As Easy as Murder (35 page)

Before any of us could react, he was inside the old house. ‘That’s a sawn-off shotgun,’ Alex exclaimed. ‘This is where I send for back-up.’

Neither Mark nor I tried to stop him as he reached for his phone. Then, from inside the house, there came a crash and a yell, then another . . . We waited for the blast of a firearm, but after that there was only silence.

‘Hold off on that, Alex,’ Mark murmured. ‘We may not need the heavy squad.’

‘If not, then what do we do?’ he asked.

‘I’m going in.’

‘You can’t,’ I protested. ‘You don’t know what’s happening in there.’

‘I can guess, though, and so can you. Somebody’s about to be
killed. What’s the worst that can happen to me? I might die ahead of schedule, but not by that much.’

He set off for the house, walking briskly, using his stick. ‘Bugger,’ I muttered, and went after him. ‘Shit,’ Alex hissed and fell into step alongside me, drawing his service pistol from its holder.

There was no shotgun fire as Mark threw the door wide and stepped into a big open area. In fact the weapon was on the floor, not far from its wielder, who lay face down, with an egg-sized lump on his right temple, and with his hands secured behind his back with a plastic tie. The egg had been laid, I realised, by the bloodstained object that dangled from the fingers of Uche Wigwe’s left hand as he stood over his captive. It was one of Jonny’s lob wedges, a match for the club that had won him the championship three days before.

In his right hand my nephew’s caddie held a revolver. It was pointed at the head of the fallen assassin; at the head of Lars Martinsson.

Alex raised his own gun, but Mark waved to him to lower it, as he stepped up behind Uche, and patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘You’re not going to use that, mate,’ he whispered, and took the pistol from him. ‘You’re not the type.’

‘That man killed my mother,’ the Nigerian told him, in a voice as hard as the stone of the walls, ‘and that man there, my father, ordered it.’

He stared across the room in the direction of an old wooden chair, under a window. Kalu Wigwe was tied to it. He was alive but he’d been beaten about the head, and beaten bloody, for there were streaks of gore all over his flight suit.

Robert Palmer, the man I’d known as Patterson, was standing beside him; he met my gaze as I looked at him.

‘She was your witness?’ I asked him. ‘Kalu’s wife?’

‘She was more than my witness,’ he replied, ‘much, much more.’ His voice seemed to have changed with his name; it was hard, strained, and not all that far from hysteria. ‘Kalu took me to Nigeria, four years ago,’ he continued, ‘to show off, no doubt, to impress me, to let me see that he really is a prince out there. Sure,’ he snorted, ‘and he’s also a fucking criminal, who isn’t just into designer drugs. He’s involved in money laundering, international fraud, slavery, and he even finances Somali pirates for a cut of their ransom money. He thought he was sure of me, and financially he was. I’d left my scruples behind a long time before. Oh yes, Kalu and I got on great. Then on that trip, he introduced me to his wife, to Sonya.’

He shrugged. ‘As I explained to Uche when I went to see him on Monday night, things happen that you can’t control. That’s how it was with Sonya and me. It might sound corny to you, but we fell in love. We saw each other whenever we could; we used to meet in a different city every time, Rome, Miami, London, always when Kalu was off screwing around, and that’s something he did a lot. Didn’t you, you fucking monster. Flashy, cheap women everywhere, but you treated Sonya, who was pure gold, like . . .’ He punched the bound man, harder than I’d thought he ever could, hard enough to produce a small scream even in his semi-conscious state.

‘Enough,’ Kalu moaned.

‘Enough!’ Alex ordered, sharply.

‘No. Not nearly enough,’ Palmer shouted back.

‘Hey,’ I intervened. ‘Robert. Didn’t you tell me a few days ago, when you were someone else, that humanity is essential, and that needless cruelty is inexcusable?’

‘This was necessary. It was justice,’ he protested, but I knew I’d got to him, and in the same moment I knew too that the naturally kind person with whom I’d had that discussion was the real whoever-he-was.

‘How the hell did you find us?’ he asked, more quietly.

‘With help,’ I replied, then took him back to the story. ‘How long did it take Kalu to catch on?’

