As Easy as Murder (24 page)

‘Of course.’ She gasped. ‘And he knows the safe combination. What if—’

‘Stop it!’ I commanded. ‘We’re miles away from there yet. He was a nice man at breakfast-time and chances are he still is. I repeat, you go home; we’ll head for the airport and check out the car rental desks.’

‘And the ticket office for the buses,’ Tom added, helpfully.

‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘There too, if we have to. We’ll call you if we have anything to report.’

Shirley was still badly shaken, but I judged . . . or maybe I hoped . . . that she was fit to drive. She was okay at least as far as the airport exit on the autopista, for I followed her there, before I turned off. The terminal building at Girona Airport has almost disappeared within a small city of multi-storey car parks. Local knowledge led me to pick the oldest, even if the walk was a little further. As we entered the concourse, it occurred to me that I might have a wait on my hands, but we struck it lucky. There was an early evening lull in flight arrivals and there were no queues at any of the car hire windows.

Judging that the staff might not part with customer information just for the asking, I had another cover story worked out. My father, Mr Patterson Cowling, had been due to arrive that afternoon and had planned to hire a car for a business trip. He was a sales representative, so I had no clear idea of his route; a family emergency had arisen, his mobile was down and I had to get in touch with him. Had they supplied him with a car and, if so, what
was the drop-off point? If I knew that, I might be able to contact him there.

I spun them the yarn, wearing my most anxious expression. Hertz were sympathetic, but hadn’t rented a car to anyone of that name. Avis tried even harder, but neither had they. Nor had Europcar. It was only when I got to the last window, that of a local outfit called Bettamotos, that I ran into a spirit of total non-cooperation.

The guy at the desk was forty-something, with bad skin, bad breath and a bad attitude. He must have been practising obduracy all his life. He let me finish my tale and then shook his head, very slowly. ‘No,’ he said, with a virtual line drawn under it.

‘No he didn’t, or no you can’t tell me?’

‘We do not give customer information.’

‘But it’s an emergency,’ I pleaded, not altogether a lie.

‘We do not give customer information.’

‘Does that mean that he is your customer, but you’re not going to tell me?’

‘I’m not saying that at all. We don’t give customer information, is all.’

I gave him my best blonde smile. ‘Not even to me?’

‘No chance.’

I withdrew the smile. ‘One last chance,’ I offered instead.

‘Or you’ll do what?’ he sneered.

‘This.’ I took out my mobile, and held it up for him to see. ‘Call me Aladdin,’ I said, ‘and consider this a magic lamp. I am now going to summon the genie.’ Beside me, Tom chuckled.

I keyed Alex’s number. He answered straight away. ‘Primavera, I was—’

That could wait. ‘Where are you?’

‘At the Novotel, in Christine McGuigan’s room.’

‘Good. I’ve got a problem, and now I need your help. With everything else that’s on your plate I didn’t want to bother you, but I have no choice. Remember a couple of days ago, I promised to keep an eye on Patterson Cowling and let you know if anything odd happened around him?’

‘Yes, although we both knew you didn’t really mean it.’

‘Maybe so, but this is my first report. He’s disappeared.’

‘What?’

‘From the golf tournament, in broad daylight, without a word to Shirley, or me. So far I’ve established that he took a taxi to the airport; that’s where I am now. I know he couldn’t have caught a flight . . . no passport—’

It was his turn to cut me off. ‘Could he have been taken?’

‘It’s not likely. He was alone in the taxi. I’m trying to find out whether he hired a car, but there’s a difficulty. There’s a roadblock at a thing called Bettamotos.’

‘Wait there.’ The line went dead. I waited for a minute or so, then stepped back to the desk.

‘Where’s your genie, Aladdin?’ the clerk chuckled. ‘Your lamp not working?’

‘It takes a few minutes to heat up. Oh, I should have warned you; he’s very bad-tempered after I’ve wakened him.’

He looked at me as if I was nuts. I let him go on believing that for a little longer, until a Mossos d’Esquadra vehicle pulled up in the bus bay outside.

‘That’s him,’ I said.

