by James Green
Jimmy took another drink and then sat back. OK, that was that. That was the game-plan he’d been given and he’d used it. Now Suarez, had the ball so he’d have to wait and see what she did with it.
It didn’t take her long to come to a decision.
‘Do you have a contact number for this Fr Perez?’
Jimmy took out his mobile.
‘Ready?’
Suarez collected her handbag, took her mobile out then nodded. She keyed in the numbers as Jimmy gave them to her and the phone got answered as if the person on the other end was expecting a call.
‘Hello, Fr Perez? This is Inspector Suarez of the Santander police –’ She listened for a moment and then put away her mobile. ‘He says he has been instructed to refer all contacts or enquiries from the authorities to the Bishop’s office. Under no circumstances was he to talk to anyone from the police about anything. All contacts are to be reported to the Bishop’s office and all enquiries directed there to be dealt with.’
Jimmy gave her a smile.
‘Then I guess you’ll have to phone the Bishop’s office.’
‘Do you think it would it do any good?’
‘Not if somebody had already anticipated your unwillingness to let me join in on this.’ The smile became a grin, ‘although I suppose I shouldn’t say that. Maybe I’m supposed to refer all questions from the authorities as well.’
‘Very funny.’
Jimmy switched of the grin.
‘Or perhaps it’s just Perez for the moment, but as I said, you’d have to phone the Bishop’s office to find out one way or the other.’ He waited while Suarez thought some more about it, then decided play-time was over. He’d more than made his point. ‘Look, I need to be on the inside on this, my boss was very clear about that when we spoke. I can’t tell you why because I didn’t get told, just what to say and I said it.’
‘And you don’t know why he wants you on the inside?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘No.’
‘Could you make a guess?’
‘No.’
Now it was Suarez’s turn to smile, but it wasn’t a nice one.
‘And that’s your idea of help?’
‘Look, if there might be even a remote chance of a terrorist tie-in, and that would be a very big if, your lot can go one of two ways. You can hand over the killing and all the information I’ve given you to whatever outfit here deals with terrorists, whoever is your Special Branch,’
‘Or?’
‘Or you can let it stay as a straightforward killing for the time being. If I’m allowed to tag along I can help you handle the Church side and see that you get off-the-record co-operation which is probably the only way you’ll get full co-operation.’ He could see she wasn’t impressed so he tried again. ‘If my boss in Rome wants me in as badly as I think, then why not ask for something to get me alongside?’ That got a response. Now he had her interest. ‘You want to know what this is all about, so make being told a condition for letting me keep in touch with whatever develops.’ He could see Suarez was interested. ‘Why not at least talk to your people about it? If my side can close doors they can open them as well. You need information and co-operation, my boss can see that you get both.’
Suarez still wasn’t convinced, but the way Jimmy looked at it, unless Spanish policing was very different from what he had known in London, neither she nor her local superiors would want whoever was their equivalent of Special Branch taking the murder away from them. He put his hand round his cold glass. He didn’t take a drink because it still didn’t taste of anything, he just held the glass and waited. He’d shot his bolt as far as persuasion went and sometimes silence was the best argument.
Suarez gave the sea the once over again. Jimmy joined her and noticed the ferry was much smaller, before very long it would have disappeared over the horizon. He carried on waiting. Suarez gave up on the sea and shuffled her drink on the table but didn’t pick it up. Jimmy could feel the heat getting to him. He’d nearly forgotten it, but now it came back. He put his cold hand to his cheeks and forehead. It helped, but not much. God, it was hot, and she said it could get hotter. Suarez finally surfaced.
‘OK. I’ll make a call and try to find out who I should contact to see if we can get you attached to whoever’s running the investigation, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. I doubt that I’ll get anywhere; what we know about you won’t exactly help.’
‘Sure, I understand, but don’t place too much faith in what you got told about me.’
‘No?’
‘Think about it. I get sent here and your lot get told I’m coming. They also get told all about my past. Jarvis gets a bullet in the head the day I arrive but I don’t know that so when we meet I volunteer the information that I’d come to see him. Quite a connection, and neatly arranged so that my involvement with Jarvis came directly from me, no third party needed. To arrange for all of that to happen must have taken a whole lot of effort, so I’d say someone was setting me up for something, wouldn’t you?’
She smiled again. A nice one this time.
‘That thought had crossed my mind.’
Thank God, thought Jimmy, she’s got a brain as well as looks, maybe we can be friends after all.
‘Maybe I’m your best way into what this Jarvis thing is about. If your lot don’t let me co-operate in some way then I’ll go back to Rome and you’ll lose what might be the best lead you’ve got. Unless I’m wrong and you’ve already got some good leads?’
But Suarez wasn’t friendly enough to give away free information, not yet.
‘I’ll see what my boss says. You wait here.’
She got up, slung her handbag over her shoulder, and walked out onto the walkway between the tables and the beach. She took out her mobile and Jimmy watched her make her call. There was quite a bit of talking and she did her share. Was she going to bat for him or was she just talking? When she’d finished she put her mobile away and came back to the table. Before she could sit down Jimmy stood up.
