Under Suspicion (26 page)

She was safe and sound. I drew a long breath and sagged against the doorpost, legs weak with relief.

‘What’s—?’ Gerry appeared at my shoulder in a whiff of fish.

From the depths of the bath came
Mwwww shptt glupp.
A sodden black blob was struggling to keep its nose and mouth above the surface, paws scrabbling ineffectually at the polished wooden sides.
My God,
Black Prince was drowning!

‘No-o-o-o-o!’ My shriek, magnified and distorted by all that marble, echoed round the room, feeding on itself as it bounced from wall to wall, an aural
version of mirror-in-mirror reflections.

I hurled myself at the bath. Startled out of her
schadenfreude
spectator-role, Gorgonzola sprang down to the cream marble floor in perfect time to home in on the scatter of caviar jostled by my elbow from one of Gerry’s plates as I pushed myself off the doorpost.

I made a grab for the scruff of Black Prince’s neck as he sank and, in the role of deus ex machina, hoisted Ambrose’s moggy from his watery grave. I heard the clink of porcelain on marble top as Gerry hastily deposited Ambrose’s best china, and then he was swaddling Black Prince in a fluffy-towel straitjacket. He thrust the bundle into my arms. Two terrified orange eyes gazed into mine, a little black face enshawled in the expanse of white whimpered a mew. I rocked him gently and felt strangely maternal…

Gerry was studying the electronic touch-pad at the side of the bath. ‘Better get rid of all this water before the bugger dives in again. Let’s see…
Spa jets, Whirlpool, Combination, Fill, Drain, Stop.
’ He punched the
Drain
button. With a musical chord the bath waste-cover rose and the water flowed silently away to expose three rows of brass-mounted jets, at least thirty of them. With that lot powering away, the effect must be more of a maelstrom than whirlpool, not
my
idea of a relaxing soak.

He glanced at his watch and frowned. ‘All this has held us back. Time’s—’

‘I’m really sorry, Gerry. G knows when she’s wearing her collar that she’s on duty and focuses on the task. She’s not easily distracted…’

Both of us eyed Gorgonzola, now crouched on the marble-topped unit, nose in one of the plates.

‘I see what you mean.’ His tone was dry.

Miaow
. My cradled bundle whined querulously.

‘There, there, there,’ I crooned, ‘you’re not such a big, bad cat after all.’

Gerry glowered at me. ‘I don’t have to remind you, do I, Deborah, that we’ve one hell of a crisis here? What we don’t need is
another
lawsuit, and over an effing pedigree cat at that. Quit buggering around, playing the bloody nursemaid. What I need is you and that moth-eaten shock-trooper of yours to start work.
Right now
.’

I wasn’t expecting him to lose his cool. That really got to me. Ignoring the slur on G, I looked round for somewhere to deposit my burden, somewhere secure. I made a rapid scan of the room…candelabra-stand of burnt-out aromatherapy candles…wicker towel basket. That would do. I turfed out most of the contents, replaced them with Black Prince, and fastened down the lid.

‘I need
results
.’ The crack in Gerry’s composure was opening into a fissure. His finger stabbed down on the bath’s electronic touch-pad, ‘And.’
Stab
. ‘I need them.’
Stab
. ‘Right now.’
Stab
.

With a warning musical
ping
and a hum of
motorised valves, the caps on the centre row of jets slid smoothly open. Gorgonzola paused in
mid-munch
, head raised enquiringly.

‘There’s no water in the bath, Gerry. You’ll ruin—’ I stopped. Tail high, G was stalking along the marble top, homing in on the quivering towel basket. ‘Gorgonzola!
No!
’

She really
was
trying to show me up. All office cred gone, I made a grab. Too slow and too late. With a soft thump she landed on the floor, sashayed nonchalantly round me, and sprang onto the edge of the bath. For a moment she balanced there, extending her claws experimentally, then leapt lightly down onto the rows of brass jets set in the bottom of the bath.

‘Can’t
you keep her under control, Deborah? My God, she’s treating the bath as a £20k teak scratch-post!’

In spite of her alley-cat appearance, G was a creature of taste and sensitivity – except in the face of extreme provocation, of course. No way would she commit such an act of vandalism. She was padding along the middle row of jets, claws carefully sheathed.

I sprang to her defence. ‘Well really, that’s a bit—’

From her throat was coming a low crooning purr, the low crooning purr of the drug-detecting cat that has nosed out the Pot of Gold.

‘Got’im, Gorgonzo-laaa!’ I yelled.

