Skinner's trail bs-3

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Bob, my amigo. I know of your reputation as a policeman and as a detective. I have heard of some of the things you have done. But this idea of yours — if I were to reopen the investigation of the death of Alberni on that basis alone, it would stir up a nest of hornets.'

  `Come on, Arturo. I've told you how it was done.'

  The Commandante was seated in uniform behind a file-covered desk in his small dark office at the rear of the five-storey yellow-brick Guardia Civil building on the crest of Avinguda Girona. Slowly and deliberately, he shook his head.

  `No, you have not. You have told me what you think. And Sarah, very clever also in her field, has produced an explanation to fit your theory. You and I have discussed the matter. You agreed with my reasons for taking it no further. Those reasons have not changed.'

  `But, man, if we're talking about murder now-'

  `You are talking about murder, Bob. I am not. The Guardia has said it was suicide. The magistrate has said it was suicide. I cannot argue with him without a very good reason, and you have not given me one.'

  Pujol paused. 'You have to allow me to be selfish, Bob. I have my career to consider. My superiors would look at me in a very strange way if I did as you ask.'

  Skinner shrugged his shoulders in resignation. 'Okay, Arturo. I hear all of that. I won't press you further.'

  Pujol smiled. 'That is good.' He paused. 'Of course, if you were in a position to offer me more conclusive information.

  Skinner's eyes narrowed slightly. 'And how would I come by that?'

  Pujol shrugged in his turn. 'Well, you are a private citizen. I cannot stop you from asking questions of anyone. But I cannot be seen to be lending you authority, you understand.'

  Skinner nodded, a light smile flicking the corners of his mouth. 'I understand.' The smile widened. 'In that case, there are one or two things I'd like to ask you!'

  `Hah! The investigator is at work already! Very well, what can I tell you?'

  `D'you know a man named Nicolas Vaudan?'

  Pujol thought for a moment. 'Si. I know him as I know most people with business interests in L'Escala. He is an extranjero from France. I know of him rather than knowing him in person.'

  Skinner cut in. 'The south of France, or so I'm told. But go on. What d'you know about him?'

  `Not very much. He has a company which makes investments in immobiliara — apartments and villas — and rents them to local people at very reasonable cost. One of my officers is his tenant, and I have never heard him speak badly of him.'

  `Where's his company based?'

  `Montgo SA? It has a small office in the edificio in the marina which looks towards L'Escala. Close to the Cafe Navili.'

  Skinner nodded. 'Yes, I know where you mean. Does Vaudan have many associates in L'Escala?'

  `He has a secretary who looks after his business here: collecting rent from tenants, and dealing with any problems they have. Her name is Veronica. She is Belgian, I think, and she is very nice. Also there is Paco — Paco Garcia. He is from L'Escala, and he does small things — odd jobs, you would say — for Senor Vaudan around his properties. He paints, fixes the water pipes when they need to be replaced, mends broken tiles, things like that. Paco is a simple fellow: big, clumsy. When Senor Vaudan is here, I often see them together, Paco following after him like a big dog.' From nowhere an image of Tony Manson and Lennie Plenderleith swam into Skinner's mind. He pushed it away and concentrated on Pujol.

  `Is Vaudan married?'

  `Yes, I think so. I don't know for certain, but I did hear it said once that there is a Madame Vaudan — but that she is very grand, very much of the Cote d' Azur, and does not like it here.'

  `Apart from business, does he have many friends here?'

  `None come to my mind. Sometimes, when he is here and I drive past, I see him sitting on the terrace of the Club Nautic, but apart from that I do not know what he does or who he sees.'

  D'you ever see him with Santi Alberni?'

  Pujol shook his head emphatically. 'No.'

  'Or hear of any links between them?'

  `Never.'

  `I take it that Vaudan and his people aren't known to you officially, so to speak.'

  `Senor Vaudan and Veronica, certainly not. Paco Garcia is slightly different. In the past we have suspected that he might be involved in minor crimes, mostly smuggling. When he was Younger, he was a bit. Pujol struggled for the English expression.

  `Wild?'

  `Si. But now, now he is harmless, I judge.'

