As Easy as Murder (23 page)

‘It’s nothing,’ she assured me. ‘I’m off my food, that’s all. My doctor took a blood sample; now he’s sending me for tests. He’s muttering about pernicious anaemia.’

I switched to nurse mode. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘That used to be serious, but it’s easily treated nowadays. Keep your chin up.’

‘I am. Don’t have any choice with Janet and wee Jonathan running my life.’

‘What about your love interest?’ Susie had acquired a new man a year or so before, a hedge fund dealer that she’d come across in the casino. I’d met him briefly, when I’d delivered Tom for his annual bonding visit with his half-siblings, and had been well under-impressed. I hadn’t told her that, though, and so her response took me by surprise.

‘Duncan? History. He was starting to behave as if he was the kids’ dad, and I wasn’t having that. So you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve binned him.’ I was about to protest, insincerely, but she cut me off. ‘No, don’t deny it,’ she went on. ‘I could tell from
your eyes that you didn’t like him. You’ve never learned to fake anything, my dear. Maybe that’s why you’re still single.’ She paused. ‘Or . . . what about Father G?’

‘Now Brother G, and staying in Ireland.’

‘And are you devastated?’

‘Who? Me? No.’

‘Fine. You’ll find him, eventually.’

‘Find who?’

‘The man of your dreams. I had one of my own about you the other night; you were fixed up in it.’

I listened for sounds of suppressed chuckles, but heard none. ‘Do tell. What was he like?’

‘Big bloke, greying hair, grey beard. I didn’t really get a good look at him.’

‘Was he wearing a red suit and driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer?’

‘Hah! Mock me if you will, but I’m becoming fey in my middle age. That’s why . . .’ She stopped, again.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, and this time I really mean it. Love to Tom, and Jonny. I’m off.’

I stared at my silent phone as if I expected a Santa Claus lookalike to appear on the screen. But he didn’t, only my wallpaper, an image of Charlie on the beach. I turned back to my son. ‘Sorry,’ I told him. ‘Susie Mum sends her love.’

‘That’s nice. He’s an emir,’ he declared, solemnly.

‘Who is?’ Susie’s fey dream had erased our previous conversation.

‘Uche’s dad,’ he said, patiently. ‘Uche says that’s the same as a
prince. He doesn’t have a palace, though, just a big house in Lagos. He’s very rich. He has an oil company, and he exports tobacco and clothes and all sorts of stuff.’

‘Does he now? It’s a pity about Uche’s mother. Does Uche talk about her?’

‘No. I asked him about her, but he said she’s dead, that’s all. I don’t think he likes to talk about her. I understand that.’

That surprised me. ‘You like to talk about your dad,’ I pointed out.

‘Only to people I know really well. I never talk about him with anybody else.’

I hadn’t appreciated that; or maybe I simply hadn’t noticed it. With me, the subject is usually off limits, absolutely when Tom’s around, and all my friends know that. All my friends, including Shirley Gash. She was bearing down on us, coming from the general direction of the clubhouse. And she wasn’t smiling.

‘What have you done with him?’ she demanded.

‘Done with who?’ I replied, ungrammatically.

‘Patterson,’ she barked. ‘Who else? Where the fuck did the two of you go?’

This was not Shirley-like behaviour and Tom did not take to it at all. I felt his shoulders tense under my arm, and he seemed to grow an inch or so taller. I gave him a little squeeze, to restrain him; the lioness and her cub, roles reversed.

Not that I was best pleased either; astonished, and instantly irked. ‘Would you calm down, woman,’ I told her sternly. ‘And don’t use that language around my son. Now what are you talking
about? Why should I have done anything with him?’

‘You went off together, didn’t you?’ she challenged, her chin stuck out.

I stared at her. ‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ I exclaimed, barely stopping myself from shouting, and forgetting my own interdict about language.

‘Come on! We were up on that stand, the three of us; I turned round and you two had buggered off!’

As soon as I recalled the scene, I could see where she was coming from. ‘Yes,’ I countered, fiercely, ‘but not together. I had a phone call; I got down from the stand to take it, then I had to leave in a hurry. But Patterson had gone by that time. You were so wrapped up in ogling golfers that you didn’t notice, so don’t get on to me if you can’t keep track of your bloke. Okay!’