Aaaaaaaaaa
moaned back Ambrose’s marble fittings.

Aooooooooo
mourned the wicker towel basket.

The rays of the setting sun sidled through the curved glass cupola of the Café Bar Oasis bronzing the feathery tops of the palm trees, the signal for the songbirds in their gilded cage to jostle vociferously for position on the roosting perches. In the adjacent Marrakesh courtyard a white-kaftaned figure was lighting the pierced and fretted pottery oil lamps. The stuff of holiday brochures. I swirled the cava bubbles round my glass and for the first time in two months really relaxed.

This morning’s drug find on
Samarkand Princess
had wrapped everything up nicely. Following Vanheusen’s arrest, a vanload of papers had been seized from Exclusive’s offices and after several hours of questioning, Monique and Cousin Ashley had been ordered to report daily to the nearest police office. Passports confiscated, of course.

Charlie refilled her glass from the bottle of inexpensive cava nestling in an ice bucket before us.
‘So…’ She took a long swig that opened the sluice gates to a stream of clichés. ‘…when the chips were down, Gorgonzola came up trumps. Close run thing, though. Came within a whisker of—’

‘Talking of whiskers, we should be toasting Black Prince,’ I said. ‘With all that scented bathwater and the aromatherapy fug, even G would have missed Vanheusen’s little stash. Clever, you know. There’s nothing suspicious about the smell of candles and bath oils in a bathroom.’

‘Anywhere else, and you’d have smelt a rat, eh?’ Her
ha, ha
was followed by
ptschchchchh
as the cava bubbles took an unexpected re-route to her lungs.

‘You sound like Black Prince going down for the last time, Charlie,’ I said. ‘Yes, we’ve got to hand it to Vanheusen. It was a masterstroke to fill the bath and make it look as if our raid had interrupted a long soak in that marvellous wooden tub.’

‘Jayne told me that the
Ministerio del Interior’s
phone was red hot with calls from Vanheusen’s friends in high places. If it hadn’t been for you and Gorgonzola,’ she reached forward to clink her glass with mine, ‘London would have put Gerry through the office shredder.’

I leant forward lowering my voice. ‘I’ll tell you this in confidence, Charlie. When he thought the drugs were too well hidden and it was all up for him, he quite lost his cool. He actually called G,’ I lowered my voice still more, ‘a
moth-eaten shock-trooper.
’

I’m afraid this calumny was not treated with the horror it merited. Her
hahahahaha
ricocheted off the green glass cupola, momentarily silencing the songbirds and turning a few heads. Over her shoulder I saw the lamplighter light the last lamp and glide off towards the Casablanca courtyard.

‘That levity’s
quite
uncalled for,’ I growled. ‘You can go off people, you know. Anyway, Gerry made amends. He sent a messenger round with an icebox full of caviar, beluga, of course.’

‘Gosh, that must have cost him.’ I could tell that she was impressed.

I smiled. ‘I suspect he liberated it from the fridge of
Samarkand Princess
. Still, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?’

‘Certainly is.’ Charlie swirled a finger round the inner circumference of her giant hoop earring. ‘Seriously though, DJ, I’m really going to miss Gorgonzola – and you, of course. I’m off tomorrow. Already packed. What about you?’

‘I’ve a pile of paperwork this high on my desk that’ll keep me here to the end of the week. It’ll give me time to pop in and see Jason. I hear he’s a bit down, so I’ve got something that will—’

Perleep perleep perleep peep peep.

I fished my mobile out of my bag. What now? Couldn’t a girl have
some
time off?

‘Deborah? Hello, dear. It’s Victoria. I’ve been away all weekend, on a last tour round the island to see if
there’s anything to match El Sooeno. But you know how it is when you’ve set your heart on something. There was nothing, nothing at all.’ A wistful sigh whispered down the line.

‘I really
am
sorry, Victoria.’ And I was.
It’s so lonely without Jack,
she’d said. El Sueño had been her dream home, a place to find happiness again with grandchildren and a friend or two…

‘Reception gave me your note, dear. I’m so glad everything’s all right. And I’d just love to join you and your friend. I’ll be right down.’

‘Looking forward to seeing you, Victoria.’ I stowed away my phone.

Charlie pursed her lips. ‘What’s that little frown for, DJ? Something wrong?’

‘Her heart’s still set on El Sueño. I wish there was something I could do.’

