Pujol's eyebrows climbed skywards on his forehead as he read. 'You seem to be covering quite a bit of ground. When I see that you can sit in your villa and call up the resources of Interpol, I have to say that not even I realised how long is your arm. It frightens me a little. You are so sure that Alberni was murdered, and that he was innocent?'
Skinner lowered himself into a chair facing the Commandante. He nodded. let me tell you why.'
He recounted in every detail his conversation with Vaudan and Inch, describing the latter's panic when murder had been added to the agenda of the investigation. 'Can you tell when someone is lying to you, Arturo? Course you can, you're a good copper. So take it from me, Santi was innocent. I believe that he was killed to prevent him finding out about something that's been going on under his nose for years, and to me it's inconceivable that Paul Ainscow wasn't involved. I've taken care of Scotland and France. I'd like you to look after this end. I don't care whether it's formal or not. I want Inch watched round the clock. If you can manage it, I want his phones tapped, office and home. Stick as close to him as possible.'
He looked across the desk. Pujol was smiling, but his eyes were heavy with irony. At once, Skinner was gripped by a sense of foreboding.
'I am ahead of you, Bob. I have Inch under close surveillance already. As close as it could be. Come and I will show you' He led the way from the small room, and along the corridor. At its end, an officer stood guard over a heavy brown-stained wooden door. He stood aside as Pujol and Skinner approached. In the centre of the small, windowless, air-conditioned room stood a narrow table. Something lay on it. Something covered by a white sheet. Something — Skinner guessed — that was around five feet six from end to end, with a walnut tan.
Pujol drew back one end of the sheet.
`Shit!' Skinner spat the word out. 'Son of a bitch!'
Inch's face was unmarked, but his tan had taken on an odd yellowish tinge as death had drained the blood from beneath the skin. His head lay at an odd angle on his shoulders, and Skinner knew without asking that his neck had been broken. Another death, he thought. How many more?
`What happened?' he asked, wearily.
`Senor Inch lived in L'Escala,' said Pujol, 'which makes it even less likely that he did not know Ainscow. He was a keen windsurfer. It was his sport. Every Monday — you know, Bob, that the property people all take Monday as their holiday — you would find him in Riells Bay, usually far out from the beach. It was the same today. Only today, at around eleven this morning, a man in a Sunseeker power-boat stolen from the marina, a man who appeared to be drunk, ran him down at full speed. He was killed instantly.'
`Where is the man now?'
`I have just sent men to take him to prison in Barcelona. He will be interrogated there and charged, no doubt, with everything we can think of.'
`Who is he?'
`I do not yet know. As I said, he seemed to be drunk. He wouldn't tell us anything, other than what we could do with our mothers. But he did tell us in German.'
`When can I see him?'
`Too soon to say, Bob. But I'll try to arrange a visit for us both as quickly as I can. And,' he added, with emphasis, 'I will arrange for the investigation of Torroella Locals. The Guardia is involved now. . whether I like it or not!'
Fifty-one
‘What d'you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the sea?' asked Skinner.
`A good start,' said Pujol.
`So it's the same in Spain, then.'
`Even more so, my friend. Even more so. And shortly this one here, who clearly speaks no English, judging from his bewildered expression, will wish that he was at the bottom of the sea. This one thinks that he can play dumb with me and get away with it.'
Josep Albert, the lawyer of record listed on the company registration of Torroella Locals, was as unprepossessing as his seedy backstreet office on the third floor of a tumbledown Girona building. Lank, wavy black hair was plastered to the sides of his head by too much oil, and his pinched yellow face looked overdue for a meeting with soap and water. Thick-lensed spectacles made his eyes seem huge, and served only to accentuate their shiftiness. But perched on a swivel chair, behind a huge desk which seemed to be designed at least in part as a barricade, he presented a wall of resistance to Pujol's gentle questioning.
Since Albert had insisted on speaking in Catalan, the content of their exchanges had been a mystery to Skinner from the start. He could follow the general drift of most conversations in Spanish, but was completely lost when the guttural regional tongue was used. However, from Pujol's translated summaries, he knew that Albert was being deliberately obstructive, denying knowledge of the operations of Torroella Locals, and claiming no involvement in its management.
`This man,' said Pujol to Skinner, 'he would not admit to knowing his own mother if a policeman asked him. "Senor Inch? He was a minor client. Of course he has no idea where the money invested in the company came from." And "Santi Alberni? He has never heard of him."' Pujol glowered at the little man perched on his swivel chair, but, Albert sat there, smug and defiant. 'Paul Ainscow? "Oh no, Commandante, I do not know him. Scottish you say? I know no Scottish people."'
`So introduce him to this one,' Skinner murmured.
`Okay,' said Pujol. 'You don't speak his language, but you can't get any less out of him than me!' He turned back to face Albert, and spoke rapidly to him in Spanish. Skinner picked up enough to know that he was being introduced as a very important policeman from Great Britain, who was in Spain specially to investigate property fraud. The introduction completed, Pujol leaned back.
Skinner pulled his chair close to Albert's massive desk and leaned forward, his forearms resting on the scratched wooden surface. He smiled. Nervously, the little lawyer smiled back. And then Skinner's smile faded and, with it, all of his customary warmth and amiability. It was as if another Skinner held Albert in his gaze: a cold, dangerous gaze full of threat and menace. He sat in silence for a full minute staring across the desk at the untidy little man, as if he was probing him, trying to read his mind.
As Pujol looked on from the side, he saw first bewilderment, then panic, then fear gather in Albert's hugely magnified eyes. He began to shift uncomfortably in his seat, fidgeting, working the swivel from side to side, glancing down occasionally into his lap, but always drawn back by the magnet of Skinner's hypnotic stare. Once, then again, he opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it each time, helpless.
Eventually, after three full unblinking minutes, Skinner said quietly, 'Arturo, ask him where the deeds to the Torroella Locals properties are held.'
Pujol put the question, and saw a look of almost pathetic gratitude sweep across the man's face at the chance to break free from his silent inquisitor. The words poured out, in Catalan, as if the Commandante had become his confessor.
When Albert fell silent, Pujol turned to Skinner. 'He says that they are held by a bank in Amsterdam, as security for a loan of one hundred million pesetas in US dollars. He says that he did not arrange the loan. He was simply instructed to inspect the agreement, and to pass on the deeds to the bank. He does not know to whom the money was paid, or what happened to it. He says that if it was used to buy more property, then it was for another company, one of which he knows nothing.'
`Ask him who arranged the loan.'
Pujol translated the question. Again, the response was instant. Even in Catalan, Skinner recognised one word, a name — confirmed by the Commandante's translation. 'He says it was Nick Vaudan.'
`Not Inch?'
`No. He says that Inch was simply, how you say, a puppet. He was the name on the record, but the orders came from Vaudan.'