for ten minutes, the drive up into the hills was pleasant enough, although the concentration it demanded left little time to take in the scenery. It was a far steeper climb than the one up to Mijas, with alarming drops on his left- hand side and more than a few hairy corners. Thorne was amazed to see signs warning of snow on the road, which were not only incongruous, considering the hot weather, but made him wonder how in hell any driver managed the climb – and worse yet, the descent – in freezing conditions. Chuck in the risk of rock falls and the occasional wandering goat, he thought, and it would be astonishing if anyone made it up or down in one piece.
It took him the best part of an hour to reach Ronda, and within a few minutes of parking the car and starting to walk towards the centre of the 'white town', he was out of breath. He stopped and looked down from one of the bridges into the canyon on which the town was perched, carved out by the river which now divided it in two. He took a minute. The view was undeniably spectacular, and he was content to put the breathlessness down to the fact that he was several thousand feet above sea-level, rather than blaming the several pounds he could do with dropping.
The big breakfast might have been a mistake, he thought.
He picked up a map from a tourist information office and followed it past rows of small shops and quirky museums to the historic bullring that Fraser had mentioned. There were far fewer visitors around than there had been in Mijas, but Thorne put that down to the feria. This town had a different atmosphere, too, something almost reverential, and it was certainly quieter.
He paid his four euros and walked through a turnstile into the empty bullring. The sandy floor sloped very gradually up towards the centre and was harder than he had expected. A couple was taking photos on the far side, and more people were moving in the stands, but despite their presence, and the late morning sun overhead, the place felt strangely cold and spooky. Resonant of a past that made Thorne uncomfortable. He found himself wondering how many animals had died there… and how many men. How much blood had soaked into the floor beneath his feet over two hundred and fifty years.
Standing in the centre of the ring, looking towards a pair of scarred, white, wooden gates, it was easy to imagine the heat and the roar of a frenzied crowd. Thorne could almost taste the adrenalin, coppery in the mouths of those waiting to face the bulls. He tried to gauge the distance between the centre and the edge, asked himself if he would make it, should he ever find himself running from a charging bull. He still fancied himself as reasonably quick if he needed to be, in short bursts at any rate.
He decided he would not even get halfway.
He spent a few minutes walking around the bullring's museum, taking no more than a passing interest in the old photographs and mounted bulls' heads. He looked briefly at the antique suits of lights displayed behind glass and wondered why vintage clothes always seemed so small, before walking across to a bar on the edge of the main square.
He waved to attract a waiter's attention and was ignored.
On the table, he laid out a handful of leaflets for some of the town's other attractions. There was certainly no shortage of museums, but each exhibition seemed more gruesome, more bloodthirsty, than the last.
A history of hunting.
Torture during the Spanish Inquisition.
Five hundred years of capital punishment.
Looking at pictures of some of the exhibits, Thorne was not sure that Ronda was quite as 'nice' as everyone kept telling him.
It was hotter now, and Thorne turned again to look for the waiter. The bar was busy and he cast an eye across the customers, half expecting to see the man with the newspaper he had spotted twice already. But when he heard a chair being scraped back, he spun around to see an even more familiar figure.
Thorne could only watch as Alan Langford dropped casually into the seat opposite.
THIRTY-SEVEN
'You mind?' Langford raised a hand, and within a few seconds a waiter was at the table. Langford looked at Thorne. 'What do you want?'
Thorne said nothing.
I want to drive a glass so far into your face that it won't matter what you call yourself, because nobody will ever recognise you again. I want to twist and push and feel the flesh shredding and I want to hear you scream. I want you to say my name, same as she did…
'I fancy a beer,' Langford said. 'Not one of those poxy little ones, either.' He ordered two beers in Spanish, then sat back to look at Thorne, shaking his head and smiling, as though they were two old friends who had fallen out over something so trivial that neither of them could even remember it properly.
I want your blood to wash away hers.
When the beers arrived, Langford put away half of his in one gulp, then sat back again and began methodically peeling the label from the bottle. 'There's nothing for you here,' he said. 'You need to know that.'
Thorne reached for his own bottle. He had no desire to drink with this man, but suddenly his mouth was dry and his tongue felt sticky. He hoped the beer might steady the tremble in his legs and help him fight the urge to do exactly what he had just imagined doing.
' You're here,' he said.
'Right. I'm here minding my own business.'
'And we all know what that is.'
'Listen, I don't know what you think you know, but the only thing you're getting in Spain is sunburn. So all I'm saying is, why don't you just toddle off home and save us all a lot of trouble?'
Langford's hair was greyer than it had looked in the photographs, and too much sun had left his face lined and leathery. Despite the bravado, Thorne could also see that he was anything but relaxed. The smile showed only teeth that were too big for his mouth, and too white.
'For someone who's minding his own business, you seem awfully worried,' Thorne said.
'I'm irritated.'
'Well, I must be doing something right.'
The teeth flashed again. 'It's a lot of trouble to go to, though, don't you think? To come all the way out here, costing the taxpayer God knows how much, to check up on a retired businessman.'
'You're not exactly retired, though, are you? And I'm doing more than checking up.'
Langford puffed out his cheeks, then exhaled slowly. 'A man finds out his wife is planning to have him killed, so he thinks it might be a good idea to start again somewhere else. End of story. I can't see the Crown Prosecution Service getting very excited about that a decade down the line, can you?'
'They're pretty keen on people who leave bodies behind.'
'Well, course they are, but I wouldn't know anything about that.'
'You don't know how a man came to be burned to a crisp in your car?'
'I thought you'd caught the man who did that,' Langford said. 'Isn't he in prison?'
'He was,' Thorne said. 'Until he got carved up in his cell a few months ago.'
'Dangerous places, prisons.'
'Then the prison officer who colluded in his murder got hit by a car.'
'Nasty.'
'Very. But you wouldn't know anything about that either, right?'
'I'm a bit out of touch over here,' Langford said. 'Unless it's in the sports pages…'
His hand dropped to his waist, reaching idly beneath the white linen shirt to scratch. Thorne caught a glimpse of the scar Donna had mentioned, pale against the brown belly.
'Retirement must get a bit boring, though, surely?' Thorne said. 'How much golf can you play, how many laps of your pool can you do?'
'You sound jealous, mate.'