‘I think you’re on to a loser there.’ Charlie made little circles on the terracotta tiles with the toe of her Roman sandal, sending the tuft of fetchingly bizarre bird feathers that dangled from her pearl anklet fluttering and swooping as if in flight. ‘Vanheusen’s busted. His assets will be frozen, so…’

I stared thoughtfully at the droplets of moisture beading the cava bottle. ‘…So once the law steps in, it’ll be too late to do anything. Yes, tonight’s the last chance for me to—’ I stood up and waved. ‘Over here, Victoria.’

While she settled herself on the wrought-iron
chair and placed her handbag on the floor, I filled up her glass.

‘I just wanted to say goodbye, Victoria, and thank you for telling Charlie that I was missing. A piece of my windsurfer broke off in the heavy seas, and if the coastguard hadn’t turned up, it would have been very nasty. So I’m very grateful to you both.’ I raised my glass in a toast.

‘Glad everything’s turned out all right, dear.’ We clinked glasses. ‘Isn’t it lucky that I got back in time for this little get-together. I would have been here earlier, but I called in at Exclusive’s offices to see if that Reservation Contract, or whatever the term is, had timed itself out.’ She picked up her glass of cava, and put it down again. ‘Monique Devereux was there, doing some paperwork. She apologised for Mr Vanheusen not being available. In conference, she said.’

‘
Ptschchchchh
,’ Charlie spluttered, wiping her eyes. ‘Yes, he’s in conference all right. In conference with the police.
Ptschchchchh
.’

‘The
police
?’ Victoria’s eyes widened. ‘Has there been a robbery?’

I leant over and thumped Charlie’s back. ‘Something a bit more serious, I’m afraid. Exclusive’s under investigation and Mr Vanheusen’s been arrested. Financial matters, I understand.’

‘Mr Vanheusen’s in prison? Oh dear.’ Victoria took a gulp from her glass and was silent for a long
moment. Then, ‘This may sound a trifle selfish, Deborah, but does this mean that El Sooeno will come on the market again?’

I sighed. ‘I can’t say, Victoria, but in these cases the assets are usually frozen. Financial matters can drag on and on, you know.’

Charlie swirled her glass. ‘And if the case is proved, our Mr V will be out of circulation for a long, long time. I guess he’ll find the accommodation Her Majesty provides is a bit more spartan than on that fancy yacht of his.’ She took a cautious sip. ‘I’ve heard prison meals can be quite good nowadays, but there’ll be no more caviar for him.’

‘Or that thoroughly spoilt Persian cat of his,’ I added.

‘A Persian? I’ve always wanted one of those, but Jack was allergic to long-haired cats…’ A faraway look came into Victoria’s eyes. ‘If Mr Vanheusen goes to prison, what will happen to the cat?’

I hadn’t thought of that. ‘They don’t have cat and dog homes here, but I think there’s a couple of animal sanctuaries.’

‘It won’t take kindly to a cage and consorting with common moggies, will it? The cat’s a pedigree, and used to swanning round that villa and yacht of his.’ Egalitarian Charlie seemed quite unsympathetic.

‘If it’s lucky, someone might think to put it in a sanctuary. Otherwise…’ I couldn’t get out of my mind a trembling and bedraggled Black Prince looking up
at me with huge frightened eyes. ‘C’mon, Charlie, he’s a changed animal since he nearly drowned, quite timid and well…er…cuddly.’

‘Ha, ha.’ Charlie set down her glass with a thump. ‘Don’t set me off again, DJ.’

‘Nearly drowned! The poor thing! And it’ll be
so
missing its master.’ Victoria looked quite upset. ‘It’s a pity I’m flying home on Friday. If only I’d been able to stay here in Tenerife,
I’d
have given it a home.’

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to raise false hopes, but I was kicking an idea around in my head. There was just a chance…

The
Policía National
in Santa Cruz is situated on the stately Avenida Tres de Mayo, just up from the flowing white curves of Calatrava’s auditorium and the modern three-level Titsa bus station. But unlike the
Policía Locale
opposite, which shouts its identity in a flourish of flags and letters nearly a metre tall, the National Police HQ lurks discreetly. No signs or notices advertise its presence. Only two storeys of a stone-block building peep over the three-metre-high roughcast wall; the lower windows are heavily grilled, the upper row protected by closed metal shutters. If Gerry hadn’t given me precise directions, I’d have driven straight past.

‘There’s an underground car park with an entrance on the avenida, but the gate will be shut,’ he’d said. ‘You’ll have to drive round the corner to the main gate.’

