‘That’s better,’ she declared, as she took the glass I handed her and made its contents disappear faster than an unsuspecting celebrity snorts a line of coke for the hidden tabloid camera. ‘I couldn’t believe what I saw in the mirror. “Fat old lioness” was putting it mildly; more like a grizzly bear that had fallen through a tree.’
‘What made you so busy?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been on the internet all afternoon.’
I frowned. ‘Trying to trace Patterson?’
‘Hell no. Bugger him. No, I’ve been sorting out an escape plan from this place, and from Alex’s insistence on having cops follow me to the toilet, more or less. If Mr Cowling can do a runner, so can I. I’ve booked myself a cruise. Late booking; I leave tomorrow.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘As far away as I can get. I fly to Singapore first off, get on a ship there and spend three weeks on the ocean wave. Don’t ask me where we’ll visit, ’cos I don’t remember. I’ll be out of here, and that’s the main thing. Let our Alex try and park a police car outside that and see how he gets on.’
‘Do you need a lift to the airport?’
‘Thanks, love, but no thanks. I’m going first class; that means they send a car for me. Bloody decadent, I know, but like they say, I’m worth it.’
I refilled our glasses. ‘You sure are, gal. Now, since you’re going to be waited on hand and foot for the next three weeks, you can burn the burgers and the sausage. I’ll finish the chips and the salad.’
I enjoy my girlie evenings with Shirl, whether they’re at her place or mine, or occasionally on neutral ground; hair is let down, drink is drunk and truths are told. The selfish part of me was glad that Patterson was gone, since his arrival, and Shirley’s absorption in him, had put them under threat, but most of me was sorry for her, and angry with him, whether he’d been at fault or not. We ate and talked and laughed as usual that night, but through it all, his recent presence still hung around, like settling dust in the air after a big storm. I tried not to talk about him, but I couldn’t keep it up.
‘How did you meet him?’ I asked, when the ice-cream dishes had been scraped clean of anything scrapeable, and as Shirley poured Drambuie into two great glass globes, then desecrated it with ice cubes made from tap water.
‘I told you,’ she replied. ‘On the internet, after my best boy Tom showed me how to get on to the site.’ She paused. ‘Here,’ she added, ‘if you ever decide to have him christened, can I be his godmother?’
‘That’s a decision he’d take for himself, but if I were you I wouldn’t buy a new frock for the occasion. You’re his fairy godmother as it is; settle for that. But back to my question: I know he put you on-site, but once you were there, how did you and Patterson get together? Who made the first move?’
She raised her goblet to her lips. ‘He did, I suppose,’ she murmured. ‘It wasn’t one of those sites that works at random. It was much more personal than that. You write a bio, then upload it, with all your details and a photo. You enter criteria: the sort of person who attracts you, and the things that would turn you off. Well groomed, big dong, yes, scruffy, small dong, no; loves classical music, no, tone deaf, yes; that sort of info. You can either be reactive, that’s go a-hunting, or you can be demure, and sit and wait, as I did.’
Demure? I thought, but I let her continue.
‘I wasn’t there long before the site moderator sent me an email saying there was someone who’d like to make contact and asking if I’d like his details.’
‘Like the size of his dong?’
‘No, you daft bat; that comes later. His personal profile, a little bit of background, and his likes and dislikes.’
‘How did they describe him?’
‘Public servant, retired.’
‘I wonder how they vet their clients,’ I mused.
Shirley snorted. ‘That’s self-evident. Not too fucking well. There was I, starting to think that I’d found someone who was capable of looking after me, only for him to be some chickenshit bastard who hasn’t got the guts to tell me to my face that he doesn’t really fancy me, or who fucks off at the slightest whiff of a possibility that somebody might have got on to his past.’
‘Is that what Alex told you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. He said that there was a good chance that pickpocket bloke had been trying to find out who he was. They were working on that theory, and that Patterson had twigged to this. Now I’ve got Starsky and fucking Hutch parked at my back door, suggesting to anyone who might be wondering that I know where he’s gone when I really don’t have a clue, and if I did wouldn’t give a shit. I pointed that out to him, but he said he’d rather err on the side of caution if it was all right by me.’
From that, it seemed Alex hadn’t told her about Christine McGuigan’s murder. Why should he? I supposed. It was all over that morning’s press, and the presumed link to the other had been made public, but for all her years in Spain, Shirl can’t read either Castellano or Catalan worth a damn, and he knew that. Why alarm her more than necessary?
‘Did you have any hint he was going to leave?’
‘Course not. I dunno what the hell he thought. That I’d tie him to the bedpost if I twigged he was thinking about it? He really didn’t know me, Primavera, did he? The only thing I wanted from him was commitment. At the first sign it wasn’t there I’d have driven him to the airport myself.’
I nodded agreement, for I knew that to be true.
‘And yet. .’ She stopped. ‘No, I’m chasing things that aren’t there.’
‘Go on,’ I prompted. ‘What were you going to say?’
‘Nothing.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s just. . When we arrived at your place for dinner on Friday, there was a moment then, when I thought he was acting as if he’d been rattled by something. But that was all; just a moment, then he was his usual smiling self. You didn’t notice anything, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I told her. But I couldn’t have, could I? Because they’d barely arrived before I was outside punching lumps out of the soon to be late Christine McGuigan, for a reason that had turned out to be significantly off the mark.
Fourteen
Shirley’s chauffeur-driven lift was coming for her early next morning, so we called it quits around ten thirty, after a stiff coffee for the road. In case you’re wondering, Shirley drank most of the cava and I didn’t finish the Drambuie, so I was okay to drive.
The house was quiet when I climbed the stair from the garage. I looked in on Tom; he was still awake, and reading. He’s a traditionalist in that respect: Susie gave him a Kindle reader for his tenth birthday, but he prefers real books. He had the self-satisfied smile of a winner on his face. ‘Jonny might be a champion golfer,’ he told me, ‘but he’s rubbish at the PGA Tour on X-Box.’
‘What about Uche?’
He shook his head. ‘His thumbs don’t work at all.’
I left him to dream of his triumphs, and went downstairs to the front terrace, to look out on to the square. La Terrassa was still open, and the guys were sitting outside. I went across to join them. Jonny offered me a drink, but I stuck to mineral water, like him, since I didn’t fancy alcohol, and I knew that another coffee would keep me awake.
‘How’s Shirley?’ he asked.
‘Disappointed. Let down. Steaming mad. Mystified. Any one of those, maybe all of them. But she’s not going to brood over it.’ I told him about her cruise plan, then I had to explain to Uche about the crisis, and Patterson’s vanishing act, since Jonny hadn’t mentioned it to him.
‘Perhaps it’s all a charade,’ he suggested. ‘When she gets on board he’ll be waiting for her.’
‘If he is, he’ll walk the plank. You can be sure of that. Shirley doesn’t play silly games, and she doesn’t take prisoners either.’
‘Ouch!’ he chuckled. ‘Remind me to be very polite to the lady when she gets back.’