Peril in Palmanova

by David W Robinson

  Chapter Three

  The centre of Palmanova was, to Joe’s way of thinking, like so many other popular Spanish holiday resorts. Its streets were lined with the usual souvenir shops, tobacconists (the only shops where cigarettes could legally be bought over the counter) places selling slightly more upmarket clothing and shoes, and the inevitable bars and restaurants.

  The place was biased towards the English, evident in a selection of bars with names readily recognisable to the Brits: The Prince William, Eastenders, The Cock & Bull, The Cutty Sark.

  The morning after the archery incident, Joe, Sheila and Brenda ambled along towards the main square. He frowned on a group of bare-chested men sat outside an English bar, all of them rowdy and raucous and obviously worse for wear for drink.

  Joe checked his watch. “Ten in the morning and they’re drunk already.”

  ”They probably never sobered up from last night,” Brenda said. “Live and let live, Joe. They’re not bothering us.”

  He frowned. “Palmanova is supposed to be slightly more upmarket than Magaluf, but you wouldn’t think so looking at them.”

  “I’ve seen it all before,” Sheila assured them. “In Benidorm and Playa de Las Américas. It was part of the reason Peter and I started visiting less touristy places.”

  The mention of her late husband, a police inspector in Sanford who had succumbed to two heart attacks following quickly one after the other, only served to remind Joe of Denise’s demise, and his spirits sank once again.

  Sheila, like Brenda, had been widowed for over a decade. Joe had to ask himself how had they coped with the gnawing emptiness left by the passing of their husbands.

  He recalled the sadness at the deaths of his mother and father. Unmarried at the time of both deaths, The Lazy Luncheonette had demanded all his attention. He had little time for grieving.

  Although not in the same class, the breakdown of his marriage was similarly traumatic, but once again the needs of the business superseded the need to deal with his own feelings.

  As they wandered along the sunny streets, the women pausing occasionally to study window displays or browse around a cluttered souvenir shop, it occurred to Joe that he had no life; he had never had any life. The business, that demanding little cafeteria on Sanford’s Doncaster Road had taken his life, and in return it had given him nothing more than financial security. It was, he reflected, a poor return. What use was money when it was all there was?

  The anger began to build in him again, and he had to make a conscious effort to suppress it. For two years, Denise had shown him how to enjoy himself, and that it did not depend on money. She had been taken, and for the first time in his life he was dealing with genuine grief.

  In an effort to sidestep his turgid feelings, he considered Sheila and Brenda. He had known these women for fifty years, and in that time they had, all three of them, suffered the usual ups and downs, joys and sadness, laughter and tears, but unlike the women, Joe had brushed aside the emotional rollercoaster, dismissed it as inconsequential. Was it any wonder he was so irritable much of the time?

  Thoughts of the two women reminded him of the previous evening in the hotel bar. A pianist played easy-listening tunes, providing a melodic background to the hum of conversation. As the sun set on Palmanova Joe questioned them on the mysterious Ms Killington, only for Sheila to look around and say the woman was not there.

  “I saw you talking to Anna after lunch. Didn’t she have anything to say?”

  Brenda answered. “It’s against hotel policy for the staff to get involved in this kind of thing. She apologised, naturally, but she refused point blank to point out the Killington woman.”

  The answer had come too quickly for Joe’s liking. It smacked of a rehearsed response, which, by default, meant it was untrue. Throughout the evening as the dusk turned to night, the brighter stars came out, and the lights of Palmanova glimmered along the curved coastline of the bay in a pleasant show of seaside illuminations, Joe occasionally pushed his friends gently on the matter, but elicited no further information.

  They were obviously hiding something, and he knew them well enough to know that they were doing so in deference to his fragile state of mind. They had not realised that softly-softly, kid gloves were not what he needed. He wanted straight talking, but breakfast at the hotel had produced no change in their approach. They played the innocents and refused to tell him what it was they knew.

