Nineteen

‘This wee nutter, Charlie Wise,’ Calum said, ‘has an image of himself which, frankly, is complete and utter balls. He’s got this crazy idea that he can rub shoulders with the worst kinds of European underworld riff raff and they’ll scamper to do his bidding at a mere snap of his podgy fingers. And this, as those guys well know, is a man who made his living manufacturing pink bloody bog paper.’

‘One of life’s necessities,’ Sian said primly. ‘I take it everything that could go wrong has gone wrong?’

‘Disastrously so. This contact Charlie was relying on to come up with some safe accommodation across the border, Mario something-or-other, is operating on home territory, his nose sniffing the air for the smell of ready money. And he’d just heard of cash being offered by a man in Gibraltar for information relating to a couple of names. Christ! Out of a clear blue sky, those names dropped in his bloody lap.’

I grimaced. ‘Charlie phoned him from the UK, digging for a different kind of information?’

‘Exactly. Charlie heard about this other reward, fifty thousand quid being offered by the Liverpool firm for the safe return of their stolen goods. He at once thought of his Spanish contacts, thought there must be someone there who could provide information about the diamonds: who’s holding them, what’s their next move – the wheres, the whys and the hows of any sale.’

‘But, after that phone call, he was as good as dead.’

‘Mario was probably already fantasizing about how he was going to spend the reward he’d get for shopping Charlie when he picked up the phone and called Bernie Rickman.’ Calum scowled at me. ‘I drove Christ knows how many miles across Europe and ended up delivering the poor bastards to the enemy.’

His words were irate, but there was a gleam in his dark eyes and Calum Wick, I realized, was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was his old, relaxed self, sprawled full length with his ankles crossed on the only long and comfortable seat in the canoe’s saloon. A Schimmelpenninck cigar smouldered between his paint-stained fingers; from time to time he reached up to stroke his salt-and-pepper beard and even by the saloon’s subdued lighting I could see that he’d managed to drive all those miles without once cleaning his John Lennon glasses.

Sian, as always, had her legs drawn up on one of the seats, and looked as soft and as drowsy as a kitten. But she was listening intently to Calum, toying idly with her loose blonde hair, occasionally sipping from a glass of water.

I was Captain Bligh, pacing the deck in torment. There was a slight movement beneath my sandals as the dying fringes of a heavy swell rolling down the straits reached the marina and stirred the sleeping yachts at their moorings. Ropes creaked in protest. Somewhere, metal tinkled. And in my pacing past the canoe’s neat oval portholes I was always conscious of a gleaming white shape and aware that, on the other side of the concrete walkway, Bernie Rickman’s Sea Wind was still sneering down at us – and with justification.

I flopped into the remaining chair, groaned, and ran fingers though my hair.

‘So you arrived at the address Charlie had been given, expecting to be met by this Mario – and then what?’

‘We came in on the A383, hit La Línea early in the evening. Charlie was navigating. He directed me through classy suburbs, houses in groves of palms, festooned with bougainvillea, with long drives barred by locked gates. Stockbroker belt. Where we finished up it was a lot less salubrious: littered streets gradually narrowing to become little more than a maze of back alleys, walls of flaking stucco, rusting iron balconies, threadbare nightdresses and underwear hanging limply from drooping overhead clotheslines.’ Calum paused. ‘And would you believe when I pulled in alongside one of those crappy buildings at the end of a lofty terrace, there was another black Mercedes sitting in front of mine, with two grinning men in suits leaning against the boot watching our arrival.’

‘Clontarf and Ebenholz,’ I said. ‘But how the hell—’

‘If you say so. I didn’t ask. I know they were the same two blokes I saw walking into Jokers Wild. They were careless enough with the way their jackets hung for me to know they were armed; one was black and the one who told me cheerfully that it was much quicker by plane had an accent you’d have got used to if you were painting outback fences.’

I nodded. ‘Suits, you say. A clever move. They flew in from Manchester, changed their image so they became just two more of Gibraltar’s lawyers and financiers drinking lattes in the coffee shops and bars. We don’t know their real names, but clearly those names don’t ring police alarm bells. Then Rickman got word from meretricious Mario, they crossed the border and waited for you to hit town.’

‘They acted like gentlemen. Charlie was impressed. The Aussie told him the place where they were parked was a tip, that Mario had got them classier digs for the same price. Charlie beamed. Adele looked wary, but was left with little choice when the two suits ushered them into the Merc. Charlie waved his thanks, shouted something about seeing me, and they drove away in a cloud of gritty dust with me standing there like a leftover haggis. It took me all of thirty fucking minutes to find my way through that maze of streets to the border.’