The Picasso Scam (10 page)

At breakfast I loaded myself with enough carbohydrates to sustain me through a day’s walking in the hills. Passing through the foyer I caught sight of my reflection in the big mirrors. I was wearing grey shorts, a grey T-shirt and grey trainers. For an ex-art student the overall effect could only be described as, well, greyish. I could desperately use a splash of colour. I poked out my tongue. It was vermilion, fading to lilac at the back, and covered all over with minute lemon spots. That should do it. I might have a dull exterior, but boy, I was colourful on the inside.

In fifteen minutes I’d crossed the coast road and cleared the edge of town. After a couple of deadends I finally found a track that petered out at the base of
the hills, from where it was possible to gain access to them. Coming through the outskirts of the town, where the locals lived, I’d been amazed how many of the villas had big dogs – Dobermanns and Rottweilers – barking and slavering within their compounds. It appeared that this wasn’t the peaceful, law-abiding community that I had believed it to be. The lower flanks of the hill were laid out with streets, complete with lay-bys and parking areas, waiting for the next speculator to come along and put up the money and the buildings. The biggest hill looked to be about two thousand feet high, with a smaller one to its
right-hand
side. The plan was to walk to the top of the small hill, then traverse the ridge to the summit of the big one. It was quite a modest walk by any standards, but I had the usual feelings of expectancy and well-being as the gradient steepened, and leg muscles that thought they had achieved redundancy began to protest at this unseemly disturbance.

I followed a path for a while, but it stayed too low, so eventually I struck off into the scrub. The ground was hard-baked clay, with sparse, evil-thorned scrub. In territory like this each bush or plant needs a certain catchment area to survive, and it never encroaches on to its neighbour’s patch. This makes it possible to walk between them without difficulty, although my legs were soon covered in small white scratches. I puffed like an old tank engine for a while, but quickly struck up a rhythm in tune with the gradient. I was gaining height
rapidly, and felt I could go on for ever. I’d have to do more walking, I’d forgotten how rewarding it could be.

The ground became rocky – outcrops of grey, porous boulders, probably volcanic in origin – and the air was heavy with the perfume of rosemary. It was hot. I took off my T-shirt and tied it round the strap of the knapsack I was carrying. It contained my camera and a small amount of food. And my Swiss army knife, of course; I never go anywhere without my Swiss army knife. I’m determined to use everything on it, one day. There was no wildlife of any sort to be seen, the probable explanation lying in the liberal scattering of shotgun cartridges I came across. Plenty of wild flowers were growing, though, including some spectacular lilies. I took photographs of them. One day, when I retired, I’d learn all their names.

The lower summit was reached quicker than I’d expected, but I wasn’t complaining. I decided to have elevenses. I unpacked the bag in the middle of a big, flat rock, so that any marauding creepy-crawlies could be warded off. I was high above the coastal towns, with the Mediterranean stretching like a sheet of beaten gold into the distance. A crusty bread roll, with molten butter, was followed by rough pate and black grapes. I slit open the grapes with the small blade of the knife – the one I don’t use for skinning crocodiles – flicked out the pips and stuffed them with pate. Heavenly! They exploded like sweet-and-sour flavour-bombs against
my tastebuds. I wished I’d brought a ton of them. The kindest thing I can say about the luke-warm Seven-Up I washed the lot down with is that it hadn’t travelled well.

Soon I was walking in the shadow of the main hill. The ridge was really a broad saddleback and the going was easy. At its steepest I could touch the rocks in front of me, but it wasn’t necessary to use my hands to climb with. Then the slope flattened out and I emerged into the brilliance of the summit plateau.

I took in great gulps of the clear air and slowly rotated, my arms held out sideways. There were another three or four days of holiday left and I resolved to spend them out walking, not wasting my time looking for Cakebread. The view, all three hundred and sixty degrees of it, was breathtaking. Inland was a vast, arid plain, with mountains at the other side and specks of white indicating the presence of villages. I’d have to buy a decent local map.

I fitted the telephoto lens to the camera and began to pan around the horizon. The lens worked like a
low-powered
telescope, giving a view slightly better than the naked eye. I picked out the inland villages, then slowly turned in a clockwise direction. To the north were some mountain peaks with snow on them, glaring in the noonday sun. I lowered the camera, but I could barely see them unaided.

They must be the Sierra Nevada, I thought. I resumed panning, down the coast towards the hotel where I
was staying. A few boats were tracking up and down, but most were stationary in the water, the occupants fishing or, more probably, just sunbathing. Down below, people were ordering their midday chips with chips, and embarking on the alcoholic trail that would lead to oblivion in about twelve hours’ time. Up here the silence was exalting. I swung the camera down the coast, and Marbella swam into view. I focused beyond it, into the unknown. I couldn’t remember what lay at the other side of Marbella.

