‘How did she sound?’
‘Okay. The spark seemed to have gone out of the lassie, as you’d expect, losing her man in the way she did; but she’s a tough wee thing. . She will survive, as the song says. She hasn’t been in touch with you?’
‘No.’›
‘Ach well, I expect she will. Give my love to Prim.’
He really did ring off this time. I passed on his greetings to my wife as I walked up to the other end of the pool to rejoin her, with lunch in mind. We were almost indoors when we heard the gate creaking open. I thought it must be Shirley, looking to borrow a cup of sugar or some such, but I was wrong.
As I looked towards the direction of the sound, a small, slender, brown-skinned girl stepped into the driveway. She carried what was either a small suitcase or a large vanity case, and was dressed in a heavy old-fashioned coat, the sort I’d have expected to see on someone twenty years older, but not on her. It flapped half open as I moved towards her and, underneath, I caught a glimpse of a flimsy cotton dress.
‘Can I help you? I asked as I walked towards her, forgetting myself and speaking to her in English. She looked at me blankly, until I repeated the question in Spanish.
‘I was told to come here,’ she answered. The coat opened wider as she spoke, letting me see just how flimsy the dress was. It seemed to cling to her body, making it pretty clear that it was all she was wearing, other than a pair of shoes with platform soles and laces which wound their way up her legs to tie in front of her shins.
I sensed a wind-up in the offing; set up by Frank Barnett maybe, or by the pool man. ‘Pardon?’ I said.
‘I was told to come here,’ she repeated. I dragged my gaze back up to her face. She was very pretty, and certainly not Spanish, although I could only guess at her nationality.
‘Oh yes,’ I went on, still sceptical. ‘And who told you?’
She frowned, her eyelashes flickering nervously. ‘I was told. Sorry. There is a mistake.’
And then she was gone, as quickly as she had arrived, and as noisily, as the gate creaked closed behind her.
I walked back up the drive and into the house. Prim was in the kitchen, making coffee. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘If I had to guess, I’d say it was a call-girl; only she called at the wrong address.’
She raised an eyebrow as she looked at me. ‘She’d better have,’ she murmured.
11
For the next couple of weeks, we concentrated on settling in to our new home, and on getting things ready for the family coming at Christmas. The painters turned the place from a dirty white colour into a sunny terra-cotta shade, the new aluminium security shutters were fitted, and a wrought-iron gate replaced the pile of rust at the foot of the driveway.
We were even able to rejoin the world, when we had a computer system installed in a small room on the ground floor, which we had turned into an office.
One of my first e-mail messages was from Miles Grayson, our movie director brother-in-law. He told me that in spite of my performance. . his very words. . Snatch was now officially a hit in the States, having taken over one hundred million dollars at the box office in its first month on release. Since I was on one per cent of the gross, that meant that I could no longer prevent Prim from going up to Figueras and buying the blue Mercedes SLK that she coveted. You know it; the one with yellow leather upholstery and the steel roof that retracts into the boot on sunny days.
Miles also sent me over the Internet a file titled ‘Project 38’. I knew what it was before I opened it; the script for the new movie which we would be shooting in February. I printed it out on the morning it arrived and settled down to read it in one of our poolside chairs. The further along I got, the more nervous I grew.
My part in Snatch had been limited, tailored to fit an unschooled beginner like me. Originally I had been hired simply as a narrator, because my voice sounded right and it wasn’t unknown to the public, thanks to my wrestling gigs and advertising voice-overs, but as the project had developed, and Miles had become used to me, a few on-camera scenes had been added. There was nothing complicated, nothing I couldn’t handle with proper direction from Miles, and although my eventual impact on the movie turned out to be quite significant, in my heart I hadn’t really felt like an actor, not even when I saw the rushes.
This was different; I knew from my first read-through of the script, a fifties drama set in the Chicago area, that this time Miles planned to stretch me. I reckoned that he was taking a big gamble, and I was grateful for the coaching sessions which he had booked for me in the New Year.
I was halfway through my second read-through when I heard a car pull up in the street outside. The new gate swung open silently and Ramon Fortunato stepped into the drive. ‘Bon dia,’ he called out. . ‘Good day,’ in Catalan. He looked up at the house. ‘Very impressive,’ he said, dropping into English. ‘It’s amazing what bright colour can do to a place. There’s a town on the Costa Brava where the mayor has banned all the builders from painting new houses white.’
He whistled as he saw Primavera’s new car in the driveway. ‘Very impressive also. More than I can afford on my poor policeman’s salary.’
‘Bullshit,’ I told him, watching him climb the stair to the terrace. ‘You don’t fancy being talked about, that’s all.’
‘I wish,’ he muttered.
‘So,’ I asked, ‘to what do we owe the honour, and all that?’
The captain shook his dark head. ‘Nothing; nothing at all. I was just passing.’
I stared at him, unable to keep the smile from my face. ‘What? You were just passing by, on a dead-end road, in the back of beyond?’
‘I was visiting the ruins,’ he claimed, but I didn’t believe a word of it.
‘Crap. You either want to tell us something, casually, or you want to find something out. You’re a detective; I never yet met one of them who did something for no reason at all.’
Ramon surrendered. ‘Okay, okay; I admit it. I am curious.’
‘About what?’
‘I am wondering whether you have been doing your own detecting, into the mystery of the man in your pool.’ He glanced into the water. ‘It looks good now that you’ve filled it.’
I held up Miles Grayson’s script. ‘Believe it or not, Capitano,’ I said, ‘I do have other priorities than doing your fucking job for you. I take it from that, that the crime on our premises is still not at the top of your list of things to do.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Not exactly. I caught the man who killed the child, though. He’s in jail in Barcelona; having a very bad time, I hope. But since then there has been a jewel robbery in Figueras, and a large German-owned sailing boat has been set on fire in Ampuriabrava. They rank ahead of Senor Capulet also.’
‘Well don’t look to me for help, mate; not even in fun. Prim would kill me.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured. ‘Prim is an unceasingly curious lady. For her life is one big question, or so it seemed to me.’
I didn’t answer him. In fact I made a point of not answering him; I just let his words hang in the air for a while, as if they might remind him not to dig up Prim’s past, not with me at any rate.
‘We did find out one thing,’ I told him, once I reckoned that he had got the message. ‘Purely by chance, of course. We heard that he had a pal around here. He used to go into Bar JoJo in L’Escala, with a tall, thin, scruffy Moroccan fisherman called Sayeed. . until he went to the slammer for running illegal immigrants into the country.’
‘Is that so?’ the policeman murmured. ‘Did they go there often?’
‘A few times, according to what we were told. Ask Jo if you want chapter and verse about it.’
Fortunato turned and ambled towards the staircase to the driveway. ‘I might just do that,’ he said. ‘I think your body has just moved a couple of places up my priority list.’