As Easy as Murder (19 page)

‘You haven’t won anything yet,’ I pointed out.

‘My credit card doesn’t know that. Go on now; get dolled up.’

‘Must I? I feel like jeans and a T-shirt.’

‘Fine.’ He smiled. ‘Whatever makes you comfortable.’

In the end I settled for shorts and a check shirt, but with enough cleavage showing to make me feel, and I hope look, a little less like a middle-aged woman out with her two boys. Jonny let me choose where we’d eat; I surprised him by directing us out of St Martí, to Mike’s, a simple German-owned waterside restaurant in L’Escala, where the menu never changes but is one hundred per cent reliable, and where they give you as many chips as you want. In Tom’s case, that’s usually a lot. In my nephew’s too, as it turned out; he had a massive salad, followed by a schnitzel, then he and Tom each demolished the biggest, gaudiest ice cream on the list.

I left the talking to the lads. To my surprise much of it was about education. Tom was curious to know about schools in Scotland. (The obvious fact that he could have asked me, but hadn’t, made me suppose that he thought I was too old to remember.) He was even more interested in Arizona, and the academic courses offered to promising athletes . . . not only golfers, for American colleges take most sport seriously. Jonny talked him through the lot. ‘They don’t do surfing, I’m afraid,’ he said as he finished.

I had to laugh. ‘Yes, sorry, Tom, you can’t do surfing at university,’ I told him.

He shot me down. ‘You can, Mum. I’ve looked it up online. You can do a degree at Plymouth, in England.’

‘You’re kidding,’ I gasped.

‘I’m not,’ he insisted. ‘And you can do them in California. Isn’t that right, Jonny?’

His cousin nodded agreement. ‘Sorry, Auntie P, but it is. There are one or two.’

‘Jesus,’ I laughed. ‘What next? Bungee-jumping?’

We didn’t stay out late. As before, Jonny had to be up with the seagulls . . . you’ll struggle to find a lark in St Martí, but those noisy bastards are omnipresent . . . to meet up with Uche. I had barely slept a wink, so I was able to send him off for the biggest day of his life with a mound of breakfast inside him.

I had hoped to spend a few calm hours before heading for the course myself, but I wasn’t capable of calmness that morning. Neither was Tom, for once; he was impatient, itching to go. A year before he might have had other Sunday duties, as an altar boy in the church, a role he’d been given by Gerard, and latterly by the venerable Father Olivares. But after the old man’s retirement, the new priest had taken the view that his assistants were required to have been baptised in the Catholic Church . . . and I suspect also, although he never spelled it out, that atheism was a definite bar to office.

So, as soon as Ben Simmers had opened his shop and could take charge of Charlie, we headed on down the road. As they had done since our first day, Shirley and Patterson were travelling independently. We hadn’t made any formal arrangement to meet up; it was hardly necessary, because our Shirley would stand out in
a full house at the Camp Nou football stadium. When we got to the course, the car park was busier than I’d seen it. The attendances had probably been in the hundreds on each of the first two days, and overwhelmingly ex-pat, but the weekend seemed to have lured a few more people out of the cities. Nonetheless, as Tom and I mingled with the crowds we heard as much English spoken as we heard Spanish or Catalan.

I was heading for the practice ground as usual, when Tom tugged at my elbow. ‘Mum,’ he said. ‘There they are.’ He pointed towards the clubhouse. Jonny and Uche were at the foot of the entrance steps. My nephew was in conversation with the telly guy I’d seen on the first day, the one with the Aussie hat, while his caddie was a few yards away, speaking, seriously, with another man, older, as black as he was, and entirely inappropriately dressed in a shiny suit that didn’t look as if it had come off the peg. He had his back to me, but there was something in his body shape and in the way he stood that told me who he was. As I watched them I remembered what Ellie had said the evening before.

Uche saw me looking at them. It took a second or two for his smile to appear, but eventually it broke through and he beckoned us to join them. ‘Primavera,’ he exclaimed, at his most regal. ‘Come and meet our new supporter.’ He looked at him. ‘Dad, this is my boss’s aunt, Primavera Blackstone, and her son, Tom, Jonny’s cousin.’ Then back to me. ‘Primavera, Tom, this is Kalu Wigwe, my father.’

