by Marjorie Orr
Her sense of time had slowed to a dreamy trance so she waited, only glancing once in the mirror to see Herk drag a body to the jeep. After his shout, she started cautiously up the steep slope, keeping a tight grip on the wheel with her right hand and praying her left would not give way. She drove at a torturous snail’s pace for what seemed like an eternity, then joined the original track, pointing upwards in the direction they had intended to take and stopped.
Herk, driving behind her, turned right and disappeared. Ten minutes later he returned on foot and she slid with difficulty across into the passenger seat.
‘Well, that was good and bad,’ he remarked as he accelerated, waving a hand behind him. She looked back with a wince, to see a plume of smoke rising up above the trees.
‘Went down a good hundred feet, turned over a few times and then caught fire. They won’t get much in the way of forensics out of that, especially if they’re not looking. I just hope it doesn’t alert anyone too soon.’
‘Or set off a forest fire?’ she said uneasily. ‘It’s dry as tinder around here.’
‘As long as we’re not caught in it, that’ll be fine. Even less evidence.’ He laughed grimly. ‘But we need away from here as fast as possible and back to France.’
‘What about this car?’ she asked.
‘Ach, Fred’ll bring the other one up from Barcelona and take this one back. It’ll be no bother. I just don’t fancy tangling with the Spanish policía.’
She laughed and then wished she hadn’t. ‘The gendarmes are cuddlier, are they?’ she said. He didn’t answer, merely giving a snort.
The track finally ended, much to her relief, meeting a small surfaced road with signs for Garriguella, Llança and Figueres.
‘How’s your head?’ he asked glancing at her. ‘You’ll have been concussed and that needs seen to. There’s a good doctor in Port-Vendres who knows how to keep his mouth shut. I’ll text him in a minute.’
‘Bit woozy, but OK,’ she answered. ‘Are we going back over the mountain?’ She suddenly wished for an uncomplicated motorway.
‘Nah,’ he said slowly, ‘never like going the same way twice and it’s kind of isolated, that road. Not that anyone’s coming after us. If you can stand it, I’ll go by the coast, though it is very winding.’
She groaned and waved a limp hand, saying, ‘Whatever you think best,’ then adding: ‘Sir.’
A road so straight it could have been built by the Romans sped them in the twilight towards Llança. There the sea glowed deep blue in the dusk, throwing into contrast the stumpy, whitewashed apartment blocks. Not throwing up was her principle concern, so she had to take continuous deep breaths to steady her stomach. Thereafter, she was so intent on wedging herself into a position where she wouldn’t be jarred by the twisting and turning of the cliff route that she paid little attention to the scenery flashing by.
Finally, Herk said: ‘This is the border coming up. Portbou.’
‘Thank god,’ she murmured, ‘and we don’t have to go far beyond that? Please.’
‘You’re doing great. Just hang on. Only Cerbère after that and we’re sort of there. About thirty minutes.’ He grinned at her and she suddenly felt a fraud for making a fuss, given what he’d been through.
Portbou was an eerie village sandwiched between the dark sea and even darker sheer cliffs of the mountain towering behind. A few umbrellas on the pavements with café tables outside attempted to set a holiday mood and failed.
‘Blood in the walls,’ she murmured.
‘What?’
She waved a hand around. ‘These kind of places. You can feel a savage history seeping out of the stone.’
The car throttled up a curving rise, with a sheer rockface inches away, out into open road again. He said: ‘Aye well, I suppose Portbou has had its moments. Spanish Civil War wasn’t great or what came after.’
‘Was I dreaming or did we actually go through a village called Colera? And there’s Cerbère coming up. It’s like something out of Dante’s Inferno.’ She stared out into the darkness beyond the headlights, remembering the phone call with Sibyl and her joke about Hercules and the River Styx. Cerbère? She tried to clear her head. No it was Cerberus, the hound of Hades that guarded the route into the underworld. He had to be paid before allowing entry. Two dead bodies. Was that high enough a price? Her stomach heaved again.
