Last Resort (3 page)

But not all of the properties: they were concentrated on one specific house; quite a few of them were close-ups. It was a modern two-storey building, set on quite a big plot. Overlooking the beach there was a bay-windowed structure that some might call a conservatory. But I don’t; I call it the ‘garden room’.

Yes, it was my house.

The last photograph had been taken at what must have been the camera’s maximum zoom; there were two people in the room, a man and a woman. They were standing, and while Carrie had been too far away for either to be facially recognisable, I knew for sure from her body shape that one was Aileen, my ex-wife now, but not then, not on 5 May, the date on the image.

I was pretty certain, too, that I could put a name to the bloke, from his slim build, his height in relation to her, because they were standing pretty close, and from his distinctive head of hair. A pound to a pinch of pig-shit, he was Joey Morocco, the actor she’d been caught with, post flagrante, one might say, by a tabloid newspaper.

I hadn’t really given a toss when it all came out, for we’d been history by then, but on 5 May we hadn’t been. The gloss might have worn off, but we were still Mr and Mrs, and she had had him, literally for sure, in our house, in my house. A quick memory trawl reminded me that there had been a chief police officers’ conference in Durham that weekend.

I’d gone easy on Joey until then, but I’ve made a mental note to have a private word with him next time our paths cross, as I’ll make sure they do.

I was so angered by that discovery that its main import almost passed me by. Carrie McDaniels had photographed my house, seven months before our meeting in L’Escala that afternoon.

Yes, it was possible that she had been doing no more than taking away-day snapshots with her clever new camera. It is also possible that Motherwell Football Club will win the Champions’ League in eighteen months or so, but you will not find me betting a single euro-cent on either of those outcomes.

Suddenly, my interest in Carrie’s card sharpened.
If she’s done it in Scotland
, I thought . . .

I scrolled down, fast, to the final images. There I was, taken unawares in the first, then growing more annoyed in the other two. But what had she been doing before that?

The answer was, she’d been taking surreptitious shots of me as I looked across the bay, lunched, and talked to Xavi on my mobile. I went a little further back. Clearly, her two guides had been taking her around the town. They’d shown her Plaça Catalunya (where the football ground used to be if you’ve known L’Escala that long), they’d shown her the church, they’d shown her a restaurant called La Clota, all closed up for the winter, and surprise, surprise, they’d shown her Puig Pedro, and the street where I live.

They’d even taken her along the cami that goes to St Marti d’Empuries, and up the walkway, from which she’d been able to take a fine shot of the front of my house.

Those who know me a little say that I’m quick to anger. Those who know me well could tell them that’s simply me blowing off steam, and that when I get really angry it happens slowly, and builds up inside me, with very few warning signs. That’s how it was as I looked at those images.

I did a trick with the computer that boosted the size of the thumbnails, so that I could make out more detail without having to look at them individually, and went back through the catalogue as swiftly as I could without missing anything.

It seemed that I’d been Carrie McDaniels’ favourite subject. At least one-third of her photo files were of me. She had me in uniform and in civvies, in Glasgow, in Edinburgh. She had me off duty, walking the course at a golf championship, and heading for the Mallard Hotel bar with Sarah on a Friday evening in late September.

She even had me on the beach with my kids, carrying Seonaid on my shoulders while Mark and James Andrew worked on a sand sculpture of a car. Each child was photographed too, separately.

That was the point at which my quiet anger turned into fury and I roared at the screen in frustration.

‘Thank Christ I took that fucking card!’ I shouted. The words were barely out before I realised that all the images, other than the most recent, would have been backed up, on at least one device.

I’d never in my life felt vulnerable before, but I did then. I’m used to being fair game, but not my children, not them, never. On my patch, even in my strange emeritus situation, Carrie’s feet would not have touched the ground on the way to the nearest police holding cell; I’d have thought about charges later.

But I wasn’t on my patch, was I, and she hadn’t done enough in Spain for me to set the Mossos d’Esquadra on her.

Instead I did something worse. I called Sauce again. He was tied up with an interview, but as soon as he was clear he rang me back.

‘Things have gone up a couple of notches,’ I told him. ‘Check out the Belgian thing, yes, but I’m pretty sure you’ll find it’s bullshit. I’m going to email you a couple of images, a man and a woman. She’s Carrie McDaniels, but I don’t know who the fuck he is. He may be no more than a boyfriend, but I’d like him identified anyway. There’s no need to keep this to yourself; if you need help from up the ladder, ask for it.’

