Inhuman Remains

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘I suppose you expect a penance,’ he said. ‘You’re not getting one.

  I absolve you from the sins of fornication and taking the Lord’s name in vain. You’re clear on arson, since it was your cousin who burned those bikes, and in the circumstances the least Caballero could have done was lend you his Suzuki. As for the rest, soon the memories will not be so sharp.’

  I settled for that and invited him to lunch.

  The story broke in London next day, thanks to a press release issued by the Foreign Office. I had advance warning, courtesy of a guy in the Barcelona consulate who had been advised of my interest, presumably by Gomez. He sent me a copy by email. It seemed to me when I read it that the party line had been agreed between Whitehall and the Catalan tourist ministry. It said that Adrienne and Frank had died after being engulfed by a wildfire on hillside overlooking the Mediterranean. There was no hint that they had been used as kindling.

  The animal that was once called Fleet Street was on to it in a flash. I had one or two calls, which I fended off, but I was small fry in story terms alongside my famous sister, who drew top billing in most of the red-tops, and whose grief was expressed in a statement issued, and probably written, by her husband’s media spokesman. It did not hint at the truth, that she had barely known either victim, family members or not, but that wouldn’t have looked too good. I read as much as I could on-line next day: Adrienne rated respectable obituaries in the Telegraph and Times, but not in the Guardian: I don’t believe she’d have minded that at all.

  For the rest of the week I was like a solitary black cloud in a clear blue sky. I moped around the house. When I couldn’t stand that any more, I hung about the cafés, in turn, drinking coffee and frowning at any tourists who tried to make polite conversation. On the Thursday morning, I went up to Shirley’s for some peace and wisdom, but I didn’t feel comfortable there. The memory of that waterborne knee-trembler, and the promise I’d made to Frank in the summer-house, Tonight, then, were still too fresh in my mind. Finally, I found something to occupy me: driven by a force I still can’t explain, I sat down at my computer and sketched out a synopsis of what had happened to me; it was the start of a process that led in time to what you’re reading now.

  The outline was pretty much finished on Sunday afternoon, when Conrad Kent arrived with Tom and Charlie. In front of the whole village I gave my son a hug of embarrassing proportions, which he tolerated before dashing indoors to fill a water-bowl for the dog, and probably to check that I hadn’t damaged or pawned any of his possessions in his absence.

  Conrad would have driven straight back, but I had prepared lunch and made him stay to share it with us. He didn’t say much, but I could tell he wanted to. ‘Spit it out,’ I told him, in the end, as I poured him coffee on the front terrace, after Tom had been cleared for beach duty.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I read all the reports: a real official stitch-up.’

  ‘Very true.’

  ‘What does Kravitz think about it? Have you asked him?’

  ‘He’s not thinking anything.’ I lowered my voice. ‘He’s been told not to, like me.’

  ‘Leaned on?’

  ‘Hard.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘If you could find a security-service operative who goes by the name Moira, and do something painful to her, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, no, but thanks for the offer.’

  ‘If Kravitz can’t do that, neither can I, I’m afraid. The best you can do is forget about it, and concentrate on that lad of yours. He’s looking more like his father every day; that means he’ll be a handful.’

  ‘Any advice?’

  ‘Make sure you teach him the difference between right and wrong in black and white,’ he replied. ‘It was a grey area to Oz.’

  I looked at him. ‘I know that better than anyone in the world.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ he conceded. ‘But he didn’t do what you think he did.’ After he had gone, I found myself wondering whether Susie had put him up to saying that, but decided he was sincere, and that he believed it. I wish I did.

  Tom’s return brought Planet Primavera back into its usual orbit: around him. I put the writing aside for a bit and asked him to draw me up a list of things he’d like to do. The water-park at Ampuriabrava featured high upon it. We went there a couple of times, we did some bird-watching at Aiguamols nature reserve, we hit a lot of golf balls on the practice ground at Gualta and we fished, morning and evening, off the long jetty that stretches out from the rocks below the village.

  After a few days of that, I was happy again and the bad memories were fading, as my confessor had promised they would. And then, in all his wide-eyed innocence, my lovely son knocked the lid right off the can of worms.

