‘Where did you find this?’
‘Certain records are public in Luxembourg, up to a point. The office of record of Hotel Casino d’Amuseo SA is hosted by a local corporate law firm called Pintore and Company. They were obliged to give me the information I asked for.’
‘Did they say why Frank resigned?’
‘That wasn’t minuted, but I did find out some other stuff. The authorised share capital of the company is one hundred million euros, one euro per share, and more than three quarters of it is issued, seventy-seven million, two hundred thousand shares to be exact. The directors’ personal shareholdings are. .’ He paused, for effect, I guessed. ‘. . one hundred shares each.’
‘So whose is the seventy-seven mil?’
‘The shareholder register will tell us that. Luxembourg law requires that it be kept at the company’s offices, but I’d have to turn up there in person to inspect it. One thing looks certain, though: your cousin was very good at his job, until he quit.’
‘What do you think’s happening, Mark?’ I asked.
‘The investors may well be about to make a shedload of money.
On the other hand, the lack of information on its principals gives cause for concern. If the company is operating under a false prospectus, then the shareholders’ funds are going to vanish, and probably pretty soon. They’re approaching the date by which they must have an AGM, the end of August. If the plan is to cut and run, they’ll do it before then. However, your meeting with Bromberg shows that they’re still fund-raising. It’s probably legit, but possibly bent. Can’t say for certain.’
‘If it is crooked, can the money be moved that easily?’
‘On the chairman’s authority, that’s all it takes. His signature, stamped by the company seal. That’s what the guy at Pintore told me.’
‘We can’t let that happen,’ I said. ‘We should dig a bit deeper.’
‘We? Prim, you should back off this. You’re only there to look for your cousin.’
‘Maybe I should, but it’s just become even more personal. It’s one thing that my cousin’s vanished without trace, but now I find that I have a meeting tomorrow with someone who might be out to steal my money.’
‘I can’t talk you out of going?’
‘No chance.’
‘Then make it as useful as you can. See if you can get me a photograph of Bromberg, even if you have to take it with your mobile.’
‘Will do. I can give you one of Macela right now, if you like.’
‘Do I ever like? How will you do it?’
‘I have an image of him on my computer back home. Give me your email address, and I’ll call my son and have him send it to you. He’s only seven, but he’s as computer literate as I am, probably more so.’ As he spelled the address out, I patched it into my PDA. ‘This is getting beyond a simple favour,’ I told him.
‘You’ve got me curious. Plus. .’ he hesitated ‘. . maybe Oz had a premonition. I don’t know, but when he asked me to find you, he said something else: that if anything happened to him, and you turned up afterwards, I should take care of you.’
I didn’t have an answer for that. I was too busy thanking my lucky stars that he had misunderstood the instruction totally.
‘Now,’ he continued abruptly, ‘is that everything?’
‘Well, not quite.’ I told him about the mysterious address near my hotel and about the city planner’s furtive visit.
‘Now that doesn’t sound too kosher,’ he declared. ‘It would be good to get inside. There might be an outside chance that Frank’s holed up in there. . or being held.’
‘Yes, but how? I can’t go back there. The lecher in the shop would spot me for sure.’
‘I appreciate that, but maybe I can arrange for someone to kick the door down.’
I was still wondering what he’d meant as I called Tom to ask him to send the image.
It was Adrienne who answered, not him. It took me a while to convince her I wasn’t covering up any bad news about her only-born. What I told her was essentially the truth, that he seemed to have resigned from the company at around the time she’d been expecting his visit, and that I was trying to find someone who could tell me where he’d gone. The someone might be the bloke whose photograph I wanted Tom to pass on, or it might be Lidia Bromberg.
She put my boy on the line; he was chuffed when I told him there was something important I wanted him to do for me. He still sounded brave and cheerful, but hidden in there I detected a hint that he might just be missing me. Just as well, for I sure was missing him.
Thirteen
The evening seemed to pass so slowly it made me think back to my time in the nick, when every day dragged. My hotel didn’t offer an evening meal, or I’d have settled for room service in front of the telly. The receptionist did recommend a few nearby restaurants, but I didn’t fancy sitting at a table for one in a formal setting.
In the end I decided to go back to the Gallego, and my new-found buddy Carlos, the only Barca supporter in town, since the evening was hot and humid, and I didn’t want to walk far. When he saw me coming, and caught my nod, he chased away four back-packers, who had been making a beeline for the only available pavement table, and ushered me straight to it. I asked him to use his imagination and bring me a selection of tapas. He did just that, coming back with a tiered arrangement that looked like an old-fashioned cake stand, with a nice bottle of albariño to wash the lot down. I had packed an English-language novel for my trip. It was called Death’s Door, and as I ate I pretended to read it, as a barrier against intrusions as much as anything else.
That said, I’d probably have been pissed off if nobody had tried to talk to me all night, so when two American guys took over the next table and said, ‘Hello,’ I didn’t blow them out. Their names were Sebastian Loman and Willie Venable, they were around thirty, about the age I was when I stopped being normal, and it didn’t take me long to realise that they were travelling as a couple and I was as safe as houses with them. They told me they were from Topeka, Kansas, and preferred to holiday in Europe than in their staunchly Republican home state.
We spent a pleasant evening together; they helped me finish the albariño and I helped them through a jug of beer. They told me their life stories: they were former teachers who had become computer programmers after they found themselves unemployable in modern America because of their sexuality. I gave them a heavily edited version of mine: I said that I was a divorcée with a young son, taking a break for a few days, thanks to my aunt, who was minding child and dog at home. When I revealed where that was, they announced that they were heading north to a resort (they didn’t say ‘gay’ but I was sure that’s what they meant) they knew in Catalunya, so I gave them my mobile number and my address, just in case their onward travels took them anywhere near St Martí.
The encounter drew to a natural end around nine thirty. The guys went on their way, towards Plaza Nueva, and I went on mine, back towards the hotel, stopping off at another pavement café for the last coffee of the gently cooling day.
I’ve always been good at going to sleep: insomnia and I are strangers. But that night I was afraid we would become acquainted, given the facts that I was away from familiar surroundings for the first time in a few years, and that I had a significant meeting next day, one for which I had no concrete agenda.
Over that final latte I had given some thought to what I might say to Bromberg, how I might handle her, armed as I was with Mark’s very useful information about the status and possible purpose of the company she was trying to sell me. There were two ways of playing it, as I saw it. One, I could carry on with my Jan More act, let her hit me with her sales pitch, and ask a few gentle questions, leading up to one about Roy Urquhart, whose ‘name was mentioned when I first started looking into this investment opportunity’. Two, I could abandon any subtlety, and tell her exactly who I was and why I was in town, threatening to make a hell of a loud noise unless she told me damn quick what had happened to Frank and where I could find him.