He paused for another swig of beer. `Santi and I would bump into each other when I was here, but we were not what you would call close friends. Then one day, around seven years ago, he came up to the villa and put a business proposition to me. He told me that InterCosta was making very good profits, and that it tore at his heart to have to give any of them to the taxman. He said that his accountant had advised him that if he converted his share into cash and reinvested it somewhere else, the taxman would never catch up with the money. It would simply be written through the company books as disbursements, and both company tax and. income tax would be avoided.
`He asked me if I would act as the front man in a new company through which this cash profit from InterCosta would be laundered and turned into long-term investments in property. He said that, as a foreign national, I would be less likely to be asked to explain where the cash had come from. I asked him who would own the new company. He said that officially it would be in my name, but that there would be a letter of agreement between us confirming Santi's ownership of the shares. I asked him what would be in it for me, and we settled on half the net rental income. The idea was that the properties would be held for not less than ten years from the date of acquisition, and indefinitely if they were good enough
`We shook hands on the deal, and Montgo SA was formed, in my name, with no traceable link to Santi. Straight away Santi began to deposit large chunks of cash in the company safe. He would bank them at intervals, or sometimes he would buy properties for straight cash. Gradually, as Montgo SA's portfolio built up, so did its income. We took office costs out of
that, and kept back an amount for property maintenance and other contingencies. The rest we split between us.'
`How much?' asked Skinner.
`At first, hardly anything. Then it began to build up. It has never been big money though. Montgo SA is a good landlord. We charge on average around eighty thousand pesetas per month in rent for good-quality accommodation — no rubbish. In the summer people will pay more than that here for a week's rental. Take off office costs, which are peanuts, and our contingency funding, and I would say that over the years Santi and I have split around twelve million pesetas between us.'
`What did you do with your slice?'
`I kept it in cash, and used it to pay for the maintenance of my villa here.'
`How big is the contingency fund?'
`Eighteen million. We used the contingency money to do the deal on Santi's villa.' Vaudan grinned. 'Well I was a nice guy. I agreed to it, and half that cash was mine! What if his mortgage had fallen through?'
`How much has been laundered through Montgo in those seven years?'
`Roughly around one hundred million pesetas.'
`Half a million sterling. Are you sure?'
Vaudan nodded. 'Certain. I don't make mistakes about money. Why?'
`Because that's maybe half of the cash that's been stripped out of InterCosta. Are you involved in any other companies with Alberni?'
`No, thank you. One was quite enough; an amusement, and a neat source of peseta cash-flow. Two would begin to resemble hard work.'
Did you know of any other money laundries that he might have set up?'
Vaudan hesitated. 'Once or twice he mentioned an Englishman named Eensh.'
What?'
Eensh. I-N-C-H. Alan Eensh. I believe he works in Torroella as a property salesman. Santi spoke of him once and said that he had another interest, a company called Torroella Locals. It was like Montgo, only it didn't buy houses. It bought shops along the Costa at knock-down prices, and let them for high rents to short-term businesses — ice-cream parlours, video arcades, sports clothing, fashion. Santi never said, but I always suspected that he might have been funding Monsieur Eensh also.'
`Who does Inch work for in Torroella?'
'A general agency called Immobiliara Brava. It has an office in the old town near the square.'
Skinner nodded, noting the name mentally. 'How well d'you know Paul Ainscow?'
`Not at all. Earlier you called him Santi's partner. That is not what Santi told me. He said that Ainscow was not more than an employee, or an agent, working on salary and commission, and that all of the profit that he was diverting from InterCosta belonged to Santi.'
`You believed that?'
`Why not? Santi was my friend. Why should I think him a liar?'
And you didn't have any scruples about being involved in a scheme that you knew was set up for tax-evasion purposes?'
`Monsieur Skinner, this is Spain. One of the blackest economies in Europe. Tax evasion in business is a way of life.
As for me, I do not do business in Monaco so that I can pay high taxes. Rather the opposite. Think of it, man, I am not a burden to anyone else in this world, therefore why should I work to pay the salaries of people like you, and the millions like you on the public payroll.' The suddenness of Vaudan's contempt took Skinner by surprise.
His eyes flashed in anger, but he checked himself. 'What makes you so fucking special that you shouldn't?'
Vaudan laughed softly. 'Friend, I pay my dues. I simply make sure that they are as low as possible. Check me out. You won't get your hands dirty.'
`I may take you up on that,' Skinner said evenly.
`Now, about Ainscow. You're telling me you didn't know he was the major partner in InterCosta?'
‘Oui. As I said, I've never met the man. He means nothing to me.'
`Now that you do know, what will you do with Montgo SA?' `Why should I do anything?'
`Because what you've told me means that seventy-five per cent of it belongs to Ainscow, and the other quarter to Gloria Alberni.'
Vaudan shook his head. 'Oh no, monsieur. The record says that I am the owner and administrator of Montgo SA and all its assets.'
`What about the letter you mentioned earlier? The one which confirms Santi's legal ownership?'
Vaudan's smile was at its widest, stretching the moustache and revealing an expanse of white teeth. Did the Guardia find a copy among his papers?'
No, not that I know of What about your copy?'
`Hah. Life is strange. A few weeks ago, on my last visit here, I was arranging some papers on my terrace. My copy of the letter was among them. I have never known a tramuntana to spring up so quickly. A few seconds, that was all it took, and they were gone on the wind, all of them, the Montgo SA letter among them. Gone and never seen again.'
Skinner looked at him. Now he understood his air of confidence. 'Let me guess, because of the nature of the thing, it was a private letter prepared by a lawyer, but not signed before the notary.'
'Exactement. And so, my friend the policeman, if Ainscow or anyone else wants to talk to me about the legal ownership of Montgo SA, they had better come with Santi's copy of that letter.'
He picked up his glass from the table and drained it. 'But what letter would that be, anyway? One of which I have never heard. I meant what I said earlier. I will never speak of this again, to you or anyone else. Poor Santi, I am sorry that he chose that way out of his problem with Monsieur Ainscow. But that is life's way: it is filled with winners and losers. Santi lost, but out of it Nick Vaudan seems to have won.'
He made to rise, but Skinner grabbed his arm, and held him in his chair.
'Sit down, pal. If what you've told me is true, it also says to me that Nick Vaudan had a first-class motive for helping Santi proactively, you might say — to commit suicide.' Vaudan shook his hand away. If you check you will find that at the time of Santi's death I was in Monaco selling a very large yacht to a very well-known oil sheikh.'