Quintin Jardine - As Easy as Murder

‘Hands off!’ I warned. ‘I saw him first.’

‘Actually,’ Patterson pointed out, affably, ‘I did.’

Shirley looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

He laughed. ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing I haven’t told you.’ He turned to me. ‘What are you going to do, Primavera?’

I leaned closer to him, as if I was trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, which, in all probability, I was. ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t want to interrupt his practice, that’s for sure. God, I may be the last person in the world he’d want to see. There was a lot of shit happened between his uncle and me. His mother probably hates me, so he’ll have had his card well marked about me.’

‘If he has,’ he said quietly, ‘there was an up-to-date picture on it. He’s staring at you.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I wouldn’t, in these circumstances. No joke.’

I forced myself to look back towards the practice range. He was right; Jonny was gazing up towards the spectator stand, and there was nobody else he could have been looking at. He was frowning. Most of me wanted to be out of there. I thought about jumping off the back of the structure and legging it, but my dignity wouldn’t let me take that way out. So I let my eyes meet his.

And when I did, he smiled. ‘Auntie Primavera,’ he said. I could hear the laughter in his voice, and see my past in his wide, friendly smile. He started to move in our direction. I knew that if I stayed where I was he’d climb up to us. I didn’t want to involve Shirley and her man in such an unexpected reunion, so I rose and headed towards him, stepping over the empty seats in front and jumping down on to the ground.

‘Auntie Primavera,’ he repeated, as I stood in front of him, then he swept me up and off my feet, into unexpectedly strong arms and hugged me tight. And I hugged him back. I was feeling lots of things, but none of them was very clear to me at that point. I didn’t know whether I was happy or sad, whether I was really hugging him or whether he was a surrogate for the dead. I kissed his neck, the nearest part available, then whispered ‘Lovely to see you, Jonny. Now put me down. At least three Major champions are staring at us.’

I was overstating it; there were only two. Back on my feet, I took my first close-up look at Jonathan Sinclair as an adult. He was slightly taller than his uncle had been, and maybe not as naturally heavily built, but he had the sort of gym muscles that you find on young pro golfers these days, since power became all-important to many of their coaches. There was a slight facial resemblance to his father, a first-generation computer nerd who’d been more interested in his job than his family, until finally Ellie Blackstone had binned him, but mostly he took after his mother. Other than temperamentally, it seemed; my former sister-in-law is most kindly described as formidable, a woman given to making her point.

‘So Uche’s message did get to you,’ said Johnny. ‘The sod never told me you’d called him back.’

‘I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘Well, I did, but I decided not to leave a message, since I’d no idea who he was. Who the hell is he, anyway?’

‘He’s my caddie.’

‘You’ve got a caddie?’ I gasped, inanely, as if it was natural in my world for a pro golfer to carry his own clubs.

‘Of course I have, Auntie,’ he chuckled. He nodded, over his shoulder, towards the black guy, who had closed in on us. ‘This is Uche,’ he continued. ‘Uche Wigwe. He’s my mate really; we were at Arizona State together. He hopes to join the tour as well, but he’s caddying for me until we can both go to qualifying school.’

‘That’s if we both have to, ma’am,’ Uche intervened. ‘If Jonny makes enough money through sponsors’ invitations, he’ll earn a playing card automatically.’

He was beautifully spoken, much better than Jonny, much better than me for that matter. ‘Your accent,’ I began.

‘African,’ he explained. ‘Nigerian, to be precise. My father is what the British media delight in calling a “princeling”, the implication being that our nobility isn’t nearly as grand or important as yours. It’s a slur that doesn’t trouble us, however, for aside from his old tribal title, he’s filthy rich.’

‘Uche was at Winchester School before Arizona State,’ Jonny added. ‘No scholarships, by the way. In theory we have the same manager, but it’s harder to get sponsors’ invites for him.’

‘Why?’ I asked, naively.

‘Why do you think? I played on the Walker Cup team; he didn’t.’

‘Jonny.’ The posh bag-carrier nudged him, gently.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Auntie, I have to hit some balls. Stay and watch and we’ll talk when I’ve done. Can we have lunch afterwards?’

‘On one condition,’ I told him. ‘Stop calling me “Auntie”, will you?’

I climbed back up to my perch, and Jonny went to work. From that moment I wasn’t looking at anyone else, not at any of the champions on parade, only my nephew. . technically he hadn’t been since Oz and I divorced, but I was claiming him anyway. I know a little about golf, from the telly and from playing myself. It didn’t take me long to work out that the swing I was watching wasn’t the one he had learned from his grandfather and his uncle, classic Scottish amateurs both, conditioned to hit the ball low, and under the wind. His flight was high, and long. At first I thought that his natural shot was a fade, until he started to hit it the other way, drawing from right to left.

I heard Patterson murmur beside me. ‘See how straight his back is?’ he whispered. That hadn’t escaped my notice; everything about him seemed perfectly balanced. ‘He hits it like a dream,’ he added. ‘I wonder what his short game’s like?’

‘If he’s anything like his Grandpa Blackstone, it’ll be deadly. Mac’s a bandit around the greens.’

‘You sound as if you’re still in touch with him.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be? He’s my son’s grandfather too. Mac’s a regular visitor.’

‘Why isn’t he here for Jonathan’s debut?’ he wondered aloud.

‘I can tell you that,’ I said. ‘He and Mary are on a long cruise, out in the Far East. He may not even know about it.’ But if he had, would he even have told me? I wondered. A loose, unofficial pact had grown up between Mac and me. While he had given me occasional reports of Jonny’s golfing progress, we never talked about events past, and rarely about people from it. Tom was our shared future and we concentrated on him.

The thought was still in my head when I noticed that Jonny and Uche seemed to have been joined by someone else. . at least I assumed they had, for she, the only woman on the range, was standing beside the caddie, talking to him, but watching Jonny, while filming him with a handheld camera. He stopped, to change clubs and to take on some water, and I managed a look at her in profile. She was well over thirty, maybe even my age. Her hair was blonde, without being lustrous, and her skin was brown, but weather-beaten rather than tanned. She was dressed in pale green trousers, golf shoes and a polo shirt. Although I couldn’t see the front, it looked a match for the Ashworth that the guys were wearing, and it had the same car manufacturer logo that was on their sleeves. I’d noticed her earlier, near the clubhouse, talking to a large blond guy and two kids. One of the team, I guessed, but who was she?

Once again, Patterson came up with the goods. ‘That’s impressive too,’ he remarked. ‘That must be Lena Mankell. She’s Swedish, a swing coach. . the only woman doing that job on the men’s tour, so it’s got to be her. . and she’s reckoned to be one of the two or three best around. If she’s working with Jonny, and it looks as if she is, that’s a statement in itself.’