After all, I owed her nothing, I didn’t give a damn about her dead mother and I no longer gave a damn about her. Our relationship had lasted all of one night and ended in acrimony, so what the hell was I doing there, I asked myself in the Barcelona darkness?
And yet I knew I had to go. I had to find out what it was that I ‘could not possibly survive’. If it was real, I couldn’t let it do me in unknowingly.
I went back to sleep eventually, and I woke late. My body clock was set to UK time, and it’s pretty reliable. I showered, then went out for breakfast in a café on the Ramblas. My taxi driver from the airport had described it as a street ‘muy peligroso’, very dangerous. That’s an exaggeration, but it’s always been a mecca for pickpockets and the Spanish economic crisis has made it worse.
I wasn’t bothered though; in fact part of me was hoping that somebody would try to dip my wallet, for my madrugada edginess had given way to annoyance, and I was feeling pretty dangerous myself. What the hell right did Mia think she had to summon me with a cack-handed blackmail threat?
I fuelled myself with a chorizo sandwich, and an espresso. . I was sure that Sarah would have allowed me one in the circumstances, although she’s been keeping a close eye on my intake. . then walked back to the hotel. As soon as I reached my room, I retrieved my iPad from the safe and checked my email inbox.
The report was there, waiting for me. I read it slowly and carefully, taking in every step and every detail of the investigation, and when I was finished I knew why Mia wanted to see me. . or I thought I did.
I caught a train from Passeig de Gracia, one of the slow ones that stops at Camallera, not far from my Spanish town. There was a taxi parked outside the bar across the street from the station. I found its driver inside, and once I’d satisfied myself that he’d been on coffee rather than brandy, I had him drive me home.
I had almost five hours before my meeting with Mia. I spent one of them swimming, thinking unrelated thoughts, and wondering in their midst how Cheryl Mackenzie and the uncle who had ruined himself for her had handled their first night in custody.
I’d begun to doubt whether Max would survive any term of imprisonment and so I’d decided to do what I could to try and keep him out. It wouldn’t be easy, but the least I could do was talk to the Lord Advocate, a golf buddy of mine. If that didn’t work, there was always the possibility of a word with Archie Nelson or Phil Davidson, two of the most influential judges on the Scottish Bench.
When I came out of the pool and back into the real world, I checked my emails once again. There was only one, another missive from Pye, updating the stuff he’d sent me earlier. I’d been wondering how I was going to play my meeting with Mia, and specifically, what I was going to do when it was over. Sammy’s message more or less made my mind up for me.
I dressed for the evening, in slacks and a light cotton jacket, then made a couple of phone calls on my landline. (The mobile had stayed switched off all day; I didn’t want any interruptions.) The second of them was to Sarah.
‘How are you?’ she asked me anxiously.
‘I’m missing you like hell,’ I told her, truly, ‘but otherwise I’m okay. The sooner this is over and done with the better.’
‘Maggie Steele called last night. She said she needs to see you, about something very important. I said she’d have to wait for a couple of days. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but she sounded really uptight about it.’
‘Uptight or not, she’s still going to have to wait. I may call her once this business is done, or I may leave it until tomorrow. I just want this woman out of my hair. I can’t look at anything else until she’s dealt with.’
‘You’ll call me when she is, yes?’
‘Promise.’
I wanted to walk to my dinner date. Normally it would take me half an hour, but I had a call to make on the way, so I left early. Summer was over, but the evenings usually stay warm until well into October.
How had I known for sure that Mia had meant us to meet in La Clota? She had more or less quoted directly from an interview I gave to the Herald newspaper in Glasgow, after I’d been confirmed in the Strathclyde job. That’s how closely she’d been tracking me. I had a vague and slightly ridiculous feeling of being stalked, but I laughed it off.
I paid that call en route, spoke to the people I’d arranged to see, then went on my way. I’ve never been any good at strolling, and so I arrived at the port area five minutes early. I didn’t want to be there first so I killed that time by taking a detour along the marina, admiring some of the larger boats that were moored there. The majority flew Catalan flags and pennants, but there were several other nations on show, French, German, Italian, British, and one single Scottish saltire.
I walked up to it for a closer look. . and my stomach flipped. It was big by comparison with most around it, at least forty feet long, but it was the name that reached out and seized me.
Palacio de Ginebra. A Scottish boat with a Spanish comedy name, The Gin Palace. It was no joke of a yacht, however, but a serious open-water vessel, that needed proper crewing.
I knew that because unless there were two of them, and there weren’t, for the closer I looked the more familiar it became, I had been its deckhand myself for one glorious weekend. By one of those bizarre coincidences that make life completely unpredictable, Sarah had mentioned it not long before, and there I was looking at the very same vessel.
It was mothballed, its binnacle and hatches covered, so there was no clue to its current ownership, but when I sailed it. . I know I should say ‘her’. . it had belonged to Alison Higgins’ brother, Eden, a Scottish furniture magnate.
She and I and Alex had been invited for a weekend on the Firth of Clyde with Eden and his son Rory. It was a catharsis for me, that trip. Doing things that were completely new, being part of an entirely different kind of team, had made me think in an entirely different way. By the time we got back to Inverkip after our round trip to Campbeltown, I had decided that I was going to jack in the police, buy a yacht as big as Eden’s and sail it myself, for fun and commercially.
That notion lasted for a few minutes, until my next phone call, one that dragged me back into the live case I had then, at the heart of which was. . Mia Watson. By the time that was over, the spell was broken.
I encountered Eden on a couple of occasions after that, the last being at Alison’s funeral. We haven’t kept in touch subsequently, for Ali and I had been ancient history by then, but he’d loved that boat, so I couldn’t imagine him having sold it. On the other hand, he’d loved his sister too. Had there been too much of her left in it?
I resolved to find out. It’s an intention that I still have, but that night I had other matters in hand.
I slipped into the restaurant through the back door in the decked, marquee-like outdoor section, rather than entering from the seafront as most people do. My thinking was that I’d rather see Mia before she saw me.
I looked around the place; half the tables were occupied, some by familiar faces in twos and fours, and as many unfamiliar. But there were no unaccompanied people, and definitely no Mia. . unless she’d aged very badly since last I’d seen her, and acquired a fat Gauloise-smoking husband with a ludicrous Errol Flynn moustache.
‘Bob!’ John, the owner, called to me from the doorway to the main restaurant. ‘What you do here?’ He’s Catalan, but his mother is Scottish, so his English is pretty good; better than my Catalan, that’s for sure.
‘I’m meeting somebody,’ I replied. ‘It’s business; a lady.’
He nodded. ‘Ah, I understand now. The lady’s Scottish, yes. She call last night and book a table for three. She spoke Spanish good, but her accent is just like my mum. That’s you there.’ He pointed to a table with the best sea view in the place, with a ‘Reserved’ sign. As he’d said, it was set for three.