Quintin Jardine - Deadly Business

He looked up at his colleague, and smiled. ‘ Preservativos ,’ he chuckled. ‘ Con sabor y aroma manzana verde . Condoms,’ he repeated, his eyes returning to their owner, ‘green apple flavour.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re not married, senor, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘I’m in a relationship.’

‘And your lady is in L’Escala?’

‘No, of course not.’ He looked across at me, and smirked. ‘But one takes one’s opportunities as they arise, so it pays to go prepared. And after all, this morning, I was meeting a single mother,’ he drawled, ‘a popular lady by all acc-’

He was stopped in mid-sentence by the back of the cop’s hand, cracking him in the side of the mouth. I’d never seen Alex move so fast; nor had I ever seen him hit anyone before.

‘You’re in enough trouble, mister,’ he growled, ‘without making it worse. Yes, Primavera is a popular lady here, but not in the way that you infer. She is an important member of our community and she is also the godmother of my daughter.’

Alex’s clout had left a vivid red mark on Culshaw’s cheek.

‘Okay,’ the intendant snapped, ‘we get down to business.’ He tapped the recorder on the table. ‘Everything you said this morning, your entire conversation with Senora Blackstone, was transmitted to us through her phone, which was active all the time. It was recorded and we have it here, all of it, including your admission to your attempt at extortion. We’re not here to negotiate, or even to interrogate. The evidence of our ears and of this tape shows that you have committed a serious crime. Under Spanish law that will earn you a minimum of three years in prison, but given the amount of money involved here, it is likely to be much more. What will happen now? Primavera will make a formal complaint against you and you will be held in jail while I report to the public prosecutor. From then on it’ll be in her hands, but I warn you, she’s a very tough lady.’ He looked round at me. ‘Primavera, will you write the denuncio , in Catalan of course, or would you prefer to dictate it?’

‘I’m literate enough to write it myself, Intendant,’ I replied. ‘If you give me a form, I’ll complete it.’ I stepped towards the table.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘The spelling doesn’t have to be one hundred per cent; the meaning has to be clear, that’s all. Marc, would you fetch a denuncio paper, please.’

Finally, as the sergeant left the room, Culshaw seemed to realise that he wasn’t involved in any sort of a game, that the cops were not bluffing and that I wasn’t either. He looked up at me. ‘Primavera, can we talk about this?’

‘We’re done talking, chum,’ I told him.

‘I was joking, only joking,’ he protested, but so weakly that he didn’t even fool himself, for his voice faded as he spoke.

‘Well, we ain’t.’

‘Please.’ He was begging, pure and simple.

As I looked at him, the anger that I’d been nurturing since I’d read the first few pages of his manuscript began to subside. I paused and began to think rationally. Duncan’s entire pitch had been based on the premise that there are things in my past and in Oz’s that might not stand up to detailed examination and that I would not want exposed to the full glare of publicity. He’d been right about that; he’d been a complete bloody idiot in the way he’d tried to exploit it, that’s all.

If I went ahead with a complaint, and it entered the Spanish judicial system, I wouldn’t be able to claw it back. Their courts might work very slowly, but eventually they do work. If Duncan got himself a decent lawyer and sought to defend himself in a trial, then everything would come out. More than that, even if he was locked up in Spain pending trial, bail denied, he’d still be able to do a book deal through his agent. Indeed the thing might become even more valuable.

Shit, the guy was on a winner either way, but he hadn’t realised it. I frowned at him, severely, but I asked Alex, ‘Would you leave us alone for a couple of minutes?’

He agreed; he was reluctant, but he agreed.

‘Okay,’ I said, when we were alone, ‘this is what it will take. You give me a document, which Alex will witness, transferring copyright ownership of your book to me. You do that now. Then you give me the device that holds the original … a laptop? …’ he nodded, ‘so that I can erase the entire hard disk. Then you disappear; you get out of Susie’s life and stay out. It’s that or you spend the next ten years being rogered up the arse by the cellmate of your choice, and I can promise you he won’t be using apple-flavoured condoms. Deal?’

He considered it for all of two seconds, and croaked, ‘Deal.’

‘One other thing,’ I added. ‘Should you stash away a copy and try to use it in the future, or should you even stick your head above the parapet, I can still make the complaint and Alex will still have that recording. That would be if you were lucky. The alternative would be that I would send Conrad Kent after you, with a free hand to do whatever he deems necessary. That’s where your thinking was flawed, Duncan. You should have realised that when you threaten my wellbeing, you threaten my son. If anybody does that, there are no limits to what I would do to protect him. You got that much right about Phyllis, and me.’

We were out of there in fifteen minutes, and he was out of town within an hour, taking with him a laptop with a completely blank hard disk.

‘Duncan?’ I repeated. ‘What makes you think she’s gone anywhere with Duncan? She doesn’t see him any more, Jonathan.’

‘He went away on business, Mummy said. But I think he’s come back.’

‘What makes you think that, son?’

‘I saw him in Monaco, before Mummy went away; one day Conrad was driving Janet and me back from school and I saw him sitting in Casino Square. Janet didn’t see him, though, and I haven’t said anything to Conrad. She’d be upset if he came back.’

‘Are you sure it was him? When you’re travelling in a car and you only get a glimpse of somebody, it’s easy to make a mistake.’

His mouth set in a hard line. ‘It was him,’ he muttered. ‘Why don’t you believe me, Auntie Primavera?’ There were tears in his eyes.

I ruffled his hair, and took his hand. ‘I do believe you, wee man,’ I said, gently. ‘If you’re certain, that’s good enough for me. Was he with anyone?’

‘No, but there had been somebody else at his table, because there were two glasses on it.’

‘Maybe they were both his?’

‘No. One was a beer and the other was a long pink drink, with straws and things in it. And there was a bag on the table, a lady’s bag not a man’s bag, and it was red, like one that Mummy’s got. And when we got home, she wasn’t there, and she’d said she would be. Auntie Primavera, I don’t like Duncan. He’s not a nice man. When Mummy and Conrad aren’t there he’s rude to us, and shouty. And he hit Tom once.’

‘He did what!’ I exclaimed. If I’d known that when he was in Alex’s custody …

‘When?’

‘One day last summer when Tom was with us. He and Janet were playing scrabble, in Catalan … Tom was teaching her … and Duncan told Janet to get him a beer. He didn’t say please or anything; he’d had lots of beers before that. Tom said that he was nearer the fridge so couldn’t he get his own, and Duncan pulled him to his feet, and said that just for that he could get it. And he swore, he used that rude word that Conrad got angry at me for using. Tom said no and Duncan hit him, on the side of the head, quite hard.’

‘Did anybody see this?’ I murmured.