Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘And that excuses you, does it?’ she shouted. She was on her feet now, in my face.

‘I’m not making excuses. I was angry, Susie was here and at the time I fancied her as much as she fancied me. That’s it.

‘But you know what? I’m still fucking angry, not about what you did then, but the fact that you can’t even be honest with me now. You lied to me last night, even, when I asked you if Miller was the end of it. How do you think I felt in that bloody restaurant when a waiter came to our table, and I had to look at him knowing that he’d fucked my wife?’

Prim gasped.

‘Don’t say anything,’ I said. ‘If I’d doubted it, the way he smirked at you and the way you chilled him out was enough to confirm it.

‘And how many more, eh? What about the lad from St Albans, and the racing driver from Sussex?’

‘Who’s been. .? Shirley.’

‘I let her think you’d told me. She assumed that you would have, and she said that it served me right. At the time, I’m sure it did, but the lies that have followed since we’ve been here, I didn’t deserve those, honey. When we married, I thought you were a princess, Cinder-bloody-ella, no less. I don’t mind you not being perfect, but I do mind you conning me into thinking that you were.’

I stopped and took a deep breath. ‘Right. Now you let me have it.’

She shook her head. ‘No. You really don’t want me to do that.’

‘Sure I do,’ I said bitterly, ‘go on.’

‘If you insist. When you left me and went back to marry your ac/dc childhood sweetheart I thought you were the lowest of the low. I felt defiled, especially when I found out that you’d been with her and then come back and been with me. So I reacted by behaving like the slut you’d made me feel. I had Miller, I had Fredo, the waiter, I had those other two and a few more that Shirley never knew about.

‘Then Ramon came along, and for a while he was different. I fell in love with him and he moved in with me. Yes, I did think I was Cinderella. When I became pregnant by him, I’d never been happier. Yes, it was a real fairy tale, sure enough.

‘He was so delighted that he left me, just like that. When he told me I was having an abortion and that he’d fixed it, I felt like topping myself.

‘I didn’t though; I got rid of it, as he demanded.

‘Afterwards, I might have gone back to being a slag, but I was too bruised even for that. Not long afterwards, I saw an ad on telly for some silly wrestling circus; and there you were, right in the middle of it. All of a sudden it came to me that I didn’t hate you after all. I had been very, very angry, and very, very hurt, but somehow, Ramon had put that into perspective. So I bought a ticket and I went to your show in Barcelona, and like you just said. . things happened.

‘Yes, I kept my mouth shut about my life in between times. And yes, if it gives you any satisfaction, you nailed the reason, right on the head.’

Prim grabbed the prints back from me and crushed them in her hand, waving them in the air. ‘But now, you bastard, you’ve done it again. You’ve been with her and you’ve come back to me and I feel defiled all over again. Did you even bother to wash it this time?’

She hit me, punched me in the chest, once, twice, three times, over and over again, not hurtful blows, more gestures of frustration and anger. ‘Why couldn’t you have been good old Oz, after all?’ she moaned. ‘Not the horrible shit you are.’

I shrugged. ‘Because, as I told you before, I never was. I was just another crafty little bastard on the make, a horrible shit, if you like. Susie showed me that much.’ I held her arms and pinned them by her side, my temper cooled by the tears running down her cheeks.

‘So you know my secrets and I know yours. I slept with Susie, and before that with Jan, before I went back to her, even. And you were indeed the village bike, as you put it recently, and then you came back to me on the rebound from the nice police captain. Tell me, then: what do we do, now that we know we’re not Mr and Mrs Perfect?’

‘Are you going to leave me for Susie?’ she asked.

‘Of course not, you’re my wife. Are you going to leave me for Ramon?’

She shook her head, briefly and violently. ‘No,’ she muttered.

‘Even if that was possible?’

‘No. Not even if.’

I chanced a smile. ‘How about “One size fits all”? Him maybe?’

She gave a spluttering, laugh, snorted, then sniffed. ‘I’d rather drill holes in my feet,’ she said.

‘Look, I am sorry,’ I told her, ‘but I’m not going to throw myself on the ground before you and beg forgiveness. I can’t do that. I didn’t set out to even scores, but that’s how it stands. Call me a heartless bastard if you like.’

‘You’re a heartless bastard.’

‘Okay. I admit it. Do you want to go on?’

‘Do you?’

‘Sure, for better or worse. That’s what I said.’

Her mouth took on that tight look again. ‘From where I’m standing it’s still me who’s come off worse. Oz, I’m not saying I’m going to leave you, but I need some space to think about all this. I’m going to go down to Barcelona for a few days. . On my own,’ she said. ‘Fair enough?’

‘Eminently.’

‘What will you do while I’m away? Call Susie?’

‘No, I won’t do that. I’ll think about us as well, I’ll get on with learning that script and, in the spare time I have left, I’ll see if I can figure out who might have chucked Susie down those stairs.’

‘If you find him,’ she said, ‘tell him from me he did a rotten job.’

‘Hey!’

‘Don’t “hey” me, Oz. I promise you this. Whatever happens with us, Ms Gantry will be a poor little rich girl when I catch up with her.’

I booked Prim a suite for the next five days in the Husa Princesa in Barcelona, and loaded her cases into the Mercedes. She didn’t kiss me goodbye, and I didn’t wave her off either.

As soon as she had left, I changed into a tee-shirt and shorts and went into my makeshift gym, where I spent half an hour pressing weights and another twenty minutes knocking ten bells out of the heavy punchbag. When I was finished, I went upstairs to take my second shower of the morning. None of it did me any good. As I stood there in the shower turning the mixer colder and colder to stem the sweat that was pouring out of me, it came to me that I was alone, not like I had felt after the family had gone, but really alone, for the first time since just after Jan died.

I dressed again, but I gave no thought to getting down to the script or anything else. Before I did that there was something else I had to do; and for that there was something else I needed. I looked through my copy of the Catalan Society magazine, but that did me no good. I thought about phoning Shirley, but decided against that, because I didn’t want to get into a discussion with her just then.

In the end, I phoned Lionell. He gave me the information I was after and, to my relief, he didn’t ask any questions.

I found Steve Miller’s parents’ villa easily enough, in a narrow street in Riells de D’Alt, where most of the houses are holiday homes. The little Lotus was parked in the driveway, with its rag-top up.

There was no preamble, no discussion. I rang the bell, he opened the door and I hit him; in the middle of the forehead, not directly on his broken nose, but close enough to make him scream in agony as he fell to the floor.

I took the crumpled photos from my jacket pocket and tossed them down beside him. ‘Did you really think that you could get away with sending those to Prim?’ I barked at him.

He was dazed and his eyes were unfocused, but eventually his head began to clear and he picked up the prints. He gazed at them, blankly. ‘Don’t know anything about them,’ he protested, his voice thick.