Inhuman Remains

by Quintin Jardine

  He grinned. ‘That’s okay. But you’d better make up with the priest too. He’s been worried about you as well.’ He eyed me up and down. ‘You look well, a lot better than the last time I saw you.’

  ‘Thanks, I feel it too. I had to get out of this place for a while, after last week’s excitement.’

  ‘Excitement, you call it? That’s an understatement.’

  ‘Any developments while I’ve been away?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not meant to know, Prim. Intendant Gomez has kept me out of the picture, more or less from the start of the investigation. He feels that I’m too close to you to be involved in any way, so I’ve had no information. I can’t argue with that: professionally, he’s right.’ He paused. ‘However, I have friends and they drop hints. There’s something. ’ He kissed me on the cheek. ‘Now I must go: I’m on patrol.’

  ‘See you, Alex,’ I called after him as I closed the door. I went straight to the phone and called Father Gerard at the residence. He was visiting a sick parishioner, so I left a message saying that his neighbour in St Martí was back and in good health. As I replaced the handset the digital read-out told me I had messages waiting. There were eight in all. Six were from friends including Shirley and Gerard, leaving polite, stumbling messages, wondering where I was and when I’d be back, as if the machine could tell them. The other two were from Intendant Gomez, inviting me to call him on my return, at a Girona number.

  I dialled it; a switchboard operator answered. At first he wasn’t sure if he could put me through to the intendant . . . Important man, I thought . . . and tried to fob me off with Garcia, but eventually I persuaded him that as I was returning his messages, he should take a chance.

  ‘Thank you for getting in touch, Mrs Blackstone,’ he said, as he came on the line. ‘I tried to call you on Sunday, and again on Monday, until Sub-inspector Guinart advised me that you were out of town.’

  ‘You have some news for me?’ I asked bluntly.

  ‘I have, but I’m afraid it isn’t good.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘An unfortunate choice of words,’ he murmured. ‘Last Thursday night there was an outbreak of fire in the hills behind Cadaques, in the forest. It took a long time to put out, and at one point it even threatened the town.’ This wasn’t news to me: Shirley and I had seen the smoke from Café del Mar. ‘It wasn’t until Saturday that investigators could begin to determine the cause. They did this very quickly. At the seat of the fire, they found remains that have proved to be human. They had been reduced to ashes, and it was clear that an accelerant had been used.’

  ‘How many bodies?’ I asked; my mouth had gone dry, and my voice was hoarse.

  ‘There was very little that was identifiably human, but our pathologist has determined there were two. This is borne out by the fact that my forensic team discovered two bullets among the residue. They also found fragments that they believe were parts of two mobile phones, and a larger piece of a polymer-based substance that we have now determined is what’s left of your taser weapon.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A few scraps, bits of metal, more melted plastic, which may have been the remains of credit cards, ashes that weren’t human, but were probably fabric and paper.’

  ‘DNA?’ I suggested.

  ‘Not a chance. Everything was consumed beyond the point of discovery. It’s like a cremation. I’m sorry, Mrs Blackstone, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s conclusive. Your aunt and your cousin are indeed dead.’

  I felt my last, lingering hope disappear. ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ I murmured.

  ‘I have to ask you,’ Gomez continued, ‘who is the next of kin?’

  I hadn’t thought about that. ‘I suppose I am,’ I told him. ‘My grandparents . . . Adrienne’s parents . . . died long ago. My mother was her only sibling, and she passed away a couple of years ago. Adrienne never married and Frank’s father died at sea before he was born. I’m older than my sister so, yes, it has to be me.’

  ‘In that case, I will need you to come to Girona. At my request the judge has issued the certificates of death, but they need to be registered. There is a form and it requires family information that only you will have. You do have it, yes?’ he added.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Among her many interests, my mum included genealogy. She had compiled the entire Phillips-McGowan-Blackstone-Grayson family tree, in considerable detail. It’s on my computer now, updated to include her own death.

