Skinner's Trail (22 page)

Fifty-three

‘Señor
Commandante Skinner, may I introduce Senor Don Francisco Garcia, who is our guest at this time.'

There was one chair only in the small interrogation cell, and it was bolted to the floor. Paco Garcia stood behind it, grasping its back with strong hands, as if wishing to tear it loose and use it as a weapon.

`
Buenas Tardes, se
ñ
or
,' said Skinner evenly. 'I think you owe me a new window.' Garcia stared back at him. 'How much English does this pig speak?' The man did not react in any way to his question to Pujol.

Not much. His French is okay.'

'Sarah did say that he sounded mixed up. What's he told you so far?'

`Nothing. He called your wife a bad name and said she was a liar. You know, Bob, it is very stuffy in here without windows. I am feeling a little faint. I think I will take that walk of which I spoke this morning.'

`That's good,' said Skinner, smiling at Garcia. 'About five or ten minutes' worth should see you all right. You might want to bring something to write on when you come back.'

As the door closed on Pujol's back, the smile left Skinner's face.
P
ourquoi
. Garcia
, pourquoi
?'

The man pulled himself up to his full height, puffing out
his chest. 'Vous n'
êt
es pas policia ici. lei vo
u
s
ê
tes
ri
en.' He spat on the floor.

Slowly Skinner walked towards him.
Rien? Je suis rien
?' Lazily he reached out his right hand and slapped Garcia lightly across the face. The man looked back at him in astonishment.

Skinner reached out again, and the big man seemed to offer his cheek to the slap — but one never landed. Instead it changed into a flashing, smashing, cutting-edge blow to the base of the jaw, just below the left ear. With a loud click, the joint dislocated. Garcia's mouth opened with the force and the pain of the blow, but before he could scream, Skinner pivoted and drove his left hand, straight-fingered, into the pit of his stomach, just above the diaphragm. The air hissed out of the man's lungs in a low moan. He slumped forward, catching hold of the back of the chair, instinctively, as support.

In no particular hurry, Skinner moved round behind him and, impacting with the first joints of his fingers rather than the tips or the knuckles, struck him two downward blows, right-handed, one to each kidney. Garcia's back arched with the pain. His legs seemed to bow under him, but he stayed on his feet, bent forward over the chair.

`
Ce
lá
, it
ê
tait pour ma femme, Garcia, et pour mon petit.
' Skinner paused and took a pace back, then went on in a whisper. `
Celui ici, i
l
est pour mes vacances!
' He kicked the man between his spread legs, square on the testicles.

At last Garcia screamed, and crumpled to the floor. He lay there, clutching himself and moaning for perhaps three minutes. Eventually, Skinner bent over, grabbed him under the armpits, and hauled him to his feet, before dropping him into the bolted chair. The man began to double over again, but Skinner pushed him upright.

'Oh,' he said. 'I see you've hurt your jaw. We must fix you up so you can talk to the Commandante.'

The man looked back at him uncomprehending, his eyes still crossed with pain. Skinner threw a punch: a short, powerful boxer's left hook. It landed on the right side of the jaw. There was a second click, as loud as the first, as the joint snapped back into place. This time Garcia howled with pain, and tears streamed down his face.

Skinner grabbed him under the chin and pulled his head up, forcing the man to look into his eyes.
‘
O
ui, monsieur
,' he said softly.
‘
j
e suis rien, mais ma femme et mon enfant sont tout le monde.'

At that moment, there was a soft knock on the door. Skinner opened it, and Pujol stepped back into the room, looking anxiously at Garcia in the process, as if checking him for visible injuries, and brightening up when he saw him sitting in the chair, unmarked and seemingly none the worse for wear.

D'you feel the better for your stroll, Arturo? Paco and I got on great when you were away. I think you'll find he's quite keen to answer your questions now, starting with who told him to heave that fucking brick through my window!'

Pujol stood in front of Garcia and put the question to him in Spanish. The big man looked up at him, tears still shining in his eyes, then sneaked a fearful glance across at Skinner, and answered, 'Senor Vaudan.

‘P
or que
?'