  Strolling into the centre of Palmanova, Sheila and Brenda stepped into what looked like a mid-range clothing shop. Joe stood outside, basking in the warm sun, and looked around seeking something, anything, to occupy his mind. Across the street was another parade of shops; a bank, shoe shop, a couple of bars and cafés, and in the centre of the row, the large, brown logo of an officially licensed tobacconist.

  Lifting his shirt, he fished into his money belt, pushed his wallet and passport to one side and came out with a €20 note. Joe was notoriously fickle. All holiday hotels provided room safes (for hire, usually at about €10 a week) but Joe did not trust them. For all he knew, the cleaning staff could have copies of the key. For that reason he kept his passport, currency and wallet with him at all times.

  Careful to remind himself that he needed to look left not right before stepping off the kerb, he crossed the road, went into the cigarette shop and came out a few minutes later with two packs of twenty and a couple of disposable lighters.

  He crossed the road again, to an open square, where he could sit. He removed the cellophane wrapping from one pack, took out a cigarette and lit it. Drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, he suffered a violent coughing fit. His head spun and he squeezed his eyes tight shut to overcome the dizziness. He took another drag. The cough was less ferocious this time, and the wooziness less noticeable. He would get used to it.

  “Joe, what are you doing?”

  He opened his eyes to find Sheila and Brenda standing before him. Both appeared shocked.

  “You haven’t smoked for years,” Sheila reminded him.

  He defied her disapproval. “Yes, and I’m busy recalling just what I’ve been missing.”

  They sat either side of him, and Brenda took his hand. “We know how stressed you are, Joe, but while the tobacco might give you a high, it won’t take the stress away.”

  “But it will aggravate your COPD,” Sheila said.

  In a show of determined resistance, Joe took another drag on a cigarette and blew out the smoke with a long, satisfied hiss.

  “Just a few weeks ago, some nutter killed my girlfriend. Yesterday, another nutter tried to kill me. You two know more than you’re telling me, and none of you, not you, the other third-agers, not the police back home or in this country believe me. And you expect me to worry about the damage a cigarette is going to do to my lungs? Well, get this: I – don’t – care.” He punctuated the words with short pauses. “Not anymore. Let the stupid tart snuff me out. I’m going to enjoy myself.” He took another drag, crushed out the cigarette and promptly lit another. “Now, did I see a lap-dancing club somewhere in this town?”

  His final words had the necessary effect. The two women were white-faced with shock.

  “Joe—”

  He cut Sheila off. “Tell me what it is you know. Tell me what you found out that you think I need protecting from.”

  There was a lengthy silence filled only by the background sounds of a seaside town coming to life as holidaymakers stepped out into the sunshine.

  They could hardly have been surprised by Joe’s candour. He had been abrupt, tell-it-as-it-is all his life, sometimes to the point of rudeness, and they were perfectly used to it. He interpreted their silence, therefore, as an unspoken, internalised debate on what to say and how to say it, and each was waiting for the other to speak first.

  Eventually it was Sheila who began, relating the tale Anna had told them the previous afternoon. Brenda put in occasional comments, and they shared their reasoning behind the refusal to tell Joe what they had learned.
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  “We were thinking of you,” Brenda pleaded in an effort to exculpate themselves from his accusing stare.

  “We did what we did with the best of intentions,” Sheila assured him.

  “The road to hell.” Joe took another drag on his second cigarette and crushed it out on the stubber attached to a nearby litter bin. “Translating all this, what you mean is, you thought telling me that I was right would send me over the top. How would you have felt if this bloody lunatic had come for me last night and left me dead? Did it not occur to you that if you’d told me I would, at least, have been on my guard?”

  Brenda patted his hand. “You’ve been very stressed out—”

  Joe snatched his hand back, and cut her off. “For god’s sake, stop treating me like a child. Yes, I’m hurting over what happened to Denise. I miss her. But I’m in no flaming hurry to join her. I am not gonna sit around Palmanova as an easy target for some nutter.” He took a deep breath in an effort to calm down. “Do we know what progress the police have made?”

