Inhuman Remains

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘We must call the police,’ said Gerard, taking out his mobile.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m going to look around. Frank and Adrienne, their bodies . . .’ My words tailed off.

  ‘You should leave that for the Mossos.’

  ‘Yes? And what if one of them’s still alive?’

  If they were there, I guessed that they’d be in the open. There couldn’t have been time to bury them, surely. I headed across the clearing to where the vehicle had been. The ground was hard and dry. There were no tyre marks, but crushed twigs and leaves showed where it had stood. All around, the bushes were thick. If two bodies had been dragged in there, I’d have seen the evidence. I was about to look in another area when something dark caught my eye, on the ground, a few metres distant. I approached it, carefully, and knelt when I reached it.

  ‘What is it?’ Gerard called to me. ‘I’m speaking to Alex Guinart.’

  ‘Blood,’ I replied. ‘Tell him I’ve found blood.’ There were two of them, side by side, big pools of dark blood. I’d seen things like that before, in Africa, and the people involved hadn’t walked away. I didn’t want to touch them, but I could see that they were fresh, still not quite dry, for all the force of the sun. ‘Tell him it looks as if they were killed here, and their bodies taken away.’

  Thirty-two

  Alex was there within half an hour. He was first on the scene, with the same cop who’d been with him earlier at the roundabout. He took me back to the stone wall and sat beside me, with Father Gerard on my other flank, listening quietly and patiently as I told him about the clue Adrienne had given me, and how it had led me there.

  When I was finished, he looked past me at the priest, accusingly. ‘She could have been killed, Father.’

  ‘I should have stopped her physically from coming up here, are you saying?’

  Alex shook his head. ‘No, but you could have called me.’

  ‘And you would have done what? As Primavera supposed, you would have come storming up here with your guns at the ready, and there would have been a battle. Frank and his mother would have died anyway, and maybe, friend, so would you. She didn’t want to risk you, and neither did I.’

  ‘But that’s my job.’

  ‘Your job is to die? I don’t think so.’

  ‘My job is to protect.’

  ‘I believe that these people were beyond protection.’

  ‘Then now my job is to apprehend. Primavera, what can you tell me about these two men?’

  ‘I’ve told you some of it already. Their names are Sebastian Loman ... he’s Canadian, I believe . . . and Willie Venable. I told you about him yesterday, remember?’

  ‘Yes, and I checked with Immigration. There’s no record of anyone with that name, but that doesn’t prove anything. He could have come into Spain by road, from France or Portugal, or through Andorra. How did you come to know him?’

  ‘I met them both on Monday evening, in Sevilla, in a restaurant. I thought it was a casual encounter, but I know now that it wasn’t: they’d set out to look for me. They were friendly; in conversation, I told them I was having a break and that my aunt was here, in St Martí, minding my son. Next morning, Willie Venable kidnapped her. I’m sure if Tom had been there . . .’

  ‘But he wasn’t,’ said Alex, calmly, ‘so be cool. Go on.’

  ‘Next day in Sevilla, two people from the fraud that Frank was sent to infiltrate tried to abduct me from my hotel. Their names are Emil Caballero, a city councillor, and Lidia Bromberg. But Frank had been watching me, without me knowing. He intervened and we escaped. We made it to Córdoba, but saw Sebastian Loman in the Mezquita, searching for us. We evaded him and went to Barcelona, on the night train, then yesterday we came here. The rest you know.’

  ‘What can you tell me about the Land Rover you saw here?’

  I frowned as I considered the question. ‘Alex,’ I answered, ‘given the state I was in, I’m not even sure it was a Land Rover, or what colour it was. It was a big vehicle, that’s all. I didn’t see the number.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ I asked.

  ‘We wait for my bosses to get here from Girona. I fear the day isn’t over for you yet, Primavera.’

  I was sure he wasn’t kidding. ‘One thing I don’t get,’ I told him. ‘They didn’t come back for me after they killed Frank and Adrienne. Why not? Did Father Gerard interrupt them?’

