Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

‘So you’d guess. Did Davidoff ask the manager whether he had ever seen this Starr before?’

She nodded. ‘He told me that he hadn’t.’ She took my hand. ‘So, was my trip worth it?’

‘You were right,’ I said. ‘It was something we had to do, even if it doesn’t take us any nearer the mystery man. You went there, and you found out what you had to. You got the result by the best means available, so don’t sell yourself short as a detective.’

Prim laughed at my defence of our profession. ‘Don’t be so precious. How was your day anyway? This business of ours seems to be a success, so far, at least. I saw Jan’s fax when I came in, and the four enquiries. Did she phone as well?’

‘Yup.’

‘How is she?’

‘Fine, as far as I could tell. She sent her best. Said she’d see us at Dad’s wedding.’

Primavera looked at me archly. ‘Oh, so I am invited, then.’

‘Of course. Stop being silly.’

‘I’m not, it’s just that whenever you’ve mentioned it so far it’s always been in “I” terms. You and Jan, best man and bridesmaid. I was beginning to wonder whether I figured or not.’

Inside I was squirming. ‘Look, don’t be daft. Okay?’

She pouted. ‘Who stole your scone?You’re always like this when you have a sleep in the afternoon.’

‘Och, I’m sorry,’ I said, seizing my chance to change the subject. ‘I had a couple of beers at lunchtime, with Miguel … and with his wife’s nephew, the policewoman’s husband.’ Spinning it out as long as I could, I told her how the bones of poor Ronnie Starr had been run out of yet another town.

‘My God,’ she whispered, when I was done. She didn’t see anything funny about it. Nor did I now that the beer had worn off. ‘If you believe in restless spirits, his must be pretty frantic by now. What are we going to do?’

I spread my hands. ‘What we did the week before last. Go and look for him. I know roughly where he was dropped.’

‘But we can hardly go wandering around the fields there,’ she protested. ‘It’s a working village, not the sort of place where young couples go for an innocent stroll.’

She had a point. I thought about it, and a solution presented itself. ‘Tell you what. Remember that restaurant we went to in Ventallo?’

‘The farmhouse?’

‘Yes. Let’s go there again. Tomorrow night.’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t be tomorrow. Shirley’s having a whist night. I said we’d go.’

‘A whist night! With the over fifties!’

‘You’ll enjoy it. Adrian will be there too. I had a chat with him this afternoon, when I took Davidoff back. He’s a nice chap.’

I laughed. ‘Okay, I get it. I can talk to Adrian, while you’re wooed by Davidoff.’

She smiled, but a touch defensively. ‘Well! Indulge me, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to Ventallo on Wednesday … after we have another look for Trevor Eames. His voyage can’t be going on for ever.’

It was probably a blessing that Blackstone Spanish Investigations seemed to be welcomed by the market, and to be generating substantial momentum. Both Prim and I spent the best part of the next day, without taking a siesta and with barely a break for lunch, preparing responses to the enquiries which Jan had faxed through.

Prim was excited, because the investigation business was still new to her, and allowed her to use her considerable brain in an entirely different way from what she was used to in her nursing career.

I got a buzz from it too; partly because enquiries like these, and my interview in Tarragona, straightforward factual work as they were, made me feel somehow that I was back in my real world after an extended lie-in, and partly because it allowed me to concentrate on something other than our pursuit of the two Ronald Starrs, skeleton and impostor, or on my disturbing conversation with Jan of the day before.

‘Partner,’ said Prim as I sorted through all of the paper which our day had generated, ‘we are on to a good thing here. If this is what it’s like after our second speculative ad, imagine what it’s going to be like when we really get our marketing act together.’

‘Eh?’

‘You heard. Look, all we’ve done so far is stick a toe in the water, for no other reason than to keep ourselves occupied. In a very short time we’ve found out that the water’s pretty deep.’ She leaned across the terrace table. ‘If we put together a sensible marketing strategy, with more focused advertising in the right journals, and with carefully targeted mailshots, we could build up a pretty respectable business in no time.’

I stared at her. ‘Come on, love, how many hours are in the day?’

She stared right back at me. ‘Eight times the number of people you hire.’

I couldn’t think of a quick comeback to that one.

‘We needn’t just be hiring them here, either,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t BSI work in both directions, like the guy in the Consulate suggested, handling investigations in Britain for Spanish clients? Come to that why should it restrict itself to Britain? With a little planning we could have a business dedicated to answering questions all over Europe, and providing information to order from a database, and …’

‘… and hold on just a minute! Have you any idea what it would take to set up a business like that?’

Her stare had turned into a frown. ‘We’ve got quite a bit at our disposal.’

‘I don’t only mean cash. I mean the time it would swallow, and the implications it would have for our lives. Have you any idea what’s involved in running a business?’

‘Yes. Hard work, self-discipline, dedication, reliability, quality standards: that sort of stuff.’

‘Sure, and accountants, bankers, lawyers, health and safety inspectors, VAT men, office overheads, employee overheads, employees’ statutory rights, customers you never get to know, customers you can’t stand but can’t tell to piss off in case they rubbish you in the market place, customers who don’t pay their bills, overdrafts, ulcers: that sort of stuff.’

I shook my head. ‘I could have done all that in Edinburgh, love, but I chose to be self-employed. I like being self-employed. I feel comfortable being self-employed. I don’t want to run a business that has a hundred mouths to feed. I don’t want to feel responsible for so many people’s lives. I don’t want to be able to go round the world on the air-miles I’ve racked up on business flights during the year.’

That frown of hers had deepened. ‘Don’t you have any ambitions?’

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it, but she didn’t like that; not one bit. I stood up and walked across to the edge of the terrace. ‘Take a look out there. That’s the Mediterranean. Those are the Pyrenees. This is a very comfortable home in a beautiful place in the sunshine. We have cash in the bank, and earning capacity. We can live here, or in Scotland, as we choose. All these advantages, all the parts of our lifestyle are wildest dream stuff for most of the guys I know. I’m thirty, and they’re all reality. I reckon I’d be greedy if I had any more. Now you’re saying they’re not enough.’

She stood up and stamped her foot in frustration. ‘Come on! You must always have a goal. Otherwise …’

‘Otherwise what? Isn’t being happy enough?’ I paused, and smiled, trying to put out the flames. ‘If you want me to have a goal, how about extending the Blackstone line? To tell you the god’s honest, that’s the only ambition I’ve got left.’

Someone must have filled my fire extinguisher with petrol when I wasn’t looking. ‘That’s all the growing you want to do for the rest of your life, is it?’ she exploded. ‘Your bloody dynasty?You can have kids and be a business success too, you know.’