Quintin Jardine - Deadly Business

‘I’ll do that,’ he agreed. ‘But hold on a minute. What about the chauffeur who brought us here? Won’t he talk?’

‘Miles,’ I sighed. ‘This is the south of France. As far as black car companies are concerned, we were invisible.’

‘In that case, it sounds like a plan,’ he conceded. ‘But what about the little guy?’ He nodded in the general direction of my bundle, who had quietened down. ‘Isn’t he going to need looking after?’

‘There’s nobody better to do that than Janet and Tom.’

Miles came with me as I took wee Jonathan to join his siblings. The other two were quiet, knowing that some serious shit had hit the fan but not quite what. ‘There’s been an accident,’ I began, ‘and Duncan’s dead.’ Janet and Tom were both impassive. At least they didn’t whoop with glee.

Then I told them the rest as Conrad had explained it. ‘We need you all to go away with Miles, to Grandpa Mac in Anstruther. The rest of us have things to do here, then Liam and I will join you. But one thing,’ I stressed. ‘You don’t talk to anyone else about what happened here. Wee Jonathan needs to try to forget about it and you have to help him.’

They both nodded. Another year of childhood’s gone in a single day , I thought, and it almost broke my heart.

‘What about Mum’s funeral?’ Janet asked, solemnly.

I looked back at her. ‘Where would you like it to be? Here or in Scotland? It’s your decision, yours and wee Jonathan’s.’

She considered the question for a while, then replied, ‘Scotland. It’s where she was from.’ Her brother nodded agreement.

‘Then so it shall be,’ I promised.

‘Won’t someone come looking for Duncan?’ Audrey whispered as I left.

‘The Nevada State police might,’ I replied, ‘and possibly Strathclyde. Shame he was never here. I doubt if anyone else will, though.’

Miles and the three children were gone in less than half an hour. Meanwhile, when I got back to the kitchen, the blood was almost all gone. Liam and Conrad had stripped off their clothes, all of them, to avoid contamination, hosed the bulk of it into a drain in the floor, and were cleaning the remnants with what smelled like industrial-strength bleach.

Duncan was still there, but he was wrapped in what looked to me like a sail.

It was. ‘I have a boat,’ Conrad said. ‘I keep it in the marina at Fontvieille. Sometimes I do a bit of night fishing, and tonight’s going to be one of those nights. Once it gets fully dark, I’ll load him,’ he jerked a thumb at the body, ‘into the car and take him down.’

‘We will,’ Liam murmured.

‘No, just me.’

‘All due respect, Conrad, but there are bound to be cameras down there. You might be fit, but looking at what I can see right now tells me that carrying that thing on board, you ain’t going to be able to make it look like it’s nothing more than a sail.’

‘But it won’t look any more right with two of us carrying it.’

Liam grinned, and flexed his musculature for a second. ‘There won’t be two of us carrying it.’

‘When you two naked men have finished your pose-down contest,’ I barked at them, ‘get used to the idea that there will be a woman on board.’ Liam opened his mouth but I shut it for him. ‘You guys are not risking everything on your own,’ I decreed. ‘No arguments.’

And that’s how it was. We were able to park a few metres away from Conrad’s mooring. Liam lifted the sail and its contents out of the trunk and hefted it on board as if it weighed ten kilos or so. On deck the three of us unrolled it so that the body fell into the footwell out of sight of everything, even the sharpest-eyed owl, and we fixed the sail to the mast, as if it had been taken away for maintenance, and returned renewed. Obviously there were no bloodstains on it, since Duncan didn’t have any left.

We left the small port under the engine, but once we were clear, Conrad went on to wind power. It was a nice night for a sail, less humid on the Med than it had been on land. We headed away from shore until the lowest of the lights of Menton started to disappear below the horizon, when our skipper deemed we had gone far enough.

Duncan Culshaw didn’t have a coffin, or even a shroud, just the boat’s massive anchor and a few other heavy weights that we had found on board. Liam had never met the man alive, so he said a couple of words as we tipped him over the side. ‘So long, mate.’

He’ll be well into the aquatic food chain by now.

Conrad and I shared a bottle of red on the way back. Liam stuck to fizzy water; not even a nautical burial could shake his resolve.

Conrad was on his second glass when he glanced towards the horizon. ‘It’s funny how life works out, isn’t it?’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Bloody hilarious,’ I snorted.

‘No, seriously,’ he insisted. ‘I had a plan for dealing with Culshaw and that was it, what we’ve just done, only my version was that I was going to persuade him to come night fishing for real, go as far out as we went, then tip him over the side. He couldn’t swim a stroke; never left the shallow end of the pool. I was going to give it ten minutes then make a distress call to the marine patrol. They’d have found him floating somewhere, and a neat line would have been drawn under him.’

‘Couldn’t we still do that?’ Liam asked.

He shook his head. ‘Hardly. We’d have a tough job explaining why three of us couldn’t have managed to save him. Also, the cops would wonder why he didn’t come to the surface. But we couldn’t have that happen, could we, not with that fucking great hole in his leg.’

As he spoke, my mind went back a few days, to the evening when we’d found out about Susie and Duncan being married. ‘Friday, in my house,’ I said to him, ‘that tune you started whistling, when we were having a drink and talking about it; I know what it was now. It was “Sailing”, wasn’t it?’

He grinned, but said nothing.

As we neared port, and the lights grew brighter and Conrad had to concentrate on steering, I leaned against Liam. ‘What happens next?’ he asked.

‘You mean apart from me fucking your brains out when we get home?’

‘Yeah,’ he murmured. ‘I was thinking a little beyond that.’

‘As far as the company’s concerned, that will be sold; Buddy Beaujean’s the likely buyer. He says he wants to expand his involvement in Britain and Europe. Obviously I have to talk to the kids about it, but I’ll try to persuade them that they need to make lives for themselves and that it would only be an encumbrance to them.’

‘That makes sense,’ he agreed. ‘Now go further still.’

I knew what he meant, and I had an answer ready, one that had been forming since Susie’s death, and maybe even before. ‘Janet and wee Jonathan have no one,’ I said. ‘No blood relatives other than Mac Blackstone, who’s an old man, and Oz’s sister Ellen, who’s a great woman but who hated their mother, and couldn’t hide it from them forever. They’re orphans, Liam. Worse, they’re rich orphans, and at least one of them is bound to be traumatised by what happened tonight. So what do you think happens next?’

‘You’ll adopt them,’ he murmured.

‘Absolutely. It’s only right that they’re brought up with their half-brother.’ I paused. ‘And that would be a hell of a lot for a lifelong bachelor to take on, more than I could ever ask.’

‘Will you live here?’

‘Hell no! With the memories of tonight, and Oz haunting the bloody place? No, it gets sold, and the two Js move to St Martí. They’ll be fine with that. They like it there. I’ll try and persuade Conrad and Audrey to come with us. If I can, we’ll buy them a house near mine.’