Quintin Jardine - Hour Of Darkness

‘We found the address,’ she continued, ‘just after midnight as ordered. Ignacio pressed the button for flat one stroke one as we’d been told. A woman’s voice came through the speaker, telling us to come up, and we were let in.’

She paused, to take another drink, and I saw that her hand was shaking. Her voice was steady, though.

‘I was behind Ignacio when she opened the door, so I didn’t see her properly at first. And she didn’t get a look at me either, as I was wearing night driving glasses and my woolly hat. I took them off as we were following her into the kitchen. When we got in there and we got a good look at each other. .’

‘ Una pesadilla ,’ Ignacio whispered. Yes, I could see that it would have been a nightmare to him, when the women of the Watson family came face to face.

‘It was my mother,’ Mia said. ‘I couldn’t believe it, and neither could she. She was as surprised as I was. Then her face just twisted into something awful, it just filled with hatred.

‘She picked up a meat cleaver and she came for me, swinging it at my head. I threw an arm up to protect myself; the cleaver hit me but it didn’t cut all the way through my jacket. She’d have killed me, Bob, if Ignacio hadn’t grabbed her from behind and hauled her off.’

She looked into my eyes, searching for belief. I tried to show her nothing.

‘When he did, though, she tried to hit him with the thing, waving it behind her. . until I picked up a knife and stabbed her, again and again, until I hit something vital and the blood started pumping everywhere, and she gurgled and her eyes rolled and she died.’

I looked at her for a while, not knowing for sure what to make of her. ‘You’d just killed your mother. How did you feel?’ I asked.

‘I’d just saved my son,’ she retorted. ‘I felt pleased.’

‘It won’t always be that way, Mia. You’re not done with those pesadillas yet. I doubt if you ever will be.’ I didn’t dwell on the thought. ‘So, that done and dusted, how did you get the body into the river?’

‘Ignacio found a big blanket chest in her bedroom. It was big enough to take her, so we crammed her in there. We checked there was nobody around, then between us we got it downstairs and into the van. We took the money too; she had that in a supermarket bag in the kitchen.’

‘Why? Why did you do all that? Why not just leave her there?’

‘Now, I don’t know for sure,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose we hoped it would give us time to get out of the country before she was found. And it did.

‘There’s a road beside the river where I used to go running when I was on Airburst. We took the van down there and got lucky. It was high tide; we took her out, stripped her clothes off so there was nothing to identify her, and dropped her into the water off some rocks, then we heaved the chest in after her. Then we headed home. We took the clothes and burned them on the way.’

‘As you burned your old bodega?’ I held a hand up, stopping any response. ‘No, don’t answer that. That happened here in Spain, so I don’t want to know, just in case I’m ever asked whether I do or not.’

I picked up my beer and drained most of it, then looked at them, first at my son, and then at his mother. ‘What’s the bottom line, Mia?’ I asked her. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘I want you to protect Ignacio. And I want you to give me a head start. If I’m arrested, it all comes out, and your career will be over. You couldn’t possibly be appointed to that big new job.’

I looked back at her and felt utter despair wash over me. ‘So fucking what?’ I hissed. ‘When Sarah and I were over here,’ I told her, ‘I decided that I’m withdrawing my application. I don’t want the job. It’s not for me. If that means my police career is over, so be it. My job doesn’t get me up in the morning, not any more. Sarah does, and my children do. Earlier you said to me that I didn’t know what I’ve done. Well, neither do you.’

‘Yes I do,’ she protested. ‘Exactly.’

I shook my head. ‘No you don’t. You could have protected him eighteen years ago, by telling me about him. Do you think, seriously, that I wouldn’t have acknowledged him? Of course I would; I’d never have considered otherwise.

‘You and me, that might not have worked, but as his mother, you would have been untouchable, by Bella, by Tony Manson, by anyone who feared my wrath descending upon them.’

I had to pause to stem my rising anger.

‘But you didn’t,’ I hissed at her. ‘Instead you’ve destroyed our boy.’

‘How?’ she protested.

‘Your story is flawed, Mia. It doesn’t work. My wife did the post-mortem examination of your mother. She will stand in the witness box at any trial and say under oath that the angle of Bella’s wounds prove that she was killed by the person, a much taller person than her, who restrained her from behind. You couldn’t have done it; you’re no taller than she was, and you’re probably not strong enough. It was Ignacio that killed her, not you, and all three of us here know it.’

I looked at him and he nodded. ‘ Perdon , Papa,’ he whispered. ‘ Lo siento. ’

‘I’ll confess to it, Bob.’ Mia’s protestation turned to pleading. ‘I have done, to you, and I’ll stick to it.’

I’d have been happy to let her, but I was forced to set her straight.

‘You can confess until they make you a saint, but proof of guilt is still required in Scotland, and if your story can be disproved forensically, the worst thing that can happen to you is five years for obstructing justice. It won’t help Ignacio. Because there’s more.’

‘How can there be?’

‘The ottoman. The blanket chest. You should have taken it away with you and burned it as well,’ I said. I was angry with her, and that confused me as, after all, I was sitting with a murderer and his accomplice.

‘The fucking thing washed up on the other side of the Firth,’ I said. ‘The local bobbies thought nothing of it, but Edinburgh asked about it and it was handed over. The Fife people hadn’t even bothered to look inside. When the investigators did, they found your mother’s blood, and they found a kitchen knife with two sets of DNA traces on it. They’ve been able to match them to Bella and to Ignacio. And just to put the tin lid on it, they found other blood traces in the box. There was a nail on the inside, with skin fragments on it.’

I turned to Ignacio. ‘The last time we met you had a plaster on the back of your left hand, isn’t that right?’

He nodded, extending it towards me, so that I could see a scar, healed but still vivid, and recent.

‘You tore the back of your hand open when you put your grandmother’s body in the chest, or when you took it out. Either way, it’s crucial, incontrovertible evidence. And it’s done for you.’

Mia reached out and caught my arm, gripping it hard. ‘Surely you can do something about that. In your position you can destroy evidence.’

‘Do you know what I did yesterday?’ I asked her. ‘I spent much of it destroying what’s left of the life of an old man, an old friend, an old colleague, because he did just that. Now you’re asking me to do the same thing.’

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, ‘I am. Will you?’

Would I have? I hope not, but I’ll never know for sure, because the question was academic by then.

‘Even if I tried,’ I sighed, ‘it’s too late. Sammy Pye and his people in Edinburgh have proved beyond the faintest, most unreasonable doubt that Bella Watson was killed by her grandson.

‘They know that she had two grandsons, and that the other one did not do it. Because of that. .’ I took my iPad from a pocket of my jacket, activated it and showed her a document that appeared on screen. ‘That’s a European arrest warrant, sworn out today in Edinburgh, in Ignacio’s name. They don’t issue those just to pick up suspects, only for people who will be charged with a specific offence, in this case, murder.’