He chuckled: ‘Heaven and hell is what a mate of mine called it. Beautiful and cursed. Suits the Catalans, he always used to say. They’ve got dark souls.’
The pain slowly started to subside in her shoulder so she wriggled her fingers on that hand, pleased to know they still worked. Her head felt less fog-bound, with fresh air blowing in the partly opened window. A wave of guilt swept over her.
‘Herk, I am truly sorry I got you into this mess. Jin was right. I do go flying in and don’t stop to think. You must be hurting.’ She took a shuddering breath. ‘And you killed two men because of me.’
A series of s-bends took up his concentration, then he took one hand off the wheel to scratch his ear.
‘Och, I’ve had worse. It just stings a bit. The doctor’ll sort that. As to the other, I’m not five years old. I came in with my eyes open. You didn’t force me. And killing them? It was us or them, and in those circumstances there’s no choice. So just forget it. It never happened. But we’ll have to think carefully about what comes next.’
‘Too bleeding true,’ she said, wondering whether he could really brush aside the killings so lightly. ‘We’re up a gum tree since they’ll now know exactly who we are.’
Cerbère came and went, the sparse lights giving way to the open, empty, dark road, before he replied slowly. ‘Well, not necessarily. I had a brief look at their mobiles, which are in the back by the way. There was a couple of angry texts asking where they were. And no responses from them. In fact, no texts or calls from them for several hours. So they weren’t in touch with base since they took off after us.’
Tire bent back with an effort, fishing with her right hand for the plastic bag on the back seat that held phones, wallets and keys, some smeared with blood. Flinching, she fired up both mobiles and searched through messages. There were eight increasingly irritable texts from the same Spanish number demanding their immediate return and no responses had been sent. A feeling of relief flooded over her.
On the unbloodied phone there was also a text from a blocked number, which she contemplated before saying: ‘Wonder what that means?’ She read out: ‘LN, 34 Dowancross Street, Apt 6, Glasgow. Name Jimmy Black. Get it right this time.’
‘Never mind that for the time being. Just switch them off and take out the batteries in case they’re tracking them,’ Herk responded curtly. ‘As long as they didn’t click that our disappearance had anything to do with theirs, then we might just be OK. Though we’ll need to spin a story about why we’re not there anymore. I’ll get Maria, the doctor’s wife, to phone up. She’s Spanish. She can say you were taken ill and I had to get you to hospital in a hurry. They were all in a bit of a scurry with the bosses back and no one saw me coming out with the bags. So they might just swallow it.’
A tunnel ahead heralded the entrance to Port-Vendres with the Cap Bear lighthouse flashing off to their right. Herk took the second exit and, having come down to the harbour, drove on back up the hill towards Collioure. At the top, he drew into the entrance of a substantial villa facing out across the cliffs to the sea.
They were clearly expected and Tire allowed herself to be fussed over, prodded and manipulated by the doctor, who pronounced her bruised but unbroken, although concussed. She was ushered off to bed with painkillers to help her sleep. He said he would check in on her every hour. Before she drifted off she could hear gales of laughter from the sitting room.
CHAPTER 36
A gusting wind drummed and roared against the windows, rattling the wooden shutters outside, bringing Tire to a painful wakening. She lay motionless, peering above the duvet to the daylight flickering through the thin
curtains. Rolling slowly onto her back with an effort, she felt a sharp twinge in her left shoulder. She wriggled her toes and fingers to check they were still working, then pulled back the covers with her right hand and slowly brought up her left arm.
A soft knock on the door was followed by Herk’s face looking questioningly at her. She grinned and pulled the duvet back up to her chin.
‘Breakfast’s on the table if you’re up to it,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Jean-Claude and Maria are away for the day to the surgery.’
She waved him out of the room and, clenching her teeth, moved to the side of the bed to stand up. A hot shower sparked up tender spots on her back but she felt more flexible and relieved to be clean when she emerged. Downstairs, Herk was sitting in an open-plan kitchen diner at the French windows, which faced out to the back garden that was sheltered from the blasts of the wind. He poured her coffee from a large jug into a cup the size of a soup bowl and indicated a pile of croissants.
