Inhuman Remains (28 page)

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Authors: Quintin Jardine

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

BOOK: Inhuman Remains
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I decided I had to see Shirley; a phone call wouldn’t do. I didn’t head for the house, though. It had just gone nine, and on most mornings at that time she’s to be found having breakfast at a pavement table outside Café del Mar.
‘Hi,’ she called out, as I approached from the car park. I took a seat beside her, and asked the waiter for coffee, with milk. ‘I guess your water’s fixed,’ she said, ‘since you didn’t come back last night. Where’s Frank, then? Have you exhausted the poor little bugger?’
There was an abandoned newspaper at a nearby table, the print edition of the one I’d looked at on the computer. I fetched it, found the story, on page three, and showed it to her, watching her eyes widen as she read. ‘Prim,’ she gasped, ‘what the fuck is all this about?’
I gave her a very potted version, speaking English to lessen the chances of being overheard, although often we use Spanish, even when it’s just the two of us. ‘Frank got involved with some bad people in Sevilla. They snatched his mum to get to him.’
‘How bad are they?’ she asked quietly.
‘Lethal, I fear.’
‘Seriously?’ I nodded. ‘You’re not involved, are you?’
‘No. They got who they were after.’
‘And your aunt?’
‘Innocent victim. Caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage. Choose your favourite cliché.’ I took her gate opener from my bag and handed it to her. ‘I owe you an apology, Shirl. It was wrong of me to impose on you without telling you the whole story. I could have put you in danger as well.’
She gave me back the device. ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘For the next time you’re in bother. You’re my pal, remember.’ She paused as the waiter brought my coffee. ‘You’ll miss him, won’t you? Just when you and he were getting close.’
‘That was just something that happened on the road.’
‘No, it wasn’t. For all I might kid you about it, I know you don’t do casual sex.’
‘Well, from now on,’ I told her, ‘that’s going to be the only kind for me. Seems that if I get too close to a bloke, he dies.’
‘In that case, I’ll bet Father Gerard’s relieved he’s a priest.’
I blinked. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘You know bloody well what I mean, but let’s leave it at that. Is there any chance that they’ll be found safe?’
‘You never can tell, but I don’t see it. There was blood; a lot of it.’
‘Oh dear.’ Shirley’s eyes misted over. She had liked Frank too. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Go and get Tom,’ I replied. ‘I sent him to Monaco for safety when all this started to happen. After that, I’m not sure. At some point I’ll need to tell my dad what’s happened, and my sister; we’re all the family Adrienne and Frank had. But I’m not up to that yet.’
‘When are you off?’
‘Now. I’ll call you when I get back.’ I slid a five-euro note for the waiter under my empty cup, stood up and headed back towards the car park.
Thirty-four
I
had packed a small case before I left, with clothes for a couple of days, and slipped my passport into my bag, with my cash and my cards. With no need to go back home, I headed straight for the
autopista
, and France.
As I passed Camallera, noticing the shrine by the roadside that Gerard had mentioned, I switched on the CD player. Del Amitri filled the Jeep with sound. I selected another disc, pronto, knowing that I’d never hear that band again without thinking of Frank. Texas took over, but the Scottish connection was too close, and Faith Hill was too maudlin. In the end I settled for a French pop radio station that I knew would be in range as far as Montpellier.
By the time I’d crossed the border, the music was in the background and I was thinking again, about Sebastian and Willie mostly, hoping I’d given Gomez and Garcia enough information to track them down, but without, I found, too much optimism. Those guys had been pros; it was improbable that they were still in Spain.
Yes, they were pros all right. They’d never made a wrong move from the time they’d sat at my table in Sevilla. They’d been on the look-out for me. But how had they known I was coming? Adrienne’s first phone call, in search of Frank, had probably been enough to sound the alarm. My Scots accent when I’d set up my date with Lidia probably hadn’t been too clever either. But when I’d gone marching up to the door of number forty-seven, then quizzed that wee twerp of a shopkeeper, well, that had more or less hung out a sign. ‘Trouble in town, she’s blonde and she’s a Jockess.’ How much more stupid could I have been? I’d got in trouble, Frank had had to leave his safe-house to rescue me and, in the process, got himself and his mother killed. Unless . . .