  “No, we don’t, and Inspector Garcia is not based in Palmanova.”

  Joe stood up. “In that case, it’s up to the hotel to get the information for us. Come on.”

  Having been on the back foot for the last few minutes, Brenda and Sheila found their legendary resistance.

  “Not so fast, buster.”

  Sheila was less Bogart/Cagney. “We have more shopping to do.”

  “You sit here and enjoy your little sticks of poison.”

  Joe took out a third cigarette and lit it. “Good enough. You know where to find me.”

  ***

  Back home, Gemma sat with the senior investigations manager of the North Shires Insurance Company, at their head office in Leeds.

  Eliot Banks was aged about forty. A tall, bulky man with a slightly rough edge to his voice. The fingers of his large hands were decked with various gold rings, and behind the open collar of his white shirt and the loosely hanging, red, company tie, a thick, gold chain dangled around his neck. It was all designed to intimidate; to give the impression of a late-model, tough street cop, even though inquiries would revealed that Banks had never been a policeman.

  The company was housed in a glass shoebox on Park Row, in the heart of the city’s financial district, but Banks’s office was at the rear of the building, overlooking a dingy yard, rather than the impressive, sunlit front of the block.

  From the moment she joined him, Banks made an effort to impose his will upon the interview.

  “We don’t talk about investigations, Inspector. Whatever Denise Latham was working on, it’s confidential and short of you coming back with a court order, I won’t tell you anything.”

  Gemma greeted the confident announcement with a smile of calm equanimity. “And do you think, Mr Banks, that I wouldn’t go for a court order? I’m simply trying to short-circuit that process and for a very good reason. You know what happened to Denise?”

  “She was killed in a car crash.”

  “To be precise, her car was run off the road, and we have evidence to suggest that it was not an accident. In plain English, Mr Banks, words that even you can understand, we suspect that Denise may have been murdered. Now, with regard to insisting upon a court order, I can view that in several ways, one of which is an effort to obstruct our investigation. I would have to consider what motive you have for doing so, and the logical conclusion would be that you were involved in her murder.” Gemma leaned forward to impress her grip upon the interview. “Am I making myself clear?”

  Banks made the effort to wrest control back. “That’s ridiculous. Even if you’re right about her death, there’s no way I’d be involved in anything like that.”

  “Then why do I need a court order?”

  “Company policy.”

  “Stick your company policy where the sun doesn’t shine. Denise was possibly murdered. Right now, there’s been another attempt, this time aimed at her partner, Joe Murray. I don’t know who’s behind it, and I need to know what Denise was working on, and whether Joe was helping her, and you are standing in my way. It would help if you stopped pratting about and told me what I want to know.”

  “Look—”

  “No, you look,” Gemma interrupted. “Joe Murray also happens to be my uncle, and if anything happens to him because you’re holding back, I will personally go through this company’s past investigations until I find enough to crucify you. Now what was Denise working on when she was killed?”

  Banks capitulated. He flounced out of his chair, yanked open the middle drawer of a filing cabinet, searched through for a few moments and withdrew a thick buff folder. Slamming the drawer shut, he returned to his seat, placed the folder on the blotter, opened it and spent a few moments reading through the top sheets.

  At length, he looked up and at Gemma. “There’s this bloke in Harrogate. Builder. Fell off a ladder on a site, and reckons he can hardly walk. Health and Safety have already hammered the main contractor with a hefty fine, but he reckons he can never work again, and he’s trying to stuff them for a coupla million. The contractor has, naturally, passed the claimed to us. We’re their insurers. We asked Denise to look into it. We don’t just poppy up two million dabs like that.” He snapped his fingers to emphasise his meaning. “As far as we’re aware, Denise had the bloke under surveillance, and trust me, she was good at that. Chances are, he didn’t even know he was being watched.”

  Gemma chewed her lip. “She told Joe that her car had to come off the road for a day or two, which is why she borrowed his. I just wonder…” She snapped out of her reverie. “Is this builder known to the police?”

