As Easy as Murder

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Okay,’ he murmured, as Shirley stirred beside him. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, but for the first time that night I doubted his sincerity. Instinct told me that I was asking him to wade into waters that he’d rather stayed untroubled.

  ‘Do ’bout what?’ his partner mumbled.

  ‘About getting you home, my dear. Primavera has a busy weekend ahead of her.’

  Nine

  Was he ever right about that!

  It began well enough; when I went down to the kitchen, still half asleep, I found breakfast on the table and tea in the pot. Jonny had gone, but Tom had got things moving as soon as he heard me moving about.

  I’d done some pondering, as I showered, over whether or not I should tell him about Christine McGuigan and her interest in him. Finally I decided that if he was old enough to bake croissants from dough better than I can, he could handle that too, so I did.

  His instant reaction? He laughed. ‘Why would anyone want to take pictures of me? I’m not important.’

  ‘To some people you might be,’ I explained. ‘Because of what he did in films, your dad had a lot of admirers. People loved him and want to know everything there is to know about him. And that means they want to know about you, and Janet and wee Jonathan. You know Conrad, the man who works for Susie Mum in Monaco?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. Conrad was Dad’s assistant; I remember.’

  Indeed, he’d been a lot more than that. ‘Yes, that’s right. Well now he does the same for Susie Mum, and part of his job is to protect the kids’ privacy, and make sure they can grow up without being pestered by well-meaning fans, or by journalists who see them as a means of making money. That’s what this woman is; she’s one of those. We don’t have a Conrad to look after you; I’ve always done that myself. Now you have to help me.’ I described McGuigan, as best I could. ‘If you notice anyone like her around in the next day or so, taking pictures of you, I want you to tell me. If I’m not there, suppose you see someone when you’re at school, tell a teacher. If it happens when you’re on the beach, at Vaive, say, tell Philippe or Teresa or anyone else you know.’

  ‘What if she tries to speak to me and you’re not around?’

  ‘Ignore her and walk straight home.’

  ‘What if she tries to stop me?’

  I frowned, worried that I might be alarming him. ‘Tom, don’t be scared by this. She’s not out to harm you; I don’t believe that.’

  ‘I’m not scared, Mum. Is she bigger than you?’

  ‘No. A little bit smaller. She’s not that much bigger than you are.’

  An eyebrow rose. ‘Did she scare you?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I snorted. ‘I’m careful about you, that’s all. I won’t have her or anyone else drawing attention to you, selling pictures to the press or posting them online.’

  ‘Like you won’t let me go on Facebook or on Myspace or on Twitter.’

  ‘Exactly. Same reason. Your privacy’s important, Tom.’

  ‘Then don’t worry, Mum. If she did try to stop me I wouldn’t let her.’ He chuckled. ‘Neither would Charlie.’ He had a point there; Charlie might be a big oaf, but he’s Tom’s big oaf. If he turned serious, most people would pause for a moment of reflection. ‘When are we going to the golf course?’ he continued, dismissing Christine McGuigan from his thoughts.

  ‘In time to see Jonny start his round.’

  ‘Can we go sooner? He said I could watch him practise.’

  And that’s what we did. When we got to the range, just after eleven thirty, he was already there, just starting his practice routine. I had intended not to disturb him and go straight up to the viewing stand, but he spotted us and waved us across. Tom hadn’t met Uche, so Jonny introduced them.

  ‘Honoured, young sir,’ the caddie said, at his most princely as they shook hands. ‘The boss tells me you’re a whizz on a sailboard,’ he went on. ‘I’ve tried it; I’m not. Sometimes on the golf course I can walk on water, but I can’t float on it. I just sink.’

  Tom frowned, wrinkling his nose. ‘I float well enough,’ he said, ‘and I swim pretty well too, but I always wear a life jacket on my board.’

  Jonny laughed. ‘Uche would need at least two of those,’ he said. ‘He can swim, but like he says, only in one direction, straight down.’

