Had I something to prove as a result, though? Inside, did I believe that I wouldn’t really be square until I’d given her a kid too? No, I’m more mature than that, and anyway we had agreed before our wedding that we’d have a couple of years as a free and easy couple before we went down the baby route.
So what was it that had been preoccupying me through Christmas Day?
It didn’t really take me long to hit on it. I could feel a presence around the place, and I thought I knew whose it was. I’m not talking about the ghost of Sayeed Hassani, or anything melodramatic like that; the only real ghosts are those of people you’ve known and loved. The dead Moroccan was no more than a passing day’s inconvenience.
No, the guy who was getting to me was Reynard Capulet. There were lots of things about his disappearance that I couldn’t figure out. And right at the top of the list, sat a big question. Had he gone for good? Sure, the fact that he had left a stiff in his swimming pool before his disappearance did not suggest that coming back would be a good idea, and yet. .
The guy had been paying serious court to Shirley Gash. There is nothing of the airhead about that lady. She’s no romantic and her feet are as solidly on the ground as any I know. Yet whatever had stirred between them had affected her, beyond any doubt; and since Shirley has probably never been taken in by anyone or anything since she found out that the Tooth Fairy was really her father, I had to believe that the attraction was mutual.
So, with a burgeoning relationship which was clearly heading for the physical, given invitations to Florida and such like, something really cataclysmic must have happened for him to have taken out Sayeed, dumped him in his empty pool and disappeared. He couldn’t have intended to come back. He must have known that selling the house would have triggered off a manhunt, with him as the prey.
On the other hand, maybe he had believed that everyone would assume that the body was his. Had he come up with a very clever plan not just to fake his own death but to leave an unidentifiable body behind as a convincer?
After all, the place had been left untended for months before the company, the nominal owner, had instructed the amiable and gullible Sergi to sell the place as it was. By that time, the corpse would have been unidentifiable. And the company was Capulet and his sister. . who had conveniently disappeared herself.
So what had happened? Had he hatched a plot that would take him away from under the watching eyes of Interpol for good and all, or had he simply killed Sayeed in a quarrel and been forced to leave town fast?
However I looked at it, I didn’t like it. I had half a mind to put the villa back on the market as soon as the family went back home, but I knew that Prim would have her say about that.
To take my mind off the puzzle, I decided to take the boys for a run in the Lada. They had never seen the Dali Museum in Figueras. I had a sentimental attachment to the place, and although Colin was a wee bit young, I reckoned that there was enough there to appeal to him.
I almost bumped into Shirley when I swung the big boat out of the drive, as she drove homeward in her Renault. ‘Just as well you can hear that thing coming,’ she said, as we sat window to window. ‘I knew to leave you a wide berth.
‘You two have a good Christmas?’ she asked the boys.
‘Yes thanks,’ Jonathan answered, leaning forward in the front passenger seat. ‘Uncle Oz is taking us to see the Dali now.’
‘Good for Uncle,’ Shirley laughed.
‘Got to be back for six though,’ I told her. ‘Guess what? Bloody turkey again. . curried this time.’
‘Better get on your way, then.’ She gave us a quick wave and we were off.
I was right about the museum. Colin thought it was great, especially the car exhibit. . the one which fills with water. . and the Mae West Room. I kept that back until the end of the tour. ‘Who’s Mae West, Uncle Oz?’ Jonny asked me. His wee brother didn’t care; he just liked looking through the funny glass thing.
‘She was a famous movie star in the last century. . for a good chunk of the last century actually.’
‘Like you, Uncle Oz?’ Colin shouted. ‘A film star like you?’ There was a queue to view the exhibit; the couple in front turned and gave me a curious, blank look. I thought they were English, till I heard him muttering to her in German.
I had to laugh. ‘No, wee man; not like me in the slightest. Mae West was a very naughty lady. I’m a very well-behaved man.’
‘That’s not what Mum says,’ my younger nephew shot back. ‘She says you were as bad as me when you were my age.’
That’s loyalty for you, I thought.
‘Listen sunshine,’ I told him. ‘Every dodgy thing I ever did, I learned from her. You can tell her that too.
‘Come on. It’s time we were heading back to L’Escala.’
There’s a handy car park less than two minutes from the Dali Museum, an ugly concrete thing, but it’s hidden out of the way. I loaded them back into my Russian off-roader, and pulled out into the narrow, twisty streets which led towards the outskirts of town. The Lada was beginning to pall on me. It handled okay, but its stiff suspension was pretty tough on the back. I had to drive fairly slowly, for I didn’t want Colin bounced around by too many potholes, so we were ten minutes late when we made it back to L’Escala, and turned up into the woodland road which led back to Villa Bernabeu. Darkness was falling fast.
We had gone fifty yards along, very slowly, for the tarmac is badly buckled in places by big tree roots, when I heard a crack. ‘What was that?’ I asked.
Jonathan, sitting beside me, looked over his shoulder. . for all the rough ride, Colin was out like a light in his seatbelt, dreaming of Mae West for all I knew. ‘I think the side window’s broken,’ Jonathan said.
‘Damn it,’ I swore, as we approached the villa. ‘Must have kicked up a stone. The road’s bloody awful here.’
I turned into the driveway and closed the automatic gate behind me with a remote. Colin was wakened when I stepped out of the car; I could see the woozy look on his face as he stretched in his seat. I could see it clearly through a round hole in the passenger window; that, and something else too.
In the opposite window, there was an almost identical hole; round, with spidery cracks radiating outward from it.
‘There’s one here too,’ Jonny called out, unnecessarily.
My heart was thumping as I unfastened Colin’s seatbelt. Call me a panic-merchant if you like, but by now, I think I know a bullethole when I see one.
‘What happened to the car?’ Prim’s voice came from the terrace, behind me, as I lifted the wee chap out.
‘A stone chip, I guess.’ I forced a laugh. ‘It almost looks as if someone took a shot at us,’ I told her, meaning her and the kids to take it as a joke, but I made the mistake of looking into her eyes as I did so.
I had to tell her the whole story after that, everything Fortunato had told me; that it was Sayeed, not the Frenchman in the pool, and that the bullet which had killed him had come from a gun similar to his.
‘Jesus,’ she whispered, looking out of our bedroom window as I finished, down at the moonlight reflected in the pool. ‘So what happened tonight? What happened to the car? You really think that someone took a shot at it?’
‘No,’ I answered, truthfully. ‘I think that, maybe, someone took a shot at me. I reckon someone’s seen the car driving around and thought that Capulet was back in town. The windows are smoked glass remember, from any sort of distance it would be difficult to tell who was at the wheel. It could be that our friend didn’t just leave a body behind. It could be that he left an enemy as well.’
I suppose I should have been shaking in my boots as I finished my story: yet I wasn’t. Neither, from the look of her, was my wife. . although she wasn’t actually wearing boots, but soft leather moccasins. The fact is, since she and I met we’ve been in stickier situations than that; one thing we’ve learned from them is that there’s nothing scary about the past. Once it’s happened, it isn’t dangerous any more.