As Easy as Murder (34 page)

‘Holes in the slate roof, half the windows broken, no electricity, no proper sanitation, no running water, just a well outside; I have
an instinct for these things, my dear. The odd hunter might have stopped there, in fact that’s probably what it was, a hunter’s lodge, but it hadn’t been occupied since Franco’s time.’

‘Did Palm . . . Patterson say anything about it?’

‘Yes,’ she chuckled, ‘he made me laugh. He said it was a pity Robin Hood wasn’t Spanish, ’cos the sheriff would never have found him there.’

M
ark was gone for so long that I asked for another coffee, and Alex joined me. ‘You’re not going to let me blow my job with this, are you, Primavera?’ he asked, quietly, as he ripped his way into the wrapping of the obligatory biscuit that came with his double espresso.

‘No,’ I told him, making a promise to myself that I wouldn’t. ‘Mark knows what he’s doing, and he is as well connected as he says, but at the first sign he’s reached a dead end, you and I will drive to Girona and I’ll put everything that I know and that he’s told you on the record, and after that, if you like, we’ll go to your headquarters and tell the whole story there.’

‘That might not get me out of trouble.’

I smiled. ‘We’ll be economical with the timeframe if we have to.’

‘This Genchev. Who’s he?’

I told him. ‘So you see, it is international. Also, we’ll be able to link the two murders here with the killing of the American DEA man in Malaga last year. That will give the Mossos big bragging rights over the Guardia Civil. You won’t be in trouble, you’ll be teacher’s pet.’

As I spoke, I saw Mark making his way around the poolside, steadying himself on his stick, but looking thoughtful as well. ‘Pleased with yourself?’ I murmured.

‘Pleased with Graham Metcalfe,’ he told me. ‘He must be plugged into every database in the world on this thing. It took him ten minutes to produce Uche Wigwe’s life story. He’s aged twenty-five, the eldest son and heir of Kalu Wigwe, Emir of Kanaan in Nigeria, and of Sonya, family name Odalonu. Uche was educated in England, at a prep school in York from the age of six, and then at Charterhouse School. From there he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he majored in and graduated
summa cum laude
in . . .’ he winked at me. ‘Guess what, Primavera?’

‘Chemistry.’

‘Go it in one. His tutors at MIT said he was near-genius level. They had him marked down as a potential Nobel Prize winner, and universities the world over just love to produce those. They offered him the chance to do a PhD, and yes, you guessed it, on the synthesis of hormones, only for him to turn them down. He dropped out of sight for a while after that, surfacing again two years ago as an MBA student at Arizona State University, with the stated ambition of getting on the golf team, which surprised the coach there, because he wasn’t exceptionally gifted at the game, despite having a personal tutor. Instead of playing, he hung about the team, caddying for a few of them, before settling for the bag of the brightest and best, Jonathan Sinclair. The rest we know.’

He smiled at me, expecting praise no doubt, but all he got was a frown. Something he’d said had thrown a switch. ‘His personal tutor?’ I repeated. ‘Did Metcalfe put a name to him?’

‘Hey, come on,’ he protested. ‘The database isn’t that good.’

I got to my feet and walked around the pool. My back was to them as I dug out my mobile, and selected Jonny’s number. I wasn’t sure he’d reply; I thought he might have been switched off on the range, but he must have had it on vibrate, for he picked up. ‘Auntie P,’ he greeted me. ‘Has the bastard shown up? If not, when he does, you might like to tell him he’s fired. I suspect you’ll be better at it than me.’

‘Sorry, Jonny; that’s a job you can’t delegate. Are you sure you don’t want to sleep on it?’

‘No. You know I’ve been thinking about the longer term? Well, I’ve been speaking to Clive Tate. He’s found me a guy who’s looking for a bag. He’s free now, but won’t be for long, and he’s giving him a big build-up.’

‘You have to make the decision that’s right for you,’ I said. ‘But no, Uche hasn’t turned up. It seems he had family business to take care of. But I don’t want to talk about him. There’s something I need to ask you. It’ll seem odd, but nonetheless. Remember you told me that Brush Donnelly found your coach for you?’

