Inhuman Remains by Quintin Jardine Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t tell you any more than I told her. I haven’t heard from Frank since Christmas.’
    ‘When you had a card.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did you send one to him?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘To the hotel?’
    ‘No, to his home address . . . that’s to say, his private post-office box number.’
    ‘His private number? All my aunt has is his business address . . . and come to think of it, that’s a box number too.’
    ‘XC2301?’
    ‘That’s it.’
    ‘I have that too, but the one I use is XE0142.’
    ‘What’s the street address of the complex?’
    ‘I have no idea, Mrs Blackstone. Frank didn’t give it to me.’
    ‘But can’t you find out through your group? Frank told his mother that he’d been promoted within the organisation.’
    ‘We don’t have an organisation; Cinq Pistes doesn’t have any subsidiaries, or a parent company for that matter. Forgive me, but I suspect that he didn’t have the heart to tell your aunt what really happened. The year before last, at the start of the season, we had a guest at the resort. He was a Lithuanian, and his booking was made by a company in Kaunas. His name was George Macela. He and Frank struck up a friendship straight away. Frank never said as much, but I got the impression from a couple of things he let slip that Macela might have come to Davos to meet him. He used to go off on sales trips during the summer, and that year, one of them was to the Baltic states.’
    ‘Miss Gilpin,’ I interrupted, ‘can I ask you something personal? How close were you and my cousin?’
    ‘As close as you probably suspect. Nothing too intense, but he’s a very attractive little guy.’
    ‘He’s all that. Apart from his family connections, did he tell you anything else about his background?’
    She gave a soft laugh. ‘He never stopped. He made up such wonderful stories. He told me that his father was a Thai pirate who’d kidnapped his mother when she was on holiday in the Far East, and that he’d been hanged for that and other crimes. He told me that he had an economics degree from Cambridge, that he’d worked in your Houses of Parliament. Oh, yes, and he told me that he’d done time for a multi-million-pound investment scam. Is any of that true?’
    ‘The part about the pirate’s pure fancy . . . as far as I understand, although I wouldn’t put much past my aunt . . . but the rest is pretty much accurate. He was an MP’s gofer and the scam wasn’t quite that big but, yes, it’s mostly true.’
    ‘And what about you? You are the cousin who was married to a movie star, aren’t you?’
    ‘Not for long but, yes, I was.’
    ‘He talked about you more than anything else. He said you were a few years older than him and that he’d met you a few times as he was growing up. He told me his mother went to your funeral, only you turned out not to be dead after all.’
    ‘Also true. Did he say anything else about me?’
    ‘Yes. He said there are two people in the world who scare him stiff. His mother’s one, and you’re the other, because you’re so like her.’
    Jesus! A cold shiver ran through me. If Adrienne had given me a glimpse into the future, I wasn’t sure I fancied it. I made another mental note, to ask Tom if he found me scary, hoping he’d laugh at the very idea.
    ‘Let’s go back to the Lithuanian,’ I said, cutting that discussion short. ‘You thought his meeting with Frank might have been prearranged.’
    ‘Yes. It was pretty clear that they knew each other. Macela spent more time talking with Frank in the bar than he did on the ski slopes. He stayed for five days, two fewer than he’d booked, then checked out. Three days later, Frank was gone also.’
    ‘Just like that? Was he fired?’
    ‘No, he left. We were together in his chalet, the night after Macela left, and he asked me if I would consider going away with him. I said no, I couldn’t do that.’
    ‘You didn’t fancy him that much?’
    ‘Not enough to leave my husband. It’s Madame Gilpin,