Quintin Jardine - Inhuman Remains

Those two guys had earned their money. They hadn’t deserved the pay-off they’d been given. I knew what had happened. Just as ‘Lidia’ and Caballero had believed in Sevilla that their gun had been loaded with blanks, so had Jerry and Jeff, until they had handed it back to Frank and found out the terminal truth.

So that was it, the whole story. My cousin wasn’t just a con-man. He’d done what he had to in bringing down the curtain on a superb performance. He’d become a killer too. And my aunt had been a part of it. . unless, of course, her little bastard had buried her somewhere else. I wouldn’t put that past him. I wouldn’t put anything past him now.

Ihad two more calls to make, before I finally put the affair to bed.

En route to Los Angeles, Tom and I stopped over in Toronto, where I hired a car and drove for an hour and a half to the home of Mrs Lina Martis, of Uxbridge, Ontario. She was in her early fifties and she was worried to distraction about what had happened to her son, Jerry. She hadn’t heard from him in months, not since he had told her that he and his boyfriend, Jeff, had been hired for this weird project by an English guy. He hadn’t given her any detail, but said that there was a quarter of a million Canadian in it for each of them.

I didn’t give her my real name. I called myself Lidia Bromberg. I did give her a distorted, but still recognisable lapel pin, and suggested that she contact Intendant Gomez of the Mossos d’Esquadra, to report her son missing, and that she also should let the Canadian Embassy know what she had done. I left the poor woman in a state of shock.

My second call was on the way home. We stopped off in London, and there, in Mark Kravitz’s flat, I had another meeting with the rodent-like Moira from MI5. Mark had arranged it, at my request. This time the woman was polite, cautious, and curious.

I told her my story in every detail, save two. I invented names for Justin and Ludmila Mayfield. (Yes, an investigation might trip over Ludo, but very quickly it would look the other way, given who her husband was.)

I gave her my copy of Reverse Circle , by Michael Jacks, and advised her to read it. I told her how much Frank, and probably his mother, had got away with, in terms of cash and murder. I said that, although I had no proof, I believed that my cousin might now be using the name Jason Lee. Finally, I asked her what her service, if it was really interested in major crime, proposed to do about it.

‘We’ll look out for them,’ she replied.

As far as I know, they’re looking still.

Me? I’m watching the sun rise out of the sea, from my bedroom terrace. One day my Tom will deign to join me, but not yet, not yet. He’s his own man.