Last Resort by Quintin Jardine Read Free Book Online Page B

you take your mum’s Range Rover . . . or mine, for that matter.’
    ‘Thanks, Xavi,’ he replied, ‘but the Rav Four’s fine. I’d be nervous in yours. How did you know I’ve—’
    ‘Once a journo, always a journo; I have a nose for these things. Plus I noticed how long you spent on the fashion desk when I took you into the newspaper office yesterday.’
    His stepson laughed softly. ‘I’m that transparent, am I?’
    The new arrivals went their separate ways and we returned to serious business.
    ‘That’s agreed,’ Xavi said. ‘I’ll ask Susannah to take a close look at the digital department accounts first thing tomorrow. She’ll find nothing, though.’
    ‘I’m sure she won’t, but it needs doing. You don’t have to let his mother know.’
    ‘Why not? It might do her good to see that something’s being done.’
    I raised my eyebrows. ‘Do I need to spell that out too?’
    Sheila had tuned in to the message. ‘He means in case Hector has been at it and she’s involved.’
    ‘Jesus, Bob,’ her husband gasped, ‘do you suspect everyone?’
    ‘The law says innocent until proven guilty. We cops don’t go quite that far.’
    ‘If that’s so, you’d better investigate me too, in case I’ve done him in and buried him at the foot of the garden.’
    ‘No, you’re definitely innocent,’ I said. ‘If you’d done that, I’d be the last person you’d have called.’
    ‘Thanks for that small vote of confidence,’ he grunted. ‘So, on the assumption that Susannah finds everything in order, what can we do to find Hector?’
    ‘How about the blindingly obvious? You can call in the police.’
    He shook his head. ‘That I do not want to do, for now. As you’ve just pointed out, there’s no evidence of violence, so they might laugh in my face if I ask them to investigate. But if they don’t, if they take it on, then for sure it will leak. All our rivals . . . and that’s the rest of the Spanish media . . . will run the story and they will use it to put the boot in.’
    ‘And that’s your fear, is it? That somehow, Hector’s been taken by a business enemy to destabilise InterMedia?’
    ‘Yes, it is; either that or for ransom. But if that was the case, surely we’d have been contacted by now?’
    ‘Not necessarily,’ I countered. ‘A kidnapper might wait for a few days, to see how you react to Hector’s disappearance. But in my experience . . . and it’s limited, abduction not being a major industry in Scotland . . . you’d have heard something within forty-eight hours.’
    I hesitated before I went on. ‘When you suggest that a business rival might have taken him, do you have anyone in mind?’
    Xavi considered his answer for even longer than I’d taken to put the question. Finally he responded.
    ‘Over the last two years we have had three approaches from interested parties. The first was a German media group, who made contact through its lawyer. He asked if we’d be interested in selling, and I said there was no basis for negotiation. He accepted that and asked to be notified if the situation changed. I gave him that guarantee.
    ‘The second was from an American investor, who said that he wanted to establish a European media portfolio and thought that InterMedia would be a good place to start. I told him to start somewhere else. A few months later he bought an ailing newspaper chain in France.’
    ‘And the third?’ I asked.
    ‘That was from an Italian conglomerate, an expanding business called BeBe, whose driving force is a youngish woman named Bernicia Battaglia. Have you heard of her?’
    ‘Yes, don’t they call her the “Warrior” because her surname means “battle”?’
    ‘The one and only. She turned up unannounced in the office in Girona just over two months ago. I saw her alone, in my room. She told me that she was going to buy the InterMedia group for one hundred million euros in BeBe shares.
    ‘I’m afraid I laughed in her face. I told