I knew that it was anxiety as much as anger that had made her snap at me, so I wasn’t surprised when her face crumpled and she seemed to fold in on herself. It wasn’t a pretty sight; I’d never seen her looking so old.

‘Hey,’ I said, friend and counsellor once more, ‘what’s this? Don’t panic, Shirl; everything has an explanation. Have you looked for him?’

I had to wait for her to blow her nose on a tissue before she answered. ‘I’ve been looking for both of you ever since. I thought . . . I thought all sorts of things, but mostly that you’d gone off to follow the golf on your own, ’cos I would have held you back, being old and slow. I looked for you all over the bloody course, then when Jonny started I went back to his match, but you weren’t there . . .’

‘That’s right,’ Tom confirmed. ‘She asked me from across the rope, at the third hole, if I’d seen you. I told her I hadn’t. I was worried too, Mum,’ he added. I hadn’t considered that possibility: bad mother.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ I said contritely. ‘I should have taken time to tell you before I left.’

‘Why did you go?’ The question came in stereo, from him and Shirley, simultaneously.

‘Someone needed my help,’ I told them, ‘but that’s not important. Tell me where else you’ve looked.’

‘In the clubhouse,’ Shirl replied, ‘in the tent with all the clothing and golf club stands, in the bars, everywhere save the gents’ bogs. I looked in the car park too, and when I couldn’t see your jeep anywhere, I thought . . . Well, I won’t tell you what went through my mind.’

No, you’d bloody well better not, the guy’s twenty-five years older than me
, went through mine, but I let it stay there.

‘You didn’t look hard enough,’ I retorted. ‘My jeep never left. Your imagination was probably running so wild by then, you didn’t want to see it.’ Actually I’d parked it alongside a big Callaway truck to catch some shade through the day, so it wasn’t a surprise that she’d missed it. ‘What about your car?’ I asked, although I was sure that I’d seen it when Alex and Jorge had dropped me off.

‘Still there,’ she confirmed. ‘I looked for that too.’

‘Then on the face of it, he should still be here. Phone him,’ I instructed.

She took out her mobile and obeyed. I watched, and saw hope go quickly from her eyes. ‘Straight to voicemail,’ she murmured.

I frowned, then turned to my son. ‘Tom, I want you to do something for me. Go to the emergency medical centre. You know where that is?’

‘Sure, beside the bar tent.’

‘Good. When you get there, ask whether they’ve treated an English gentleman for anything. You know Mr Cowling, so describe him, and say that he was wearing grey trousers and a blue blazer with gold buttons. Then meet us back at the clubhouse, in front.’

‘Why are we going there?’ Shirl asked.

‘To check the gents’ toilets, or have them checked for us.’

We did, courtesy of the club manager, who despatched a bag boy to look for a locked cubicle with an unresponsive customer inside, but came up blank.

‘He’s gone,’ Shirley wailed, as Tom reappeared, shaking his head.

‘Come on, girl,’ I cajoled her, ‘hold yourself together.’

‘How can I? He’s fucked off and left me. He’s been taking the piss, Primavera, all this time.’

I had to admit, if only to myself, that the same possibility was beginning to gain ground in my list of possible causes for Patterson’s absence. ‘If he has gone,’ I asked nobody in particular, ‘how has he done it? Let’s assume that he isn’t hiding among the trees waiting for it to get dark.’

‘But what if he is? What if he’s had an accident? There are snakes here, Primavera.’ My robust pal was verging on hysteria. I didn’t want to call out the National Guard, but . . .

‘He was wearing nice sensible shoes, so forget the vipers,’ I said. ‘Let’s try to answer my last question.’

‘He could have got a taxi,’ Tom pointed out.

‘Are there taxis here?’

‘A lot. Some of the players and most of the caddies use them to get back to their hotels, and the crowd do as well.’

‘Then let’s see if we can find some.’

‘I’ll show you where they are.’