The princeling turned, gave us a quick glance up and down, and said, ‘How do you do,’ in a voice that offered a preview of how Uche would sound once he had smoked a few hundred expensive
cigars, like the one clenched between the first two fingers of his dad’s left hand. He extended the right, first to Tom, and they shook formally.

‘Very well, thank you,’ he replied.

Wigwe senior turned to me, and as he did he swept off his wraparound Oakleys and fixed me with eyes that were vivid green, and more than a little bloodshot. I felt as if they were scanning me. The moment passed with a short courtly bow and another proffered handshake. ‘And you, madam.’ He beamed, showing all of his son’s charm, but somehow with more substance to it. Close to, the suit was so sharp it was dangerous. The material was pale blue, with silk in it, I was sure, and the jacket was Mandarin style . . . my dad still calls it a Nehru collar. The eyes twinkled; I guessed he liked what he saw. (With all that red in there they made me think of traffic lights changing.)

Other than that, what I saw wasn’t hard on the eye, either. Kalu Wigwe had the same oval-shaped face as his son, but his version was rendered more imposing by age, and it was adorned by a full, well-trimmed beard. His hair was cut to around the same length, and there were grey flecks through it all. He was a little thicker in the waist than junior, but for all that he still seemed well built and not gone to fat. Age? Given that Uche was a contemporary of Jonny, he was probably a little older than he looked, but surely no more than fifty. There was much about him to fancy, and yet . . . although one colour was missing from those traffic signal eyes, amber, they still managed to say ‘Caution’.

‘This is a surprise, Uche,’ I said. ‘You didn’t say your father was going to turn up.’

‘I rarely announce my arrival,’ Kalu replied. ‘I have an unpredictable schedule, and I can never be sure of being able to keep family appointments, so I tend not to make them. There is also the consideration that uncertainty keeps my sons on their toes.’

‘You have more than one?’

‘I have three; Uche is the oldest, then there’s Oba and Solomon. Oba’s nineteen and Solomon’s seventeen.’

‘And Mrs Wigwe? Is she with you?’

‘Mrs Wigwe is with our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.’ Behind him, Uche’s eyes narrowed just a little as he spoke. ‘I have a companion, but she didn’t make the trip. It was, after all, short notice. I didn’t decide to come until yesterday. When I saw that Jonathan was doing so well, I knew that I had to support the team. So I flew here.’

‘I’m surprised you could get a flight so quickly.’

‘I don’t have that problem,’ he replied, modestly. ‘I have a Gulfstream jet, based at Lagos.’

‘That’s still a long trip,’ I remarked, ‘on the spur of the moment.’

‘Around eight hours.’ He shrugged, as if it was nothing. ‘I landed around nine last night, at Girona, very close to here.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a very comfortable aircraft; and it’s always ready to take off. I’d be happy to show you around. Perhaps you and Tom would like to take a flight with me.’

‘You don’t fly it yourself, do you?’

‘My goodness no, Mrs Blackstone,’ he laughed. ‘It’s not built for pleasure flights. I employ a crew; previously they were with Air New Zealand. They’re the best, I’m told.’

The last time I flew on a private aircraft it came down a lot
harder than the pilot had intended. I walked away, but nobody else did. As a result, I’ve stuck to scheduled services ever since. ‘That may be,’ I said, politely, ‘but I think I’ll pass on that, thank you. And it’s Primavera, please.’

‘Anywhere you like?’

‘I like it here. Thanks all the same.’

‘Dad,’ Uche growled. ‘Stop being a flash arsehole.’

His father looked at me, his expression pained. ‘You hear that, Primavera? The money I’ve invested my son’s education and that is the result.’

‘But he does have a fine, cultured accent, Mr Wigwe,’ Jonny pointed out. He’d finished his chat with the telly guy and come over to join us. ‘They called him the Count at ASU. It went down very well with the cheerleaders.’

‘So did they,’ his caddie murmured. ‘Very well.’ I shot him a warning glower; Tom was within earshot, and I didn’t want to have to explain the remark . . . or maybe I hoped that he didn’t understand it.

But as it happened, he seemed to be in conference with Jonny. ‘Can I?’ I heard him exclaim.

