Quintin Jardine - As Easy as Murder

‘That’s right. And Palmer wasn’t, isn’t, saying anything. He refused to accept the certainty of his contact’s death. He saw Lucas’s killing as a warning to him to stay silent. He may well be right too.’

‘And Interpol? How do they see it? They can’t be happy about Palmer’s silence.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Primavera. Without that second witness, Palmer’s testimony would be worthless. Sure, they’re desperate to know who his partner is, but the deal he was given was legally drawn up and witnessed, and it wasn’t contingent on him naming him, something he’s consistently refused to do without the guarantee of him being taken out of play, permanently.’

‘Couldn’t that be arranged?’

‘Hah! Are you suggesting that the Americans might take direct action? No; another US administration might have, but this one doesn’t seem to have the balls for that sort of thing. Anyway, too many other nations are in the know. Instead, Uncle Sam’s gone home to watch his own back yard and Robert Palmer’s been dropped into the witness protection programme. Patterson Cowling died at exactly the right time. Because of the career he’d followed, he was a non-person. With the cooperation of MI6, the Home Office and the Justice Ministry, the Met witness unit took over his identity, and gave it to Palmer.’

‘Why?’ I asked; something in me was offended that the original Mr Cowling hadn’t been allowed to stay dead.

‘Simple,’ Mark replied, bluntly. ‘Because it was a hell of a lot easier than creating a new one. He stayed in the safe house for a while, getting used to his new self, then they turned him loose to get on with his life. Graham Metcalfe transferred from Interpol to the Central Witness Bureau as his handler, to keep an eye on him, just in case at some time in the future a new witness turns up, and Palmer can be pulled in to earn his freedom properly. Metcalfe was one of the two guys who visited me yesterday morning, by the way.’

‘Do the Cowling daughters know about this?’

‘Yes. They had to be told. But they have no idea who Palmer was or where he is.’

‘Did they give him a new face as well?’

‘No, they just fattened him up and gave him a different hair colour, and contact lenses that make his eyes blue instead of the distinctive brown they were.’

‘I see.’ I frowned. ‘So someone who’d known him before, and saw him again, might think they recognised him, but couldn’t be sure?

‘I suppose. Why?’

‘That’s part of my story,’ I said, then checked my watch and saw that it had just gone five. ‘But first things first; any minute now. .’

Right on cue, a brown figure crested the hill on his bike, skidded to a halt at our front gate and jumped off. ‘Hey,’ I called to him. So did Charlie, in his own way, and ran to greet him.

Tom came across to join us, his face a-glisten with a light sheen of perspiration. There’s a speed limit on the cycleway from L’Escala to St Martí, but it means nothing to him, unless it’s busy, in which event he keeps it more or less in sight. ‘Hello, Mr Kravitz,’ he exclaimed, forestalling an unnecessary introduction. I’d forgotten that they’d met, in London, three years before.

They shook hands, like adults, and he dropped into a chair. Our visitor said nothing at first; he just gazed, that was all. When he did speak, it wasn’t the usual platitudes about being big for his age, or looking like his father, or like me, both being the case; no, it was a question. ‘What do you want to be, Tom?’

‘Mum’s always asking me that,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mark told him. ‘Neither did your dad, until the day he died.’

I cut into the exchange. ‘Are you taking Charlie for a run as usual?’ I asked him.

He nodded, then jumped up. ‘Yes. Come on, boy. Where’s Jonny, by the way?’

‘Still at work, I suppose; him and Uche both.’

‘He didn’t even ask why I’m here,’ Mark observed, as he watched him remount his bike.

‘That’s like his father too,’ I said. ‘Oz was curious about everything, but often he kept it to himself.’

‘Or hired people like me to satisfy it for him.’

‘True, but Tom doesn’t have that luxury. When he gets round to it, he’ll ask me about you, and he knows that I’ll tell him. No secrets in our house.’

‘None?’

Sharp question; Kravitz had helped me out of some difficulty I’d got into a few years earlier, involving my cousin Frank. I’d never told Tom about that; he’d been too young, and for some of the detail, he always will be. ‘None that involve him,’ I retorted.

‘Ready to spill this story to me?’

He caught me off guard; my mind was still somewhere else, in Shirley Gash’s swimming pool, three years before, as it happened. ‘Pardon?’

‘Your story?’

Back to the present crisis. ‘Yes, sorry. How did I guess that Beau Lucas had his face blown off, you ask? Because that’s what seems to happen when your Mr Palmer’s involved.’ I gave him a rundown of everything that had happened in the eight days gone by, from Patterson Cowling’s introduction as Shirley’s new partner, to the attempted theft a few metres from where we were sitting at that very moment, and the dramatic incidents that had followed, leading to Patterson’s disappearance, and to his unveiling as Robert Palmer as was.

‘That’s why I asked if his appearance had been changed. It seems to me that somebody might have-’

‘Yes,’ Mark picked up, ‘might have thought he recognised him, but not been sure, so he sent in people to try to find out. Has the first victim been identified yet?’

‘No. The police aren’t even close.’

‘But it’s only the police who are looking? The Catalan people, these Mossos d’Esquadra?’

‘Yes.’

‘What have they got to go on?’

‘Blood group, DNA and a photograph taken on a mobile phone. That was published in the local papers and shown on television. Not a whisper of a reaction, from what I hear from Alex, other than a couple of women who hoped it might be their missing husbands.’

‘Then Graham Metcalfe and his DI, Harry Ferguson, need to get hold of it. The search should be at a different level. What about the woman, McGuigan? What’s known about her?’

I tried to recall as much as I could of what Alex had told me. ‘She worked in Ireland until a little over a year ago, as a TV sports reporter, legit, union member and everything. Then she dropped out of sight, and showed up in Spain, calling herself Christy Mann and scratching a living feeding video to shit websites and celeb photos to any tabloids that would buy them.’

Mark smiled. ‘Sports reporter,’ he repeated. ‘And she relocated in a hurry at the very time Palmer’s Bulgarian factory was busted. As I said, we know nothing about the distribution network for the HGH, but it was global, Palmer said, and those two facts about Miss McGuigan would fit, if she was part of it.’

‘Might he have known her?’

‘Not according to him. He’s always insisted that he just made the stuff, and that the only two people he knew on his partner’s team were the man himself and the witness.’

‘What about the genius chemist?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t he know him?’

‘He said he wasn’t allowed to meet him. This was a very secure operation, Primavera, so that makes sense. Just as it makes sense that McGuigan was involved in distribution in Ireland; a woman with contacts and freedom of movement across the world of sport.’

‘Too right it’s secure,’ I pointed out. ‘These two people were sent in to try to identify Palmer. They failed and, not only that, they drew attention to themselves in the process. Now they’re both dead; no chances taken.’