‘Listen, do you mind if we sit inside? This heat’s too much for me.’
‘Sure, I would have suggested it but I thought you preferred it out here. You were out here last time I came.’
‘Then, I didn’t have anybody to talk to, so I sat out here to watch the ferry. It’s not much but it’s better than staring at your beer. And it wasn’t so hot.’
Jimmy went to pick up his beer.
‘Leave it. I’ll get cold ones inside.’
‘Thanks.’
And they walked together through the palms. Jimmy’s head hurt with the heat but he wasn’t bothered. The friendship hadn’t taken so very much of a beating after all, nothing more than a little slapping around. No, on the whole he was well satisfied, even though his head did hurt.
Chapter Four
Inside the bar it was pleasantly cool.
‘Better?’
Jimmy nodded, the pain in his head had already eased.
‘How do you stand that heat each day?’
‘The truth is that we don’t usually get it as hot as this. Even some of the locals are suffering. You just picked a bad time to come if you don’t like the heat.’
She called the waiter over and asked for two beers.
‘Not in a hurry to dash off somewhere?’
‘No, I have some time. My boss will see what he can do and get back to me. Until he does I’ve been told to sit on you.’ The way she looked at him made Jimmy feel that she had chosen her words carefully and expected some sort of a reply, but he couldn’t think of one. Charm, wit, an easy manner with women: these were not something he’d been blessed with, and suddenly that annoyed him. Suarez got things going again. ‘What do you do in Rome?’
‘Not much. I went there after the Copenhagen thing. My boss offered me a job, I didn’t have anywhere else I wanted to go and nothing I wanted to do, so I got myself a flat and settled in. This is the first job I’ve been sent on.’ He
tried a smile. ‘It doesn’t seem to have started, well does it?’
Suarez ignored the question and the smile.
‘Did this boss of yours get you out of the Copenhagen thing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it the Monsignor who said you worked for the Vatican?’
Jimmy gave a short laugh. The idea of the Monsignor as his boss tickled him.
‘No, it’s not the Monsignor.’
‘So who is this mysterious, all-powerful boss?’
‘Professor McBride of the Collegio Principe.’
‘Part of the Vatican?’
‘No, not the Vatican. It’s an independent college. They study things.’
‘Like?’
‘The relationship between, religion, politics and power. Don’t ask me how they study it, I’ve no idea. They just study it.’
The waiter brought their beers and a silence fell for a few moments. Then her mobile rang. She took it out and answered it. She pushed her chair sideways so she wasn’t looking at him while she was on the phone and crossed her legs.
Jimmy watched her as she talked. He liked the way she looked; he also realised that what he liked about the way she looked had very little to do with getting into a good working relationship. He felt confused. She was young enough to be his daughter. Why would he feel attracted to a total stranger he had only met twice, and a copper at that? She was still talking, not paying any attention to him. Jimmy told himself it was rubbish, there was no attraction. He couldn’t feel anything for her, he was too old for that sort of thing. Unfortunately he had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t telling himself the whole truth.
Suarez finished her call and said something in Spanish to nobody in particular. Jimmy didn’t need to have it translated because she looked like someone who had just got bad news. She put her phone away.
‘Apparently I was wrong. I didn’t need to get in touch with anyone about you.’
‘No?’
‘No, someone has already had a call from Rome, from a monsignor who said he was acting on behalf of a very powerful name. He requested, on behalf of the name, that you be allowed to stay here as an observer and be informed of the progress of the investigation into Jarvis’s death. As the present investigating officer speaks no English I have been told to take over and provide you with all the information you require.’
‘That’s good isn’t it? It means –’
‘Would this Monsignor be the same one who pulled you out of Denmark?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well he seems to deliver messages for some very influential people.’
The look on her face showed Jimmy she was not a happy bunny. In fact it made it clear she was a very unhappy bunny.
‘What’s the matter? Why is that not good? I thought it was what we wanted?’
‘It was what you and your boss in Rome wanted.’
‘OK, it was what I wanted, but I still don’t see why you think it’s bad news.’
‘This morning I was nothing but a messenger boy in all this. I speak good English so I got sent to tell you that we wanted you gone. The Jarvis case wasn’t mine, it was nothing to do with me. Now I’m pushed in as investigating officer and a colleague gets pushed out, which means his nose will be out of joint.’ But Jimmy wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking that whatever she was this morning, it wasn’t a boy, not a messenger boy, not any sort of boy. But he kept his opinion to himself and let her carry on. ‘Your boss must throw a pretty powerful punch. Who did you say he is?’
Jimmy pulled his mind back to the job in hand. But it wasn’t easy. She was still sitting with her legs crossed.
‘Professor Pauline McBride, the original American Superwoman.’
Suarez uncrossed her legs, pulled her chair to the table and took a drink. Any anger in her voice was gone.
‘A woman?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘I’m surprised. I would have thought …well, not a woman, not in Rome.’
