Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘You fancy one yourself?’ I asked him.

‘What?’

‘Dark rum and Coke. If it works on Colin, it should work on us.’

‘Away and work yourself,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I finished with that stuff a while back, as you well know.’ He paused. ‘However, it is more than time for you to be opening that very fine bottle of Lagavulin that I brought you, all the way from Edinburgh Airport.’

We settled on that as our nightcap; the ladies turned it down and had a bottle of the Widow Cliquot instead. ‘You know,’ my dad announced, expansively, as we sat staring at what I still thought of occasionally as the Frenchman’s fireplace, ‘in my experience there are no bests, when it comes to Christmases. More than any other it’s a moveable feast. Time moves on, we move on. People grow away, people go away; for the best and the worst reasons there are symbolically empty chairs at the table. You can’t draw comparisons, because of that very fact.

‘But every so often, there comes a Christmas which is truly different. This is one of them, one that none of us will ever forget.’ He looked at me, and then at Prim. ‘Thanks, you two, for making it possible; for giving it to us.’

He was right: it was different. It was the first time in their lives, even counting living in France, that Jonny and Colin had opened their presents outside, in the sunshine. They both slept until nine o’clock; I guessed that my dad must have spiked Jonathan’s drink as well.

It was the first time that the rest of us had warmed up for Christmas dinner by drinking Singapore Slings round the swimming pool. Also, it was the first time that I had ever hosted a Christmas dinner, anywhere, with anyone. There was someone watching over us, of course; Mary and I felt it more intensely than anyone else, but once, as my dad said grace before the meal, I caught Jonny looking at me. His thoughts were written in his old young eyes, and they touched my heart.

I used to think that the time spent preparing for Christmas is way out of proportion to the time it actually lasts. Not any more. That was a different day, a special day, for all that my Dad says. Okay, it ended like all others, with the kids. . not just the kids. . watching the big movie on BBC1, but it was still a belter. I knew it for sure when Colin clambered up on me, just before Ellen took him off to bed, and gave me a great big hug. That’s his highest accolade, and it’s better than any award with ‘BE’ on the end.

Later on, Prim clambered up on me too. ‘Hi,’ I murmured. I had a slight buzz on and so did she. Somewhere in the background I could hear a noise; a rhythmic sound.

‘Hi,’ she whispered in reply. ‘I’m still here, you know.’

For some reason, that turned my head upside down for a couple of seconds. I had to wait for my mind to settle down. ‘What d’you mean?’ I asked at last. That sound was still in the background, but its beat seemed a little faster.

‘I mean that the only words you’ve said to me today. . to me alone, I mean. . have been “Merry Christmas”, and “Thanks” when you opened your present. Is anything wrong, Oz. Is there anything on your mind?’

I squinted as I looked up at her in the soft light of our bedside lamp. ‘Yes,’ I said.

Her frown line appeared, between her eyes. ‘What?’ she asked.

‘I can’t work out where that bloody noise is coming from.’

The frown vanished, replaced by a grin and then a giggle. ‘You know what Spanish bricks are like,’ she whispered. ‘I’d say that right now your dad is having a better Christmas than you are.’

I slid beneath the duvet, beneath her, partly to drown out the sound of my father and stepmother’s coupling, and partly to attend to other business. ‘That’ll never do,’ I said out loud but knowing that my voice would be muffled. ‘Not for one minute more.’

Next day, though, I thought about what Prim had asked me. Something had been eating at me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. It wasn’t her. No, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t still dwelling on her liaison with Ramon Fortunato, subconsciously or otherwise. I’ve become pretty good at compartmentalising my life. In other words, that was then and this is now. There was no way, I told myself, that I was going to blame her for something that happened in the past, and at a time when, honestly, it was none of my bloody business. Honestly.

Had I something to prove as a result, though? Inside, did I believe that I wouldn’t really be square until I’d given her a kid too? No, I’m more mature than that, and anyway we had agreed before our wedding that we’d have a couple of years as a free and easy couple before we went down the baby route.

So what was it that had been preoccupying me through Christmas Day?

It didn’t really take me long to hit on it. I could feel a presence around the place, and I thought I knew whose it was. I’m not talking about the ghost of Sayeed Hassani, or anything melodramatic like that; the only real ghosts are those of people you’ve known and loved. The dead Moroccan was no more than a passing day’s inconvenience.

No, the guy who was getting to me was Reynard Capulet. There were lots of things about his disappearance that I couldn’t figure out. And right at the top of the list, sat a big question. Had he gone for good? Sure, the fact that he had left a stiff in his swimming pool before his disappearance did not suggest that coming back would be a good idea, and yet. .

The guy had been paying serious court to Shirley Gash. There is nothing of the airhead about that lady. She’s no romantic and her feet are as solidly on the ground as any I know. Yet whatever had stirred between them had affected her, beyond any doubt; and since Shirley has probably never been taken in by anyone or anything since she found out that the Tooth Fairy was really her father, I had to believe that the attraction was mutual.

So, with a burgeoning relationship which was clearly heading for the physical, given invitations to Florida and such like, something really cataclysmic must have happened for him to have taken out Sayeed, dumped him in his empty pool and disappeared. He couldn’t have intended to come back. He must have known that selling the house would have triggered off a manhunt, with him as the prey.

On the other hand, maybe he had believed that everyone would assume that the body was his. Had he come up with a very clever plan not just to fake his own death but to leave an unidentifiable body behind as a convincer?

After all, the place had been left untended for months before the company, the nominal owner, had instructed the amiable and gullible Sergi to sell the place as it was. By that time, the corpse would have been unidentifiable. And the company was Capulet and his sister. . who had conveniently disappeared herself.

So what had happened? Had he hatched a plot that would take him away from under the watching eyes of Interpol for good and all, or had he simply killed Sayeed in a quarrel and been forced to leave town fast?

However I looked at it, I didn’t like it. I had half a mind to put the villa back on the market as soon as the family went back home, but I knew that Prim would have her say about that.

To take my mind off the puzzle, I decided to take the boys for a run in the Lada. They had never seen the Dali Museum in Figueras. I had a sentimental attachment to the place, and although Colin was a wee bit young, I reckoned that there was enough there to appeal to him.

I almost bumped into Shirley when I swung the big boat out of the drive, as she drove homeward in her Renault. ‘Just as well you can hear that thing coming,’ she said, as we sat window to window. ‘I knew to leave you a wide berth.