Broken Faith by James Green Page B

tie them all together and if they fell out, if Jarvis got greedy or wanted out, then pop, Mercer puts a bullet in his head.’
    â€˜It’s possible. Harry’s got bad hands but he could still pull a trigger without any difficulty.’
    â€˜It makes a line of enquiry.’
    â€˜What do we know about Jarvis before he came to Spain?’
    â€˜He was a teacher. That’s what he put down on the forms.’
    â€˜How old was he?’
    â€˜Fifty-one, and he’d been here for just over three years.’
    â€˜And from the autopsy no health problems except being dead. A fit teacher under fifty who can afford to pack it in and retire to Spain. Nice going. Did he do any work here?’
    â€˜Not officially, none that we could turn up.’
    â€˜So how was he fixed for money?’
    â€˜The bills we found at his house seem to have been paid on time and he had statements showing just over two thousand euros in the current account of his bank, and a pass book for a deposit account where he had a balance of over twenty thousand.’
    â€˜Fixed up OK then, and it wasn’t from any teachers’ pension fund.’
    â€˜From his bank statements there was a regular monthly payment of three thousand euros into the current account from the deposit account.’
    â€˜So how did the deposit account keep up with that?’
    â€˜Cash deposits. Various sums, nothing regular and nothing so big questions might get asked.’
    â€˜A teacher leaves his job in the UK and comes to Spain. He’s not taken on a pension so he’s not taken early retirement, has no job that anyone knows of, but he’s comfortably off with a steady but erratic income. What was his house like?’
    â€˜Neat, clean –’
    â€˜No, I mean what sort of house was it, big, small, in a good area?’
    â€˜Comfortable, two bedrooms, all the fixings and it’s in a nice enough area, residential, quiet, handy for town and the beaches if you don’t drive.’
    â€˜So not at the cheap end of the market?’
    â€˜No, not the cheap end.’
    â€˜Did he own it?’
    â€˜No, he rented it.’
    â€˜From?’
    â€˜From a company that has properties in different parts of Spain, Iberian Property Holdings. It operates out of Gibraltar and only deals on-line. We didn’t look at it closely but it looks genuine.’
    â€˜Gibraltar?’
    â€˜Probably a tax thing. Also it means they can bypass a lot of UK and European regulations. It doesn’t mean anything, lots of small companies do the same.’
    â€˜An ex-teacher who moves to Spain, rents a nice house and lives comfortably with a decent supply of money which comes from nowhere at all.’
    â€˜Who ends up dead in his own kitchen with a bullet in the back of his head.’
    Jimmy finished his beer. ‘Another one for you?’ he asked Suarez.
    â€˜No thanks.’
    He beckoned the waiter. ‘One more beer, please.’ The waiter left. A group of four elderly people speaking English loudly came in and sat at a table by the window, obviously relieved to be out of the Spanish sun. Having paid to get it they were now busy avoiding it. They must have liked the look of the pictures in the holiday magazine as well. Jimmy pulled his mind back to the business in hand.
    â€˜What about Henderson?’
    â€˜Fifty-four, owns an accountancy business in the UK, Coventry. Semi-retired and came over here five years ago with his wife. He goes back to England about six times a year to keep an eye on things. They had a house in town when they arrived, then two years ago they moved out and bought the place where they live now.’
    â€˜Did they sell the other house?’
    â€˜Nobody checked, why?’
    â€˜When I was a copper you checked everything. Times must have changed.’
    â€˜OK, I’ll check. And before you ask, I checked to see if Mercer really does write crime thrillers. I went on Amazon