Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

‘You wouldn’t go to them.’

She looked up at him, with her sweetest, most beatific smile. ‘Too fucking right we would,’ she countered. ‘Murder, fraud, maybe art theft: oh yes, they’ll want to talk to you. They might even give you a bed for the night.’

He stared down at her, his forehead knitted, then across at me. Finally, he sat down again, in the cane chair. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But none of this goes back to Gavin. Okay?’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said Prim.

Foy ran his hands through his thick hair and looked across at us. ‘The whole thing was a set-up. It started off as a laugh really. I bumped into Trevor at the club earlier on this year, just before Easter, and I bought him a drink. After we’d had a couple of bevvies, and got a bit relaxed, he started to talk about this chap he knew who’d come by this picture. It was a forgery, he said of a Dali, but so good that even an expert couldn’t put his hand on his heart and swear it wasn’t the real thing. He said his mate had asked him to get him a few quid for it.

‘He offered it to me first off, for seventy-five thou, sterling. I told him to fuck off. Then I thought about Gav. The auction was my idea. You know what Gav’s like with pictures. Thinks he’s a connoisseur, a real ace. I told Trevor about him, and I suggested that if the thing was that good, and he accepted it as genuine, then if we could get him bidding for it, he’d go through the roof.’ He paused. ‘A couple of days later, Trevor called me and said his chum wanted to talk about my idea. We met in the place at Peretellada. Trevor introduced the guy as Ronald Starr.’

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

‘Ordinary. Around forty. Medium everything. There was nothing about him that stood out.’

‘Would you recognise him again?’

‘Too right!’ said David Foy, emphatically. ‘I’d recognise anyone who owes me money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The bastard stiffed me, didn’t he. We talked my idea through. Then the guy Starr took me out to his car and showed me the picture. I’m no bleeding expert, but even I could see it was the business. I began to regret not giving him his seventy-five grand. Not enough to change my mind, though. We agreed that we’d set up the auction, and that I’d fit Gav into it.’

I looked at him. I don’t think I was smiling at the time. ‘Some pal you are. So the meetings with Trevor at the golf club, they were all prearranged?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the other people at the auction?’

‘All hired hands. The whole thing worked a treat. Mind you, Starr went further than I intended. Our deal was that he would fold at two hundred and fifty US, but Starr and his phoney Swiss took a chance and carried on up to four hundred.’

I shook my head. ‘But why? What did you have against Scott?’

Foy shrugged. ‘Gav thinks he’s a real player. I just wanted to show him he was still small-time, that’s all.’

‘And what was in it for you?’ asked Prim.

‘Twenty per cent … which I never got.’

I smiled at him. ‘Appropriate in the circumstances. What happened?’

‘I haven’t seen Starr since that night in Peretellada. We had agreed that the three of us would meet up there again, a fortnight after the pay-off, to divvy up. Trevor and I showed, but there was no sign of the other fella. Only a message that dinner was on him, and that he hoped we’d enjoy it.’

‘Have you tried to find him?’

Foy grinned, ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. I did employ some local talent to ask around, but they came up empty. Like you said, I suppose it serves me right.’

Prim and I nodded, simultaneously, and stood up to leave. Outside, the short, heavy storm was over. Foy called after us as we walked down the drive. ‘You won’t tell Gav, right?’

Prim looked over her shoulder. ‘You haven’t given us a single reason why we shouldn’t. What do you think we’ll do?’

We left him, staring after us, with a king-size worry that hadn’t been there half an hour earlier.

Next day we took a stroll round the marina in L’Escala. It was quieter than in July and August, many of the boats having been taken out already for the winter. But there were still hundreds moored in the big basin, and so looking for a single boat was like searching for one anchovy among the shoal.

It didn’t help either that La Sirena turned out to be the most popular name for a small boat in all Catalunya. We must have found a dozen of them before we happened on what we guessed must be Trevor Eames’ boat, moored sharp end in against the quay furthest from the shore.

It was an eighteen-foot sail-boat, with a single mast and a classic wheel, behind the steps leading down to its cabin. La Sirena Two was emblazoned on either side of the bow, and a pair of small pram dinghies were lashed, not to the cabin roof as Gary had said, but to the sides.

Everything else was lashed down too. We tried the cabin door, but it was locked, and the windows were curtained. It was pretty obvious that Trevor was still at sea.

On the way back to St Marti, Prim had an idea. ‘We really should check out the place at Peretellada, shouldn’t we. Just in case the phoney Starr was daft enough to have booked the dinner using his real name.’

‘Fat chance, but yes, you’re right.’

‘Then why don’t I,’ she said, ‘take Davidoff along there with me tomorrow, to ask some questions?’

I looked at her, right eyebrow cocked. ‘Oh yes! After some more courtship.’

She grinned. ‘And why not. A lady likes to be wooed. You still don’t quite realise that, do you?’

All of a sudden, I was miles away, thinking of Jan and my impulse buy in Laing’s. All of a sudden, I was torn in two.

Prim dug me in the ribs. ‘Hey.’

‘Sorry. Of course I do. I’m just not very good at it, that’s all.’

‘Well, it’s time you put in some practice.’

My conscience must have pricked me, for as soon as we reached St Marti, I dropped Prim off and without warning, headed back the way we had come. She was on the terrace when I returned, looking tense. ‘What’s up?’ she said. ‘Why the huff?’

‘No huff,’ I said, and handed her a small brown box. She opened it. Inside, on a white satin cushion, were the gold dolphin earrings which she had admired, pointedly, in a designer jeweller’s window in L’Escala a few evenings before. From behind my back, I produced a single red rose.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve been a bugger lately.’

Holding the rose in one hand and the earrings in the other, she rose up on tiptoe and kissed me.

‘You may not be in the Davidoff class as a romantic,’ she whispered, ‘but I suppose you do your best.’

Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better.

As good as her word, my partner headed off for Peretellada just after noon next day, to pick up Davidoff from Shirley’s en route. The rest of our Sunday had been slightly strange, with Prim preening herself in her new earrings and me feeling increasingly tense and guilty.

Fortunately, she had her period, for if she had been expecting me to make love to her, I think I would have been struggling to do her justice. That evening, we dined on pizza at Casa Minana. Miguel wasn’t there, but his father told me that he had gone for a drink with his wife’s nephew in L’Escala.

Left on my own next morning, I was writing up reports on the two projects which Shirley had helped us research, when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard the fax tone. It connected and five pages were excreted. Four of them were new business enquiries from our second ad the previous Friday, and the fifth was an explanatory note from Jan.