Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

As I thought back to my adventure, it came back to me through the foggy curtain which Miguel’s new red wine had cast over the later part of the evening. How the body’s left hand had fallen out of the shroud as we lifted it into the crate, and the watch with it. The disgust with which I had thrust the bony extremity back beside its arm. The hesitation with which I had put the watch into my pocket, meaning to return it later to what was left of its owner.

I picked it up, from where Prim had thrown it, and looked at it, as closely as I could manage on a full stomach. The face and back were dirty but there was no sign of corrosion. The leather strap was in better condition than I had thought, although there were a few scraps clinging to the inside. I tried desperately not to consider what they might be.

I took the watch through to our bedroom, and set to work on it, with soap and a nail brush. The dirt was dried on, but after a few minutes it began to loosen, and with more vigorous rubbing, and polishing with the small towel which hung on a ring by the bidet it was soon shining, looking for the most part brand new. Only the leather strap still looked a bit tired. I took the thing out to the terrace and examined it in daylight, front and back. There was no doubt: it was exactly the same model that I had bought for my father. The black face which he said was a bugger to read in anything but good light; the steel back, engraved with the maker’s name, his crest, and a number. I peered at it. ‘930100,’ I read aloud.

‘What?’ asked Prim from the living-room doorway. ‘And for God’s sake put some clothes on. Standing around in the buff after midday doesn’t fit with our new work ethic.’

I grunted and held up the watch. ‘There’s a number on the back. These things don’t cost enough to be exclusive, though. Chances are it’s just a piece of designer flash.’

‘Mmm.’ She followed me as I headed for the shower. ‘What are you going to do with it? Put it back.’

‘Hardly. Not now that I’ve cleaned it up. Right now, I don’t have a bloody clue what I’m going to do with it. Although throwing it in a communal dustbin seems like a good idea.’ Leaving that thought aside, I shoved it away into my sock drawer, out of sight … and, after a while, out of mind.

Naturally, I asked Prim if she wanted to come to Lyon, but I didn’t try too hard to persuade her when she said, ‘No.’

Our serious discussion two days before had made me realise just how much we were living in each other’s pockets, and given me a nostalgic urge to do something on my own, just to remind myself what it was like. I was pretty sure that Prim felt the same.

I did no tourist driving heading for Lyon, but followed the autoroute all the way, sticking to the coast past Narbonne this time, on through Montpellier and Nimes, finally heading north after the Orange junction.

Although I had never stopped in Lyon before, I knew that Allan worked at the head office of Sprite Oil, in the heart of the city. I had no intention of giving him advance warning of my visit, so I stopped at a filling station near Vienne to buy a street map, and check the address in the telephone directory.

Lyon is a big place, and like many of the major French cities, a river runs through it. By the time I reached my destination the Rhone seemed like an old friend, since I reckoned that I had crossed and recrossed it at least four times on the journey. Its smell was strong in my nostrils when I found Allan’s office, just where the phone book and the map said it should be. I was prepared to give my French a whirl, but the receptionist’s English made it unnecessary. Going on for three months in Spain, my Mediterranean tan shining gold in the light reflected from the building’s big glass walls and, she still clocked me as a Brit before I’d opened my mouth.

‘Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you?’ She was a nice-looking girl, with a wide smile and curly brown hair.

‘I’d like to seeAllan Sinclair, in your marketing department.’

‘Of course. Who shall I say is calling?’

I smiled at her. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. Could you just tell him it’s someone with a message from his wife.’

The receptionist nodded, dialled a number then spoke rapidly in French. The only words which jumped out clearly at me were, ‘sa femme’. After a few seconds, she looked up at me again. ‘Would you wait over there, please, sir. In that room.’

I thanked her and followed her pointing finger to an obscured glass door at the side of the hall, behind which was a small office with a view down to the river. I had been waiting for almost ten minutes when the door opened and my brother-in-law appeared. Quite suddenly it dawned on me that as a professional interviewer I had prepared badly for this one. I had no idea what I was going to say.

Allan solved my problem for me by kicking things off and making me mad in the process. He arched his eyebrows, and looked at me down his nose — or should that be up his nose, because he’s three inches shorter than me — in that ‘This is too tiresome’ way of his. This is a guy who could make you feel unwelcome in your own house.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘I was told that it was someone from Ellen.’

‘So?’ I said, belligerently. ‘Listen, Allan, if I’d said it was me, then all of a sudden you’d have been in a meeting. I know you, pal.’

He shuffled his feet and started to reply, but I beat him to it. ‘Anyway, I do have a message from my sister. She’s not coming back to France, Allan, or to you. I’m sorry, chum, but that’s it. Now, what she wants, what we all want is that you should face up to it and accept it.’

He hunched his shoulders. ‘Why should I? She’s my wife, dammit. She made vows, that sort of thing. Now she’s broken them, and she’s stolen my sons.’

Allan had always got on my tits, even from the days when he and Ellie were newly engaged, but I was doing my level best to keep to my honest broker role. That crack got to me, though.

‘Am I hearing this? Are you calling my sister a thief?’

He held up his hands as if to ward me off. For an instant it had been necessary. ‘Okay, taken them, if you prefer. But she did. She just took the boys and left me a note on the kitchen table. No warning, no nothing.’

I looked at him. ‘Allan, I spent one night in your house in France, and I could see the warning signs. You were just too fucking blind.

‘It’s time you opened your eyes and faced up to some truth about yourself. My sister’s bright, man, as bright as you. She’s dynamic, if anything more so than you. Time was when she had ambition too. Yet you stuck her away in that place in the middle of nowhere, with no other function than to look after your kids and make your meals.

‘When was the last time you took the boys to the seaside, or took Ellie to the theatre? I know the answer, Allan. Never. You imprisoned her over here, pal. Now she’s escaped.’

My brother-in-law looked at me, huffily. ‘She felt enough for me to marry me, Oz.’

For the first time, I began to feel sorry for him. ‘True, Allan. Because you’re good at your job. You felt you should have a wife, so you looked at the women you knew and you picked Ellen. Then you marketed yourself to her, like a barrel of oil. But you never had a fucking clue what being a partner’s about. It’s not something you are, it’s something you become. You have to work at it. It’s taken me thirty years to realise that. It’s bloody hard work too, I’ll tell you. You both have to make the effort. Ellie did, but you never had a fucking clue. So now she’s given up, and you only have yourself to blame.’

I looked at him. ‘Tell me honestly, Allan. Do you think that you and she were ever really in love?’