‘He was rather vague about that.’
‘Where did he go when he moved out?’
‘Switzerland. He got a job as a chalet maid in Davos, in an international ski facility called Cinq Pistes.’
‘As a what?’
‘Chalet maid. I’m not kidding. He filled out an application on the Internet, using his proper name, Frances. The company who owned the resort assumed he was female and took him on.’
‘What happened when he turned up?’
‘He showed them the name on his passport and pointed out that he had ticked the “M” gender box on the form, so any misunderstanding was theirs. They huffed and puffed, but in the end they agreed that he could give it a try.’ She smiled. ‘He lasted two weeks as a cleaner: that was how long it took them to work out he was rather over-qualified for the job. They moved him into the office, into the publicity department at first, but within six months he was head of sales and marketing.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘No. When he took me to the Savoy, he told me he was being moved to another company within the group. He was to become a director and sales manager of a new hotel and casino complex that’s being readied for construction just outside Seville. A few days later, he called me to say he was in post, and to give me his new business address. After that I heard from him, or I got in touch with him, every couple of weeks or so. He told me he was very busy, and kept apologising for never coming to see me. I understood, of course: business has always been my priority too. He sent me flowers at Christmas and on my last birthday. Everything seemed to be going fine, until suddenly . . . it all stopped.’ Her voice faltered, and she did her best to bury her face in her wine glass for a few seconds.
I waited for a moment. ‘When did you hear from him last?’ I asked, when I judged she was ready.
‘In the middle of May,’ she replied. ‘Around six weeks ago. He sent me an email saying he’d be in London on business, and that he’d stay with me for a few days, but he never arrived. I had his room ready, and the fridge stocked with all his favourites, but he didn’t show up. I called him and asked where he was, but his phone was on voicemail. I sent him a text, but got no reply. So I sulked.’
‘Weren’t you worried then?’
‘Not really. Frank’s never been all that reliable when it comes to keeping dates with his mum.’
‘How long did your moody last?’
‘About a month. I’d planned to sit it out until he got in touch with me to apologise, but it got too much for me. So I sent him an email, asking how he was, as if nothing had happened. Again, no reply. I texted him and called him, but it was the same. Finally I called the office number he’d given me, and asked to speak to the sales manager. I was put through to a woman. I told her I didn’t want to speak to her, but to Frank McGowan.’
‘And?’
Adrienne’s carefully drawn eyebrows rose. ‘And she said, “Who?” I repeated myself. She said, “Who’s he?” in a dry way, and in a mid-European accent that I didn’t care for. I told her that he was her sales manager and my son, and advised her to mind her tone, to which she told me that she was the sales manager, that her name was Lidia Bromberg, and that she had never heard of any Frank McGowan.’
‘So it was bullshit: the big job in Switzerland, the promotion to Spain, it was all crap?’
‘No!’ my aunt protested. ‘It was real. I visited him in Davos. I had a week there, in the resort, as his guest. So was the casino; the number I called was on his business card, plus he sent me some literature on the place.’
‘Then he’s been fired, Auntie. He’s been up to something, he’s been caught and they’ve sacked him.’
‘If that’s so, why not tell me? Why would that woman deny his very existence?’
I didn’t have a snappy answer for that one. ‘What have you done about it?’ I asked instead.
‘Nothing that’s worked. I contacted the embassy in Madrid, but they had no knowledge of him. The man I spoke to assured me that if he’d been arrested, or involved in a serious accident, they’d have been informed by the Spanish authorities. He checked with all nine consular offices, and he even contacted the Guardia Civil, to see if they had any unidentified . . .’ She paused. ‘But there was no one.’
‘How about his friends? Lady friends?’
‘There was a girl in Davos, Susannah. I met her when I was over there: she was head receptionist at the resort. I called her. She told me that they kept in touch after Frank moved to Spain, but there was nothing between them any more. She’d had a Christmas card from him, but nothing since. She did say she thought he was involved with someone else, but she couldn’t give me a name.’
