As Easy as Murder (4 page)

‘That’s right. Well, there’s a saying: “Grief is the price we pay for love”. I find it beautiful. I hope you will too, and that you’ll try very hard to accept it, and to believe that it’s a price worth paying. If you do, then however sad you are when someone dies, it will never overcome you, because you will appreciate what you’ve had from that person and know that nothing can take those good memories away.’

He was gazing at me. ‘D’you understand?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘It’s much the same as “shit happens”, only not so rude.’

D
eep discussion over, Tom went to bed with
The Fellowship of the Ring
. . . he’s taking a break from Harry Potter. I read Gerard’s letter one more time, ran it through the shredder, wrote him off as a memory, and saw off the rest of Saturday with a coffee on our first-floor terrace, overlooking the square. The day died slowly; there were quite a few stragglers from Arrels del Vi, and the restaurants were busy until almost midnight. But eventually, the village turned in and so did I.

Tom and I spent the first part of Sunday with Charlie on the only beach in our area that allows dogs in the summer months. It allows nudists too, although going naked is not obligatory. (No, I don’t! When I feel like getting all my kit off, I do it in the privacy of my terrace.) We had a late lunch at Vaive, our favourite xiringuita (that’s beach bar to you), then wandered back home, so that we could be showered and reasonably dressed in time for the last session of the fair.

Business around the stalls was even more brisk than it had been the day before, and there were even more pre-schools playing in front of the church. But I was in a sunnier mood so that was fine.
The salesman from Miles’s winery tried to quiz me about the owner’s view of his performance, but I gave him no more than an encouraging smile. I wanted to speak to my brother-in-law, to make things as official as they were going to be before I started to act on his behalf.

Tom and I knew most of the people there so we spent a happy couple of hours schmoozing the crowd, me sipping, him sniffing. Shirley and her new beau were in evidence again, getting full value for their tickets.

Before we’d left for the beach I’d done one thing. My time in the ambassadorial thing had given me a few contacts in the Foreign Office. I called the best of them, a man named John Dale, on his mobile, and ran the name Patterson Cowling past him. His response had been immediate. ‘Never heard of him. One of ours, you say?’

‘I don’t, he does. He told me he spent most of his career in your set-up. Fairly senior at the end, but I couldn’t wheedle any more out of him.’

‘Is he giving you cause for concern?’

‘No, but if my eventful life has taught me anything it’s never to take anyone at face value. My friend’s involved with him, so if there’s anything she should know . . .’

‘I’ll check, soon as I can, and get back to you.’

Fortunately I was some distance away from the man under discussion when the opening bars of ‘Born to Run’ sounded in my pocket. I took out my mobile, apologised to Alex Guinart and his wife, to whom I’d been chatting, and took a few steps away from the throng.

‘Primavera?’

‘Of course, John.’ I was surprised. Although I knew him well enough to have called him on a Sunday, I hadn’t expected a result for a couple of days, at best.

‘Can’t be too careful. Are you alone? There’s a lot of background noise.’

‘I can’t be overheard and anyway, most of the people making it don’t speak English.’

‘That’s good, because this conversation will never have happened.’

My eyebrows rose, my forehead ridged. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Definitely. I asked a couple of quick questions about your new friend. Wow! I’m not so high up the ladder that I can’t still get my arse kicked, and it didn’t take long for it to happen. I’ve been instructed to tell you to stop asking questions about Mr Cowling, and to take him at face value, as a retired civil servant.’

I reached a very quick conclusion. ‘Oh hell,’ I moaned, ‘you’re not saying he’s a fucking spook, are you? I don’t like those people.’ That was very true; about three years before I’d had real trouble with an MI5 woman, in something that a renegade cousin of mine dragged me into. I’d sorted it out, and her, but I hadn’t forgotten her. If she had anything to do with Mr C . . .

‘Primavera,’ John cut in, ‘I’m not saying anything, and neither are you. Understood? If this man gets the faintest notion that you know about his background, there could be hell to pay, for me, personally.’

‘But he seems like such a nice guy.’
Yes
, I thought, as the banality escaped,
and Eva Braun loved Hitler
.

