Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

We hurried across and stood between them. The fields sloped down, and looking northwest we could see the great Pyrrenean skyline, carved in its blue background, with lines of snow on its highest peaks. Much closer stood two old barns, converted into discos, and on the far side of the road to Bellcaire, the go-kart track.

The drainage ditch — never a firebreak, as I could see in the daylight — was only a few feet away. I took Prim’s hand and led us to it. Together we looked down its length.

There was nothing to be seen.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Oz!’ She exploded. ‘After all that, you’ve brought us to the wrong place.’

I shook my head. ‘No! This is it. We must have put him further down than I thought. Come on. Let’s walk down the length of it. But remember, act casual. We can be seen from over there.’

Hand in hand, we ambled casually down the fringe of the wood, on the edge of the ditch, expecting with every step to find a skeleton, and planning our ‘shock, horror’ reactions for the benefit of anyone who might have been watching us from a distance. But there was nothing. Not a trace, not a scrap, not a sign. Eventually the ditch simply stopped.

Silently, we turned and retraced our steps, bumbling along with growing dismay. Eventually we found ourselves back at our starting point. ‘Well, smartarse,’ said Prim, ironically. ‘Still so confident?’

I was not amused, and was about to tell her so, when something caught my eye. A few feet beyond us, the ditch sloped downwards towards the town out of our sight. Just on the curve I saw that a number of twigs and broken branches lay on its northern bank.

‘Look there,’ I said, pulling her with me as I moved forward again, no longer giving a stuff about onlookers. We reached the wooden debris in a few strides, and stared into the ditch. It was empty.

‘But this is it,’ I said. ‘I’m certain. We put a few branches over him to cover him, and make it look as if he could have been here for a while. Some bastard’s beaten us to it.’

Prim let my hand go and knelt beside the ditch, then leaned in and picked something up, something that had been half hidden by a stone. She held it up and gazed at it, appraisingly. ‘Big toe,’ she said at last. ‘I was good at anatomy. You’re right. Someone’s found your body.’

‘In that case,’ I said. ‘I suggest that we get out of here … fast. Because we’ve just sent a signal to anyone who might be watching this place that we are after it too.’

For all that it’s a small town, with an off-season population that would fit into the Wheatfield Grandstand at Tynecastle Park, with a few seats left over, L’Escala has its own radio station.

We listened to the first hourly news bulletin after we made it back to St Marti. It was in Catalan, but we could follow enough to be sure that there was no mention of a body having been found on the outskirts of town. There was nothing in the Costa Brava section of La Vanguardia, or L‘Avui , which we bought in town before catching the Carrilet home. There were big stories about the important Roman find in St Marti, with a photo of Miguel and young Jordi in L’Avui, but nowhere was there any mention of the former occupant of the stone coffin’s top bunk.

We strolled round to the square after dinner on the terrace. Miguel had been right about the extra visitors. They had begun to arrive already, in droves, and we had trouble finding a table outside Casa Minana. When we had, Miguel brought us two beers automatically. I motioned to him to the spare seat beside us.

‘Prim and I went to visit our friend this afternoon. The one we saw last in Riells on Tuesday morning. I found his watch and I wanted to give it back to him.’ A brief look of panic flashed across our friend’s face, for an instant. ‘The trouble was, he’s gone.’

Miguel gulped, but otherwise managed to stay impassive.

‘You haven’t heard of him being moved anywhere, have you?’

He shook his head. ‘No. Nothing,’ he said, quietly. ‘I was sure he would be found. There are shepherds up there, with dogs.’ Beside me, Prim gave a barely noticeable shudder. ‘But not this soon.’

He paused. ‘We will look at the newspapers for the next day or two, and at the Empordan, the newspaper for here, when it is published. If there is nothing in that, my wife has a sister who has a son who is married to a woman who is in the municipal police in L’Escala. I will ask my wife to ask him to find out if the police know anything. But I will be … I’m sorry, I don’t know the word.’

‘Discreet, Miguel,’ said Prim. ‘The word is discreet!’

There was nothing about the missing skeleton on Radio L’Escala next morning either, or in the daily newspapers.

We left for Barcelona at 8:30 a.m., foundAvinguda Diagonal without any great difficulty, parked and made it comfortably to the British Consulate in time for our appointment. It was another pleasant morning, with the temperature only in the low seventies, but it was hot indoors, and the air conditioning in the fourteenth floor suite was welcome. We were amazed to see that only the private offices had this benefit, and imagined the discomfort of the poor punters queuing in the real heat of July and August, watching the staff, cool behind their thick glass screen, while they sweltered in the reception area.

We were received by the commercial counsellor, a decent chap called Hal something. We explained our backgrounds and our idea. He gave us the thumbs up straight away.

‘Good proposition,’ he said. ‘Most people looking for business information come to us, and we don’t have the manpower to deal with them all promptly. I’ll be happy to refer people to you. I don’t think that your fees will frighten many off. As for the legal and personal stuff, I don’t know of anyone who does that, so you should be on a winner there too.

‘If I were you, once you’re up and running, I’d think about reversing the process, and offering a British market information service to Spanish customers.’

Hal echoed Jan’s advice that we should seek resident status straight away. ‘From what you’ve said, you can show a level of income, so you’ll have no problem.’

He gave us a series of names and addresses and was able to make a couple of appointments for us. We spent much of the rest of the day in government offices, filling in forms and signing papers, and by mid-afternoon we had gone most of the way to becoming Spanish residents.

‘You know,’ said Prim, as we strolled down the Ramblas, celebrating our imminent new status, ‘it must be two years since I was in a city as big as this. Let’s do the tourist thing with the rest of the daylight.’

So we visited the Sagrada Familia, then the Olympic Stadium. We meant to take in Nou Camp, the vast home of Barca football club, but there was a league game on that evening. The man on the gate laughed at me when I asked if there were any tickets.

It was just after midnight when we rolled into the apartment, knackered and very well fed, having dined on the way home at Mas Pou, one of our favourite restaurants. As soon as I switched on the light, I saw a sheet of fax paper lying curled on the phone. I picked it up and read its very short message.

Oz/Prim

Phone me, soon as you get in. You’re in business.

Jan

Finding a flight turned out to be easier than I had expected. The KLM desk was still open when I called, and they had seats on their 4:05 p.m. flight to Amsterdam, linking with an Air UK transfer that would land me in Edinburgh at 8 p.m. BST.

Rather than take the car out of play for two days, Prim ran me to Figueras to catch a fast train to Barcelona with a connection that would take me right into the airport.