Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘Now just hold on, Oz, hold on. Think this through.’ I was talking to myself, but I’m my favourite audience; that’s because I’m never heckled, as sometimes I have been at GWA shows. I remembered why I’d come into the kitchen in the first place, so I took a beer from the fridge, uncapped it and strolled back through to the living room. As I settled on to the couch, the phone rang, but I let it go unanswered. I didn’t want to speak to anyone just then.

‘What’s happened here?’ I asked myself.

One, someone took a shot at me in Capulet’s Lada.

Two, someone broke into the house, grabbed Susie from her bed and threw her down the stairs.

Three, someone sent Prim compromising photos of Susie and me. Not Steve Miller; who?

Four, someone broke into the house as soon as I went out; maybe someone with a key.

‘Why Oz, why?’ I said, aloud once more.

What if Susie had been killed by that fall? I’d have been arrested, sure as God made wee green apples.

What if I’m wrong about an enemy of Capulet shooting at the car, thinking that it was him. Maybe he knew it was me all along and thought he could scare me out of town.

Why would anyone want to break Prim and me up? Maybe, he didn’t, or didn’t care one way or the other. Maybe what he really wanted was just to get us out of the house.

Who might have a key to this place? The Frenchman, that’s who. But why would he sell us the bloody house then try to get us out of it so that he could break in? Answer me that one, smartarse. No, you can’t can you?

‘No, I bloody can’t,’ I admitted to myself. ‘The answer’s in here, I’m sure of it. There’s something about this house. But as to how it all fits together, and how, or even if, the body in the pool relates to it, there I don’t have a bloody clue.’

There was only one logical thing to be done at that point. I searched the place, from top to bottom, looking for signs of the intruder, looking to see if anything else was missing other than that one giveaway mug. It took me three hours, and it was dark outside when I was finished. While I was working, the phone rang three more times and my mobile sounded twice. I ignored them all.

There wasn’t a thing out of place. My passport was still there; my chequebooks and the passbooks for our Spanish bank accounts in the Caixa de Girona were still in the bedside drawer where I’d left them. The bed itself was rumpled, just as we had left it that morning.

I looked in every cupboard, every wardrobe, and every drawer. I checked the wall safe behind the mirror in our bedroom; it had come with the house too. We had found it open and empty, and I had programmed in my own combination. I kept some cash in there in pesetas and sterling, some receipts given to us by the notary and by Sergi when we had completed our purchase of the house, and a few valuable jewellery items, like my white gold Piaget watch and Prim’s necklace; gifts which we had bought for each other when we were married. They were still there, every item.

Nothing in the house was out of place as far as I could see; yet I knew that he’d been there. I could sense it.

I walked out of our bedroom, wondering what he could have been after, and whether he had finished searching for it. I was halfway down the stairs when another question jumped up in my mind and bit me.

How did the guy know when he broke in that Susie wouldn’t wake up and scream the place down?

‘Because he’d seen her, son, that’s why and possibly because he knew she wasn’t drunk, but drugged. Those two guys in JoJo’s; the two playing pool in the back room. Who the hell were they, and could one of them have spiked her drink while I was in the bog?’

I tried to remember what had happened that night, and who they were. Then I recalled that I had only seen one of them, a veteran L’Escala anchovy fisherman called Miguel. When I’d gone into Jo’s unisex toilet, one of the two cubicles had been occupied. When I had come out of the other one, it had been empty and the pool players had both been gone.

Suddenly, right at the top of my list of priorities was another visit to Bar JoJo.

I was thinking about that and about going out for something to eat when the phone rang once more. This time, I picked it up.

‘Hi. You’re back at last. I was beginning to think you were headed for Glasgow.’ Prim sounded quiet and subdued, far from her normal breezy businesslike self.

‘No. I’m still here; I just didn’t feel like talking to anyone for a while, that’s all.’

‘You spoke to Susie, though. You told her where I was.’

‘That was earlier, when I was out in the car. She called me to tell me she got home safe. I told her she didn’t.’

‘You told her right.’

‘What did you say to her?’

‘Nothing you’d want to hear.’

‘And what did she say to you?’

‘That it was all her fault, that it began by her taking shameless advantage of you, and that it all got out of hand after that.’

‘That’s not true. It wasn’t all her fault.’

‘I know that, for God’s sake,’ she snapped.

‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘I am truly sorry that I’ve hurt you, and so is Susie. But there’s someone else to blame, to an extent.’

‘You mean me?’

‘No, I do not. I mean the person who took those photos and sent them to you. If it hadn’t been for him, you’d never have been any the wiser, Susie and I would have had our little secret and that would have been that.’

She gasped. ‘Oz, you incredible bastard! I don’t blame him at all. I blame you and Susie Gantry; end of story. If you’ve made someone mad enough at you to do that, then it’s down to you. Who do you think it was anyway?’

‘I thought it was Miller, but I don’t any more.’

She let out a small sound; it could have been a yelp. ‘Oz, you didn’t …’

‘No, at least not much. He convinced me that he didn’t do it.’

‘So who do you think did?’

‘I don’t know, Prim,’ I told her. ‘But I’m certain it has something to do with this house. You maybe don’t believe that someone broke in and chucked Susie downstairs, but it happened. Then today, after you’d gone and while I was off questioning Mr Miller, he broke in again: this time he searched the place.’

‘Are you serious? Or is this some story you’ve cooked up to make me feel sorry for you.’

‘I don’t give a shit whether you feel sorry for me or not, my love. It’s the truth. There is something in or about this house, and someone wants it.’

There was silence between us for a while. I could sense that she was working herself up to say, or ask something. It turned out to be both. ‘Oz,’ she exclaimed, finally, ‘I don’t think that me sitting down here brooding for a week is going to do either of us any good. Do you want me to come back?’

‘Frankly,’ I told her, ‘I’d rather you stayed in Barcelona. Until I’ve got to the bottom of what’s happening here, I’m not sure this place is safe. Give me a few days to sort it out.’

‘Is that the real reason you want me to stay away?’

‘Sure it is.’ Actually I wasn’t sure at all, but it was certainly a reason.

‘Okay then; a few days. I’ll stay for the five I’ve booked. If it gets too scary up there, you can always come down and join me.’

‘Honey, the mood I’m in, it’s me that’s scary. I’m going to catch this bastard.’

‘Why don’t you tell Ramon? Ask for his help.’

I had to laugh at that one. ‘First, unless it was in my interests, I wouldn’t ask him for the time if he had an armful of Rolexes. Second, I’m not entirely certain that he isn’t the guy I’m after.’