‘Then do so. I’ll come to see you there tonight, and we’ll see about getting you further away. Don’t think about it. You have to hurry.’
He didn’t have to tell me that. ‘I have to see Mac,’ I said. ‘Wait here.’
I ran upstairs, heading straight for my room on the top floor; by the time I got there I was panting. I grabbed some clothes, almost at random, and some other essentials, girlie stuff like make-up, facial wipes, and such, and rammed them into a haversack. Finished, I went back down to the kitchen. Mac was there, wolfing a slice of toast.
I looked him in the eye and handed him the key to the store. ‘In ten minutes,’ I told him, ‘I want you to open that door again. When you’ve seen what’s there, do what has to be done.’ I gave him a quick hug. ‘You’re right, Mac, I’m a magnet for bother; trust me again, please, and look after my boy.’
He stared at me. I could still feel his eyes on my back as I left the room.
There’s a safe in the garage as well as the fridge. It’s built into the wall, it can’t be drilled out and it’s pretty much impregnable; not even the legendary Johnny Ramensky could have cracked it. Ever since my trouble a few years back, I’ve made a point of keeping an emergency stash of money, near at hand. I had four thousand euro in there, cash, and I took the lot. I also had a brand new taser weapon, but I left that where it was.
I took my bike from its place against the wall. . I could hardly have taken the Jeep, could I?
I stepped up to Gerard, and for the first time in my life, I kissed him, woman to man. Again, he didn’t flinch. ‘Thanks, love,’ I whispered. ‘It isn’t just Alex who’s putting his job on the line, is it?’ He said nothing in reply, but I knew. ‘We both have to leave,’ I told him. ‘You first. Come to Shirley’s back gate, after dark; I’ll leave it open.’
He nodded, climbed into his car and drove away. I counted to ten, then slipped on my haversack, straddled my mountain bike, and swung it out of the garage. I pressed the remote closer, chucked it back under the door as it began to swing down, and pedalled out of Dodge, or in this case St Martí d’Empúries, as fast as my legs could pump.
Thirty-two
Quite a chunk of my sensual history is tied up with Shirley Gash’s garden; I haven’t had all that many sexual partners, but two of my encounters have taken place there. Enough said about them, though.
Still, I had lots on my mind as I sat in the summer house and waited for night to fall. I’d made sure that nobody had seen me slip into the house and the garden isn’t overlooked by any of the neighbours, so I felt secure, or as secure as I was entitled to feel in the circumstances. Shit, I was an old hand at the game. I’d been a fugitive before. . or, to be accurate, I’d believed that I was. This time, though, it was for real. I was as innocent as I’d ever been in my life, but the Mossos d’Esquadra were after me, and they are not people you want on your trail.
The palm print on the chair: I had an answer for that, and I was pretty sure that a good lawyer would keep me out of jail, if only that was all they had on me. But it wasn’t; there was something nasty in my woodshed, and that wasn’t deniable. Planas killed. Then Justine’s mum kidnapped; done away with. I assumed that there had to be a connection, but I had no idea what it was. I had even less of an idea as to why anyone would choose to plant her body on me. I had. .
I had nothing. I was sitting uninvited in my absent friend’s home, with four thousand euro, a change of knickers and no idea of what I was going to do next. I couldn’t stay there for ever, I knew that sooner or later they were going to get round all my friends, and that would include calling on Shirley. When they found the house empty. . they’d be over the wall, for sure. Even with Alex running blockers for me, and I doubted if he’d do that again, not after the latest development, I reckoned I had a day’s grace, no more. My imagination grew more bizarre by the minute. Did they use bloodhounds in Spain? I wondered.
I was puzzled, I was scared, I was uncertain, I was missing my boy, all the more because I was afraid to call him to explain that I had to go away for a while. I had to assume that there would be a tap on my home phone and that they’d be monitoring my mobile as well. The one thing I wasn’t, was hungry. I’d raided Shirley’s freezer, microwaved a lasagne from her stock, and washed it down with a bottle of fizzy water.
I’d found something else too. Shirley has a great mane of hair; she’s very proud of it, and in recent years she’s taken to changing colours and styles all the time. Occasionally she’ll go blond, but usually she prefers a darker shade. She prefers DIY and often I’ll help her, so I knew where to search. It didn’t take me long to find what I was after, a box of her preference of the moment, a deep chestnut colour. I had plenty of time, so I took great care, and after an hour or so. . I wasn’t unrecognisable, but anyone who’d been told to look out for a blonde was going to give me a miss.
I knew I was going to need more than a change of hair colour, though. Men on the run have a great advantage, over a few days they can grow facial hair as a disguise, or if they had some to begin with, over a few minutes they can take it off. Us girls, we’re stuck.
It seemed to take ages for the darkness to fall. I spent the time wondering where I was going to go. Air travel was out, and probably trains as well. For a while I considered following Matthew Reid’s example and heading for the British Consulate in Barcelona. I gave up on that notion fairly quickly, however; his innocence had been demonstrable, while to a neutral eye, indeed to any sensible eye, mine was questionable. There was also the consideration that as soon as the consular staff ran a check on my background, they’d come up with my criminal conviction. I wasn’t a retired brigadier with dangerous secrets to protect. I was an ex-con and no reputations would be risked on my behalf. Plus, Avinguda Diagonal was a long way off on a bike. Hard as I thought about it, I could come up with no better solution than to cycle up into the mountains and hide out in a rented apartment or on a campsite in the hope that. .
In the hope that what? That whoever had decided to set me up, and had made such a good job of it, would have a crisis of conscience and confess?
‘Let’s face it, girl,’ I murmured as the big swimming pool reflected the first of the moonlight, ‘you’re fucked.’
A second or two later, I heard a creak; there’s a heavy iron gate at the back of Shirley’s property, and it needs a touch of oil. I shrank back into the summer house and waited, not quite certain who was coming, hoping that Gerard hadn’t fallen victim to a crisis of conscience himself, or been followed by Gomez and Alex.
He was alone, though; I shouldn’t have doubted his trust in me or his caution in making sure there was nobody on his tail. Puig Sec, the area where Shirley lives, is very quiet, even in the summer and so it’s easy to spot a following vehicle. I could see him from my hiding place as he walked up to the poolside; thick chested, narrow waisted, in T-shirt and jeans, his soft leather moccasins making not a sound. He carried a bag, over his shoulder.
‘Hey,’ I called out, stepping out of the shadows. He turned towards me and for the first time in more than twelve hours, I felt something other than despair. ‘Thanks for coming.’
He grinned as he walked towards me. ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’
‘What’s been happening?’ I asked him.
‘What do you think? The mayor’s mother has been found murdered. When Senor Blackstone called it in, all hell was let loose in L’Escala. The police. . all the police; the Mossos, the municipals, even the Guardia Civil. . stopped and searched every car heading out of town for five hours afterwards, looking for you. Eventually they stopped; they now believe that you’d left the area already.’
‘Have they put out a description?’