‘How about London? Anyone there?’
‘Not many. His business colleagues dropped him when the trouble arose, and so did most of his school chums. There are still one or two, though, people who stayed loyal. Justin’s the closest, Justin Mayfield. He and Frank worked in the House of Commons, in the dying days of the last Tory government. They were both researchers: Frank worked for a junior minister and Justin was with an opposition back-bencher. ’
‘What does he do now?’
‘He’s a junior minister himself; number two in the Culture department. He’s been an MP for seven years. I called him, of course; his assistant said he was busy, and that he would get back to me. He hasn’t though; not yet, at any rate.’
Some long-buried instincts started to murmur within me. I pushed myself out of my chair. ‘Let’s get this right, Adrienne,’ I said. ‘You’re telling me that Frank’s vanished into thin air, and that the company he was supposed to be working for has denied all knowledge of him.’
‘That sums it up.’
‘What about the bird in Davos, Susannah? If she and Frank had a thing going, she must be concerned too. Can’t you get more out of her?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
‘Then it’s time you spoke to her again. And it’s time you rattled the man Justin’s cage again. If he’s Frank’s closest friend, it’s time he was told about the situation, if nothing else. As a government minister he’ll have clout.’
And then a thought struck me, like a car I hadn’t seen coming. I found myself grinning at her. ‘But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ I exclaimed. ‘You want me to find him for you.’
‘No, no, no.’ She shook her head, but not quite emphatically enough. ‘How could you do that, really? You have Tom, you have a dog. Your hands are quite full enough, Primavera.’
‘I have a computer with a broadband Internet connection.’
‘So have I, but even today, there are limits to what the web can achieve. I need a hands-on approach.’ She sighed heavily. ‘And, yes, I admit that when I decided to visit you, I did have in mind the fact that you and Tom’s father ran an investigation business a few years ago, before all the later stuff happened to you. But now that I’ve seen how you live, I can’t possibly expect . . .’
‘No, you can’t, Adrienne.’ I picked up my glass from the table and took a sip of sauvignon blanc. It was warm, so I refreshed it from the bottle in the ice bucket. As I leaned against the terrace rail, ostensibly looking down at my aunt, I found myself seeing other things, scenes from times past, from affairs that might have been described as adventures, with a tall figure by my side, one whose smile and good looks were a match for a much darker persona. Old thrills, old dangers, all in the past. Compared to which, asking a few questions about my crooked, probably recidivist cousin . . . ‘But now that we’ve established that,’ I continued, ‘if you were able to look after Tom and Charlie for a few days, I suppose I could catch a flight down to Sevilla.’
She stayed poker faced: I made a mental note never to play cards with her. ‘I couldn’t possibly allow that, Prim . . .’
There were men out on the bay, in boats, fishing for squid. I could see, like fireflies in the night, the bright lights they used to draw their catch to the surface. I grinned at her, aware that she was luring me
into her net. ‘Cut the crap,’ I retorted. ‘We both know that you could, and that you will.’
Six
Tom was very good about it, when I told him I had something to do for Aunt Adrienne and that she’d be house-sitting with him and the dog. If he’d been upset in the slightest, I’d have aborted the mission there and then, but he assured me he didn’t mind a bit. In truth I was the one with reservations; my son’s early years had been a little nomadic, thanks to me, and I didn’t want him to form the impression that history might be repeating itself.
Once I was fully committed, mentally, I booked myself a flight on-line, from Barcelona to Sevilla for the next day, Monday: the regular schedules were full, but I found a seat on a budget operation called Clickair. That done, and having despatched Tom and Charlie to give the great-aunt a guided tour of the nearby Greco-Roman ruins of the city of Empuries, I sat down to review the situation.
Ade had given me a small glossy strip of paper with the logo of the Hotel and Casino d’Amuseo, Sevilla, a telephone number and a web address. I turned back to my computer and keyed it into the address bar, then sat back, impressed.