‘It’s all fixed up,’ his cousin replied. He looked at me. ‘Our board boy’s called in sick,’ he told me. ‘You know, the kid who follows us round with the sign that shows our scores. The tournament director told me in the clubhouse, and I’ve volunteered Tom for the job.’

‘Is he big enough?’

‘Mum! I’ve grown two centimetres in the last month. I’m a hundred and fifty-two now.’

Or five feet tall, expressed another way; and still short of eleven years old. I found a chart online a couple of years ago, and I’ve been plotting his growth ever since. It says that he’s on course to be around six three.

‘He’s well big enough, Auntie P,’ Jonny assured me. He looked at Tom’s feet. ‘He might be better in golf shoes than those trainers, though.’ He punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go and see the FootJoy guys. They might just have a pair your size. Then I’ll introduce you to the guy who runs the board boys.’

‘Shouldn’t you be practising?’ I asked.

He checked his watch; his large, multi-buttoned sponsored watch. ‘I’m not due on range for another fifteen minutes,’ he said. He glanced at Uche. ‘See you there, mate, okay?’

He and Tom left, and I found myself alone with two generations of Wigwes. I recalled the serious discussion they’d been having when I’d arrived and thought it best to let them resume it. ‘See you later, guys,’ I chirped.

‘Please don’t go, Primavera,’ Kalu exclaimed. ‘I hoped we might have lunch.’

‘Sorry,’ I lied, sort of. ‘I have to meet friends.’ He was an interesting man, no question, but he was radiating interest in me as well. He wasn’t unattractive, a bit more than that indeed, but I thought of the absent ‘companion’ and decided that if he was advertising a temporary vacancy, it wasn’t one I saw myself filling.

I headed for the retail tent hoping that Shirley was in shopping mode, but if she was she was doing it somewhere else. Still I killed a quarter of an hour looking for her, then headed for the practice ground. When I got there, Jonny and Tom were waiting, alongside
Lena Mankell, looking not her usual frosty, but downright glacial. I could guess why: no sign of Uche. As for my boy, he was wearing a nice new pair of shoes, with cotton liners that didn’t quite qualify as socks, and he was carrying a bag that I guessed contained his trainers.

Shirley and Patterson were in the stand, watching the action. I didn’t think that Lena was nice to be near at that moment, so I headed towards them. I passed close enough to hear Tom ask, ‘Would you like me to go and find him?’

Jonny started to nod, then stopped, frowning over Tom’s head. I followed his eyes, and there was Uche, toting the massive bag and smiling, probably as close to apologetically as he could manage. Kalu was following behind him, on his way to join us in the bleachers, or so I thought until he stopped, said something to his son, and stepped back out through the entrance to the arena. I carried on, and settled myself down beside my chums.

Shirley pointed in the direction from which I had come. ‘Who was that?’ she asked. ‘The black guy in the Savile Row suit?’

‘Uche’s dad,’ I replied. ‘He flew in for the big day; on his own jet, no less.’

She whistled. ‘Bit of all right,’ she pronounced. ‘And Uche’s mum?’

‘She’s in the arms of another; our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ, to be specific.’

‘What a shame. Uche never said his mother was dead.’
No, he hadn’t
, I thought. ‘Leaves a clear field, though.’ She winked, lasciviously.

‘Which I will not be cultivating,’ I declared.

‘No?’ she exclaimed. ‘And him with a private jet? Could be your chance to join the mile-high club, and you probably wouldn’t even have to do it in the toilet.’

I frowned at her, severely. ‘No thank you very much. Anyway, I am a member, several times over.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You are?’ she gasped. ‘You dirty little bitch. Come on, spill the beans.’

‘Aspen, Colorado,’ I revealed. ‘Oz and I went on holiday there once, oh, must be twelve, thirteen years ago. That’s well over a mile high.’

‘Gawd! You must have been out of breath.’

‘Not once, my dear, not once. We weren’t in any rush.’ I smiled as some very vivid memories came back. ‘You should try it,’ I advised her.

‘You hear that,’ she said, turning to Patterson. But he wasn’t there; nature must have called while we were talking, or he’d had a severe case of the munchies. While Shirley had been wheedling my sexual exploits out of me, he’d slipped out, without either of us noticing.