Love
Prim
PS I really would like to know how you found out about Fergal. That’s the one thing that nearly made me stay.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But not nearly enough.’
I tried to call her, on her mobile, until I heard it ring, and I realised that she’d left it by the side of the bed. I thought about racing after her in the Voyager, thought about it seriously, until I knew for sure that I didn’t want to. She was right; if there was any chance for us, we had to put time and distance between us and all that shit. We had to do that even to find out whether either of us wanted there to be a chance.
I had to call someone; my sister drew the short straw. I told her that Prim and I had split up and why. I had expected Ellie to give me the bollocking of all time, just as if I was a lad again, but she didn’t.
‘You poor loves,’ she said. ‘I could tell at Christmas that there was something wrong between you. I blame that place, Oz.’
‘What? The house?’
‘No, the whole bloody town. You had nothing but trouble when you were there before, so whatever made you go back?’
‘There are dark forces which guide our destiny,’ I told her grimly. Until that moment it would have been one of my poorer jests, but that was the point at which I became convinced that it was entirely true.
‘Maybe so, but if they come around my house I’ll give them a good leathering. Do you want to come and stay with me for a bit?’
Never once in my life, not even when she was slapping me around as a kid, had my sister ever made me cry. . until then. I felt my eyes moisten and a tear ran down my cheek. More than anything else, it came from the knowledge that there was still someone alive, as well as my dad, who really loved me.
‘Thanks Ellie,’ I said wiping it and that flash of self-pity away, ‘but I’ve got some stuff to finish up here. I’ll come and see you when I get back to Glasgow. I’ll tell you what: you can chum me to the premiere. You up for that?’
‘Haud me back!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re on, boyo.’
I left her laughing, then went out to eat. The techs were still at work when I got back, and when I went to bed. They were still at work next morning, when I got up, although I have no idea what they were doing by then. . having a wine tasting, maybe.
They had only just gone at three thirty, when the phone rang. I picked it up, half hoping that it would be Prim. But it wasn’t. It was the Other Woman.
‘Oz,’ Susie burst out, as I answered.
‘Just saying my name gets you that excited, does it?’
‘Could do, boy, you never know. Don’t repeat this to anyone who might know me, but I’ve been missing you.
‘Prim back yet?’
‘And gone.’ I filled her in on what had happened. . with the notable exception of my horizontal encounter with Veronique Sanchez.
‘Que sera, sera,’ she said.
‘When did you join the Tartan Army?’
‘I helped to found it. Now shut up and listen. I’ve just had a visit from your old man. I think he came along to see that I was all right. . bless his wee heart, or did you put him up to it?’
‘No,’ I told her, truthfully. ‘It was his idea.’
‘Glad to hear it. Anyhow. . he brought along some holiday snaps to show me. They were of your place, so I thought I’d better act as if I’d never seen it before.
‘Then he showed me one that was taken at your New Year party.’ She paused: she was winding up for something big, I could tell.
‘He was in one of them, Oz. The guy in JoJo’s that night, the one you reckon spiked my drink. I recognised him.’
I gasped, struck dumb for a moment. ‘Who was it, then?’
‘If I knew that I’d have told you in L’Escala, idiot.’
‘I suppose so. I’ll just have to wait until my old man can send me it.’
‘No. I guessed you’d want to see it, so I asked him to leave it with me. I’ll post it to you tonight.’
I thought about this for a bit. ‘Better than that,’ I said. ‘Have you got a scanner in the office?’
‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘I’m with you. I’ll turn it into a file and send it to you by e-mail. Gimme half an hour.’
‘I’ll hold my breath,’ I told her. ‘Susie, if I did, right now I’d tell you I love you.’
‘Aye, but don’t, until you do.’
I heard the phone go down. I didn’t quite hold my breath, but I didn’t wait for half an hour. I logged on after fifteen minutes and, sure enough, Joanna Lumley told me that I had post.
Susie had named the file, ‘Villain’. It took just under a minute to download.
I felt my fingers tremble as I opened it and watched it scroll down the screen. I adjusted the magnification to one hundred and fifty per cent; any more and I’d have lost clarity.
There were quite a few people in my dad’s wide-angled snapshot. Prim and me for two, kissing, Mary, Ellie, Jonny and Frank Barnett. I didn’t have any trouble working out who Susie had meant, though. She had printed a great big ‘X’ right above the smiling face of John Gash.
36
I sat for an hour after I’d printed out the picture, staring at it, caressing a couple of beers until they’d evaporated, and thinking. I knew I should call Fortunato right away and tell him what I’d found out, but I wanted to get a handle on the complete picture before that.
Almost from the moment I discovered that Gash was the guy trying to get Prim and me out of the way, I developed what I used to call Quasimodo Syndrome. I had a very large hunch.
We were agreed, the captain and I, that Lucille Capulet had to be involved in her brother’s murder. Someone had to be instructing the company lawyer and it could only be her. We were agreed too that there was a man involved in it, because of what had happened to Susie.
Therefore, there was only one conclusion as far as I was concerned. The lovely Virginie, the new girlfriend John had sprung on Shirley, was Lucille Capulet. How they had met didn’t interest me; maybe John had been alarmed by the Frenchman’s courting of his mother, and had sought out his sister to see what she might be able to do about it. Maybe, but it didn’t matter.
Lucille had never been to L’Escala as far as anyone knew; not even Sergi, her estate agent, had ever seen her. She was Virginie, simple as that; I knew it and I didn’t need any faxed photos from Lyon to confirm it.
So what were she and John after so badly? Towards the end of my contemplation, something came back to me, something that had struck me as slightly off at the time. After all his determination to get his hands on Capulet’s old Lada, even to the extent, I was now sure, of taking a shot at me to scare me into selling it, he had buggered off and left the thing in his mother’s garage.
I left my beer and the photo on the kitchen work-surface and walked along to Shirley’s house. She was in, and met me with a great big smile, which made me feel all the worse about what I was going to do to her life.
‘Shirl,’ I began, ‘that car I flogged to your lad: I think I may have left a pair of sunglasses in it. Can I have a look?’
‘Sure,’ she said, handing me a remote control device which had been lying on her hall table. ‘That’ll open the garage.’
I pressed the button and the door raised. It was starting to get dark, but there was still enough light for me to see that John had given the car a real going over. The seats had been taken out and were upside down on the floor. The roof lining had been cut out completely, and all the door panels stripped off. HM Customs could not have done it more thoroughly: this was not how a car was broken into spares for export.
I closed the door quickly and gave Shirley her zapper, plus a ‘No luck’ story. Then I hurried back to Casa Nou Camp.
Whatever they were after, he and his girlfriend, was a big mystery, but there was also a ‘why’ to be considered. I could have asked Shirley a couple of questions, but she was too smart not to ask me a couple in return. So instead, I called someone I’d met the last time we were in L’Escala.