Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

‘How can you know that?’ Ford squealed.

‘Simple. I asked. The manager at Peretellada, he’s Catalan. My people will tell you anything, if you ask them in their own language. That’s the key to them. As for Trevor; well, most people will tell you the truth if you hold a gun to their head. Only the really tough ones, like you, will try to lie their way out of danger, right to the end. I learned that in the Civil War, my friend. I wish I’d been able to blowTrevor’s brains all over his boat. But I couldn’t make so much noise. So I had to use a knife. I learned that in the war also. There’s no one around here. I can make as much noise as I like.’

On screen, I could see Adrian Ford begin to shake. ‘Wait a minute Dav,’ he screamed, as if a gun had been raised. ‘It’s your fault too. If you hadn’t introduced us to Starr in the bar across the road, none of this would have happened. He’d never have shown me the Dali. He’d be alive today but for you.’ A last flicker of defiance showed in his face. ‘You evil old bastard!’

‘I know that,’ said the voice. ‘And for that I must die too. But evil, no. Davidoff is good, and at the end, good usually wins.’

Pure astonishment spread across Ford’s face, as the first bullet hit him, and as the first red flower bloomed on his chest, all of it simultaneous with the sound of the pistol as the shot cracked from the speaker of the television set. I think he died then, but Davidoff shot him twice more, just in case, hurling him backwards into the trunk of the Caddy.

His feet hung out over the body panel, until a slim figure, wearing a black T-shirt and trousers, stepped into the frame, swung them into the car, and slammed the lid shut. Then Davidoff turned, revolver held in his left hand, and reached for the camera.

The screen went blank, but only for a few seconds. When it cleared, Davidoff was sitting calmly, facing the camera. He held up a newspaper. ‘This is to show you the date, Oz. It’s today’s, Tuesday’s. They always do this in the movies, so I thought I would too. Not that I want you ever to let anyone else see this tape.

‘That’s how he died,’ he said, ‘that bastard Adrian, who betrayed my friendship and trust and who killed Ronnie Starr. For either, I’d have shot him.’

He smiled, then reached down and picked up a book. The Dali volume. ‘But enough of Adrian and Trevor,’ he drawled, in that strange Hispanic American accent. ‘Have you found the answer, on page three hundred and twenty? I know you; you’re a smart boy. I reckon you have.’ He grinned at me from the screen.

‘There were two of you,’ I said, as if he could hear me. ‘You’re his brother.’

‘That’s right,’ Davidoff said, as if in answer, as he waved the heavy volume at the camera. ‘The book says that Salvador Galo Anselmo Dali i Domenech was born at Number 2 °Carrer Monturiol, in the town of Figueras on the twelfth of October, 1901, and that he died in August, 1903. It says that Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech was born in the same house on May 11, 1904.’

He beamed, like a magician about to pull a rabbit from his hat. ‘I am Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech. Yes Oz, what the book says is true. My father had two sons named Salvador. But it is not correct when it says that my elder brother died as an infant. That was a story which my father put about to cover the real truth. For my father was a very private man, with a misplaced sense of shame, and there were some things which he simply could not have borne had they become public knowledge and matters for discussion.

‘From his earliest days, my brother Salvador behaved oddly. As a very small baby he did not smile, or laugh. Our mother used to say, when she could speak of it, that his eyes were always fierce.’ He frowned. ‘As he grew he seemed to have a hostile spirit within him. When he cut his teeth, he would bite the nipple at which he sucked, he would bite our father, he would bite himself. His fingernails had to be cut short, for he would scratch anything he could touch.

‘Salvador was a strong, healthy child, yet he would not walk. He had a loud voice, yet he would not learn to speak. Instead, as he grew bigger he spat and snarled with fury in his eyes at anyone who would come near him. Everything that came into his hands he tore or threw about. He had to be force fed. If mother and father did not watch him he would eat his own shit, and they had to be careful he did not smear it on them.

‘You have to understand, Oz, that my father was a very religious man. He believed in the embodiment of good and of evil. And he came to believe that his son was possessed by a devil.’ He paused, to let his words have effect. ‘I tell you something. Even today, so do I.

‘When my brother was only eighteen months old, a priest was brought into the house, to perform the rite of exorcism. When he said the Latin words, Salvador, for the first time in his life, shrieked with a mad laughter. Afterwards, his behaviour continued unchanged.’

Davidoff glanced at the floor, looking away from the camera for the first time. ‘No one from outside the family had ever been allowed to see my brother,’ he said at last. ‘When he was nine months old, my father dismissed his two servants, for fear that they would spread stories.

‘As I said, he was ashamed, Oz, of this, this thing, that had been visited on him and on my mother. I think that if he had been a less strong-willed man, he might have killed Salvador for the child’s own sake. Instead, he chose a more difficult road.

‘When his mad son was about two years old he let it be known that he had died. He determined that he and my mother would look after him in secret, in the sound-proofed attic of the house in Carrer Monturiol, that they would be his nurses and his jailers, until he was full grown and could be put away in an asylum. They could simply have sent him away at that time too, of course, but my father believed in duty, and he loved Salvador, crazy or not.’ Davidoff smiled. ‘My father was a great man, Oz. He made Dali, but as you could never have imagined.’

He paused, picked up a glass of red wine from the floor and took a sip. ‘I was born in the year after my father made his choice. He named me Salvador also, hoping that he had not cursed me with the name. But he had not. I was the opposite of my brother in every way, a loving, thoughtful, intelligent, happy little boy.

‘I was born into comfort. My father was a merchant, and rich. Many people worked for him in his warehouses. One of my earliest memories is of the sea, and of my mother. I remember visiting Cadaques by boat. I would have been three years old at the time. We took many excursions, my mother and I, when I was too young to wonder, far less ask, why my father never came with us.’ He smiled for a second, his eye blank, looking into the past.

‘I suppose I must have known from an early age that there was something strange about our house. I was never allowed to bring playmates home with me. In fact no one ever came there, other than my grandparents. As I met other children too, I noticed that their parents had servants, and I began to wonder why I had none. Yet I never asked.To complain about these things would have been rude, and as I have said, I was a polite little boy.’

Davidoff took another sip of wine, then topped up his glass, as I watched, fascinated. ‘My parents felt that I was too young to understand, so they kept their secret from me for almost seven years. Maybe if they could, they would have held on to it for ever, but that would have been impossible. I suppose it was only because I was such a submissive little bastard that it lasted so long.

‘Our house had three floors, and the attic. We lived during the day on the ground floor, mostly. My bedroom, the music room and the nursery were on the first floor, and my father’s study and my parents’ bedroom was on the second. I was allowed up there only rarely, and never at all was I allowed to go up to the attic.