I searched for straws to grasp. Maybe he’d put up a fight and they’d had to subdue him. Maybe all that blood was his. I thought back to Africa and remembered that once or twice I had seen wounds that bled as much but turned out to be more or less superficial. Maybe . . . I persuaded myself there was a little hope.
I clung to it as I drove east, through the morning, past Narbonne, Montpellier and to Nîmes. I stopped near Marseille for petrol and water. Before getting back on the road, I called Susie to let her know that I was on the way and should be with them in less than two hours. She sounded a little underwhelmed, but I put that down to her being busy, and to the unnecessarily short notice I was giving her.
When I got there, just after two thirty, to the secure villa on the hilltop overlooking the harbour of Monte Carlo, I decided I had been kidding myself about that. She was her usual effusive self, when she and Charlie greeted me, welcoming me in, then taking me through to the playroom where the kids were amusing themselves, out of the heat of the day. ‘Mum!’ Tom called out, jumped up and ran towards me, into my arms. He’s not usually so demonstrative; I guessed he must have been far more worried than he was letting on.
Of course the first thing he asked me was ‘Did you collect Auntie Adrienne?’
‘Yes, love,’ I told him. ‘She and Frank have moved on now.’
‘That’s a shame. I liked her.’
‘Perhaps you’ll see her again some time.’
‘And meet Frank?’
‘Perhaps.’
I stayed with him for a while, making a fuss of wee Jonathan, and of Janet, as far as that growing young woman would let me (I know she’s only eight, but try telling her that). Then, when it was swim time, Susie and I joined the three of them in the pool. (Charlie was barred from the terrace, I discovered, after an earlier incident in which he had tried to life-save wee Jonathan, who’s probably a better swimmer than the bloody dog is.)
It wasn’t until Ethel came in to call time up . . . she’s in charge of the children’s activities; that’s her absolute rule . . . that us two mums had the chance of some time alone. ‘Well?’ Susie demanded, as soon as wee Jonathan, always the laggard, was out of earshot, and we were settled on two couches, under an awning.
‘It’s not good,’ I said. ‘Frank’s associates caught up with him. He and Adrienne are missing, believed dead.’ I didn’t see the need to tell her any more than that.
‘Believed? What are their chances?’
I looked at her, and shrugged.
‘God, Prim, I’m so sorry.’ She glanced at the ground between us. ‘I have to confess that when you called me on Tuesday the words “drama” and “queen” came to mind, given that you’ve got a track record in that area. I was expecting your aunt to be found wrestling with a trolley in the local supermarket. But this; it’s shocking. How did your cousin get mixed up with these people?’
‘He was working undercover for Interpol, to break a major international fraud, but he was betrayed by someone on the inside. He might have got away in one piece, until I went crashing in there after him, like a cow in a bloody china factory.’
‘That’s why they took your aunt? To get to him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh dear.’ She looked at me. ‘I see now why you wanted Tom out of it. How about you? Are you okay?’
‘Apart from being knackered, I’m fine.’
‘Would you like to stay here for a while?’
‘A couple of days, if that’s all right with you, and then my boy and I will get back down the road.’
Susie frowned, her red hair glinting in the sun. ‘Actually,’ she ventured, ‘I was going to talk to you about that. We’d agreed that Tom would come here for a couple of weeks in August, yes?’
I nodded.
‘Well . . .’ she hesitated before continuing ‘. . . I’ve pretty much decided to sell the Loch Lomond estate. It would suit my book to go back there in August, to get the process under way. There would be no point in now. You know what Glasgow’s like: you can barely sell chips in July. So, seeing as Tom’s here now, can we bring his stay forward to . . . well, to now?’
