Death Warmed Up

by John Paxton Sheriff

  ‘And then…?’

  ‘A white Mercedes overtook me and pulled up.’

  ‘The door flew open and an evil-smelling thug with a scarred face dragged you inside and a pad soaked in chloroform was—’

  ‘Cut it out, Jack,’ Sian said.

  ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Prudence said, smiling weakly at me, ‘though the effect was almost the same.’ She shut the laptop with a click, her face troubled as she sipped her drink without really tasting it. ‘A woman was driving. She leaned across to open the door for me, and we drove off. Beautiful long hair, greyish-blonde, bleached by the sun and sweeping, naked tanned shoulders. She was wearing – just about – the most expensive casual clothes I’ve ever rubbed up against, and the diamond rings she was flashing on fingers like talons were causing oncoming drivers to swerve. It’s not far into town from the marinas, as you know, but in that time she managed to scare me rigid. She told me Rickman wanted those pictures. She didn’t need to specify. If I was stubborn, she said with a sweet smile, I would wake up one morning in hospital wearing a different face, and would henceforth refuse to look in mirrors.’

  ‘D’you know who she was?’

  ‘I assumed Rickman’s wife, Françoise. While we were sitting drinking he mentioned that she’d just returned from a trip to England.’

  ‘Why send her, I wonder, and not the thug with the chloroform?’

  ‘I suppose because Rickman knew using his wife would be more effective. Give the threat emphasis. I’m, well, you know—’

  ‘Young and beautiful,’ Sian said.

  ‘And struggling to make a living, while she’s beautiful and rich and there she was suggesting someone could take away what little I have going for me with a couple of strokes of a cut-throat razor.’

  I nodded, frowned into my drink and rattled the ice. The sound, in the circumstances, was … chilling.

  ‘When was this photoshoot, and the threats?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Did this beautiful woman tell you what to do? How to get the incriminating photos to Rickman? Because they must be incriminating in some way, mustn’t they?’

  ‘Absolutely. And, no, she didn’t, because there was no need. I know where Sea Wind’s moored, don’t I? I suppose all I have to do is toddle down there and hand them over.’

  ‘But you haven’t, not yet – and you haven’t been … approached?’

  ‘By someone wearing brass knucks or waving a shiv?’ She grinned a trifle sheepishly. ‘Actually, I’ve been keeping my head down. As in, staying in my room with the door locked and my head in a book.’

  ‘And the room is where?’

  ‘This hotel.’ She pointed at the ceiling. ‘Up there somewhere.’

  ‘Which should mean that you’re reasonably safe.’ Sian pursed her lips. ‘When are you going back to the UK?’

  Prudence shrugged her shoulders. ‘I was hoping to stay here for a while – blue skies and hot sun, breathtaking scenery, do some work on my website and portfolio.’

  ‘You’re here on your own, I take it?’ Sian said, frowning. ‘Look, if you really feel that you’re in danger, that Rickman means business, you’ve got two obvious choices.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I could always take the easy way out and do as he says … or, what’s the other, get on the first plane home?’

  ‘Why don’t you go and stay with your parents for a while?’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to, but they’re in Tangier. I think they intend staying there indefinitely.’ She was beginning to look embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mention it, but Adele and Charlie – Mum and Dad – actually live aboard their yacht. The Alcheringa. It’s a Sunseeker 66 Manhattan Flybridge, if you want the full title.’

  ‘Can’t say I’ve considered buying that particular model,’ I said, straight-faced, ‘but I suppose that means Mum and Dad are … what, filthy rich?’

  ‘I suppose so. They’re retired, but Charlie was a successful Liverpool businessman. He made a small fortune in bathroom tissues. A polite term for you-know-what.’

  ‘What do they do now, Prudence?’

  ‘Pru, please.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, apart from cruising the Med posing in expensive togs from fashion houses like Gucci, Versace and Jimmy Choo, not a lot.’