Alex came through the door, nodded to Tom and me and leaned over the desk. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he murmured. ‘Antonio Santos, ex Guardia Civil, Figueras.’ The man nodded. ‘Okay, Antonio: did you rent a car today to an English gentleman, Mr Cowling?’

He didn’t yield at once; instead he folded his arms, and repeated his mantra. ‘We do not give—’

‘Sure, I know,’ Alex snapped. ‘Customer information is confidential. But not from me. This is now a police matter. Yes, you could make me get a court order, but I don’t need one to pull every one of your company’s cars off the road for inspection, and you know how long that can take. Piss me about on this and that will happen. If it does I’ll make sure your bosses know why.’

Antonio sighed. He also shot me a look full of bluster and ‘If I ever see you on a dark night’ threats. Alex saw it too. ‘Friend,’ he said quietly, ‘this lady works for me, undercover. If she says I should arrest you, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.’

‘Yes,’ the clerk snapped. ‘Okay, he did, this man. I rented him a Seat Ibiza, white, just before one o’clock.’ He scribbled on a scrap of paper and handed it to Alex. ‘That’s the number.’

‘How long was the hire?’

‘A week.’

‘Where’s the drop-off? Which of your depots?’

Antonio shook his head. ‘This one. He’ll bring it back here.’

‘And you believed that?’ Alex snorted. ‘Let me see the paperwork.’ The man stared at his desk. ‘The paperwork!’ he repeated.

‘There is none,’ he murmured. ‘Cash deal.’

‘Jesus!’ He looked at the number. ‘This car’s at least four years
old,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ll bet it’s a piece of shit, the oldest on your lot, the one that never gets rented out.’ He smiled. ‘I get it. You pocket the money, he brings it back and nobody’s ever the wiser. Or possibly he doesn’t bring it back. Do you care if he doesn’t? No. You report it stolen from the lot, and the company collects the insurance, more than the thing is worth.’ He looked up at the sign. ‘Who owns this outfit?’ he asked. ‘Tell me, now; don’t make me find out.’

‘My brother-in-law.’ It was a whisper, as if he feared being overheard.

Alex laughed. ‘Then you give him a piece of advice from me, and you take it too, ex-cop. From now on, you drive straight. Understood?’

‘Yes. Okay; now let me alone, huh?’

Alex turned away, and Tom and I followed, leaving Antonio to enjoy what was left of his day.

‘He’s in the wind, your mysterious friend,’ he murmured. ‘You know that, don’t you? They’ll never see that car again. Why would he do that, Primavera, why?’

‘I have no idea,’ I told him, honestly. ‘I can’t imagine that it had anything to do with Shirley, but who knows for sure.’

‘So where do I start looking?’

‘Why should you?’ I asked. ‘He hasn’t broken any laws. You have no grounds for starting a manhunt. Alex, you’re under enough pressure as it is without piling more on to yourself.’

‘The dead man in the forest connects to him,’ he pointed out.

‘So what? Not nearly as much as he connects to Christine McGuigan, and she and Patterson don’t relate at all.’

‘True,’ he conceded. ‘So you’re saying that I should simply forget about him?’

‘Yes.’ I paused. ‘But I’m not saying that I will. He’s left my friend in the lurch, knocked ten bells out of her emotionally, and I don’t take kindly to that. For her sake, okay and for my own curiosity, I’d like to find him and ask what the hell he’s playing at.’

‘That brings me back to my question, more or less. Where do you start looking?’

‘Close to home: his, that is. The only thing that he told me about himself, directly, is that he has two daughters, so that’s where I’ll begin.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You do that, if you want. You’re right, of course; if I were to make his disappearance an official matter I’d be carrying even more heat, and I’m in danger of melting as it is. One condition, though; if you turn up anything that makes it my business, you tell me, straight away.’

‘Sure.’ I grinned at him. ‘I know I’m not really working undercover.’

‘I wish you were; I could use you. I suppose you want to know about McGuigan.’

I glanced, quickly, in my son’s direction. ‘Not at this moment, no.’