‘Will do, Chief,’ he said, briskly, ‘but if I have to ask my gaffer, he’ll want to know what this is about.’

‘I’d like to know that myself, son,’ I replied. ‘All I can tell you for now is, it appears that I’m being stalked.’

Four

I
put the beast back in his cage before he had a chance to send me out to find Ms Carrie McDaniels and put the fear of several serious deities into her. Instead I loaded my bag into my car and headed off to find Xavi’s place, hoping that I might still get there in daylight.

As it transpired it was a close-run thing. My Spanish car is a Suzuki four by four . . . some of the minor roads there can be very bumpy and it pays to have a vehicle with its arse well clear of the ground . . . but it hadn’t come with built-in satnav, so I had to use the app on my phone. Post codes in Spain only take you to a town or district, and my destination was rural. The upshot was that I had to phone my host from a crossroads for final directions.

I followed Xavi’s instructions and found myself in a broad flat valley, surrounded by towering hilly forests, a few kilometres past a tiny place called Constantins. I looked out for a sign that read ‘Casa Forestals’, and took a right turn when I found it.

The gate at the end of the one-way road that led to the
masia
had been opened for me; I drove through and on to a long driveway that was smoother and better shod than the trunk road from Girona. At its end, it widened and turned back on itself in a circle, with a single oak tree in a green island in its centre, and with the great stone house beyond.

I parked my humble vehicle in a space between two white Range Rovers, one of them the new coupé version, and just beyond, a Mercedes S-class saloon. It had an old-style Spanish number plate, and was on its way to becoming a classic.

Xavi was standing in the doorway; he saw me admire it. ‘That’s Joe’s,’ he said. ‘Ever since he moved out here he’s always had a Merc. He really loves that one; says it’ll be his last. These days his main exercise consists of polishing it.’

He walked towards me, hand outstretched, towering over me . . . I don’t think I mentioned that he’s six feet eight inches tall, or that he was a goalkeeper in his football days. ‘Thanks for coming, Bob. It’s good to see you. You’re looking well.’

He was being kind, for I’ve looked better than I did then, but when I replied, ‘So are you,’ I wasn’t kidding.

He’s only a couple of years my junior, but he looked at least ten years younger. His handshake was politely firm, but I suspected he would only need a nutcracker if he chose to use one. The complexion that I remembered being greyish even before his solitary days in Edinburgh was bronzed, even though it was winter, and he seemed to have lost a few wrinkles rather than gaining any. His thick hair was flecked with a only a few grey strands, whereas I haven’t found any dark on my comb for at least five years.

‘Come in,’ he said, ‘and meet the family.’

I followed him through the double entrance door into a big, high-ceilinged hall, with a marble floor. It was lit by a wrought-iron chandelier that had probably held candles when put in place but had been adapted to accommodate electric replicas.

He saw me glancing at it and chuckled, softly. ‘Hideous, isn’t it? Joe loves it, though, so it’ll last as long as he does.’

‘Which will be longer than you imagine, lad.’

The retort came from a doorway to our left, from an old man in black trousers, a checked cotton shirt that was predominately red in colour, and sheepskin slippers. His hair was silver and facially he looked more like a walnut than anyone I’d ever seen. He could have been any old bloke in any town square in any Catalan village, apart from the fact that very few of those are multimillionaires.

‘Mr Skinner,’ he exclaimed, coming towards us, ‘I’ve heard and read a lot about you over the years. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.’ There was a faint similarity to Xavi in his accent, but most of the Edinburgh influence had been worn away by decades in Spain.

‘Likewise, Mr Aislado,’ I replied.

He smiled. ‘Joe, please. My birth name is Josep-Maria, but that never saw the light of day in Scotland. I only use it here in business, or rather I did, when I was involved.’

‘Don’t believe a word of that,’ Xavi snorted. ‘Joe founded InterMedia, and he’s still its chairman. I might be the managing director, but there isn’t a major decision I take that I don’t talk through with him first. I do the travelling around Spain, when it’s necessary, but he does the thinking.’

