Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

He was still at our table, when his wife came over with word of Trevor Eames’ murder, newly arrived courtesy of an off-duty Guardia Civil private. We explained that we had first-hand knowledge, and how.

‘Did you know the guy?’ I asked Paco, casually.

‘He come in here now and again, looking for people to teach to sail.’

‘Do you know if he dealt in pictures?’

He looked at me as if I was daft.

‘The reason I ask,’ I said, quickly, ‘is that Shirley Gash told me her son bought a painting from him this year.’

Paco scowled. ‘Hah! That is what they were doing, was it. I remember now, in the spring, I see Trevor and John Gash talking in this very room. I think then they make an odd couple. If I know Trevor was selling a picture in here, maybe I kill him myself.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, I didn’t know.’

It was almost three o’clock before we made it home. Even then we sat on the balcony for an hour before going to bed.

The sound of a rainstorm battering our bedroom windows woke us eventually. I looked at my watch. ‘Jesus, it’s two in the afternoon,’ I mumbled.

‘Good,’ said Prim, giving one of her finest stretches beside me. ‘I like a lie-in on a Saturday. And it means that the police haven’t kicked our door in.’

It was still chucking it down half an hour later. Showered and dressed, we stood and watched the weather through the glazed balcony doors. The storm was coming in off the sea, in a great grey wave, but behind it we could see a line of clear blue sky, stretching to the horizon. ‘It’ll blow itself out soon,’ I said, as if I was an expert on the local weather after three months.

Prim wound an arm around my waist. ‘Oz,’ she said, slowly. ‘I’ve been wondering. Why was Eames killed?’

I looked down at her. ‘To close off the trail to the phoney Ronnie Starr, I suppose.’

‘If that’s so, apart from Davidoff — who couldn’t be the mystery man, on account of being twice his age, being Spanish, and having one eye — who would know that anyone was looking for the phoney Starr?’

Every so often Prim would say something that would catch me really off balance. This was one of the times. I thought about her question for a while, as the rain began to slacken. ‘Reis Sonas, for one,’ I offered at last. ‘She knew about the picture, for a start. We only have her word for it that she handed the things over to Trevor, and she was careful to say that she didn’t know the name of his chum. She could have been in on it. She could have set Starr up for murder.’

‘But got herself knocked up by him first?’

‘Accidents will happen. Besides, maybe the kid isn’t Starr’s.’

‘Ha,’ she laughed. ‘How many wee, fair-haired Spanish babies have you seen? Also, how long did the police say Eames had been dead?’

‘Twenty-four hours, at least, maybe a bit more.’

‘Exactly, so by the time she finished with us on Thursday, she’d have been struggling for time to get along to L’Escala and knife him. Even if you think a woman could have done that.’

She had me, on all counts. ‘David Foy, then,’ I proposed. ‘He’s already admitted setting up Scott. Maybe he was in it all the way. Maybe he did know who the phoney Starr was all along. Maybe the story about he and Trevor being done out of their shares was a lot of cock.’

Prim nodded. ‘That’s more like it. I didn’t like Foy at all.’

‘There is another option, though. Maybe the phoney Starr didn’t know that anyone was looking for him. Maybe Trevor found him, and was pressing him for his cash. Or maybe he just decided that having Trevor around as a witness to murder was too risky, and put him out of the way.’

‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘But if he does know about us, let’s hope he doesn’t decide that we’re too big a risk as well.’

She may have been joking, but I was still worrying about that one when we arrived in Ventallo at around eight. The rain and the wind were long gone, and the evening was calm, warm enough for a few tables to be set out in the garden of the farmhouse restaurant.

‘Sure,’ said the owner, in fractured English. ‘I can give you table. But no food till nine o’clock. You can have drink in the bar, though.’

We agreed that we would go for a stroll around the quaint village for a while and come back around eight-thirty for an aperitif. I remembered their house red from our previous visit, and didn’t want to be left alone with it for an hour on an empty stomach.

Idly, we headed back out into the unpaved street, as if making for the heart of the village, but as soon as we were out of sight we turned on our heels and headed back up the dirt track which led from the highway to the restaurant, and by which Ramona and her partner had dropped the remains of Ronnie Starr.

We had gone barely any distance before we realised that it was useless. It was too dark, the ditches were deep and full of water from the afternoon’s storm, and the fields were rutted. It would have been dangerous to venture off the track, and very messy. ‘Christ,’ said Prim, ‘we’d need a sniffer dog. Let’s take that walk round the village after all.’

We wrote off any further reconnoitring and explored Ventallo, discovering that it had a second restaurant, a town hall, a small, bizarre zoo and sod all else. Our table was ready when we returned to the farmhouse, and the kitchen had been cranked into action, even though it was only eight forty-five.

We had almost finished our pork, with apples and Calvados sauce, and our first bottle of house red when I noticed the animal in the far corner of the garden. Even as Spanish dogs go, it was quite big: mostly Alsatian, it seemed. I recognised it from our earlier visit and guessed that it belonged to the place.

I thought no more of it, nor would I have to this day, had it not come into Prim’s line of vision as it moved across the spotlit wall.

She stiffened and sat bolt upright in her chair. Her eyes, big at the best of times, became huge and completely round. She stared at the hound, and pointed, speechless. The owner was standing beside us, serving the next table. He laughed, in an apologetic sort of way. ‘I sorry for my dog. Is bad manners to carry a bone into a restaurant.’

‘It sure is,’ Prim gasped at last, revealing the benefit of her years of nursing and her six months in an African war-zone. ‘Especially when it’s a human thigh-bone!’

The young proprietor looked at her, bewildered. She dropped her bombshell again, in French this time. He shrieked, and dropped his tray.

The rest of it was like a movie farce: the dog leashed, the bone taken from him, then given him again to scent, the five of us — the owner, the couple at the next table, Prim and I — FOLLOWING the straining animal, three of us with flashlights. We were barely out of the village before the mostly Alsatian veered off the track, and across the ditch that had become a small river. His master, the bloke from the next table, Prim and I all leapt over into the field beyond, leaving the second lady teetering on the edge, afraid of the jump.

I tripped twice over ploughed ruts, and was lagging behind when the short hue and cry came to a silent halt. When I caught up, covered in mud and waving my torch, the other three were standing in a semi-circle, with the mostly Alsatian held on a very tight leash. Two beams shone on the ground, on something white.

I flashed my light in the same direction, and fought off the urge to say, ‘Hello again!’ as the gleaming skull of Ronnie Starr grinned up at me. The rest of him was there too, apart from the major bones of one leg. Most of the scraps of clothing had been lost in transit, but he still wore his leather belt.

We all stared at him in silence for a while. Once the young restaurateur tugged at his curly hair, as if reaching for a hat to remove. At last he said, in English, to me, for some reason. ‘We should call the police.’