  Skinner leaned back in his chair and stretched himself. `Well, thanks for that, Arturo. I think I'll go for a stroll in the sun. And who knows, it might take me down past the Cafe Navili.' He stood up and gestured with a thumb at the files heaped on the small desk. 'I'll leave you to get on with that lot. I sympathise with you. Back home I have an intray too.'

  `Si,' said Pujol, showing him to the door. 'And you will have someone to empty it for you also. Here, I do my own dirty work. Good day, my friend, and good luck with your theory. But as you try to prove it, please try not to make too many splashes!'

  Forty-three

  Skinner almost walked past the man. He was seated on the terrace of the Cafe Navili, in a cane chair in the shade, looking out across Riells Bay as it glistened in the morning sun. He was alone; a black Americano coffee and a croissant lay before him on the marble-topped table.

  The tall policeman glanced at him, then looked ahead, searching for the Montgo SA office. He saw what he thought might be it, just before the walkway took a right turn, and was about to lengthen his stride when the memory came back to him. A slim, sleek man, immaculately suited, with gold-framed spectacles, jet-black hair and a neatly-trimmed moustache, standing a little way from him at Santi's funeral, quite close to Carlos.

  Skinner stopped and turned towards the figure and, as he did so, the man picked up a newspaper from beside his chair. Skinner saw that it was French. He stepped up to the table.

  `Monsieur Vaudan?'

  Surprised, the man looked up. Skinner had a flashing impression of cold, cruel, dark eyes — threatening eyes, dangerous eyes — but then they blinked and, in that instant, softened.

  `Oui.' The response was cautious.

  `I thought I recognised you from Santi Alberni's funeral. I'm Bob Skinner.'

  Vaudan sprang lithely to his feet, extending his hand.

  Skinner shook it and felt a strong grip testing his own. He returned it with equal, but no greater, force. The man was, he guessed, around forty, but he moved with the ease of one who made a point of maintaining maximum fitness. He stood around six feet tall. He wore tan slacks and a tailored cotton shirt which gave emphasis to powerful shoulders.

  `Monsieur Skinner, I am pleased to meet you. I spoke with your wife after Santi's funeral, at the villa.' His expression seemed to be probing, trying to establish whether his new acquaintance might have intentions which were other than friendly. 'Perhaps she told you.'

  Skinner smiled and looked the man straight in his dark eyes. He nodded. 'Yes, she told me.'

  A silence hung between the two men for a few seconds. Skinner supposed that Vaudan was trying to guess whether Sarah had told him of his clumsy pass, and whether he should offer an apology. Bob decided to let him off that hook. 'You're from the Cote d'Azur, she said.'

  Vaudan relaxed appreciably. 'Yes, that is my home now. But I have lived in other parts of France — and in Greece. My mother was from Athens. Come, sit down, please.' He pulled one of the cane chairs up to his table. 'You will have coffee? Croissants?'

  `Coffee, yes, thank you. Cortado, Croissants, no. I make it a rule to eat only one breakfast a day.' He sat down at the table as Vaudan leaned through the service hatch to the bar and called for the waiter. Skinner's Cortado ordered, he returned to join him.

  `I understand that you had the misfortune to find poor Santi hanging in his garage. I know from your wife that you are a policeman, but that must have given even you a great shock.'

  Skinner nodded
his grey mane. 'Normally, when you walk into a garage, you expect to find a car. But in my time I've seen a few people end up like that, and in other violent ways. It's always ugly.'

  Vaudan nodded. 'It is not something in which I am experienced, but I can imagine. Did you know Santi well?'

  `No, I'd never met him. I went looking for him on business that same morning. Gloria tells me that you were a good friend of theirs, though. She told me how you helped them with their villa.'

  Vaudan's smile seemed genuinely self-deprecating. 'One does what one can to help a friend.'

  `You were that close?'

  `I'm a nice guy.' Vaudan smiled, but Skinner this time did not return it.

  `You have a company here, don't you?'

  'Oui. Montgo SA. Just a little property investment. It brings me some nice rental income.'

  `Is that your main interest?'