  I printed the pages I’d need and took them with me to Girona that afternoon. Gomez helped me through the registration process, which is pretty simple, and obtained for me six copies of each death certificate. (This is not the same as the certificate of death, but that’s Spain for you.)

  ‘What about a funeral?’ he asked, when it was all done. ‘Normally, it would have to happen within twenty-four hours from now, but this situation is unique in my experience. Effectively, it has taken place already.’

  ‘What happened to the remains?’ I asked him.

  ‘We have them. I can return them to you, in one or two caskets, whichever you prefer, if you wish that they be scattered or buried in Britain.’

  ‘Can I have some time to think about that? I should consult my father; he may wish the ashes interred beside my mother.’

  ‘Of course. Take as long as you like. They’re not going to be a health hazard, not any more.’

  As I drove home, it occurred to me that another trip to London might be necessary. I hoped that Adrienne had left a will. If not, with no obvious heir, the settlement of her estate could be hellish difficult. I made it home in time to catch Fanette, who was able to give me the name of my aunt’s legal adviser, a man called Harold Liddell, a specialist in copyright and contract law. I called him, and told him what had happened. He was shocked, but he composed himself quickly. What he told me took a weight off my mind.

  ‘I drew up Ms McGowan’s will; it names me as her executor. It leaves everything to her son, with the proviso that if he should predecease her, it’s divided between you and your sister, Mrs Dawn Grayson.’

  ‘But who did die first? How can anyone say for sure?’

  ‘English law will decree that she did,’ Mr Liddell replied, ‘on the simple basis that she was older: crude but practical. If your cousin also left a will, that overrides your interests, but there is no evidence that he did. However, I must explore that possibility.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Public advertisement. I’ll need to consult an inheritance lawyer about where and for what period, but it won’t be too long.’

  ‘What about the agency? What happens there?’

  ‘That dies with Ms McGowan. Her relationships with her author clients were direct; in other words, she was personally entitled to commission. In law there was no agency; she was a sole trader. As her executor, I’ll be required to write to all her clients and their publishers and advise that future royalties should be paid direct. If I remember rightly, that includes your father, as beneficiary of your mother’s literary estate.’

  I hadn’t thought of that. Mum’s books still sell to children across Britain and the Commonwealth, in decent numbers. ‘Left to himself,’ I told him, ‘Dad will stick the letter in a drawer and forget about it. I’ll see that doesn’t happen. What about Fanette?’ I added, as an afterthought. ‘Adrienne hinted to me that she was backing out of the business and handing it over to her.’

  ‘She couldn’t,’ Liddell replied instantly, ‘without the clients’ agreement to the new arrangement. It’s tough on Fanette, but she’s out of a job.’

  I didn’t feel too much sympathy, I’m afraid. ‘What do you need from me?’ I asked him.

  ‘The Spanish death certificates, both of them: give me your address and phone number and I’ll instruct a courier to pick them up. As soon as I receive them, I can act. As for you and your sister, it’ll be a few months, I should think, before I can tell you if you’re going to inherit, but from what I gathered
from your aunt, neither of you is penurious, exactly. Between you and me, it won’t be a fortune, after inheritance tax: there’s the house, some investments and some cash; as you can see, there’s no residual value in the business.’

  ‘That doesn’t bother me. But what about the remains?’

  ‘They should be preserved. If an heir to Frank McGowan should turn up out of the blue, that person might want the right of disposal.’

  I told him where they were, and that made him happy. I left him to call his courier, and got on with the nasty task that I couldn’t delay any longer, telling Dawn and my father that they had two fewer relatives. I decided to clothe it as decently as I could, by telling them only that they’d been caught up in a forest fire.

  Dad wasn’t surprised, and he didn’t buy my cover story. ‘My darling girl,’ he replied, when I asked him why, ‘the day I can’t tell when there’s something seriously wrong in your life, I’ll be in the box above your mother. It doesn’t surprise me that the little bastard’ . . . he spat the word out, with a venom I’d never heard from him before . . . ‘has come to a sticky end, but it saddens me deeply that he took Adrienne with him. Probably inevitable, though. The boy inherited his recklessness from her; as witness, the circumstances of his birth.’