‘No,’ he contradicted me, at once. ‘If I said that, it’s not quite what I meant. Brush approved Lena, but that was never an issue, for she’s one of the best. Strangely enough, it was Uche who introduced us. He said that his dad had hired her to work with him.’ He paused. ‘Does that help?’

‘Does it ever. You go hit another few hundred balls.’

I went back to the guys, feeling more than a little smug. I was going to tell them what I’d just learned, but Mark didn’t give me the chance. ‘Did you find Shirley?’ he asked, urgently.

‘With the greatest of ease,’ I replied. ‘The call was worth every euro too.’ I recounted her story, complete with Robert Palmer’s comment, then added one of my own. ‘Sounds like a bolt-hole to me.’

‘It’s all we’ve got,’ Mark agreed. ‘Do you know that area?’ he asked Alex.

‘Yes. I went hunting up there when I was a kid.’

‘Fancy doing it again?’

The cop face returned. ‘Hold on. If there’s a chance that’s where they are, I can get a whole squad up there.’

‘Just what we don’t need: a Catalan SWAT team.’

‘Come on, man. We’ve got a kidnap victim there and a probable double murderer, triple counting the American in Malaga.’

‘Who?’ I exclaimed, intervening.

‘Uche Wigwe, who else?’

‘Uche never killed anybody,’ I protested. ‘Why the hell would he?’

‘Good question,’ Mark agreed. ‘Uche never met Robert Palmer, so how could he have recognised him? He didn’t send Genchev and McGuigan to try to identify him, so how could he have killed them?’

‘Then who did?’

‘That’s the big question. Maybe Kalu gave them their orders, from Nigeria, but he didn’t get here until after the second murder, so he didn’t shoot anyone either, not personally.’

Alex shrugged. ‘So I send in a team, we arrest everyone who’s there, and we get the answers.’

‘You get bodies; that’s the only certainty. We have a man with a gun, we have a man with a secret, and we have a man with whom they both seem to have a grievance. If you send people in there
with big boots, Kevlar helmets and assault rifles, someone, maybe all of them, will die. I was sent here to secure Robert Palmer, and to make him safe. That’s still my objective. I don’t care about the Wigwes, father or son. I propose that you and I go up there, Alex; first to establish if they’re in the building at all, and then to find out why.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘In my experience, the best way is to ask.’

‘Are you forgetting Uche’s gun?’

‘You’re a cop. Your uniform’s bullet-proof, because only a lunatic would shoot at it.’

Alex frowned. ‘Yours isn’t. Or is that stick all the protection you need?’

‘I’m still here,’ Mark pointed out, cheerfully. ‘And I’ll bet I have a lot more experience than you of situations like this. If I wasn’t here you’d probably fly in someone like me, as a negotiator.’

‘Shit! Okay, we go up there and we do what you say. But the decision on calling in back-up will be mine. You may be here to protect Palmer, but you’re a civilian, a foreign national, and my first task will be to protect you.’

‘Boys,’ I said, quietly, ‘if I may interrupt your pissing contest. If either of you think you’re going up there without me, then take a reality pill.’ They stared at me. Alex started to speak but I cut him off. ‘I’m coming, end of story. You don’t seem to realise that I’m the only one of us who’s actually met all of these people. Two out of the three aren’t remotely dangerous, and the third? Last seen, he’s been rendered harmless and anyway, if he’s what we think he is, he gets someone else to do his close-up work.’

‘And what if that person gets there before us?’ Mark asked.

‘I’ve got a feeling that’s what this whole kidnap thing is about, don’t you? In which case . . . let’s get a fucking move on.’

Alex let out a great sigh. ‘What’s the point of arguing with this woman?’ he moaned, then stood. ‘But before we go, I have to ask this, and I’d appreciate an honest answer. Mr Kravitz, are you carrying a gun? That I couldn’t allow.’

The reply was instant and firm. ‘No, I’m not; search me if you want to be sure. I can still hit a target with a rifle, from a prone position, but my MS makes me useless with a handgun. I’d be dangerous to everyone except the person I was trying to shoot.’

We took my jeep. The car that Alex had arrived in was an ordinary saloon, and from Shirley’s description of the road we’d be tackling, a four-by-four would be needed. I didn’t need directions to get to Darnius, since it was only forty minutes from L’Escala, but I’d have driven right past the turn for La Central if Alex hadn’t been there.

