Last Resort (20 page)

He flashed me a crooked smile. ‘In my condition I don’t need the grief it would bring me. Once the surgeon gives me my new heart valve, I will write an editorial on the subject and I will insist that it is published in
GironaDia
. Hector asked me to do it. I didn’t commit myself, but I said I would consider it, when I am well.’

He frowned. ‘Maybe I will talk to Joe Aislado as well. With Battaglia dead, BeBe will be ripe for the plucking, and he is not so old that he has lost his eye for a business opportunity.’

I dragged him back to the moment. ‘Let’s just focus on the fact that she is dead, and on Hector’s predicament. He had given you no clue that he was meeting her?’

‘No. I think back over the last few weeks but I can recall nothing. However, as I told you before, he was excited the last time I saw him, on the day when you say they met. Which of them do you think made the contact?’ he asked.

‘My assumption is that she did. They met on his territory; that’s as good an indicator as we have.’

‘From what they say, she’s a very attractive woman,’ he mused. ‘And my son has always been fond of the ladies. Nature must have taken its course, for him to take her to Barcelona. He’s only ever brought one woman here, and that was the Russian girl. Yes, they must have been getting along.’

‘Or he simply took her there to discuss business,’ I suggested . . . and then I thought of the roses. ‘But we don’t know, for it’s all a mystery from then on.’

‘What did you hope that Pilar could tell you?’ Simon asked. ‘And why, señor, if you will forgive me, are you even interested in my son?’

‘I promised Xavi I’d help find him,’ I replied, instantly, ‘and I haven’t done that yet. Yes, I know I could leave it to the police from now on, but a promise is a promise. As for your wife, I was going to ask her if she knew where he might have gone.’

‘You would have been asking the wrong parent.’ His laugh was weak, but his smile was wide.

‘To his mother,’ he continued when his voice returned to normal, ‘Hector is a model of virtue. But no man can be that good, and stay normal. His successes have always been reported to Pilar, but his failures and his faults have been confessed to me.

‘The truth is that my boy was a little wild in his college days. He drank more than he should have, he smoked marijuana in industrial quantities, and as for the women in his life . . . I met a couple of them when I visited him in Oxford.’

‘Oxford?’ I repeated.

‘Yes, he studied there. Its computer science course is rated the third best in the world, after two universities in the US. It is very expensive, but his godfather paid his tuition fees. Joe,’ he added. ‘Joe Aislado is his godfather.’

He paused. ‘Anyway, those women, they were pretty loose. They were not students, more . . . camp followers, I think is the English phrase.’

‘But he graduated in spite of it all?’

‘Oh yes, with first class honours. He really is a genius, Señor Skinner.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you have sons?’

I gazed at him. I nodded. ‘I have three. My youngest . . . he’s a bit young to be showing special skills, other than on the golf course. His older brother we adopted after he was orphaned; he looks like following in your Hector’s footsteps.’

I hesitated, then decided to be frank; after all, the guy was no better than even money to see Christmas. ‘There’s a third one, from an old relationship; he’s something of a genius too, in chemistry, but he used his talents unwisely, and it caught up with him.’

‘He is a burden to you?’ Simon asked, gently.

‘I hardly know him, señor . . . but that is something I will rectify. Is Hector your only child?’ I asked, moving on discreetly.

‘Yes, he is. We’d have liked a daughter too, but it never happened.’

It was my turn to laugh. ‘I have two of those; they’re challenging . . . regardless of their age.’

‘And so is my Hector, it seems,’ he sighed. ‘As I said, he had a few troubles as a student, and also as a younger man in Barcelona. There were a couple of occasions when I had to use my influence with the police there to keep him out of court, but those were minor adventures, scuffles in nightclubs and such. In recent years, however, as he has become more and more important to the InterMedia group, he has become a responsible citizen. I think his girlfriend Valentina helped too; I wish she was still around.’

‘Your wife told Xavi and me that he ended the relationship,’ I said.

‘Because that is what Hector told her. I do not know what happened, but he was upset by it. He brought her here to meet us; there was talk of a future together and then . . . she was gone. He told me very little, but as I understood it she left him, not the other way around. What he told Pilar, it was only to stop her thinking badly of Valentina.’

He sighed, as deeply as he could. ‘If only . . . if they were still together he would not be in this trouble.’ He frowned then looked me straight in the eye. ‘You are telling me the truth, Señor Skinner, yes? You do think he is innocent?’