Neither spoke for several minutes as they munched through the flaky pastries smeared with butter and jam. Her left hand was back in operation as long as she didn’t move her shoulder too much. The silence, she realised, was a strangely comfortable feeling.
‘You’ve got diabetes,’ he remarked, as she lit up her first cigarette.
‘Really?’ she said, licking jam off her lower lip. ‘Serious, is it?’
‘Not now that you got to the hospital and they changed your medication. Maria phoned them last night and they were concerned about you disappearing. But the lad she spoke with seemed relieved to know it wasn’t anything too serious. He said just to tell them when it was convenient for you to return. She got the impression there was a flap on. Lots of shouting in the background in English and Spanish.’
Herk rubbed his chin and looked thoughtfully out to the garden, where the water from a small fountain was being swirled and splayed by the wind. Her mood of elation and relief switched suddenly to dread and guilt as she remembered the dead bodies and the blood. She put a hand on his arm.
‘Herk, we need to talk about yesterday…’ she started, only to be interrupted by a stubby muscular hand going up instantly, warning her to stop.
‘No, we don’t,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve been in these situations before. If I know one thing, it is you never look back. Be grateful you got out in one piece and keep moving forward. We’ve tidied up the loose ends and with luck there’s nothing connecting us to them. So leave it.’ He gave her a sharp look.
Two black and white swallowtail butterflies chased each other around a sprawling bush of blue plumbago, their flight unfazed by the strong gusts of sea breeze. Tire followed their dancing path, feeling steadily more depressed. She had bitten off more than she could chew and had failed. Her eyes were sad and defeated when she finally said, looking away from him: ‘I think we should give up. I can’t see what else we can do.’
Herk ground a thumbnail between his front teeth, clicking repetitively, his eyes narrowed, gazing upwards at the sky. His lack of response started to irritate her.
‘Well? Are you looking for omens up there? What do you think?’ She banged on the table, making the coffeepot wobble.
He sniffed. ‘You’re rattled.’ He raised a hand: ‘Perfectly understandable. But it’s not the best state of mind for making decisions.’ He stretched his legs under the table, leant back and continued: ‘I’ve always thought this was bigger than you… it seemed. Which just means moving cautiously. We know more than we did before. Sometimes you have to wait. And as you said once, keep following every lead till it makes sense.’
Her shoulders slumped and a twinge of dizziness made her draw several deep breaths. A bleep from a mobile got Herk to his feet. He walked over to a corner table where several phones sat and opened one to read a message.
‘Fred can’t make it till tomorrow to swap cars. Just as well. Your concussion could do with another day.’
‘Who is Fred?’ she said, her old exasperation coming back.
Herk sighed, ‘He’s a mate from the old days. He owed me a few favours. There’s nothing mysterious about him.’ He nodded over his shoulder, ‘He’ll also check over these mobiles we picked up yesterday. I took out the tracking devices but there’s other ways to make them untraceable. The batteries are out for the time being.’
A light bulb went on in her head and her mood lifted as she remembered the text from yesterday about LN with the Glasgow address. Could that have been from Wrighton? Maybe the business partnership with Harman Stone had continued with shared security. That should be followed up.
She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one, her mind running over the information trails that were still in play. Russell, the accountant, digging into Stone’s and Wrighton’s finances. Juarez, the doctor in Mexico, had promised to find out more about the memory drug tests. And the researcher Matt was still checking out Paul Stone’s stepson from his first marriage, Louis Neroni. He would be stepbrother to Harman, so perhaps a financial threat if he were owed an inheritance from his mother. They were no further forward in finding out who had killed Erica; if anything the spider’s web was getting more complicated. But they still had leads to follow.
Reinvigorated, she beamed at Herk who stared evenly back at her. ‘I know,’ she said, waving an excited hand, ‘I’m getting manic. But that text about LN in Glasgow, it could be Louis Neroni.’
‘Aye,’ he said cautiously, ‘but I’m not driving from here to Scotland.’ She frowned and he added: ‘So we’ll get the car back to London and fly up.’
