‘I took him out to Kathleen and Carlos’s restaurant. . you know, La Clota. . returning his hospitality, then we had a few more dinner dates after that. Never got down to any of the other, you understand, but it was on the agenda. . mine at any rate. Mind you, he did talk about me going to his place in Florida, so it might have been on his too.
‘Last time I saw him? Oh, it must have been a year ago.’ She frowned. ‘November, it was; early November. He took me to Mas Torrent. . that was when he mentioned going to Florida, in fact. He said he was off to Geneva for a couple of weeks, to visit his sister. But he never came back. . or so I thought. I never saw him again, anyway.’
‘And you never knew he lived two doors down from here?’ Prim asked.
‘I’d no idea; we never got to the stage of him inviting me back to his place. I was still in my old house then. I’d only just signed up for the plot, and when Vincens showed it to me, Rey was off on his travels. So I never made the connection; all I was told was the same as you, that Villa Bernabeu was owned by some French geezer.’
‘Did he never discuss his business?’
‘Not much. He said that he came from a wealthy family and that he dealt in commodities. When someone says that to you in L’Escala, you can draw your own conclusions, but you tend not to ask any more questions. If Fortunato says that he was a smuggler, it doesn’t surprise me.’
‘Did he ever talk about other friends or business associates? ’ I caught Prim giving me an old-fashioned look.
‘No. And Sergi was the only guy I ever saw him with, as far as I can remember.’
All of a sudden, Shirley shuddered. She seemed to shrink into herself, to become smaller, as the impact of what we had told her began to sink in. ‘The police really think that was Rey in the pool?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ I told her. ‘They’re a bit vague about the actual time of death, but it could fit with the time you saw him last.’
‘God,’ she whispered.
‘Unlikely,’ I muttered. ‘He doesn’t use a gun.’ I winced as soon as I’d said it, knowing that she had heard. It wasn’t something that the old Osbert Blackstone would have come out with. No, that crack was very definitely new Oz, worldly wise and maybe none the better for it. But Shirley didn’t seem to mind; in fact she sat upright again.
‘No, He doesn’t. If you move in that world, I suppose you have to live by its rules. I wonder who he upset?’
‘Maybe he didn’t upset anyone,’ Prim suggested, an hour later, as we walked back to the villa. ‘Maybe someone upset him.’
I laughed out loud. ‘What? So he shot him, dumped him in the pool, then left town and put the place on sale: with all furnishings and fittings?’
‘Smartarse,’ my wife grumbled.
‘Come on. You love me really.’ I remembered a moment. ‘Here, why did you give me that funny look back there at Shirley’s?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Sure you do. When I was asking her who Capulet’s pals might have been, you shot me a right frown.’
‘Ah that. Just for a moment I thought you were slipping into private eye mode.’
‘Gie’s a break, honey. I never was a private detective. I was a private enquiry agent; different animal altogether. I just got drawn into a few things, that’s all.’ I paused as another brick slipped into place. ‘And always when you were around, come to think of it.’
‘Don’t blame me! You couldn’t stop yourself. Well, just remember, whatever you called yourself, you’re out of that business for good. You’re an actor, and to prove it you’re an Equity member. I will not. . Hear me? I said I will not. . have you getting involved with this business.
‘If that was the previous owner in our pool, then he probably got what was coming to him. If it wasn’t. . So what? It’s Ramon’s job to find out who it was and why he was put there. It’s got nothing to do with you. Hear me?’
‘I hear you! I hear you! You just remember it too. You know, sometimes I think that it’s no wonder I took to acting. My whole life’s been a fucking movie since I met you, darlin’.’ My blood went cold suddenly. I had pronounced that last word just like Jan used to.
Prim never noticed though. She was still chuntering to herself as we walked back into the villa.
‘Hello there,’ Captain Fortunato greeted us, clutching a mug of our finest Bonka coffee. (I’ve often wondered why they don’t market that brand in Britain.) ‘We have almost finished. You will be glad to hear that, so far, we found nothing out of the usual.’
‘If you’re happy, we’re happy,’ I said, being fairly keen to see the back of the bloke.
No such luck. ‘Ahh, I did not say I was happy. I am a detective, and so I have the sort of mind that expects to find something out of the ordinary. When I do not, I become suspicious.
‘When people buy a house in this town, it is not unusual for it to be sold with furniture and most of the fittings. Normally, the person who sells will clear out personal items, but there is usually something left behind, something which gives a clue about the previous owner.
‘When you moved in here, what did you find? Were there clothes in the wardrobes?’
Prim nodded. ‘Yes, there were; men’s clothing. Most of it casual. I chucked it all out.’
‘Were there any papers in the drawers, anything at all? For example, were there any cards for restaurants, or for businesses in L’Escala? Were there any maps of the town? Were there even any matchbooks, or the little packs of sugar which they give people in cafes, and which everyone takes home?’
‘No, there weren’t. Not that I can recall. Can you, Oz?’
I thought about it for a while. ‘No. I can’t. I don’t think there was a single piece of paper left in the house; other than books, novels and such, all of them French. I tell you something that struck me as odd. There was a telephone, but no directories. Why would somebody leave town, leave Spain, as far as anyone knows, yet take the telephone directory with him?
‘And the tape? There was a telephone answering machine, but it was empty. There was no cassette in it, and none anywhere in the house.’
I looked at Fortunato. ‘I see what you mean,’ I told him. ‘When we moved in here there was nothing that referred in any way to the Frenchman. It was as if the place had been stripped of anything that might, anything on which he might even have made a note, or scrawled down a phone number, an e-mail address, anything like that.’
‘And yet his clothing was still here, his books. .’
‘And a stack of CDs,’ I added.
‘And a few cases of expensive wine. . Unless you have bought the bottles which I found in the storeroom at the back.’
‘No, we found them there too. So what does that tell you, Captain?’
No one can shrug his shoulders quite like a Catalan. It’s a national trait, and one of the most expressive gestures I know. Fortunato’s said it all. He didn’t need to add, ‘Everything. Nothing. Either the body is Capulet and the person who killed him has covered his tracks, or it is not, and he is covering his own.’ But he did.
‘What it means,’ he continued, ‘is that I think I do have to share this now, with my colleagues in the Guardia Civil. I hope they don’t want to dig up your terrace, or your garden at the back, but you never know.’
8
Happily, they didn’t. Three days later, on Saturday morning, Fortunato came back with a couple of them, stern-looking, thirty-something guys in olive green uniforms. They looked into the pool, as if they were thinking deep thoughts; they looked around the house; they looked into the outbuildings; they looked into the garage and the Lada.
Then one gave the other a Catalan shrug that would have scored high marks for both performance and artistic impression, and they left.
‘Is that it?’ I asked Ramon as they walked down the path. ‘Is that the investigation? Don’t they want to take our fingerprints for elimination? Don’t you want to take them?’