Quintin Jardine - Deadly Business

Ben runs our local wine shop at the foot of the narrow street that leads up to St Martí’s main square, extravagantly named Plaça Major. It’s taken up entirely in summer by café restaurants, of which all but one are big on pizzas. It was quarter to seven, on Friday, June the twenty-third. It was quiet at that moment in time, but in a couple of hours it would not be, for on that auspicious date the Festa de San Juan, the national celebration of the summer solstice, takes place.

Once I heard a Brit expat describe San Juan as ‘like Guy Fawkes night. You know.’ That’s akin to describing the Spanish Civil War as ‘a little local dispute’. San Juan has fireworks too, but it’s much, much more. It’s more like the bombing and rocket campaign that preceded the invasion of Iraq at the start of the second Gulf War. If it’s explosive and they can get their hands on it, the locals will set it off, and by that I mean locals all across Spain. L’Escala, the municipality of which St Martí is a part, is a big enough community to make some serious noise, and we were about an hour away from the usual kick-off time. They don’t wait for dark; thunderflashes make their point twenty-four hours a day.

That was why the party was starting to break up, and why Tunè was trying to offload the sandwiches. I scoffed mine and jumped down off the wall ready to help with the clear-up. In fact there was little to clear; Cher and Mustard are very effective in that respect, with anything that’s edible.

We were finished, the party guests and their parents had all gone home, and Tom was fitting a reluctant Lily into her pushchair … if I’d tried that there would have been trouble, but she’s his girl … when Janet reappeared. She looked at her half-brother. ‘Did you ask?’ I heard her say.

‘Ask what?’ I said.

Tom replied. ‘Can Janet and I go to the concert?’ His voice had begun to deepen over the winter; I’ve noticed that the more serious he is, the lower the register.

I frowned at him, as if I meant it. ‘Which one?’ I retorted.

He gave me his exasperated sigh; I’m told that’s something else that comes with puberty. ‘You know which one, Mum. The one tonight, on the beach, for San Juan.’

I kept my frosty face on. ‘Do you know when it starts?’

‘Yes, round about midnight.’

‘Remind me. How old are you two?’

‘You know how old; twelve.’

‘Then I rest my case.’

‘Oh, come on, Mum,’ he protested. ‘It’s happening three hundred metres away from our house. Do you think we’re going to sleep through it? Never mind the concert, the rockets and the bangers will go on till one o’clock, earliest. Please, Mum. We won’t be drinking, or smoking dope or anything like that. You can send Conrad to look after us, if you like.’

As he spoke, I saw the man in question, and his sandy charge, crest the hill behind him.

‘I don’t send Conrad anywhere,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s responsible to Susie Mum for Janet and Jonathan; he decides where they go.’

‘So I can go, but not Janet?’

‘Did I come close to saying that?’ I exclaimed. ‘Conrad,’ I called out, ‘these two want to go to the reggae concert on the beach tonight. What do you think of that?’

He pursed his lips. ‘Definitely not without a minder,’ he said. ‘And that’s a problem ’cos for all my West Indian heritage, I can’t stand reggae.’

‘Then it’s just as well for everybody,’ I told him, grinning, ‘that I’ve been waiting for a few years for Tom to be old enough for us to go.’ I pointed at him, and his half-sister. ‘There’ll be a curfew, mind,’ I warned them. ‘Two o’clock, latest.’

‘Three o’clock?’ my boy shot back.

‘Two thirty. You’ll have had enough by then, trust me. Janet, it’ll probably be cool during the night, so make sure you dress warm enough.’

‘I will do, Auntie Primavera,’ she promised. ‘But what about Jonathan?’

I was about to tell her that he was just too young, when he beat me to the punch. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t like loud music and I don’t like big crowds.’ He spoke French, as if he was trying to cut the rest of us out of an argument between him and his sister, but I knew by that time that it went deeper. Wee Jonathan made a point of speaking French almost exclusively in Monaco, and would do the same when he’s at mine if I let him get away with it. I will only speak English to him there, and won’t acknowledge his reply unless it’s in the same language. I have no idea what goes on inside the kid’s head, but I can only guess that he’s rejecting something, possibly his entire family.

‘That’s okay,’ Tom said to him, in the same language. ‘I hadn’t thought about you. I’m sorry. I’ll stay with you if you want, Jonathan.’

‘You will not!’ Janet snapped. ‘He’s the baby of this family and he’s not going to decide what we do.’

‘No more are you,’ Tom murmured, in Catalan.

‘I don’t want anyone to stay in with me!’ Jonathan shouted, exploding into English. ‘Go to your fucking concert and enjoy yourselves!’

‘Hey,’ Conrad barked, grasping the child by the shoulder. ‘That settles it. You are grounded, boy. You don’t leave the house till Monday, earliest.’ He glanced at me. ‘I’m sorry about that, Primavera. I don’t know where he picked that up.’

I laughed. ‘You don’t? His father and I used to have conversations just like that. For all that Oz and Susie were happy, I’m sure they had their moments too.’ I went over to the kid. His eyes had more life in them than I’d ever seen before, but it was the wrong sort. I took his hand; he tried to pull it away but I didn’t let him. ‘Come on, Jonathan, let’s you and I go home. Would you like to phone your mum? You haven’t spoken to her for a couple of days.’

‘No.’

‘Send her an email, then?’

‘No.’

‘She’ll be missing you,’ I ventured as we started to walk towards the house.

His bottom lip trembled. ‘She won’t, or she’d have taken me with her.’

‘Mum,’ Tom called, from behind me, ‘can Janet and I go down to the beach bar for a Fanta?’

‘Okay, but be home before eight, so you can get cleaned up for dinner.’

‘I’ll go with them,’ Conrad said. ‘I fancy a beer.’ And he didn’t fancy letting Janet out of the sight of an adult. Oz was rich and famous, and he had been obsessive about his kids’ security. He and his minder had been very close, and Conrad still heard and obeyed his master’s voice, even from beyond the grave.

They went on their way, and wee Jonathan and I continued on ours. There’s a simple cold shower at the side of the house. I made him stand under it for a minute or so, not as a penance, but to wash the sand off: standard practice. When it was done, I towelled him half dry and then we went inside. He would have headed straight for the room he was sharing with Tom, but I wouldn’t let him. Instead, I took him into the kitchen, gave him a glass of Activia pouring yoghurt, vanilla flavour, and sat him at the table. I’d seen enough of him by that time to know that always gets his attention.

‘Now,’ I began, ‘now that everyone’s tempers have cooled, tell me again why you think your mother won’t be missing you.’

‘Because she didn’t take me,’ he repeated, quietly, but stubbornly.

‘She couldn’t. Your mother’s a businesswoman. Sometimes she has to be away.’

‘She’s never left me before, only this last year. Any time she’s had to go to Scotland before she’s always taken Janet and me.’

‘And Conrad and Audrey.’

‘Yes.’

‘And those times I’ll bet she worked a lot and you didn’t see much of her.’