  I didn’t have to spin the same yarn to Dawn. Miles was at home when I rang and picked up, so I told him the unvarnished truth and left him to pass it on in whatever form he thought best.

  And then I turned to my top priority.

  Thirty-nine

  The expression on Emil Caballero’s face when he opened the front door of his massive white house . . . called La Casa Blanca, what else? . . . and saw me smiling on the step, is one that I’ll carry with me for a long time. It began with naked fear, but as the seconds passed and I said nothing, it changed, passing through uncertainty until it reached belligerence.

  ‘Yes?’ he barked. ‘It’s Saturday. I don’t receive people on Saturdays.’

  ‘You’ll receive me, though, Councillor,’ I told him, still grinning. I’d been watching the place from my hire car, parked almost opposite, and I’d seen his wife and children leave.

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ he threatened.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you did. Once I’m done with you, I’m going to see them, to make a complaint against you. Call them and save me the trip.’

  ‘You complain against me?’ he exclaimed, as if the idea was ridiculous. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Do you want a list? Listen, it’s hot out here. Invite me in or I’ll start screaming.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ he challenged.

  I took a step back. ‘You bastard!’ I yelled, at the top of my voice. ‘You come to my club, you fuck three of my girls, and then you leave without paying. You owe me money, you owe them money!’ I spoke English, but the message got through. He hushed me, and ushered me into a round marble hall.

  ‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘I just want to see you, before I bring you down. You asked for what. Attempted kidnapping, corruption and murder are three counts that come to mind.’

  ‘You’re a lunatic.’

  ‘That’s been said, but since we both know that you took me out of my hotel at gunpoint and tried to bundle me into the boot of your car, it seems to me that my sanity isn’t in question in this instance.’

  ‘It was an act,’ he protested.

  ‘It convinced me,’ I told him. ‘The gun was real enough.’

  ‘She told me it was loaded with blanks. The woman Lidia; she gave it to me and that’s what she told me. The whole thing was her idea. She said you were working for Roy Urquhart, trying to ruin the project. She wanted to frighten you enough to make you stop. All we were going to do was drive you to one of our less attractive districts, throw you out and make you walk back. Then that madman Urquhart, that thief, showed up, and it was you two kidnapped me. Mother of God, he shot my car! That bloody gun was loaded. Now you have the nerve to show up here and I let you in. No, you’re right, you’re not crazy, I am. Where is Urquhart now? Outside, waiting to come in and finish me?’ He was in full flow; I let him rave on. ‘You know how long it took me to get out of the fucking car, until I figured out that that luminous green strip was to open it? Two hours! Two whole fucking hours! You burned all my bikes, you and he. You stole my Suzuki, and it was four days before they found it, with the false plates. So go on, call him in and you kill me. You took everything else, you, he and that Bromberg woman. I invest a lot of money and a lot of goodwill in getting the permissions for the hotel and casino, and now it’s all gone. Bromberg is gone, Urquhart is gone, Macela is dead, and all the money is gone. Worst of all, my good name is gone. I’m a laughing stock in the city, with a piece of land that’s worth nothing, that I can’t even use to grow sunflowers. So, yes, we call the police. You denounce me, and I denounce you.’

  There was something about his tirade that was beginning to convince me. ‘The man you call Urquhart,’ I said. ‘You described him as a thief.’

  ‘That’s what Bromberg told me, and Macela, when he could see straight. They said he’d been stealing money from the company, and they kicked him out.’

  ‘Then they lied to you, or she did. And what did you mean about Macela seeing straight?’

  ‘The man was a morphine addict, hopeless. All the time he was here, he lay in my mother’s old house in Alvarez Quintero, shooting up.’

  ‘Yes, because you kept him there, doped up, until you killed him.’

  ‘Killed him? I never killed him.’

  ‘Caballero, I saw you go into the house. I watched you. You came in with a bag and you came out empty-handed, and that same afternoon he died of an overdose.’

