I walked the rest of the way home barefoot, since I didn’t want to get sand in my trainers. As I let myself in through the front door, remembering the new code without difficulty, I felt renewed, back in control. I thought about what Father Gerard had said about finding courage where you least expect it, smiling as I wondered whether that included a chorizo and cheese sandwich.
I showered and dressed for the morning, in not very much since it was going to be another hot one. Remarkably I still felt hungry, so I took some sliced bread from my freezer stock and toasted it, eating it hot with butter and jam, the way you shouldn’t, but the way I’ve always liked it.
I thought of calling Alex, but it was still early, and I feared I might disturb Gloria and Marte. Instead I went on-line, and found the electronic edition of the Costa Brava newspaper. I searched the latest stories, and found the one I was after. It reported that the Mossos d’Esquadra were looking for two unnamed English visitors, mother and son, who were missing, last seen at Santa Caterina, near Bellcaire, on the edge of a heavily wooded area. Short, succinct, no hint of murder, no hint of violence, no hint of anything beyond a couple of careless punters lost in the woods, where wild boar are rumoured to roam. ‘No, we mustn’t upset the tourists,’ I whispered.
I decided I had to see Shirley; a phone call wouldn’t do. I didn’t head for the house, though. It had just gone nine, and on most mornings at that time she’s to be found having breakfast at a pavement table outside Café del Mar.
‘Hi,’ she called out, as I approached from the car park. I took a seat beside her, and asked the waiter for coffee, with milk. ‘I guess your water’s fixed,’ she said, ‘since you didn’t come back last night. Where’s Frank, then? Have you exhausted the poor little bugger?’
There was an abandoned newspaper at a nearby table, the print edition of the one I’d looked at on the computer. I fetched it, found the story, on page three, and showed it to her, watching her eyes widen as she read. ‘Prim,’ she gasped, ‘what the fuck is all this about?’
I gave her a very potted version, speaking English to lessen the chances of being overheard, although often we use Spanish, even when it’s just the two of us. ‘Frank got involved with some bad people in Sevilla. They snatched his mum to get to him.’
‘How bad are they?’ she asked quietly.
‘Lethal, I fear.’
‘Seriously?’ I nodded. ‘You’re not involved, are you?’
‘No. They got who they were after.’
‘And your aunt?’
‘Innocent victim. Caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage. Choose your favourite cliché.’ I took her gate opener from my bag and handed it to her. ‘I owe you an apology, Shirl. It was wrong of me to impose on you without telling you the whole story. I could have put you in danger as well.’
She gave me back the device. ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘For the next time you’re in bother. You’re my pal, remember.’ She paused as the waiter brought my coffee. ‘You’ll miss him, won’t you? Just when you and he were getting close.’
‘That was just something that happened on the road.’
‘No, it wasn’t. For all I might kid you about it, I know you don’t do casual sex.’
‘Well, from now on,’ I told her, ‘that’s going to be the only kind for me. Seems that if I get too close to a bloke, he dies.’
‘In that case, I’ll bet Father Gerard’s relieved he’s a priest.’
I blinked. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘You know bloody well what I mean, but let’s leave it at that. Is there any chance that they’ll be found safe?’
‘You never can tell, but I don’t see it. There was blood; a lot of it.’
‘Oh dear.’ Shirley’s eyes misted over. She had liked Frank too. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Go and get Tom,’ I replied. ‘I sent him to Monaco for safety when all this started to happen. After that, I’m not sure. At some point I’ll need to tell my dad what’s happened, and my sister; we’re all the family Adrienne and Frank had. But I’m not up to that yet.’
‘When are you off?’
‘Now. I’ll call you when I get back.’ I slid a five-euro note for the waiter under my empty cup, stood up and headed back towards the car park.
Thirty-four
I had packed a small case before I left, with clothes for a couple of days, and slipped my passport into my bag, with my cash and my cards. With no need to go back home, I headed straight for the autopista, and France.
As I passed Camallera, noticing the shrine by the roadside that Gerard had mentioned, I switched on the CD player. Del Amitri filled the Jeep with sound. I selected another disc, pronto, knowing that I’d never hear that band again without thinking of Frank. Texas took over, but the Scottish connection was too close, and Faith Hill was too maudlin. In the end I settled for a French pop radio station that I knew would be in range as far as Montpellier.
By the time I’d crossed the border, the music was in the background and I was thinking again, about Sebastian and Willie mostly, hoping I’d given Gomez and Garcia enough information to track them down, but without, I found, too much optimism. Those guys had been pros; it was improbable that they were still in Spain.
Yes, they were pros all right. They’d never made a wrong move from the time they’d sat at my table in Sevilla. They’d been on the look-out for me. But how had they known I was coming? Adrienne’s first phone call, in search of Frank, had probably been enough to sound the alarm. My Scots accent when I’d set up my date with Lidia probably hadn’t been too clever either. But when I’d gone marching up to the door of number forty-seven, then quizzed that wee twerp of a shopkeeper, well, that had more or less hung out a sign. ‘Trouble in town, she’s blonde and she’s a Jockess.’ How much more stupid could I have been? I’d got in trouble, Frank had had to leave his safe-house to rescue me and, in the process, got himself and his mother killed. Unless. .
I searched for straws to grasp. Maybe he’d put up a fight and they’d had to subdue him. Maybe all that blood was his. I thought back to Africa and remembered that once or twice I had seen wounds that bled as much but turned out to be more or less superficial. Maybe. . I persuaded myself there was a little hope.
I clung to it as I drove east, through the morning, past Narbonne, Montpellier and to Nîmes. I stopped near Marseille for petrol and water. Before getting back on the road, I called Susie to let her know that I was on the way and should be with them in less than two hours. She sounded a little underwhelmed, but I put that down to her being busy, and to the unnecessarily short notice I was giving her.
When I got there, just after two thirty, to the secure villa on the hilltop overlooking the harbour of Monte Carlo, I decided I had been kidding myself about that. She was her usual effusive self, when she and Charlie greeted me, welcoming me in, then taking me through to the playroom where the kids were amusing themselves, out of the heat of the day. ‘Mum!’ Tom called out, jumped up and ran towards me, into my arms. He’s not usually so demonstrative; I guessed he must have been far more worried than he was letting on.
Of course the first thing he asked me was ‘Did you collect Auntie Adrienne?’
‘Yes, love,’ I told him. ‘She and Frank have moved on now.’
‘That’s a shame. I liked her.’
‘Perhaps you’ll see her again some time.’
‘And meet Frank?’
‘Perhaps.’
I stayed with him for a while, making a fuss of wee Jonathan, and of Janet, as far as that growing young woman would let me (I know she’s only eight, but try telling her that). Then, when it was swim time, Susie and I joined the three of them in the pool. (Charlie was barred from the terrace, I discovered, after an earlier incident in which he had tried to life-save wee Jonathan, who’s probably a better swimmer than the bloody dog is.)