‘I do,’ I assured him. ‘I’m not being partisan either. I don’t know Hector, so I have no inbuilt bias in his favour. My opinion is based on what I saw at the crime scene.’

‘And Valencia? And the Mossos investigators? What do they think?’

That was a good question. ‘Valencia is looking for Hector as a witness, not a suspect; that’s what he told me yesterday. Whether he still feels that way today . . .’ I glanced at my watch, ‘we should know very shortly, when he has his press conference. He’ll face some tough questioning, especially when the journalists there realise who Hector Sureda is, and what he is to InterMedia.’

‘He will face some tough questioning from the examining judge too,’ Simon pointed out. ‘In Spanish law he is the head of the investigation; he will want to complete it as quickly as he can.’

He didn’t have to explain in any more detail. Structurally the system is like our own in Scotland, where the police investigate as agents of the Crown Office, but in practice the Spanish system is more hands-on. Whoever the
juez
was, he was faced with an internationally famous victim from another country, found dead in the apartment of a man who had been at the scene and whose reaction had been to go into hiding.

As Simon had been on his way to suggesting, whatever the crime scene had said to me, it would tell the judge that he had an acceptable prime suspect. And would the judge be at the press conference? For sure he would. That was what Valencia had meant when he talked of not being his own master there.

I’d been kidding myself. Valencia’s open-minded attitude was irrelevant, because he wasn’t in charge. The judge would lead with what he had, and Hector would be a fugitive, his face plastered across every newspaper and TV bulletin in Spain. Once he was caught, he would disappear into a judicial system that can take a year to bring a man to trial, with the presumption of guilt firmly planted in the public consciousness.

‘I expect,’ his father continued, ‘that the police will be here soon, wanting to know the same thing you do. With Pilar absent, I can deflect them by the simple means of going to sleep, as my doctors say I should whenever possible . . . even though each time I do I wonder whether I will wake up again. So let me see how much of a head start I can give you. Has there been any trace of my son since last Friday?’

‘Three bank withdrawals,’ I told him. ‘In Barcelona, then Lleida, then Zaragoza, on successive days. I guess he drew the maximum each time.’

‘In that case, I suspect . . . no, I am certain . . . that he was heading for Madrid.’

‘Over two days or more?’

‘Yes, if he went by slow train or even by bus; high-speed train journeys can be traced. He’s a resourceful man; that’s the sort of thing he would do if he didn’t want to be detected.’

‘So why do you think he’s gone to Madrid?’

‘Because that is where Jacob Ireland lives, his closest friend . . . in fact his only close friend outside of the business. They met at Oxford, where Jacob was studying Spanish. They were . . . how you say . . . kindred spirits, each as unruly as the other, each as clever.’

He smiled, remembering. ‘When they were in trouble it was always together; in England and in Spain, when Jacob moved here. One time in Barcelona when I had to get them both out of jail!’ He nodded. ‘That’s where he’s gone. Madrid.’

‘Do you have an address for Ireland?’

‘Calle de la Cruz,
numero doscientos quarante dos
: sorry, two hundred forty-two. It is an apartment in a street between Puerta de la Sol and Plaza Mayor . . . in the heart of the city, like Hector’s is in Barcelona.’

‘Does this Jacob live alone? Is he single?’

‘Sometimes,’ Simon chuckled. ‘He has changed less than Hector from his younger days. I can give you his mobile number.’

‘Do that, but if we go there I doubt if we’ll give him advance warning. What does Jacob do? What’s his job?’

‘He is a translator. When legal and other documents have to be converted into Spanish from English, they will be accepted by the authorities only if they have an official stamp. Jacob has one of these. He is also a tour guide, for the British and Americans. He gets a lot of work, because he knows all the places that are not in the tourist guidebooks.’

He looked at me. I sensed that his limited energy was all but exhausted and that he was more affected by his son’s predicament than he had cared to show me.

‘Find him for us,’ he whispered, ‘if you would be so kind. When you do, tell him that his mother will kick his ass big time when he gets home.’

Twenty-One

I
called Xavi as soon as I got back to my car. He was surprised to hear that I’d been talking to Simon. ‘For the last few weeks Pilar hasn’t let anyone see him,’ he said, ‘not even me.’