  Banks shrugged. “You tell me. You people don’t go out of your way to help us.”

  Gemma took out her notebook. “Give me his name and address. I’ll go see him.”

  “I don’t know…” Banks trailed off under her determined eye. He read the report again. “Thomas Higginshaw. Twenty-three, Tankersley Lane, Harrogate.”

  Gemma scribbled down the details, put away her pocketbook, and stood up. “Thank you, Mr Banks. I’ll be in touch if I need any more information.”

  Chapter Four

  By the time they had made their way up the steep hill to the Palmanova Corona, Joe, Sheila and Brenda were exhausted.

  “I told you we should have taken a taxi,” Brenda complained. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have cost more than five euros.”

  Joe sat on a low wall outside the hotel entrance, dug into his pockets seeking his inhaler, found it and took two puffs. “Five… five euros is… is two pints in this place. Get your… priorities right.”

  Sheila looked down her nose at him. “You can hardly breathe thanks to that hill. Walk up and down it too often and you won’t be here to enjoy those two pints.”

  Brenda kept up the pressure. Holding up three carrier bags full of clothing, she said, “Five euros is nothing to what I’ve spent this morning.”

  Joe fished into his pockets again, this time coming out with cigarettes and lighter, prompting another protest from Sheila.

  “I don’t believe you, Joe. Thirty seconds ago, you needed Ventolin to ease your breathing difficulties, and now you’re about to take in more poison.”

  He lit the cigarette with an air of defiance, drew in the smoke, went through the usual coughing fit, and when he had control over his breathing again, he declared, “I’ll stop again, when this banana has been caught and locked up. Or, at least, when you lot start taking me seriously.”

  “We are taking you seriously, Joe.” Brenda took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from her brow. “We’ve admitted that it looks suspicious, but we still don’t know anything for sure, and it’s not an excuse for you to compromise your health with those things.” She pointed at the cigarette.

  Joe took another drag. “You might not be convinced, but I’m sure of it. If she gets the chance, I could be dead before the week is out, so why shouldn’t I enjoy myself?”

  The women knew that Joe in thi
s kind of mood was not to be argued with, and silence fell as they sat in the sunshine.

  Cars lined either side of the steep and narrow street. Mid-morning and there were people about: holidaymakers, easily identified by their skimpy attire of shorts and T-shirts, on their way down to the town or the beach, and others, obviously dressed for work, their shirts, long and short-sleeved, bearing the logos of hotels and other businesses, clearly labelling them as locals.

  A large van trundled slowly down the hill, the driver negotiating his way slowly between the parked vehicles, taking care not to clip a bumper or wing mirror. As it passed them, a middle-aged woman on the other side of the street, heavily dressed in a long, flouncy skirt and dark top, dropped her shopping bag, spilling its contents across the pavement.

  Joe tutted, put out his cigarette and hurried across the street to help her pick up the bread, fruit and other items.

  “Gracias.”

  “De nada,” Joe replied, demonstrating his limited Spanish.

  As he turned to cross the street again, a car pulled out of its parking space forty yards further up the hill. Joe had already stepped into the road, and he was not worried. Spanish drivers, he knew, were far more tolerant than their British counterparts.

  He was wrong.

  With a roar, the car accelerated and came straight at him.

  The woman he had helped shouted an unintelligible warning. Brenda screamed, “JOE!” Sheila could only stare in rigid mortification.

  At the last possible second, with the car just yards away and bearing down upon him, Joe threw himself back to the pavement he had just left. He felt the rush of the car’s slipstream whistle past his foot, and the next thing he knew he was hitting the pavement, rolling over and his shoulder ramming into the property wall lining that side of the road.

  The car tore off down the hill clipping another vehicle on the right and yet another on the left before disappearing at high speed towards the town.

  The woman he had helped stood over him babbling in Spanish, none of which Joe understood. Getting groggily to his feet, he reassured her with gestures and by the time Sheila and Brenda had reached him both the woman and Joe had calmed down.