‘So you’re OK to keep going?’ she said slowly, pulled between guilt at involving him and knowing she needed his help.
He looked down with a wry smile and said: ‘It’s not the best motive. But to be truthful I’ve got a vengeful streak. I hate being messed about.’
She chuckled in spite of herself, trying not to think about yesterday’s ordeal. Herk cleared the breakfast table and announced he was going to look over the Range Rover. A dull ache across the back of her skull was crowding into her thinking space. To clear her head she walked twice round the small back garden, moving stiffly up the stone steps, easing her shoulder as she went. A striped and mottled cat swished its tail at her from a neighbouring fence, ears flattened back, then was distracted to its feet by two herring gulls chasing and squawking overhead. Best of luck there, mate, she thought.
A spiky pyracanthus bush, weighted with white flowers, snagged through her jeans, causing her to wince. The wind swung strands of hair constantly over her face, which became irritating so she turned round and walked back down, testing every step, and was pleased to feel more sound.
Back inside, Herk was scrubbing oil off his hands in the sink. A thought struck her.
‘Can you look up how far Arles is from here? We might nip across there since we’ve time today?’
‘What for?’ He frowned irritably, dried his hands and checked his phone. ‘Three hours there and three hours back. No chance.’
‘It must be closer than that. The American Nathon said Paul Stone’s mother was born and buried near here. Arles something.’
He checked again. ‘Arles-sur-Tech. Fifty minutes inland, past Amelie-les-Bains. Why are we interested in Harman’s grandma? You could just sit still and let your head recover.’
‘We’re here. We might as well. The more you know about the broader background, the more you know. Wheels within wheels.’ She held her head up and forced her shoulders back, attempting not to let the twinges show.
He shook his head. ‘Unknown knowns and all that. If you insist.’
An hour later they were driving up the Vallespir valley, deep into the eastern Pyrenees, with snow-tipped mountains crowding around. Despite the sunshine it felt cold and the small, historic commune uninviting. Tire knew she was winging it, but past experience indicated that luck plus persistence sometimes paid off. The mairie was unhelpful but the office de tourisme came up with the name of a retired school teacher who would be the same age as Paul
Stone and had always lived in Arles-sur-Tech. They also gave her a map to the local cemetery.
After collecting a boxful of pastries at the local boulangerie and a bottle of wine from the cellier next door, she climbed back into the car and handed Herk the address. Twenty minutes of driving round the outskirts, circling back on themselves after incomprehensible directions from an aged peasant who was out walking his dog, they found the cottage at the end of an unsigned track.
The elderly, white-haired owner, dressed in jeans and a fleece waistcoat, came out, leaning on a walking stick to greet them. His manner was civil but disinterested, since he clearly thought they were lost tourists. Once he heard that Tire was researching a biography of a person who had been in Arles during the war and after, and was offered the bottle of wine, his eyes twinkled.
His English was excellent and he volunteered that he was always pleased to get the chance to use it. At first, sitting round a wooden kitchen table with wine glasses in front of them, he disavowed all knowledge of Paul Stone. Tire persisted, saying his mother was local and had been buried here. Crumbs from a cheese pastry stuck to his moustache and clung to his waistcoat. Finishing it, he brushed a shaky, veined hand across his mouth and down his front.
Not another dead end. Maybe Nathon had the place name wrong and it wasn’t Arles-sur-Tech. A stray thought struck her about Paul Stone’s Cote D’Azur house. ‘Would La Mirabelle mean anything?’
His shaggy eyebrows shot up and he looked sideways at her, suddenly defensive. He said slowly: ‘You wouldn’t mean Lilou Pedra? Mirabelle was the name on her cottage.’
Tire sipped her wine, giving him an encouraging look.
‘Pedra means stone in Catalan.’ The old man looked puzzled, almost furtive and rubbed his hands together uneasily. ‘And yes, she did have a son, about my age. I was at school with him for several years.’ He shuddered. ‘An unpleasant child. Not that it was his fault. He had a terrible life.’