  He shook his head. ‘They didn’t drive past him, and that road back there is the only one out of here. Okay, if you take a chance you might get off another way in a four-by-four, but you’d need to know the lie of the land. No, I’d say, my dear friend, that they left you because you’re high profile, Mrs Oz Blackstone, the mother of his son. If you’d died, it would have made news internationally . . . as it did before, if I may remind you.’

  He frowned. ‘Your cousin, on the other hand, is a former criminal, if I remember correctly what you told me about him before. Nobody will care that he’s wound up dead. Your aunt, that’s unfortunate, but she’s not famous either. Her murder will be forgotten in a couple of weeks in England, and will barely make the front page here in Spain.’

  I thought about what he’d said, and realised that it was all true: sad, but inescapably true.

  Alex’s middle-aged and higher-ranking colleagues, an intendant whom he introduced as Gomez, and an inspector, whose chest badge identified him as J. Garcia, arrived from Girona not long afterwards, with a support team who went to work at once on the drying blood. I wanted to give them a statement, then go home, but they insisted on taking me to the Mossos station in L’Escala, for interrogation, as they put it bluntly. Father Gerard did some insisting too, that he would accompany me. The unsmiling coppers tried to put him off, but he wasn’t having any.

  In fact, they didn’t take me straight to the station. Instead I was driven to the adjacent emergency medical centre, where I was given a thorough physical examination by the receiving doctor while they and Gerard waited outside. I could hear the medic through the half-open door as she briefed them. She said I hadn’t been raped . . . I’d never claimed to have been raped, as my friend the priest was quick to point out . . . but I had suffered some form of trauma, in the aftermath of which I was in a confused and highly excitable state.

  ‘You mean she could be delusional?’ I heard Intendant Gomez ask.

  ‘That is possible,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m not delusional!’ I shouted, proving beyond reasonable doubt that at the very least she’d been right about my excitability.

  I didn’t contribute to the improvement of relations between us by refusing to get dressed. ‘I want fresh clothes,’ I demanded, from under a sheet on the examination table. ‘I don’t have a proper shirt and those jeans are filthy.’

  Garcia scowled at me. ‘We need those anyway,’ he said, ‘for forensic testing. What you’re going to wear, that’s your problem.’

  ‘No,’ Gerard told him, in a quiet tone that might have been threatening if it hadn’t come from a man in holy orders, ‘it’s yours.’

  Gomez stepped between them; he sent the inspector to the police station to fetch a T-shirt and shorts as close to my size as he could find. ‘What did he mean by forensic testing?’ I asked, as the door closed on him.

  ‘We need to check your garments,’ the intendant replied coolly, ‘for blood splashes. There was a lot of it up there.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I told him. ‘I knelt beside it but I was careful not to touch it.’

  ‘You don’t understand me.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ The doctor had been right about my confusion too.

  ‘We need to check them for blood splashes,’ he repeated patiently.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ I shouted, as finally I grasped what he was saying, lapsing into English and drawing a frown. ‘Listen to me,’ I continued, in Spanish once more. ‘My cousin and my aunt have just been murdered, almost before my eyes, and their bodies taken Go
d knows where. I’ve just been shot with the sort of weapon they use to subdue bears, and you’re implying that I might have had something to do with their deaths. Someone in this room is delusional, as the doctor said, and it’s you.’

  ‘Madam,’ he said stiffly, ‘I am implying nothing. But I must eliminate. That’s why I need to test your clothing; to answer questions that I will be asked myself. Now, are you calm? Would you like me to ask the doctor to give you a mild sedative?’

  I was on the point of laughing in his face, but I stopped myself. Instead I paused for breath, a deep breath. ‘I am calm, Intendant,’ I told him, once I was sure that was so. ‘I appreciate that you have to interview me, and I would rather not be under the influence of drugs when that happens.’ I asked him to leave me with Gerard until his colleague returned, and he did.

