A Coffin For Two ob-2

by Quintin Jardine

  A sudden wave of fear swept over me. It might have got out of control had I not realised almost at once what had made it spring up. The watch was an identical model to one which I had given my dad nine months before, as a Christmas present: Giorgio of Beverley Hills, Swiss made, water resistant to three atmospheres. I was pretty sure that Giorgio didn’t have a branch in Catalunya … or at least that he didn’t in the days when they were still burying people in stone chests.

  My grip on myself didn’t last long. The sound of your own scream confined and magnified within a stone coffin is — Oh God, how I hope it is — a once in a lifetime experience. I just couldn’t help it. I jumped up, banging the side of my head on the edge of the lid, rolled over and scrambled away from the thing, looking, I suspect, like the old film of Jackie K ‘hauling ass’ out of that limo in Dallas.

  I lay on the ground, staring up at Miguel, aware that my mouth was hanging open, but unable to do anything about it … like speak.

  He looked at me, with scant sympathy, I have to say. Alongside my reaction, his earlier agitation was stoic by comparison. He didn’t say a word, but I knew that there was face to be lost in the situation, so finally I gave him what I hoped was a wicked smile, and rolled back towards the open grave. In my hurried withdrawal I had dropped the torch. I reached down and picked it up, then lowered myself once more through the opening.

  Imagine the worst morning you’ve ever had after the night before. The wildest stag party — and let’s not be sexist about this — or hen night, you could ever imagine, when things have got really out of control, you’ve ended up guttered in some disco, and, as you wake up, you really can’t remember a thing about the person next to you, the face you see on the pillow next to yours. Go on, give free rein to your worst nightmare.

  Nothing like it.

  Inside the coffin, a second skull grinned at me, eye to eye, no more than a foot away, like that face on the other pillow. Unlike the original tenant, yellowed with age, this one was still more or less shining white. The beam of the torch reflected off a gold filling in one of the back teeth, and off the steel of a bridge set on the lower jaw. I forced myself to stare at it dispassionately, fighting hard to master my horror. I succeeded, and at last I was able to play the torch down the rest of the body. It lay on its side, pressed against the coffin wall. It was clean, if you could use that word for something that was well down the descent into corruption, because the earth which had spilled in through the open lid, covering most of the original skeleton, had not piled up beyond its right limb. Relics of clothing, unspeakably stained, still hung on the bones. There were strands of a shirt that had probably been blue, and trousers that might once have been cream. A black leather belt was still looped around the waist, the weight of its heavy, rusted metal buckle pulling it down against the bony spine. There seemed to be no jewellery, other than that Giorgio watch. I shone the beam on and around the hands, looking for a wedding ring but seeing none.

  I looked back up at the skull. A few wisps of fair hair still clung to its dome. ‘Afternoon,’ I said. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I’ll be off now.’

  I hauled myself out of the coffin for a second time, under control this time, and stood up beside Miguel, with a quick glance over my shoulder to confirm that the square was still empty.

  ‘I see.’ I didn’t think there was much more to be said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miguel. ‘Is terrible. What are we going to do?’

  I looked at him in surprise, my eyebrows shooting half-way up my forehead. ‘I reckon that “Call the police”, sounds like a pretty good answer to that one.’

  He gasped, and his face became a mask of fright. ‘Ah no, not that. That would be terrible. The tourists would not come any more. All the families in the village need them for the money, for the businesses.’

  ‘Come on, man,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be that bad.’

  He nodded his head violently. ‘Oh yes it would. This is a quiet place, a peaceful place. Most of our tourists come every year, from all over Spain, and Europe. Many of them have children. Others are old. They will not come back to a place where something like this can happen. Where people can be killed and buried.’

  ‘How will they know about it?’

  He looked at me as if I was daft. ‘From the newspapers, the television … and not only in Spain.’

