Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

For an instant, a strange flash caught my eye; it could have been gold or silver. I couldn’t be sure, for the stone lid cast a dark shadow. I swung the torch back slowly until its beam found the bright metal once more. My stomach turned over. The torch-light shone full on a man’s wristwatch. It had a black face with gold hands, and gold roman numerals and a stainless steel back, with what looked like 18-carat gold plate around the edge of the face. Its strap was black leather, and looked as if it was partly rotted.

A sudden wave of fear swept over me. It might have got out of control had I not realised almost at once what had made it spring up. The watch was an identical model to one which I had given my dad nine months before, as a Christmas present: Giorgio of Beverley Hills, Swiss made, water resistant to three atmospheres. I was pretty sure that Giorgio didn’t have a branch in Catalunya … or at least that he didn’t in the days when they were still burying people in stone chests.

My grip on myself didn’t last long. The sound of your own scream confined and magnified within a stone coffin is — Oh God, how I hope it is — a once in a lifetime experience. I just couldn’t help it. I jumped up, banging the side of my head on the edge of the lid, rolled over and scrambled away from the thing, looking, I suspect, like the old film of Jackie K ‘hauling ass’ out of that limo in Dallas.

I lay on the ground, staring up at Miguel, aware that my mouth was hanging open, but unable to do anything about it … like speak.

He looked at me, with scant sympathy, I have to say. Alongside my reaction, his earlier agitation was stoic by comparison. He didn’t say a word, but I knew that there was face to be lost in the situation, so finally I gave him what I hoped was a wicked smile, and rolled back towards the open grave. In my hurried withdrawal I had dropped the torch. I reached down and picked it up, then lowered myself once more through the opening.

Imagine the worst morning you’ve ever had after the night before. The wildest stag party — and let’s not be sexist about this — or hen night, you could ever imagine, when things have got really out of control, you’ve ended up guttered in some disco, and, as you wake up, you really can’t remember a thing about the person next to you, the face you see on the pillow next to yours. Go on, give free rein to your worst nightmare.

Nothing like it.

Inside the coffin, a second skull grinned at me, eye to eye, no more than a foot away, like that face on the other pillow. Unlike the original tenant, yellowed with age, this one was still more or less shining white. The beam of the torch reflected off a gold filling in one of the back teeth, and off the steel of a bridge set on the lower jaw. I forced myself to stare at it dispassionately, fighting hard to master my horror. I succeeded, and at last I was able to play the torch down the rest of the body. It lay on its side, pressed against the coffin wall. It was clean, if you could use that word for something that was well down the descent into corruption, because the earth which had spilled in through the open lid, covering most of the original skeleton, had not piled up beyond its right limb. Relics of clothing, unspeakably stained, still hung on the bones. There were strands of a shirt that had probably been blue, and trousers that might once have been cream. A black leather belt was still looped around the waist, the weight of its heavy, rusted metal buckle pulling it down against the bony spine. There seemed to be no jewellery, other than that Giorgio watch. I shone the beam on and around the hands, looking for a wedding ring but seeing none.

I looked back up at the skull. A few wisps of fair hair still clung to its dome. ‘Afternoon,’ I said. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I’ll be off now.’

I hauled myself out of the coffin for a second time, under control this time, and stood up beside Miguel, with a quick glance over my shoulder to confirm that the square was still empty.

‘I see.’ I didn’t think there was much more to be said.

‘Yes,’ said Miguel. ‘Is terrible. What are we going to do?’

I looked at him in surprise, my eyebrows shooting half-way up my forehead. ‘I reckon that “Call the police”, sounds like a pretty good answer to that one.’

He gasped, and his face became a mask of fright. ‘Ah no, not that. That would be terrible. The tourists would not come any more. All the families in the village need them for the money, for the businesses.’

‘Come on, man,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be that bad.’

He nodded his head violently. ‘Oh yes it would. This is a quiet place, a peaceful place. Most of our tourists come every year, from all over Spain, and Europe. Many of them have children. Others are old. They will not come back to a place where something like this can happen. Where people can be killed and buried.’

‘How will they know about it?’

He looked at me as if I was daft. ‘From the newspapers, the television … and not only in Spain.’

He had me there. I could see the headlines. ‘Fresh Stiff in Pre-historic Coffin.’ Yes, even the Lothian Herald and Post would run that one. But even at that … ‘Listen, Miguel,’ I insisted, ‘the season’s almost over. It’ll all have been forgotten by next summer.’

A very obvious question struck me suddenly, right in the teeth. ‘Eh, you don’t know who that is down there, do you?’

He shook his head this time, and so violently that I thought it might come off. ‘No, no, no! But the Guardia Civil, they will find out, then they will find out who did it, and there will be a trial. In Spain that takes a long time, and all that time there will be periodistas here, asking questions, taking pictures. The families, they will go away, and the wrong sort of people will come instead.’

He paused, chewing his lip nervously. ‘The Guardia Civil, they will investigate everyone in the village. They will ask questions and they will find things out that maybe some will not want found out.’

I pointed to the coffin. ‘You mean someone here might have …’

‘Oh no, I know everyone in this village, and around it. I promise you, no one who lives here would have done that. No, I mean that they will find things out about our businesses, that maybe someone no pay as much tax as he should, that maybe someone no pay any tax at all.’

As a self-employed person, I understood that concern. ‘Ahh. I’m with you,’ I said. ‘But even at that, Miguel man. This is murder we’re talking about. That bloke didn’t climb in there himself. He was put there.

‘This ground used to be hidden from the village by a thick hedge, until the workmen took it down to prepare for the viewpoint. I’d guess that someone killed him up here, went to dig a grave, then hit the stone coffin by accident and had the bright idea of shoving him inside.

‘Almost certainly that guy down there has a family. They deserve to be put out of their misery. And whoever murdered him deserves to be caught. What if he’s killed more than one, and uses St Marti as a graveyard? Tax man or no tax man, we can’t just cover the thing up and pretend that it isn’t there.’

Miguel looked at me, slightly shocked. ‘Oh no, of course not. I do not mean that we should do that. Is not possibly anyway. It was Jordi who found this, remember. Even if I told him not to do it, he could not stop himself telling his friends at school about what he had found.’

‘Does he know what’s inside?’

‘No, he did not see the other body. Only the old one. But that is enough. He is very proud of being an archaeologist. Also, is the law that when you find something like this, you must report it.’

I turned and took a few steps away from the coffin, until I could see down the square. A waiter had appeared outside the Esculapi and was busying himself pulling his tables to the side and hosing the gravel underneath, to keep down the dust.