  There was a sudden silence. Pru’s cheeks were pink. She was staring down into her glass, watching the ice melt, the lime wilt. She seemed to be waiting, with considerable unease, for … a decision? And it suddenly occurred to me that the uneasiness could be caused by something other than fear, or that the fear itself could have a cause unrelated to her story. I’d asked her if she’d recognized the man she’d accidentally photographed. She’d looked straight at me when she said no – and wasn’t that a sign that someone is striving to convince you they’re telling the truth? But if she was lying, to what purpose? She’d told a very pretty tale, embellished with lots of colourful characters and detail, but she hadn’t yet told us precisely what she wanted us to do.

  Were we to be bodyguards? If so, for how long? Or was she asking us to trot along to Marina Bay, confront Bernie Rickman and his heavies and possibly end up under tons of liquid concrete in one of the expensive new waterside developments?

  The quiet was broken by Sian, who, as always, came up with an intelligent suggestion suitably masked by the mundane.

  She said, ‘Jack, it’s still only 8.30. I know you want to get the latest on Eleanor, so perhaps now would be a good time to head up Europa Road and talk to Reg.’

  1 See Rock to Death

  Two

  Sian’s idea was that Reg Fitz-Norton, a retired diplomat who adored my mother, Eleanor, would listen to Prudence’s story, dip into his vast experience and come up with words of wisdom that would solve all her problems. I thought it unlikely, but it was at least worth a try.

  As it happened Prudence was tired, edgy and in no mood for going over her story yet again, which made it a non-starter anyway. So we compromised.

  The young woman from Liverpool left the laptop in our care and made her way to the lifts, followed by the barman’s dark, lustful eyes. Sian and I stopped at reception. There, I made it clear to the wide-eyed receptionist that if anyone came to the hotel asking for Prudence Wise’s room number, she should refuse to give it to them. If they insisted, became awkward or threatening, she should pick up the phone, call Prudence first to warn her, then phone the police.

  That done – which was about as much as we could do – we left the hotel by the side door opening into Library Street just as the band started up again. It was, I thought, like the exit of the toreadors, but the insistent beat had us walking as if we had two left feet. As the music faded behind us we strolled the short distance to the taxi rank, and there jumped into a cab that would take us the mile or so up the hill to Reg’s house.

  We’d zipped up Eliot’s Way where it skirted the car parks and Alameda Gardens and were passing the Rock Hotel when a car came up fast behind us. It nosed in dangerously close. Headlights on full beam lit up the inside of the taxi. Our driver swore softly and reached up to adjust his mirror. For the next fifty yards I could see his eyes darting from that to the off-side wing mirror. Then he exploded.

  ‘Come on, you dipstick,’ he growled, ‘what are you playing at?’

  ‘Just a couple of drunken youths winding you up,’ Sian said, twisting so she could look back. ‘Ignore them, they’ll go away.’

  ‘I think you are wrong,’ the driver said. ‘This does not happen, here, in Gibraltar.’

  Even as he spoke there was a roar from the following car’s engine and it pulled out to overtake on a tight bend where, in normal daytime traffic, overtaking would have been suicidal. It hurtled past. There was a tinny scratching sound as the vehicles briefly touched. The cab driver swore again. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I leant across Sian. The overtaking car was a rusty old Datsun. The man in the driving seat was grinning across at us. He wore a wide-brimmed bush hat. His teeth were startlingly white in a
tanned face.

  ‘Not drunk, not young,’ I said.

  ‘But they have gone away,’ Sian said as it raced ahead with a series of mocking toots on the horn, ‘so that makes me half right.’

  The driver grunted his disagreement.

  ‘I think maybe not even that,’ he said.

  He was proved right. The taxi had rounded a bend and was coasting down a slight slope that took it onto the flat. As the driver pulled to a halt, I saw the Datsun’s brake lights glow fifty yards ahead of us. Then, with a squeal of tyres, it did a careless three-point turn that must have added to the dents in the rear bumper, drove a short way towards us and pulled in tight up against a stone wall. The headlights were switched off.

  Pale exhaust smoke drifting towards the clear night skies told me that the engine, clearly souped-up, way too powerful for such a shabby body, was still running.

  ‘They’re watching us,’ Sian said quietly, turning away from the driver.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I said. ‘But why?’

  ‘A cheap crook’s after a young woman’s blood. She’s just spent the best part of an hour pouring her heart out to us.’