‘She didn’t have a choice this morning,’ I explained. ‘He walked in on us. Don’t get me wrong,’ I added, ‘he’s a sick man, but he’s a long way from comatose. She’s more scared of his condition than he is. Simon sees the light at the end of the tunnel; she sees the proverbial train coming.’

‘I hope he’s right, not her.’

‘They also see their son in different ways.’ I gave him a precis of Simon’s account of Hector’s youth. ‘You never told me that Joe paid his way through Oxford,’ I added.

‘It wasn’t relevant.’

‘Are they close, the two of them?’ I asked.

‘Close enough for Hector to have told Joe that he was meeting Battaglia?’

‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ I admitted. ‘Simon reckons there are a couple of barks in the old dog yet. He reckons he might be talked into having a go at acquiring BeBe, now that she’s out of the way.’

‘I’ll ask him,’ Xavi growled, ‘as soon as we’re done. What else did Simon tell you? I don’t suppose he knows where Hector is.’

‘He reckons that he does.’ I told him about Jacob Ireland.

‘That’s his name, is it?’ he murmured. ‘Pilar’s mentioned an old university pal of his from time to time, usually with a frown on her face.’

‘Maybe, but Simon’s dead sure that’s where he’ll have headed: to friend Jacob, in Madrid. Valencia called me earlier. He said that Hector’s pulled three slabs of cash out of ATMs; the locations point in that direction.’

‘Then we should go there,’ he declared. Then he paused. ‘I say “we” but . . .’

‘Fuck’s sake, man,’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course I’m coming. I’m hooked now; you couldn’t keep me away. There’s only one thing you should know. If I’m completely wrong, and I find that Hector Sureda did shoot Battaglia, then I’ll give him to Valencia, gift-wrapped.’

‘I’ll buy the wrapping paper,’ Xavi said. ‘I’ll take what we saw yesterday to my grave. Nobody deserves to die like that, not even the Warrior. Suppose you’re completely right, Bob, I’m going to find it hard to forgive him for running out and leaving her lying there, undiscovered, for the best part of a week. I don’t care how good he is at his job; I’ll find him for his parents’ sake if I can, but he’s finished with InterMedia.’

‘Let’s see what we find,’ I told him, ‘before making any judgements. How do we get to Madrid?’

‘We take the AVE from Girona, like he did. Can you be ready to leave this afternoon? There’s a train round about four o’clock. We should get there not much after seven.’

‘Go for it. Let me know the exact time and I’ll meet you at the station.’

I left him to get on with it and headed for home. I hadn’t got very far before my phone rang again. I’d have ignored it, had there not been a parking bay just ahead; I pulled in and took the call.

It was Andy Martin. ‘Gimme a break, pal,’ I moaned. ‘I’m out here to do some thinking about the future, please give me time to do it.’

‘Sure, Bob,’ he replied, a little tetchily. ‘That’s not why I’m calling.’

It disappoints me to have to say this, but since he’s become chief constable of the whole fucking Scottish world there’s been a change in my long-time friend. He has a stiffness about him that’s never been evident before; it’s as if he’s distanced himself very slightly from everyone, even from me.

It’s a significant factor in my hesitancy over accepting a role within his force. I backed his candidacy, and lobbied for him with all the decision-makers that I know, but now that he’s there I’m far from certain that I could work under his leadership.

‘What is it, then?’ I asked, suddenly irritable myself. ‘Have the traffic lights packed in at the foot of Lothian Road in the middle of the rush hour?’

‘No, nothing as dramatic as that; it’s tedious, in fact, and entirely domestic. It’s Alex and me; we’ve had a row.’

I said nothing; I let a void of silence develop between us until he had no choice but to fill it.

‘I’m selling the house in Edinburgh, Bob, and moving to Glasgow. As I told her, I need to live closer to the heart of the action.’

‘No, you fucking don’t,’ I said, abruptly. ‘You are the heart of the action. You’re the policing equivalent of the queen bee. You can be anywhere in the hive you like. Your office base is in Clackmannanshire at the moment, and you’re under no real pressure to move. That’s easily accessible from Edinburgh.’

‘In that case you’ve taught me too well. You know as well as I do, better, that most of the action is in greater Glasgow. I have to be hands on there when necessary.’