  He had me there. I could see the headlines. ‘Fresh Stiff in Pre-historic Coffin.’ Yes, even the Lothian Herald and Post would run that one. But even at that … ‘Listen, Miguel,’ I insisted, ‘the season’s almost over. It’ll all have been forgotten by next summer.’

  A very obvious question struck me suddenly, right in the teeth. ‘Eh, you don’t know who that is down there, do you?’

  He shook his head this time, and so violently that I thought it might come off. ‘No, no, no! But the Guardia Civil, they will find out, then they will find out who did it, and there will be a trial. In Spain that takes a long time, and all that time there will be periodistas here, asking questions, taking pictures. The families, they will go away, and the wrong sort of people will come instead.’

  He paused, chewing his lip nervously. ‘The Guardia Civil, they will investigate everyone in the village. They will ask questions and they will find things out that maybe some will not want found out.’

  I pointed to the coffin. ‘You mean someone here might have …’

  ‘Oh no, I know everyone in this village, and around it. I promise you, no one who lives here would have done that. No, I mean that they will find things out about our businesses, that maybe someone no pay as much tax as he should, that maybe someone no pay any tax at all.’

  As a self-employed person, I understood that concern. ‘Ahh. I’m with you,’ I said. ‘But even at that, Miguel man. This is murder we’re talking about. That bloke didn’t climb in there himself. He was put there.

  ‘This ground used to be hidden from the village by a thick hedge, until the workmen took it down to prepare for the viewpoint. I’d guess that someone killed him up here, went to dig a grave, then hit the stone coffin by accident and had the bright idea of shoving him inside.

  ‘Almost certainly that guy down there has a family. They deserve to be put out of their misery. And whoever murdered him deserves to be caught. What if he’s killed more than one, and uses St Marti as a graveyard? Tax man or no tax man, we can’t just cover the thing up and pretend that it isn’t there.’

  Miguel looked at me, slightly shocked. ‘Oh no, of course not. I do not mean that we should do that. Is not possibly anyway. It was Jordi who found this, remember. Even if I told him not to do it, he could not stop himself telling his friends at school about what he had found.’

  ‘Does he know what’s inside?’

  ‘No, he did not see the other body. Only the old one. But that is enough. He is very proud of being an archaeologist. Also, is the law that when you find something like this, you must report it.’

  I turned and took a few steps away from the coffin, until I could see down the square. A waiter had appeared outside the Esculapi and was busying himself pulling his tables to the side and hosing the gravel underneath, to keep down the dust.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ I asked Miguel, quietly, over my shoulder.

  ‘I want to move the other body. Tonight. Out of here, away from St Marti, somewhere else, where it will be found.’

  ‘You’re crackers, man!’ I tapped the side of my head.

  ‘Maybe. But will you help me?’

  I gave it a couple of seconds’ thought. ‘Of course I will. No one ever accused me of being sensible either.’

  5

  ‘You’re going to what!’ She had been straddling me on the bed; suddenly she sat bolt upright.

  ‘I’m going to help him,’ I repeated, staring up at her. ‘What else should I do? The guy’s beside himself with worry about it, and he’s got no one else. Shifting that lid will be a two-man job, and Jaume’s far too old for it.

  ‘Remember, Miguel�
�s the reason we’re here. He’s done us a huge favour, and if he’s got a problem, it’s up to us to help him out. We’re part of this community now. If Miguel says he knows what’s best for it, then even though it scares me shitless, I just think I have to go along with it.’

  Prim frowned at me, and resumed her ministrations with Dettol-soaked cotton wool to the graze on my right temple, where I had bumped it on the coffin. I had come home unaware of the line of blood trickling down my face.

  ‘But won’t that make you both accessories after the fact, or something like that?’

  ‘I’d rather not think about that, thank you very much.’

  ‘Well what about this poor man?’ she said, severely. ‘From the way you described the condition of the skeleton, he can’t have been dead for all that long. Almost certainly, he’ll be on someone’s missing persons list. What about his family? Don’t they have rights?’

