As Easy as Murder

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Jesus,’ I whispered, looking around, quickly, to see if anyone was watching me, but if there was, they were well out of sight. The guide books don’t tell you this, but there are many car scams in our part of the world. Okay, most of them are targeted at rental vehicles or those with foreign plates, but not exclusively, and many involve putting a blade through a tyre. I was pretty certain that’s what had been done to mine.

  I checked the other wheels to make sure they were undamaged, then called Alex on my mobile, so that he could report it to tournament security. I was just about to climb in behind the wheel, when I noticed something else. The jeep has an aerial on its roof, a short stubby black thing that’s removable, should it be put through a car wash. It was missing; a little added annoyance.

  I was pretty sour all the way up the road, and when I dropped the wheel off at the Universal garage, for them to replace the tyre, but I’d managed to put it behind me by the time Tom came home from school. I was ready to bring him up to speed on Jonny’s progress, but I didn’t need to. He’d made his cousin promise to send him a text once he’d finished his round. By the same medium they’d also arranged to meet up at six, on the beach below our house, for a swim and possibly some windsurfing, although Jonny was doubtful about the latter, given that even a minor injury wasn’t something he could risk. All that was fine by me, since I’d invited Shirley and Patterson for seven thirty, and I didn’t need anyone under my feet when I was getting ready.

  Great in theory, and almost in practice. By the time they arrived, a very acceptable five minutes past the appointed hour, I had put together a Catalan salad (dead easy; cold meats and various sausages), made a chicken curry, which was simmering quietly, with the rice under way in my Japanese steamer, and I’d chopped a couple of pineapples into cubes, mixed up with raspberries and blueberries. I’d also had a burst of femininity, which involved showering, a full hair and make-up job and a very sexy low-cut red dress that I hadn’t worn for a while, and which I’d decided needed an airing. I knew that La Gash would come in all her finery, and for once I was prepared to rival her.

  All that was lacking, to make my preparations complete, were my son and my nephew. Jonny had arrived just before six, as I was cooking, and had headed out at once, in swim gear. I’d assumed, rashly as it transpired, that they’d come back while I was in my bedroom, but when I called them, all was silence. ‘Buggers,’ I muttered. I sorted my guests out drinks, then headed out to fetch them.

  I could have gone out through the garage, but that would have involved three flights of stairs, so I left by the front door, and walked round in front of the church. The evening was warm and there were a few diners in the cafes, but the Friday rush hadn’t really begun, so I passed no one as I headed for the slope that leads down to the beach.

  I saw the boys as soon as I reached the start of the descent. The church bells had just rung three times to signal the three-quarter hour. I suspected that Tom had interpreted it correctly as a signal that they were in the shit, for they were starting to head homewards; he was carrying his sail and Jonny had the board slung on his shoulder. I stopped, and was waving to them to get a move on, when I heard a noise, on my right.

  There’s a little open area there in front of an old stone garage. It doesn’t belong to anyone that I know of, and it offers an excellent view of the beach. Someone was in there leaning back into the corner by the garage, in the way that people do when they’re foolish enough to think they can make themselves invisible. This one couldn’t; her red jeans and yellow shirt were way too loud for that. I turned off the path and walked towards her, out of sight of the square, out of sight of anyone close by, and as I did she tried to stuff the object she had been holding into her enormous bag: it was a camera, with a long telephoto lens.

  ‘How the hell did you get here?’ I snapped.

  ‘It’s not a crime,’ she retorted.

  ‘How did you find out where I live?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m a reporter,’ she sneered, defiantly. ‘I have skills.’

  I took a guess at what they were. ‘You followed me, you cow, didn’t you? You watched me in the car park and you followed me up the road.’ A further possibility occurred. ‘Did you knife my tyre?’ Her face flushed, her eyes shifted and I knew I was on the mark. ‘And now,’ I continued, ‘you’re here and . . .’ The camera; her vantage point; the beach. ‘You’ve been photographing my son!’

