Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

I went back to Pubol three times in the week after Ronnie Starr’s funeral. Once, I told Prim that I was going to make sure that Reis was all right. On the other occasions I simply went, unannounced. Each time, I sat in the bar, looking at the street outside. Each time I paid my money and I went into Gala’s castle, into her garden, with its weird animals, into the garage, where the Cadillac stood on view to the tourists, roped off again as if it still had contained only one body in its lifetime, and into the Delma, where the stuffed giraffe and the statuary still stood guard over her lonely tomb, and over the redundant slab beside it.

I was looking for someone, but I never really expected to find him. Rather, I hoped that he would find me, but that didn’t happen either. Eventually, leaving an empty feeling, my certainty began to slip away.

There were only three days left before Prim and I were due to fly back to Scotland for my dad’s wedding, when at last I found the key. It was Tuesday morning, and Shirley had taken Prim to Girona to buy a dress for Saturday. I was sitting at the table on the balcony working alone on a report, when the thought fired itself like a bullet into my brain.

My wallet was in my jacket in the wardrobe. I rushed into the bedroom, and searched through it until I found the business card that Adrian Ford had given me, just after he had finished cleaning my clock at the snooker table.

Sure enough, it carried a mobile number. I picked up the phone and dialled it. At first, it was unobtainable, but I tried once more, using the UK code to link into the system. It rang three times before it was answered.

‘It’s taken you this long to figure it out,’ said a familiar voice on the other end of the line. ‘Oz, my boy, I’m disappointed in you. I was afraid I’d have to come and get you.’

‘Where are you?’

‘You don’t need to know where I am right now. Come to the castle tonight at eleven o’clock. There’s a side door beyond the garage. It will be unlocked and the alarm will be switched off. Come to the Delma: you’ll find me there. Got that?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘But listen to me. It is very important that you come alone. You must not bring Captain Fortunato and his gang, and most of all you must not bring the lovely Primavera. I could not bear that. You promise me this?’

‘I promise.’

‘Good. I see you. Before you come, one thing you can do. Take a look in the book about Dali, the one I told you not to buy when I took you to the castle, but which I know you bought anyway. Take a look in there and see if you can find the answer.’

The line went dead. I sat at the table, gasping, realising that for the last thirty seconds I had been holding my breath.

I had looked at the book before, of course; at all of the colour plates and some of the text. However, I had found the translation patchy and confusing, altogether too heavy going for my taste, and I had chucked it before the end.

I fetched it from the coffee table and attacked it again, opening it more or less where I had given up before, around page 150. I scanned the pages for two hours, stopping occasionally to ponder a particularly obscure reference, then going on when I had satisfied myself that it signified bad translation rather than hidden meaning.

I finished the text proper, then the fine-printed notes. Finally, I turned to the section headed ‘Appendices’. And there, from page 320, the answer jumped out at me, as clear as the bright day which lit the autumn snow on the tips of the high Pyrenees.

I left the apartment before Prim returned from Girona. I didn’t want to have to spin her a story about why I was going out, and I didn’t want any problems over her insisting on coming with me.

So I headed out of St Marti in mid-afternoon and drove up to Figueras. Parking near the Dali museum is never a problem because of the concrete multi-storey hidden behind it. I stuck a long-term ticket on my windscreen and went for a wander round the lanes which surround it.

After almost an hour poring over the books, prints,T shirts and other memorabilia, I paid my admission fee and went into the museum itself. I had been there before, of course, and essentially the Dali is a pretty static exhibition. There’s the car in the courtyard, which fills up with water whenever someone’s daft enough to put 100 pesetas in the slot, there’s the Mae West room, there’s the ceiling with the sole of god’s foot descending from it, and there’s the stereoscopic painting which somehow turns, when seen through a viewer, into the head of Abraham Lincoln. All these plus dubious sketches from the early days, mad sculptures and other oddities, but very few of the recognisable great works. They are scattered in public galleries around the world, and in private collections … just like the Toreador of the Apocalypse.

I began to wonder if their absence was an accident of fate, or something else. Finally, just as the place was about to close for the day, I made my way down to the cellar. It’s much bigger than the one at Pubol, and Dali’s tomb is much grander than Gala’s, with a greater show of memorials.

I stood before it and I tried to recapture the feeling of loneliness that had come over both Prim and me as we stood before the grave in Pubol. Somehow, it wouldn’t come. I had read all about the crazy artist and his equally crazy wife, and I had heard the tales of them in St Marti and L’Escala. It seemed natural that they should be buried side by side, yet here was Dali in his emperor’s tomb, and somehow that seemed right also.

There was another puzzle there, but I didn’t have time right then to work it out, for a bell was ringing to chase the last of the visitors from the building.

I hung around in Figueras for most of the evening, reading the Dali book and dining in a bar off one of the narrow streets. At last, with ten o’clock approaching, I went back to the multi-storey park, picked up the Frontera and headed south for Pubol.

The road from Figueras was almost straight. I drove slowly, taking my time, preparing myself for my meeting. More than once, the thought came into my mind that I had set myself up to be killed, but every time I put it aside. There was no possible reason to kill me. Well, maybe there was one, but I couldn’t take that seriously; not even then.

I reached Pubol twenty minutes early, and parked in the big, flat, red-ash area which was as far as cars could venture, tucking the Frontera out of sight as best I could. The night was moonless and the stars stood out more vividly than they normally did in the southern sky, as I walked quietly into the hamlet.

The bar and restaurant were closed and shuttered. Nothing stirred as I slipped across the narrow street, and up the steps which led to Gala’s castle. The gate was locked, but I climbed it, quickly and noiselessly. As I had been told, I hurried round the corner, my left hand on the wall in the darkness, and cursing myself for my stupidity in not bringing a torch.

I had never noticed the side door in all my earlier visits, but it wasn’t difficult to find. Three metres along from the locked garage doors, behind a bush which deepened the darkness, my searching hand found a sudden break in the wall, and felt the touch of wood. There was a handle on the right. I turned it, opened the door and stepped inside. At first the blackness was complete. I stretched my hands out on both sides and realised that I was in a short corridor. Slowly, I inched along it, until my foot encountered something solid: another door. It opened easily too. Suddenly, the night was less dark, as the starlight shone down into the castle’s open courtyard. I stood there, like a nervous burglar, listening for a footfall upstairs, until my eyes could make out the cellar door, and the light which shone under it.