I was surprised at the warmth between the two of them, but I wasn’t about to say so. Joe was in his eighties, and Xavi had lived the first thirty years of his life thinking that he was his son, not his half-brother. That was their family history, and it was not going to be disturbed by any questions from me.

The company they ran between them had grown from Joe’s purchase of a daily newspaper called
GironaDia
, after he sold up in Scotland and took his mother back to the land they had left during the Spanish Civil War, when he’d been a baby.

It had been doing its first few circles around the plughole at the time, but he had kept it alive by cutting out the dead wood and easing the old Franco loyalists through the revolving door. It had gone on to prosper and in time it had become the cornerstone of the biggest media group on the Iberian peninsula, with interests in radio and television, as well as newspapers.

Having greeted me, Joe went back to what Xavi told me were his own quarters within the great house. ‘He’s always lived there since he bought this place, over thirty years ago. Grandma Paloma, his mother, ran the house but she insisted that each of them should have their own space. The rooms on the ground floor are all he ever wanted. They have their own entrance, which was handy for him, when he and Carmen were a secret.’

‘Carmen?’

‘Carmen Mali Sans. Joe’s . . . partner, I suppose we call her nowadays. Her dad was the gardener here and her mother helped in the house. Carmen lived with them, but she supported herself by painting. I don’t mean houses either; she’s a portrait painter, and an eminent one at that. You’ll see her work through here.’

He opened a door and we stepped from the hall into a great drawing room; an interior designer had been given free rein on it at some time in its history, and that person had been a big rococo fan. The walls and ceiling were decorated with plaster sweeps and flourishes, everywhere, and on the wall facing the fireplace there was an ornate mirror that was worthy of a palace.

Above that great hearth there was a portrait; I looked at it and gasped, involuntarily. The subject was a tall, majestic woman, dressed in black, with long white hair; the work was life-size, and she might have been in the room with us. I knew without having to ask that she was Grandma Paloma.

On each side of her, another painting hung. When I looked at the one on the right, my eyes widened. It depicted a young woman; she was blonde and naked . . . and familiar to me. ‘Is that . . .’ I began.

Xavi nodded.

The subject was his first wife, Grace. I knew because I’d met her, when my old gaffer, DCS Alf Stein, and I went to interview her in Xavi’s flat in Edinburgh, after her parents had been murdered. Many things happened after that, leading up to a sad ending in which I played a small part. I was surprised to see her likeness there, and my expression must have said as much.

‘I’d take it down,’ he said, ‘but Sheila won’t let me. She says that since you can’t erase your past from your memory, you should live with it around you.’

‘And to be honest,’ another voice cut in, ‘it keeps me on my toes as well.’

He turned to face the woman who had spoken, as she came into the room through a side door, stretching out a hand to her as she walked across to join us. ‘And this is Sheila, whom you have never met.’

‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but I’ve heard of you,’ I told her, nodding as I met her gaze, and her smile, ‘from June Crampsey. In my line of work, I have to know the editor of the
Saltire
, and every other paper in Scotland.’

Xavi’s second wife was nothing like Grace in appearance, but just as attractive, dark where she had been blonde. She was the subject of the third portrait, from which serenity shone.

‘So it still is your line of work, Bob,’ he exclaimed. ‘The whole of Scotland thinks you’re finished with it; my sister certainly does, I know that.’ Before I could respond he carried on. ‘Hey, come on, I have no manners. Drop your bag and sit down. Would you like a drink? You must have had a fair old drive from L’Escala.’

‘It’s not all that far,’ I replied, ‘but any excuse for a drink is a good excuse, as they say.’

‘What do you fancy?’ he asked. ‘You name it.’

‘I’ll have what you’re having.’

He grinned. ‘In that case, it’ll be cava.’

They’re big on cava in Catalunya; it’s the local fizz. They used to call it Spanish champagne, until the protectionist French put a stop to that, forcing the producers to create a new identity. They’ve never looked back since.

Xavi left the room, through the door that Sheila had used, leaving the two of us together.

‘June’s told us a lot about you too,’ she said, as we sat facing the massive hearth, in which a log fire was burning. ‘Xavi speaks to her often, on Facetime, and sometimes I’m there. I gather you’ve been very helpful to her over the years.’

‘I hope I’ve been helpful to all the editors,’ I countered. ‘Well, maybe not all of them; most of the Scottish outlets have been fair to me over the years, but there have been one or two that have stepped over the line.’