  ‘And what if I have?’ she challenged. ‘He’s Oz Blackstone’s son too; there’s money in these pictures, and you won’t be buying them.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, quietly.

  I’d never punched a woman before. In fact I’d never punched anyone, apart from Oz a couple of times, when I was really angry with him. Until then nearly all my punching had been done in the gym and had been aimed at bags. I’d picked up the skill, though. I hit Christine McGuigan with a right-hander that her namesake Barry would have been proud to call his own. It caught her on the temple and knocked her on her red-trousered backside. I snatched up her bag, and pulled out the camera. It was a Nikon, like mine, and so I was able to find and extract the memory card in a couple of seconds. (As an added bonus, and proof of my theory if I’d needed it, I also found my missing aerial in there.)

  ‘I’ll call the . . .’ she began, as she scrambled to her feet, but I didn’t let her finish.

  ‘No, honey, you won’t,’ I hissed. I went back in time. A version of Primavera that I’d thought I’d left way behind me showed all her claws. ‘This is what you’ll do. You’ll get back into whatever brought you here and you’ll fuck off. You’ll put as many miles as you can between yourself and my boy.’ I glared at her and saw her fear as clearly as I could see the lump rising on her head and the mark left by my heavy dress ring. ‘If I ever find you anywhere near him again, I’ll kill you. I’m not being figurative here, you understand; if I see you as a threat to his happy existence . . .’

  ‘Auntie Primavera.’ My nephew’s calm voice came from behind me. ‘Is everything all right?’

  I looked over my shoulder; he was alone. ‘It is now,’ I told him. I nodded towards McGuigan. ‘Jonny, if you ever see this woman again, anywhere near any of us, I want you to tell me. She thought she could make a couple of quid by selling pictures of Tom to the press. I’ve just been telling her that she can’t.’

  He took a few steps forward and stood beside me. He was still wet from the sea, and his muscles were hard and glistening in the last of the evening sun. He stared at the woman, unblinking. ‘I’m sure she gets the message, Auntie,’ he murmured. Then he took me by the elbow. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You have guests waiting, don’t you?’

  I allowed myself to be led away, concentrating on calming myself down and becoming the nice Primavera once again, not the other woman. I’d frightened McGuigan, sure, but I’d frightened myself as well.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ I asked him, as we reached the house, although I could guess the answer.

  ‘He’s gone in through the garage to stow his board and sail,’ he replied, pausing at the gate.

  ‘He sent me up here to take the flak.’ He laughed. ‘He’s a really good surfer, Auntie P.’

  ‘So they tell me. You didn’t try it, did you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Too big a risk. He’d have embarrassed me anyway. He’s in a different league from me. Are they all beach boys around here?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  He smiled. His back was to the sun as it went down behind the roof of the building behind him, and I had to shade my eyes to look at him. What I saw was a depth I hadn’t appreciated before; I knew that there was more to Jonathan Sinclair than he allowed to show. At some time or another he’d been places that had left a mark on him, made him older than his years, and possibly a little wiser too.

  ‘This is a great thing you’re doing for him, you know,’ he murmured.

  ‘What thing?’ I asked.

  ‘Choosing to bring Tom up here, in this place. You�
�re well off; you could live anywhere you wanted in the world, in any city: London, Edinburgh, Paris, New York . . .’

  ‘I’m not sure the Americans would let me into the last of those, given my previous.’

  ‘Don’t kid me; you could fix it. I mean it, the world’s your . . .’

  ‘Mussel?’ I suggested. ‘There aren’t any oysters around here.’

  ‘Any shellfish you like,’ he chuckled. ‘But this is the one you’ve chosen, and it’s fantastic for Tom. I thought I was lucky being brought up in St Andrews, but this, this is way beyond that. But . . . what’s it doing for you?’

  ‘Everything. It’s my home; it’s where I belong.’