‘That’s because you haven’t seen her in action. You wouldn’t be surprised if you knew her. She eats broken bottles for breakfast and makes human sacrifices at the full-moon. She makes Attila the Hun look like Goldilocks. And she does it all without getting even so much as a crease in her neat, white blouse. And no one ever sees her hands move.’ He tried to get some humour into his voice. ‘Sometimes they call her the Shadow.’ But Suarez wasn’t amused. Why was he trying to amuse her? Why was he trying to get her interest? He gave up and went back to work. ‘So, I’m in?’
‘Oh you’re in all right, but just as an observer.’
‘And you, how do I stand with you?’
‘You’ve just dropped me into the shit with a lot of the people I work with. How do you think you stand with me?’
‘You know what I mean. Are we going to work together on this?’
Suarez looked at him for a second trying to make up her mind.
‘You tell me what you really think about it all and then I’ll tell you how we stand.’
‘Fair enough.’ Jimmy marshalled his thoughts. He’d been a detective once, now he had to think like one again. ‘A retired English guy tells an old priest friend something that, if true, is dynamite. Other people get told but no one takes it too seriously because the source is Jarvis and how would he come by that sort of information? But now Jarvis is in the morgue with a bullet in the head and you say it wasn’t a break-in that went wrong or anything like that which means it was a cold-blooded killing. So perhaps he really did know something after all, or was involved in something, something that made it worthwhile for him to be killed. Let’s look at what we’ve got, what we’ve been told by the priest, Perez.’
‘That he knew something about ETA.’
‘Yes.’
‘But that has to be –’
‘I know and I agree but let’s look at it anyway. First, why tell the priest? Not because he was frightened. If he really was frightened, very frightened, he’d be more likely to tell nobody, to keep whatever it was to himself. But if for some reason he had to tell somebody then he would go to someone who could protect him, like the police. But what he actually did was go and tell an old priest. Why tell Perez? How could Perez help him if it was to do with ETA? And Perez certainly couldn’t protect him if the terrorists got to hear about it.’
‘OK, why do you think he told Perez?’
‘The only reason I can think of is that Jarvis wanted what he knew passed on.’
‘It makes some sort of sense, not much, but some.’
‘And what is it that he wants passed on? I mean, so far as we know, what did he actually say, “I have this big secret about ETA, about their inner-council, and what I want you to do, Fr Perez, is tell somebody else that I have this really dangerous secret.” It’s madness. Once he’s done it, Perez knows, plus whoever he decides to tell. Perez writes to the Bishop’s secretary so now he knows, and so does anyone he might tell. Then the secretary tells the Bishop so he knows plus –’
‘Yes, yes, I get the picture. By the time it gets to Rome a lot of people either know or could know. Not the best way to handle a secret that’s dangerous enough to have you really scared and maybe killed.’
‘Correct. At least three people at this end know the secret as well as Jarvis. These people have all been told that there’s the possibility of a high-up Catholic cleric at the heart of the terrorist organisation ETA. Question one, how did it stay a secret and not get leaked to the media? Next, your lot get told that I’m coming here to look into something but you don’t get told what it is I’m looking into. All you get told is where to go so you can put together a picture of me that will make you send me packing almost as soon as I arrive. You knew all about me this morning but you didn’t know why I was here, I had to tell you that. So question two is, why were you told I was coming and that you should dig into my background? Next question, why was Jarvis killed on the day of my arrival? I’m like you, I don’t believe in coincidences, so
there has to be a connection. If there is then we ask the last question, what connects me to Jarvis?’ Jimmy took a drink. ‘OK so far?’
Suarez picked up her glass, took a slow drink, studied the glass for a moment then put it back down.
‘So far, keep going.’
‘Either somebody at this end is up to something, or somebody in Rome is, or both. Jarvis was part of it and it frightened him, if he really was scared like the priest says, which he probably was because, as it turns out, he was right to be frightened.’
‘Because now he’s dead.’
‘Exactly, and it’s been very carefully arranged to make it look like I’m part of whatever it is. So should I start being frightened? Is whoever topped Jarvis now going to come looking for me?’.
Suarez shrugged.
‘Don’t ask me, I only got given the case ten minutes ago.’
‘I tell you one thing we do know for sure, the one thing this can’t be about is a frightened bloke asking to talk to someone from the Catholic Church about ETA terrorist information he’d somehow picked up.’
‘Agreed, so what is it you’re saying? That Jarvis and Perez and all the rest didn’t happen the way you were told?’
‘No, I didn’t say that. It may have happened that way. Remember, I told you that when my boss gives you the facts she makes them point the way she wants you to go. I know, she’s done it before and believe me she’s good at it.’
‘So what about your boss as the one who’s organising it, whatever it is?’
‘Because she doesn’t arrange for people to get killed.’
‘Sure?’
Jimmy nodded.
‘Yes, sure. She’s on the side of the angels, she’s just a bit rough in her methods sometimes. Which leaves us with, Jarvis was killed because he was involved in something going on here, and the way he died makes it something criminal. But that stymies any connection with me because I have no connection with Jarvis or Santander, criminal or otherwise. And that leaves us with just one option, that Jarvis’s death and my arrival were one hell of a coincidence. And that won’t work because neither of us likes coincidences.’