  Forty-one

  We had just returned from the beach at Montgó, where we’d gone to escape the strong afternoon breeze that was stirring up the sand at St Martí. We were in the living room, drinking carrot and orange juice and Coronita beer respectively, and Sky News was on the box. I allow one telly in the house, and that’s all, although sometimes I cheat by watching on-line.

  I wasn’t paying much attention as the evening bulletin began. The main story of the day came from Westminster, where the dour and unloved Prime Minister had attempted to freshen up his image by freshening up his cabinet.

  One by one, the losers appeared, one or two with brave smiles, the rest about to trip over their long faces. And then the winners were paraded, in no obvious pecking order: third in line, the new Home Secretary, was . . . Justin Mayfield, MP.

  An official photograph appeared on screen, and then the programme cut to live footage from the doorstep of a posh terraced house, a red-brick job in a nouveau riche suburb like Fulham or Herne Hill. There he was, the man I’d last seen being given a one-finger salute by Frank as we wished him goodbye, smiling haughtily alongside his smug-looking little wife, a stumpy blondette.

  ‘I know her,’ Tom exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, I know him too. He’s on the telly a lot, but I met him a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Not him.’ Tom sighed, in his be-patient-with-her voice. ‘Her. I’ve seen her.’

  I stared at him. ‘You must be mixing her up with somebody else.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve seen her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here, in the village. It was her, I know it.’

  Tom is brilliant with faces. I decided not to argue. ‘When was this?’

  ‘A few months ago. April, just after school started again. Remember the day the old car broke down when you were coming to pick me up, and I had to come home on my bike and wait for you in Can Coll?’

  ‘Yes, I remember that.’

  ‘It was then. I saw her then, and I spoke to her.’

  ‘You mean she spoke to you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I spoke to her. I asked her why she was videoing our house.’

  ‘She was doing what?’

  ‘I told you, Mum.’ I was trying his patience.

  ‘As in, she was filming the whole village?’

  ‘No, just here, so I asked her why, and she just laughed at me and told me not to be nosy, so I told her it was our house, and that you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then she went away, out of the square, just as the man at Can Coll came over to see what was happening.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that something?’ I murmured.

  My telly is fed through a very clever little box. Among other things it lets you rewind programmes, and that was what I did with the Sky News bulletin, running it back until I saw that upwardly mobile house and its self-satisfied occupants. The box also lets me freeze frames. I’d never used the facility until then, but when I did I saw that it gave a clean, sharp image. I went right up to the screen and peered at Mrs Mayfield.

  It took a second or two, but I realised I’d seen her before too. She hadn’t been blonde th
en. She’d been dark-haired, and she’d been calling herself Lidia Bromberg.

  I tossed the remote to Tom so he could watch what he liked, and dashed into the hall. I was about to pick up the phone, when I remembered Moira and thought better of it. I had reported my mobile lost and they’d given me another, but I still had Adrienne’s. I used that to call Mark Kravitz on his.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked him. Even as I spoke, my mind was working, adding pieces to a jigsaw.

  ‘Perfectly all right. I have a condition, Primavera; I’m not an invalid. I’ve had an okay day, in fact.’

  ‘Then I’m about to upgrade it to brilliant. Would you like to shove one up that Moira woman?’

  ‘In the sense of retribution, yes.’

  ‘Then dig up all you can for me about the wife of the new Home Secretary. I think my son has just made her day as bad as yours has been good.’

  Forty-two

  ‘You realise we have to be careful here,’ said Mark, as he reversed his car into one of the parking spaces that had been cleared in front of the Mayfield house. ‘We may know what we know, and you may suspect what you suspect, but this man is now the Home Secretary, not the middle-ranking ministerial wanker you met in Barcelona.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s good. But remember, the higher you climb . . . and all the rest of that metaphoric stuff.’ I looked at him and saw his anxiety. ‘I’ll behave myself appropriately,’ I promised him, ‘but what about you? You were threatened along with me, and so was your business. If you want to stay in the car with Tom and let me do this, I’ll be perfectly happy about it.’