  ‘There’s something I haven’t done,’ the priest murmured, once he had gone, ‘for which my bishop would reprove me.’ He took my hand and began to pray, for the souls of Frank and Adrienne, that their bodies would be found so that they could be properly committed, and for me, that I would be able to put behind me all the things that had happened to me over the previous three days.

  ‘I think that, maybe, I should join your team,’ I said, when he was finished.

  He smiled. ‘You’re a member already, whether you know it or not.’

  The replacement clothing that Garcia brought was adequate, even if the T-shirt was a little tight and the shorts were knee-length. I walked the short distance to the Mossos station with the two officers and Gerard, suspecting that I looked like a Girl Guide leader, but grateful that I felt cool for the first time since . . . since the first hour of that day, in Shirley’s pool.

  I thought of what I’d promised Frank. Tonight. No more tonights for him; no more days. The enormity of what had happened was beginning to sink in. I knew that I had to keep it at bay, to deal sensibly with the police.

  As we turned the corner, I was distracted by the sight of my Jeep in the station’s secure park. I had forgotten about it, completely; the key left in the lock, too. I guessed that Alex had driven it back, and felt a surge of gratitude.

  My interrogation lasted for three hours, and Father Gerard stayed with me for all that time. Gomez and Garcia were solemn but polite, never threatening as I related my story, from start to finish, although I could sense the inspector’s scepticism on more than one occasion. They took me through it for a second time, asking questions this time, and for a third. By that time I had been told that my clothes had come up negative, and so the heat was off, to an extent. Still, I felt that I was reaching the end of my physical and emotional resources when the intendant called in a clerk and dictated a statement on my behalf, summarising everything I’d told them. It was typed and put in front of me for checking; it was a formal denunciation accusing Sebastian Loman and Willie Venable of the murders of my aunt, Adrienne McGowan, and her son, Frances Ulverscroft McGowan. I noticed that it contained no mention of the Hotel Casino d’Amuseo fraud, confining itself to the events surrounding the killings, but I accepted that as reasonable, and signed it.

  It was almost ten, and darkness had fallen when Gomez showed me to the waiting Jeep. ‘I’m sure you’re safe now,’ he said, smiling for the first time since we’d met, ‘but I’ll put a guard on your house, front and back, to be sure.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ I replied. ‘My alarm will be security enough.’

  ‘As you wish. You’ll be kept informed of the progress of the investigation.’

  Father Gerard drove me back to St Martí, and took the car right into the garage. The system was still active, and that was a good sign. Nevertheless my friend insisted on going through every room in the house to ensure that no intruders were lurking, anywhere. Then he made me change the entry code, his back to me as I did it, and extracted a promise that next day I would have the locks changed. After all that, the least I could do was feed him, once I’d changed out of my police-issue clothes and into something comfortingly familiar.

  The humidity was pretty high so we chose the air conditioning of Esculapi rather than take a table outside in the square. Gerard is a typical Catalan carnivore, and had a steak, but I couldn’t manage more than a pizza, and even then, I cut off the crust. However, I could and did manage the best part of a bottle of Torres Coronas.

  When we were finished he saw me home yet again . . . I had a moment of panic when I thought I’d forgotten my new code . . . then went off into the night. It was only later that I discovered he’d left his trail bike up on the track to Santa Caterina, and had to walk to the parochial residence in L’Escala.

  That was it. Finally I was on my own, at the end of the day I had thought, for a time, wouldn’t have one. I sat on my bedroom terrace, safe within the cocoon of my alarm, half sloshed but cuddling a bottle of Coronita, and tried not to think of what had happened. Instead, I tried to think of the next morning and the things I had to do: check with Alex for overnight developments, call on Shirley to tell her what had happened, then fuel up the Jeep and drive to Monaco, to be with the only person in the world I wanted to see, no, needed to see, my lovely boy Tom who’d never get to know that he might have lost his reckless, stupid mother.

  I really did try not to think of what had gone down, but it was impossible. My hand crept under my shirt, of its own volition, found the two puncture marks on my belly, and a second later, I had given in to my memories of Auntie Ade, of her crazy little half-Japanese son, and to more salty, unstoppable tears.

