Quintin Jardine: On Honeymoon With Death

‘The owner is a Real Madrid fan,’ he explained.

‘No wonder he left town,’ I murmured.

The estate agent’s sign covered half of the double metal gate, hiding, I guessed, a sizeable patch of rust in the process. It took our lantern-jawed pal three minutes, and several failed attempts, to find the key which unlocked it. As he swung it open, my heart sank.

The house was on the crest of a slope, the front door approached by a weed-invaded driveway on the right of the plot, which led from the gate to the garage, then veered off to form a path. It was big enough, a two storey villa with a pillared entrance, designed by an architect who had either a rough idea of Greek style or had seen Gone With the Wind . Like the wall, it was plaster-clad, and in a similar state of disrepair.

The garden to the left of the drive was raised up; a short flight of stone steps led up to what seemed to be a terrace. It had a balustrade, which for some reason had been painted blue.

‘The plot is two shousand metros,’ Sergi announced, lapsing into lumpy English once again.

‘ Dos mil ,’ Prim repeated, getting him back on track.

‘Yes, it’s big. The land alone is worth twenty million pesetas; the price of the house. . everything, including the furniture and the car in the garage. . is fifty million.’

‘Pardon?’ I exclaimed.

‘But I think they would take forty-two,’ he added quickly.

‘I think they might have to,’ said Primavera as we walked up the driveway. ‘Look at those shutters.’

I followed her pointing finger. Several of the slats of the wooden blinds, which covered all of the windows, were twisted and rotten, and some were missing altogether.

‘As I said to you, I was told to sell the house in its present condition. I concede that it needs work done to it, but once you have spent the money, you will have something very good indeed.’ He led us up to the front door; this time he was able to open it at the third attempt.

Even in the little light which spilled in from the doorway we could see that it looked much better inside. Sergi found the power box, in the customary place behind the door, and switched on the light. The house smelled musty, but that was only to be expected. To the front, the ground floor was one open area from wall to wall, with a stairway rising from the centre, seating to the left of the entrance, and fine oak dining furniture to the right. Two big open fireplaces, stone-built with thick timber mantelshelves faced each other across the huge apartment and a Sony wide-screen television, with a video player and a satellite decoder box stood in a corner of the living area.

He walked from window to window, opening each one inwards; they were floor length, with black-painted metal frames and small square panes. ‘See,’ he exclaimed, as if he had remembered that he was supposed to be selling the property. We kept our faces straight as the shutter nearest the seating area more or less disintegrated in his hands.

He rushed us through the rest of it: cloakroom, breakfasting kitchen, bathroom and laundry on the ground floor and, upstairs, four bedrooms, the front two en-suite. . the master chamber with the biggest, most solid brass bedstead I had ever seen, and an oval Jacuzzi big enough for a football team. . and opening out on to an upper terrace which ran the full width of the house.

As we looked down we saw that the spacious garden to the front was paved in stone, and dominated by a big rectangular pool, covered for the season by a blue tarpaulin, lashed securely to rings which were set into the ground all around.

‘Twenty metres by eight,’ our guide volunteered. ‘That’s big for a private pool.’

He paused. ‘What do you think?’

I followed Primavera’s gaze out over the Golfo de Rosas, and read her mind at once. ‘We’re interested,’ I told him. ‘But we want it checked out.’

If we had been at home, we’d have sent a surveyor, but that’s not the way they do it in Spain. Instead, we went to Shirley’s builder, Vincens Siemens, who had a good reputation around the town, and asked him to give us a report and an estimate of what it would cost to refurbish it to a standard suitable for an international movie star and his consort.

It was less than we thought; the central heating system and plumbing were in good condition, and the bathroom fittings were all of the finest quality. The pump machinery had been renewed and the pool retiled less than three years before, by Senor Siemens himself, and so we were left to contemplate only rewiring, a new kitchen, replacement shutters and a complete redecoration.

Apart from the lumpy mattresses, the furniture was pretty good too; not antique, but old enough to have a comfortable feel to it. The car in the garage turned out to be a Lada Niva four by four, but you can’t have everything.

Sergi’s little eyes lit up when we told him we wanted to buy. They narrowed to slits when we said we had been thinking of offering forty million, but relaxed once more when we said that we would go to forty-four, for completion within the week. Three days later, on the second Friday in December, we did the deal before the local notary, a pleasant chap with a moustache thick enough to have swept a ballroom floor. Sergi acted for the seller, having been granted a power of attorney months before.

‘Well,’ I asked my wife as we stood, that afternoon, on the terrace of our new second home, ‘have we done the right thing?’

‘Let’s hope so,’ she answered. ‘But time will tell. Come on; let’s find out where the bodies are buried.’

We hadn’t said a word to Shirley. Nor did we, until we had checked out of Crisaran and moved in, on the following Tuesday. It wasn’t a problem; the place wasn’t just furnished, it was fully equipped with linen, towels, crockery, cutlery, glassware, the lot.

I called her, mobile to mobile, and asked if she fancied a coffee. ‘Sure. Where?’

‘Two doors along.’

‘You bleeding what!’

I was watching from the bedroom terrace as, within two minutes, she came striding into the driveway. It was a mild day, but she was wrapped in a long dark overcoat. ‘Honest to God,’ she bellowed, as I swung the door open and we stepped out to greet her. ‘I drop one bleeding hint and look what happens. What if I was to say I fancied a new car?’

Primavera laughed out loud. ‘There’s a very nice Lada in the garage with four thousand kilometres on the clock; you’re welcome to it.’

‘Here,’ I protested. ‘That’s a motor of character. I plan to drive that.’

‘Ship it to Russia and break it up for spares,’ said Shirley. ‘That’s my son’s new business venture,’ she added. ‘He buys Ladas in Britain and France for peanuts, breaks ’em up and ships the parts across to a warehouse in St Petersburg. Making a bleedin’ fortune, he is.’

‘Do you see much of John these days?’ I asked.

‘No. He’s too busy, with his Russian thing, with running the family company. . although our manager does most of the donkey-work. . and with keeping an eye on a pub he bought just outside Newcastle. The other Newcastle, I mean; the one in the Midlands.

‘Last time he was over, though, round about Easter, he had a look at this place. I heard him mutter something about buying it as an investment. He’ll be pissed off that you’ve beaten him to it; still, if he was serious, he should have been quicker off his mark.’

She stepped inside and looked around. The place was a mess, with two big cardboard crates, which until an hour before, had held a washing machine and a tumble dryer, lying in front of the stairway, and the plastic coverings from four new mattresses strewn on the floor, waiting to be stuffed inside them for disposal. It was warm, though; there had been plenty of oil in the tank which fed the central heating boiler, and for good measure we had lit fires in each of the two great hearths, using dry logs which we had found piled in an Aladdin’s cave of a brick shed at the back of the house.