  He grinned, and I saw that his concern had been about me alone. ‘You know what?’ He chuckled. ‘After you left I started thinking about Moira and what she’d said, and I realised that I don’t give a toss about her and her crew. I’m comfortably off, I’m well insured against incapacity, and I don’t have any dependants they can threaten. Anyway, what are they going to do? Sabotage my wheelchair? ’

  ‘In that case, let’s go.’ I turned to my son, in the back seat. ‘We won’t be long, love,’ I told him. Don’t worry, I had no intention of taking him in there to confront Mrs Mayfield. But when I’d known I had to go back to London, I’d realised I couldn’t leave him in St Martí, not so soon after bundling him off to Monaco, so I’d decided to take him with me and make it a holiday for him. (We left Charlie with the guy in El Celler Petit; he has dogs and said that one more wouldn’t make that much difference to him.) We’d done the Tower that morning, and Madame Tussaud’s in the afternoon. He was quite happy to sit in the car and play with his Game Boy, while Mum did a bit of business.

  For the purposes of that business, we were supposed to be researchers for an American television company that was planning a feature on the fastest-rising political couple in the land. Mark had made the appointment, using one of his cover names.

  His wheelchair was in the luggage space of the estate car, but he left it there, and used elbow crutches instead. There were two uniformed police officers, one male, one female, on guard duty at the Mayfields’ door. ‘Mr Crossley and Miss Gregg,’ Mark announced as we approached them, ‘to see the Home Secretary.’

  Our names were checked on a list, then the young lady officer . . . once again, it was with great sadness that I calculated that I was old enough to be her mother, if I’d got myself knocked up at around seventeen . . . announced us through a video-phone, and the door was opened.

  We were met in the narrow hallway not by the new cabinet member but by a pallid woman in a mannish suit, middle aged, wedding ring but no other jewellery, bad hair day, with an intense expression and the hollow cheeks of a heavy smoker. ‘Martina Smith, Press Office,’ she announced, as Mark put all his weight on his left crutch to shake her hand. ‘We spoke on the telephone. You understand the ground rules?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘We recite the list of questions I gave you, one by one, and they recite the answers you’ve drafted for them. That’s how it works, isn’t it?’

  I had the impression that she didn’t know whether to scowl or smile: she compromised by doing neither. ‘There will be some scope for supplementaries,’ she said stiffly, ‘as long as they’re appropriate and relevant. I’ll be the judge of that; I’ll be sitting in, as usual.’

  She swung a door open and stepped into a drawing room, beckoning us to follow, like courtiers. Mark led the way, and I followed.

  I was much better dressed than I had been in the Hotel Arts, and much better groomed, and so it took Justin Mayfield a few seconds to recognise me. When he did, the politician’s smile was wiped from his face like chalk from a blackboard. He glared at the press officer, and I knew that somewhere down the line she was going to pay, big-time, for not checking out our bona fides. ‘Thank you, Mrs Smith,’ he murmured, in a tone that would have etched steel, ‘we won’t be needing you for this one.’

  ‘But, Home Secretary,’ she protested, ‘it’s standard practice.’

  ‘This won’t be a standard interview. Leave us.’

  As Martina Smith obeyed, he turned back towards me. ‘Primavera,’ he blustered, ‘what the hell is all this about? If you wanted to see me, all you had to do was ring my office.’

  ‘It isn’t really you I’ve come to see, Justin,’ I told him. ‘As soon as I saw Lidia on telly the other night, I knew we had to renew our acquaintance.’ I smiled at Mrs Mayfield.

  ‘My wife’s name is Ludo.’ If he’d been in the dark about the whole operation, I’d have known it then, by the way he said those words. But his tone was wrong, his simple denial. There was no bewilderment there. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, nodding, ‘short for Ludmila. But in Sevilla, and on the website of a fraudulent hotel and casino project, she calls herself Lidia Bromberg. When she and an associate tried to kidnap me two weeks ago, that was the name she was going under. She had a black hair job then, but the cut was the same as she has now. I’m pretty sure I could tell you who her hairdresser is. My sister goes to him every time she’s in London.’

