Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

Scott nodded at once. ‘His Christian name, yes. He told us his surname, but it’s gone, completely. But his first name I know for sure. He was called Trevor.’

‘Scott might not have realised, but I saw you twitch,’ said Jan, as I drove us back towards Edinburgh. ‘That name, Trevor; it meant something to you, didn’t it?’

I shrugged, as expressively as I could at the wheel of the Fiesta. ‘There must be a few English ex-pats called Trevor up and down the Spanish Costas. I just happen to have met one.’

‘Yes, but when he described the man: fifty-something, bald, cultured accent, walnut tan. You reacted to that too.’

‘Okay,’ I grunted, reluctantly. ‘I didn’t want to get Scott excited, that’s all. The description matches, virtually point for point. About five feet six, bald as an egg, and with the sort of tan that you see on a Brit who’s been in Spain for a few years. His accent’s affected, the sort you can adjust to fit almost any occasion. My manTrevor normally dresses like the second engineer in a down-market inshore fishing vessel. I’ve seen Pals Golf Club. Looking like he does, you wouldn’t get into the car park. But I suppose that his costume could be as adjustable as his voice.’

‘It’s a good starting point, then,’ said Jan, cheerfully. ‘Assuming that he is the same Trevor, he should be able to help you find this man Starr.’

‘That’s true. And I suppose I should be grateful; I hope this job’s always as easy. I’ll go in search of him on Tuesday.’ I paused. ‘Meantime, this is still Sunday, it’s after five o’clock, and I’m on expenses. Let’s go and eat somewhere … unless you’re expected home, that is.’

Jan shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not expected.You’re on.’

I turned the car on to the Edinburgh bypass and headed east, towards the A1, then on down to the ribbon village of Aberlady, one of our old favourites, where we stopped at the Old Inn. Even on a Sunday it was busy, but they found a table in the corner and squeezed us in. We tossed a coin to see who would drive home. I lost.

‘So,’ Jan said, sipping a tasty Rioja, while I toyed with my Strathmore Lemon. ‘You’re back in business, Oz. I wonder if all your commissions will be like this one.’

‘I don’t imagine so. In fact I hope not. I’m not optimistic of getting a result for Mr Scott. That’s a hell of a picture, but there are some helluva good painters in northern Spain. If the rumour about signed blanks is true, then the best our client will do is to crystallise his capital loss, and throw himself on the mercy of the shareholders at the Annual Meeting.’ I paused. ‘It’s “our” commissions, by the way. I know what you said earlier, but if you’re going to be involved in BSI, I insist that it’s as a partner. The business must have someone in Britain, and you’re her. Financial Controller, and no arguments.’

She smiled. ‘Hadn’t you better talk that over with Prim?’

‘Primavera will agree. So must you.’

She looked at me, with a delicious smile. ‘Christ, but I can’t get used to you being decisive! Okay, I agree.’ She extended her hand; we shook on it.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘if I’m in, we’d better take some decisions; for openers about how the business should be set up, for tax-sheltering and other purposes.’

I made a face. ‘I’m not worried about avoiding tax. That’s not why we went to Spain.’

‘So why did you?’ asked Jan, quietly.

I looked at her, across the table, as she started on her dressed Dunbar crab. Enormous, it was. Funny things have happened to the marine life down that way since they opened Torness nuclear power station.

‘Good question. Because it was there, I suppose. Because we could afford it.’ I laughed. ‘And yes, I suppose to avoid the possibility of paying tax on Ray Archer’s gift, even though we knew he’d have to show it as a trading loss, and that he could never declare it as a payment to us.’

I took a spoonful of my Provencal fish soup. ‘I suppose there was another reason, on top of those. To give ourselves a start as a couple in completely new surroundings, away from all the influences we’d known until then.’

‘Like me, for example.’

She took me by surprise. ‘No, of course not,’ I said, defensively.

Something flickered in her eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said, in a voice which, whether she meant it or not, was loud enough to carry to the next table. ‘Nor, I suppose, was it simply a case of suddenly finding yourselves moderately rich and deciding to indulge yourselves by lying in the sun and copulating all day long.’

For a moment the territory felt distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Sorry,’ I murmured. ‘I thought that was what I just said we decided to do.’

She laughed, and at once I was comfortable again. I looked at her as she attacked her crab, and I remembered Saturday evenings, more than a decade in the past, and the seafood stall in Crail harbour; other generations of crustaceans, still steaming from the boiling pot. Jan and I as sixteen-year-olds, country kids with ruddy faces, and tight-muscled thighs from our beach and coastal walks, tearing into them, bare-handed, as later we tore heartily into each other. I snapped myself back to the present and turned my attention to my own meal, quickly.

‘It’s funny to think of a man like Gavin Scott being conned,’ said Jan, finished at last.

‘Not really,’ I countered. ‘Scott’s a gambler by nature, I’d say. Look at his track record in business. He staked the lot on buying Soutar’s and it’s paid off. Once a punter always a punter. On top of that he’s an art enthusiast; he’d call himself an expert. A painter and a punter combined: some combination.

‘You have to understand, love, that there’s a whole Dali industry out there. If you spend any time in Catalunya you can’t avoid it. It’s all around you. You’ll find Dali prints in all the souvenir shops, and you’ll find special prints of signed work in the more up-market places. There’s a Dali museum in Figueras, and it has hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

‘The great man is buried there, you know. In the cellar. I’ve seen his tomb. The museum itself is spectacular. It’s a work of art in its own right; by Dali, about Dali. Paintings, displays, objects: the whole experience draws you into it, makes you part of it.’

‘Christ, Oz,’ Jan chuckled. ‘You sound like a disciple.’

‘I suppose I am, in a way. You visit the place and you can’t help it. The man was just crazy, but wonderfully crazy, larger than life. How can I put it? If you visit the place and you’re in tune with it, you can sense that in death he’s become part of it.

‘I’m no expert, and that’s how the place took me. So imagine someone like Scott, caught up in the spirit of it. He told us he’d been there, but I knew that even before I asked him. So imagine him, given the opportunity to have a piece of Dali as his own, and not just any old piece, but an undiscovered, signed work which he’s told is genuine, and from the look of it, could be the real deal.

‘Gavin Scott doesn’t see himself as having been conned.

He sees himself as having taken a gamble, with a limited downside and one which might still pay off, if you, Prim and I can come up trumps for him.’

Jan raised her right eyebrow, a gesture I had known since childhood. ‘If we do, maybe we should ask for a cut of the winnings.’

‘Absolutely not. Been there, done that, got the scars. We set decent fee levels, we bill by the hour, and we do not, repeat not, become personally involved with our clients. This may be a three-way equal partnership, but this is the one area in which Oz is laying down the law.’