  Vaudan shook his head. 'Oh no. Far from it. This is just a sideline, something to cover the cost of maintaining my villa here. In everything I do, Mr Skinner, I am a businessman. My main activity is in boats, luxury vessels. I am a broker: I buy and sell yachts and cruisers of all sorts. I have a number of dealerships in Monaco for major manufacturers. Big, big, money — international money. For such an operation, Monaco is the ideal base. As well as buying and selling, I have a number of cruisers which are available for charter.'

  `Around here?'

  `No. Frankly there is not enough money here to make such an operation pay. I do some brokerage in Spain, but my chartering is done out of Monte Carlo, and in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.'

  `That's very interesting.' A white-coated waiter arrived with Skinner's cortado, always served at the Navili in a cup rather than in the usual small glass. He took a sip, and tasted its sharp bite.

  ‘Did you know much about Santi's business?'

  'InterCosta? No. Why do you ask?'

  `Gloria hasn't said anything to you?'

  `No. What would she say?'

  Skinner looked the man in the eye once more. 'In confidence, yes?' Vaudan nodded. 'The thing I went to see Santi about wasn't just a property matter; it was police business as well. A man came to see me in Scotland, complaining that he had been involved in a deal with InterCosta, and that some of the money had disappeared. It looked like a clear case of fraud by the company. I interviewed Santi's partner, Ainscow. He showed me certain evidence which pointed to Santi, and I was going to interview him, with the approval of the Guardia, when I found him dead.

  `Since then the InterCosta accounts have been examined and it seems clear that Santi was ripping it off for years. The trouble is, it was done very simply but very cleverly. We found some money, but we don't know where the rest is. My continuing interest, as a policeman, is that this business is half-British, and that a British subject has been defrauded. Maybe there are others. Ainscow's prepared to forget about it but, as a policeman, if I see a crime I have a duty to investigate.'

  Vaudan nodded. 'Of course, of course.' Skinner felt an edge of concern in his companion. He decided to turn on a little heat. 'Apart from your friendship with Alberni, how strong were your business links?'

  `Monsieur, what business links? We were friends.'

  `That's not what Gloria told me.' He leaned towards Vaudan, his right forearm resting on the table. 'Look, I'll be frank. I didn't just happen past here this morning. I was on my way to your office. I'm the sort of copper who doesn't put an investigation to bed with lots of questions still unanswered. And, believe me, there are many questions unanswered about the death of Santi Alberni. For example, I'd like to know how come, if Alberni had ripped off a couple of hundred million pesetas from InterCosta, he still died heavily in debt. I'd like to know where all that money went to, because no one has a fucking clue. And, Monsieur Vaudan, I'd like to know, without being fed any more nice-guy crap, what sort of a link there was between you and Alberni to make you risk, I'd guess, around twenty million pesetas of your own to help him buy his new house. Why, for God's sake, if he had stolen all that cash, did he need your help in the first place?

  `When I have good answers to all these questions, and a few more, I may start to believe that Santi Alberni strung himself up in his garage. Until I do, I'm inclined to the view that he had some help. Now, my new friend, what do you have to tell me to ease my troubled mind?'

  For almost half a minute the Frenchman sat silent, staring out across the sunlit bay towards the high-rise blocks of the Passeig Maritim. And then he turned to face Skinner, and in the dark eyes the coldness and the danger showed once more, with something new: a strange smugness emphasised by the man's confident smile.

  ‘All right, Skinner. All right. I could make you jump through a few hoops for your answers but, hell, it's a nice day and I have better things to do. I'll give you some answers. But I do not think you will like them. I'm going to say all these things just once, with no one but you and me to hear them, and then I will never repeat them. Have a beer while you listen. You may need it.'

  He rose and walked back over to the hatch. 'Juan, deux bieres, si'l vows plait. Pression.' He waited while the barman poured two glasses of St Miguel from its ornate tap, and carried them back to the table, one cupped in each hand.