  ‘Because of Tom, yes; but one day soon, before you know it, it’ll be time for him to go . . . and you’ll want him to. I had that discussion with my mum and grandpa, four years ago. I’d have gone to Stirling University, happily, but the Arizona offer was there and they insisted that I take up the place. It’ll be much the same with him, and then you won’t be able to ignore the truth.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ I whispered.

  ‘That the part of you that isn’t a mother, she’s lonely.’

  Suddenly, he seemed even more mature. ‘Jonny, you’re not making a play for me, are you?’

  ‘God no!’ he gasped. Then he added, ‘No, I didn’t mean it that way! I’m not saying you’re not attractive . . . you are, very . . . and age doesn’t mean nearly so much these days, but you’re my auntie and he was my uncle and I couldn’t ever look at you without seeing him. God,’ he gulped, ‘let’s get inside. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I don’t know what made me.’

  ‘I don’t know either,’ I mused, ‘but maybe it needed saying. A hell of a conversation to be having at your front gate with a half-naked young man, though. One night, next week, maybe, we’ll have dinner, you and I, just the two of us, and carry it on.’

  We went inside. I apologised once again to Shirl and Patterson for the hiatus, but they weren’t bothered. In my absence they’d worked their way through most of a bottle of albarino. I killed the rest and opened another while we waited for Tom and Jonny to join us. As if he was following his cousin’s lead, my nephew had thrown on a T-shirt and jeans, shedding the golfer gear for once, but that didn’t get him out of a replay of his afternoon press briefing as my guests quizzed him about his round. I didn’t let it go on for long. After a couple of minutes, I cried, ‘Enough, you two. Jonny’s had a hard couple of days, and he’s got even tougher to come, so give him a break from the shop talk, please.’

  Dinner, when I finally got round to serving it, with Tom’s help, was pleasant. We talked about nothing more serious than the weather; the March snowstorm that had almost obliterated Catalunya the year before, and the searing summer that had followed. We relaunched the global warming debate (Tom was in favour, if it meant bigger waves on the beach) until Jonny ended it by saying that it was as real as the millennium bug. ‘I went to college in Arizona, remember. It couldn’t get any warmer there.’

  As I looked at Patterson, eventually I remembered my undertaking to Alex, which had prompted my invitation, and I realised how preposterous the whole notion was, that he could have had something to do with the death of the stiff in the woods. Okay, his career had been in intelligence, but so what? I resolved to pay no more attention to the fantasies of the Mossos d’Esquadra. Their time would be better served freeing me from the attentions of the likes of Christine McGuigan, but with a hot murder inquiry under way, they’d hardly be doing that. As Alex had admitted, his dismissal of her that afternoon had been mostly bullshit, and, as it had turned out, pretty ineffective. Which was a nuisance. I’d thrown a scare into her outside, no question. But what if it wore off? I knew next to nothing about the woman, other than that she wasn’t much good at martial arts, but did know how to blade a tyre. ‘Bugger,’ I whispered, as I realised I could have searched her bag further, for the knife; whispered to myself, I thought, but Patterson overheard me, and I realised that he’d been watching me a lot more closely than I’d been fixed on him, for all my earlier intentions.

  Jonny broke the moment. ‘If you’ll all excuse me,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll turn in. For all that I’m in the second last group tomorrow, I’ll need to be on the course early. Uche will be up at sparrow fart checking on the pin positions, and I need to support him.’

  That was it for Tom too; I’d noticed his eyelids beginning to droop. While he was too old for ‘Time for bed, young man’, there were still times when the suggestion had to be made, but that night wasn’t one of them. He’d been putting on a show on his board for his cousin and it had tired him out. Or maybe he suspected I’d tell him to clear the table, and decided to forestall me.

