‘Over dinner, Ronnie said that he was thinking about leaving the college right then, rather than a year later. He asked me how I would feel about not going back to Barca, but about us setting up home together, in La Pera or somewhere else around here.
‘I said that sounded like a damn fine idea.’ A tear came to her eye but she kept control. ‘There and then, he took off the gold chain from round his neck, and gave it to me. “Till I can buy a ring,” he said.’ She reached up to her throat, and held the chain out for us to see. ‘I didn’t get no ring,’ she snorted. ‘I got Felipe instead. Ronnie said that he would have to go back to Wales to sort things out with the college. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when the man came.’
I frowned at her. ‘What man?’
‘An Englishman named Trevor. I’d met him once in the bar with Ronnie.’
‘Was there another man with him? Around forty, medium everything?’
‘Yes there was, but he never told me his name. I never saw him again after that.’
‘So when did Trevor come?’ I asked.
‘Two days after my birthday. The day after it, I went to Barca, to visit a girlfriend. I told Ronnie about it and said I’d be staying overnight. He said okay, and that he would look after the shop for me.
‘When I got back, the shop was closed, and there was no sign of Ronnie. I opened up and a couple of hours later, Trevor came in. He said that he had a message from Ronnie. He told me that he had to drive back to Wales very suddenly, the evening before, and had asked Trevor to pick up his things and send them on.’
‘What things?’
‘That’s what I asked. “All of them,” Trevor said. “His clothes, and his pictures.” He said that Ronnie needed those for the college.’
‘Didn’t it strike you as odd that he had left without them?’
‘Sure it did, at first. But Trevor explained that they had been having a drink on the previous afternoon when Ronnie had gone off to make a call to the college. He had returned in a panic and had said that the college wanted him back before the end of the next working day. “Or else,” were the words Trevor used. He had to leave then if he was going to make it back in time, in his little car. He had been worried about his clothes and pictures, but Trevor had told him that his friend, the other guy, whose name I didn’t know, was going back to England next day, and that he would take them and drop them off in Cardiff.’
‘So you gave Trevor Ronnie’s clothes and all his pictures?’
‘Not all,’ she said. ‘I kept the one of Gala’s castle, and of the plain. Ronnie gave me those as my birthday presents. They’re upstairs, still. But the others I gave to Trevor, with his clothes.’
‘Including the Toreador?’
‘Yes. That and the painting of Cadaques.’
‘What about the Port Lligat painting?’ I asked.
‘Ronnie told me he had traded that. But he didn’t say where. Artists do that all the time; trade pictures for materials, or meals in restaurants.’
‘When he didn’t contact you,’ asked Prim, sympathetically, ‘did you try to get in touch with him, after a while?’
Reis shook her head. ‘No. I knew I was pregnant by then. I reckoned that if Ronnie had wanted to get in touch with me he would. So I decided that he had been lying to me; and because of that I decided also that I would bring up my baby on my own.’
Her jaw was set in a hard line. Suddenly she didn’t look quite so pretty.
‘When Ronnie was here, did he get to know anyone else that you were aware of?’
A crease appeared between her eyebrows as she considered my question. ‘No,’ she began, ‘but there was one time. Once on a Sunday afternoon when I was closed, and Ronnie wasn’t painting, we went along to the bar in Pubol. While we were there a man walked past the doorway, looked in and said hello to Ronnie, in English. Ronnie waved back, then the man walked on. When I asked who he was, he said only that it was someone that he had met there before.’
‘Can you describe him, after all this time?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Reis Sonas. ‘I could still draw you his picture. He was Catalan, obviously, with olive skin, and he was wiry. He moved like a little cat, except he was not all that small. He looked ancient, yet not old, if you can understand me. And he had a patch over one eye.’
Beside me, I heard Primavera’s quiet gulp.
‘Have you seen him since, this man?’ I asked. She shook her head.
‘Reis, I don’t think Ronnie was lying to you.’ I took Starr’s watch from my pocket and showed it to her. She went chalk white. ‘I believe that Ronnie’s dead, and I expect that pretty soon there will be proof of that.’ I could almost hear her heart hammering, though she was on the other side of the room. As I looked at her, her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head slowly, as if in denial of the truth.
‘If I can give you some advice,’ I said, ‘if I were you I would raise a court action in Wales to have Felipe recognised legally as Ronnie’s son. He could be in line for quite a legacy. I reckon his father would want him to have it, rather than the government, don’t you?’
She squeezed her eyes shut tight, briefly, then nodded. ‘If we can help,’ I said. For the first time I felt the need of a business card. Instead I picked up a pen and paper from the fireside and wrote down our names and our telephone number. I handed it to her. ‘If you need to contact us.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, as she took it.
She stood up and showed us to the door, past Ronnie Starr’s son, who was beginning to stir in his cot.
As soon as we were out in the street Prim’s breath exploded in a loud gasp. ‘Davidoff,’ she burst out. ‘He knew Ronnie Starr. And he didn’t tell us.’
I took her arm. ‘Hold on. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. They were on talking terms, yes, but there’s no proof it was any more than that. Starr didn’t mention his name to Reis; maybe he didn’t know it. Maybe Davidoff didn’t know Starr’s name either.’
‘What?’ she said. ‘The most nationalistically biased man in Spain forms a nodding acquaintance with a foreigner, without finding out his name.’ Still, she had cooled down.
‘We’ll ask him, okay?’
She frowned at me. ‘Too bloody right we will!’
43
Our opportunity to confront Davidoff arose next day just after noon. We didn’t have to go in search of it. We were on the terrace completing responses to two instant enquiries from our third advertisement, which had appeared in the press that same morning, when the door buzzer rang.
Assuming that the caller would be Miguel or his son, I pressed the button to release the lock without lifting the handset, left the door ajar and went back to Prim on the terrace. A minute later a theatrical cough sounded in the doorway.
‘Good afternoon, my friends. Pardon this disturbance, but I have come for two reasons. The first is simply to see you both again … especially you, my dear,’ he added, beaming at Prim and advancing towards us. ‘The second is to invite you to dine with Davidoff on Sunday evening, in Shirley’s summerhouse.
‘My friend Adrian will be leaving on Saturday, and the unpleasant John will arrive on Monday. I never visit his mother when he is there. I always feel in the way, and also, I don’t like the asshole. But on Sunday, Shirley will be free and I can cook my special paella for her as I do every year, to thank her for putting up with me. I hope that you will be able to join us.’
Davidoff’s visit had set us both on the back foot. We hadn’t discussed how we were going to confront him with the previous day’s discovery.
I played it by ear. ‘We’d love to come. About eight o’clock?’ He nodded.
I drew up a chair for him, at the terrace table. There was hot coffee in a jug on the floor, and so Prim automatically went to the kitchen to fetch him a mug.
As she poured, I came straight to the point. ‘Davidoff, you devious old bugger, you might have told us you knew Ronnie Starr?’