He took my meaning. ‘Then maybe I’ll call you tomorrow. You get on home now. So long, Tom.’

We did as he suggested, but with a detour along the way. I knew it might delay my dinner date, but I felt that I had to do it. Rather than drive up to Shirley’s place and press the buzzer, I called her
as we approached and the big jail-sized gate was open when we arrived for us to drive in.

‘I’ll stay in the car, Mum,’ Tom said as I unbuckled my belt.

I smiled, for I knew what he was doing: giving Shirl and me room for frank girl talk, but also making sure I didn’t stay too long. Game time was looming and he was clock-watching.

She was waiting for me at the front door. She’d been crying, again: I felt sorry for her and, simultaneously, angry for her, and furious with the guy who was giving her such grief. ‘He’s been here,’ she said, as we walked through to her living area. ‘He’s packed his things, or most of them, taken his passport and he’s gone.’

‘Have you checked the safe?’ I asked, sharply.

‘Yes, nothing missing apart from a box of bonds he kept in there. It’s a bugger; I felt guilty doing it.’

‘YOU felt guilty?’ I exclaimed. ‘You poor love. When I find him he’ll know what bloody guilt is.’

She slumped into an armchair, round-shouldered, make-up smeared, looking worn and defeated. ‘Find him?’ she repeated. ‘No point in that, Primavera. He’s voted with his feet, hasn’t he, and who can blame him? Look at me, a self-indulgent old woman throwing myself at him.’

I gasped. ‘You know, you do talk a load of old bollocks sometimes. You are Shirley Gash, the queen of L’Escala, the strongest woman I know, and one of the most attractive. Snap out of it and put this thing in perspective. If this man has run away from you, it’s not because he’s rejecting you, that’s for bloody sure.’

‘But he left me a note,’ she wailed. She pointed to her massive
oak dining table. ‘And the house keys.’ I looked; they were lying there, a big bunch that included the zapper for the electrically opened gate.

‘Was it open when you arrived?’ I asked.

‘No, he must have used the back entrance. The door there’s on a Yale, remember.’

I did. I’ve used it myself. I went across and picked up the note. It had been scrawled on the back of an old restaurant bill, by a man in a rush, possibly in a panic, not the neat, meticulous Patterson Cowling that I’d come to know. ‘Sorry,’ I read aloud. ‘I’d hoped it would work out between us. Love, Patterson.’

‘You see? I’ve been dumped; chucked. That’s never happened to me in my life before.’

‘And it hasn’t happened now. This man’s running away from his own inadequacies, not any of yours. Come on, ’fess up. Is he any good in bed?’

She shot me a quick, girl-to-girl look. ‘I can see why you left Tom in the car.’ Her chuckle was a promising sign. ‘He’s all right, I suppose. A bit quick, maybe.’

‘Always missionary, I suppose. Car ferry sex.’

She stared at me. ‘Whatever are you talking about?’

‘You know. Roll on, roll off.’

She laughed. ‘That’s a fair description.’

‘And you put up with that?’

‘Not always,’ she murmured, coyly. ‘Sometimes I had to take things into my own hands, so to speak. Gawd, listen to me, Primavera, staring seventy in the face and here are you telling me that I’m a nympho.’

‘I’m telling you no such bloody thing. I’m reminding you that women are entitled to expect as much from sex as men are. If Patterson’s done a runner because he couldn’t handle you getting on top, that reflects on him, not you. And by the way, you are not staring seventy in the face, you can barely see it in the distance; you’re still looking over your shoulder at sixty. Nice man, but if that’s the way he was, write him off to experience and find yourself someone with a bit more energy.’

‘A bit more stay up and go?’ she tittered.

‘You get my drift.’

‘A bit younger?’

‘No reason why not.’

‘Even someone half my age?’ I’d seen that cunning gleam in her eye before. I knew then that she was turning back into Shirley, even if I wasn’t going to where she was leading me.

‘That would be pushing it,’ I said, firmly. ‘But that does remind me; I’m having a celebration dinner with my nephew . . .’

‘Oz’s nephew.’

‘Our nephew, my son’s cousin.’