The road to the hotel should have been labelled ‘Proceed at your own risk’. Most of it was single track and every one of the many bends seemed to be blind, but at least it had a hard top. That ended as soon as we reached La Central and crossed the tiny, narrow bridge that sat just beyond, with a yellow sign advertising a restaurant in what had once been Robert’s Mill, and with an arrow pointing the way.

We began the ascent, and it didn’t long for me to wonder what the hell a couple of sixty-somethings had been doing walking up a small mountain like that. Winter rains had left deep ruts in the dirt surface and once or twice I had to steer around the remnants of
fallen trees. There was woodland on either side of the camino and some of it was pretty thick. Once or twice I thought we might be in among it, so narrow were some of the twists and bends. It could have been worse, though; in muddy conditions I wouldn’t have gone much further than the hotel, but spring had sprung early in Catalunya and we’d enjoyed almost four weeks of sunny weather.

It took around fifteen minutes to reach the fork that Shirley had described. When I saw it I could see how they had got it wrong. There was another restaurant sign, but without an arrow. Guesswork, if you weren’t smart enough to work out that there were no windmills in woodland country, only watermills, and that no rivers run in ground as high as that which we’d reached, far less along a track that continued to climb for as far as I could see.

I hadn’t thought that driving conditions could get any worse, but they did. The way grew narrower and rougher; the jeep even bottomed out a couple of times, despite its underside being normally well clear of the ground. I had to concentrate even harder, so I was more than a little annoyed when Mark, in the front passenger seat, patted my arm.

‘What?’ I snapped.

‘Ease off, Primavera,’ he said. ‘There’s a dustcloud up ahead. I think there’s another vehicle ahead of us.’

I stopped, and looked. He was right; the surface was bone-dry and I could see billowing dust in the distance, the same sandy-grey colour as the fine film that had formed on my hood. As far as I could judge, it was a few hundred metres away, and heading in the same direction as us.

‘Ten minutes earlier and we might have been waiting for them,’ I murmured.

‘No,’ Mark contradicted. ‘They’ll have come straight here from the airport, and I don’t imagine they’ve just nipped out for an early lunch. Someone else . . . unless of course this is a through road; that we don’t know for sure.’

‘It isn’t,’ Alex volunteered from the back.

‘Then wait. Roll down the windows and listen.’

I did as I was told. Funny thing, but even although we were in the middle of a wood, there was no birdsong, only the sound of a high-revving engine in the middle distance. And then there was nothing. ‘He’s stopped,’ I whispered. Why did I whisper? No idea.

I reached out to turn the engine on once more, but Mark stopped me. ‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘We could hear him, so . . . We’re on foot from here.’

‘Are you okay with that?’ I asked.

‘As long as it’s not too far. If I start to struggle you two go on.’

We climbed out of the jeep and set out up the track. In truth we travelled almost as fast as we had on wheels, sticking to the side of the road and avoiding the deepest ruts; some of them looked like small ravines. We’d gone a couple of hundred metres when we reached the other vehicle, the one we’d been following. It was a mid-range Volkswagen saloon, new, metallic blue beneath the dust, totally unsuited to the terrain, as out of place as Rudolf Nureyev in a Wild West saloon. Incongruous also because there were two kid seats in the back.

I looked ahead and I could see why the driver had stopped. The nose of another vehicle was sticking out from a gap between two
trees that might have been intended as a passing place. It hadn’t been new for some years. It was a crappy old off-white Seat, the kind that a car hire company will only keep in the hope that a renter might write it off, or steal it.

Mark had fallen a few metres behind. ‘Careful,’ he murmured as he caught us up. ‘Let’s go steadily. This changes things.’

We walked on, but slowly, taking care not to kick any loose rocks and send them clattering. We’d only gone for another fifty metres when the forest on our right track opened out into a clearing, in the middle of which was an old stone building, but not so derelict that it didn’t have a front door, through which a man was stepping. We had the briefest glimpse of him, but it was enough to tell us that he was very large, and that he was carrying something in his right hand, an object with a polished wooden stock.