‘He got suspicious of Sonya about two years ago, but he didn’t know it was me she was seeing, until we set up her escape through Malaga.’ He sighed, and I could hear the despair in it. ‘It turned out that setting it up through Facebook wasn’t as clever as we thought. Sonya made a mistake. She used her home computer, and by that time Kalu was checking everything. So when Sonya went into room 106 in the Silken Puerta, he and Lars were waiting for her. They thought they’d be killing me as well; they were disappointed when only Beau Lucas, my American minder, showed up. Poor Beau; nice guy.’ He winced. ‘They got her body out of there in a cart, then put it in a big suitcase and took it back on board the plane. Those fucking Kiwi pilots!’ he hissed. ‘He made them fly low over the Atlantic, so he could chuck her out. They’ll deny it, but they knew what he was up to. They’re lucky, those guys, that all they got was tied up for a few hours. I’d have wasted them, but Uche said no.’

‘And Lars?’ I asked. ‘I take it he spotted you at the golf course. Had you met before?’

‘Yes, a couple of times at the factory.’ He looked at Mark. ‘Who are you, by the way? CWB? Interpol?’

‘Both,’ my friend replied.

‘Who’re you working for here?’

‘Everybody. You were a little short of the truth with Interpol, Palmer, weren’t you?’

He nodded, with a smile that was slightly embarrassed. ‘Just a bit,’ he admitted. ‘I told them that I only made the stuff, but I knew a little more than that. Kalu made sure I did, enough to tie me in, but not enough to be a threat to him.’

He pointed at the giant on the floor. ‘Lars was part of the route for the HGH into the US sports market. Before he became a crap golfer, he had an early career in the Swedish military, and Kalu found him useful for other work. I’d no idea he was in Girona, and I never saw him there. But he saw me, that first day we went there. He wasn’t certain, but he got in touch with Kalu, and Kalu told him to find out for sure. The Bulgarian and the Irish woman were both in Spain; they had to relocate after my place was busted and the HGH network was shut down. He sent Genchev, then the girl, first to nick something from me, then to take a closer look than he could risk. When they failed . . . you know what he did to them.’

‘When did you realise you’d been rumbled?’ I asked.

‘For sure? Not until Kalu walked on to the practice ground. I saw him and he saw me, and I got out of there.’ He looked at me, with an expression that was almost a plea. ‘Primavera, I’d run away from my old self. I never stopped grieving for Sonya . . . oh, I knew she was dead; I knew she had to be . . . but I became a different man, literally. I met Shirley, I found a new life, one I’d thought
was beyond me, and I’d truly given up being Robert Palmer. I wanted to be clear of Wigwe; that’s why I refused to give anyone his name. If I had shopped him, I’d have been tied to him forever, and probably he’d have slithered out from under and I’d have wound up in a suitcase myself. But it wasn’t just fear: I was happy, honest, I really was. Then the bastard turned up and I realised that I couldn’t be, not really, until he was dead. So I went to see Uche, and I told him what had really happened to his mum.’

I turned to him. ‘You didn’t know?’ I murmured.

‘No, Primavera,’ the younger man replied. ‘I knew that my father was capable of most things, but not that, no, I didn’t believe that. His story to my brothers and me was that she had died in a boating accident, while we were all away studying, and that her body had never been found. I didn’t believe it, of course. I suspected that either she had run off, or he had sent her away. Now, I see I should have known, but I wouldn’t allow myself to, or maybe I couldn’t. I suspect I was hiding from the truth . . . until Robert came to see me and I knew I couldn’t hide any longer.’

‘And so we set this up,’ Palmer continued. ‘Kalu had told Uche when he planned to leave, early when there was very little traffic at the airport. So we snatched him; it was easy. We were able to drive straight in, and up to the plane.’

‘Where did the gun come from?’ Mark asked.

‘It was mine; I brought it with me, just in case. I kept it in Shirley’s safe, in a lockable box; I told her there were bonds in it.’ His eyebrows twitched, and the corners of his mouth flicked upwards in a brief smile. ‘I never imagined I’d need it, but it came in handy this morning. It impressed Kalu, that’s for sure. Didn’t it,
mate?’ He paused. The bound man’s traffic signal eyes turned towards him. There was no arrogance left in them, only pain and fear.