The home page showed a complex that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Las Vegas Strip, with a Y-shaped, ten-storey building sitting on top of what I took to be a vast gaming area, an assumption confirmed when I read the detailed description. A lake guarded the front of the building, while the rear opened out on to an eighteen-hole golf course. It was impressive, but it would have been even more so if it had been a photograph. What I was looking at was all artwork, apart from photography of the Andalucían countryside and the Sierra Nevada.
I scratched my head absent-mindedly as I studied it, feeling myself frown. There was something about the place that I couldn’t put my finger on. I thought about my time in Vegas, and as I did it came to me. I was looking at an amalgam, a blend of things I’d seen there; it was as if the architect, or artist, or whoever, had looked at an aerial shot of the place and had nicked pieces from it to form his grand design. Yes, for sure, the lake had been taken straight from the Bellagio, and the golf course from the Wynn. The building itself was more or less identical in shape to the Mirage.
That said, I had to admit that the presentation was first class. Okay, the design might not have been original, but imitation is the sincerest form of whatever, and if you’re imitating the best, that’s not so daft. Still, I found myself wishing that I’d asked more questions about the people behind Frank’s big job. My aunt was no fool, but her son was her blind spot.
The d’Amuseo project might still be at the planning stage, but one thing did exist: the ski resort where my cousin had worked his way through the ranks, in short order. Its number was there, on a business card of Frank’s that Adrienne had given me. I picked up the phone and keyed it in, then paused as two truths struck me: one, it was Sunday, and two, it was July, hardly the time to be calling a winter-sports complex. I almost hung up, but it was ringing so I let it, and was surprised when it was answered.
‘Bonjour, Cinq Pistes,’ a male voice announced.
‘Hello,’ I replied. ‘I don’t suppose Susannah’s working today, is she?’
‘Susannah Gilpin? I imagine so, but let me try Reception. Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Tell her it’s Primavera Blackstone, Frank McGowan’s cousin.’
‘Hold on.’
I held on, for around a minute, listening to the theme from Ski Sunday, until a female voice broke in. ‘You’re for real,’ it exclaimed. ‘So Frank didn’t make you up. He told me he’d two glamorous cousins, that one had been married to a movie star, and the other still was, but he wouldn’t tell me any names, so I assumed it was a touch of bullshit, the same as the stuff about the big-name authors he said his mother represents. He wouldn’t say who they were either. But if your name’s Blackstone . . .’
‘That’s right,’ I confirmed, ‘and it’s true about his mum as well.’ It’s nice to know, I thought, that Frank has a little discretion after all.
‘How can I help you?’ Susannah Gilpin asked, then paused. ‘You’re not calling to give me bad news, are you?’
‘No, I’m not. You had a call from my aunt a few weeks ago.’
‘Yes, that’s right. But I can’t tell you any more than I told her. I haven’t heard from Frank since Christmas.’
‘When you had a card.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you send one to him?’
‘Of course.’
‘To the hotel?’
‘No, to his home address . . . that’s to say, his private post-office box number.’
‘His private number? All my aunt has is his business address . . . and come to think of it, that’s a box number too.’
‘XC2301?’
‘That’s it.’
‘I have that too, but the one I use is XE0142.’
‘What’s the street address of the complex?’
‘I have no idea, Mrs Blackstone. Frank didn’t give it to me.’
‘But can’t you find out through your group? Frank told his mother that he’d been promoted within the organisation.’
‘We don’t have an organisation; Cinq Pistes doesn’t have any subsidiaries, or a parent company for that matter. Forgive me, but I suspect that he didn’t have the heart to tell your aunt what really happened. The year before last, at the start of the season, we had a guest at the resort. He was a Lithuanian, and his booking was made by a company in Kaunas. His name was George Macela. He and Frank struck up a friendship straight away. Frank never said as much, but I got the impression from a couple of things he let slip that Macela might have come to Davos to meet him. He used to go off on sales trips during the summer, and that year, one of them was to the Baltic states.’