  She dabbed again, a wee bit too hard, I thought, making me wince. ‘Easy on the antiseptic, love. They’ve got the same rights today as they had yesterday, but you could argue that thanks to Jordi and Miguel they’re nearer today to having them fulfilled. Miguel isn’t talking about burying the guy again. He plans to leave him in a place where he’s likely to be found.’

  ‘Such as?’ My arguments were having little or no effect on her disapproval level.

  ‘Well, hardly in the middle of the road, but in a place where he won’t be too hard to find yet where realistically he might have been since he was killed.’

  She seemed to brighten up a bit. ‘I see. Then you and I might go for a walk one day and sort of trip over him. Accidentally. Yes?’

  I wasn’t so sure about that idea, but I said ‘Yes,’ anyway.

  ‘Okay then,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘D’you want me to come with you tonight?’

  I shook my head. ‘I think that would make Miguel uncomfortable. Anyway, two of us stumbling around in the dark will be quite enough.’

  ‘When are you meeting him?’

  ‘Three o’clock. I’ll try not to wake you, going out or coming back.’

  She shook her head, shot me her best ‘Daft bugger!’ expression, and kissed me gently in the middle of the forehead. ‘Fair enough, but make damn sure you do one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Have a shower before you get back into bed!’

  She jumped off me and headed for the bedroom door. ‘Change of subject,’ she called back to me. ‘Come on and I’ll show you our advertisement. I’ve got it written out.’ I followed her into the living room. We had added a writing bureau to our inherited furniture, to accommodate my lap-top and printer. The fall-flap was down and on it lay a sheet of paper. ‘There you are,’ said Prim, standing over it. ‘What d’you think?’

  I scanned it, murmuring as I read.

  Blackstone Spanish Investigations

  Legal, Business, Personal

  Member BEAA

  Write Box No xxx

  6

  Until I eyeballed a skull at close quarters, I used to think that there was nothing as savage as the grin of a monkfish, cooked whole and taken straight from the oven.

  Prim had returned from the peixateria — sounds so much more interesting than fishmonger, doesn’t it — beside the roundabout on the way into L’Escala, with two of the sublimely ugly fish, gutted but otherwise intact. We had cooked them whole, as we had seen it down in Meson del Conde, the restaurant on the lower side of the square, in a rich tomato and onion sauce, with sliced potatoes boiling in the juice.

  Prim’s nursing experience came into play as she took them off the bone. All I could do was admire her skill, and stare back at the fish as they looked at me reproachfully, their huge mouths stretched in wicked smiles.

  After that, we had an early night. Prim, unwakeable by an earthquake, fell into her usual depth of sleep while I dozed fitfully, dreaming occasionally of my dad, dressed as a pirate for Hallowe‘en, my nephew Jonathan, in a suit and speaking into a mobile phone, and Jan sitting cross-legged on the harbour wall at Anstruther, gazing out to sea through my big binoculars, with the wind ruffling her hair. As I looked at her, she lowered the glasses and turned towards me. ‘I know, Oz,’ she said. ‘See you.’ Then she went all fuzzy and turned, somehow, into Prim.

  I was awake a couple of minutes before 2:55 a.m., the time at which I had set the alarm to ring. I cancelled it, slipped out of bed without waking Primavera — as if there was a chance — then put on my oldest jeans, sweatshirt and trainers, and went outside.

  This time, Miguel was waiting for me out of sight, against the wall of the Casa Forestals. I didn’t see him at first, not until he stepped from out of the shadows, scaring me half to death. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a full moon and a cloudless sky. Luckily it had occurred to Miguel. He had even catered for it. He beckoned me over to where the skeletons lay. As I stepped towards him I could see that he had set up a makeshift screen, a rough wooden framework covered with dark cloth. Behind it, we were screened completely from any insomniacs in the village.

