Free As Easy as Murder by Quintin Jardine Page B

for Patterson’s shout of ‘No!’ laced with an imperious authority that seemed totally alien to such a mild-mannered man . . . if you believed that’s what he really was, of course.
    Jonny stopped in his tracks, and turned, staring at him like a chastened schoolboy.
    ‘It’s not worth it,’ he said, in a tone that was almost apologetic. All the people at the surrounding tables were staring at us, but he calmed them with palms-down gestures, until gradually their interest subsided. (Only Charlie was unaffected. Some bloody guard dog: he slept through the whole drama.) ‘He didn’t get anything,’ he continued, looking at my nephew, ‘and you never know with these guys. Thank you, Jonny, but if you’d caught him and he’d been carrying a knife . . .’ He shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’ He smiled at Tom, who was holding out his wallet, like an offering. ‘Well done, young man,’ he murmured, as he accepted it, and slipped it into his trouser pocket. ‘It’s not like me to be so careless. It just goes to show; you should never take your surroundings for granted.’
    ‘But here you can,’ I protested. ‘This is St Martí, not bloody Barcelona. We don’t have pickpockets and petty thieves here.’ I was furious, partly because I’m very proud of my home village, but mostly, I’m sure, because my son had been involved in a situation way beyond his years. Later, after I’d gone to bed, I shed a few tears of pride over the way he’d handled it, but at that moment, all that registered was anger. ‘I’m not having this,’ I declared, digging out my mobile.
    ‘What are you going to do?’ Shirley asked.
    ‘I’m going to call my pal Alex Guinart, and report the son of a bitch to the police.’ He is one, a detective, based in Girona.
    ‘And what are you going to tell him? To look out for a running man, and that’s it? ’Cos I never saw him.’
    ‘No, more than that; for a start he was . . . white,’ I added, lamely, realising that I could offer little more than her by way of a description.
    ‘He was wearing Lacoste pirate pants, and a Def Leppard T-shirt,’ Jonny volunteered. ‘Dark hair, skinny. Tom was able to get a good grip of his wrist, so it couldn’t have been that thick. I think he’d a Mont Blanc wristwatch on the other . . . they’re one of my sponsors, so I recognised it. And New Balance trainers . . . they aren’t, but I had a pair in Arizona, so I know the logo.’
    ‘He has blue eyes,’ said Tom, firmly, ‘a gold tooth, a scar on his chin,’ he touched his own to demonstrate. ‘He needs a shave and his hair’s grey as well as dark. And he’s not British,’ he added, as a postscript, ‘or Spanish, or French, or German … and he’s too short to be Dutch.’
    Patterson frowned at him, curiosity engaged. ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘It’s a game we play, Tom and me,’ I explained. ‘We reckon that seven times out of ten we can tell a punter’s nationality just by looking at them, and at their body language, before we ever hear them speak. Apart from their clothing, and that’s a big give-away, especially among the youngsters, we can tell the Dutch by their height, the Germans by their build, the French by their frowns . . . very serious people; always worried about something. We know the Spanish because they seem most at home here . . . and they’re most likely to be smokers. Our lot, they’re easiest of all. They might as well have “British” tattooed on their foreheads.’
    ‘You’re British yourself,’ he pointed out, ‘you and Tom. That must give you an advantage.’
    ‘No,’ I contradicted. ‘Tom’s lived hardly any of his life in Britain, yet he’s better at the game than I am. I didn’t get any sort of look at the guy, but if he says he isn’t a Brit, then trust him; he isn’t. Not that I’d expect it,’ I added. ‘That job that I had for a couple of years: I was based in the consulate general in Barcelona. I was