‘Which will be very rarely,’ I countered. ‘Listen, if I had gone for your job and got it, I might have set up my HQ in the old Fire Training School in Gullane, now that Fire and Rescue Scotland has decided in its dubious wisdom to shut it down. I could have walked to work and been just as efficient. You could do much the same thing. Edinburgh’s the capital; you could argue that the chief’s office should be there.’

‘I could, but I choose not to,’ he said, coldly.

‘Sure. And having made that choice, you assume that Alex will just say, “That’s nice, dear,” and follow you. When she doesn’t you have a hissy fit. I’m assuming that’s what’s happened.’

‘She’s the one who was doing all the hissing,’ he retorted.

‘I’ll bet. So what do you want me to do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘I’m simply calling to tell you what’s happened, and to say I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out between us.’

‘Again.’

‘You sound as if you expected it.’

‘I’ve had bigger surprises in my life,’ I admitted. ‘Sarah and me, for a start.’

‘I hope that works out for you two this time around. At least your careers won’t be in competition, unlike Alex’s and mine.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘What’s the clash between a senior police officer and a corporate lawyer?’

‘But—’ He stopped abruptly, then murmured, ‘Oh shit, Bob. Don’t tell me she hasn’t told you.’

‘Told me what, mate?’

‘That she’s leaving CAJ to become a solicitor advocate, specialising in criminal work.’

If we’d been on a Skype video call he’d have seen my jaw drop. As it was he heard me burst into laughter a few seconds later.

‘So it never went away,’ I chuckled. ‘When she was in her last year at school, getting ready for uni, it was all about being the first woman Lord President of the Court of Session, but somewhere along the line she got sidetracked.

‘Maybe that was my fault, for I had a vision of her in court ten years later, cross-examining people she’d known for much of her life: you, Mario, Neil, maybe even me . . . although a judge would have had something to say about that.’

‘Aren’t you still worried by that now?’

‘No. Why the hell should I be? I want what she wants, if it’s going to make her happy. And that, my friend, is where we differ, and why it will never work between the two of you.’

I had nothing more to say to him, other than, ‘So long,’ so I did, and ended the conversation. I almost called her, there and then, but decided against it. There was no telling how long we’d have been on the line, and I had a deadline. Instead, I put the Suzuki back into gear and headed for L’Escala.

A north wind had arisen out of nowhere, the fearsome tramontana; it was strong enough to rock my unladen car on open stretches of road, so I drove more slowly than usual, making a brief stop at a supermarket to buy some food. As I drove into the old town I heard the church bell strike noon . . . or two minutes past, given the peculiar local habit of ringing the hour twice, in case anyone lost count the first time.

I slipped off the main drag and took the sloping road that leads to Puig Pedro. When I turned into my street, I drove right past a grubby white Seat Ibiza that was parked a few yards along, It was only as I stepped out of my car and locked it that I noticed it, and saw that it was occupied.

I shook my head, despairing rather than angry, and walked towards it.

‘You might as well come in,’ I said to Carrie McDaniels.

‘Will I ever come out again if I do?’ she asked, fiercely.

‘There’s a fair chance of that,’ I promised. ‘When you do you’ll have had lunch.’

She glared at me for a few seconds, then sighed and climbed out of her car. ‘I lost my deposit on the Skoda,’ she grumbled, then adding, as if she’d done me a favour, ‘but I didn’t drop you in it. I told the company I’d been at a meeting and come out to find that my tyre had been done. They still slapped an insurance excess charge on me.’

‘Which you will pass on to your client,’ I said, as I unlocked the front door and let her in.

‘Too right,’ she agreed.

‘What’s he after?’ I asked her.

‘I can’t tell you that.’

I laughed. ‘Come on, Carrie, don’t give me that client confidentiality crap. You’re not a doctor, you’re not a lawyer; you’ve got no legal privilege.’

‘Maybe not, but I have ethics.’

‘What? Ethics? To the likes of you that’s an English county with a fucking lisp.’

‘The likes of me, indeed,’ she shot back. ‘You cops think you’re special, but you’re not. We do the same job . . . but my hourly rate is better.’

‘No you don’t,’ I said as I led the way into the kitchen. ‘You follow people around, you take sneaky photographs, you intrude into their lives, and your only motivation is money. Police officers keep people safe in their homes. What do you do? You took telephoto images of mine.’ I glared at her. ‘My children live there; imagine how I feel about them being spied on.’