What he hadn’t said was that the main gate also shunned the limelight. It was set in high walls taking up the right-hand side of a narrow residential side street of bijou houses, each with its pillared porch and tiny, neat garden, each with its carefully chosen cactus, bougainvillea or agave plant.

After checking my papers at the barred gate with its Portakabin-style guardhouse, the uniformed guard admitted me to a central courtyard full of cars and unmarked vans. I’d anticipated some difficulty in arranging access to Vanheusen, but I’d told Gerry firmly that he owed it to me to pull a few strings, and he’d raised an eyebrow but no objections, so fifteen minutes after threading my way through the cars, I was face to face with Ambrose himself.

He looked up as I was ushered into a sparsely furnished room, very different from the sumptuous surroundings of
Samarkand Princess
. Beneath the slowly revolving blades of the ceiling fan, Exclusive’s millionaire boss was sitting on a hard wooden chair drawn up to a cheap plastic-topped table. Santa Cruz Police HQ funds, it seemed, did not run to white leather state-of-the-art swivel chairs with pop-out drinks tray. The only things that swivelled were his eyes. After a quick glance at me, they slewed away and focused on the boots of the policeman standing beside the door.

I drew up a chair. ‘Hello, Ambrose. Monique wasn’t allowed to come, so she asked me to find out if there’s anything…’

He looked at me, thumb stroking his upper lip in that familiar gesture, eyes calculating, assessing. How was he going to play it?

‘All this is a complete misunderstanding, Deborah.’ Said with a wry smile. ‘Some kind of stupid foul-up, but my lawyers are confident that they’ll soon have me out of here.’

He was polishing his brass neck, as Charlie would have put it. GRECO, the Spanish unit set up to combat major organised crime, had opposed bail, and HM Government would certainly be seeking his extradition.

‘But enough of my temporary little difficulties.’ He flicked a hand as if brushing away an annoying insect, and leant back. ‘How did that board of mine handle on your run to Las Américas?’ He certainly believed in polishing that brass neck.

I took my cue from him. ‘It handled wonderfully. Best board I’ve ever tried, but…’ I inserted a wobble into my voice. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but I had an accident and if a fishing boat hadn’t come along… I don’t remember much about it as I was a bit concussed, but I’m afraid your board’s been lost at sea. I’m awfully sorry, Ambrose…’ I trailed off with an embarrassed half-smile.

Relief flickered in the depths of those pale blue eyes. ‘You had an accident with the board? Well, I did say to you that it was a bit unwise to attempt a solo run to Los Cristianos.’ He reached across the
table and patted my hand. ‘But there, there, don’t you worry about that, Deborah. As long as you’re safe, that’s what
really
matters.’

It’s difficult to sound suitably grateful when someone who’s tried to kill you expresses concern about your welfare, but I managed it. ‘That’s
very
generous of you Ambrose. I feel bad about it, though. It was a really expensive board.’ I hesitated. Now to make my play. ‘I don’t want to add to your worries when you’re in a spot of bother but, as I said, Monique sent me. She’s worried about Black Prince. If you’re, er…detained for any length of time, she says he’ll have to be put into an animal sanctuary.’

‘
No!
’ The flat of his hand crashed down on the table.

I flinched. The policeman took a warning step forward. A silence fell. I let it draw out.

After a few moments I heaved an insincere sigh. ‘I do so wish I could look after him myself, but I’ve just heard that headquarters are sending me to South America. I’m quite looking forward to it, actually. I’ll have similar accommodation arrangements to here, I believe, so I won’t have to worry about Persepolis. It’ll be absolutely marvellous to make short trips into the rain forest to see the rare gorgonzolias growing in the wild!’ (Jayne would have been proud of me.) I flashed him an apologetic smile. ‘Oh dear, sorry for babbling on like this.’

‘Not at all,’ he said, his thoughts elsewhere.

It was time for my trump card. ‘Is there
nobody
you can trust to look after him? Somebody who breeds Persians, perhaps? But then you’ve got to be to be
so
careful that they don’t take advantage, haven’t you?’ A strategic pause to let him work it out. ‘You know what I mean?’ My raised eyebrow indicated the danger of unauthorised little Black Prince scions.

‘It’s worrying, yes.’ A tightening of his lips indicated that I’d hit my target.

‘It’s
such
a pity Victoria’s flying home on Friday,’ I sighed. ‘She’d have been just the person…a cat lover, so motherly.’

‘Victoria?’

‘Victoria Knight. She’s the current client who was very keen to purchase El Sueño. She was so disappointed when she heard there was another buyer.’