  As he spoke, Lena Mankell arrived, and the atmosphere changed, as if a cold wind had blown down from Sweden. Again Jonny introduced us. She acknowledged us, politely, and then ignored us completely. In other circumstances, I might have taken that badly, but we were in her workplace, so I didn’t interpret it as rudeness, only professionalism. I left them to it and headed for the stand. I was going to take Tom with me, but Uche asked him to stay. ‘You can be our runner,’ he said. ‘Fetch more balls when we need them. Otherwise that’s my job.’

  So he stayed with them on the range, he watched and he ran, whenever it was necessary. To his disappointment, though, he couldn’t go inside the ropes when the round started. He had to stay in the crowd with me. Luckily, it wasn’t vast; the main galleries were with the leading twosome, and with an all-Spanish pairing a couple of groups further back. Plus Jonny’s playing partner was Thai, and there weren’t a lot of them around to follow him. Because of that we saw every stroke, all sixty-eight of them, for Jonny shot another four under par round, taking him to fifteen under par for the tournament, still two shots behind the Irish kid in the lead but alone in second place. As soon as the last putt had dropped and I was able to switch on my phone, I found a voice message from Ellie asking me to call her back.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ she demanded, as soon as I did. ‘I won’t be able to speak to him for another hour at least.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him myself yet.’ I’d stayed clear of him as he left the eighteenth green, just in case Christine McGuigan was lurking somewhere, in disguise. ‘But I did bump into Lena Mankell and she was smiling. Trust me, you can take that as a positive.’

  ‘He’s not getting too excited, is he?’

  ‘Ellie, on an excitement scale of ten, I’d say he was just short of three. He’s not going to choke tomorrow, I promise you. Tom was on the range with him this morning, acting as Uche’s gofer; he says nobody else has got a chance.’

  She laughed. ‘Good lad; but what do you say?’

  ‘You know what golf’s like. Nothing’s certain until all the scores are recorded, and the boy in the lead is a terrific player. But whether Jonny wins or not I’m sure he’s going to do what he really came here to do and that’s make a lot of money. He says that third place here would be enough to get him his tour card for next year . . . but that’s not to say he’s thinking of finishing third.’

  I thought I heard a stifled sob on the other end of the line. ‘To be honest,’ Ellie admitted, ‘he’s done better already than I thought he would. I mean, he’s just my wee boy. Remember him when you first met him? As wild as the purple heather, he was. He’s calmed down a lot, but I still see him that way. Is he sleeping all right?’

  ‘That is something I would not know for sure,’ I reminded her. ‘But he’s eating well. I had a look in his bag on the range. Uche had more bananas in there than Tesco’s fruit counter.’

  ‘That Uche!’ She let out a cracked chuckle. ‘He’s some boy. Maybe I’ll get to meet his dad, one day, the aristocrat. If the son’s anything to go by, he must be an interesting bloke.’

  I’ve never known a Saturday evening like the one that followed. Jonny was so laid-back when he arrived home that I reckoned I’d placed him a point too high on that excitement scale. So was Tom; he could see only one outcome, so it didn’t occur to him to be any more worried about the final round than he had been about the first three. No, it was me who was strung out.

  I’d started putting a meal together, but only succeeded in slicing my finger instead of an onion. Jonny walked in on me as I was stopping the bleeding with a piece of kitchen roll. ‘Auntie P,’ he declared, ‘I don�
��t know what sort of sauce you were planning to make, but I don’t fancy it. Anyway, you’ve cooked enough this week; I’m taking us all out.’

  ‘You haven’t won anything yet,’ I pointed out.

  ‘My credit card doesn’t know that. Go on now; get dolled up.’

  ‘Must I? I feel like jeans and a T-shirt.’

  ‘Fine.’ He smiled. ‘Whatever makes you comfortable.’

  In the end I settled for shorts and a check shirt, but with enough cleavage showing to make me feel, and I hope look, a little less like a middle-aged woman out with her two boys. Jonny let me choose where we’d eat; I surprised him by directing us out of St Martí, to Mike’s, a simple German-owned waterside restaurant in L’Escala, where the menu never changes but is one hundred per cent reliable, and where they give you as many chips as you want. In Tom’s case, that’s usually a lot. In my nephew’s too, as it turned out; he had a massive salad, followed by a schnitzel, then he and Tom each demolished the biggest, gaudiest ice cream on the list.