It soon came back to me, though. There it was, like a full stop at the end of a sentence, or the buffers at the end of a railway track. The blue bulk of the familiar shape of the Rock of Gibraltar reared upwards, marking the southernmost tip of continental Europe. The Sierra Nevada to the north and Gibraltar to the south – so much reward for so little effort. I peered at the Rock again, and as I did so, adjusted the focus to see what was beyond. To the left of it, across the water, a range of blue hills was barely discernible against the glare of the sky, one peak slightly higher than the others. I lowered the camera and thought about it. They must be the Atlas Mountains, in North Africa; Morocco in fact. On the other side of those hills stretched five thousand miles of the Dark Continent. I’d never seen it before, but I was far from being immune to its allure.

I was gazing at the Pillars of Hercules, once thought to be the end of the world. I stood there, stupefied. ‘PH,’
I said to myself. ‘The Pillars of bloody Hercules.’

I was down the hill in well under half the time it had taken me to go up. I called into the hotel room to have a quick shower and collect my passport and wallet, and was on the road again in Olympic qualifying time. 

The best suggestion we had managed during our brainstorming session had been ‘public house’. Nigel narrowed the field somewhat with ‘Poste House’, while Sparky’s contribution could be ignored, as it was unlikely that multi-million-pound art deals would be transacted in public toilets. I’d been thinking in terms of a public house of unknown name, but did I now know that name? Four hours after leaving the mountaintop I parked on a huge area of tarmac at the end of the isthmus that links the Rock with the mainland. An RAF Nimrod was standing at the other side of the road. As I was locking up, an eight-year-old mafioso sidled up to me and said something that included the words ‘money’ and ‘car’.

I said: ‘Go to hell, Miguel,’ and climbed back in. I
drove towards the customs post with the intention of impressing the incumbent with my warrant card and asking him if I could leave the Jag outside his window, but he waved me straight past. I decided that it would save a walk and pressed on. I soon regretted it: the place was chock-a-block with tourists and looking for a parking place was like trying to find charity in Hull. Then I saw him. He was big, bonny and smiling: a wonderful British bobby, big hat and all. I pulled up alongside and flashed my card. I was deferential, though; he was the boss as far as I was concerned.

‘I’m only on holiday,’ I told him, ‘but I’d be grateful if you could help me with a parking place for a couple of hours.’

‘No problem, sir. Leave it in the visitor’s spot at the station. That’s what they usually do.’

‘Fantastic. Where’s the station?’

He started to point, then decided it was complicated and maybe he’d better come with me. The complication was one right turn, but he enjoyed the ride, and he let them know inside who I was. I deliberately didn’t ask him if Pillars of Hercules meant anything. I preferred to explore; that way you discovered incidental things that otherwise you wouldn’t have come across. There’d be plenty of time for asking if I became stuck.

I found it long before reaching the ‘What am I doing here?’ point. I wandered up and down a couple of streets – the couple of streets – and there it was. Tucked between a shop selling Hong Kong tablecloths and one
with windows filled with expensive pottery figures was the only pub in the colony that didn’t sound as if it belonged in the Cotswolds. Inside, though, it was pure Heart of England, from the glass riding boots in the inglenook fireplace, to the busts of William Shakespeare on the beer engines. It was moderately busy. The waiter on this side of the bar looked Spanish, but the man behind, presumably the landlord, was all Anglo-Saxon. He was big, with bare, pink arms that resembled pigs’ carcasses. Round his neck was a gold chain that you could have used to drown a St Bernard, and on one wrist he wore a bracelet that had been carved straight out of the ingot with a blunt chisel.

‘Good afternoon, sir. What would you like?’

Pleasant enough manner, though his voice was surprisingly light. He had blond hair and eyebrows that were paler than his skin. I ordered a half of lager and passed the minimum of pleasantries with him. The other clientele gave the appearance of being holiday-makers: young couple, three lads, a few older couples. Nobody with a violin case, drinking screwdrivers. I ordered a ham sandwich. York ham, of course.

When he brought it to me I said: ‘I was supposed to meet a friend here on Tuesday, but I don’t know if he meant last Tuesday or next Tuesday. You didn’t notice a big, fat fellow hanging around, did you?’

He placed my change on the table. There was no visible reaction. ‘No, there wasn’t anybody in like that.’ I asked for another lager, and when he came back with
it he said: ‘This friend of yours, does he have a name?’