She flinched a little, started to speak, but thought better of it.

‘No, don’t deny it,’ I snapped at her. ‘I have the evidence, and maybe grounds for a civil action against you. I’ll need to consult my daughter about that.’

‘Look . . .’ Carrie protested. I ignored her and started cracking eggs into a bowl.

‘Look . . .’ she tried again.

‘Who was the guy on the beach?’ I asked, abruptly, cutting across her. ‘Was that Linton Baillie?’

She frowned. ‘Him? No, that was just a guy I know, a boyfriend. He had no idea what I was doing . . . well, not specifically.’

‘How long have you been doing this job on me?’

‘Seven months . . . no, make that eight. Baillie emailed me, out of the blue, and asked me if I wanted an unusual job. I was a bit doubtful when he said I’d be running surveillance on the chief constable, but money speaks my language, and business hadn’t been great for a while.

‘It hasn’t been twenty-four seven, though. Baillie hires me by the day; he calls it Skinner-time. He’s been watching you himself, and hires me to cover for him when he has other things to do. I’ll get a phone call, with instructions to follow you, sometimes to specific places, others, just in general. When I’m done I forward reports, and the best shots I’ve taken, to a Gmail address.’

‘How do you get paid?’

She watched me as I beat the eggs, with a little milk, and put a pan on the hob. ‘I invoice him, monthly, to the same email address. He pays me by credit card.’ She smiled, briefly. ‘I add on five per cent to my rate to cover the Visa commission.’

‘So what’s he up to?’

‘Honestly, Mr Skinner, he’s never told me.’

I transferred the eggs to the pan and began to stir them slowly, with a wooden spoon, making sure they didn’t stick. ‘Describe him,’ I said.

‘I can’t. I’ve never met him.’

‘Are you serious?’ I asked, looking her in the eye. She nodded; thirty years’ experience made me believe her.

‘What did he tell you about himself?’

‘Only that he was a writer. He gave me the name of a couple of books he’d published so I could check him out. I didn’t ask him directly why he wanted you followed. I just assumed . . .’

‘That it was for another book, one about me?’

‘Exactly. An unauthorised biography, I reckoned.’

That was a reasonable assumption, but those calls to Mia had raised an alternative possibility.

As I thought that through, I asked Carrie to cut a couple of slices from a round loaf that I’d bought and spread them with Flora. When they were done, I put them on plates and piled scrambled eggs on top.

We sat on stools and ate at the breakfast bar. I let her finish before I resumed my gentle quizzing.

‘Has the surveillance pattern been the same all along?’ I asked when I was ready.

‘Mr Skinner,’ she said, ‘I still feel awkward about this. Mr Baillie’s my client; strictly speaking, I need his permission to talk to you.’

‘You need to understand something,’ I countered. ‘Your front-line investigator’s licence doesn’t give you any sort of immunity if your client has asked you to do something that might prove to be illegal.’

‘There’s nothing illegal about taking photographs.’

‘That could depend on the use to which those photographs are put.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Such as?’

‘Extortion is one possibility.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she exclaimed, just a little rattled for the first time.

‘I may get to that later. For now, tell me, over the last six months has the surveillance pattern always been the same?’

‘No, it changed a few months ago. I was following you one day, when out of the blue, you took me by surprise and went to Edinburgh Airport. I thought no more of it, until a couple of days later Baillie called and said he wanted me on you full time till further notice. I told him that would be expensive, but he told me it was okay.

‘You were in Glasgow by that time, Chief Constable of Strathclyde; I thought we were pushing it a bit, but I carried on. Nothing unusual happened for a while, until one day you left your office on foot. I was parked up in a car, but I was able to follow you, to an address next to Sauchiehall Street. I checked the plate on the door; it was a laboratory called Forest Gate. I photographed it and sent it to Mr Baillie with the rest.’

‘Shit,’ I whispered. I thought through some possibilities, then asked, ‘Did you ever follow me to the High Court in Edinburgh?’

She stared at me, then blinked, taken aback by my question. ‘No,’ she began, hesitantly, ‘not directly, but there was one day Mr Baillie asked me to go there and photograph everybody going in and out of the public entrance. And you showed up. You were in civvies, very casually dressed; I hardly recognised you. You went in on your own but when you came out you were with a woman, very attractive, forty-something. The pair of you went for a coffee and I followed you.’