  Thirty-three

  Honestly, I’m not the hysterical type: I can recall every occasion when I’ve shed tears as an adult. I can recall all of my good times and all of my sad times. The best? Giving birth to Tom. The saddest? Being alone when Tom was born, without family in the delivery room, friends or the man who’d made him.

  Not the killings of Frank and Ade? No, I’ve never thought of them in terms of sadness, but of shock, the kind for which nothing can prepare a person.

  As I had begun to say, I don’t cry a lot, but when I let myself go, it usually does me good, and so it was when I was awakened next morning by the rising sun, as I sat slumped in my terrace chair, my hair and clothes damp with the dew, my mouth like the slops tray of a beer tap. I sat for a while longer as the awful memories returned, one by one, dimming the bright glory of the new day. I contemplated going inside, closing the shutters and chasing more sleep, but I knew that would be a pointless exercise. Instead, I put on trainers and a swimsuit, let myself out through the garage, clipped on my bum-bag, with my keys and a bottle of water stuffed inside, and started to run.

  I headed along the walkway that leads to L’Escala, past the ruins, past the hotel and the beach bar outside, until I reached the road. I stopped at the Olympic statue. I had run harder than usual, and my breathing was heavy, so I waited until it had eased, then turned and jogged back the way I had come.

  When I reached the beach bar once again, the guy who runs it was opening up for early breakfast customers. I know him, so I asked him to look after my bag and shoes, then plunged into the sea. I swam for about ten minutes, walked along the water’s edge for a bit, until I began to dry off, then went back to the bar, retrieved my bag, and had a chorizo and cheese mini, with a double-espresso chaser.

  I walked the rest of the way home barefoot, since I didn’t want to get sand in my trainers. As I let myself in through the front door, remembering the new code without difficulty, I felt renewed, back in control. I thought about what Father Gerard had said about finding courage where you least expect it, smiling as I wondered whether that included a chorizo and cheese sandwich.

  I showered and dressed for the morning, in not very much since it was going to be another hot one. Remarkably I still felt hungry, so I took some sliced bread from my freezer stock and toasted it, eating it hot with butter and jam, the way you shouldn’t, but the way I’ve always liked it.

  I thought of calling Alex, but it was still early, and I feared I might di
sturb Gloria and Marte. Instead I went on-line, and found the electronic edition of the Costa Brava newspaper. I searched the latest stories, and found the one I was after. It reported that the Mossos d’Esquadra were looking for two unnamed English visitors, mother and son, who were missing, last seen at Santa Caterina, near Bellcaire, on the edge of a heavily wooded area. Short, succinct, no hint of murder, no hint of violence, no hint of anything beyond a couple of careless punters lost in the woods, where wild boar are rumoured to roam. ‘No, we mustn’t upset the tourists,’ I whispered.

  I decided I had to see Shirley; a phone call wouldn’t do. I didn’t head for the house, though. It had just gone nine, and on most mornings at that time she’s to be found having breakfast at a pavement table outside Café del Mar.

  ‘Hi,’ she called out, as I approached from the car park. I took a seat beside her, and asked the waiter for coffee, with milk. ‘I guess your water’s fixed,’ she said, ‘since you didn’t come back last night. Where’s Frank, then? Have you exhausted the poor little bugger?’

  There was an abandoned newspaper at a nearby table, the print edition of the one I’d looked at on the computer. I fetched it, found the story, on page three, and showed it to her, watching her eyes widen as she read. ‘Prim,’ she gasped, ‘what the fuck is all this about?’

  I gave her a very potted version, speaking English to lessen the chances of being overheard, although often we use Spanish, even when it’s just the two of us. ‘Frank got involved with some bad people in Sevilla. They snatched his mum to get to him.’

  ‘How bad are they?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Lethal, I fear.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I nodded. ‘You’re not involved, are you?’

  ‘No. They got who they were after.’