‘Yes.’ I rocked back in my chair so that I could stare him in the face, and said: ‘He’s called Cakebread, Aubrey Cakebread.’

He held my gaze and replied: ‘Sorry, never heard of him.’

But just off to my left the glasses rattled on the waiter’s tray.

I finished my drink at a leisurely speed and made my way back to the police station. I hadn’t caught a fish but I’d certainly stirred up the mud. Maybe the murk would attract a big one. I thanked the desk sergeant for his help and drove into the narrow gateway from the station yard. I stopped there, and looked both ways to see if the road was clear. It’s a policy I’ve adopted over the years. It wasn’t, and I had to wait for several seconds.

A man in a doorway opposite was having great difficulty lighting a cigarette. His body language was yelling: ‘I know this looks suspicious, but I can’t think of anything better to do.’ It wasn’t possible to be certain, but he looked like the waiter from the Pillars. I pulled on to the road and immediately stopped. In the mirror I saw him leave the doorway and hurry off. On the back of his T-shirt was a picture of a Greek bodybuilder carrying a club over his shoulder. What a prat. I chuckled at the ease of it all.

If I hurried I could make it to Puerto Banus with an hour or two of daylight left, so I did. It hadn’t changed
much, just put on its evening gown and dinner jacket. I had to admit it: the place had style. The loudest noise you could hear was that of wealth rubbing up to opulence. None of the boats had moved. I was reaching the point where I could name most before I saw them. I ordered a glass of house
tinto
in a pavement cafe and let darkness fall around me. There were worse places to be.

‘Suki! Stop doing that. Be a good boy. Oh, Kimmy! You’re all in a tangle. Come to Mummy.’

Northern vowels were breaching the peace. I turned towards their source. A peroxide blonde in a
leopard-spot
blouse and leather miniskirt had two dogs on leads. One of them was having a pee against a lamppost and the other had the lead wrapped round its legs. She untangled it and picked it up.

‘Hurry up, Suki,’ she said impatiently.

Personally, I’d have toe-ended the little bugger into the bay. When it had finished she waddled off, lucky Kimmy pressed to her bosom and Suki trotting alongside. She was wearing stiletto heels, and her skirt was so tight that her legs couldn’t move in parallel – they had to oscillate around each other with each mincing step. If you’d placed a dry stick between her thighs the friction would have ignited it.

It was the dogs, though, that I was mainly interested in. They were a bit like Yorkshire terriers, but hairier and more softly coloured. I didn’t know what a shih tzu looked like, but I’d have gambled Gilbert Wood’s
pension that I was looking at a pair. I left a three hundred per cent tip because I had nothing smaller and followed her.

The only description I had of Cakebread’s wife was that she was an ex-beauty queen. The ex part was accurate, but I wasn’t happy about the rest of it, unless you only had to enter to qualify. I followed her along the quay until we were down among the wannabees – the ones that it would only take me eight lifetimes to earn the equivalent of. She turned on to a jetty and then picked up the other dog to carry it up a short gang-plank. Ignoring the sign showing a lady’s shoe with a line drawn through it she crossed the deck towards the cabin and let herself in. I watched from the shore. The boat was called
Pelican
; there was no need to look – I could remember it. Only because of its associations with Francis Drake, though: my powers of theoretical deduction had been a complete waste of time.

I sat on a bench on the dockside until nearly midnight, watching the lighted windows on the boat, sometimes turning to watch the beautiful women and their partners strolling by, resplendent in their evening finery. Lady Breadcake would either go to bed, in which case I’d go home, or she was right now changing into something stunning before hitting the town, in which case I would follow her. Plenty of people were promenading up and down, enjoying the warm night air. A couple of times I walked on to the jetty and strolled along it, hanging
about as I passed the
Pelican
, but there was no sound to be heard.

I’m never sure if you can actually see a light go out. One moment it’s there, a hundredth of a second later it’s not. The windows at the front of the boat went dark, then those in the middle, sorry, amidships, and then the ones at the stern. It was as if she were working her way towards the door, before coming ashore. Some people were passing in front of me. I stood up and walked a few paces forward to lean on the railing.

Someone rattled off something in Spanish in my ear and a hand gripped my arm.

A pockmarked man was speaking to me, but it was the ugly black automatic he was poking into my side that demanded most of my attention.

He had the advantage of a gun, I had the advantage of unpredictability. Of the two, I’d have preferred the weapon, but you can only make the best of what God gives you. I swept his gun hand to one side and thumped him, hard, in the solar plexus. The air in his body burst out in a rasping gasp, bringing most of his stomach contents with it, and he went down like a tower of dominoes. His pal was more professional: he must have cracked me on the side of the head with his pistol. I saw a display that would have pleased Standard Fireworks and the next thing I remember is being on the ground, surrounded by legs and shiny shoes. It was impossible to tell if they were friendly or foe-ly.