He led us to a compound, alongside the spectator car park. I hadn’t noticed it until that moment. Most of the crowd had gone, but there were still plenty of people around, tournament staff, media and as Tom had said, competitors and their aides. There were a dozen cabs in a line waiting to be picked up. As we approached I saw Lena, Lars and their kids sliding into one, then being driven off.

The lead driver in the rank beamed at me expectantly as we approached. ‘Sorry,’ I said, wiping the smile away with a word. ‘I need your help,’ I continued, in Castellano, then switched to Catalan, knowing that Shirley doesn’t speak a word. ‘My friend here may have been robbed. Earlier on today she met an Englishman, a middle-aged man, in the shopping tent. He said he was on his own, like her, and a fan of golf as she is. He was very nice, very plausible, they talked and they had a drink together, on the clubhouse terrace. After a while, he asked her if she would like to have lunch with him. She said she would, he went to book a table and he never came back. It was some time before she looked in her bag, but when she did she found that her money was gone, and her credit cards and some very valuable rings that she had taken off because her fingers were puffy in the heat. We’ve spoken to the police; they said “Tough” as they do. Our only
hope is that he might have used a cab to get away. Can you help us. Did he?’

The further I got into my story the darker the driver’s expression grew. Why did I lay it on? Simples, as that meerkat used to say. If I’d told him that Shirley’s boyfriend had done a runner, had second thoughts and buggered off, there was a better than even chance, no, much better than even, that I’d have run into the male solidarity thing. But show him a woman robbed, rather than a woman wronged, and by an Englishman at that . . .

Perhaps I’m doing the man an injustice; perhaps he’d have helped us anyway, but I’ve lived in Spain for long enough to know that for those of a certain age, as he was, it’s still a male-dominated society. I described Patterson in detail, from his immaculate brown coiffeur to his sensible shoes.

‘Hold on,’ he growled. ‘I’ll ask around.’ He waved his fellow drivers to him and they went into conference. When they were done, he turned back to me, and shook his head. ‘None of us picked him up,’ he said. National Guard it is, then, I was thinking, when he added, ‘But hold on, I’ll get on the radio and check the other guys.’

He got into his cab. I watched him reach for a small hand mike on a wire and speak into it, then wait. Within no more than half a minute he was speaking again, then nodding, his eyes brighter and more alert. When his CB exchange was over, he climbed out. ‘Yes,’ he announced. ‘The guy who left a minute or two ago, with a couple and their kids, he says he picked up a man just like that, five, maybe six hours ago. Is that time about right?’

‘Spot on. Does he remember where he dropped him?’

‘Sure. The airport; Girona Airport. He thought it was unusual, because the guy had no luggage at all, not even a small bag.’

I whistled. ‘So he’s well gone.’

‘For sure. Your friend will never see her rings again, and she’d better cancel her cards.’ He looked at Shirley. ‘I’m sorry, lady,’ he said, in English. ‘You’ve been done.’

The same thought had occurred to her, even without the elaboration of my cover story, for she burst into tears.

I gave the guy a twenty; he refused at first, but I insisted. It was only right, since I’d deceived him a little. I hustled Shirley away, waiting until she’d composed herself before giving her the full story.

‘The airport,’ she repeated. ‘But that’s crazy. He didn’t bring his passport. I know that for sure, I saw it on the dressing table this morning. I said he should put it in my safe, and he said he would when we got back. I know he left it. But why else would he go there, if not to catch a flight?’

‘To catch the Barcelona bus,’ Tom pointed out. Of course, he’d heard the entire discussion with the cabbie, and his Catalan is better than mine.

‘There’s that,’ I agreed, ‘or maybe to hire a car. Shirl, do you know whether he had his driving licence on him?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I told him he should carry it all the time, in case he was ever asked for ID with a credit card. But only the plastic bit, not the paper licence, and you need both to hire a car, don’t you?’

‘Technically,’ I agreed, ‘but they don’t usually bother with the counterpart here.’ I considered our tactics. ‘You go home,’ I said eventually, ‘just in case there’s a bizarre but innocent explanation
for all this and he’s sitting there waiting for you. He does have a key, doesn’t he?’