  I left the talking to the lads. To my surprise much of it was about education. Tom was curious to know about schools in Scotland. (The obvious fact that he could have asked me, but hadn’t, made me suppose that he thought I was too old to remember.) He was even more interested in Arizona, and the academic courses offered to promising athletes . . . not only golfers, for American colleges take most sport seriously. Jonny talked him through the lot. ‘They don’t do surfing, I’m afraid,’ he said as he finished.

  I had to laugh. ‘Yes, sorry, Tom, you can’t do surfing at university,’ I told him.

  He shot me down. ‘You can, Mum. I’ve looked it up online. You can do a degree at Plymouth, in England.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ I gasped.

  ‘I’m not,’ he insisted. ‘And you can do them in California. Isn’t that right, Jonny?’

  His cousin nodded agreement. ‘Sorry, Auntie P, but it is. There are one or two.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I laughed. ‘What next? Bungee-jumping?’

  We didn’t stay out late. As before, Jonny had to be up with the seagulls . . . you’ll struggle to find a lark in St Martí, but those noisy bastards are omnipresent . . . to meet up with Uche. I had barely slept a wink, so I was able to send him off for the biggest day of his life with a mound of breakfast inside him.

  I had hoped to spend a few calm hours before heading for the course myself, but I wasn’t capable of calmness that morning. Neither was Tom, for once; he was impatient, itching to go. A year before he might have had other Sunday duties, as an altar boy in the church, a role he’d been given by Gerard, and latterly by the venerable Father Olivares. But after the old man’s retirement, the new priest had taken the view that his assistants were required to have been baptised in the Catholic Church . . . and I suspect also, although he never spelled it out, that atheism was a definite bar to office.

  So, as soon as Ben Simmers had opened his shop and could take charge of Charlie, we headed on down the road. As they had done since our first day, Shirley and Patterson were travelling independently. We hadn’t made any formal arrangement to meet up; it was hardly necessary, because our Shirley would stand out in a full house at the Camp Nou football stadium. When we got to the course, the car park was busier than I’d seen it. The attendances had probably been in the hundreds on each of the first two days, and overwhelmingly ex-pat, but the weekend seemed to have lured a few more people out of the cities. Nonetheless, as Tom and I mingled with the crowds we heard as much English spoken as we heard Spanish or Catalan.

  I was heading for the practice ground as usual, when Tom tugged at my elbow. ‘Mum,’ he said. ‘There they are.’ He pointed towards the clubhouse. Jonny and Uche were at the foot of the entrance steps. My nephew was in conversation with the telly guy I’d seen on the first day, the one with the Aussie hat, while his caddie was a few yards away, speaking, seriously, with another man, older, as black as he was, and entirely inappropriately dressed in a shiny suit that didn’t look as if it had come off the peg. He had his back to me, but there was something in his body shape and in the way he stood that told me who he was. As I watched them I remembered what Ellie had said the evening before.

  Uche saw me looking at them. It took a second or two for his smile to appear, but eventually it broke through and he beckoned us to join them. ‘Primavera,’ he exclaimed, at his most regal. ‘Come and meet our new supporter.’ He looked at him. ‘Dad, this is my boss’s aunt, Primavera Blackstone, and her son, Tom, Jonny’s cousin.’ Then back to me. ‘Primavera, Tom, this is Kalu Wigwe, my father.’

  The princeling turned, gave us a quick glance up and down, and said, ‘How do you do,’ in a voice that offered a preview of how Uche would sound once he had smoked a few hundred expensive cigars, like the one clenched between the first two fingers of his dad’s left hand. He extended the right, first to Tom, and they shook formally.

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ he replied.

  Wigwe senior turned to me, and as he did he swept off his wraparound Oakleys and fixed me with eyes that were vivid green, and more than a little bloodshot. I felt as if they were scanning me. The moment passed with a short courtly bow and another proffered handshake. ‘And you, madam.’ He beamed, showing all of his son’s charm, but somehow with more substance to it. Close to, the suit was so sharp it was dangerous. The material was pale blue, with silk in it, I was sure, and the jacket was Mandarin style . . . my dad still calls it a Nehru collar. The eyes twinkled; I guessed he liked what he saw. (With all that red in there they made me think of traffic lights changing.)