I rolled on to my side. I was immediately grabbed
by strong hands and my arms were forced behind my back and manacled. They were definitely foe-ly. They dragged me to my feet and pushed me towards a car. I swayed about and kept my head down, trying to act a lot worse than I felt. The one I’d hit was sitting on the pavement, his back against a post. His face was the colour of a toad’s belly, and the front of his shirt looked like a salad bar. We tore off with a squeal of tyres, and I did my best to take notice of where we were heading. I needn’t have bothered: we arrived in about three minutes. They pulled me out of the back seat and bundled me towards the door of an imposing building. Several cars were neatly parked on either side of the entrance. They were black and white, and had POLICIA stencilled on the sides. These were the good guys.

Nobody read my rights to me. They just confiscated everything from my pockets, removed the laces from my trainers, took off the ‘cuffs and threw me in a cell.

A sickly youth with a stupid grin was already in it. He put two fingers to his lips and said: ‘Cigarrillo?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I told him, in fluent Spanish.

There were two benches, for sleeping or sitting on, and a small sink in the corner with a single tap. It smelt as if someone had been pissing in it. I swilled round the basin with cold water, then washed my face. There was no mirror or towel, so I dried myself on the front of my T-shirt. The wound on the side of my head had bled a
little, but it had stopped now. After a few minutes the guard’s keys rattled in the lock.

Good, I thought, let’s be getting out of here. He opened the door and threw me a blanket. There was an air of finality about his action. I rolled it into a pillow and stretched out on the vacant bunk. The youth was laid under his blanket. Trying to perform two functions with a single blanket was a form of torture. I resolved to write to Amnesty International, if I ever escaped from this dump. I looked across at my cellmate. He wasn’t very big; if it became cold during the night I’d just have to steal his.

Morning came, although there were long periods when I doubted if it ever would. Like I’m told they do in hospitals, they woke me up just after I’d dropped off to sleep. A full English would have gone down well, but they didn’t even offer coffee. The guard just told me to ‘Come’, grabbed me under the armpit and marched me upstairs. I didn’t argue, I was in no position to, but I was amazed how compliant one night in jail had made me.

Capitano R. Diaz sat behind a big polished desk that could have graced a modest boardroom. He wore a blue suit with a dazzling white shirt. The silver stripes in his tie were echoed in his cuff links. The desk was clear, apart from the large brown envelope that had contained my meagre possessions, which were now coming under his scrutiny, and a nameplate that told me who he was. One of his lieutenants was also in the
room. He studied the contents of my wallet for several minutes, the last few being devoted to my warrant card. Then he sat with his hands together as if in prayer, his fingertips touching his lips.

Finally he said: ‘Sit down, Inspector Priest,’ gesturing to a chair and passing my laces across the table. ‘Would you be good enough to tell me what you were doing last night in Puerto Banus?’ His English was about as good as mine, but his accent was sexier.

‘Thank you.’ It seemed impolite to put my foot on his desk while I replaced my laces, so I wrapped them around my fingers. ‘I’m on holiday, Captain. Whilst I was here I heard that a known criminal one – I’ve had dealings with – was in the area, so I thought I’d watch out for him. I believe he may be staying on the boat called the
Pelican
.’

‘And his name?’

‘Cakebread.’

He turned to give an enquiring glance to the lieutenant, but he shook his head.

‘Cakebread, did you say? Is that a common name in England?’

‘No, sir, it’s very unusual.’

He thought for a few seconds, then asked: ‘This Cakebread; what did you intend to do if you saw him?’

I’d wondered about that myself. My brain did what passes for racing to think of a plausible course of action. The results impressed me. ‘We think he may be involved in drug smuggling. I had information that
he was due back in England on Thursday, but I didn’t know whether it was last Thursday or next. If he’s still here, it must be next.’

‘When you say: “
We
think he may be involved in drug smuggling,” who do you mean?’

‘Just myself, sir. My evidence is only hearsay, and I really am here on holiday. I’m acting completely without authority and apologise for the problems I’ve caused you.’ I shrugged my shoulders and risked a smile. ‘It’s the only way I know to enjoy myself.’

He didn’t return my smile, but he said: ‘Yes, Inspector Priest, I know what you mean.’

I wondered if I’d be able to make myself a coffee if I killed them both, but decided against it – I was in enough trouble. I said: ‘There is one other thing, Captain Diaz.’