  `This is a wonderful place, L'Escala, is it not?' He settled back into his chair and took a generous mouthful of St Miguel. The creamy head left a white shadow on his moustache. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  `I came here for the first time around ten years ago. I had sold a cruiser to a man in Monaco, and had agreed to deliver it to L'Escala, where his brother would berth it and look after it for him. I brought it across myself, and spent a day or two training the brother in its ways. I took to the place at once. I had been looking for a second home — somewhere outside France, and when my client told me of a building plot for sale at Punta Montgo, I was interested in it.

  Santi Alberni was the agent for the owner. He was very young. It was a prime site, perched on the hill, but difficult to build on. Because of that I was able to beat Santi down on the price. I bought it there and then for cash, for less than half the profit on that one cruiser deal. I was paid for the boat on delivery, in dollars, and I gave the rest of the money to Santi to find me an architect and builder. He did a good job, and less than a year later my wife and I took over my new villa. I have to say that she hated L'Escala as much as I love it. However, I bought her an apartment in Rome, and she was happy. Now she has hers, I have mine, and we have ours near Cannes.'

  He paused for another swig of beer. `Santi and I would bump into each other when I was here, but we were not what you would call close friends. Then one day, around seven years ago, he came up to the villa and put a business proposition to me. He told me that InterCosta was making very good profits, and that it tore at his heart to have to give any of them to the taxman. He said that his accountant had advised him that if he converted his share into cash and reinvested it somewhere else, the taxman would never catch up with the money. It would simply be written through the company books as disbursements, and both company tax and. income tax would be avoided.

  `He asked me if I would act as the front man in a new company through which this cash profit from InterCosta would be laundered and turned into long-term investments in property. He said that, as a foreign national, I would be less likely to be asked to explain where the cash had come from. I asked him who would own the new company. He said that officially it would be in my name, but that there would be a letter of agreement between us confirming Santi's ownership of the shares. I asked him what would be in it for me, and we settled on half the net rental income. The idea was that the properties would be held for not less than ten years from the date of acquisition, and indefinitely if they were good enough

  `We shook hands on the deal, and Montgo SA was formed, in my name, with no traceable link to Santi. Straight away Santi began to deposit large chunks of cash in the company safe. He would bank them at intervals, or sometimes he would buy propertie
s for straight cash. Gradually, as Montgo SA's portfolio built up, so did its income. We took office costs out of

  that, and kept back an amount for property maintenance and other contingencies. The rest we split between us.'

  `How much?' asked Skinner.

  `At first, hardly anything. Then it began to build up. It has never been big money though. Montgo SA is a good landlord. We charge on average around eighty thousand pesetas per month in rent for good-quality accommodation — no rubbish. In the summer people will pay more than that here for a week's rental. Take off office costs, which are peanuts, and our contingency funding, and I would say that over the years Santi and I have split around twelve million pesetas between us.'

  `What did you do with your slice?'

  `I kept it in cash, and used it to pay for the maintenance of my villa here.'

  `How big is the contingency fund?'

  `Eighteen million. We used the contingency money to do the deal on Santi's villa.' Vaudan grinned. 'Well I was a nice guy. I agreed to it, and half that cash was mine! What if his mortgage had fallen through?'

  `How much has been laundered through Montgo in those seven years?'

  `Roughly around one hundred million pesetas.'

  `Half a million sterling. Are you sure?'

  Vaudan nodded. 'Certain. I don't make mistakes about money. Why?'

  `Because that's maybe half of the cash that's been stripped out of InterCosta. Are you involved in any other companies with Alberni?'

  `No, thank you. One was quite enough; an amusement, and a neat source of peseta cash-flow. Two would begin to resemble hard work.'

  Did you know of any other money laundries that he might have set up?'

  Vaudan hesitated. 'Once or twice he mentioned an Englishman named Eensh.'

  What?'

  Eensh. I-N-C-H. Alan Eensh. I believe he works in Torroella as a property salesman. Santi spoke of him once and said that he had another interest, a company called Torroella Locals. It was like Montgo, only it didn't buy houses. It bought shops along the Costa at knock-down prices, and let them for high rents to short-term businesses — ice-cream parlours, video arcades, sports clothing, fashion. Santi never said, but I always suspected that he might have been funding Monsieur Eensh also.'