‘Of course not, you’re my wife. Are you going to leave me for Ramon?’
She shook her head, briefly and violently. ‘No,’ she muttered.
‘Even if that was possible?’
‘No. Not even if.’
I chanced a smile. ‘How about “One size fits all”? Him maybe?’
She gave a spluttering, laugh, snorted, then sniffed. ‘I’d rather drill holes in my feet,’ she said.
‘Look, I am sorry,’ I told her, ‘but I’m not going to throw myself on the ground before you and beg forgiveness. I can’t do that. I didn’t set out to even scores, but that’s how it stands. Call me a heartless bastard if you like.’
‘You’re a heartless bastard.’
‘Okay. I admit it. Do you want to go on?’
‘Do you?’
‘Sure, for better or worse. That’s what I said.’
Her mouth took on that tight look again. ‘From where I’m standing it’s still me who’s come off worse. Oz, I’m not saying I’m going to leave you, but I need some space to think about all this. I’m going to go down to Barcelona for a few days. . On my own,’ she said. ‘Fair enough?’
‘Eminently.’
‘What will you do while I’m away? Call Susie?’
‘No, I won’t do that. I’ll think about us as well, I’ll get on with learning that script and, in the spare time I have left, I’ll see if I can figure out who might have chucked Susie down those stairs.’
‘If you find him,’ she said, ‘tell him from me he did a rotten job.’
‘Hey!’
‘Don’t “hey” me, Oz. I promise you this. Whatever happens with us, Ms Gantry will be a poor little rich girl when I catch up with her.’
29
I booked Prim a suite for the next five days in the Husa Princesa in Barcelona, and loaded her cases into the Mercedes. She didn’t kiss me goodbye, and I didn’t wave her off either.
As soon as she had left, I changed into a tee-shirt and shorts and went into my makeshift gym, where I spent half an hour pressing weights and another twenty minutes knocking ten bells out of the heavy punchbag. When I was finished, I went upstairs to take my second shower of the morning. None of it did me any good. As I stood there in the shower turning the mixer colder and colder to stem the sweat that was pouring out of me, it came to me that I was alone, not like I had felt after the family had gone, but really alone, for the first time since just after Jan died.
I dressed again, but I gave no thought to getting down to the script or anything else. Before I did that there was something else I had to do; and for that there was something else I needed. I looked through my copy of the Catalan Society magazine, but that did me no good. I thought about phoning Shirley, but decided against that, because I didn’t want to get into a discussion with her just then.
In the end, I phoned Lionell. He gave me the information I was after and, to my relief, he didn’t ask any questions.
I found Steve Miller’s parents’ villa easily enough, in a narrow street in Riells de D’Alt, where most of the houses are holiday homes. The little Lotus was parked in the driveway, with its rag-top up.
There was no preamble, no discussion. I rang the bell, he opened the door and I hit him; in the middle of the forehead, not directly on his broken nose, but close enough to make him scream in agony as he fell to the floor.
I took the crumpled photos from my jacket pocket and tossed them down beside him. ‘Did you really think that you could get away with sending those to Prim?’ I barked at him.
He was dazed and his eyes were unfocused, but eventually his head began to clear and he picked up the prints. He gazed at them, blankly. ‘Don’t know anything about them,’ he protested, his voice thick.
‘Sure you do, Steve. You spotted Susie and me in that restaurant and you photographed us. I clocked you then, but I couldn’t catch you. Then you had the idea of hanging around the house to see if you could get some really incriminating stuff. We left for Barcelona, you followed us, and you took that other one at the airport.
‘Great, thinks you. I’ll slip copies of these to Prim and that bastard Blackstone will be really in it. Congratulations, mate, I am, but so are you. Oh, how deeply you are in the shit!’
Miller looked up at me. ‘I didn’t take these,’ he squealed. ‘They’ve got nothing to do with me.’
‘Of course they have. Prim only got back yesterday morning, but she was a couple of days early; nobody knew about it. But you saw us last night, sitting in the window of La Dolce Vita. You knew she was home.’
‘Oz, I swear on my mother’s grave …’
‘Your mother isn’t bloody dead!’
‘All right, I swear to you on the grave of somebody who is. My grandmother, I’ll swear on her grave, I didn’t take those photographs.’ I reckoned he had a deal more swearing to do, though, before I started to believe him.
‘When were they taken?’ he asked.
‘You know damn well.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The Roser Dos shot was taken on Saturday night, the other one, yesterday morning.’
A huge smile of relief crossed his broken face. ‘Then I couldn’t have done it. I was on the golf course yesterday, with Frank, Gerrie and Maggie. We played a foursome at the Torremirona Country Club, up past Figueras. Ask them; they’ll tell you I couldn’t have been in Barcelona.’
Still I didn’t buy it; I suppose I wanted him to be the one, I wanted to punish someone and he was the easiest to fit in the frame.
‘So someone else took the second shot. So what? You got a pal to tail us and take it.’
He stared up at me. There was a lump the size of a pigeon’s egg above his left eye. ‘Oz,’ he said, in a sad voice that I just couldn’t doubt, ‘I don’t have any pals.’
I helped him up, the poor hopeless sod, sat him on his parents’ couch, stepped into the open-plan kitchen and made us two mugs of coffee. It turned out to be a foul own brand instant, but I didn’t care. Steve didn’t either; he was still slightly stunned, from my big righthander.
‘I’m sorry I shot my mouth off on Saturday, Oz,’ he mumbled. ‘Not very gentlemanly, was it? Not very clever either. My father’s told me often enough that I’d get myself really done over some day.’
I was relieved to find that the new model Oz Blackstone still had a conscience, of sorts. ‘It’s you who’s due the apology, mate,’ I told him. ‘Not just from me either. Prim owes you one as well; she worked you over worse than I did.’
He looked at me. ‘Mmm,’ he murmured. ‘Truth is, I guessed that when she agreed to come to Madrid with me, your leaving had a lot to do with it. Still, I hope you won’t thump me again if I say that one doesn’t look a gift horse, and all that. Good for any chap’s morale, when he lands a lovely like her, whatever the story.’
I tried to think back to a time when I had morale; it was difficult. Success doesn’t mean anything unless you feel it inside yourself. There was I, my name on billboards all over the States, and soon to be all over Europe too, and inside I felt like shit.
‘I’ll push my luck a bit further, shall I?’ Steve went on. He must have guessed that I was no longer dangerous by that time. ‘What possessed you to take a chance like that? I mean, old boy, be sure your sins will find you out, and all that.’
‘They sure will,’ I agreed. ‘As to what possessed me. . apart from the obvious. . that I have to figure out. There’s only ever really been one woman for me, Steve, and I even messed her about too. Now she’s dead, and I can’t tell her I’m sorry.
‘As for Prim, she and I got back together and got married because each of us thought that the other was a safe port in a storm. For different reasons, both of us were wrong.’
‘I take it that she’s gone, because of those photos, and that’s why you came knocking my door down.’
‘Yeah, she’s gone, and I don’t know whether she’s coming back.’
I’ve never been one for self-pity; I’m like my dad in that respect. I don’t wallow in it, I turn it into anger.
‘I do know one thing, though,’ I said, sincerely. ‘I am going to find the bastard who took those pictures, and when I do. .