‘Of course.’
‘Well …’
‘I don’t think it’s a problem.’
‘Hah! It’s a problem, all right. A major league problem. A go to jail problem.’
‘Not if the subject’s dead, surely.’
Eddie hesitated again. ‘I’m not sure about that, even. But this guy Starr, are you sure he’s dead?’
‘Either that or he’s got helluva thin over the last few months. Skeletal, even. Look, Eddie, I don’t want financial info. Only some background stuff: married or single, occupation, employer and when was the last time that any trace of him showed up in the system.’
A great exhalation of breath came down the phone line like a roar. ‘Christ, I don’t know, Oz.’
I sighed, as loudly as I could. ‘I hate to do this, Eddie, but d’you remember that time …’
‘… when my mother had that problem, and you had a word with someone. Aye, okay. Enough said. Look, you don’t want this just now, do you? Only the lads are waiting for me.’
‘No, of course not. But if you can give me a call from home tonight.’ I gave him my phone number.
‘Okay,’ said Eddie. ‘Around six o’clock, our time.’
‘Great. I’ll be here. Be clear, man, this squares us.’
There was a growl. ‘Too fuckin’ right it does, pal. Too fuckin’ right!’
23
‘She’s fantastic,’ Prim had said of Shirley Gash. It turned out to be true, literally. Shirley is the stuff of fantasy, without a doubt.
I had seen her before, a couple of times at tables on the other side of the Trattoria, and on another occasion dining beneath the trees in the square at St Marti, with a man. I had been struck by her each time, but meeting her up close was something else.
‘Come away in, folks,’ she boomed from the top of the wide stone stair which led up to her front door. The villa’s high, wide iron gate had slid open as if by magic as I had pulled the Frontera to a halt in the street, giving us access to a wide driveway.
Prim waved and trotted up the steps, with me at her heels, as always. At the top, she stood on tiptoe and kissed our hostess, on both cheeks.
‘Shirley,’ she said, turning to me. ‘This is Oz; Oz Blackstone.’
‘Hello, love. Great to meet you after all I heard from this one at the weekend.’
All at once I was engulfed, by arms and a flowery muslin wrap, and by a great bosom, encased in a peach-coloured swimsuit. I hadn’t realised how big she was until then. She was at least as tall as me, slim enough, but strongly built, with breasts like racing airships, so she could never be model thin. I found out there and then that Shirley Gash is one of nature’s great huggers. When that splendid woman, in her pastel colours, hugs you, it’s an experience akin to falling into a field of sunflowers.
‘Hi,’ I said, when I could. ‘Just as well we’ve been formally introduced, isn’t it.’
She roared with laughter and threw an arm around my shoulders, drawing me into the villa. Rude as it was, I gazed around. I couldn’t help it. This was not your average Spanish holiday home. Everything about it was on the big scale, as if it had been built to scale for Shirley … which in fact turned out to have been the case. The square entrance hall led to a huge living-room, beyond which I could see a roofed-over terrace, so big that it put ours to shame.
I was about to step through its double doors when she took my arm. ‘No, this way, love. It’s too nice a day to sit in here.’
She led me through a door at the back of the hall and out into the sunshine. I looked around, and whistled. Three tall, thick palm trees shaded a corner at the back of the house. Two more stood off to the side, with a hammock slung between them, and other mature shrubs and flowering bushes were set around the grassed over area. But the garden was dominated by the pool, around twenty metres long, I guessed, and rectangular in shape. It was surrounded by a paved terrace, beyond which, on the left, I could see a summerhouse, stone-built like the rest. It seemed large enough for a family of four, with big arched wooden doors which opened into the pool area.
‘Like it?’ asked Shirley. I nodded, speechless.
‘Clive, my late husband, and I,’ she said, with strong traces of a Midlands accent, ‘we built it together. He was in the furniture business, manufacturing and importing. He started the company from scratch and did very well. A few years ago he was killed in a helicopter crash. My son does most of the running of the business now, along with my brother, so I decided to hand the place in Staffordshire over to him and spend most of my time over here.’ The mention of adult offspring made me look at her again, playing my ‘guess her age’ game. I lost. Shirley could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty … as, it turned out, she was … but the way she looked, at that first meeting, only a fool would have cared.
‘How do you find living here?’ I asked her, and not simply to make conversation.
‘It’s okay in the summer,’ she replied, with barely a pause. ‘But sometimes, in the winter, when it’s quiet …’ She looked at me, with a big open smile. ‘Frankly, love, it gets on my tits. But when that happens at least I can bugger off back to the UK.’
She showed us to a group of garden seats, big double loungers, like wooden sofas, with thick cloth-covered cushions. Some of them were set in the shade of the palms. ‘Make yourself comfortable, won’t you. Clive had these made for us in the factory. They’re placed so that you can sit in the sun, or sit out, whichever you prefer.’ Since I had coated myself in Piz Buin before leaving the apartment, I chose the sunshine. Prim took a seat tucked away under the palm leaves.
‘I’ve made up sangria and sandwiches,’ said Shirley. She glanced at Prim. ‘I don’t know if he’ll be joining us or not. You can never tell with that bugger.’
All of a sudden she cupped her thumb and middle finger to her lips and whistled. It was the sort of piercing sound that would put a line of bo’sun’s pipes to shame; the sort of whistle that most wee boys dream of being able to do, but very few can; the sort of whistle which, up close, threatens the integrity of your eardrums. In theory it should have been one of the least lady-like things I had ever seen — or heard — in my life, yet in no way did it detract from the glamour of the larger than life Shirley Gash.
‘Oi,’ she shouted across the garden, in the general direction of the summerhouse, ‘are you coming out or what, you old bastard?’ She gazed towards the big wooden doors for a while, but nothing stirred. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and vanished indoors, to reappear with a big tray laden with a huge plastic jug of sangria, four beakers, and a plate piled high with baguette sandwiches.
The voice came from over my shoulder, taking me by surprise. ‘Hope that wasn’t me you were shouting at. I respond to “Adrian” most of the time, but never to “You old bastard”.’ Prim and I looked back, simultaneously, towards the house. A man stood there, smiling. The door offered little head-room and so he almost filled it, although he was of no more than medium height. He was wearing cream slacks and a shirt to match, with a tiny crest on the breast pocket. He had a neatly trimmed beard, and his dark, sun-tinted hair was cropped to around the same length, giving his head a sort of ‘fitted’ look.
‘No,’ said Shirley. ‘I leave out the “old” in your case.’ She turned towards us. ‘Prim, Oz, this is my brother, Adrian Ford. He arrived on Sunday night for a week. Treats this place like a bleedin’ holiday camp, he does.
‘You off out to play again, then?’
Adrian nodded. ‘I should get another eighteen holes in. I won’t be home for supper, Shirl, I shouldn’t think.’
‘If you are, you’re taking me out. I don’t mind giving you a roof, but you know better than to look for me in the kitchen.’
‘Course I do, Sis.’ He leaned out of the doorway, kissed her, smiled and nodded to Prim and I, then vanished into the house.
Shirley stared after him. She was trying to frown, but I could tell that she was pleased by his attention. ‘Bugger!’ she muttered. ‘Still, he is my little brother and I do love ’im. He’s come over here as often as he can since Clive died, and since he got divorced. Five or six times a year; just to make sure I’m all right, he says. He means it too. He probably will be back this evening, and if he is, he will take me out for dinner. John, my son, says he’s a bloody liability in the business, but fuck it, it can afford him.’