  The moon cast some light on the grave, but Miguel had added to it by wedging his torch between two rocks and directing its beam on to the coffin. ‘We have to move more earth, then lift the lid,’ he said. He handed me a funny sort of tool, a cross between a pickaxe and a shovel, with a short handle. Clearing the earth away didn’t take long, but raising the stone lid was a different matter. Since its original disturbance, soil had worked its way between the lid and base and had been turned by moisture into a form of cement. It took us twenty minutes of muffled chipping and levering with the sharp end of our implements before we could get the thing to budge. At last we swung it up and over, lowering it gently to avoid any chance of it breaking. The beam now shone full into the open coffin, reflecting on the white of the younger skull, and on the replica of my Dad’s Giorgio watch.

  ‘Okay, Miguel,’ I whispered. ‘That was the easy part. Now tell me, how the hell are we going to shift this poor bugger without him turning into a jigsaw puzzle?’

  He looked at me, puzzled himself for a second until he caught on. Then he smiled, looking macabre in the torch light. I shuddered. Miguel has long canine teeth. I glanced up at the moon and looked furtively at him for signs of sprouting hair, or fingers turning into claws. ‘Like this,’ he said, and produced a bolt of black cloth, just like the one from which our screen was made.

  Carefully, he spread it inside the coffin, beside the ragged skeleton. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we take care, and we roll him over into the sheet. See?’

  I did as I was told. Together, very delicately, we reached behind and under the body, and very slowly, rolled it over into the waiting black shroud.

  It worked. Almost. The skeleton moved in one piece. The skull stayed where it was, grinning at us as wickedly as one of those bloody monkfish. That almost did me in. Just for a second, I thought that the fish was going to make a return appearance. But I mastered the rising sensation at the back of my throat, as Miguel reached down and pulled the skull into the sheet, then wrapped it fully round the body.

  We lifted it out, holding either end taut like a sack, and carried it down to the Minana pick-up. A long crate lay in the back. ‘In there,’ said Miguel. Very gently we laid our pal in his new, temporary, coffin.

  Carefully, we smoothed out the marks where he had laid within the stone box, checking to make sure that not as much as a toenail was left behind. We replaced the lid, ajar like Jordi had found it, and putting some of the earth which he had removed back inside for luck. Then we dismantled our screen and smoothed out our footprints.

  ‘Come.’ Miguel signalled me to follow. He was in full command now, as we climbed into the Toyota truck. He allowed it to run down the slope, away from the village before switching on the engine and engaging gear. We drove quietly through the wooded track, then out on to the road and away from the village.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘Not far, but far enoug
h. To the woods behind L’Escala.’

  The journey took less than five minutes. He headed towards the town, but instead of going in, swung round past the hypermarket and on, up towards an area called Riells de D’Alt, where Prim and I had never ventured. He simply drove until the road ran out, then a bit further, into the edge of a wood, running the truck between the first few trees so that it was out of sight. Eventually he drew to a halt and reached for the torch.

  He jumped out of the car, surprisingly nimbly and shone the torch on a deep ditch at the edge of the tree-line. It might have been intended for drainage, or as a firebreak, or both. ‘Over there,’ he said. Following his lead, I helped him unload the crate from the back of the truck and carry it across to the long trench. Together we lifted out the black sheet, and its contents, then lowered it into its new resting place.

  ‘Okay,’ said a coolly efficient Miguel I had not known before that night. ‘Now pull.’ Together we tugged the shroud, and the skeleton rolled out. We arranged the bones carefully, to avoid any suspicions that the body might have been moved.

  ‘That’s good enough. Now, some wood.’ He plunged back into the wood, with me on his tail. As quickly as we could we gathered fallen branches and other debris and placed them over the bones in a makeshift cover.

  At last, Miguel stood up and beamed: a sardonic smile of satisfaction. ‘There, Oz. Now they can find the poor man, any time they like. And tomorrow before the men from the town hall came to work, I will call the mayor and tell him that my son has found a body from the Romans. All will be as it should.’