‘I’m sure he is. They’re not all licensed to kill, you know; most of them are linguists, or IT experts, or graduates who had no clear career plan when they left university.’

‘Fine, but what about Patterson?’

‘I don’t know about him!’ He was beginning to sound exasperated. ‘The person who gave me my orders isn’t one to be cross-examined.’

‘Okay,’ I said, to mollify him. ‘Thanks for that. Who were we talking about again? I’ve forgotten his name already.’

‘Good. And not a hint to him, remember.’

‘Promise.’

‘You’ll be held to it, be sure.’ He paused. ‘Hey, about your resignation: are you firm on that? The people in the Barcelona consulate are going to miss you.’

‘I’ll miss them too, but not enough to change my mind. Nothing’s going to do that; my boy needs me more than my country.’

‘I can understand that. Be happy, and keep in touch.’

I pocketed my mobile and turned back to face the throng. Alex and Gloria had moved along, with Marte, my god-daughter, tagging along in Tom’s care. She’s getting disturbingly close to school age, another constant reminder of the passing years. I was about to rejoin them, when Shirley’s bellow stopped me short. ‘Hoi, Primavera, you haven’t forgotten tomorrow, have you?’

I stared as she and Patterson approached, focusing on her alone and trying not to look at him at all, in case something in my expression betrayed me. Spooks must be experts at reading people, I reasoned wildly. ‘What about tomorrow?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘Golf,’ she exclaimed. ‘Girona. Christ, you have too.’

She was right. I had; stuff had intervened.

‘Leave the girl alone, Shirley,’ Patterson laughed. ‘Not everyone’s as keen as you to watch guys whacking balls around a field.’

‘It’s the guys we’re going to watch,’ she retorted. ‘Isn’t that right, girl?’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do. What time are you picking us up?’

‘Eh?’ was all I could gasp.

‘Come on, you don’t want Patterson to have to drive, do you? Not on his first trip here. Let him see the countryside.’

‘I’m all for that,’ I replied, ‘but can’t he see the sights with you behind the wheel?’

‘Sure, but who’s going to point them out? Besides, I’m a terrible driver.’

The only thing that makes Shirley’s driving terrible is her insistence on approaching Formula One speeds on public highways, but that was reason enough for me to agree. I had spent a few journeys in her passenger seat with my eyes shut tight. ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘Nine o’clock, your place. But we’ll have coffee and croissants before we set off.’

‘Done deal.’ She frowned briefly. ‘Oh, by the way, Ben was looking for you earlier.’

‘Did he say why? Does he have a problem?’

‘Maybe he wants you to look after the baby.’

Benedict Simmers, our village wine merchant, had settled down; he had fallen in love with a beautiful girl from Barcelona
called Tunè, and in June of the previous year they had produced a small angel, name of Lily. She had pushed all my ‘broody’ buttons, and I’d become a regular volunteer babysitter. I looked around trying to spot him among the crowd, and eventually I did, paused in mid-bustle, talking to his mother and sister. He saw me at the same time, and waved me across. ‘No problem,’ I told him, as he approached. ‘Do you want to leave her with us, or have us come to you?’

His eyes said ‘puzzled’ until he worked it out. ‘Oh no, no,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘It’s not about that. Someone’s been looking for you, that’s all. He phoned my shop asking for your phone number. Jordi’s in there just now, looking after things, and naturally he wouldn’t give it, not just like that, to a stranger. So he told the guy to leave his number and you’d call him back, if you felt so inclined, that is.’

He fished in his pocket, produced a scrap of paper, and handed it over. It took me a few seconds to decipher Jordi’s scrawl, but eventually I made out the name ‘Wigwe’, and a phone number that could have been an American mobile, to judge by the format.

‘Wigwe?’ I muttered, wracking my brains. ‘I don’t know anyone called Wigwe. I’m absolutely certain of that. Never have done.’

Ben grinned. ‘Remember it was Jordi who took the message. The name’s as likely to be Smith or Jones.’