I thought about it. Tom and I had no firm plans for the rest of the month. That said, I always missed him while he was gone, and after the past few days, did I need to be brooding on my own? On the other hand . . .
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘The rest of this week and next.’
‘Thanks. You can stay too, if you like.’
‘That’s good of you, but it’s best if I don’t. Let’s stick to our normal practice.’ It’s not just two women in one kitchen, as I’d told Adrienne. While Susie and I do get on fine now, we both know that if we were together for a couple of weeks we’d wind up either going out on the batter every night, or arguing over the past or, probably, both.
‘Why are you selling Loch Lomond?’ I asked her. ‘It’s a palace.’
She glanced at me, then looked away again. ‘Janet thinks it’s haunted.’ She tried to chuckle, but failed.
‘It’s a big old house,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not unnatural for a kid to imagine things, especially one with the enquiring mind she’s got.’
‘It’s not just the house, Prim, it’s the whole damn place. There are some woods that she just won’t go in. To tell you the truth, I find it really spooky myself now. No, it’s going, and that’s an end of it. I’ll buy a smaller house, with an ordinary garden, not something the size of a bloody farm.’
‘Do you ever feel haunted here?’ I asked.
‘No.’ This time she did manage to laugh. ‘Did you think the bugger was stalking me from beyond the grave?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him.’
‘Are you still afraid of him,’ she asked bluntly, ‘even though he’s dead? For he is, believe me. I saw the body.’
‘No, but I never really was. When I disappeared after the crash, I was confused, but I reckoned that was what he’d want me to do.’
Her brow furrowed as she realised what I’d said. ‘Wait a minute. Are you implying that you thought he wanted you dead? That he arranged that plane crash?’
‘I’m not implying it; I’ve never told anyone straight out, but that’s what I believe. We knew him better than anyone else, Susie. Can you put your hand on your heart and deny that he was capable of it?’
She had to think about that for a while. ‘No,’ she confessed. ‘I can’t. But I don’t believe he’d have harmed you. He loved you, Prim, for all you spent half your time at each other’s throats. My secret fear, even after Jonathan was born, was that one day he’d leave me and go back to you. If one of us fixed that aircraft it would more likely have been me.’
‘Now that I can’t accept,’ I protested. ‘You are definitely not capable of such a thing. Honest, I wish I didn’t believe what I do, but that’s the way the evidence points.’
‘Fuck the evidence. Take my word for it: Oz didn’t do it.’
One day, I may be able to accept that. There, on her terrace, I told her I’d try, but I’m still a way short of succeeding.
Thirty-five
I
stayed with Susie and the family for two days, until Sunday. Both mornings, I went on-line and checked for developments in the search, but there were none reported. I studied the London media too. The story hadn’t gone unnoticed: I found it on the BBC website, and in the
Telegraph
and the
Guardian
, but without names to go on it wasn’t front-page news.
Tom was fine about the idea of extending his visit, especially when I promised to take him to America in August, to see his aunt Dawn and his cousins, Bruce and Eilidh. He hadn’t asked me any more questions about Adrienne or Frank; I was pleased about that.
I headed off after breakfast, but I didn’t drive home. Instead, I went to Nice Airport, where I parked the Jeep and caught a flight that I’d booked the day before, to Edinburgh, via London. My dad was waiting for me at Arrivals, as arranged. I could have hired a car, but as usual he wouldn’t hear of it. Since Mum went, he’s seized every excuse to get out of the great big house in which he still lives, having refused to sell it, despite suggestions, entreaties and downright bullying from my sister and me.
I spent a lovely, peaceful evening with him, and later, in my old bed, managed a night’s sleep that was, as far as I can recall, free of dreams of any sort. I didn’t raise the subject of Adrienne’s visit, but he did, over breakfast. ‘I had your aunt on the phone,’ he said casually. ‘Has she been in touch?’
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘She invited herself, stayed for a couple of days, then buggered off without as much as a thank-you.’

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