Chapter 10
The jet touches down.
Steve has a headache he can’t explain. Must be too much sunshine. He drains the last of his Coke Zero. The steward always jokes with him now, ‘Glass of bubbly, sir?’ Steve remembers a time, a time before Rosie D’Antonio, when he didn’t have any in-jokes with private jet crew members.
Amy is going to stay at Vern’s villa for a couple of days, make herself useful, dig up the corpse, ask a few questions, while he and Rosie look into Jakob Eriksson and Georgie Glazier, and Tommy Griffin too.
Amy should be safe, shouldn’t she? In a beautiful villa on an Italian hillside?
I mean, sure, one of Vern’s bodyguards has just been assassinated by, at best current guess, either a ruthless business rival or an ex-wife.
But Amy’s view is that whoever is threatening Vern has already got his message across in fairly forceful terms, so what good would killing another bodyguard do?
You can’t pull off the same trick twice.
You sort of have to trust Amy with that type of thing, she’s quite insightful where imminent and brutal danger is concerned.
So here Steve is, at another private airport in another European city. It occurs to him, as he adjusts himself from the flight, that he doesn’t actually know where they are. It’s not England, he knows that, because he can’t see a Costa Coffee.
‘Where are we?’ he asks Rosie, as they step down on to the tarmac.
‘Barcelona,’ says Rosie.
‘Barcelona, Spain?’ Steve asks.
Rosie turns and lowers her sunglasses. ‘No, Barcelona, Norway. It’s lucky you’re cute, Stevie.’
‘How long are we staying for? If it’s more than three days, I’ll need socks.’
‘You only brought three pairs of socks?’ Rosie asks.
‘No, I only brought one pair of socks,’ says Steve.
People change their socks far more often than they need to, that’s Steve’s view. Your socks are inside your shoes half the time, so they’re not even getting dirty? It really makes you think. Steve’s mystery headache starts throbbing away again.
‘We won’t be long,’ says Rosie. ‘My contact is driving here to meet us.’
Steve looks towards the terminal building. A row of cars is parked on the apron of the runway. The sun glints off the tinted windscreens of Range Rovers, Mercedes and Jags. Every colour of the rainbow, so long as that rainbow is entirely black.
‘Who’s your contact?’
‘Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuéllar,’ says Rosie. ‘Assistant Detective Inspector, Spanish Interpol.’
‘He has a long name,’ says Steve.
‘Probably the finest lover in Western Europe,’ says Rosie.
‘Okay,’ says Steve.
‘But also a brilliant scholar,’ says Rosie. ‘Did you really not bring sunglasses again?’
‘Screwing your eyes up is much cheaper,’ says Steve. ‘And less showy.’
‘Ernesto also played football for Barcelona in his teens.’
‘Oh, did he?’
‘Before a knee injury forced him to join the Special Forces,’ says Rosie. ‘Then he took three years out to study Criminal Psychology at Oxford. You’ll love him.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ says Steve.
‘You will,’ says Rosie.
‘I won’t,’ says Steve. You can just bet that Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuéllar will be wearing sunglasses.
Expensive ones too. He will be exactly the sort of man that women love and men hate.
There’s a farmer in Clay Hill, a few miles from Axley.
Brett, he’s called, floppy blond hair, red trousers, GPS in his tractor, the full works.
The women go silly over him. Tony Taylor once stood next to him at the urinal in The Brass Monkey and came back white as a sheet, couldn’t speak for the rest of the evening.
When men like this come along, then, as another man, you just have to wait them out.
They’ll have a fatal flaw somewhere. As it happened, Brett decided he’d have a crack at The Brass Monkey quiz night one Wednesday and word from his team was he didn’t even know the capital of Malawi.
Oh, Brett, with your Hugh Grant looks and your fifty-grand tractor, who goes to a half-decent pub quiz if they don’t even know the capital of Malawi? Absolutely laughable.
Steve is wondering which of the sleek limousines this no doubt tall, handsome prick will be stepping out of when the noise of a backfiring engine causes him and Rosie to start.
From around the side of the terminal building comes a two-tone blue-and-white SEAT Ibiza, front bumper grazing the tarmac and smoke billowing from the exhaust. It continues, as fast as its little engine will carry it, then skids to a halt in front of them.
A small man jumps from the driver’s seat.
Bright eyes, huge smile, dishevelled moustache and off-white T-shirt bearing the legend MAMA O’ROURKE’S SEAFOOD PARTY HOUSE 1968.