‘We brought him here,’ his captor went on. ‘We made him admit to everything . . . he isn’t really very brave, by the way, not nearly as brave as his son; a few whacks with that golf club and he was screaming at us to stop. When he was finished, we knew everything. That was when we made him call Lars and tell him to meet him here, to get rid of me once and for all. We had the opposite in mind, and everything was going our way until you three showed up. Why the hell didn’t you just wait outside for a minute longer?’ he growled. ‘I’d have killed them, even if Uche had bottled it. Now they’re both going to walk out of here.’

‘Looks that way,’ Mark agreed. He looked down at Martinsson, who was fully conscious once more, still face down, but aware. ‘But when you do, big fellow, you’re going to sing for your supper, aren’t you? You’re going to tell the whole story to Interpol, you’re going to admit to killing Genchev and McGuigan, and in return you will not be extradited to the US, and you won’t be executed for Beau Lucas’s murder.’ He drove his stick, hard, into the back of the Swede’s neck. ‘Aren’t you?’ he growled.

‘Yes, yes!!!’ the fallen killer yelled.

‘That’s the deal, then.’ He turned to Alex. ‘I think you should take this one outside now,’ he suggested. ‘Uche will help you, I’m sure.’ He watched as the cop and the chemist hauled the former Scandinavian golf champ to his feet and dragged him from the room, from the old, dark house, into the bright day outside.

‘There you are, Mr Cowling,’ Mark said, easily. ‘You can relax.’

‘How do you work that out?’ Palmer retorted. ‘How long will it be before this thing here hires someone from his jail cell to finish me off?’

‘You wouldn’t do that, Mr Wigwe, would you?’ Mark asked.

The traffic signal eyes locked on to his. ‘Oh yes,’ he hissed. ‘That is exactly how it will be. This man will go into a meat grinder, feet first. My oldest son will watch him, and then he will follow. Lars’s children too, if necessary. That’s why he’ll change his mind about giving evidence.’ He smiled, through the blood and the broken teeth. ‘You people have made certain of that, of all of it.’

Mark took a few steps forward, to stand above Kalu in his chair. As I watched him, I felt my heart heading for my mouth, as I had a premonition of the immediate future. ‘That’s not quite how it’ll be,’ he murmured, then put the pistol he had taken from Uche against his father’s forehead and blew his brains all over the wall behind him. As easy as that. I didn’t scream, but Palmer did.

‘You see? It’s cheap to talk about killing people,’ Mark told him. ‘Even about killing yourself. Doing it, though . . .’

He had tossed the weapon on to the floor by the time Alex came charging back through the front door, his own gun raised and held in both hands. He pointed it at Mark’s chest. ‘What the hell have you done?’ he yelled.

‘Followed orders,’ my other friend said, as I took in what I had just seen, and as Robert Palmer wiped furiously at the blood that had splattered over him. ‘My remit was extended this morning, as soon as the Americans heard what we’d turned up. You’re not here, Intendant Guinart. You didn’t see this; you’ve never met Kalu
Wigwe, only his son, and the man you’ve just arrested after he confessed to two murders. Now either shoot me, or put your gun away. Either way, I don’t give a toss, but it’ll be better for you if you do as I say. It would be more grateful of you too, considering that I’ve just made you a hero.’

I pulled myself together, got hold of Alex and drew him away, back outside, where I hugged him until he’d stopped shaking.

Uche didn’t say a word. He looked at Palmer, as he emerged with Mark, and Palmer nodded. That was all.

‘What about . . . ?’ I nodded towards the house, as I looked at Mark.

‘I have to make a phone call,’ he told me, ‘that’s all. Nothing will be left behind.’

He did, and then we headed back down the track. I gave Alex the keys to my jeep, since it was the only vehicle there that was capable of taking a six-foot five-inch handcuffed man, and two escorts: him, and Mark at the wheel.

‘What about me?’ Palmer asked his saviour, as he reached the first vehicle, the one he’d blagged from the care hire company.

‘Nothing. You weren’t here either. I didn’t call you Mr Cowling by mistake, a couple of minutes ago. You still are him, and if you choose, you always will be.’ He took in the man’s doleful expression and smiled. ‘Don’t feel so sorry for yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ve still got Palmer’s money, rather than some spook pen-pusher’s pension.’