True, but I focused on Wigwe in the meantime. Forename or surname? Whichever, where the hell could a handle like that have originated? It couldn’t be an intermediary from Gerard, could it, I wondered as I scratched around for a clue? From the postmark, his
letter had taken ten days to reach me. Could he have been hoping that I wouldn’t accept it, that I’d want him enough to fight for him? If so, he’d bet on the wrong horse. But still . . .

‘Only one way to find out,’ I declared, digging out my phone once more, and walking away to give myself some more clear space. As I did I saw Tom looking at me; I waved to him and smiled, to let him know that everything was all right.

I keyed in the numbers that Jordi had written down and pressed ‘call’. It took a few seconds to make the connection, but when the ringing tone began it came in single pulses, a clue that the owner was in Spain, or some other part of Europe. It sounded six times, and then it switched to voicemail.

‘Hello,’ a deep, confident, cultured baritone greeted me. ‘This is Uche.’
What the hell happened to Mr Wigwe?
I wondered. ‘I’m afraid that I can’t take your call just now, but if you tell me what’s on your mind, then I promise I’ll do something about it.’

What was on my mind was ‘Who the fuck are you?’ but I decided not to share that with him. Instead, I killed the call. He wasn’t linked to my former job, that was for sure, and I didn’t take him for a friend of a friend. If a chum of mine had known anyone with a name like that, more than likely I’d have heard about him and it would have stuck.

That left only one other likely explanation: journalist. It doesn’t happen very often but it has done. On two or three occasions I’ve had approaches from hacks digging into Oz’s life and death. In every case I’ve refused to speak to them: more, I’ve left them in no doubt that if they bothered me further, I had friends in the police force and elsewhere who would bother them.

‘I think I’ll just sweep you under the rug, mate,’ I whispered to myself.

‘Sorted?’ Ben asked as I moved back towards the shade of the entrance tent.

I shook my head. ‘A mystery,’ I replied, ‘and that’s how it will remain. If he calls again, you’ve never heard of me.’

I went back to Tom and to my happy day.

When the next one dawned, there were clouds in the sky. That suited my son, because he had school, and I didn’t mind either. In my experience golf courses are best avoided, either as player or spectator, when the temperature heads towards the nineties as it can here when you least expect it. Tom took his bike to school, with a packed lunch in his haversack. The former was normal, since it was no more than a ten-minute cycle; the latter he likes to do more often than not.

I’d never been to the PGA Catalunya course, but I had a feeling that it would be even more upmarket than the Emporda norm, which can be fairly posh, so I chose a designer outfit that I’d bought in Barcelona, sticking a lightweight rainproof jacket in my shoulder bag as a precaution, just in case those clouds were water-bearing.

I arrived at Shirley’s a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. The bitch in me hoped that I might catch them on the hop, or even on the job, but they were ready and waiting. Shirl had coffee on the hob and fresh croissants warming in the oven. I was determined not to let Patterson have a whiff of my precautionary interest in him, but I couldn’t stop myself from sneaking the occasional glance at him, trying to catch him off guard, to see if
anything showed in his eyes other than the bonhomie so evident at our first meeting.

There was nothing; if anything he was even more laid-back. Those laugh-lined eyes of his were positively twinkling. So, indeed were Shirley’s. I reckoned that they must be getting very well acquainted. Looking at the pair of them made me wonder about myself. They were twenty years older than me and obviously at it like rabbits. So what had I become? Wasn’t I a woman any longer? I hadn’t fancied anyone since Gerard left, not for a second.

It passed quickly, though, as I told myself why that was. In the couple of days that had gone by since Gerard’s letter, I’d come to think of him as a lucky escape. I’d found him attractive, sure, but . . . a lapsed priest, for Christ’s sake!

The fact is, my sexual career hasn’t been very exciting or very extensive. I won’t list all my partners: suffice it to say that I’m well short of double figures. And here’s the truth, boys. Of that number, only Oz really knew what he was doing down there, or to put it another way, cared about what he was doing for me. The others ate, shot and left, more or less. A wise and cynical lady, whose name I’ve forgotten, once said that the two saddest times in a woman’s life are, one, when her partner can’t find her clitoris, and two, when he finds it. I’ve had enough sadness in my life, and I’m not about to go looking for more.