He doesn’t remind Steve a great deal of Brett from Clay Hill.
In fact, if anything, he reminds Steve of Tony Taylor.
One thing is for sure: this cannot be Ernesto, soldier, scholar, footballer and lover. Perhaps a driver?
Rosie’s eyes light up. ‘Ernesto!’
Okay, thinks Steve, this is Ernesto. Unless Ernesto has a driver also called Ernesto.
Rosie and Ernesto hug. And not the way you might hug a driver. Ernesto is a full three inches shorter than Rosie. ‘Beautiful Rosie. The Queen is here!’
Finally tearing himself away from Rosie, Ernesto looks at Steve, and his manic energy disappears into immediate stillness. He looks Steve up and down, very, very slowly, then spreads his arms and begins to shake his head.
‘Can it be?’ starts Ernesto. ‘Can this be Steve Wheeler? I heard about him, and now I see him?’
‘Umm,’ says Steve. ‘Yes. I’m Steve.’
Ernesto spreads his arms wider still and advances. He wraps Steve in an enormous bear hug. Or as enormous as Ernesto can manage.
‘I heard so much about this Steve,’ says Ernesto, loosening his grip, stepping back and really taking Steve in. ‘Handsome Steve. Brave Steve. Steve shot a guy in a Coldplay T-shirt. And here he is.’
‘In the flesh,’ agrees Rosie.
Steve is trying to think of something to say.
‘Did you really play for Barcelona?’
Ernesto waves this away. ‘Only a little.’
‘And you were Special Forces?’
‘I blew up some stuff,’ says Ernesto. ‘Nothing important.’
Steve stares into the man’s big blue eyes. Like oceans of joy swirled with pools of love.
‘You don’t wear sunglasses?’
‘I think it’s cheaper to just screw your eyes up.’ Ernesto then nods to Steve’s T-shirt. ‘You like Van Halen?’
‘Just a bit,’ says Steve. He sees that Rosie is leaning against the SEAT, one eyebrow raised, smug smirk on her face.
‘They played in Barcelona,’ says Ernesto. ‘I said Interpol needed to investigate something backstage. But we didn’t need to investigate anything. I just wanted to meet Van Halen.’
‘You met Van Halen?’
Ernesto nods, seriously. ‘I thought maybe I should arrest them for something and then I could spend the whole night in a cell with them, ask them everything, you know, but in the end I didn’t arrest them. I really try to be a good cop, but I was very tempted.’
‘Still, though,’ says Steve. Why does a part of Steve feel like he’s cheating on Tony Taylor?
Ernesto nods. ‘Still, though. So you guys solving a murder?’
Steve looks at Rosie. ‘Uh …’
‘What have you found out about our lovely suspects for us?’ Rosie asks.
Ernesto reaches through an open window and takes a laptop from his passenger seat. He places it on the bonnet of the car and opens it up.
‘Tommy Griffin,’ says Ernesto, showing them a photograph of a man with a cigar and a scowl. ‘Bad man. FBI have a lot on him, but never enough to make an arrest. He’s in Palm Springs, if you like to go see him.’
‘We’ll probably have to, knowing my luck,’ Steve says. ‘Why doesn’t anyone live in Iceland?’
Ernesto nods. ‘Criminals like hot places. Georgie Glazier, the ex-wife, we’ve got nothing official, she’s pretty clean. I sent you her address, right?’
‘You did, yes,’ says Rosie.
‘But Eriksson is the biggest player,’ says Ernesto. ‘He’s the one that worries me. And no one worries me. I’m Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuéllar.’
‘Vern Blackwood says he’s a killer,’ says Rosie. ‘Can you confirm that?’
‘A definite killer,’ says Ernesto. ‘He killed plenty of people, don’t you worry that he hasn’t killed no one.’
Ernesto expands a photograph of a bald man, perhaps in his early seventies, taken from an airport security camera.
He looks, to Steve, like Death himself. ‘This is him in Bratislava a year ago. We have another one of him flying back out the next day. Between the two photos a Czech gentleman is murdered in a hotel in the centre of the city.’
‘And you’re sure it was Eriksson?’ Steve asks.
‘Only God can tell for sure,’ says Ernesto.