  ‘So now the shock troops are after our blood?’

  ‘Perhaps they think we now know something they don’t. And they’re wondering what we’re going to do with it.’

  The driver was getting impatient, tapping his fingers on the wheel. I shrugged.

  ‘Well, if that’s what they’re wondering,’ I said, ‘let’s show them,’ and I got out of the taxi.

  There’s really just that one reasonably level section of Europa Road, and the expensive houses in the prime position along its western edge cling to slopes that fall precipitously to yet more houses along South Barrack Road. Several of those residences along Europa Road have a small parking area – and for small, read tiny. Room for two small cars, with a squeeze.

  Reg had recently downsized, and was now driving a new Nissan Micra. Sian was staring at it while I paid the driver, and when the taxi drove off she turned to me, wide-eyed.

  ‘What on earth,’ she said, ‘is Reg doing?’

  ‘Fishing.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that, two rods like long whips on his roof rack – but I mean, what does he know about fishing? Does he go out on a boat, or—’

  ‘He fishes off the rocks at Europa Point. Late evening, usually, watches the sun go down, communes with nature. It’s his way of chilling.’

  ‘Well, glory be,’ Sian said softly, and turned towards the house.

  From the tiny parking area the houses are reached by a gate through rustic stone walls, and by stone steps leading steeply down. Like most, Reg’s living areas are on the upper floor, bedrooms and bathroom on the lower.

  He answered the door with a tall glass of gin and tonic tinkling in one hand. I looked at his eyes. It wasn’t his first. Reg noticed the look, and winked. While the cat’s away, he seemed to be saying, and I thumped him on the shoulder as the old diplomat stood to one side, grinning.

  His grey hair was tied back in the usual ponytail, and he had on the blue tracksuit he’d been wearing when, not too long ago, he’d used a flying rugby tackle to knock me backwards down the steps of my mother’s bungalow high up the Rock’s slopes. He’d thought I was one of Ronnie Skaill’s thugs. Typical ex-public school, he was as hard as nails and had come close to shattering my larynx with a sinewy forearm.

  The living room’s gold-shaded table lamps cast a warm light over thick Persian rugs, pale spruce parquet flooring, chairs and a huge settee upholstered in soft ivory leather. Reg’s Bose stereo system was playing softly in the background: we’d travelled a mile or so and moved from the Eliott hotel’s modern jazz to the tinkling flamenco guitars of old Spain, and were enveloped in the wild scent from small baskets of pot-pourri that Eleanor scattered about Reg’s house to foster the illusion of fresh flowers.

  Reg shut the door and followed us in, plonked his glass down on the coffee table then went to stare silently out of the wide picture windows that took up three sides of a sort of suspended sun room – with skylight – and afforded panoramic views over the town and bay.

  Sian raised her eyebrows inquiringly at me, then crossed to the drinks cabinet and reached for the Bombay Sapphire. I put Pru’s laptop on the settee and joined Reg at the window.

  ‘Thoughtful, Reg. Or are you still concerned?’

  He grunted. ‘Life’s too short to waste time worrying.’

  In the circumstances, I thought that was an odd, insensitive remark. Were we both thinking on the same lines? I was talking about Eleanor, but now he had me wondering. Reg Fitz-Norton is diplomatic but foolhardy, and has been known to tread on toes.

  ‘What are you looking at? Or looking for?’

  ‘Mm? Oh … .’ He gestured vaguely at the twinkling lights, the reflections in the distant water.

  ‘You can’t see the hospital from here.’

  ‘General direction,’ Reg said, and pointed. ‘She’s somewhere over there.’

  ‘But not for much longer.’

  He nodded absently, his mind – I assumed – in that distant hospital ward. ‘You know, Eleanor’s a remarkable woman for her age. Mind’s wonderfully alert, she’s rock-steady on her feet.’

  ‘She also,’ I said, ‘enjoys the occasional gin and tonic.’

  ‘Even a young pup like you knows the old saying— ‘

  ‘I’m in my fifties, Reg.’

  ‘When the sun’s over the yardarm. That’s when the day’s first drink is taken. It was ten in the morning when Eleanor was pushed; she’d not long eaten breakfast. Anyway, under the influence or sober she was pushed by a woman, or so she tells me – though her memory of the incident is understandably hazy.’