  ‘Woman’s mad,’ Mrs Mayfield snapped, and turned her back on me, as if she didn’t want me looking at her any longer.

  I couldn’t help myself. I forgot my promise to Mark, that I’d be cool, and I kicked her, hard, on the right buttock. She screamed, arching her back as her hand flew to her rump; I was glad that the door had looked exceptionally thick, so that the sound wouldn’t carry to the outside. Mind you, she wasn’t the only one who was hurting. I’d thought that my broken toe had healed, but it hadn’t, not completely. A spear of burning pain tore into my foot.

  ‘Hey!’ Justin protested. ‘I’m getting the police in.’ He headed for the door but I stepped in front of him.

  ‘No, you ain’t,’ I said, putting my hands on his chest to stop him. ‘If your wife was to bend over and drop her pants, we’d see a healing knife wound on her arse, just where I booted her. That was a gift from Frank, when he rescued me from her and from Emil Caballero. He thought they were only going to teach me a lesson, but I suspect Lidia might have planned more than that.’

  Mayfield sighed. ‘Look, Primavera, I know Frank’s dead. You must be upset, so I’ll make allowances. Now stop this nonsense.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen her naked in the last couple of weeks?’

  ‘Of course I have and, yes, she has a wound there, but she got it in London when she slipped in the street and landed on a broken bottle.’

  ‘And I was there when it happened, was I, and knew exactly where to kick her? No, Justin, that won’t work for a second. Let’s all sit down,’ I glanced at Mark, on his supports, ‘especially my friend, and we’ll talk you through it.’

  The new Home Secretary gave in. ‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s do that.’ His wife’s expression would have frozen others solid, but I guessed he’d seen it often enough before. ‘Come on, Ludo,’ he told her. ‘Do as I say.’

  She did, grudgingly. I looked at my companion, an invitation.


  ‘I’ve spent the last couple of weeks,’ he began, ‘doing a lot of research on you, Mrs Mayfield. Your maiden name, or birth name if you prefer, is Ludmila Banovsky, a member of an old Slovakian family, one that in the past was rich and powerful. Your grandfather, Ondrej Banovsky, was an industrialist, a steel magnate, and a friend of President Benes, in pre-war Czechoslovakia. This worked in his favour, for in 1937 he was advised that bad times were coming, and that he should protect his assets. He was an astute man; he did this by setting up a secret trust, in Switzerland, moving his family and as much of his money out of the country as he could, before the Germans arrived. He might have moved it all back after the war, but the country was unstable, and Communism was on the rise, so he stayed where he was and ran his enterprises from a distance. But they were in poor shape. The Nazis had allowed him to carry on, for they needed the steel that he produced, so the mills had survived, but as the tide turned against them in 1944, raw materials became scarce, and they had gone into decline. So, as a form of long-term protection, your grandfather decided to establish a business base in Western Europe, by taking over a French mining company called Energi, with solid profitability and considerable untapped reserves of coal.’ He paused and looked at Ludmila. ‘All correct so far?’ She scowled at him.

  ‘By the time the Soviets were gone in their turn,’ he continued, ‘so were your operations in what became Slovakia, all failed, all closed. And so was Ondrej, long gone. He died in 1965, and your father, Pavol, became head of the family, and chief beneficiary of the trust. When democracy was re-established, he reopened an office of the Banovsky Corporation in Bratislava, but that was no more than a patriotic gesture, for by that time the only asset it controlled was Energi. Unfortunately for your family, it wasn’t the cash cow it had once been. It needed good, strong management, but Pavol wasn’t a patch on his father. Ondrej would have ensured that the company had continued reserves or that it diversified in time, but his son sat back and watched the seams being worked out, and old equipment being patched up rather than modern machinery installed. When he died in 2000, and you inherited, Energi was doomed. Worse than that, its borrowings were underwritten by the family trust, in Switzerland.’ Mark stopped again; this time, it seemed, to recover his strength, and maintain his momentum. It was a long time coming; I decided to take over.