  That left the three seniors alone, for coffee and liqueurs on the terrace. Shirley was past her best by then, so Patterson had slowed up. He was seated between the two of us; on his left, Shirl was slumped back in her chair, with a goblet of amaretto in her cupped hands. When she began to snore lightly, he reached out, took it from her, with touching gentleness, and placed it on the table in front of them. She didn’t stir; when someone can separate her from her drink, you know that she’s asleep.

  ‘You’re a nice man, you know,’ I told him. I was on amaretto too, but I had tonic and ice in mine, in a tall glass: my version of a highball.

  ‘I like to think so,’ he said.

  ‘Have you always been?’

  ‘Personally, I hope so. My daughters seem to think so.’

  ‘Professionally?’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask me that.’

  ‘I just did, though.’

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. For a moment I thought he was taking refuge in sleep, like Shirley. But he wasn’t; instead he was weighing up his answer. ‘Without going into operational details,’ he began, when he was ready, ‘there were situations in which my service was required not to be very nice. But I was never part of those so I remained humane. Humanity is essential to a worthy society. Needless cruelty is inexcusable.’

  ‘But what if captive terrorists won’t tell the state what it wants to know?’

  ‘That’s their human right.’

  ‘Even if people’s lives depended on them talking?’

  He sighed. ‘At that point, people like us have to leave the room.’

  ‘Is that a roundabout way of telling me that when cruelty is necessary, the state needs brutes?’

  ‘I suppose it is. And you, Primavera,’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you always been nice?’

  ‘No I have not,’ I admitted, ‘and I’ll bet you knew that already.’

  ‘I’ve given up on judging people. From what I’ve been told about you, I know you’ve been inside for foolishness more than malice, but I know also that you’re an exemplary mother, and that the Foreign Office trusted you enough to give you a job quite recently, thanks in part to your connection with the former Home Secretary, which not a soul understands. Incidentally, it’ll be kept open for you, should you wish to reconsider your resignation.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve retired?’ I laughed.

  ‘Oh yes, I have, I assure you. But the strings are still there, the access to information, for me to pull if I need to.’

  ‘Could you pull them for me?’ I asked him quietly.

  ‘That wouldn’t be proper, Primavera.’

  ‘Neither was pulling them to run a complete background check on me.’

  He smiled. ‘Retaliation. You did it first, remember.’

  ‘True,’ I conceded, ‘but in any event, I wasn’t asking you to observe propriety. I was asking you to do me a favour.’

  ‘Depends what it is. Shoot.’

  I told him about my story, from my problem in the car park, leading into my second encounter with Christine McGuigan, and about the way I’d dealt with her.

  ‘Did anyone see this altercation?’ he asked, hardly giving me time to finish.

  ‘Jonny arrived right at the end of it. He backed
me up, naturally.’

  ‘Just as well. If you’re right about her sabotaging your tyre, anyone who carries a knife as a matter of routine isn’t to be trifled with.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not either.’

  He frowned. ‘Primavera,’ he said, ‘I’m sure that the mortuaries of the world are full of people who thought that way.’

  ‘Which is why I’d like to know a bit more about this woman. This afternoon she said she works for something called Spotlight Television, yet this evening I catch her taking telephoto shots of Tom on the beach. I mean what the hell is she?’

  ‘She’s probably what she says she is, a journalist. The world’s moved on, Primavera. Fings ain’t wot they used to be, as the old song goes. We’ve moved on from hot-metal presses and inky fingers. Nowadays, would-be reporters who can’t sell their stuff to radio or television can set up their own blog sites then post whatever smears and libels and paparazzi pictures they choose, or they can shoot video and upload footage to abominations like YouTube. Nowadays, every wannabe, can be.’

  ‘I’d still like to know for sure, though. Maybe I’ve scared her off, but maybe I haven’t. What if she carries on stalking Tom?’

  ‘What was the name on the passport she showed your friend?’

  ‘Christine McGuigan, and it was an Irish passport. But she told me her name was Christy Mann.’

  ‘And she said she worked for . . . ?’

  ‘Spotlight Television.’