‘Miss Gilpin,’ I interrupted, ‘can I ask you something personal? How close were you and my cousin?’
‘As close as you probably suspect. Nothing too intense, but he’s a very attractive little guy.’
‘He’s all that. Apart from his family connections, did he tell you anything else about his background?’
She gave a soft laugh. ‘He never stopped. He made up such wonderful stories. He told me that his father was a Thai pirate who’d kidnapped his mother when she was on holiday in the Far East, and that he’d been hanged for that and other crimes. He told me that he had an economics degree from Cambridge, that he’d worked in your Houses of Parliament. Oh, yes, and he told me that he’d done time for a multi-million-pound investment scam. Is any of that true?’
‘The part about the pirate’s pure fancy . . . as far as I understand, although I wouldn’t put much past my aunt . . . but the rest is pretty much accurate. He was an MP’s gofer and the scam wasn’t quite that big but, yes, it’s mostly true.’
‘And what about you? You are the cousin who was married to a movie star, aren’t you?’
‘Not for long but, yes, I was.’
‘He talked about you more than anything else. He said you were a few years older than him and that he’d met you a few times as he was growing up. He told me his mother went to your funeral, only you turned out not to be dead after all.’
‘Also true. Did he say anything else about me?’
‘Yes. He said there are two people in the world who scare him stiff. His mother’s one, and you’re the other, because you’re so like her.’
Jesus! A cold shiver ran through me. If Adrienne had given me a glimpse into the future, I wasn’t sure I fancied it. I made another mental note, to ask Tom if he found me scary, hoping he’d laugh at the very idea.
‘Let’s go back to the Lithuanian,’ I said, cutting that discussion short. ‘You thought his meeting with Frank might have been prearranged.’
‘Yes. It was pretty clear that they knew each other. Macela spent more time talking with Frank in the bar than he did on the ski slopes. He stayed for five days, two fewer than he’d booked, then checked out. Three days later, Frank was gone also.’
‘Just like t
hat? Was he fired?’
‘No, he left. We were together in his chalet, the night after Macela left, and he asked me if I would consider going away with him. I said no, I couldn’t do that.’
‘You didn’t fancy him that much?’
‘Not enough to leave my husband. It’s Madame Gilpin, not Miss.
Frank acted as if he was a little disappointed, but he said he understood. A couple of days later, I came into work and the managing director asked me if I knew where he was. His office was cleared, his chalet was cleared, the keys of his company car were lying on his desk, and he was nowhere to be found.’
‘He did a moonlight?’
‘That’s a good way of putting it.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘That’s what I asked him, when he contacted me a couple of weeks later, in an email, using a hotmail address I’d never seen before. His answer was that if he’d told the boss where he was going he’d have been released without notice. There was more to it than that, though. As well as being head receptionist, I’m Cinq Pistes IT manager. Frank had a PC, as all the management-level staff do, but he also has a personal laptop. When I looked at his computer, I found that all his files, all the information he had gathered while working for the company, had been cleaned out. This is a very prestigious resort, Mrs Blackstone. You would not believe some of the clients who have passed through it. Pop stars, presidents, prime ministers, plutocrats, we’ve had them all; the rich, the famous and the infamous. Frank took all their contact details with him when he left. He transferred them to his lap-top.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because when I asked him in my reply to his email, he admitted it. We also have a central terminal where everything is backed up. The copies had been deleted also. When I challenged him about that he owned up to that also; he told me that the data would be useful to him in his new venture. I asked him what that was, and he told me: a huge new complex called Hotel Casino d’Amuseo, just outside Seville, with a satellite ski lodge in the Sierra Nevada. That’s why he cleaned out those files, he said: rather that than leave them with a company that was now the opposition.’
Inhuman Remains Page 4
