‘Whose life or death?’
‘Uche’s father. Maybe Uche’s too. Maybe your bloke’s. We don’t know for sure.’
I had her attention. ‘What do you need to know?’
‘I want you to think about anywhere you were with Palmer, probably not in L’Escala, but maybe not too far away, somewhere different, somewhere he was interested in.’
‘Excuse me, but who in the name of Agatha Christie is Palmer?’
‘Slip of the tongue, sorry. I have a CD of his in the car just now.’
‘Just as well. I don’t think I could have taken another secret. Let me think.’ I heard water ripple in the background. ‘We went to Mas Torrent. How about that?’
Mas Torrent is a very posh, very public and very expensive hotel. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Mmm. In that case, there’s only really La Central.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a spa hotel, up near Darnius, close to the reservoir. We went up there for a couple of days, week before last, while I was getting ready to show Patterson off in L’Escala high society.’
‘I don’t know it.’
‘I’m not surprised; it’s quite hard to get to, five kilometres along a very dodgy road. Mind you, it gets worse beyond the hotel. I’d think twice about taking a car up there, all ruts and bumps and rocks.’
‘But you went up it?’
‘Yes, on our first morning there. We walked up it following a sign that said there was a restaurant up there. We were on the road for an hour and more, uphill all the bleedin’ way, but somewhere we must have taken the wrong turn, for we never found the bloody restaurant, only this old abandoned house. The track was windy all the way, until we came to a fork; we reckoned that we went right when we should have gone left. We should have known, ’cos it got even worse after the split.’
‘House?’ I repeated.
‘It had been, at one time; it was an old stone building.’
‘How did you know it was abandoned?’ I asked.
‘Holes in the slate roof, half the windows broken, no electricity, no proper sanitation, no running water, just a well outside; I have an instinct for these things, my dear. The odd hunter might have stopped there, in fact that’s probably what it was, a hunter’s lodge, but it hadn’t been occupied since Franco’s time.’
‘Did Palm. . Patterson say anything about it?’
‘Yes,’ she chuckled, ‘he made me laugh. He said it was a pity Robin Hood wasn’t Spanish, ’cos the sheriff would never have found him there.’
Sixteen
Mark was gone for so long that I asked for another coffee, and Alex joined me. ‘You’re not going to let me blow my job with this, are you, Primavera?’ he asked, quietly, as he ripped his way into the wrapping of the obligatory biscuit that came with his double espresso.
‘No,’ I told him, making a promise to myself that I wouldn’t. ‘Mark knows what he’s doing, and he is as well connected as he says, but at the first sign he’s reached a dead end, you and I will drive to Girona and I’ll put everything that I know and that he’s told you on the record, and after that, if you like, we’ll go to your headquarters and tell the whole story there.’
‘That might not get me out of trouble.’
I smiled. ‘We’ll be economical with the timeframe if we have to.’
‘This Genchev. Who’s he?’
I told him. ‘So you see, it is international. Also, we’ll be able to link the two murders here with the killing of the American DEA man in Malaga last year. That will give the Mossos big bragging rights over the Guardia Civil. You won’t be in trouble, you’ll be teacher’s pet.’
As I spoke, I saw Mark making his way around the poolside, steadying himself on his stick, but looking thoughtful as well. ‘Pleased with yourself?’ I murmured.
‘Pleased with Graham Metcalfe,’ he told me. ‘He must be plugged into every database in the world on this thing. It took him ten minutes to produce Uche Wigwe’s life story. He’s aged twenty-five, the eldest son and heir of Kalu Wigwe, Emir of Kanaan in Nigeria, and of Sonya, family name Odalonu. Uche was educated in England, at a prep school in York from the age of six, and then at Charterhouse School. From there he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he majored in and graduated summa cum laude in. .’ he winked at me. ‘Guess what, Primavera?’
‘Chemistry.’
‘Go it in one. His tutors at MIT said he was near-genius level. They had him marked down as a potential Nobel Prize winner, and universities the world over just love to produce those. They offered him the chance to do a PhD, and yes, you guessed it, on the synthesis of hormones, only for him to turn them down. He dropped out of sight for a while after that, surfacing again two years ago as an MBA student at Arizona State University, with the stated ambition of getting on the golf team, which surprised the coach there, because he wasn’t exceptionally gifted at the game, despite having a personal tutor. Instead of playing, he hung about the team, caddying for a few of them, before settling for the bag of the brightest and best, Jonathan Sinclair. The rest we know.’
He smiled at me, expecting praise no doubt, but all he got was a frown. Something he’d said had thrown a switch. ‘His personal tutor?’ I repeated. ‘Did Metcalfe put a name to him?’
‘Hey, come on,’ he protested. ‘The database isn’t that good.’
I got to my feet and walked around the pool. My back was to them as I dug out my mobile, and selected Jonny’s number. I wasn’t sure he’d reply; I thought he might have been switched off on the range, but he must have had it on vibrate, for he picked up. ‘Auntie P,’ he greeted me. ‘Has the bastard shown up? If not, when he does, you might like to tell him he’s fired. I suspect you’ll be better at it than me.’
‘Sorry, Jonny; that’s a job you can’t delegate. Are you sure you don’t want to sleep on it?’
‘No. You know I’ve been thinking about the longer term? Well, I’ve been speaking to Clive Tate. He’s found me a guy who’s looking for a bag. He’s free now, but won’t be for long, and he’s giving him a big build-up.’
‘You have to make the decision that’s right for you,’ I said. ‘But no, Uche hasn’t turned up. It seems he had family business to take care of. But I don’t want to talk about him. There’s something I need to ask you. It’ll seem odd, but nonetheless. Remember you told me that Brush Donnelly found your coach for you?’
‘No,’ he contradicted me, at once. ‘If I said that, it’s not quite what I meant. Brush approved Lena, but that was never an issue, for she’s one of the best. Strangely enough, it was Uche who introduced us. He said that his dad had hired her to work with him.’ He paused. ‘Does that help?’
‘Does it ever. You go hit another few hundred balls.’
I went back to the guys, feeling more than a little smug. I was going to tell them what I’d just learned, but Mark didn’t give me the chance. ‘Did you find Shirley?’ he asked, urgently.
‘With the greatest of ease,’ I replied. ‘The call was worth every euro too.’ I recounted her story, complete with Robert Palmer’s comment, then added one of my own. ‘Sounds like a bolt-hole to me.’
‘It’s all we’ve got,’ Mark agreed. ‘Do you know that area?’ he asked Alex.
‘Yes. I went hunting up there when I was a kid.’
‘Fancy doing it again?’
The cop face returned. ‘Hold on. If there’s a chance that’s where they are, I can get a whole squad up there.’
‘Just what we don’t need: a Catalan SWAT team.’
‘Come on, man. We’ve got a kidnap victim there and a probable double murderer, triple counting the American in Malaga.’
‘Who?’ I exclaimed, intervening.
‘Uche Wigwe, who else?’
‘Uche never killed anybody,’ I protested. ‘Why the hell would he?’
‘Good question,’ Mark agreed. ‘Uche never met Robert Palmer, so how could he have recognised him? He didn’t send Genchev and McGuigan to try to identify him, so how could he have killed them?’
‘Then who did?’
‘That’s the big question. Maybe Kalu gave them their orders, from Nigeria, but he didn’t get here until after the second murder, so he didn’t shoot anyone either, not personally.’