  He took a deep breath, managed a grin, looked straight at me. ‘Your face is looking better, old boy. Bruises fading to yellow, swelling around the hooter almost gone— ‘

  ‘Eleanor, Reg.’

  ‘She’s fine. Home tomorrow. Here, not in her bungalow, so I can look after her while she reads magazines with her cast stuck up in the air and pops Ferrero Rocher chocs into her mouth at frequent intervals.’

  ‘With her little finger daintily cocked,’ Sian called, busy pouring, ‘while poor old Reg rushes madly about vacuuming and polishing and seeing to her every whim.’

  ‘What a life, eh,’ Reg said, grinning.

  ‘So you’re not as miserable as you look?’

  ‘If he is, we’ll soon cheer him up,’ Sian said, coming over to hand me a crystal glass containing smoky Aran single malt with ice and Reg a fresh gin and tonic. She flicked the diplomat’s dangling ponytail, put a hand on his shoulder so she could get close to kiss him on the cheek. ‘You love unravelling knotty problems, don’t you, Reg? Dabbling in a bit of insider trading? Even poking about on the murky fringes of the underworld if there’s profit in it – but preferably down at one of those sun-soaked marinas? Bit of an art expert as well, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘I have my moments.’

  ‘Well, have one now,’ I said, ‘because a young lady called Pru needs help.’

  ‘Or something,’ Sian said, glancing at me. ‘She didn’t exactly tell us what, did she?’

  ‘Do go on,’ Reg said. ‘Who’s this Pru when she’s at home, and what’s she been up to?’

  ‘You ever heard of Bernie Rickman?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of him, and so have you. That rakish black boat that nearly belonged to your dear departed brother is moored across the concrete from Rickman’s huge yacht.’

  ‘Bloody hell, you’re right,’ I said, amazed. ‘Now you mention it I remember seeing the name, marvelled at its size, imagined it sneering at Tim’s little canoe.’

  ‘Sneering is what Rickman does to those lesser mortals he despises – and that’s just about everybody. Does it because he’s convinced he’s the cat’s whiskers, when actually he’s the lowest of the low. Sea Wind and his whole flamboyant lifestyle are financed by illegal activities too numerous
to mention. If I say soft drugs, you’ll get a small part of a much bigger picture.’

  While talking we’d moved down the three steps from the cool, starlit sun room. Sian curled up on the settee with the laptop. I sank into one of the huge chairs and watched Reg as he placed the drink Sian had given him on the coffee table alongside the one he’d abandoned. He now had two drinks, and he looked at me with a wry grin. Not his usual self, perhaps, but sharp as a knife and, as always, proving to be an excellent source of all kinds of information.

  ‘If Rickman’s that crooked,’ I said, ‘why isn’t he behind bars?’

  ‘Never been caught red-handed. His kind rarely are. Gibraltar’s got water on three sides, a guarded border on the other, so all of Rickman’s skulduggery is forced to involve boats of one kind or another. Needless to say, Sea Wind is not one of them.’

  ‘The late Ronnie Skaill used to stay in the background while using Tim and his canoe,’ Sian said. ‘I imagine Rickman does the same.’

  ‘Yes, and in much the same way,’ Reg said. ‘The men doing his dirty work are, on the surface – no pun intended – beyond reproach. Their vessels are a big step down from Sea Wind but still white, gleaming and very expensive. More importantly, they are also very fast.’

  I glanced at Sian. She guessed at once what I was thinking, and lifted her shoulders, spread her hands.

  ‘That would certainly seem to limit Rickman’s choice,’ I said carefully. ‘I mean, how many crooked owners of luxury yachts are out there cruising the Med?’

  ‘There’s one I can name straight away,’ Reg said, coming in on cue, ‘and that’s cuddly Charlie Wise. His boat, the Alcheringa, is classy and swift, and Wise came here as a retired businessman with impeccable credentials. Rickman would consider that an asset, something he could use. Crucially, the grapevine was hinting years ago that Wise was fast running out of cash, and if Rickman showed him an easy way out of his troubles… .’