Garcia blurted out his answer almost before the question was out. He paused, then leaned forwards conspiratorially towards Pujol and muttered something else. The Commandante turned to Skinner. 'He says that Vaudan told him you had become a problem, and that he was to give you a
message by frightening Sarah. He says that she frightened him. When he broke the window, he thought that she was going to cut his heart out.'

`If he'd made a move for her she would have.'

`Bob, Paco also says that he would speak much more readily if you were not here. He seems to think that you wish him harm. I think perhaps that it is —'

`Sure,' said Skinner. 'Wouldn't want to upset the poor chap. I'll wait outside. But don't piss about with him. As soon as I'm through that door, you ask him who was with him when he murdered Santi.'

Pujol nodded. Skinner opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

Ten minutes later, he heard a buzzer sound. When two uniformed officers marched past him along the corridor, and into the interrogation room, he realised that it had been a signal from Pujol. As Garcia was led away, still doubled over and clutching his groin, the Commandante signalled him to come back into the room.

`Well?' asked Skinner.

`I put your question to him as you asked. It was amazing. Twenty minutes ago he knew nothing. Now, in here he would have told my fortune if I had asked him. What did you do to him, Bob?'

'I'll show you sometime. What did he say?'

Pujol smiled. 'When I put your question to him, he went as white as a ghost. Then he said, "It was Serge Lucan, Senor Vaudan's man from France. I was with him. But we did not kill Senor Alberni."'

`Oh, yes?'

`That's right. He said that he was there, at Alberni's
villa, with
Lucan. They were there before you. Vaudan sent them to put money in Alberni's safe. Santi had shown him around the house, so he knew where it was. They thought that Alberni would be at work and that they would have to break in, but when they got there, the garden door was open and Santi's car was still there. They were going to go away and come back later, but when the dog barked at them and no one appeared, they decided to take a look around. Paco said that he looked through the window of the garage, and saw Santi hanging there. He called Lucan over to show him. He said that Lucan just laughed, and said, "That's saved me a messy job." When Paco asked him what he meant, Lucan said that his orders were that, once the money was in the safe, Santi was to suffer a fatal accident.'

`How did Garcia react to that?'

`He said that he was terrified. He said that he did not realise until then what sort of a man Vaudan is.'

Skinner snorted. 'So how come he's still doing his dirty work?'

`He is afraid not to. He heard about Inch's accident, and he thinks that it would be easy for him to have one also, if he crossed Vaudan.'

`I suppose so. Anyway, how did his story go on?'

`There wasn't much more to it. They went into the villa, found the safe, found Santi's key so they didn't have to pick the lock, and they put the money inside. Paco said that Lucan had locksmith's tools with him.'

`Did you ask him if they took anything from the safe — a letter, for example?'

Pujol nodded. 'Si. I asked him that. He thought I was going to accuse him of robbery as well as all the rest. He said to
me —
he gave me his solemn promise — that they did not take anything. They put the money in, and then they left. From the time he said, they can only have been gone a couple of minutes before you arrived.'

Skinner cast his mind back to that Saturday morning. He recalled a battered old green van, with two men inside, waiting to pull out of the Camp dels Pilans road as he had swung in from the highway. 'Does Paco have a car?'

`
Si
. A very old Renault, green, but not a car, a . . . oh, what is the word?'

`It's all right. I remember. I saw them. He's told you true, about the time, at least. That doesn't mean they didn't kill Santi, though. They could have taken their time about it.'

Pujol's expressive face became mournful. 'No, my friend. I am afraid not. I am a policeman like you, and like you I have an idea when a man is telling me lies. I have an idea about people, too. Paco may be stupid, and ready to do things like he did today, at your house. He is someone you would send out to frighten a woman, but not a man. He is certainly not someone that you could send out to kill.'

Skinner sat down in the bolted chair and looked up at Pujol. 'You're a good copper, Arturo. You have good instincts. You're right about him. I found that out when I was . . . having my talk with him. Sarah scared him with that knife far more than he scared her. A lioness with her cub, right enough.' He laughed softly.

`Yes, Bob, and whatever you, mm, said, to him, he is now far more afraid of you than of Vaudan.'

That could come in handy.'

Skinner folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair. 'So what have we got? We know that Vaudan had
that money planted in Santi's safe. We know that he
w
as planning to kill him. Except Santi seems to have beaten him
to it. It looks as if, whatever my friend Carlos says about the Catalan character and your kindness to animals, the guy killed himself after all. Yet the money in the safe indicates that
Vaudan was trying to frame him. That was done to fit in with Vaudan's story.'

