Quintin Jardine - On Honeymoon With Death

‘Has your husband changed his cell phone recently?’ I asked.

‘No. He’s had the same number for years, since he was in the Guardia Civil.’

Prim has a remarkable memory for numbers; once they’re lodged in her brain she can recall most of them, and certainly the most important, within seconds. If Vero was right, she’d called him and he’d come running. . IF she was right.

‘You know what?’ I told her. ‘You should go to France. You should get your son away from here and bring him up somewhere new. If you raise him here there’s a fair chance that he’ll never leave. This place is fine for retired Europeans and for Catalans who are born to the lifestyle, but there really is more than that.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know, I’m half Catalan too, remember.’

‘I do know; I’m all Fifer, and that’s worse.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘Because I like the place, yet I have the ambition and the will to go away from it when I need to. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be gone from here, back to Scotland. A few weeks after that and I’ll be in Los Angeles.’

‘Lucky you. And here was I thinking that Rey Capulet’s palace had hold of you for ever, with its sunshine, its luxury, its fine wine cellar. Did all of that come with the house as well?’

I shrugged; maybe I was starting to turn into a Catalan myself. ‘The wine? There was some in racks in the house, and in the storage area at the back. It was good stuff but I wouldn’t describe it as a cellar.’

‘No, no. I mean the cellar itself. Rey had some very valuable wines there, laid down long-term. I suppose he must have had them taken away when he left.’

I was more than a bit puzzled. ‘Vero,’ I assured her, ‘this house doesn’t have a cellar.’

She looked at me, blankly. ‘Of course it does, down below; a big one where Rey kept his wines, and some of his f iles.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Then I remembered another cellar I’d been in once. ‘Does it have a secret entrance?’

‘Don’t be silly. There’s a door under the staircase.’

‘There isn’t.’

‘There is.’

‘Listen, this is my house now, and I’m telling you there’s no door there.’

‘Come on,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll show you.’

She led me out of the kitchen and round to the far side of the big staircase, into the passage which led to our small office. ‘There. .’ she exclaimed, pointing. Then she stopped and looked, blankly.

There was no door of course. Like the other, the side of the stairway from the steps down to the floor was finished in fine wood panelling. English oak, I’d been assured by Sergi, although I was fairly sure it was really good quality Spanish pine, well treated and finished.

‘This is new.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Oz, I swear, this is new. It wasn’t here when I knew this house before, and there is a door behind it.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ But once I had, a big question came to me. Why would anyone block up a doorway in a house they were selling?

‘Do you know any good carpenters around here?’ I asked Veronique.

‘One or two. Why?’

‘Because I’m going to need one shortly.’

I went out behind the house, into the workshop and selected the biggest chisel I could find and a black-handled steel claw hammer.

She looked at me with a degree of awe as I set to work on the panelling. ‘You’re going to tear it down?’

‘Of course. I can’t have all that wine going to waste.’ I worked as carefully as I could, trying to remove the wood, rather than just rip it out. The panelling job had been done by a real expert; the joins were there, but you couldn’t see them, and the nails which secured the timber to the framework behind had been filled over and varnished to make them undetectable.

In the end, it came off easily. I worked until all the sections were loosened, then removed them together.

Yes, there was a door; but it hadn’t just been covered over, it had been bricked up. Whoever had done the job had been much better at carpentry than at building walls.

Veronique was looking frightened now; I guess I was looking pretty serious myself.

‘Listen, kid,’ I told her. ‘I think you should leave.’

‘No.’

‘Humour me in this, okay. This was done for a reason, and I’d rather that you were long gone from here when I find out what it was. Go back to your baby; better still, nip down to Girona and buy something to prove to your mother that you really did go there.’

‘Why?’

‘Common sense. Keep all your options open, for now at least; so that this morning never happened, if that’s the way you decide you want it.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m going to knock this wall down. This morning? As far as I’m concerned, it certainly didn’t happen.’

I recovered her coat and scarf from the kitchen, kissed her quickly, and rushed her to the door before she had a chance to protest.

I watched her from the window, and listened to the sound of her engine, until I was sure she had driven off. Then I went back out to the workshop and found a bigger hammer. . a much bigger hammer.

As it turned out I could probably have nutted my way through the badly built wall. The bricks were soft, and I guessed that they hadn’t been properly soaked before being put in place. Three good whacks, middle, top and bottom, and there was a hole big enough for me to step through.

As the last chunk fell, the smell seemed to come out in a ‘Whoosh!’ Staleness, mustiness, and something that could have been the notorious surge from the L’Escala town sewers, but wasn’t. I waited until it had subsided, then opened all the doors and windows in the living room to let it escape outside, before I contemplated going down to trace its source.

I brought my wide-beam torch through from the kitchen, but as it turned out I didn’t need it. There was a switch at the top of the stairway, I flicked it, and lo, there was light, from three neon tubes suspended from the ceiling of the big, pillared chamber.

Capulet’s wine. . mine now, legally. . was still there, racked high; row upon row of it, dozen upon dozen. I picked one up as I reached the foot of the stairs. I didn’t recognise the label, but it was 1968 vintage, whatever it was. I hoped I would enjoy it.

I moved on past the racks, towards what I knew must be the front of the house. Facing me I saw a big double-fronted, metal filing cabinet. It was open and yellowed papers were strewn all over the tiled floor.

I came to the last rack and looked round, shivering from the chill as I did. . At least I think it was the chill.

This time, as I looked at the body lying face-down. . a technical description; it didn’t have a face any more. . I was one hundred per cent certain that I’d found Reynard Capulet, the maestro. I didn’t have to prod him to find out whether he was dead or not, and I didn’t have to be an ace pathologist to know what had killed him either. The big kitchen cleaver that had done the job was still lodged in the back of his skull.

‘Don’t you move, now,’ I warned him. ‘Not till the ambulance gets here.’

Then I went back upstairs and found Captain Fortunato’s card, the one with his mobile number on it, the number that Prim must have known a couple of years before.

I almost dialled it until I thought to myself, Fuck it; might as well know one way or another .

So instead I called the Husa Princesa and asked for Prim’s room.

‘Did you decide to stay in this afternoon?’ I asked her, unnecessarily, as she picked up.

‘Yes,’ she replied. This time she sounded hesitant, not drowsy.

‘Fine. Listen, if you’re alone, I apologise. If you’re not, put him on.’