  ‘I took him food!’ he shouted. ‘I fed the poor bastard. I didn’t kill him, I kept him alive. Yes, he did die of an overdose, and that’s the truth, but he did it himself. I checked very carefully with the police, believe me.’

  ‘So where did he get his dope?’

  ‘I have no idea, no idea at all. It must have been Bromberg.’

  ‘I think you may be right,’ I conceded. ‘How much do you know about her?’

  ‘I thought I knew everything. Now it seems I knew nothing. She came to see me, almost two years ago. She said she was a Swiss businesswoman, and that she had a project, a huge project, for which my property would be perfect. She offered me shares in the new company in return for my land, and for my services in securing all the necessary permissions to build and licences to operate. I agreed, we signed papers. Then Urquhart and Macela came to Sevilla to sell the project to investors. I never saw Bromberg again until a few weeks ago. She turned up and told me that Urquhart had gone bad on us, and that she would take over his role in the company until we were ready to start. We were supposed to begin in September, after the height of the summer was over. We had enough money to fund construction, she said. And that was all, until you turned up.’

  ‘I came to find Frank,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Who the fuck is Frank?’

  ‘The man you knew as Urquhart was my cousin; his name was Frank McGowan.’ I thought of Moira’s warning, but decided to chance it. ‘He was a cop, undercover, working to expose the fraud. So was Macela. They were sold out; that’s why Frank disappeared.’

  Caballero frowned at me. We had stopped threatening each other; instead, we were having a conversation. ‘So where is he now, this Frank?’

  ‘He’s dead, he and his mother, my aunt. They caught up with him.’

  ‘Bromberg?’

  ‘Not directly. Two men, North Americans, blond, smooth looking.’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ he declared. ‘Once when I met Bromberg in Hotel Alfonso Thirteen, she had two guys minding her. Sounds like them.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Last time I saw her she was rolling on the ground, screaming and holding her ass. After I escaped from the Chrysler, where you left me, I called her. But there was no reply. I haven
’t heard from her since. Beginning of last week, I called the company lawyer in Luxembourg. I told them that I needed Bromberg as we’d have to pay contractors some up-front money soon. They told me they had no means of contacting her, or the man Rowland, the chairman. They said also that the money had been moved beyond their control.’

  ‘Have you ever met Rowland?’

  ‘No, only her and Macela, and the man you say was really called Frank.’ He looked at me. ‘Christ, we’ve all been set up, eh?’ He sighed. ‘Look, I’m sorry for what I tried to do to you. I’m sorry about your cousin and your aunt.’

  There wasn’t much I could do other than accept his apology. ‘Where does this leave you?’ I asked.

  ‘Financially, not too bad. Politically, my party colleagues don’t want to know me. Fuck ’em, I’ll be all right. My barn was insured, and all my toys: I’ll get new ones.’

  ‘What’s your business? Your main business?’

  ‘I sell bridal outfits, for men and women. And religious robes, for priests and altar boys.’

  ‘If I were you,’ I told him, ‘I’d go to confession.’

  Forty

  And that was it. I caught an evening flight back to Barcelona, and was home in time to have supper in Mesón del Conde with Alex and Gloria, with Marte in a pram beside the table. In Spain babysitters aren’t in great demand: in our culture we tend to take the kids with us, from infancy, when we go out to eat.

  Next morning, I awoke feeling completely drained, empty, devoid of purpose and alone. I hate being idle, and usually fight against it by doing something constructive with Tom or by getting involved with local projects, like the annual St Martí wine fair. But that Sunday I couldn’t think of a single thing to do.

  So I took the advice I’d given to Caballero. I went to midday Mass, even though I was baptised in the Church of Scotland, a country not famed for its ecumenism. Once the service was over, and as Father Gerard saw the congregation off the premises, I slipped into the confessional, remembering what he had said about never turning away sinners. When he took his place on the other side of the divide, I told him all that had happened to me, from Adrienne’s first phone call. I left nothing out. I described my meetings in London and Sevilla, and I told him of my encounters with Frank, on the train and in the pool. When I was done, I waited.