Perhaps,' Pujol said tentatively, Vaudan had frightened or blackmailed Santi into taking the money from InterCosta.'

Skinner shook his head. 'No, that would require Santi to have a partner who was so fucking stupid that he wouldn't notice a missing million — or one who was scared along with him. You've met Ainscow. Is he that fucking stupid? Is he the type who would scare easily? Sorry, Arturo, that's another bit I find hard to swallow. Ainscow's in this, I can feel it. He and Vaudan have been smart in covering up any link between them, but there has to be one. That makes it still my business, even after Pitkeathly's been paid off. That's why I'm using my force resources on this business. What we've got here is a very clever money-laundering operation. Cash ripped off, salted away in property to make it legit, then turned back into cash again. We know about the loan on the Torroella Locals shops. You can bet that if we looked, we'd find that the same had been done with the Montgo properties. So there's a million in funny money, carefully built up over a period of years. Where is it, and what's it doing? Those are the questions I want to answer. Santi topping himself, that's just confusing, and bad luck for Gloria, but in this business it's no more than a sideshow.'

Pujol leaned on the steel door of the dingy, sweat-smelling room. With head pressed back against the metal, he closed his eyes, considering what Skinner had said. Eventually he looked
down at his companion, still in the interrogation chair. 'Yes, you are absolutely right, my friend. All of that, simply put. But it is a million miles above the head of Paco Garcia. What do you want me to do with him? I could throw him in jail for quite a long time.

Skinner shook his head. 'Your jails are full enough already, man. Why don't you just let him go? We won't press charges. Before you kick him out, though, tell him that when Vaudan gets in touch, he should say that I've got the message, and that I'm flying Sarah and the baby home tomorrow morning, then driving back myself. Tell him, too, that if I ever find out that he told Vaudan anything different, then the next time we have a talk there won't be anyone else around, and he won't walk away after it.' He pushed himself powerfully out of the chair. Now I'm going home to spend some time with my family, and to send another fax. We need to know all about Mr Serge Lucan, and we need to watch him very carefully from this day on.

Fifty-four

‘Y
ou are sure the baby'll be okay on the plane?'

`Hey, I'm not just his mother. I'm a doctor, remember. Everything in his life is a new experience. This will be another. They've given us a front-row seat, so we'll have plenty of space, and we'll be well in front of the engines, so it'll be quiet, or as quiet as you can get on a Spanish airplane!'

They were standing at the end of the long straight concourse of Barcelona Airport. Behind them it stretched back almost a kilometre, looking more like a high-quality shopping arcade than a major international terminal. Arturo Pujol's Guardia uniform had whisked them round a long queue at passport control. As Bob and Sarah said their farewells, he sat across in the cafeteria, among passengers and air crew, sipping his first coffee of the day.

`Okay,' said Bob, `I'm convinced. Anyway it's a short flight. Alex will be well on her way down to Manchester to meet you by now. Alex and Andy, that is. It was nice of him to offer to keep her company.'

Sarah smiled, `Mmm, wasn't it. He must be keen to see his new godson again.'

`Yeah, that'll be it. Single guys in their mid-thirties do tend to get broody. Time he got himself sorted out in that area.'

`He will. Don't you worry. He'll probably take you completely by surprise one day.'

‘
Not him. I know him too well. Listen, when you get home, do one thing for me. Call Jimmy and tell him what's been going on here. Tell him that, since all this started from a complaint made in Scotland, and since there's a possibility that Ainscow's involved, I'm staying on here at the request of the
Guardia to help their investigation.

Sarah nodded. 'I'll call him soon as we're settled in. If he's free I'll invite him down for coffee, late afternoon. How long do you think you'll have to stay out here?'

`A few days, probably. Until we establish a link with Ainscow, or until the thing just stalls completely. When the time is right, I'll just jump in the car and drive up.' He glanced across at Gate 44. The queue for embarkation was down to its last few passengers. 'You'd better get on board now. I love you . . . both' He kissed her, long and tenderly. Now, safe home. And while you're in the air, Arturo and I'll be in jail!'