‘But he has a habit of being in town when these things happen. We have a murder in Helsinki two years ago, another in Minsk around four years ago. Every time a murder, every time there is Jakob Eriksson. The most dangerous man in Sweden, they call him. Though I guess there’s not much competition. ’
‘And he’s not in jail?’ Rosie asks.
‘You want to find us some evidence,’ says Ernesto, ‘and we’ll put him in jail. I can’t arrest him for being in an airport. This isn’t Russia.’
‘Or America,’ adds Rosie.
‘All to do with drugs,’ says Ernesto. ‘But not, you know, not Van Halen drugs. Medicine drugs. Tablets, Viagra, you know, Ritalin, those sorts of drugs. That makes sense to you?’
‘It makes perfect sense,’ says Rosie. ‘And Tommy Griffin is in the same business?’
‘Correct,’ says Ernesto.
Rosie gives a slow nod. ‘We think Eriksson might have just killed someone else.’
‘You want to give me details?’ Ernesto asks.
‘In good time,’ says Rosie. ‘Vern doesn’t believe it’s him, so we’ll tread carefully for now. And Jakob Eriksson is his real name?’
Ernesto shrugs. ‘Maybe. Definitely we’ve known him as Jakob Eriksson for about twenty-five years. First mentioned in 2001, an anonymous tip-off about an illegal factory in Morocco. Twenty-five years would be a long time to have the same alias.’
‘Great year, 2001,’ says Steve. ‘I saw AC/DC at Wembley, and I also caught a guy who was murdering gang members and leaving their dismembered limbs in supermarket toilets.’
‘How were AC/DC?’ Ernesto asks.
‘Epic,’ says Steve. ‘2001 they were in their pomp.’
Ernesto nods enthusiastically. ‘Did they play –’
‘And back to Jakob Eriksson, boys,’ says Rosie.
‘You must have found something on Eriksson since 2001,’ says Steve. ‘You’re Interpol.’
‘I am Interpol, yes,’ says Ernesto. He adjusts the wing mirror on the SEAT and it falls off. He picks it up, looks at it accusingly, then throws it on to the passenger seat.
‘Can you send us everything you have?’ Rosie asks. ‘On all three of them?’
‘Legally, no, of course not,’ says Ernesto. ‘But yes, for you and Steve.’
‘And do you know anyone in Sweden who might be able to help us track Eriksson down?’ Rosie asks.
‘Spanish cops are better than Swedish cops,’ says Ernesto.
‘I see,’ says Rosie. ‘Do you think Swedish cops would agree with that?’
‘How could they not?’ says Ernesto. ‘It’s just facts. But I know a guy, Larssen. For a Swedish cop, he’s good. For a Spanish cop, he would be second-rate, perhaps third. He’s the guy they got tracking down Sara Lindstrat, so you know they rate him.’
‘Who’s Sara Lindstrat?’ Steve asks.
Ernesto shakes his head. ‘You really don’t know any of the “Europe’s One Hundred Most Dangerous Criminals” list?’
‘Sorry,’ says Steve. ‘We know Vern Blackwood. Is he on it?’
‘For sure, not,’ says Ernesto. ‘Sara Lindstrat is the most dangerous woman in Sweden. Killer, torturer, a bad woman, and not in a good way. Larssen is on her trail. He’ll know something about Eriksson.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ says Rosie. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Okay, Steve, back on the plane.’
‘Back on the plane?’ says Steve. ‘We’ve only just got here. Ernesto will –’
‘We need to talk to the ex-wife,’ says Rosie. ‘You’ll enjoy it, she’s in England. It’ll be cold.’
‘But …’ Steve looks at Ernesto, then back at Rosie.
‘You’ll see Ernesto again, Steve, I promise. If you’d like to. Would you like to?’
Steve shrugs. ‘I don’t mind.’
Ernesto hugs him. ‘I would like to. Don’t you dare get killed, Steve. After I just met you.’
‘Okay, I won’t,’ says Steve.
Ernesto hugs Rosie. ‘You stay for longer next time.’
‘Let’s solve the murder,’ says Rosie. ‘Then we’ll be back for cocktails.’
‘Cocktails it is!’ says Ernesto, beaming.
Steve leads the way up the steps, back on to the plane. At the top, he turns back. Ernesto is leaning against his battered SEAT.
‘Can I ask you a question, Ernesto?’
‘Sure,’ says Ernesto.
‘What’s the capital of Malawi?’
‘Lilongwe,’ says Ernesto.
And that, thinks Steve, nodding, is a real man.