‘Where’s your line drawn?’

‘Between my professional and private lives; the second is off limits.’

‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘Xavi will sympathise with you there. When he and I met up again . . .’ She paused. ‘You know we met twice, sort of? Briefly, when we were in our teens, then later, after we’d both been through the mill.’

She glanced up at the portrait of Grace. I nodded. ‘So I understand,’ I replied.

‘The second time around, Xavi was really withdrawn. He spent nearly all of his life running the
Saltire
, and cut himself off from everything else. His day consisted of cycling to the office, via the gym at his health club, then cycling home again, usually around midnight. He never accepted business or social invitations, not ever. If he hadn’t come into the minor injuries clinic after he fell off his bike and buggered his knee, we might never have met up again, and he might still be doing that.’

‘But he did,’ I said, ‘and all’s well.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t become any less private, not even after Paloma was born.’

‘How old is your daughter now?’ I asked.

‘She’s twelve. She’ll be here soon, in fact; my son Ben’s gone to pick her up from school, in Girona. He’s here with us just now. He’s as fond of his half-sister as Xavi is of his. He should visit her more often.’

‘He doesn’t live in Spain, then?’

‘No, he’s in Scotland, still; he’s never been tempted to move here. He works as a bookseller, or rather he did, until his company folded a couple of months ago.’

I’d noticed the collapse of a book chain earlier in the year, but hadn’t focused on it, having my own worries at the time.

‘It’s the impact of eBooks,’ Sheila continued. ‘It’s happening to newspaper sales too. Everything that you and I grew up with, Mr Skinner, it’s all changing.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I grunted, with what was meant to be a smile but probably came across as a grimace. ‘It’s not just in the media that things are being stood on their head. We’re in the middle of a social revolution, and it’s having a greater effect than any other period of major change in our history, because it’s all happening so fast.’

‘The social revolution: I like that, Bob. I may suggest to our editors that they focus on that phrase from now on.’ Xavi had re-joined us, carrying a tray with three glasses and a bottle of Freixenet Elyssia. ‘Are you a one-man resistance movement?’

‘Hell no!’ I retorted. ‘I’m for everything that improves people’s lives. In my book man’s three greatest inventions have been the wheel, the condom and the Internet.’

‘I know some old guys here who have no time for two of those, and would get by without the third if they could.’ He popped the cava and filled the three glasses. ‘But you have limits?’ he continued, as he finished and handed them round.

‘Yes, I do. I’m not against change, as long as it’s for the better. I’m not against cost saving either, as long as there are benefits. It’s okay to fix things, even if they ain’t broke, as long as you don’t make them worse. For example . . .’

‘The new Scottish police service?’

‘A prime example,’ I agreed.

‘Why?’ Sheila asked. ‘We have a National Health Service, so why not a national police force?’

‘We’ve had an NHS for over sixty years, and we still haven’t got it right,’ I pointed out, ‘not the management of it, at any rate. Very few things in this life are black and white; every large community has its own culture and its own problems. In policing these have to be handled sensitively, and sometimes with a large dose of common sense. To do that properly, the decision-makers have to understand the issues involved. They also have to work with the local authorities, the councils.’

I smiled, seeing an imaginary soapbox in the middle of the room, and realising that I was in danger of stepping on to it. ‘Ach, don’t get me started. Police Scotland’s a done deal, and there’s nothing more to be said about it.’

‘So that’s why you pulled your application form,’ Xavi murmured.

‘Who said I ever submitted it?’

‘My newspaper, the
Saltire
; it said so, based on information from good sources, and so did most of the other Scottish titles. My sister even ran an editorial about it, criticising you for going off in a huff.’

‘That’s June’s view,’ I retorted. ‘I wasn’t about to get into an argument with her about it.’

‘Are you saying she was wrong?’

‘Of course I am; she should have talked to me before she published. It wasn’t that easy a call for me. I might have gone ahead with my application, but something else got in the way.’ As I sipped the excellent cava, a small wave of suspicion rippled through my mind. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘is that why I’m here? Is this really an interview? Am I being recorded?’

I’d never seen the big man look remotely angry, not even in terrible circumstances, but he did then. His eyebrows came together hard as he frowned. ‘Do you really think I would do that?’ he boomed. ‘Invite you to my home just to pump you for information? Jesus, Bob . . .’