  Other than that, what I saw wasn’t hard on the eye, either. Kalu Wigwe had the same oval-shaped face as his son, but his version was rendered more imposing by age, and it was adorned by a full, well-trimmed beard. His hair was cut to around the same length, and there were grey flecks through it all. He was a little thicker in the waist than junior, but for all that he still seemed well built and not gone to fat. Age? Given that Uche was a contemporary of Jonny, he was probably a little older than he looked, but surely no more than fifty. There was much about him to fancy, and yet . . . although one colour was missing from those traffic signal eyes, amber, they still managed to say ‘Caution’.

  ‘This is a surprise, Uche,’ I said. ‘You didn’t say your father was going to turn up.’

  ‘I rarely announce my arrival,’ Kalu replied. ‘I have an unpredictable schedule, and I can never be sure of being able to keep family appointments, so I tend not to make them. There is also the consideration that uncertainty keeps my sons on their toes.’

  ‘You have more than one?’

  ‘I have three; Uche is the oldest, then there’s Oba and Solomon. Oba’s nineteen and Solomon’s seventeen.’

  ‘And Mrs Wigwe? Is she with you?’

  ‘Mrs Wigwe is with our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.’ Behind him, Uche’s eyes narrowed just a little as he spoke. ‘I have a companion, but she didn’t make the trip. It was, after all, short notice. I didn’t decide to come until yesterday. When I saw that Jonathan was doing so well, I knew that I had to support the team. So I flew here.’

  ‘I’m surprised you could get a flight so quickly.’

  ‘I don’t have that problem,’ he replied, modestly. ‘I have a Gulfstream jet, based at Lagos.’

  ‘That’s still a long trip,’ I remarked, ‘on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘Around eight hours.’ He shrugged, as if it was nothing. ‘I landed around nine last night, at Girona, very close to here.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a very comfortable aircraft; and it’s always ready to take off. I’d be happy to show you around. Perhaps you and Tom would like to take a flight with me.’

  ‘You don’t fly it yourself, do you?’

  ‘My goodness no, Mrs Blackstone,’ he laughed. ‘It’s not built for pleasure flights. I employ a crew; previously they were with Air New Zealand. They’re the best, I’m told.’

  The last time I flew on a private aircraft it came down a lot harder than the
pilot had intended. I walked away, but nobody else did. As a result, I’ve stuck to scheduled services ever since. ‘That may be,’ I said, politely, ‘but I think I’ll pass on that, thank you. And it’s Primavera, please.’

  ‘Anywhere you like?’

  ‘I like it here. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘Dad,’ Uche growled. ‘Stop being a flash arsehole.’

  His father looked at me, his expression pained. ‘You hear that, Primavera? The money I’ve invested my son’s education and that is the result.’

  ‘But he does have a fine, cultured accent, Mr Wigwe,’ Jonny pointed out. He’d finished his chat with the telly guy and come over to join us. ‘They called him the Count at ASU. It went down very well with the cheerleaders.’

  ‘So did they,’ his caddie murmured. ‘Very well.’ I shot him a warning glower; Tom was within earshot, and I didn’t want to have to explain the remark . . . or maybe I hoped that he didn’t understand it.

  But as it happened, he seemed to be in conference with Jonny. ‘Can I?’ I heard him exclaim.

  ‘It’s all fixed up,’ his cousin replied. He looked at me. ‘Our board boy’s called in sick,’ he told me. ‘You know, the kid who follows us round with the sign that shows our scores. The tournament director told me in the clubhouse, and I’ve volunteered Tom for the job.’

  ‘Is he big enough?’

  ‘Mum! I’ve grown two centimetres in the last month. I’m a hundred and fifty-two now.’

  Or five feet tall, expressed another way; and still short of eleven years old. I found a chart online a couple of years ago, and I’ve been plotting his growth ever since. It says that he’s on course to be around six three.

  ‘He’s well big enough, Auntie P,’ Jonny assured me. He looked at Tom’s feet. ‘He might be better in golf shoes than those trainers, though.’ He punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go and see the FootJoy guys. They might just have a pair your size. Then I’ll introduce you to the guy who runs the board boys.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be practising?’ I asked.