was a fat, half-naked middle-aged slob, plodding along in the centre of the track, heading the same way as I was, and refusing obdurately to budge. Eventually I lost patience and blasted him with the horn. He stopped, turned round, glared at me, then stepped sideways when he saw the look in my eyes. As I passed he took a half-hearted kick at the Jeep, a stupid thing to do when you’re barefoot, especially if you connect. I took some satisfaction, as I drove on, from the sight of him in the rear-view mirror, hopping on his left foot, and clutching the toes of the other.
It didn’t get much better when I rejoined the main road: the day was so hot that families were deciding to abandon the beach before they and their kids melted. The car parks were emptying and the traffic was queued back a quarter of a kilometre from the L’Escala-Figueras junction. There was nothing for me to do but grimace and bear it.
Normally, on a clear road, it takes me five minutes, tops, to drive from my house to Bellcaire, the village beyond L’Escala. That afternoon it took thirty-five, and I had made a dent in my water supply by the time I reached the crossroads. I did as the priest had said, and took a left, then drove slowly, looking out for the sign. It was hand painted, but clearly visible. I turned in, left again, stopped alongside it and drew breath.
A dirt track lay before me leading upwards, up a hillside, not directly towards the summit that we Brits all call Tit Hill but to a lower crest alongside it. I had taken Tom up to Castell del Montgri a few months before, on a fine day during the school’s winter holiday, but we had climbed by the path that starts from Torroella. I recalled the view from the old citadel walls, and realised that the building I had seen below, on the edge of a clearing, must have been the abandoned retreat of Santa Caterina. From what I could recall of the terrain, I knew I would be wise to stop short of the place and approach on foot.
Was I nervous? Too damn right I was; I could feel my heart thumping in my chest at a rate well above the normal seventy beats per minute. But also I felt the holstered taser against my side. That, and the sure knowledge that I wouldn’t even think once about pulling the trigger of the lightweight but super-efficient weapon, gave me comfort. I slid the Jeep into drive once more, engaged four-wheel mode, and moved forward.
At first, the track ran parallel to the road alongside, but then it veered off and curved, rising more steeply. I climbed, steadily, up the bumpy road. I had probably driven for a kilometre, when I saw, through a gap in the trees, the spire of the retreat. I hit the brake. There were trees on either side of the road. This was no plantation: they had taken root naturally, and were thickly packed in places, but a short distance ahead, I spotted a small circular area, possibly cut as a passing place. I drove past it, then reversed in, ready for a quick getaway.
I did a spot-check. The cartridges were in the pockets of my jacket. Ropes? I picked them up, stuffed them into Frank’s rucksack, together with the drinks I’d brought for Adrienne, slung it over my left shoulder and stepped out of the Jeep, leaving the key in the lock and closing the door quietly behind me.
The sun was blazing above me as I stepped out on to the track, and its force hit me like a blast from a giant hair-dryer. The road was steeper than I’d realised while I was driving. I pushed myself as hard uphill as my injured toe would let me. Soon I felt my breath quicken, and my shirt wet against my skin. I could see Santa Caterina more clearly, and something else, a pathway off the track, through the woods, that led up behind it. I headed for it.
And Sebastian Loman stepped out from behind a tree, about twenty feet before me. He wore a grey linen suit and white shirt, tie-less, with a little maple-leaf pin in the left lapel; there was a smile on his face. ‘You took your time, Primavera,’ he said.
He was unarmed. I could not believe it, but he had no gun, in his hand or anywhere else that I could see. But I had. I stepped towards him, closing the distance between us, and reaching for the taser. He was still smiling, but I didn’t have time to consider that. I cleared my pacifier of its holster, and sighted it on his chest.
That was when I felt the pressure on the small of my back, against my spine, of something hard and circular. I didn’t need to be told what it was.

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