‘And what’s that?’ I whispered.
‘That the part of you that isn’t a mother, she’s lonely.’
Suddenly, he seemed even more mature. ‘Jonny, you’re not making a play for me, are you?’
‘God no!’ he gasped. Then he added, ‘No, I didn’t mean it that way! I’m not saying you’re not attractive. . you are, very. . and age doesn’t mean nearly so much these days, but you’re my auntie and he was my uncle and I couldn’t ever look at you without seeing him. God,’ he gulped, ‘let’s get inside. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I don’t know what made me.’
‘I don’t know either,’ I mused, ‘but maybe it needed saying. A hell of a conversation to be having at your front gate with a half-naked young man, though. One night, next week, maybe, we’ll have dinner, you and I, just the two of us, and carry it on.’
We went inside. I apologised once again to Shirl and Patterson for the hiatus, but they weren’t bothered. In my absence they’d worked their way through most of a bottle of albarino. I killed the rest and opened another while we waited for Tom and Jonny to join us. As if he was following his cousin’s lead, my nephew had thrown on a T-shirt and jeans, shedding the golfer gear for once, but that didn’t get him out of a replay of his afternoon press briefing as my guests quizzed him about his round. I didn’t let it go on for long. After a couple of minutes, I cried, ‘Enough, you two. Jonny’s had a hard couple of days, and he’s got even tougher to come, so give him a break from the shop talk, please.’
Dinner, when I finally got round to serving it, with Tom’s help, was pleasant. We talked about nothing more serious than the weather; the March snowstorm that had almost obliterated Catalunya the year before, and the searing summer that had followed. We relaunched the global warming debate (Tom was in favour, if it meant bigger waves on the beach) until Jonny ended it by saying that it was as real as the millennium bug. ‘I went to college in Arizona, remember. It couldn’t get any warmer there.’
As I looked at Patterson, eventually I remembered my undertaking to Alex, which had prompted my invitation, and I realised how preposterous the whole notion was, that he could have had something to do with the death of the stiff in the woods. Okay, his career had been in intelligence, but so what? I resolved to pay no more attention to the fantasies of the Mossos d’Esquadra. Their time would be better served freeing me from the attentions of the likes of Christine McGuigan, but with a hot murder inquiry under way, they’d hardly be doing that. As Alex had admitted, his dismissal of her that afternoon had been mostly bullshit, and, as it had turned out, pretty ineffective. Which was a nuisance. I’d thrown a scare into her outside, no question. But what if it wore off? I knew next to nothing about the woman, other than that she wasn’t much good at martial arts, but did know how to blade a tyre. ‘Bugger,’ I whispered, as I realised I could have searched her bag further, for the knife; whispered to myself, I thought, but Patterson overheard me, and I realised that he’d been watching me a lot more closely than I’d been fixed on him, for all my earlier intentions.
Jonny broke the moment. ‘If you’ll all excuse me,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll turn in. For all that I’m in the second last group tomorrow, I’ll need to be on the course early. Uche will be up at sparrow fart checking on the pin positions, and I need to support him.’
That was it for Tom too; I’d noticed his eyelids beginning to droop. While he was too old for ‘Time for bed, young man’, there were still times when the suggestion had to be made, but that night wasn’t one of them. He’d been putting on a show on his board for his cousin and it had tired him out. Or maybe he suspected I’d tell him to clear the table, and decided to forestall me.
That left the three seniors alone, for coffee and liqueurs on the terrace. Shirley was past her best by then, so Patterson had slowed up. He was seated between the two of us; on his left, Shirl was slumped back in her chair, with a goblet of amaretto in her cupped hands. When she began to snore lightly, he reached out, took it from her, with touching gentleness, and placed it on the table in front of them. She didn’t stir; when someone can separate her from her drink, you know that she’s asleep.
‘You’re a nice man, you know,’ I told him. I was on amaretto too, but I had tonic and ice in mine, in a tall glass: my version of a highball.
‘I like to think so,’ he said.
‘Have you always been?’
‘Personally, I hope so. My daughters seem to think so.’
‘Professionally?’
‘You shouldn’t ask me that.’
‘I just did, though.’
He leaned back and closed his eyes. For a moment I thought he was taking refuge in sleep, like Shirley. But he wasn’t; instead he was weighing up his answer. ‘Without going into operational details,’ he began, when he was ready, ‘there were situations in which my service was required not to be very nice. But I was never part of those so I remained humane. Humanity is essential to a worthy society. Needless cruelty is inexcusable.’
‘But what if captive terrorists won’t tell the state what it wants to know?’
‘That’s their human right.’
‘Even if people’s lives depended on them talking?’
He sighed. ‘At that point, people like us have to leave the room.’
‘Is that a roundabout way of telling me that when cruelty is necessary, the state needs brutes?’
‘I suppose it is. And you, Primavera,’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you always been nice?’
‘No I have not,’ I admitted, ‘and I’ll bet you knew that already.’
‘I’ve given up on judging people. From what I’ve been told about you, I know you’ve been inside for foolishness more than malice, but I know also that you’re an exemplary mother, and that the Foreign Office trusted you enough to give you a job quite recently, thanks in part to your connection with the former Home Secretary, which not a soul understands. Incidentally, it’ll be kept open for you, should you wish to reconsider your resignation.’
‘Are you sure you’ve retired?’ I laughed.
‘Oh yes, I have, I assure you. But the strings are still there, the access to information, for me to pull if I need to.’
‘Could you pull them for me?’ I asked him quietly.
‘That wouldn’t be proper, Primavera.’
‘Neither was pulling them to run a complete background check on me.’
He smiled. ‘Retaliation. You did it first, remember.’
‘True,’ I conceded, ‘but in any event, I wasn’t asking you to observe propriety. I was asking you to do me a favour.’
‘Depends what it is. Shoot.’
I told him about my story, from my problem in the car park, leading into my second encounter with Christine McGuigan, and about the way I’d dealt with her.
‘Did anyone see this altercation?’ he asked, hardly giving me time to finish.
‘Jonny arrived right at the end of it. He backed me up, naturally.’
‘Just as well. If you’re right about her sabotaging your tyre, anyone who carries a knife as a matter of routine isn’t to be trifled with.’
‘Maybe I’m not either.’
He frowned. ‘Primavera,’ he said, ‘I’m sure that the mortuaries of the world are full of people who thought that way.’
‘Which is why I’d like to know a bit more about this woman. This afternoon she said she works for something called Spotlight Television, yet this evening I catch her taking telephoto shots of Tom on the beach. I mean what the hell is she?’
‘She’s probably what she says she is, a journalist. The world’s moved on, Primavera. Fings ain’t wot they used to be, as the old song goes. We’ve moved on from hot-metal presses and inky fingers. Nowadays, would-be reporters who can’t sell their stuff to radio or television can set up their own blog sites then post whatever smears and libels and paparazzi pictures they choose, or they can shoot video and upload footage to abominations like YouTube. Nowadays, every wannabe, can be.’